iv

GENERAL INDEX

GENERAL INDEX
Volume XCVII
(2011)
Compiled by
Elizabeth Foxwell, M.A.
Abbreviations:
b.n.: brief notice
biog.: biography
men.: mentioned
obit.: obituary
rev.: review

Ælred of Rievaulx, Saint
men., 627
Agnes of Bohemia, Saint
men., 626–27
Akenson, Donald Harman
Rev. of S.A. Brighton, 336–37
Altermatt, Urs
Konfession, Nation und Rom.
Metamorphosen im
schweizerischen und europäischen
Katholizismus des 19. und 20.
Jahrhunderts, rev., 831–32
American Catholic Historical Association
Announcement,ACHA Awards for
Scholarship, Service, and Teaching
and ACHA Graduate Fellowships,
195
Call for Papers, 2012 ACHA Annual
Meeting, 410
Joint meeting of the ACHA and the
Canadian Catholic Historical
Association, 620–23
Report from the Executive Secretary
and Treasurer, Special Funds for
2009, 93–94
Reports of the Ninety-First Annual
Meeting:
Of the Committee on the Howard
R. Marraro Prize, 311
Of the Committee on the John
Gilmary Shea Prize, 309–11
Of the Committee on the John Tracy
Ellis Dissertation Award, 311–12

Of the Committee on Nominations,
309
Of the Committee on Program,
305–09
Of the Editor, The Catholic
Historical Review, 324–27
Of the Executive Secretary and
Treasurer, 320–24
Of the President, 314–20
On the 2010 ACHA Excellence in
Teaching Award, 313
On the 2010 ACHA Lifetime
Distinguished Scholarship Award,
313
On the 2010 ACHA Presidential
Graduate Fellowships, 314
On the 2010 ACHA Service to
Catholic Studies Award, 313–14
On the Peter Guilday Prize, 312
Anderson, R. Bentley
Rev. of F. Botham, 179–80
Andrée,Alexander
Rev. of A. J. Hauser and D. F.Watson,
eds., 96–98
Angelo Clareno
men., 355–56
Angenendt,Arnold, auth., and Hubertus
Lutterbach, ed.
Die Gegenwart von Heiligen und
Reliquien, rev., 572–73
Anglarill,Anna Maria Janer, Servant of
God
men., 412

GENERAL INDEX

Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum
Publishes papers on “Was ist ein
Konzil? Überlegungen zur Typologie
insbesondere der ökumenischen
Konzilien,” 199–200
Antón, Beatriz Ferrús, and Nuria Girona
Fibla, eds.
Vida de Sor Francisca Josefa de
Castillo, rev., 403–04
Aram I [Keshishian]
St. Nerses the Gracious and Church
Unity: Armeno-Greek Church
Relations (1165–1173), rev., 573–74
Art
men., 401–03, 597–99, 796–97,
846–48, 873
Ashley, Kathleen, and Marilyn Deegan
Being a Pilgrim: Art and Ritual on
the Medieval Routes to Santiago,
rev., 115–17
Association of Contemporary Church
Historians
Sponsors conference “Secularization
and the Transformation of Religion
in the U.S. and Germany after
1945,” 198
Associazione “Roma nel Rinascimento”
Cosponsors conference “Convegno su
Egidio da Viterbo nel V Centenario
del Concilio Lateranese V
(1512–2012),” 411
Athanasius, Saint
men., 413
Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Saint
men., 112–13
Augustinian Order
men., 250–75
Augustinians of the Assumption
men., 839–40
Avella, Steven M.
American Catholicism in the
Twentieth-Century American West:
The Next Frontier, 219–49
L’azione muliebre
men., 484–526
Backus, Irena
Life Writing in Reformation Europe:
Lives of Reformers by Friends,
Disciples and Foes, rev., 588–89
Badillo, David A.
Rev. of J. J. Pescador, 189–90
Badir, Patricia
The Maudlin Impression: English
Literary Images of Mary
Magdalene, 1550–1700, rev.,
105–06

v

Bailey, Michael D.
Rev. of P. Hersperger, 770–71
Baines, Ron
Rev. of C. G. Pestana, 558–59
Baker, Nelson H., Monsignor,VicarGeneral, and Servant of God
men., 412
Baldi, Barbara
Pio II e le trasformazioni dell’Europa
cristiana, 1456–1464, rev., 584–85
Bardon, Jonathan, auth., and the Rt. Hon.
the Lord Mawhinney, introd.
The Struggle for Shared Schools in
Northern Ireland: The History of
All Children Together, rev., 606–07
Bareggi, Claudia di Filippo, and
Gianvittorio Signorotto, eds.
L’inquisizione in età moderna e il
caso milanese. Atti delle giornate
di studio 27–29 novembre 2008,
rev., 376–77
Bargellini, Clara, and Michael Komanecky,
eds.
The Arts of the Missions of Northern
New Spain, 1600–1821, rev., 401–03
Barker, S. K.
Protestantism, Poetry and Protest:
The Vernacular Writings of
Antoine de Chandieu (c.
1534–1591), rev., 372–73
Barton, Simon
Rev. of J. D. Dodds, M. R. Menocal, and
A. Krasner Balbale, 131–32
Baumgartner, Frederic J.
Rev. of A.A.Tulchin, 791–93
Rev. of S. Carroll, 142–44
Bays, Daniel H., and Ellen Widmer, eds.
China’s Christian Colleges: CrossCultural Connections 1900–1950,
rev., 193–94
Beal, John P.
Rev. of N. P. Cafardi, 188–89
Beales, Derek
Rev. of U. L. Lehner and M. Printy, eds.,
822–24
Beaumont, Keith
Rev. of I. Ker and T. Merrigan, eds.,
159–60
Beauregard, David N., O.M.V.
Rev. of J. Pearce, 593–94
BeDuhn, Jason David
Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma I:
Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388
C.E., rev., 112–13
Bell, David N.
Rev. of H. Birkett, 776–77

vi

GENERAL INDEX

Benedict XIII, Pope
men., 580–81, 883
Benedictine Order
men., 126–28, 166–70
Bergin, Joseph
Church, Society and Religious
Change in France, 1580–1730,
rev., 145–46
Berman, Constance H.
Rev. of H. Feiss, O.S.B.; M. M. O’Brien;
and R. Pepin, trans. and introd.,
766–67
Bernard, G.W.
Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions, rev.,
793–94
Bernard of Tiron, Blessed
men., 117–18
Bertelsmeier-Kierst, Christa, ed.
Elisabeth von Thüringen und die
neue Frömmigkeit in Europa, rev.,
129–31
Berthelon, Pierre
Antoine Chevrier: Prêtre selon
l’Évangile 1826–1879, b.n., 406–07
Bertram, Jerome
Vita Communis: The Common Life of
the Secular Clergy, rev., 747–48
Bessarione, Basilio, Cardinal
men., 357–58
Betz, John
Rev. of A.Vincelette, 378–79
Bhreathnach, Edel; Joseph MacMahon,
O.F.M.; and John McCafferty, eds.
The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990,
rev., 103–05
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Discusses creation of the World Digital
Library, 883
Biola University
Schedules conference,“Christian
Scholarship in the 21st Century:
Prospects and Perils”; offers
research fellowships, 625
Bireley, Robert, S.J.
Rev. of W. Reinhard, 813–15
Birgittine Order
men., 139–41
Birkett, Helen
The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness.
Hagiography, Patronage and
Ecclesiastical Politics, rev., 776–77
Birzer, Bradley J.
American Cicero: The Life of Charles
Carroll, rev., 391–92
Bisson,Thomas N.
Rev. of R.V.Turner, 124–25

Blake, Richard A., S.J.
Rev. of A. B. Smith, 395–96
Blanchette, Oliva
Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical
Life, rev., 836–38
Blaschke, Olaf
Offenders or Victims? German Jews
and the Causes of Modern
Catholic Antisemitism, rev., 559–61
Blondel, Maurice
biog., 836–38
Blosser, Jacob M.
Rev. of L. F.Winner, 851–52
Blumenthal, Uta-Renate
Rev. of A.T. Hack, 349–50
Rev. of T. Graber, ed., 352–53
Blythe, James M.
The Life and Works of Tolomeo
Fiadoni (Ptolemy of Lucca), rev.,
581–83
The Worldview and Thought of
Tolomeo Fiadoni (Ptolemey of
Lucca), rev., 581–83
Boisson, Didier, and Yves Krumenacker,
eds.
La coexistence confessionnelle à
l’épreuve: Études sur les relations
entre protestants et catholiques
dans la France moderne, rev.,
596–97
Boleyn,Anne
men., 793–94
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich
men., 386–88, 843–45
Bonney, Richard, ed. and trans.
Confronting the Nazi War on
Christianity. The Kulturkampf
Newsletters, 1936–1939, rev.,
388–89
Boothman, Lyn, and Sir Richard Hyde
Parker, eds.
Savage Fortune: An Aristocratic
Family in the Early Seventeenth
Century, rev., 595–96
Borghese, Scipione, Cardinal
men., 813–15
Borgia, Francis, Saint
men., 370–72
Botham, Fay
Almighty God Created the Races:
Christianity, Interracial Marriage,
& American Law, rev., 179–80
Bouchard, Constance B.
Rev. of K. Heidecker, auth., and T. M.
Guest, trans., 114–15
Rev. of V. L. Garver, 348–49

GENERAL INDEX

Bourgeoys, Marguerite, Saint
men., 848–49
Boutry, Philippe, Pierre Antoine Fabre,
and Dominique Julia, eds.
Reliques modernes: Cultes et usages
chrétiens des corps saints des
Réformes aux révolutions, rev.,
333–35
Bovée, David S.
The Church & the Land: The National
Catholic Rural Life Conference
and American Society, 1923–2007,
rev., 185–86
Boyer, John W.
Karl Lueger (1844–1910):
Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf.
Eine Biographie, rev., 600–01
Bradshaw, Paul F.
Rev. of R. MacMullen, 563–64
Brady,Thomas A., Jr.
German Histories in the Age of
Reformations, 1400–1650, rev.,
98–99
Rev. of C. S. Dixon, D. Freist, and M.
Greengrass, eds., 137–38
Brakke, David
The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and
Diversity in Early Christianity,
rev., 753–54
Braude, Benjamin
Rev. of D. M.Whitford, 587–88
Brighton, Stephen A.
Historical Archaeology of the Irish
Diaspora: A Transnational
Approach, rev., 336–37
Brundage, James A.
Rev. of J. Riley-Smith, 121–22
Buffon, Giuseppe, and M.Antonietta
Pozzebon
Un altro francescanesimo:
Francescane missionarie da
Gemona a New York tra immigrazione e servizio sociale, rev.,
392–93
Bullard, Melissa Meriam
Rev. of H. Hyde, 590–91
Bultot-Verleysen,Anne-Marie, ed.
Odon de Cluny.Vita sancti Geraldi
Aureliacensis, rev., 350–51
Burkey, Blaine, O.F.M. Cap.
Seelos: The Cumberland Years. The
Life and Labors of Blessed Francis
Xavier Seelos in Maryland’s
Allegheny Mountains, 1857–1865,
b.n., 881

vii

Burson, Jeffrey D.
The Rise and Fall of Theological
Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de
Prades and Ideological
Polarization in EighteenthCentury France, rev., 824–25
Bush, Kate E.
Receives ACHA John Tracy Ellis
Dissertation Award, 311–12
Bush, Michael
The Pilgrims’ Complaint: A Study of
Popular Thought in the Early
Tudor North, rev., 366–67
Bushkovitch, Paul
Rev. of D. B. Miller, 785–86
Byzantine Studies Conference
men., 624
Cafardi, Nicholas P.
Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops’
Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse
of Children, rev., 188–89
Callam, Daniel, C.S.B.
Rev. of D. G. Hunter, 113–14
Calvin, John
men., 141–42
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies,
University of Alberta
Publishes guide to Ukrainian holdings in
Canadian archival repositories, 411
Caner, Daniel F.
Rev. of G. Filoramo, ed., 757–58
Capito,Wolfgang
men., 363–64
Carbonneau, Robert, C.P.
obit. of J. J. O’Brien, C.P., 632–33
Carey, Patrick W.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ: A Model
Theologian, 1918–2008, rev.,
611–12
Rev. of J. P. McCartin, 609–11
Carlsmith, Christopher
A Renaissance Education: Schooling
in Bergamo and the Venetian
Republic, 1500–1650, rev., 789–91
Carroll, Charles
men., 391–92
Carroll, Stuart
Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise
Family and the Making of Europe,
rev., 142–44
Cary, Noel D.
Rev. of O. Blaschke, 559–61
Cassity, Michael, and Danney Goble
Divided Hearts: The Presbyterian
Journey through Oklahoma
History, b.n., 407

viii

GENERAL INDEX

Castaldini,Alberto, ed.
Antonio Possevino. I gesuiti e la loro
eredità culturale in Transilvania.
Atti della Giornata di studio, ClujNapoca, 4 dicembre 2007, rev.,
149–51
Castillo, Francisca Josefa de la
Concepción
men., 403–04
Catà, Cesare
Rev. of F. Colnago, 576–77
Catherine of Siena, Saint
men., 624–25
Caussé, Françoise
La revue «L’Art sacré»: Le débat en
France sur l’art et la religion
(1945–1954), rev., 846–48
Cavazos-González, Gilberto, O.F.M.
Greater than a Mother’s Love: The
Spirituality of Francis and Clare
of Assisi, rev., 774–75
Celestine III, Pope
men., 128–29
Celestine V, Pope and Saint
men., 780
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance
Studies, University of Toronto
Sponsors conference,“Early Modern
Migrations: Exiles, Expulsions, and
Religious Refugees, 1400–1700,” 198
Centro Culturale Agostiniano
Cosponsors conference “Convegno su
Egidio da Viterbo nel V Centenario
del Concilio Lateranese V
(1512–2012),” 411
Chang, Derek
Citizens of a Christian Nation:
Evangelical Missions and the
Problem of Race in the Nineteenth
Century, rev., 858–59
Chávez, Nicolasa
Rev. of C. Bargellini and M.
Komanecky, eds., 401–03
Chevrier,Antoine, Blessed
men., 406–07
Christ Child, devotion to
men., 189–90,
National Christ Child Society, men.,
626
Christie, Robert C.
Rev. of W. E. Conn, 382–83
Christine of St.Trond, Saint
men., 579
Church History & Religious Culture
Publishes articles on St.Athanasius,
413

Church of SS. Celso and Giuliano
men., 653–78
Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina
men., 653–78
Church, S. D.
Rev. of R. Dunning, ed., 777–78
Clare of Assisi, Saint
men., 773–75
Clark, Linda, Maureen Jurkowski, and
Colin Richmond, eds.
Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600:
Essays for Margaret Aston, rev.,
741–44
Clark, Peter
Rev. of B. Lowe, 788–89
Claster, Jill N.
Sacred Violence: The European
Crusades to the Middle East,
1095–1396, rev., 118–19
Clatterbuck, Mark
Demons, Saints, & Patriots: Catholic
Visions of Native America through
The Indian Sentinel (1902–1962),
rev., 393–95
Claussen, M.A.
Rev. of G. I. Halfond, 570–71
Clopper, Lawrence M.
Rev. of F.A. C. Mantello and J. Goering,
trans., introd., and annot., 577–79
Coari,Adelaide
men., 484–526
Codex Carolinus
men., 349–50
Collins, David J., S.J.
b.n., of C. Jetter, 409
Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and
Their Authors in Germany,
1470–1530, rev., 360–62
Colnago, Filippo
Poesia e Teologia in Giovanni Scoto
l’Eriugena, rev., 576–77
Colombo, Emanuele
Rev. of A. Castaldini, ed., 149–51
Coluccia, Giuseppe L.
Basilio Bessarione: Lo spirito greco e
l’occidente, rev., 357–58
Conforti, Guido Maria,Archbishop, Blessed
men., 412, 626
Congregation of Notre Dame
men., 848–49
Congregation of the Mission
men., 153–54
Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of
the Immaculate Conception of the
Mother of God
men., 412

GENERAL INDEX

Congregation of the Passion
men., 887
Congregation of the Servants of Mary,
Ministers of the Sick
men., 626
Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph
men., 626
Conn,Walter E.
Conscience & Conversion in
Newman. A Developmental Study
of Self in John Henry Newman,
rev., 382–83
Connelly, Cornelia
men., 162–63
“Conoscere la Biblioteca Vaticana”
exhibition, 197
Constantine the Great
men., 755–57
Contreni, John J.
Rev. of O. Schneider, 763–64
Conway, John S.
Rev. of R. Bonney, ed. and trans., 388–89
Coon, Lynda L.
Dark Age Bodies: Gender and
Monastic Practice in the Early
Medieval West, rev., 764–65
Cooper-Rompato, Christine F.
The Gift of Tongues: Women’s
Xenoglossia in the Later Middle
Ages, rev., 585–86
Coppa, Frank J.
The National Edition of the Diaries of
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli/Pope
John XXIII: A Bibliographical Essay,
81–92
Receives ACHA Lifetime Distinguished
Scholarship Award, 313
Coreth,Anna
men., 276–304
Corkery, James, and Thomas Worcester,
eds.
The Papacy since 1500: From Italian
Prince to Universal Pastor, rev.,
744–45
Costigan, Richard F., S.J
Rev. of V. Petit, 833–34
Cotts, John D.
The Clerical Dilemma: Peter of Blois
and Literate Culture in the Twelfth
Century, rev., 125–26
Cousins, Norman
men., 679–712
Cox, Jeffrey
Rev. of D. Hardiman, 879–80
Crane, Richard Francis
Rev. of J.-P. Guérend, 168–70

ix

Cristianesimo nella storia
Publishes issue on sacramental
politics, 413–14
Crosignani, Ginevra,Thomas M. McCoog,
and Michael Questier, eds.; with the
assistance of Peter Holmes
Recusancy and Conformity in Early
Modern England: Manuscript and
Printed Sources in Translation,
rev., 803–04
Crowther, Edward R.
Rev. of W. J.Wallace, 856–58
Crusades
men., 118–22
Cunningham, Bernadette
The Annals of the Four Masters: Irish
History, Kingship and Society in
the Early Seventeenth Century,
rev., 811–13
Curran, Robert Emmett
A History of Georgetown University,
Vol. 1: From Academy to
University, 1789–1889;Vol. 2: The
Quest for Excellence, 1889–1964;
Vol. 3: The Rise to Prominence,
1964–1989, rev., 853–55
Cusato, Michael F., and Guy Geltner, eds.
Defenders and Critics of Franciscan
Life: Essays in Honor of John V.
Fleming, rev., 132–34
Dallen, James
Rev. of A. S. Kidder, 749–50
Damiani, Bruno M.
Rev. of W. Smith and C. Colahan, trans.,
eds., introd., and annot., 148–49
D’Andrea, David M.
Civic Christianity in Renaissance
Italy: The Hospital of Treviso,
1400–1530, rev., 583–84
Rev. of K. L. Jansen, J. Drell, and F.
Andrews, eds., 574–76
Da Persico, Elena
men., 484–526
Daughters of Charity of St.Vincent de
Paul
Consolidates archives in Emmitsburg,
MD, 883–84
David, Zdenĕk V.
Realism, Tolerance, and Liberalism
in the Czech National Awakening:
Legacies of the Bohemian
Reformation, rev., 827–28
Dawes, Helena
The Catholic Church and the Woman
Question: Catholic Feminism in
Italy in the Early 1900s, 484–526

x

GENERAL INDEX

Declerck, Leo, trans.
Les agendas conciliaires de Mgr J.
Willebrands, secrétaire du
Secrétariat pour l’Unité des
chrétiens, rev., 176–78
de Cros, Pierre
men., 356–57
de’ Grassi, Paris
men., 653–78
de Gruchy, John W., ed.; Isabel Best, Lisa
E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and
Nancy Lukens, trans.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works,Vol. 8:
Letters and Papers from Prison,
English ed., rev., 843–45
Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf
Ravenna in Late Antiquity, rev.,
564–65
Del Soldato, Eva
Rev. of G. L. Coluccia, 357–58
DeSilva, Jennifer Mara
Appropriating Sacred Space: PrivateChapel Patronage and Institutional
Identity in Sixteenth-Century
Rome—The Case of the Office of
Ceremonies, 653–78
Deutscher,Thomas
Rev. of C. Carlsmith, 789–91
Diefenbach-Popov, Natalia
Das russisch-orthodoxe KirilloBelozerskij-Kloster zwischen
Macht und Spiritualität, b.n., 408
Dietrich, Donald J.
Rev. of D. Hastings, 173–74
Rev. of J. Ulrich, ed., 835–36
DiGiovanni, Stephen M.
Rev. of G. Buffon and M.A. Pozzebon,
392–93
Dillon,Anne
Rev. of G. Crosignani,T. M. McCoog,
and M. Questier, eds., with the assistance of P. Holmes, 803–04
Dixon, C. Scott, Dagmar Freist, and Mark
Greengrass, eds.
Living with Religious Diversity in
Early Modern Europe, rev., 137–38
XVII e siècle
Publishes articles on Bohemia,
628–29
Dodds, Jerrilynn D., Maria Rosa Menocal,
and Abigail Krasner Balbale
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians,
Jews, and Muslims in the Making
of Castilian Culture, rev., 131–32
Domenico, Roy
Rev. of A. Melloni, ed., 170–71

Donahue, Charles, Jr.
Rev. of P. Nold, 782–83
Donnelly, James S., Jr.
Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian
Rebellion of 1821–1824, rev.,
379–80
Dooley, Brendan
Rev. of E. Ferraglio and M. Faini, eds.,
826–27
Rev. of E.-M. Schnurr, 364–66
Doran, John, and Damian J. Smith, eds.
Pope Celestine III (1191–1198):
Diplomat and Pastor, rev., 128–29
Doran, Susan
Rev. of S. Hamrick, 144–45
Dossetti, Giuseppe
men., 170–71
Dougherty, Joseph
From Altar-Throne to Table: The
Campaign for Frequent Holy
Communion in the Catholic
Church, rev., 750–51
Doyle,William
Rev. of J. D. Burson, 824–25
Drake, H.A.
Rev. of K. M. Girardet, 755–57
Drinan, Robert, S.J.
biog., 862–64
Ducreux, Marie-Elizabeth
Emperors, Kingdoms,Territories:
Multiple Versions of the Pietas
Austriaca?, 276–304
Duffy, Eamon
Fires of Faith: Catholic England
under Mary Tudor, rev., 798–800
Dulce, Irmã, Servant of God
men., 412
Dulles,Avery, S.J., Cardinal
biog., 611–12
Dumond, Don E.
Rev. of E. D.Terry, B.W. Fallaw, G. M.
Joseph, and E. H. Moseley, eds.,
874–75
Dunning, Robert, ed.
Jocelin of Wells: Bishop, Builder,
Courtier, rev., 777–78
Durand,William, Bishop
men., 781–82
Durso, Keith E.
No Armor for the Back: Baptist
Prison Writings, 1600s–1700s, rev.,
106–08
Dursteler, Eric R.
Rev. of B. Heyberger, M. García-Arenal,
E. Colombo, and P.Vismara, eds.,
821–22

GENERAL INDEX

Early American Studies
Publishes issue on “Markets and
Morality: Intersections of Economy,
Ethics, and Religion in Early North
America,” 200
Eason, Susan
Receives Carlos E. Castañeda Award,
887
Ecjegaray, María Catalina Irigoyen
men., 626
Edwards, John
Rev. of S. B. Schwartz, 101–03
Edwards, Kathryn A., and Susie
Speakman Sutch, trans., introd., and
annot.
Leonarde’s Ghost: Popular Piety and
“The Appearance of a Spirit” in
1628, rev., 815–16
Edwards, Mark
Catholicity and Heresy in the Early
Church, rev., 340–42
Ehrenschwendtner, Marie-Luise
Rev. of E. L. Lindgren, 778–79
Eire, Carlos M. N.
Rev. of E. Duffy, 798–800
A Very Brief History of Eternity, rev.,
328–29
Eleanor of Aquitaine
men., 124–25
Elisabeth of Thuringia, Saint
men., 129–31
Elizabeth I, Queen
men., 144–45
Ellis, John Tracy, Monsignor
men., 46–75
Endres, David J.
American Crusade: Catholic Youth in
the World Mission Movement from
World War I through Vatican II,
rev., 861–62
Enochs, Ross
Rev. of M. Clatterbuck, 393–95
Entenmann, Robert
Rev. of E. Menegon, 875–77
Episcopal appointments
men., 461–83
Erasmus, Desiderius, auth.; Dominic
Baker-Smith, ed.; and Carolinne
White and Emily Kearns, trans. and
annot.
Expositions of the Psalms: Enarratio
Psalmi 38, De sarcienda ecclesiae
concordia; Enarratio Psalmi 14,
Qui est de puritate tabernaculi
sive ecclesiae christianae, rev.,
138–39

xi

Ericksen, Robert P.
Rev. of J.W. de Gruchy, ed.; I. Best, L. E.
Dahill, R. Krauss, and N. Lukens,
trans., 843–45
Rev. of L. L. Rasmussen, ed.; I. Best, D.
Higgins, and D.W. Stott, trans.,
386–88
El Escorial, Monastery of San Lorenzo el
Real
men., 807–08
Evers,Alexander
Church, Cities, and People.A Study of
the Plebs in the Church and Cities
of Roman Africa in Late Antiquity,
rev., 567–69
Faggioli, Massimo
Rev. of C. M. Martini, auth., and M.
Vergottini, ed., 168
Farge,William J., S.J.
Rev. of H. N.Ward, 191–93
Farr, James R.
Rev. of K.A. Edwards and S. Speakman
Sutch, trans., introd., and annot.,
815–16
Feiss, Hugh, O.S.B.; Maureen M. O’Brien;
and Ronald Pepin, trans. and introd.
The Lives of Monastic Reformers, 1:
Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and
Stephen of Obazine, rev., 766–67
Felici, Lucia
Profezie di riforma e idee di concor
dia religiosa:Visioni e speranze
dell’esule piemontese Giovanni
Leonardo Sartori, rev., 592–93
Ferngren, Gary B.
Medicine and Health Care in Early
Christianity, rev., 566–67
Ferraglio, Ennio, and Marco Faini, eds.
Carteggi con Quadrio . . . Ripa.
Edizione Nazionale del Carteggio
di L.A. Muratori, Vol. 35. rev.,
826–27
Ferrer, Luis Martínez, ed.
Decretos del concilio tercero provincial mexicano (1585), rev., 613–14
Fiadoni,Tolomeo
men., 581–83
Filoramo, Giovanni, ed.
Monachesimo orientale:
Un’introduzione, rev., 757–58
Findlen, Paula
Rev. of S. Pagano, annot., 151–53
Firpo, Massimo, and Ottavia Niccoli, eds.
Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e
l’ultima fase del concilio di Trento,
rev., 801–03

xii

GENERAL INDEX

Fisher, James T.
On the Irish Waterfront: The
Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul
of the Port of New York, rev.,
186–87
Folda, Jaroslav
Rev. of D. Pringle, 120–21
Foley, Mary Anne
Rev. of P. Simpson, 848–49
Foley, Patrick
Appointed to the Faculty Advisory
Board of the John Paul Institute of
Lay Ministries, 887
Ford, John T.
Rev. of P. D. Murray, ed., with L. BadiniConfalonieri, 337–39
Forrestal,Alison
Rev. of P. Petot, 373–75
Forster, Marc R.
Rev. of L. Jalabert, 146–48
Francis of Assisi, Saint
men., 774–75
Francisca de Paula de Jesus, Servant of
God
men., 412
Franciscan Order
men., 1–23, 103–05, 132–34, 392–93,
355–56, 375–76, 412, 626–27,
808–13
Franco,Antonio, Bishop and Servant of
God
men., 412
Franziskus Maria vom Kreuze, Servant of
God
men., 412
Freeburn, Ryan
Rev. of J. D. Cotts, 125–26
Freeze, Gregory L.
Rev. of M. Kozelsky, 385–86
Friguglietti, James
Rev. of N. Shusterman, 819–21
Frykenberg, Robert Eric
Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present, rev., 740–41
Fudge,Thomas A.
Rev. of Z.V. David, 827–28
Galilei, Galileo
men., 151–53
Gallagher, John A.
Rev. of J. F. Keenan, S.J., 339–40
Gallant, Mary
Rev. of S.Vromen, 603–04
Gariepy, Henry
Christianity in Action: The
International History of the
Salvation Army, rev., 183–85

Garneau, James F.
Rev. of M. S. Massa, S.J., 398–400
Rev. of R.A. Schroth, S.J., 862–64
Garver,Valerie L.
Women and Aristocratic Culture in
the Carolingian World, rev.,
348–49
Gaucher, Guy
Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux
(1873–1897). Biographie, rev.,
834–35
Gaustad, Edwin Scott
obit., 629–32
Gayte, Marie
The Vatican and the Reagan
Administration:A Cold War
Alliance?, 713–36
Geary, Medora Bross
Rev. of F. J. Sypher Jr., 855–56
Georgetown University
men., 853–55
Gerald of Aurillac, Saint
men., 350–51
German Historical Institute
Cosponsors conference “Martin Luther
in Rome,” 197
Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus
Catholicorum e.V.
Cosponsors conference “Das Konzil
von Trient und die katholische
Konfessionskultur,” 885–86
Gilbank, Robin
Rev. of C. F. Cooper-Rompato, 585–86
Giorda, Mariachiara
Monachesimo e istituzioni ecclesias
tiche in Egitto. Alcuni casi di
interazione e integrazione, rev.,
569–70
Girardet, Klaus Martin
Der Kaiser und sein Gott: Das
Christentum im Denken und in
der Religionspolitik Konstantins
des Grossen, rev., 755–57
Girgensohn, Dieter
Rev. of H. Millet, ed, 580–81
Gleason, Philip
Working in a Tradition, 435–60
Glickman, Gabriel
The English Catholic Community,
1688–1745: Politics, Culture and
Ideology, rev., 156–57
Gollar, C.Walker
The Historical Methodology of John
Tracy Ellis, 46–75
Gonzaga,Aloysius, Saint
men., 409

GENERAL INDEX

Gordon, Sarah Barringer
The Spirit of the Law: Religious
Voices and the Constitution in
Modern America, rev., 865–66
Gossman, Lionel
Rev. of C. Grewe, 597–99
Graber,Tom, ed.
Die Papsturkunden des
Hauptstaatsarchivs Dresden, Erster
Band: Originale Überlieferung,Teil
I: 1104–1303, rev., 352–53
Gransden,Antonia
A History of the Abbey of Bury St.
Edmunds, 1182–1256: Samson of
Tottingham to Edmund of Walpole,
rev., 126–28
Green, Bernard
Christianity in Ancient Rome: The
First Three Centuries, rev., 110–11
Green, Ian
Humanism and Protestantism in
Early Modern English Education,
rev., 367–68
Greene,Alison Collis
Rev. of D. Chang, 858–59
Gregorian University
Schedules program “Cristiani d’Italia,”
625
Gregory, Brad S.
Rev. of D. J. Collins, 360–62
Grendler, Paul F.
Church Censorship of Science in the
Sixteenth Century, 76–80
Rev. of A. Jamme and O. Poncet, eds.,
359–60
Rev. of C. D. F. Bareggi and G.
Signorotto, eds., 376–77
Gres-Gayer, Jacques M.
Rev. of J. Bergin, 145–46
Grewe, Cordula
Painting the Sacred in the Age of
Romanticism, rev., 597–99
Gribble, Richard, C.S.C.
Rev. of N. D. Mitchell, 329–30
Grieve, Patricia E.
The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in
the History of Christian, Muslim,
and Jewish Conflict, rev., 332–33
Grosseteste, Robert, Bishop
men., 577–79
Grossus, Geoffrey, auth., and Ruth
Harwood Cline, trans. and introd.
The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron,
rev., 117–18
Guanella, Luigi, Blessed
men., 626

xiii

Guérend, Jean-Pierre
Le moine, le prêtre et le général. Les
frères Lalande ou le dépassement
de soi, rev., 168–70
Guida, Marco
Una leggenda in cerca d’autore: la
Vita di santa Chiara d’Assisi.
Studio delle fonti e sinossi intertestuale, rev., 773–74
Guise Family
men., 142–44
Häberlein, Mark
The Practice of Pluralism:
Congregational Life and Religious
Diversity in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1730–1820, rev., 182–83
Habsburg monarchy
men., 276–304
Hack,Achim Thomas
Codex Carolinus: Päpstliche
Epistolographie im 8. Jahrhundert,
rev., 349–50
Hafner, Georg
men., 199
Hahn, Cynthia
Rev. of S. B. Montgomery, 771–72
Halfond, Gregory I.
Archaeology of Frankish Church
Councils, AD 511–768, rev.,
570–71
Hamrick, Stephen
The Catholic Imaginary and the
Cults of Elizabeth I, 1558–1582,
rev., 144–45
Hardiman, David
Rev. of Missionaries and Their
Medicine: A Christian Modernity
for Tribal India, 879–80
Harries, Richard
biog., 845–46
Hart, Kevin
Rev. of G.T. Kurian, ed., and J. D. Smith
III, coeditor, 737–38
Hastings, Derek
Catholicism and the Roots of
Nazism: Religious Identity and
National Socialism, rev., 173–74
Hauser,Alan J., and Duane F.Watson, eds.
A History of Biblical Interpretation.
Vol. 2: The Medieval through the
Reformation Periods, rev.,
96–98
Hazard, Benjamin
Faith and Patronage: The Political
Career of Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire,
c. 1560–1629, rev., 808–10

xiv

GENERAL INDEX

Hazlett, Ian
Rev. of J. Murray, 369–70
Heal, Bridget, and Ole Peter Grell, eds.
The Impact of the European
Reformation: Princes, Clergy and
People, rev., 134–35
Heidecker, Karl, auth., and Tanis M.
Guest, trans.
The Divorce of Lothar II: Christian
Marriage and Political Power
in the Carolingian World,
114–15
Helena, Saint
men., 776–77
Hellman, John W.
Rev. of S. B.Whitney, 602–03
Hellmann, J.A.Wayne, O.F.M. Conv.
Rev. of M. F. Cusato and G. Geltner,
eds., 132–34
Henderson, John B.
Rev. of F. C. Hsia, 877–78
Hennessy, Marlene Villalobos
Rev. of K. L. Scott, 787–88
Herbers, Klaus, and Jochen Johrendt,
eds.
Rev. of Das Papsttum und das
vielgestaltige Italien: Hundert
Jahre Italia Pontificia, 95–96
Herde, Peter, ed.
Die ältesten Viten Papst Cölestins
V. (Peters vom Morrone), rev.,
780
Hermaniuk, Maxim, Bishop, C.Ss.R.
men., 679–712
Hernán, Enrique García, ed.
Monumenta Borgia, Vol.VII:
(1550–1566). Sanctus Franciscus
Borgia Quartus Gandiae Dux et
Societatis Iesu Praepositus
Generalis Tertius (1510–1572),
rev., 370–72
Hersperger, Patrick
Kirche, Magie, und “Aberglaube”:
Superstitio in der Kanonistik des
12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, rev.,
770–71
Heyberger, Bernard, Mercedes GarcíaArenal, Emanuele Colombo, and
Paola Vismara, eds.
L’Islam visto da Occidente. Cultura e
religione del Seicento europeo di
fronte all’Islam, rev., 821–22
Higman, Francis
Rev. of S. K. Barker, 372–73
Hincmar,Archbishop
men., 763–64

Hinds, Peter
“The Horrid Popish Plot”: Roger
L’Estrange and the Circulation of
Political Discourse in LateSeventeenth-Century London, rev.,
818–19
Historical Studies
Publishes papers from 2009 annual
meeting of Canadian Catholic
Historical Association, 201
Holloway, R. Ross
Rev. of B. Green, 110–11
Horden, Peregrine
Rev. of G. B. Ferngren, 566–67
Hospitallers
men., 121–22, 412
Hotchin, Julie
Rev. of C. Bertelsmeier-Kierst, ed.,
129–31
Hourihane, Colum
Rev. of K.Ashley and M. Deegan,
115–17
Howe, John
Rev. of A.Angenendt, auth., and H.
Lutterbach, ed., 572–73
Hsia, Florence C.
Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits
and Their Scientific Missions in
Late Imperial China, rev., 877–78
Hudon,William V.
Rev. of M. Firpo and O. Niccoli, eds.,
801–03
Hugh of Saint-Victor
men., 122–24
Hughes,Amy Brown
Rev. of T. Jansen, 760–61
Hughes, Jennifer Scheper
Biography of a Mexican Crucifix:
Lived Religion and Local Faith
from the Conquest to the Present,
rev., 612–13
Hughes, John Jay
b.n. of L.V. Kanawada Jr., 882
Rev. of K. L. Parker and M. J. G. Pahls,
eds., 160–61
Rev. of P. Hünermann, ed., 389–90
Hünermann, Peter, ed.
Exkommunikation oder
Kommunikation? Der Weg der
Kirche nach dem II.Vatikanum
und die Pius–Brüder, rev., 389–90
Hunter, David G.
Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in
Ancient Christianity: The
Jovinianist Controversy, rev.,
113–14

GENERAL INDEX

Hurt, R. Douglas
Rev. of D. S. Bovée, 185–86
Hyde, Helen
Cardinal Bendinello Sauli and
Church Patronage in SixteenthCentury Italy, rev., 590–91
Ignatius of Antioch, Saint
men., 751–53
Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
men., 591–92
Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies,
University of Southern California
Announces “Generations in Dialogue”
research program, 198
Institute of the Daughters of Divine
Charity
men., 412
Institute of the Daughters of St. Mary of
Providence
men., 626
Institute of the Sisters of Charity of the
Immaculate Conception
men., 412
Institute of the Sisters of the Holy Family
of Urgell
men., 412
International Congress of Medieval
Canon Law
Fourteenth international congress
scheduled, 198
Isaïa, Marie-Céline
Remi de Reims: Mémoire d’un saint,
histoire d’une Église, rev., 762–63
Istituto per le scienze religiose
Sponsors events, 411
Izbicki,Thomas M.
Rev. of B. Baldi, 584–85
Jalabert, Laurent
Catholiques et protestants sur la rive
gauche du Rhin: Droits, confessions et coexistence religieuse de
1648 à 1789, rev., 146–48
Jamme,Armand, and Olivier Poncet, eds.
Offices et papauté (XIVe–XVIIe
siècle). Charges, hommes, destines,
rev., 359–60
Jansen, Katherine L., Joanna Drell, and
Frances Andrews, eds.
Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation,
rev., 574–76
Jansen,Till
Theodor von Mopsuestia. De incarnatione: Überlieferung und Christologie der griechischen und lateinischen Fragmente einschliesslich
Textausgabe, rev., 760–61

xv

Javellana, René B., S.J.
Rev. of J. N. Schumacher, S.J., 878–79
Jefferies, Henry A.
The Irish Church and the Tudor
Reformations, rev., 794–96
Jerónimo Zurita: Revista de Historia
Publishes papers on “Fábrica de
Santos, España, siglos XVI–XVII,” 886
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, b.n., 409
Jewish-Catholic relations
men., 131–32, 559–61, 603–04,
739–40, 751–53
Jiyou, Paul Wang
Le premier concile plénier chinois,
Shanghai 1924: droit canonique
missionnaire forgé en Chine, rev.,
618–19
Joan, Pope
men., 765–66
Joassart, Bernard, ed.
De Constantinople à Athènes: Louis
Petit et les Bollandistes. Correspondance d’un archevêque savant
(1902–1926), rev., 839–40
Jocelin of Furness
men., 776–77
Jocelin of Wells, Bishop
men., 777–78
Jodock, Darrell
Rev. of I. Linden, 561–63
John XXII, Pope
men., 782–83
John XXIII, Pope
men., 81–92, 679–712
John of Cantimpré,Abbot and Saint
men., 579
John Paul II, Pope, Blessed
men., 412, 623–24, 713–36
John Scotus Eriugena
men., 576–77
Johnson, Lawrence J.
Worship in the Early Church: An
Anthology of Historical Sources,
Vol. 1, rev., 110
Johnson, Sherri Franks
Convents and Change:Autonomy,
Marginalization, and Religious
Affiliation in Late-Medieval Bologna,
250–75

xvi

GENERAL INDEX

Johnson,Trevor
Magistrates, Madonnas and
Miracles. The Counter Reformation
in the Upper Palatinate, rev.,
810–11
Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican
Foundation
First Ratzinger Prize presented, 883
Jovinian
men., 113–14
Julian the Apostate
men., 758–60
Kamen, Henry
The Escorial: Art and Power in the
Renaissance, rev., 807–08
Kanawada, Leo V., Jr.
The Holocaust Diaries: Book I: The
Souls of the Just: Rome, Italy; Book
II: The Righteous and the Just: Côte
d’Azur, France; Book III: A Homeland for the Just: Palestine; Book
IV: Saviors of the Just: Romania;
Book V: The Innocence of the Just:
Hungary and Slovakia, b.n., 882
Karant-Nunn, Susan C.
The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping
the Religious Emotions in Early
Modern Germany, rev., 135–37
Kardong,Terrence G., O.S.B.
Rev. of L. L. Coon, 764–65
Karrer, Robert N.
The National Right to Life Committee:
Its Founding, Its History, and the
Emergence of the Pro-Life
Movement Prior to Roe v.Wade,
527–57
Kasper, Maria Katharina, Blessed
men., 383–85
Katholische Akademie der Erzdiözese
Freiburg
Cosponsors conference “Das Konzil
von Trient und die katholische
Konfessionskultur,” 885–86
Kauffman, Christopher J.
Rev. of M. Pasquier, 608–09
Keen, Ralph
Rev. of I. Backus, 588–89
Keenan, James F., S.J.
A History of Catholic Moral Theology
in the Twentieth Century: From
Confessing Sins to Liberating
Consciences, rev., 339–40
Kelly, Henry Ansgar
Rev. of M. E. Sommar, 804–05
Kempf, Damien
Rev. of M.-C. Isaïa, 762–63

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald
men., 679–712
Kent, Peter C.
Rev. of J. Pollard, 164–66
Kentigern, Bishop and Saint
men. 776–77
Ker, Ian, and Terrence Merrigan, eds.
The Cambridge Companion to John
Henry Newman, rev., 159–60
Kerner, Max, and Klaus Herbers
Die Päpstin Johanna: Biographie
einer Legende, rev., 765–66
Kesselring, Krista
Rev. of M. Bush, 366–67
Khater,Akram Fouad
Rev. of T. S. Kidd, 180–82
Kidd,Thomas S.
American Christians and Islam:
Evangelical Culture and Muslims
from the Colonial Period to the
Age of Terrorism, rev., 180–82
Kidder,Annemarie S.
Making Confession, Hearing
Confession: A History of the Cure
of Souls, rev., 749–50
King, Benjamin John
Newman and the Alexandrian
Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in
Nineteenth-Century England, rev.,
380–82
Kingdon, Robert M.
obit., 415–16
Klaiber, Jeffrey L., S.J.
The Jesuits in Latin America, 1549–
2000: 450 Years of Inculturation,
Defense of Human Rights, and
Prophetic Witness, rev., 870–71
Knox, Lezlie
Rev. of M. Guida, 773–74
Kohut, Zenon E.
Rev. of B. Skinner, 158–59
Kolar, Bogdan
Rev. of H.-J.Veen, P. März, and F.-J.
Schlichting, eds., 178–79
Rev. of I.A. Murzaku, 745–47
Kolb, Robert
Rev. of D.Wilson, 362–63
Kostka, Stanislaus, Saint
men., 409
Kostlevy,William
Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and
Radicals in Progressive Era
America, rev., 859–60
Kostroun, Daniella, and Lisa Vollendorf, eds.
Women, Religion, and the Atlantic
World (1600–1800), rev., 108–09

GENERAL INDEX

Kozelsky, Mara
Christianizing Crimea: Shaping
Sacred Space in the Russian
Empire and Beyond, rev., 385–86
Kuefler, Mathew
Rev. of A.-M. Bultot-Verleysen, ed.,
350–51
Kurialacherry,Thomas, Bishop
men., 626
Kurian, George Thomas, ed., and James D.
Smith III, coeditor
The Encyclopedia of Christian
Literature,Vol. 1: Genres and
Types/Biographies A–G;Vol. 2:
Biographies H–Z, rev., 737–38
Kuzniewski,Anthony J., S.J.
Rev. of R. E. Curran, 853–55
Lacal, Francisco Estaban
men., 626
Lalande, Bernard
men., 168–70
Lalande, Jacques, O.S.B.
men., 168–70
Lamberts, Emiel
Rev. of U.Altermatt, 831–32
Lambkin, Brian
Rev. of J. Bardon, auth., and the Rt. Hon.
the Lord Mawhinney, introd., 606–07
Lange, Hermann
men., 199
Larin, Sister Vassa
b.n., of N. Diefenbach-Popov, 408
Larkin, Brian
Rev. of J. S. Hughes, 612–13
The Very Nature of God. Baroque
Catholicism and Religious Reform
in Bourbon Mexico City, rev., 872–74
Lavrin,Asunción
Rev. of B. R. Larkin, 872–74
Leadership Conference of Women
Religious
Receives ACHA Service to Catholic
Studies Award, 313–14
Lederer, David
Rev. of T.A. Brady Jr., 98–99
Rev. of W. B. Smith, 335–36
Lee, J. Joseph
Rev. J. S. Donnelly Jr., 379–80
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A.
Rev. of M. M. Rosa, auth., and S. E.
Owens, ed. and trans., 375–76
Lehner, Bernhard
men., 626
Lehner, Ulrich L., and Michael Printy, eds.
A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, rev., 822–24

xvii

Leo X, Pope
men., 590–91
Leo XIII, Pope
men., 414, 484–526
Leonard, Bill J.
Rev. of K. E. Durso, 106–08
Licence,Tom
Rev. of G. Grossus, auth., and R. H.
Cline, trans. and introd., 117–18
Liebmann, Maximilian
“Heil Hitler”—Pastoral bedingt:Vom
Politischen Katholizismus zum
Pastoralkatholizismus, rev.,
174–76
Linden, Ian
Global Catholicism: Diversity and
Change since Vatican II, rev.,
561–63
Lindgren, Erika Lauren
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women
and Spirituality in Medieval
Germany, rev., 778–79
Lodwick, Kathleen L.
Rev. of D. H. Bays and E.Widmer, eds.,
193–94
Logan,Alastair H. B.
Rev. of M. Edwards, 340–42
Longenecker, Steve
Rev. of M. Häberlein, 182–83
Lonsdale, John
Rev. of E. N.Wamagatta, 190–91
Loofs, Friedrich
men., 835–36
Lothar II, King
men., 114–15
Lotz, John-Paul
Rev. of T.A. Robinson, 751–53
Louthan, Howard
Receives honorable mention for ACHA
John Gilmary Shea Prize, 309–11
Lowe, Ben
Commonwealth and the English
Reformation: Protestantism and
the Politics of Religious Change in
the Gloucester Vale, 1483 – 1560,
rev., 788–89
Lowe, Kate
Rev. of N.Terpstra, 800–01
Lueger, Karl
men., 600–01
Lutgard of Aywières, Saint
men., 579
Luther, Martin
men., 197, 362–63
Lutterotti, Nikolaus von, O.S.B.,Abbot
biog., 166–67

xviii

GENERAL INDEX

Lutton, Rob
Rev. of L. Clark, M. Jurkowski, and C.
Richmond, eds., 741–44
MacCoull, Leslie S. B.
Rev. of I. Shahîd, 345–46
MacEvitt, Christopher
Martyrdom and the Muslim World
through Franciscan Eyes, 1–23
Mackay, Christopher S.
The Hammer of Witches: A Complete
Translation of the Malleus
Maleficarum, rev., 99–101
Mackie, Gillian
Rev. of D. M. Deliyannis, 564–65
MacMullen, Ramsay
The Second Church: Popular
Christianity, A.D. 200–400, rev.,
563–64
Madden,Thomas F.
Rev. of J. N. Claster, 118–19
Magdalene, Mary, Saint
men., 105–06
Maier, Renate
Maria Katharina Kasper
(1820–1898), Gründerin der
Genossenschaft “Arme
Dienstmägde Jesu Christi”: Ein
Beitrag zur Pastoralgeschichte des
19.Jahrhunderts, rev., 383–85
Maldonado, Juan
men., 148–49
Malley,William J., S.J.
Rev. of G. Scrofani, 758–60
Malloy, Edward A., C.S.C.
Monk’s Tale: The Pilgrimage Begins,
1941–1975, rev., 396–98
Mann, Kristen Dutcher
The Power of Song: Music and Dance
in the Mission Communities of
Northern New Spain, 1590–1810,
rev., 400–01
Mantello, F.A. C., and Joseph Goering,
trans., introd., and annot.
The Letters of Robert Grosseteste,
Bishop of Lincoln, rev., 577–79
Margaret of Ypres, Saint
men., 579
Maria Chiara of St.Teresa of the Child
Jesus, Servant of God
men., 412, 626
Marianist Order
men., 412
Marija Antonija, Servant of God
men., 412
Marija Berchmana
men., 412

Marija Bernadeta, Servant of God
men., 412
Marija Jula, Servant of God
men., 412
Marija Krizina, Servant of God
men., 412
Martini, Carlo Maria, auth., and Marco
Vergottini, ed.
Paolo VI “uomo spirituale”: Discorsi
e scritti (1983–2008), rev., 168
Marty, Martin E.
obit. of E. S. Gaustad, 629–32
Rev. of S. B. Gordon, 865–66
Mary I, Queen
men., 798–800
Maryknoll
Hosts centennial symposium “Church
in Mission:Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow,” 884
Massa, Mark S., S.J.
The American Catholic Revolution:
How the Sixties Changed the
Church Forever, rev., 398–400
McCartin, James P.
Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting
Spiritual Life of American
Catholics, rev., 609–11
McCoy Jordan, Floyd L.
Rev. of D. D. de Torres y Vargas, auth.; J.
R.Vidal, trans.,A. M. Stevens-Arroyo,
comment., 871–72
McDougall, Roseanne
Cornelia Connelly’s Innovations in
Female Education, 1846–1864:
Revolutionizing the School
Curriculum for Girls, rev.,
162–63
McGinness, Frederick J.
Rev. of D. Erasmus, auth.; D. BakerSmith, ed.; and C.White and E.
Kearns, trans. and annot., 138–39
McGrath,Alister E.
Rev. of R. C. Zachman, ed., 141–42
McHugh, James Thomas, Bishop
men., 527–57
McKnight, Kathryn J.
Rev. of B. F.Antón and N. G. Fibla, eds.,
403–04
McLeod, Hugh
Rev. of J.T. Fisher, 186–87
McMichael, Steven J., O.F.M.Conv.
Rev. of G. Cavazos-González, O.F.M.,
774–75
Meehan, Seth
Receives ACHA Peter Guilday Prize,
312

GENERAL INDEX

Melanchthon Center
Cosponsors conference “Martin Luther
in Rome,” 197
Mélanges de Science Religieuse
Publishes issue on “Hagiographie et
prédication,” 200
Melion,Walter S.
The Meditative Art: Studies in the
Northern Devotional Print
1550–1625, rev., 796–97
Melloni,Alberto, ed.
Giuseppe Dossetti: La fede e la storia.
Studi nel decennale della morte,
rev., 170–71
Menegon, Eugenio
Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars:
Christianity as a Local Religion in
Late Imperial China, rev., 875–77
Menestò, Enrico, ed.
Angelo Clareno Francescano: Atti del
XXXIV Convengo internazionale
Assisi, 5–7 ottobre 2006, rev.,
355–56
Menke, Martin R.
Rev. of I. Steinsträßer, 166–67
Mentzer, Raymond A.
obit. of R. M. Kingdon, 415–16
Rev. of D. Boisson and Y. Krumenacker,
eds., 596–97
Mercado, Monica
Receives ACHA Presidential Graduate
Fellowship, 314
Merrick, Mary Virginia, Servant of God
men., 626
Merrill,William L.
Rev. of K. D. Mann, 400–01
Merrills,A. H.
Rev. of A. Evers, 567–69
Mezzadri, Luigi, C.M., and José María
Román, C.M, auths.; Robert
Cummings, trans.; Joseph E. Dunne
and John E. Rybolt, C.M., eds.
The Vincentians: A General History of
the Congregation of the Mission.
Vol. I: From the Foundation to the
End of the Seventeenth Century,
1625–1697, rev., 153–54
Midelfort, H. C. Erik
Rev. of C. S. Mackay, 99–101
Miller, David B.
Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His
Trinity Monastery, and the
Formation of the Russian Identity,
rev., 785–86
Miller, John
Rev. of P. Hinds, 818–19

xix

Miller, Maureen C.
Rev. of T. M.Thibodeau, trans. and
introd., 781–82
Millet, Hélène, ed.
Le concile de Perpignan (15
novembre 1408–26 mars 1409).
Actes du colloque international
(Perpignan, 24–26 janvier 2008),
rev., 580–81
Miola, Robert S.
Rev. of P. Badir, 105–06
Misner, Paul
Rev. of M. Nicoletti and O.Weiss, eds.,
838–39
Missionary Museum of Propaganda Fide
Opens, 410–11
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate
men., 626
Mitchell, Nathan D.
The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian
Devotions and the Reinvention of
Catholicism, rev., 329–30
Monson, Craig A.
Rev. of C. Schleif and V. Schier,
139–41
Montgomery, Scott B.
St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand
Virgins of Cologne: Relics,
Reliquaries and the Visual Culture
of Group Sanctity in Late
Medieval Europe, rev., 771–72
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Online research tools, 624
Moore, John C.
Rev. of J. Doran and D. J. Smith, eds.,
128–29
More,Thomas, Saint
men., 886–87
Moreana
Publishes papers on St.Thomas More
and Shakespeare, 886–87
Morlion, Félix A., O.P.
men., 679–712
Morone, Giovanni, Cardinal
men., 801–03
Mosaic Project
men., 624
Mount St. Mary’s College
Hosts exhibition “Women and Spirit:
Catholic Sisters in America,” 197
Muller, Eduard
men., 199
Munitiz, Joseph A., S.J.
Rev. of M. E. Palmer, S.J.; J.W. Padberg,
S.J.; and J. L. McCarthy, S.J., eds.,
591–92

xx

GENERAL INDEX

Muratori, Ludovico Antonio
men., 826–27
Murray, James
Enforcing the English Reformation
in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and
Political Conflict in the Diocese of
Dublin, 1534–1590, rev., 369–70
Rev. of H.A. Jefferies, 794–96
Murray, Paul D., ed., with Luca BadiniConfalonieri
Receptive Ecumenism and the Call to
Catholic Learning: Exploring a
Way for Contemporary
Ecumenism, rev., 337–39
Murzaku, Ines Angeli
Returning Home to Rome. The
Basilian Monks of Grottaferrata
in Albania, rev., 745–47
Muslim-Catholic relations
men., 1–23, 131–32, 180–82, 821–22
National Catholic Rural Life Conference
men., 185–86
National Christ Child Society
men., 626
National Right to Life Committee
men., 527–57
Nauert, Charles G.
Rev. of S. C. Karant-Nunn, 135–37
Nederman, Cary J.
Lineages of European Political
Thought: Explorations along the
Medieval/Modern Divide from
John of Salisbury to Hegel, rev.,
330–32
Nerses the Gracious, Saint
men., 573–74
New College Conference on Medieval
and Renaissance Studies
Eighteenth biennial conference
scheduled, 884
Newman, Barbara, ed.; and Margot H.
King and Barbara Newman, trans.
Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected
Saints Lives—Abbot John of
Cantimpré, Christina the
Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres,
and Lutgard of Aywières, rev.,
579
Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, Blessed
men., 159–61, 380–83
Nicoletti, Michele, and Otto Weiss, eds.
Il modernismo in Italia e in
Germania nel contesto europeo.
Atti della L settimana di studio,
Trento, 23–26 ottobre 2007, rev.,
838–39

Nicolini-Zani, Matteo
Rev. of D.W.Winkler and L.Tang, eds.,
616–18
Niessen, James P., S.O.
Rev. of F. Szabó, S.J., auth., and A.
Miklósházy, S.J., trans., 163–64
Noble,Thomas F. X.
Rev. of M. Kerner and K. Herbers,
765–66
Noguez, Xavier
Rev. of B. D. Sell and L. M. Burkhart,
eds., 615–16
Rev. of B. D. Sell, L. M. Burkhart, and E.
R.Wright, eds., 615–16
Nold, Patrick
Marriage Advice for a Pope: John
XXII and the Power to Dissolve,
rev., 782–83
Rev. of E. Menestò, ed., 355–56
Rev. of P. Herde, ed., 780
Nowinski, Sheila
Receives ACHA Presidential Graduate
Fellowship, 314
Nunis, Doyce Blackman
obit., 632
Oakland Museum
Hosts exhibition “The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain,” 197
Oakley, Francis
Rev. of C. J. Nederman, 330–32
O’Brien, John J., C.P.
obit., 632–33
O’Connor,Thomas
Rev. of B. Cunningham, 811–13
Rev. of E. Bhreathnach; J. MacMahon,
O.F.M.; and J. McCafferty, eds., 103–05
Odon de Cluny
men., 350–51
O’Donnell, Catherine
Rev. of B. J. Birzer, 391–92
Olsen, Glenn W.
Rev. of K. Herbers and J. Johrendt, eds.,
95–96
O’Malley, John W., S.J.
Rev. of P.W. Carey, 611–12
Ó Maolchonaire, Flaithrí
men., 808–10
Onnekink, David, ed.
War and Religion after Westphalia,
1648–1713, rev., 816–18
Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré
men., 626
Order of Cistercians
men., 579
Order of Preachers
men., 250–75, 579, 601–02

GENERAL INDEX

Order of St. Clare
men., 626–27
Osheim, Duane J.
Rev. of J. M. Blythe, 581–83
O’Toole, James M.
Rev. of J. Dougherty, 750–51
Oxford Movement
men., 160–61
Pagano, Sergio, annot.
I documenti vaticani del processo di
Galileo Galilei (1611–1741), rev.,
151–53
Paiva, José Pedro
The Appointment of Bishops in EarlyModern Portugal (1495–1777),
461–83
Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de, Bishop
Beatification ceremonies held, 886
Palmer, Martin E., S.J.; John W. Padberg,
S.J.; and John L. McCarthy, S.J., eds.
Ignatius of Loyola, Letters and
Instructions, rev., 591–92
Papadakis,Aristeides
Rev. of A. E. Siecienski, 343–45
Parish, Helen
Rev. of J. Bertram, 747–48
Parker, Kenneth L., and Michael J. G.
Pahls, eds.
Authority, Dogma, and History:
The Role of Oxford Movement
Converts in the Papal Infallibility
Debates of the Nineteenth
Century, 1835–1875, rev.,
160–61
Parker, Michael
Rev. of D. J. Endres, 861–62
Pasquier, Michael
Fathers on the Frontier, French
Missionaries and the Roman
Catholic Priesthood in the United
States, 1789–1870, rev., 608–09
Patrick, Saint
men., 776–77
Paul V, Pope
men., 813–15
Paul VI, Pope
men., 168
Pearce, Joseph
The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard
of Avon and the Church of Rome,
rev., 593–94
Pearson, Birger A.
Rev. of D. Brakke, 753–54
Peart-Binns, John S.
A Heart in My Head: A Biography of
Richard Harries, rev., 845–46

xxi

Pease, Neal
Receives ACHA John Gilmary Shea
Prize, 309–11
Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The
Catholic Church and Independent
Poland, 1914–1939, rev., 171–72
Pennington, Kenneth
obit. of J. M. Powell, 633–35
Receives ACHA Excellence in Teaching
Award, 313
Pensiero e azione
men., 484–526
Perez-Manglano Magro, Faustino, Servant
of God
men., 412
Pescador, Juan Javier
Crossing Borders with the Santo
Niño de Atocha, rev., 189–90
Pestana, Carla Gardina
Protestant Empire: Religion and the
Making of the British Atlantic
World, rev., 558–59
Peter of Blois
men., 125–26
Petit, Louis,Archbishop,A.A.
men., 839–40
Petit,Vincent
Eglise et nation: La question
liturgique en France au XIXe
siècle, rev., 833–34
Petot, Patrick
Alain de Solminihac (1593–1659).
Prélat réformateur de l’Abbaye de
Chancelade à l’éveché de Cahors,
rev., 373–75
Pettegree,Andrew
Rev. of E. Rummel, ed. and trans., with
M. Kooistra, 363–64
Piehl, Mel
Rev. of H. Gariepy, 183–85
Pietas Austriaca
men., 276–304
Pittock, Murray
Rev. of G. Glickman, 156–57
Pius II, Silvio Piccolomini, Pope
men., 584–85
Pollard, John
Catholicism in Modern Italy:
Religion, Society and Politics since
1861, rev., 164–66
Poole, Stafford, C.M.
Rev. of L. M. Ferrer, ed., 613–14
Poor Servants of Jesus Christ
men., 383–85
Popish Plot of 1678
men., 818–19

xxii

GENERAL INDEX

Porter-Szucs, Brian
Rev. of N. Pease, 171–72
Possevino,Antonio, S.J.,
men., 149–51
Powell, James M.
obit., 633–35
Rev. of M. Rubin, ed., 346–47
Prassek, Johannes
men., 199
Pringle, Denys
The Churches of the Crusader
Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus.
Vol. IV: The Cities of Acre and Tyre
with Addenda and Corrigenda to
Volumes I–III, rev., 120–21
Prodi, Paolo
Symposium held on Prodi’s book Il
paradigma tridentino, 884
Prohászka, Ottokár, Bishop
biog., 163–64
Pro-life movement
men., 527–57
Protestant-Catholic relations
men., 146–48, 596–97
Radano, John A.
Rev. of T. Salemink, ed., 605–06
Radding, Cynthia
Rev. of M. F. Wade, 850–51
Radini Tedeschi, Giacomo, Bishop
men., 484–526
Rafferty, Oliver P., ed. and introd.
George Tyrrell and Catholic
Modernism, rev., 842–43
Ramirez, Susan Elizabeth
Rev. of J. F. Schwaller, 867–68
Ramos, Gabriela
Death and Conversion in the Andes:
Lima and Cuzco, 1532–1670, rev.,
868–70
Rapp, Claudia
Rev. of G.Traina, auth., and A.
Cameron, trans., 342–43
Rasmussen, Larry L., ed.; and Isabel Best,
David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott,
trans.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works,Vol. 12:
Berlin: 1932–1933, rev., 386–88
Ratigan,Virginia Kaib
Rev. of R. McDougall, 162–63
Reagan, Ronald
men., 713–36
Reeves,Thomas C.
Rev. of S. Rosswurm, 864–65
Reinhard,Wolfgang
Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621): Mikropolitische Papstgeschichte, rev., 813–15

Remi of Reims, Saint
men., 762–63
Rex, Richard
Rev. of G.W. Bernard, 793–94
Rev. of I. Green, 367–68
Rhodes, Elizabeth
Rev. of D. Kostroun and L.Vollendorf,
eds., 108–09
Rider, Jeff, and Alan V. Murray, eds.
Galbert of Bruges and the
Historiography of Medieval
Flanders, rev., 353–55
Riley-Smith, Jonathan
Templars and Hospitallers as
Professed Religious in the Holy
Land, rev., 121–22
Rivers, Kimberly A.
Preaching the Memory of Virtue and
Vice: Memory, Images, and
Preaching in the Late Middle Ages,
rev., 767–68
Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana
Publishes papers on “Atti della
Pontificia Commissione di
Archeologia Sacra,” 627
Roberson, Ronald G., C.S.P.
Rev. of B. Joassart, ed., 839–40
Robert of La Chaise-Dieu
men., 766–67
Robinson,Thomas A.
Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting
of the Ways: Early Jewish-Christian
Relations, rev., 751–53
Rodgers, Darrin J.
Rev. of W. Kostlevy, 859–60
Rodríguez de Castro, Bonifacia, Blessed
men., 626
Römische Quartalschrift
Publishes papers on history of
Christian archaeology in Eastern
Europe, 200
Rorem, Paul
Hugh of Saint-Victor, rev., 122–24
Rosa, Madre María, auth., and Sarah E.
Owens, ed. and trans.
Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns, rev.,
375–76
Rosswurm, Steve
The FBI and the Catholic Church,
1935–1962, rev., 864–65
Routhier, Gilles
Rev. of L. Declerck, trans., 176–78
Rowe, Erin Kathleen
Rev. of P. E. Grieve, 332–33
Rowland, Ingrid
Rev. of R. Zorach, ed., 806–07

GENERAL INDEX

Rubin, Miri, ed.
Medieval Christianity in Practice,
rev., 346–47
Rule, Paul A.
Rev. of M.A. J. Üçerler, S.J., 404–06
Rummel, Erika, ed. and trans., with
Milton Kooistra
The Correspondence of Wolfgang
Capito,Vol. 2: 1524–1531, rev.,
363–64
Russell, Frederick H.
Rev. of J. Rider and A.V. Murray, eds.,
353–55
Russell, Jeffrey Burton
Rev. of C. Eire, 328–29
Russi,Vittorio Sciuti
Inquisizione spagnola e riformismo
borbonico fra Sette e Otttocento. Il
dibattito europeo sulla soppresione del «terrible monstre», rev.,
829–30
Ryan, María Del Pilar
Rev. of E. G. Hernán, ed., 370–72
Ryan, Salvador
Rev. of B. Hazard, 808–10
Sachs,William
Rev. of J. S. Peart-Binns, 845–46
Sadler, Gregory B.
Rev. of O. Blanchette, 836–38
St. Cyril-Belozersk Monastery
men., 408
Salemink,Theo, ed.
“You will be called Repairer of the
Breach”: The Diary of J.G.M.Willebrands, 1958–1961, rev., 605–06
Salvation Army
men., 183–85
Sandgren, Leo Duprée
Vines Intertwined: A History of Jews
and Christians from the
Babylonian Exile to the Advent of
Islam, rev., 739–40
San José, Cándido Castán
men., 626
Santa Caterina di Quarto, Bolognese
nunnery
men., 250–75
Santa Maria dei Battuti, Trevisan
confraternity
men., 583–84
Santa Maria del Monte della Guardia,
Bolognese nunnery
men., 250–75
Il Santo
Publishes papers from conference
“Cultura,Arte, Committenza al Santo
[Antonio] nel Quattrocento,” 627

xxiii

Sartori, Giovanni Leonardo
men., 592–93
Sauli, Bendinello, Cardinal
men., 590–91
Savage,Thomas, 1st Viscount Savage
men., 595–96
Schaefer, Richard
True and False Enlightenment: German
Scholars and the Discourse of
Catholicism in the Nineteenth
Century, 24–45
Schelkens, Karim
Vatican Diplomacy after the Cuban
Missile Crisis: New Light on the
Release of Josyf Slipyj, 679–712
Schleif, Corine, and Volker Schier
Katerina’s Windows: Donation and
Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard
and Seen through the Writings of
a Birgittine Nun, rev., 139–41
Schloesser, Stephen
Rev. of F. Caussé, 846–48
Schneider, Olaf
Erzbischof Hinkmar und die Folgen:
Der vierhundertjährige Weg historischer Erinnerungsbilder von
Reims nach Trier, rev., 763–64
Schnurr, Eva-Maria
Religionskonflikt und Öffentlichkeit:
Eine Mediengeschichte des Kölner
Kriegs (1582–1590), rev., 364–66
Schrader,William C.
Rev. of R. Maier, 383–85
Schroth, Raymond A., S.J.
Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of
the First Catholic Priest Elected to
Congress, rev., 862–64
Schultenover, David G., S.J.
Rev. of O. P. Rafferty, ed. and introd.,
842–43
Schumacher, John N., S.J.
Growth and Decline: Essays on
Philippine Church History, rev.,
878–79
Schwaller, John Frederick
The History of the Catholic Church
in Latin America: From Conquest
to Revolution and Beyond, rev.,
867–68
Rev. of J. L. Klaiber, S.J., 870–71
Schwartz, Stuart B.
All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance
and Salvation in the Iberian
Atlantic World, rev., 101–03
Sciurba, Salvatore, O.C.D.
Rev. of G. Gaucher, 834–35

xxiv

GENERAL INDEX

Scott, Kathleen L.
Tradition and Innovation in Later
Medieval English Manuscripts, rev.,
787–88
Scott, Robert A.
Rev. of W.Vroom, auth.; E. Manton,
trans., 769–70
Scrofani, Giorgio
La religione impura: La riforma di
Giuliano Imperatore, rev., 758–60
Seelos, Francis Xavier, Blessed
men., 881
Sell, Barry D., and Louise M. Burkhart, eds.
Nahuatl Theatre,Vol. 4: Nahua Christianity in Performance, rev., 615–16
Sell, Barry D., Louise M. Burkhart, and
Elizabeth R.Wright, eds.
Nahuatl Theatre,Vol. 3: Spanish
Golden Age Drama in Mexican
Translation, rev., 615–16
Sellink, Manfred
Rev. of W. S. Melion, 796–97
Semple, Rhonda A.
Rev. of R. E. Frykenberg, 740–41
Sergius of Radonezh, Saint
men., 785–86
Servants of Charity
men., 626
Sewanee Medieval Colloquium,ThirtyEighth
Colloquium on “Voice, Gesture,
Memory, and Performance in
Medieval Texts, Culture, and Art”
scheduled, 198
Shahîd, Irfan
Byzantium and the Arabs in the
Sixth Century,Vol. II, Pt. 2:
Economic, Social, and Cultural
History, rev., 345–46
Shakespeare,William
men., 593–94
Sheehan, James
Rev. of J.W. Boyer, 600–01
Sheridan, Mark, O.S.B.
Rev. of M. Giorda, 569–70
Shusterman, Noah
Religion and the Politics of Time:
Holidays in France from Louis XIV
through Napoleon, rev., 819–21
Siecienski,A. Edward
The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal
Controversy, rev., 343–45
Simpson, Patricia
Marguerite Bourgeoys and the
Congregation of Notre Dame,
1665–1700, rev., 848–49

Sisters of the Adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament
men., 626
Skinner, Barbara
The Western Front of the Eastern
Church: Uniate and Orthodox
Conflict in Eighteenth-Century
Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and
Russia, rev., 158–59
Slavery
men., 587–88, 856–58
Slipyj, Josyf, Cardinal
men., 679–712
Smith,Anthony Burke
The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in
Popular Culture from the Great
Depression to the Cold War, rev.,
395–96
Smith, Seth
b.n. of M. Cassity and D. Goble, 407
Smith,Warren, and Clark Colahan, trans.,
eds., introd., and annot.
Spanish Humanism on the Verge of
the Picaresque: Juan Maldonado’s
Ludus Chartarum, Pastor Bonus,
and Bacchanalia, rev., 148–49
Smith,William Bradford
Reformation and the German
Territorial State: Upper Franconia,
1300–1630, rev., 335–36
Smuts, R. Malcolm
Rev. of L. Boothman and R. H. Parker,
eds., 595–96
Sneider, Matthew
Rev. of D. M. D’Andrea, 583–84
Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église
catholique
78e Congrès scheduled on theme “Le
patrimoine matériel et immatérial
des communautés religieuses,”
624
Society of the Divine Savior
men., 412
Society of Jesus
men., 149–51, 370–72, 409, 591–92,
611–12, 853–55, 862–64, 870–71,
877–79
Society of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign
Missions
men., 412, 626
Society of St. Pius X
men., 389–90
Society of St. Sulpice
men., 608–09
Soergel, Philip M.
Rev. of T. Johnson, 810–11

GENERAL INDEX

Solminihac,Alain de,Venerable,Abbot
and Bishop
biog., 373–75
Sommar, Mary E.
The Correctores Romani: Gratian’s
Decretum and the CounterReformation Humanists, rev.,
804–05
Spalding, John Lancaster, Bishop
men., 46–75
Speth,Volker
Katholische Aufklärung,
Volksfrömmigkeit und
“Religionspolicey”: Das rheinische
Wallfahrtswesen von 1816 bis
1826 und die
Entstehungsgeschichte des
Wallfahrtsverbots von 1826. Ein
Beitrag zur aufklärerischen
Volksfrömmigkeitsreform, rev.,
830–31
Spicer, Kevin P., C.S.C.
Rev. of M. Liebmann, 174–76
Spinks, Bryan D.
Liturgy in the Age of Reason:Worship
and Sacraments in England and
Scotland, 1662–c. 1800, rev., 154–56
Stammberger, Ralf M.W.
Rev. of P. Rorem, 122–24
Starr-LeBeau, Gretchen
Rev. of V. S. Russi, 829–30
Stein, Murray
Rev. of C.Weldon, 601–02
Steinsträßer, Inge
Wanderer zwischen den politischen
Mächten: Pater Nikolaus von
Lutterotti O.S.B. (1892–1955) und
die Abtei Grüssau in
Niederschlesien, rev., 166–67
Stellbrink, Karl Friedrich
men., 199
Stephen of Obazine
men., 766–67
Strange, Roderick
Rev. of B. J. King, 380–82
Strocchia, Sharon T.
Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance
Florence, rev., 784–85
Receives ACHA Howard R. Marraro
Prize, 311
Studi Storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di
Maria
Publishes papers on “I servi di santa
Maria tra intuizione carismatica e
istituzionalizzazione (1245–1431),”
412

xxv

Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana, XL
Incontro
Schedules conference on “Law and
Religion in Late Antiquity,” 884–85
Sweeney, David Francis, O.F.M.
men., 46–75
Sweetman, Robert
Rev. of B. Newman, ed.; and M. H. King
and B. Newman, trans., 579
Sypher, Francis J., Jr.
St. James’ Church in the City of New
York, 1810–2010, rev., 855–56
Szabó, Ferenc, S.J., auth., and Attila
Miklósházy, S.J., trans.
The Life and Work of Ottokár Prohászka (1858–1927), rev., 163–64
Talar, C. J.T., ed.
Modernists & Mystics, rev., 840–42
Templars
men., 121–22
Terian,Abraham
Rev. of Aram I [Keshishian], 573–74
Terpstra, Nicholas
Lost Girls: Sex and Death in
Renaissance Florence, rev., 800–01
Terry, Edward D., Ben W. Fallaw, Gilbert M.
Joseph, and Edward H. Moseley, eds.
Peripheral Visions: Politics, Society,
and the Challenges of Modernity
in Yucatan, rev., 874–75
Teske, Roland J., S.J.
Rev. of J. D. BeDuhn, 112–13
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Bishop
men., 760–61
Théophanius Léo, F.S.C.,Venerable
men., 626
Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint
men., 834–35
Thibault, Paul R.
Rev. of D.Williman, 356–57
Thibodeau,Timothy M., trans. and introd.
William Durand, On the Clergy and
Their Vestments: A New Translation
of Books 2 and 3 of the Rationale
divinorum officiorum, rev., 781–82
Thomas of Cantimpré
men., 579
Tilley,Terrence W.
Rev. of C. J.T.Talar, ed., 840–42
Toniolo, Giuseppe
men., 412
Torres y Vargas, Don Diego de, auth.;
Jaime R.Vidal, trans.;Anthony M.
Stevens-Arroyo, comment.
Report on the Island and Diocese of
Puerto Rico (1647), rev., 871–72

xxvi

GENERAL INDEX

Toulorge, Pierre-Adrien
men., 626
Tracy, James D.
Rev. of B. Heal and O. P. Grell, eds.,
134–35
Traina, Giusto, auth., and Alan Cameron,
trans.
428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End
of the Roman Empire, rev., 342–43
Tulchin,Allan A.
That Men Would Praise the Lord: The
Triumph of Protestantism in
Nîmes, 1530–1570, rev., 791–93
Turner, Ralph V.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of
France, Queen of England, rev.,
124–25
Tyacke, Nicholas
Rev. of B. D. Spinks, 154–56
Tyrrell, George
men., 842–43
Üçerler, M.Antoni J., S.J.
Christianity and Cultures: Japan &
China in Comparison 1543–1644,
rev., 404–06
Udovic, Edward R., C.M.
b.n. of P. Berthelon, 406–07
Rev. of L. Mezzadri, C.M., and J. M.
Román, C.M., auths.; R. Cummings,
trans.; and J. E. Dunne and J. E.
Rybolt, C.M., eds., 153–54
Ulrich, Jörg, ed.
Friedrich Loofs in Halle, rev., 835–36
Ursula, Saint
men., 771–72
U.S. Catholic Historian
Publishes issue on “Women Religious:
Conflict and Dissent in NineteenthCentury Communities,” 887
Publishes issues on “Catholic Higher
Education” and “Essays in Honor of
Moises Sandoval,” 414–15
van Deusen, Nancy E.
Rev. of G. Ramos, 868–70
Vatican Museums
Exhibition “The Man, the Face, the
Mystery” presented, 883
Veen, Hans-Joachim, Peter März, and
Franz-Josef Schlichting, eds.
Kirche und Revolution. Das
Christentum in Ostmitteleuropa
vor und nach 1989, rev., 178–79
Verna,Antonia Maria
men., 412
Vester, Matthew
Rev. of L. Felici, 592–93

Vincelette,Alan
Recent Catholic Philosophy: The
Nineteenth Century, rev., 378–79
Vincent, Nicholas
Rev. of A. Gransden, 126–28
Vismara, Clemente
men., 626
von Stamwitz,Alicia
b.n. of B. Burkey, O.F.M. Cap., 881
Vromen, Suzanne
Hidden Children of the Holocaust:
Belgian Nuns and Their Daring
Rescue of Young Jews from the
Nazis, rev., 603–04
Vroom,Wim, auth.; Elizabeth Manton,
trans.
Financing Cathedral Building in the
Middle Ages: The Generosity of the
Faithful, rev., 769–70
Wade, Maria F.
Missions, Missionaries, and Native
Americans: Long-Term Processes
and Daily Practices, rev., 850–51
Wallace,W. Jason
Catholics, Slaveholders, and the
Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835–1860, rev., 856–58
Waltheof,Abbot and Saint
men., 776–77
Wamagatta, Evanson N.
The Presbyterian Church of East
Africa: An Account of Its Gospel
Missionary Society Origins,
1895–1946, rev., 190–91
Wandel, Lee Palmer
Rev. of P. Boutry, P.A. Fabre, and D.
Julia, eds., 333–35
Ward, Haruko Nawata
Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s
Christian Century, 1549–1650,
rev., 191–93
Weber, Francis J., Monsignor
obit. of D. B. Nunis, 632
Weldon, Clodagh
Fr.Victor White, O.P.: The Story of
Jung’s “White Raven,” rev., 601–02
Wenzel, Siegfried
Rev. of K.A. Rivers, 767–68
White, Joseph M.
Rev. of E.A. Malloy, C.S.C., 396–98
White,Victor, O.P.
men., 601–02
Whitford, David M.
The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern
Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery, rev., 587–88

GENERAL INDEX

Whitney, Susan B.
Mobilizing Youth: Communists and
Catholics in Interwar France, rev.,
602–03
Wieland, Christian
Rev. of D. Onnekink, ed., 816–18
Wiest, Jean-Paul
Rev. of P. W. Jiyou, 618–19
Wilken, Robert Louis
Rev. of L. D. Sandgren, 739–40
Willebrands, Johannes, Cardinal
men., 176–78, 605–06, 679–712
Williman, Daniel
The Letters of Pierre de Cros,
Chamberlain to Pope Gregory XI
(1371–1378), rev., 356–57
Wilson, Derek
Luther: Out of the Storm, rev., 362–63
Wilson,William
men., 713–36
Winkler, Dietmar W., and Li Tang, eds.
Hidden Treasures and Intercultural
Encounters: Studies on East Syriac
Christianity in China and Central
Asia, rev., 616–18
Winner, Lauren F.
A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith:
Anglican Religious Practice in the
Elite Households of EighteenthCentury Virginia, rev., 851–52

xxvii

Witchcraft
men., 99–101
Witczak, Michael G.
Rev. of L. J. Johnson, 110
Working Group on “Re-Thinking Reform”
Schedules meeting to explore new
ways of interpreting eleventhcentury reform movements, 885
Wright,A. D.
Rev. of J. Corkery and T. Worcester,
eds., 744–45
Yonke, Eric
Rev. of V. Speth, 830–31
Zachman, Randall C., ed.
John Calvin and Roman
Catholicism: Critique and
Engagement, Then and Now, rev.
141–42
Zarri, Gabriella
Rev. of S.T. Strocchia, 784–85
Zerner, Catherine W.
Rev. of H. Kamen, 807–08
Zorach, Rebecca, ed.
The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance
Rome: Printing and Collecting the
Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae,
rev., 806–07

The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCVII

OCTOBER, 2011

No. 4

APPROPRIATING SACRED SPACE:
PRIVATE-CHAPEL PATRONAGE AND
INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY
IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ROME—
THE CASE OF THE OFFICE OF CEREMONIES
BY

JENNIFER MARA DESILVA*

The author explores the efforts of papal ceremonialist Paris de’
Grassi (1504–28) to transform the Office of Ceremonies from a
group of semi-corporate, specialized papal attendants into a curial
college with fixed regulations and social clout. The reform bull
Pastoralis officii (1513) permanently reserved benefices at the
Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano in Rome, where de’ Grassi served
as archpriest. Between 1524 and 1551 ceremonialists endowed
three private chapels at Ss. Celso and Giuliano; in 1578 another ceremonialist established a chapel at the Church of San Lorenzo in
Lucina, where a personal monument did not reference or depend
on de’ Grassi’s legacy. The construction of memorial chapels at Ss.
Celso and Giuliano allowed ceremonialists to establish both individual and collected corporate identities and reveals the continued
entwining of private and institutional goals in both patronage and
the papal bureaucracy.
Keywords: Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano; Church of San Lorenzo in
Lucina; de’ Grassi, Paris; liturgy; patronage
*Dr. DeSilva is assistant professor of history at Ball State University in Muncie, IN,
email jmdesilva@bsu.edu.The author would like to thank Nicholas Terpstra and Simon
Ditchfield for their valuable comments on this article, as well as the three anonymous
reviewers and the editor of The Catholic Historical Review.

653

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In 1448 the Florentine merchant-banker Tommaso Spinelli received
permission from the chapter of the Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano
to endow a chapel for his private use.The license issued by the chapter confirmed the chapel’s dedication to the Apostle Thomas, the
chapel’s location within the church, and the chapter’s continued
goodwill toward Spinelli. As patron and holder of ius patronatus,
Spinelli’s obligations included the chapel’s decoration and provision,
as well as financing a chaplain to perform religious services. In the
1440s Spinelli joined Pope Nicholas V and the dello Mastro family as
patrons of the church in rione Ponte.1 As a result of this endowment
the chapter and Spinelli established a connection that provided substantial reciprocal benefits.The chapter of canons acquired a wealthy
patron who was bound to contribute financially to the church for the
foreseeable future. Spinelli expanded his patronal identity through
valuable institutional and spiritual connections that asserted his
honor and position in the Roman social and curial hierarchy.
Emphasizing the practical benefits of this connection, in a will dated
1468, Spinelli instructed his heirs to maintain the chapel if they
wished to continue doing business in Rome.2
This article presents a series of Roman chapels that go beyond the
common mold of a private memorial chapel in the Spinelli vein, in
which a single patron initiates the endowment through private
wealth for the cultivation of his own soul. Although individually the
chapels fulfill this model, the series reveals a pattern that reflects a
greater strategy for institutional patronage and appropriation of ecclesiastical space.The earliest chapel foundation set the standard for later
patrons, all of whom belonged to the same corporate group, the papal
Office of Ceremonies.3 The series includes three chapels, endowed by
papal ceremonialists between 1524 and 1551 at the parish church of
Ss. Celso and Giuliano in Rome, as well as a fourth chapel founded by
a later ceremonialist at the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina in 1578.
This series highlights the multipurpose nature of ecclesiastical
1
Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile Antecosimiano, Protocollo 12518;
this license is included in the appendix of Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli
of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family (University Park, PA, 2001),
pp. 294–95.
2
Fourth and Final Testament of Tommaso Spinelli, December 4, 1468; N.A., Prot. 357,
Ser Pietro da Vinci, fols. 69r–74r; also see Jacks and Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence,
pp. 347–48.
3
For the Office of Ceremonies’ archive, see Gregorio Palmieri, “De Archivio S. C.
Caeremonialis,” Analecta ecclesiastica, 1 (1893), 427–30.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

655

endowments and the process of constructing identity through spaces
and institutional connections over several generations.4
Paris de’ Grassi, the papal master of ceremonies (1504–28),5 endowed the earliest chapel in 1524 in his capacity as archpriest of Ss.
Celso and Giuliano, and as part of a campaign to expand and codify
the privileges and stature of the Office of Ceremonies. De’ Grassi used
his unique dual position to appropriate ecclesiastical space in the
service of the Office. In the early-sixteenth century the Office was a
semi-corporate collection of specialized papal attendants, which, following the 1513 reform bull Pastoralis officii, became a curial college
that was bureaucratically consistent with the larger colleges of apostolic secretaries and protonotaries. This transformation was emphasized by the connection that de’ Grassi formed between the Church
of Ss. Celso and Giuliano and the papal college through papal legislation, the appropriation of space, and chapel patronage.The success of
de’ Grassi’s efforts, and the resulting financial and spiritual benefits,
are reflected in the maintenance of this connection by his successor
ceremonialists who endowed chapels and sought a permanent physical connection to the church through burial privileges.The series of
memorial chapels functioned as a perpetual reminder of the institutional source of patronage within the church, not only appropriating
space within the physical church but ultimately directing the chapter’s liturgical life according to the ceremonialists’ private interests.6
Chapel Patronage in Rome
The turbulent history of the papacy through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and its prolonged absence from Rome had a sub4
For an example of this process of social entrenchment pursued by a layman, see
Anna Maria Corbo,“La committenza nelle famiglie romane a metà del secolo XV: il caso
di Pietro Millini,” in Arte, Committenza ed Economia a Roma e nelle Corti del
Rinascimento (1420–1530), ed. Arnold Esch and Christoph Frommel (Turin, 1995),
pp. 121–53.
5
Massimo Ceresa, “Grassi, Paride,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 58 (Rome,
1973–), pp. 681–84; Nikolaus Staubach, “‘Honor Dei’ oder ‘Bapsts gepreng’? Zur
Reorganisation des Papstzeremoniells in der Renaissance,” in Rome und das Reich vor
der Reformation, ed. Nikolaus Staubach (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), pp. 251–70.
6
For a discussion of the importance of ceremony and ritual actions and spaces as a
language of authority and politics: Martine Boiteux,“Linguaggio figurativo ed efficacia
rituale nella Roma barocca,” in I linguaggi del potere nell’età barocca. Vol. 1: Politica
e religione, ed. Francesca Cantu (Rome, 2009), pp. 39–79; Cérémonial et rituel à Rome
(XVI e–XIX e siècle), ed. Catherine Brice and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Rome, 1997).

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stantial effect on Roman church patronage. The fifteenth-century
popes invested heavily in a renovatio Urbis while encouraging elite
clergy, functionaries, and associated merchants and bankers to do the
same. Infrastructure projects occupied the ledgers of fifteenth-century Roman popes and citizens in an effort to return the Eternal City
to a state worthy of Ss. Peter and Paul, enhance an increasingly magnificent curia, and host thousands of pilgrim visitors annually.7
The papacy’s campaign to assert its leadership over the Church, as
well as its temporal control over the Papal State and the city of the
Apostles, resulted in the absence of any substantial guild powerbase
or municipal authority (popolo Romano) in Rome. Although there
was considerable guild membership, the individual Roman guilds did
not acquire the political power that historians cite in other Italian
cities.Thus, the patronal role that guildsmen might have played fell to
elite clergy, noble families, religious corporations, and expatriate
communities.8 Through the second half of the fifteenth century a substantial portion of the papal bureaucracy sought sacral space for private devotions and public display. Many of these men added private
chapels to a portfolio of spaces (bishopric, parish, family chapel) that
established their ecclesiastical identity. Clergy could entrench institutional associations by patronizing chapels in churches under their
influence. Cardinal Oliviero Carafa (1430–1511) is a good example of
a cleric whose patronage reflected his ecclesiastical and political
interests. As Diana Norman has shown, Carafa’s chapel, dedicated to
St.Thomas Aquinas and situated in the Roman Church of Santa Maria
sopra Minerva, emphasized his role as cardinal-protector of the
Dominican Order and his personal connection to the saint. In addition, Carafa endowed a second chapel called the Succorpo chapel in
the crypt of the cathedral of Naples, recalling his position as archbishop of Naples (1458–84, 1503–05) and as the king’s resident representative at the Curia.9
7
Mary Hollingsworth, Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early
Sixteenth Century (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 234–75.
8
Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome, 1978), p. 7; Barbara Wisch and
Diane Cole Ahl, Introduction, in Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance
Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image, ed. Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl (New York, 2000),
pp. 1–19, here pp. 3, 11–12.
9
In addition to these primary chapels, Carafa contributed to his family’s chapel in
the Church of San Domenico Maggiore, also in Naples; Gail L. Geiger, Filippino Lippi’s
Carafa Chapel: Renaissance Art in Rome (Kirksville, MO, 1986), p. 35; Diana Norman,
“The Succorpo in the Cathedral of Naples: ‘Empress of All Chapels,’” Zeitschrift für

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

657

Although most patrons did not wield the immense resources of a
cardinal, there was a growing interest through the fifteenth century in
acquiring private chapels among the group of men whose professional success derived from a combination of benefices, venal offices,
and activities at the papal court. Scholars of Florence have argued that
a similar demand from the merchant and patrician classes resulted in
600 new chapels constructed in expanded parish and monastic
churches through the fifteenth century.10 Although there are no similar measurements for Rome, this period coincided with the expansion
of the papal bureaucracy, which created more offices, attracted more
men to Rome, and diffused more ecclesiastical wealth.
Institutional or Personal Space?
The acquisition of patronage rights to a private chapel was a
desired but potentially contentious achievement.11 As the Florentine
banker Giovanni Rucellai stated, his private chapel “serve[d] the glory
of God, the honor of the city, and the commemoration of myself.”12
The glorification of these three figures stood at the heart of all ecclesiastical patronage, as the omnipotent Lord was thought to benefit the
people who improved their community in his name. The virtuous
quality revealed in an individual’s custody of a chapel also was eminently practical. The patron undertook to decorate the chapel in a
manner befitting its character as sacral space, relieving the church
opera from an onerous financial burden.This custodial responsibility
allowed the patron an opportunity to prove his piety to both God and
the earthly community by preserving the church from financial hardship and cultivating communal devotion via patronage.
The appropriation of space lies at the heart of the Office of
Ceremonies’ concern for Ss. Celso and Giuliano. De’ Grassi’s initial
interest in the church stemmed from its desirability as a benefice.
Although de’ Grassi did not seek to monopolize the church for the
Kunstgeschichte, 49 (1986), 323–55; Diana Norman, “In Imitation of Saint Thomas
Aquinas:Art, Patronage and Liturgy Within a Renaissance Chapel,” Renaissance Studies,
7 (1993), 1–42.
10
Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600
(Baltimore, 1995), p. 123.
11
Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance
Florence (University Park, PA, 2004), esp. pp. 101–38.
12
Quoted in Jonathan K. Nelson and Richard J. Zeckhauser, The Patron’s Payoff:
Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art (Princeton, 2008), p. 1.

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exclusive benefit of his own family,13 he did search for space that
would expand his portfolio of benefices and accommodate the institutional needs of the Office of Ceremonies. The process began with
de’ Grassi’s provision to the benefice of archpriest in 1509, an office
previously occupied by a cardinal that was of a higher stature than
any other benefice held by de’ Grassi.The attraction of Ss. Celso and
Giuliano also was geographic.The church was situated on the bustling
Piazza di Ponte, only a short walk from the Vatican Palace. Moreover,
the archpriest enjoyed the use of a palazzetto nearby.14 De’ Grassi
served as archpriest from 1509 to 1517 when he resigned the office
to his nephew, Ippolito Morbioli de’ Grassi,15 but he continued to
reside at the palazzetto and maintained strong ties to the chapter
until his death in 1528.
One historian has described Ss. Celso and Giuliano as “one of the
most noted parishes in Rome”16 (see figure 1). Although the parish
church attracted worshippers from all social classes, its major fifteenth-century patrons included families whose wealth derived from
business with the papal court—specifically the Spinelli, Bonadies,
dello Mastro, and Damiani families.17 As archpriest, de’ Grassi led a
chapter of eight canons, through which he could exert some independent patronage within a local environment.18 The connection
forged with a parish that already had close ties to the papal court
extended opportunities for de’ Grassi to project an identity founded
on his role as a professional ceremonialist.The Office of Ceremonies
held responsibility for the liturgy of the papal chapel, overseeing the
13
De’ Grassi also contributed to a family chapel located in the cathedral of San Pietro
in Bologna, first endowed by his uncle,Antonio de’ Grassi, in 1478; Mario Fanti,“La cattedrale di san Pietro dal IX al XV secolo e il suo Battistero. Lineamenti di una storia complessa,” in La cattedrale scolpita: il romanico in San Pietro a Bologna, ed. Massimo
Medica and Silvia Battistini (Bologna, 2003), pp. 19–48, here 37–40.
14
G. Constant,“Les maîtres de cérémonies du XVIe siècle,” Mélanges d’Archeologie
et d’Histoire, École Française de Rome, 23 (1903), 161–229, 319–44, here 222–23.
15
When Ippolito died in 1527 the office reverted to his uncle for a brief period
before Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci acquired it; Marc Dykmans, “Paris de Grassi: I–II,”
Ephemerides liturgicae, 96 (1982), 407–82, here 425; Marc Dykmans,“Paris de Grassi:
IV,” Ephemerides liturgicae, 100 (1986), 270–333, here 281–82.
16
Carlo Grigioni,“Biagio da Cesena,” Studi Romagnoli, 5 (1954), 349–88, here 356.
17
Jacks and Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence, pp. 4–5, 60–61.
18
For a discussion of de’ Grassi as an absentee bishop and his efforts to exert ecclesiastical leadership in other venues, see Jennifer Mara DeSilva, “Pluralism, Liturgy and
the Paradoxes of Reform: A Reforming Pluralist in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome,”
Sixteenth Century Journal, forthcoming.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

659

FIGURE 1. The facade of the modern Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano on the
Vicolo del Curato, Rome. Photograph courtesy of the author.

rituals of consistory meetings, and planning any extraordinary ritual
events (such as funeral, conclave, and public processions).19 All of
these activities involved the papal court and Curia, many of whom
resided in de’ Grassi’s parish.20 By establishing the Office of
Ceremonies as an institutional patron of Ss. Celso and Giuliano, de’
Grassi raised the profile of its members amongst his peers and parishioners, emphasizing the patronage power of a vital but often overlooked college.
Unlike the colleges of secretaries and abbreviators, which enjoyed
a large membership and occupied a designated space within the
Vatican Palace, the Office of Ceremonies was significantly smaller and
19

Constant,“Les maîtres de cérémonies du XVIe siècle,” pp. 161–229, 319–43.
Egmont Lee,“Gli abitanti del rione Ponte,” Roma capitale (1447–1527), ed. Sergio
Gensini (San Miniato, 1994), pp. 317–43; Melissa Meriam Bullard,“Mercatores Florentini
Romanam Curiam Sequentes in the Early Sixteenth Century,”The Journal of Medieval
and Renaissance History, 6 (1972), 51–71.
20

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did not produce the profits or paperwork of other colleges.21 The
essential character of the Office of Ceremonies did not lend itself to
the venal trend of office multiplication that seized other papal colleges as part of papal attempts to raise funds. In this way, the Office of
Ceremonies remained anomalous among the administrative colleges,
for its constant involvement in daily life at the papal court and its specialized knowledge. In 1506 the population of the Office of
Ceremonies included only four men;22 this remained the standard
throughout the century.The Office’s consistently small size and easy
operation provided no impetus for the pope to establish a similar
institutional structure or space as he had for colleges that involved
significantly more men and greater bureaucratic chaos.
Practically, the acquisition of designated collegiate space would
provide storage space for the accoutrements of papal ritual beyond
the credenza where the ceremonialists stood during rituals performed in the Sistine Chapel.23 In addition, the space would act as the
headquarters of the Office, providing meeting space for the ceremonialists and allowing them to maintain a chapel.Although several pontiffs insisted that apostolic abbreviators and scriptors attend Mass
before commencing work and designated a chapel within the palace
for this purpose, the ceremonialists received neither such scrutiny
nor privilege.24 Moreover, a papal review of the Office’s practices reinforced the elite and essential position that de’ Grassi considered cere21
“Non debet reprehensibile,” Magnum bullarum Romanum: bullarium privilegiorum ac diplomatum romanorum pontificum amplissima collectio ([repr.] Graz:
Akademische druk—U. verlagsanstalt, 1964), 3.1:213; “Divina aeterna Dei,” Magnum
Bullarium Romanum, 3.1:256.
22
Johannes Burchard (praesidens), Paris de’ Grassi (magister), Baldassare Nicolai
(supernumerarius), and Michael Sander (supernumerarius).
23
In the diary chronicling his tenure as master ceremonialist, de’ Grassi noted frequently that he brought the Book of Ceremonies with him to Mass for consultation, suggesting that the Office kept important resources off-site, possibly at the home of the
current senior master of ceremonies. Only the articles in immediate use remained on
the credenza or temporarily were kept in the camera dei papagalli or aula dei vestimenti in the Vatican Palace; Bram Kempers, “Ritual and Its Images: Paris de Grassis,
Raphael and the ‘Signatures’ in the Vatican Stanze,” in Functions and Decorations: Art
and Ritual in the Vatican Palace in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed.Tristan
Weddigen, Sible de Blaauw, and Bram Kempers, [Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque,
Collectanea Acta Monumenta, 9], (Vatican City, 2003), pp. 71–93, here pp. 74–75.
24
Sixtus IV mandated that the abbreviators attend Mass daily and thus should have
a chapel or portable altar reserved for them at the house of the vice-chancellor where
they assembled most frequently;“Divina aeterna Dei,”p. 256. As the ceremonialists were
directors of the papal chapel, mandating attendance at daily Mass would be repetitive.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

661

monialists to have at the papal court. In Rome, size was less important
than proximity to the pope.25
As a ceremonialist, de’ Grassi understood that the acquisition and
decoration of a private chapel was a sign of both economic and social
status, whereas the acquisition of space itself was an opportunity to
align oneself with ecclesiastical organizations and sacred figures as
well as assert a geographic identity.26 Ambitious men, most of whom
came from the patrician or merchant classes, who hoped to rise
within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, could project an identity of wealth,
local leadership, and piety in a Roman church of middling stature, like
Ss. Celso and Giuliano, without breaking the bank.27 The population
of ambitious men seeking advancement through curial office was significant, numbering around 500 men in 1500. Many of these men
were in minor orders and held several ecclesiastical benefices, as well
as one or more curial offices.28 Membership in a papal college responsible for bureaucratic functions, combined with family and national
ties, were important parts of Roman identity. As well as providing
access to wealth and social connections, advertising a personal role in
the papal bureaucracy established a local audience for the message
projected by the chapel supported by the patron.
Curial Organization and Renovatio Urbis
John F. D’Amico noted that the traffic of petitions to Rome grew
through the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, capitalizing on
the papacy’s assertion of its position as a court of final appeal and its
prerogative to dispense ecclesiastical impediments, forgive censures,
and distribute benefices.29 Due to this growing interest in the Curia’s
25
The truth of this statement is seen in the frequent debates over precedence that
ceremonialists adjudicated in both consistory meetings and public processions.
26
Rab Hatfield, “The Compagnia de’ Magi,” The Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 33 (1970), 107–61.
27
In 1524 de’ Grassi spent 300 ducats acquiring the rights to a chapel at Ss. Celso
and Giuliano, which was approximately equal to the annual income that an apostolic
secretary or a clerk of the Camera could expect from their single office; Peter Partner,
The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford, 1990), pp. 52,
54. In contrast, it is likely that in 1486 Carafa paid a more substantial amount for his
chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, even though the chapel was already built. The
gilded altar frame alone cost 250 gold florins, and Carafa donated thirteen houses to the
church to maintain the chapel and fund the celebration of two Masses each day; Geiger,
Filippino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel, p. 46.
28
Partner, The Pope’s Men, pp. 38–39.
29
John F. D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome on the Eve of the
Reformation (Baltimore, 1983), p. 21.

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power, in the period after 1450 there was an increasing concern in
Rome to organize the papal bureaucracy in a fashion that most efficiently met the needs of the pope as well as the expectations of the
officeholders. This reorganization did not necessarily equate with
establishing a “modern” bureaucracy, but undoubtedly the institution
and expansion of venal colleges were related to the papacy’s need for
money and the desire of skilled men to rise through the Curia.
Professional advancement depended on a man’s wealth and skills, but
also on the connections forged through office-holding and the social
perquisites of the position.30 The pope and the city of Rome
depended heavily on these men for an infusion of cash through purchased offices, but, in turn, they composed a network of mid-level
patrons whose public identity depended on their patronage projects
and connections with both papal colleges and mid-level churches.
Hence, the interest in organizing officeholders was founded on social
as much as financial concerns and linked to a more broad effort to disseminate curial wealth through patronage.
Both Sixtus IV (1471–84) and Innocent VIII (1484–92) organized
substantial portions of the papal bureaucracy into venal colleges
with distinct rules, fee schedules, and positions within the curial
hierarchy. Sixtus was particularly energetic, establishing a collegial
structure for the auditors of the Roman Rota in 1472, the apostolic
abbreviators in 1478,31 the solicitors of benefices in 1482, and the
notaries in 1483.32 His successor, Innocent VIII, transformed the
apostolic secretaries into a venal college in 1487, which Peter
Partner has identified as the organizational model for future bureaucratic reform initiatives.
Sixtus IV emphasized the importance of curial organization in the
proemium of Divina aeterna Dei (1478), which established a venal
collegiate structure for apostolic abbreviators. Rational improvement
reflected the divine mandate imparted by God to the popes “to guide,
institute, and fix by means of the highest diligence, tireless vigilance,
30
For a discussion of curial advancement at the Roman court, see D’Amico,
Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome.
31
Pope Pius II had established this college, which Pope Paul II notoriously dissolved.
Pope Sixtus IV re-established and expanded the College of Abbreviators.
32
Sixtus IV dissolved this college after only one year due to criticism of the notaries’
monopolistic privileges. Pope Julius II reformed and expanded the notaries as the
College of Archivists.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

663

and a blameless system . . . especially the whole Church of God . . .
through laws, constitutions, customs and decrees.”33 The pope’s interest
in the well-being of officeholders reflects the institutional aspect of
Sixtus’s renovatio Urbis.Although the bull Divina aeterna Dei focused
on the creation of a bureaucratic system, the fruits of the restructuring
provided abbreviators with the financial independence and social position necessary to contribute to the renovatio of cultural and ecclesiastical patronage more traditionally associated with Sixtus.34
The wealth that collected in the community of papal bureaucrats
was substantial and thus necessitated careful attention from the pope
and gentle guidance toward appropriate behavior and an institutional
identity. In 1514 Pope Leo X exhorted cardinals and curialists to
patronize the institutions at which they held benefices, ensuring that
their behavior was dignified and that their contributions of leadership
and wealth were equally substantial and honorable. Men who adopted
the pope’s wider social and financial expectations were more likely to
advance to a more elite office through which their resources and
their patronage could expand respectively.35
Following this theme of private patronage in publicly accessible
monuments, a cursory analysis of the extant tombs of apostolic secretaries contemporary with de’ Grassi shows an interesting pattern.36 Although these men were amongst the most privileged
officeholders in the Curia, both in terms of financial remuneration
as well as social standing,37 the majority of secretaries have only
tomb slabs in church floors. Although secretaries who received
burial in Rome chose elite churches for their earthly resting place
(frequently at a cardinal titulus), rarely did they establish a private
33
“[P]raedecessores nostri Romani Pontifices . . . inprimis Ecclesiam Dei universam
. . . legibus, constitutionibus, moribus et decretibus summa diligentia, vigilantia indefessa et ordinatione irreprehensibili, dirigere, institutere et stabilire conati sunt”;“Divina
aeterna Dei,” p. 252.
34
Much like his Roman model Octavian Augustus, Sixtus IV sought a renovation of
Roman civic and curial administration. For contemporary comparisons to Augustus, see
Jill E. Blondin, “Power Made Visible: Sixtus IV as urbis restaurator in Quattrocento
Rome,” The Catholic Historical Review, 91 (2005), 1–25.
35
“Supernae dispositionis arbitrio,” Magnum Bullarium Romanum, 3.1:608.
36
These men do not include secretaries who died outside of Rome (such as Angelo
Colocci and Baldassare Turini) or secretaries who became cardinals (such as Ludovico
Podocataro and Pietro Bembo), but only include men who progressed to the episcopate
and other offices commensurate with de’ Grassi.
37
In the mid-fifteenth century an apostolic secretary could expect to reap from 250
to 350 ducats per annum in fees; Partner, The Pope’s Men, p. 54.

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burial chapel.38 Sigismondo dei’Conti, Pope Julius II’s secretarius
domesticus, was buried in Santa Maria in Aracoeli (1512) with a
tomb slab on the right near the high altar, where the church displayed his donation of Raphael’s Madonna of Foligno (1511–12).
Pomponio Leto also received burial in Santa Maria in Aracoeli
(1498).The tomb of Bartolomeo Platina (1481), also the first Vatican
librarian, remains in Santa Maria Maggiore, whereas Giovanni Andrea
Bussi, secretary and bishop of Aleria, chose interment in San Pietro
in Vincoli (1476).39
The secretaries invested in churches of greater cultural prestige,
but surely did not have the resources to acquire a private chapel. Thus
they settled for less prestigious memorials in communities that
emphasized their connection to (but not dominance of) the elite
church via the surrounding tombs of popes and cardinals. In contrast
to these secretaries, de’ Grassi chose a financially accessible church
with curial connections and ensured the permanence of its association with the Office of Ceremonies.
Reform, Expansion, and Codification: Pastoralis Officii (1513)
In the early-sixteenth century the larger campaign of expanding
and reorganizing office-holders into colleges collided with a more
general criticism of the papal court’s wealth, pluralism, and corruption. As an early product of the Fifth Lateran Council, the bull
Pastoralis officii was an attempt at quelling criticism that papal
bureaucrats acted simply to increase their wealth.40 The bull promulgated reforms to the structure, privileges, and behavioral norms of all
of the papal colleges, including the Office of Ceremonies. Pastoralis
officii played a pivotal role in de’ Grassi’s efforts to raise the ceremo38
Conversely, secretaries who were buried outside of Rome more often commissioned private chapels such as Domenico Bertini (†1504) in Lucca’s cathedral and
Giovanni Pietro Arrivabene (†1506) in Urbino’s cathedral.
39
Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters, pp. 112–13, 189; Gabriele Bartolozzi Casti and
Giuliana Zandri, San Pietro in Vincoli (Rome, 1999), p. 162.
40
The bull’s proemium states its goal:“in order that all the Christian faithful fleeing
to this Holy Apostolic See for grace and justice even as to a kind mother, after having
their requests satisfied without being burdened by improper exactions, they may be
able to return to their affairs, not without the highest praise of this See”; Nelson H.
Minnich,“Paride de Grassi’s Diary of the Fifth Lateran Council,” Annuarium Historiae
Conciliorum, 14 (1982), 370–460, here 390–391; “Pastoralis officii,” Magnum
Bullarium Romanum, 3.1:372–393. The author thanks the editor of The Catholic
Historical Review for assistance with this passage.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

665

nialists’ stature as a college and made the connection between the
Office and the church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano permanent. As the
first codification of the Office’s norms and rights, the bull produced a
standard fee schedule for the rituals supervised by the masters of ceremonies and strove to eliminate disputes between the Office and
delinquent individuals who neglected to pay for services or
attempted to negotiate the fee.41 Pastoralis officii presented the
Office of Ceremonies as an organ of ecclesiastical administration
structurally similar to the colleges of secretaries and protonotaries,
but more simple in its history and needs.
Unlike other papal colleges, the venality of the Office of
Ceremonies was a minor characteristic. The true emphasis within this
college was on performance,42 for a successful ceremonialist needed
a keen eye for detail and an extensive knowledge of liturgical history
and ritual. Nonetheless, the bull emphasized that, like other curialists,
ceremonialists depended on an income that could only be amplified
with guaranteed benefices. The combination of monthly stipend,
accumulated fees for services, and the periodic servitio minuto dispersed by the papal court would not maintain a ceremonialist in the
style expected by Roman curialists.43 To this end Pastoralis officii
reserved for the sole use of the Office of Ceremonies the benefices of
the archpresbyterate, a canonry, and a prebend from Ss. Celso and
Giuliano. The language of the bull emphasizes the improvement of
ceremonies through the receipt of benefices “in order that they may
be able to exercise their office in a more fitting way and sustain themselves more commodiously.”44
The codification of the Office of Ceremonies’ privileges and its official transformation into a papal college underlined the importance of
41

“Pastoralis officii,” p. 373.
Although a ceremonialist purchased his office from a retiring ceremonialist and
could resign the office and reserve the right of regression like other offices in the papal
bureaucracy, in practice the trade was neither brisk nor fully open to all interested parties. See below for a discussion of the Office’s oligarchic venality. Also, for de Grassi’s
ideas of a new emphasis and conception of ceremonial performance practice, see Jörg
Bölling, Das Papstzeremoniell der Renaissance. Texte—Musik—Performanz (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), pp. 91–106.
43
For an estimate of de’ Grassi’s income solely from fees for ritual services
(May–December 1504), see Jennifer Mara DeSilva,“Ritual Negotiations: Paris de’ Grassi
and the Office of Ceremonies under Pope Julius II and Leo X (1504–1521)” (PhD diss.,
University of Toronto, 2007), Appendix 1.
44
“Et ut decentius officium eorum exercere, & commodius”; “Pastoralis officii,”
p. 373.
42

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ritual and the ceremonialists’ efforts contributing to a strong papacy
and an effective papal court. The institutional recognition provided
by Pastoralis officii codified the ceremonialists’ connection to the
wider papal mandate of articulating relationships through rituals and
hierarchies, and provided them with an increase in status and wealth,
and the appropriation of space at Ss. Celso and Giuliano. As a self-proclaimed personal favorite of both Popes Julius II and Leo X, de’ Grassi
encouraged a minor legislative act that had substantial results for the
ceremonialists. In actuality, Pastoralis officii little altered the daily
ceremonial experience, but did improve the lot of the ceremonialists.
The bull reduced arguments over fees due for ritual supervision,45
whereas the benefices provided a stable financial base and connections to a church known for its curialist congregation. Beyond
income, the bull provided an opportunity for ceremonialists to
become patrons of a church well known to the curialist community.
As Pastoralis officii dictated, the president of the Office of
Ceremonies received the title of archpriest and his assistant, the
junior ceremonialist, received a canonry at Ss. Celso and Giuliano,46
with the junior ceremonialist succeeding to the archpresbyterate at
the death, retirement, or resignation of the senior master.47 The permanent reservation of these offices for ceremonialists essentially coopted the institutional character of Ss. Celso and Giuliano. Unlike the
two previous archpriests, Cardinals Giovanni Jacopo Schiafenati
(†1497) and Giovanni Antonio Sangiorgio (†1509), both of whom as
cardinals implicitly emphasized the distance between the parishioners and the elite clergy (pope and cardinals) on which they
depended, initially de’ Grassi was only a mid-level curialist. His
appointment as leader of the collegiate chapter reinforced the character of the parish as a community of mid-level importance within the
Roman hierarchy, with a congregation that made a substantial contri45
One of the earliest topics discussed in de’ Grassi’s ceremonial diary is the variability of payments made by orators and prelates to members of the papal court for
assistance at rituals; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5635, fols.
8v–11v.
46
“Pastoralis officii,” p. 373; Minnich, “Paride de Grassi’s Diary of the Fifth Lateran
Council,” p. 391; Constant,“Les maîtres de cérémonies du XVIe siècle,” p. 222.
47
Leo X’s reform bull Pastoralis officii reaffirmed that the creation of a president
was an extraordinary measure, mandated only for a ceremonialist who became a
bishop, and that necessitated the consent of the current pope. Both Johann Burchard
and Paris de’ Grassi became president on their elevation to the bishoprics of Orte and
Cività Castellana (1503) and Pesaro (1513) respectively;“Pastoralis officii,” p. 373.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

667

bution to the papal court but lacked the titles of cardinal or elite lay
functionary. Through the sixteenth century the appropriation of
space within the church via the construction of ceremonialists’
chapels would reveal this character tangibly.
The Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano
The connection with Ss. Celso and Giuliano reflects the responsibilities of a papal ceremonialist, whose chief preoccupation was to
direct and frame access to the pope through rituals. Situated at the
edge of the abitato, the sixteenth-century church faced the Tiber and
the Castel Sant’Angelo, which marked the edge of the Vatican
enclave.48 All processions from the city approaching St. Peter’s basilica passed under the observation of the church, just as they would in
the ceremonialist’s professional capacity.
Although from 1198 Ss. Celso and Giuliano bore the honor of a cappella papalis,49 from at least the mid-fifteenth century relics from the
left foot of St. Mary Magdalene and the offer of an indulgence worth
up to 100 years ensured the church’s position on the pilgrimage circuit.50 At Ss. Celso and Giuliano, de’ Grassi’s chapel combined his own
memorial needs with those of the Office of Ceremonies and a desire
to expand devotion to the church’s relics. Although many patrons
expected their private chapels to lead to burial rights in the same
church, de’ Grassi did not intend to receive burial at Ss. Celso and
Giuliano but in the Bolognese cathedral of San Pietro where his family
48
In the early years of de’ Grassi’s tenure as archpriest at Ss. Celso and Giuliano, the
church experienced a period of intermittent building from 1510 to 1513. Although
Segui,Thoenes, and Mortari have argued from a later anonymous document for Donato
Bramante’s involvement in the church’s renovation based on a sketched plan by him
(Soane Museum, London, Codex Coner, fol. 12f, image 18), the church languished unfinished. Although de’ Grassi’s diary notes an incident in 1512 of Pope Julius II’s interest
in the progress of renovations, it would be premature to suggest that this was a papal
project based on Bramante’s sketch and the relationship between the archpriest and
the pope. Gabriele Segui, Christof Thoenes, and Luisa Mortari, Ss. Celso e Giuliano collegiate e cappella papale [Le Chiese di Roma illustrate, 88], (Rome, 1966), pp. 31–32,
40–41; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 12268, fol. 331v; Hubertus
Günther, “Bramante, Donato,” Encyclopedia of the Renaissance (New York, 1999),
1:282.
49
Segui,Thoenes, and Mortari, Ss. Celso e Giuliano, p. 9.
50
Il museo d’arte sacra di San Giovanni de’ Fiorentini, ed. Lydia Saraca Colonelli
and Rosanna Thau (Rome, 2002); Segui, Thoenes, and Mortari, Ss. Celso e Giuliano, p.
14.

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supported a chapel.51 Instead, the Roman chapel would act as his historical legacy, emphasizing his leadership of the collegiate chapter,
and his work in the Office of Ceremonies. Although scholars have
paid little attention to de’ Grassi’s attempts to initiate ceremonial
events outside the papal court, de’ Grassi’s description of the endowment (codified as The Institution of the Chaplain) provides an
opportunity to discern his understanding of the use of private chapels
for both private and public advantage.
In 1524 de’ Grassi dedicated the new chapel to St. Mary Magdalene
and the Holy Cross in gratitude for recovery from a terrible illness on the
saint’s feast day.52 The endowment included an initial fund of 300 ducats
for the acquisition of ius patronatus and the provision of the necessary
accoutrements, as well as an agreement to pay an annual stipend of 20
ducats for the chaplain’s salary and expenses.53 The chaplain’s duties
included singing a daily Mass in commemoration of St. Mary Magdalene
and the Holy Cross, and for the soul of his patron de’ Grassi. On three
other special occasions, the feast of St. Mary Magdalene (July 22), the
feast of the Discovery of the Holy Cross by St. Helena (May 3), and the
feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14), there would be
vespers and another Mass. On the day of de’ Grassi’s burial in Bologna
the chaplain would celebrate a Mass for the Dead, and on successive
anniversaries there would be vespers and a Mass.54 The exhortation to
the collegiate chapter to attend services on these feasts55 emphasizes
the primary goals of the chapel: to enlarge devotion to these cults and
to preserve de’ Grassi’s memory as patron. Moreover, this endowment
marks the beginning of the ceremonialists’ projection of their own liturgical interests through feast-day commemorations at the church.
As Jill Burke has noted, it was not uncommon to find a correlation
between the recipients of patronal rights to altars and chapels and
members of the church’s opera or the collegiate chapter.56 The bull
51
De’ Grassi, “Institutio Capellaniae sub titulo Sa[n]ctae Crucis & S[anct]ae Mariae
Magdalenae in Ecc[lesi]a S[anct]i Celsi de Vrbe per E[pisco]pum Pisaurien[sem] &
eiusdem Ar[ch]ipresbyteru[m] facta” (hereafter The Institution of the Chaplain);
Rome,Archivio Storico del Vicariato, Capitolo SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol. 373, Istromenti,
Testamenti ed altre Scritture, fol. 161, chap. XVII.
52
De’ Grassi, The Institution of the Chaplain, chap. I.
53
The 20 ducats included 16 ducats for the chaplain’s salary and 4 ducats for the
chapel’s expenses; De’ Grassi, The Institution of the Chaplain, chap. IV.
54
De’ Grassi, The Institution of the Chaplain, chaps. XI–XIV.
55
De’ Grassi, The Institution of the Chaplain, chap. XIV.
56
Burke, Changing Patrons, p. 73.

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669

Pastoralis officii and de’ Grassi’s chapel established a permanent
connection between the church and the papal college, placing ceremonialists in a position of authority that made the appropriation of
space for burial and patronal activities quite convenient.57 In the
years following de’ Grassi’s first endowment, there is clear evidence
that his successor ceremonialists willingly embraced the church as a
corporate spiritual center and a site for personal patronage.
De’ Grassi’s immediate successor in the post of senior master of
ceremonies, Biagio Martinelli (1518–40), followed his lead, contributing to the restoration of a chapel at Ss. Celso and Giuliano sometime
between 1532 and 1538.58 The chapel’s dedicatees included the Holy
Trinity and All Saints, and Martinelli bequeathed funds for the celebration of Masses on the anniversary of his death, in addition to three
Masses each week in perpetuity.59 At de’ Grassi’s death in 1528,
Martinelli expressed eagerness to take possession of the archpresbyterate as the succeeding ceremonialist. In his diary, Martinelli noted
de’ Grassi’s death and his inquiry to Pope Clement VII about the
benefice in the same sentence. Clearly the attraction of Ss. Celso and
Giuliano persisted, as did the memory of its transformative effect and
institutional importance, for Martinelli also recorded the reservation
of the archpresbyterate for the Office of Ceremonies at the Fifth
Lateran Council fifteen years earlier.60 In three extant testaments from
1532 to 1543, Martinelli expressed a consistent desire to receive
burial in Ss. Celso and Giuliano, but only his third testament (1538)
provided detailed instructions for a burial marker in the chapel that
he helped to restore.61
57
The archpriest’s acquisition of ius patronatus over a chapel was not automatic
based on his position of authority in the parish. Between 1509 and 1513 the chapter
had shown de’ Grassi that it was capable of resisting directives found to be unsatisfactory.This further explains de’ Grassi’s care to emphasize the chapter’s support for his
chapel from the beginning; De’ Grassi, Preface, in The Institution of the Chaplain;
Constant,“Les maîtres de ceremonies,” pp. 222–23.
58
Grigioni,“Biagio da Cesena,” p. 359.
59
Rome, Archivio di Stato di Roma, Fondo Segretari e Cancellieri della Reverenda
Camera Apostolica, vol. 76, fols. 328r–329r; Capitolo SS. Celso & Giuliano, vol. 373, fol.
128v.
60
“In principio Julij veni in cistis super mulum R[everendissi]mi card[inali] de valle
in civitate Castellana, et die xv eiusdem propter pestem discussi versus Romam. Vbi
intellexi de obitu Episcopi Pisaurien[sis], scripsi ad Papam pro Archipresbyteratu s.
Celsi vigore unionis in lateranen[si] concilio, et interim cepi possessionem de novo”;
Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,Vat. lat. 12276, p. 103.
61
Grigioni,“Biagio da Cesena,” p. 359; Fondo Segretari e Cancellieri della Reverenda
Camera Apostolica, vol. 176, fols. 78r–79v, vol. 76, fols. 328r–329r.

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When Martinelli became archpriest, he resigned the canonry to his
junior colleague Onofrio Pontano, who had been a member of Ss.
Celso and Giuliano’s collegiate chapter from as early as 1516 and
entered the Office of Ceremonies in 1527.62 Pontano’s will ordered
the endowment of an altar dedicated to the full life of the Virgin Mary,
including the celebration of her six feast days: Immaculate
Conception, Nativity, Annunciation, Visitation, Presentation, and the
Assumption. Pontano provided funds for a sung Mass in his chapel on
each feast day in perpetuity, in addition to the liturgy requested for
the repose of his own soul. For two months after his death each day
a chaplain would celebrate a missa plena, in addition to vespers.
Thereafter, two Masses each week would suffice in addition to the
customary Office of the Dead on the anniversary of his death.63
Although no other papal college established a common space for
burial or liturgical commemoration, de’ Grassi’s appropriation of the
church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano brought greater institutional cohesion through liturgical acts embodying institutional memories and
focusing on patronal monuments.64 As Sharon Strocchia has argued,
funeral and memorial liturgy acted to re-create bonds between the
deceased and mourners, as well as project identities with specific
topographical and social connotations.65 The connection between
the papal college and its chosen church would be reaffirmed each
time the chapter convened to memorialize a deceased ceremonialist or venerated a cult connected to one of their chapels.66
62
In 1516 an inventory of the items in the sacristy at Ss.Celso and Giuliano lists Pontano
as a witness;Vatican City, Archivio Storico del Vicariato, Capitolo SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol.
199, fol. 86r. Biagio Martinelli’s diary notes that Onofrio Pontano succeeded Ippolito
Morbioli in the position of participans ceremonialist in May 1528;Vat. lat. 12276, p. 102.
63
Pontano willed two houses to the chapter of Ss. Celso and Giuliano to maintain his
chapel and provide an appropriate liturgy; Capitolo SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol. 373, fols.
96r–96v.
64
The word appropriation has been used to emphasize de’ Grassi’s personal
involvement in tying benefices from Ss. Celso and Giuliano to the Office of Ceremonies.
In 1509 de’ Grassi vociferously lobbied Julius II for provision to the archpresbyterate,
long before there was any hint of using a reform bull to further institutionalize the
Office of Ceremonies.Without de’ Grassi’s presence at the church and commitment to
the endeavor it is unlikely that Leo X would have bound the archpresbyterate to the
Office, thus minimizing the holder’s ability to profit from the benefice through its resignation and regression.
65
Sharon T. Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 1992),
pp. 55–104.
66
According to Gustav Constant, from de’ Grassi’s death in 1528 Ss. Celso and
Giuliano served as a mortuary chapel for ceremonialists who held the title of archpriest.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

671

Moreover, the anniversary Masses argued for a continuation of the
link between the two groups based on clear financial benefits to
each, as well as the prestige gained from identification with a vital
papal college and a church of historical importance. The endowment of further chapels by Martinelli and Pontano reinforced de’
Grassi’s work and emphasized the continued desire to elevate both
private and corporate professional identities through the appropriation of space.67
Another practical effect of the three chapels was the domination of
the church’s calendar with liturgical events commemorating the cults
favored by ceremonialists. Pontano’s enthusiasm for the Virgin’s full lifecycle introduced the observance of all six feast days included in the
Roman liturgy,68 in addition to the four feasts observed in the chapels
of de’ Grassi and Martinelli (see figure 2). A seventeenth-century liturgical calendar from Ss. Celso and Giuliano shows that only January and
October bear no obligations toward ceremonialist chapel patrons.69

According to their successors’ diaries, Paris de’ Grassi, Biagio Martinelli, and Onofrio
Pontano’s remains lay in the church.This contradicts de’ Grassi’s own wish to be buried
in Bologna, and generally the location of his tomb remains an uncertain issue; Constant,
“Les maîtres de ceremonies,” pp. 222–224; Grigioni,“Biagio da Cesena,” p. 359; Capitolo
SS. Celso & Giuliano, vol. 373, fols. 96r–99r.
67
The inscriptions of both de’ Grassi and Martinelli were destroyed during the eighteenth-century renovations of Ss. Celso and Giuliano, yet Pontano’s tomb slab (1551)
remains ex situ at the church. Pontano describes himself as “HONOPHRIVS PONTANVS
HVIVS ECC[LESIAE] CANONICVS ET CIRIMONIAR[UM] MAG[ISTE]R.” The author
thanks John Christopoulos for his invaluable assistance in viewing and photographing
the inscription. See Vincenzo Forcella, Iscrizioni delle chiese e d’altri edificii di Roma,
vol. 2 (Rome, 1869), p. 148n429.
68
Although it was not uncommon to find chapels devoted to two intercessors, as
with Carafa’s chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva (initially the Annunciation and the
Assumption of the Virgin, and later the Virgin’s Annunciation and St.Thomas Aquinas),
six feast days is exceptional.
69
January also includes the anniversary of the death of Simon Bonadies (†1518),
the bishop of Imola (1488–1511) and Rimini (1511–18), who was a substantial (and
rare) early-sixteenth-century patron with no affiliation to the Office of Ceremonies.
However, de’ Grassi surely knew him as the vice-legate of Bologna in 1509.
Interestingly, the calendar shows no evidence of fifteenth-century influence from
the Bonadies family or continued memorials for the Spinelli, Damiani, or dello
Mastro families. On the Bonadies family houses in the Ponte region, see Mariano
Armellini, Un censimento della città di Roma sotto il Pontificato di Leone X tratto
da un codice inedito dell’Archivio Vaticano. Estratto dal periodico Gli studi in
Italia Anno IV e V (Rome, 1882), pp. 58 (“Un altra del Vescovo de Arimini”), 60 (“Un
altra de Bapta de Gaspare Bonadies vacua . . . et laltra mettà per li heredi de
Benedies”).

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APPROPRIATING SACRED SPACE

FIGURE 2. Image and inscription on the tomb slab of Onofrio Pontano (1551)
in the Church of Ss. Celso and Giuliano. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Every other month includes either an anniversary of a death or a feast
day celebrated through chapel patronage.70
The collection of ceremonialist chapels at Ss. Celso and Giuliano
shows similarities to the increasing construction of national churches
in Rome through the early-modern period. Whereas the ceremonialists wished to reinforce their shared professional connection, the
patrons of the national church wished to advertise their shared patriotism and often maximize devotion to their hometown’s saintly protector.71 The national church provided the same advantages that de’
70
“Dies Festor[um] Co[m]munium, et Anniuersarior[um] pro animabus
Defunctor[um]” (1639–40); Capitolo SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol. 373, n. pag.
71
Anna Esposito,“I ‘forenses’ a Roma nell’età del Rinascimento: aspetti e problemi di
una presenza ‘atipica,’” in Dentro la città. Stranieri e realtà urbane nell’Europa dei
secoli XII–XVI, ed. Gabriella Rossetti (Naples, 1993), pp. 163–75; Renata Ago,
“Burocrazia, ‘nazioni’ e parentele nella Roma del Settecento,” Quaderni storici, 67
(1988), pp. 73–98.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

673

Grassi sought at Ss. Celso and Giuliano—space, spiritual credit, and
public renown. Through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the
Tuscan community in Rome lobbied for the permission and patrons
necessary to build a space that was known to be Florentine. In 1462
the archpriest of the Church of Sant’Agostino encouraged Tommaso
Spinelli to patronize a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the
patron saint of Florence, explicitly noting Spinelli’s reputation as an
ecclesiastical patron and his patriotism.72 Nearly sixty years later Leo
X, also of Florence, would authorize the early construction of the
Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini—a fully autonomous, national
Florentine church—on land annexed from Spinelli’s parish.73
Yet, had Spinelli endowed a chapel at Sant’Agostino, his expatriate
identity might have eclipsed the chapel he founded at Ss. Celso and
Giuliano. The social and spiritual benefits found in the later chapel
were individualistic for Spinelli, but for the ceremonialists there was
a permanent institutional character combined. Just as de’ Grassi established a clear separation of purpose (familial versus professional)
between the burial chapel in Bologna and Ss. Celso and Giuliano, ceremonialists who wished to privilege their familial identity above their
institutional character opted for another patronage space.
Although the chapels at Ss. Celso and Giuliano over time might
have incorporated the memories of their founders’ descendents, de’
Grassi, Martinelli, and Pontano did not succeed in establishing many
heirs in the Office of Ceremonies.74 Ippolito Morbioli, De’ Grassi’s
nephew and junior ceremonialist, died prematurely in 1527, extinguishing the family line in the office.75 Two further generations of
72
New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Spinelli
Archive, Box 89, 1686; see also Jacks and Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence, pp. 249–50,
337.
73
Irene Polverini Fosi, “Il consolato fiorentino a Roma e il progetto per la chiesa
nazionale,” Studi Romani, 59 (1989), pp. 50–70; Mariano Armellini, Le chiese di Roma
dal secolo IV al XIX (Vatican City, 1891), p. 352.
74
Throughout this period the Office of Ceremonies reveals the existence of an “oligarchic venality” in which participating ceremonialists (men who receive a monthly
stipend plus fees) were drawn from a restricted group, usually the relatives or associates of the other participating ceremonialist. By contrast, the nonparticipating ceremonialists (men only receiving fees based on their participation) are more varied in their
backgrounds.
75
Although de’ Grassi designated Ippolito as his “heir and successor,” Martinelli in
1524 noted the presence of Ippolito’s brothers, Achilles and Alexander Morbioli, at
certain ceremonies, perhaps in preparation for future introduction to and total family

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APPROPRIATING SACRED SPACE

Martinelli’s kin served in the Office, as his relative, Francesco
Mucanzio, resigned his position to a nephew, Giovanni Paolo
Mucanzio.76 Although Pontano’s family had its roots in the church
chapter,77 it was his colleague Giovanni Francesco Firmano (1529–65)
who established a multigenerational presence in both the chapter and
the Office that lasted into the mid-seventeenth century.78
Later Ceremonialists and the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina
Although late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents show
that ceremonialists continued to hold benefices at Ss. Celso and
Giuliano, and use the resources marked for the Office by Pastoralis
officii, they did not endow any further chapels at the church chosen
by de’ Grassi. Instead, in the late-sixteenth century, the descendants of
Giovanni Francesco Firmano looked to the Church of San Lorenzo in
Lucina in the newly expanding neighborhood around the Campo
Marzio.79 This new line of ceremonialists, all of whom acquired their
positions after the death of de’ Grassi, dominated the Office of
Ceremonies but avoided establishing personal monuments at Ss. Celso
and Giuliano, the traditional space devoted to ceremonialist patronage.
Instead these men chose a more prestigious church, a cardinal’s titulus, which was clear of associations with an earlier institutional patron
to whom they had no association, unlike both Martinelli and Pontano.
dominance of the Office of Ceremonies;Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,Vat.
lat. 12308, fols. 109r, 115v, 116r. Moreover, the chapter archive reveals that Cardinal
Carlo Grassi, de’ Grassi’s grand-nephew and bishop of Montefiascone, continued to support the chapel’s liturgy through the 1550s, although he held no office at Ss. Celso and
Giuliano; Vatican City, Archivio Storico del Vicariato, Capitolo SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol.
374, fols. 46r–46v.
76
To reinforce his position as the beneficiary of Martinelli’s offices and acts,
Francesco Mucanzio became the rector of his chapel at Ss. Celso and Giuliano; Capitolo
SS. Celso e Giuliano, vol. 373, fol. 119r.
77
For a discussion of the relationship between the Pontano family and the Church
of Ss. Celso and Giuliano, see Pasquale Adinolfi, Il Canale di Ponte e le sue circostanti
parti, vol. 1 (Narni, 1860).
78
In the Office of Ceremonies Giovanni Francesco Firmano was succeeded by six
generations of relatives: Ludovico de Branca, Cornelio Firmano, Paolo Alaleone,
Giovanni Battista Alaleone, Gaspare Servanzio, and Fulvio Servanzio.
79
For a discussion of the expansion of Rome in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth
centuries away from the late-medieval Leonine city, see Manfredo Tafuri, Interpreting
the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects (New Haven, 2006), pp. 73–84; Dorothy
Metzger Habel, The Urban Development of Rome in the Age of Alexander VII (New
York, 2002); Tod A. Marder,“Sixtus V and the Quirinal,” The Journal of the Society for
Architectural Historians, 37 (1978), pp. 283–94.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

675

In 1548 Pope Paul III provided Firmano’s nephew, Ludovico de
Branca, with the position of ceremonialist, thus ensuring the family’s
continued presence in the Office. Although Pastoralis officii established a connection with Ss. Celso and Giuliano to provide space and
income for the Office of Ceremonies, the bull did not dictate the
focus of ceremonialists’ liturgical patronage. In 1578 de Branca
endowed an altar at San Lorenzo in Lucina devoted to St. Francis of
Assisi and the Virgin Mary. His nephew, Paolo Alaleone, significantly
expanded the family’s contribution by expanding the chapel and
commissioning painted scenes of the life of St. Francis of Assisi
(1623–25) from Simon Vouet.80 An inscription dated 1624, displayed
on a pilaster on the left side of the chapel, notes Alaleone’s physical
contribution to the expansion and decoration of the space (see figure
3). Moreover, the inscription emphasizes the chapel’s spiritual contribution via a plenary indulgence secured from Pope Gregory XV for
Masses heard there on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi (October 4).81
The movement of patronage from Ss. Celso and Giuliano coincided
with Firmano’s descendants seeking more illustrious connections.
Notably, in 1595 Paolo Alaleone resigned his archpresbyterate in favor
of a canonry at St. Peter’s basilica.82 By the early-eighteenth century,
the chapel passed from Alaleone’s heirs to the Ruspoli family, which
added St. Giacinta Marescotti to the chapel’s dedication but maintained the cult of St. Francis of Assisi and the plenary indulgence.83
The last ceremonialist descended from Firmano was Fulvio Servanzio,
whose tenure ceased in 1674.84
At the time of de Branca’s endowment, which privileged his familial identity over his institutional identity, the Office of Ceremonies
80
M. Marini,“L’opera di Simon Vouet nella Capella Alaleoni in San Lorenzo in Lucina,”
Arte illustrate, 7 (1974), 197–203.
81
Maria Elena Bertoldi, S. Lorenzo in Lucina, [Le Chiese di Roma illustrate, n. s., 28],
(Rome, 1994), pp. 95–101.
82
In addition the inscription of 1624 identifies Alaleone as a papal chamberlain and
familiar; Marini,“L’opera di Simon Vouet,” p. 201; Leone Caetani,“Vita e diario di Paolo
Alaleone de Branca, Maestro delle Ceremonie pontificie 1582–1638,” Archivio della
Reale Società Romana di storia Patria, 16 (1893), 5–46, here 23.
83
Bertoldi, S. Lorenzo in Lucina, pp. 97, 99, 101.
84
In the 1650s a lay branch of the Alaleone family patronized a chapel dedicated to
St. Joseph in the Church of Sant’Isidoro in Rome. It is possible that this newly built
chapel monopolized the family’s attention after the end of its interest in the Office of
Ceremonies.This period coincides with the presence of the Ruspoli at San Lorenzo in
Lucina. On the chapel, see Aedan Daly, S. Isidoro, [Le Chiese di Roma illustrate, 119],
(Rome, 1971).

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FIGURE 3. A pilaster in the chapel at San Lorenzo in Lucina notes
Paolo Alaleone’s physical contribution to the expansion and decoration of the
space. Photograph courtesy of the author.

was still small, but no longer struggled for institutional recognition.
Moreover, following the Council of Trent’s assertion that Catholic
liturgy should be based on a Roman model, the Office discovered
greater institutional influence through the Congregation for Sacred
Rites and Ceremonies, founded in 1588.85 The expansion of the
chapel at San Lorenzo in Lucina by Alaleone and a later foundation at
the Church of Sant’Isidoro emphasizes the movement of the family up
85
The members of this Congregation included the dean of the College of Cardinals,
who functioned as the congregation’s prefect; the senior master of ceremonies, who
acted as the congregation’s secretary; and the remaining ceremonialists, who were
listed as consultors. The Congregation’s responsibilities included supervision of the
extraordinary tasks entrusted to the Office of Ceremonies, excluding daily supervision
of the papal chapel and the irregular rituals of the papacy (conclave, coronation, and
funerals). Constant, “Les maîtres de cérémonies du XVIe siècle,” pp. 338–39; Frederick
Richard McManus, The Congregation of Sacred Rites (Washington, DC, 1954), pp.
32–35; Giovanni Papa, “La Sacra Congregazione dei Riti nel primo periodo di attività
(1588–1634),” in Miscellanea in occasione del IV Centenario della Congregazione per
le Cause dei Santi (1588–1988) (Vatican City, 1988), pp. 13–52.

BY JENNIFER MARA DE SILVA

677

the Roman social hierarchy and beyond the Office of Ceremonies.
The danger of abandoning Ss. Celso and Giuliano, the sphere of a powerful precursor and institutional support, was mitigated by continued
patronage through subsequent generations and the family’s movement toward more prestigious spaces and offices.
Conclusion
As the senior master of ceremonies and the archpriest of Ss. Celso
and Giuliano, de’ Grassi crafted a strategy for both corporate and individual patronage, fulfilling the memorial needs of ceremonialists and
appropriating space for the Office’s corporate needs. This strategy
reflects the contemporary combination of personal and institutional
motivations that Max Weber considered opposites in bureaucratic
evolution.86 In early-modern society the domination of an office by
one ambitious family often resulted in the equation of personal goals
with institutional change that benefited that family politically, socially,
or financially. With the bull Pastoralis officii ceremonialists gained
access through increased curial status to Ss. Celso and Giuliano,
where they erected monuments to their personal successes. These
private chapels, as public signs of status, reinforced the benefits that
accrued from the Office becoming a papal college and de’ Grassi’s
efforts to further institutionalize papal ceremonies.
Although the Office remained the smallest papal college, the ceremonialists, unlike curial contemporaries, displayed a unified and prestigious institutional character by elevating institutional over familial
86
Whereas Max Weber and Paolo Prodi traced a movement from patrimonial to
modern bureaucratic organization, Partner’s view seems more plausible: “The papal
government of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was typical of its period in the
way in which it combined archaic, patrimonial ways of running a government with
managerial methods which in some respects looked forward to more modern times. It
presents a special difficulty for the theory of modernization, in that its ideological basis
was something which has to be defined as traditional, even though its methods have
very often been as modern, or more so, as those of other contemporary governments.
That, perhaps, is only a problem for those who care to make it so.” Understanding the
process by which the papal bureaucracy functioned lies in the examination of the
motives, effects, and beneficiaries connected to institutional change, which was frequently effected through reform, nepotism, and personal campaigns as seen in the
Office of Ceremonies. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed.
Hans Heinrich Gerth and C.Wright Mills (London, 1991), pp. 296–98; Partner, The Pope’s
Men, pp. 40–41, 45–46; Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls. The
Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. Susan Haskins (New York, 1987).

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ties so as to maximize patronal resources. The development of the
Office of Ceremonies and the patronage of its members emphasize
the interconnection of individual and institutional goals and changing
strategies in ways that reveal the complexities of space, politics, and
identity across Rome and the papal bureaucracy. Moreover, the movement of ceremonialists to a church of higher status outside the
Leonine city reflects Rome’s urban expansion through the late-sixteenth century and the belief that public ceremonial played an essential role in both papal authority and the individual’s identity and quest
for salvation.

VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS:
NEW LIGHT ON THE RELEASE OF JOSYF SLIPYJ
BY

KARIM SCHELKENS*

The author, drawing on original documentation from several
archives, examines the February 1963 release of Josyf Slipyj, the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop, by the Soviet government.
Slipyj’s liberation is explored against the complex background of
the Second Vatican Council and the emergence of Catholic ecumenism, as well as the diplomatic and political aftermath of the
Cuban Missile Crisis. The significant roles of Pope John XXIII;
Belgian friar Felix A. Morlion, O.P.; U.S. journalist Norman Cousins;
and Dutch monsignor Johannes Willebrands—who all played a
part in Slipyj’s release—are described.
Keywords: Cousins, Norman; Cuban Missile Crisis; Slipyj, Josyf,
Cardinal; U.S.-Holy See relations;Willebrands, Johannes, Cardinal
For contemporary church historians the situation of the Roman
Catholic Church in the mid-twentieth century is a particularly interesting, yet highly complex, subject of study. The Second Vatican
Council (1962–65) and the process of aggiornamento set major
changes in motion for the Church.1 A major concern was the rising
*Dr. Schelkens is secretary of the Center for the Study of Vatican II at the Catholic
University of Leuven and a staff member at the Cardinal Willebrands Research Center
at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, email karim.schelkens@theo.kuleuven.be.
Unless otherwise indicated, English translations of quotations in this article are the
author’s.
1
A full history of the most recent Council has been published in History of Vatican
II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak, 5 vols. (New York, 1995–2006).The
first and second volumes set the church historical background for this study. For a more
general background to the issue of the Vatican Ostpolitik, see Philippe Chenaux, L’église
catholique et le communisme en Europe (1917–1989): De Lénine à Jean Paul II
(Paris, 2010). For the change in attitude from the pontificate of John XXIII onward and
its heritage, see Agostino Casaroli’s book Il martirio della pazienza: La Santa Sede e i
paesi comunisti 1963–1989 (Turin, 2000), esp. pp. 71–75.

679

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

tension between the two major political powers that emerged in the
post–World War II world: the United States and the Soviet Union.
Historians and political scientists alike have underscored the importance of Pope John XXIII in establishing a “détente” after the repeated
condemnations of communism uttered by his predecessor, Pope Pius
XII.2 The extraordinary capacity of John XXIII’s humane and conciliatory attitude became most tangible in his remarkable encyclical letter,
Pacem in Terris, of April 11, 1963. The encyclical was promulgated at
a time when anticommunist sentiments were a strong presence
within the gatherings of “his” ecumenical council; it is a document
that can be seen as a worthy testament to the pope’s peacekeeping
efforts.3 This article will tend—once again—to confirm the pivotal
role of John XXIII, but will by no means describe the full scope of his
geopolitical impact. A detailed analysis of the way in which the
Vatican repositioned itself within the overall context of the cold war
also falls outside the scope of this article.4
Rather, based on original documentation from several archives, the
focus will be on a significant event of the era: the release by the Soviet
government of Josyf Slipyj, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop,
in late January 1963 (see figure 1). Given that it took place not long
after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 22–29, 1962, when U.S.Soviet tensions were still high, the archbishop’s release was momentous indeed.5 In a bipolar world marked by the arms race and vivid
2
For Pope Pius XII’s attitude toward communist regimes, see Philippe Chenaux, Pie
XII: Diplomate et Pasteur (Paris, 2003).
3
See, for example,Vincenzo Carbone,“Schemi e discussioni sull’ateismo e sul marxismo nel Concilio Vaticano II: Documentazione,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in
Italia, 44 (1990), 10–68, here 11–12.
4
The particular relationship between Rome and the communist world has been the
subject of various excellent studies such as those by HansJakob Stehle,
Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan: Die Päpste und die Kommunisten (Zurich, 1993), and
Andrea Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca, 1940–1990 (Rome, 1992). On the Russian
Orthodox Church under communist rule, see Dimitri Vladimirovich Pospielovsky, The
Russian Church under the Soviet Regime 1917–1982, 2 vols. (New York, 1984);
Bohdan Rostyslav Bociurkiw,“The Formulation of Religious Policy in the Soviet Union,”
in Readings on Church and State, ed. James E.Wood Jr. (Waco,TX, 1989), pp. 303–18;
and John Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor
States (Cambridge, MA, 1994).
5
See Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days:A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New
York, 1969).An interesting study of Europe’s political reactions to this crisis is found in
L’Europe et la crise de Cuba, ed. Maurice Vaïsse (Paris, 1993). Also see studies such as
James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine
the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York, 1989); and The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

681

FIGURE 1.At left: Josyf Slipyj, Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop, later cardinal. Photo courtesy of Kirche in Not, Königstein, Germany. At right: Thenmonsignor Johannes Willebrands, secretary of the Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity. Photo courtesy of the Cardinal Willebrands Archives
Foundation, Utrecht, the Netherlands.

memories of the casualties of World War II, political tensions reached
a fearful climax in the Cuba crisis. In that context, the interaction of
protagonists such as U.S. Catholic president John F. Kennedy,6 Soviet
premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Pope John XXIII, who all contributed
to Slipyj’s release from exile, should be acknowledged as a surprising
act of confidence and goodwill from all sides.7 The accounts of
House during the Cuban Missile Crisis ed. Ernst R. May and Philip D. Zelikow
(Cambridge, MA, 1997).
6
Among the overabundance of literature on Kennedy, see, for example,Arthur Meier
Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (New York,
1983).
7
Events from an insider’s point of view are described in the highly interesting and
well-documented volume by Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate: An
Asterisk to the Hopeful Year 1962–1963 (New York, 1972), esp. pp. 20–22, 47–53, and
62–65. In the period discussed in this article Cousins met with Khrushchev, Kennedy,
and John XXIII and maintained contacts among these leaders. Many other accounts
appear to have been based largely upon Cousins’s book. See, for example, on the socalled “Andover Talks,” Roland Flamini, Pope, Premier, President: The Cold War Summit
That Never Was (New York, 1980); Alberto Melloni, L’Altra Roma: Politica e S. Sede
durante il Concilio Vaticano II, 1959–1965 (Bologna, 2000); and Gerald P. Fogarty,“The
Council Gets Underway,” in Alberigo and Komonchak, History of Vatican II, II:69–106,

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Slipyj’s release after almost eighteen years of Siberian exile have rarely
referenced archival material. The intention here is not to offer a
simple repetition or a synthetic overview of the existing literature;
rather, a reassessment of this event will be presented from a church
historiographer’s perspective. In doing so, several lacunae will be
filled in. In addition, the often underestimated, if not unknown, role
played by individuals such as Félix A. Morlion, O.P., and Johannes
Willebrands (then a monsignor, later cardinal; see figure 1) will be
highlighted.8 In this account, details of the contacts between Vatican
officials and politicians on both sides of the ideological divide, as they
took place in the days before and after Slipyj’s release from Moscow,
will be presented. On the basis of unpublished materials found in the
Vatican Secret Archives, the personal files of Willebrands and Cardinal
Leo Joseph Suenens,9 and the private diaries of Ukrainian bishops,

particularly pp. 94–104. The same is to be said for several studies briefly discussing
Slipyj’s release in Vatican II in Moscow, 1959–1965, ed. Alberto Melloni (Leuven,
1997). Also see Ivan Choma,“Storia della liberazione del metropolita Josep Slipyi dalla
prigiona sovietica,” in Intrepido Pastore (Rome, 1984), pp. 323–47; Giancarlo Zizola,
L’Utopia di Papa Giovanni (Assisi, 1973), pp. 205–06; HansJakob Stehle, Die Ostpolitik
des Vatikans, 1917–1975 (Munich, 1975), pp. 342–48.
8
The author thanks Maria ter Steeg of the Cardinal Willebrands Archive Foundation
for granting access to Willebrands’s private papers held at the Catholic Documentation
Centre/Katholiek Documentatiecentrum (henceforth KDC) at Nijmegen, the
Netherlands. On Willebrands’s biography, see Karim Schelkens, Johannes Gerardus
Maria Willebrands, in Bio-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 31 (Nordhausen, 2011),
pp. 1530–48, highlighting the importance and characteristics of Willebrands’s diplomatic skills amid tensions. Interestingly, Melloni’s L’Altra Roma deals with Willebrands’s
involvement in only a few lines of text:“Fanfani, otto giorno dopo, viene a sapere dall’ambasciatore dell’URSS a Roma, Semeion Kozyrev, che Slipyj sarà liberato ed espulso;
Willebrands riceve l’incarico di accogliere Slipyj a Mosca, di consegnarli il passaporto
diplomatico dell’URSS che gli è stato preparato e di scortarlo a Rome” (p. 166).
9
The author thanks Archivist Gerrit Van den Bosch for access to a collection of private memoranda and correspondence in the personal archives of Suenens, held at the
archives of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. These items were delivered to
Suenens through the mediation of Curtis Roosevelt (grandson of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt) and Morlion, with permission from Monsignor Igino Cardinale, chief
of protocol at the Vatican Secretariat of State. Given the fact that Suenens was asked to
present John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris at the UN headquarters in New York in
May 1963, Roosevelt and Morlion intended that the Belgian cardinal would be well
informed for the occasion. See Archives Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels (hereafter
AAM), Personal Archives Suenens, Box 20,“Voyage États-Unis. Papiers Cousins-Morlion.”
For more information on Suenens’s journey to New York, see Mathijs Lamberigts and
Leo Declerck, “The Role of Cardinal L. J. Suenens at Vatican II,” in The Belgian
Contribution to the Second Vatican Council, ed. Doris Donnelly, Joseph Famerée,
Mathijs Lamberigts, and Karim Schelkens (Leuven, 2008), pp. 61–217, here pp. 150–52.

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

683

new light can be shed on the relationships among the protagonists.
Moreover, this study will benefit from recent publications that feature
other relevant sources.
Given the distinctive nature of Slipyj’s personal situation,10 some
background information is necessary about the position of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in the post–World War II
era, the rise of Roman Catholic ecumenism in the same period, and
the clash between the Ukrainian diaspora hierarchy and the Russian
observers during the first weeks of the Second Vatican Council.
Within this complex setting, a detailed reconstruction of the timeline
of Slipyj’s release will be offered.
A Church in Exile: Ukrainian Greek Catholicism
after World War II
To understand the difficulties surrounding the release of Slipyj
from Soviet incarceration, it is necessary to look at the origins of his
exile. These are to be understood within the context of the bipolar
political situation characterizing the post–World War II era. When
Andrej Sheptytsky, the Lviv metropolitan for the UGCC, passed away
in November 1944 his territory in Western Ukraine had already
become part of the Soviet empire.11 This situation had begun with the
occupation and annexation of Galicia in September 1939, yet during
the war the communist occupier’s primary concerns had not been in
the religious field, thereby providing a relative amount of freedom for
the Ukrainian Greek Catholics who had been in communion with the
Holy See since the Union of Brest in 1595–96.12 Moreover, the repu10
For more detailed biographical information on Slipyj, see Ivan Choma,“La vita e le
opere del card. Slipyj,” Euntes docete, 2 (1985), 217–36; Franz Loidl, Josyf Kardinal
Slipyj und seine ukrainische Kirche (Vienna, 1987); Jaroslav Pelikan, Confessor
between East and West: A Portrait of Ukrainian Cardinal Josyf Slipyj (Grand Rapids,
MI, 1990), pp. 146–231; and Ivan Choma, Josyf Slipyj: Vinctus Christi et defensor unitatis (Rome, 1997).
11
Stella Hryniuk, To Pray Again as a Catholic.The Renewal of Catholicism in Western
Ukraine (Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, 1995), pp.
2–4. Especially see the excellent study by Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939–1950 (Toronto, 1996), pp. 80–83.
12
Augustin Theiner, Vetera monumenta Poloniae et Lithuaniae, 4 vols. (Rome,
1860–64), III:234–37. On this union, which produced long-term tensions between the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church that the Soviet
treaty would only worsen, see also Bernard Dupuy,“L’union de Brest jugée avec le recul
du temps,” Istina, 35 (1990), 17–42; and Four Hundred Years Union of Brest:A Critical

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

tation of the widely known and respected Sheptytsky also had served
as a restraint on communist authorities, thereby protecting the metropolitan from open attacks. Sheptytsky had established four
Ukrainian exarchates in October 1939, and two months later he
secretly ordained Slipyj—then the rector of the Greek Catholic
Theological Academy in Lviv—as bishop. Thereupon, Slipyj was
appointed coadjutor for the Archeparchy with right of succession, and
on the death of Sheptytsky, Slipyj succeeded him.The end of the war
and the death of Sheptytsky led to the subordination of the Russian
Orthodox Church to the Communist Party, paving the way for a persecution of churches that were not incorporated into the Russian
Orthodox Church and thus subject to Moscow Patriarch Alexis.13
On April 11, 1945, the Ukrainian Catholic bishops, including Slipyj,
were arrested. Most of them were accused of collaboration with Nazi
rule and sentenced to forced labor and exile.These draconic measures
prompted a strong reaction from Pius XII, expressed in his encyclical
Orientales Omnes of December 23, 1945.14 In it, the Vatican did not
only condemn communism but also openly and specifically attacked
Moscow Patriarch Alexis. The situation worsened when on March
8–10, 1946, some 200 Greek Catholic priests were forced to revoke
formally their Union with Rome, declare the Brest Union annulled,
and convert to Russian Orthodoxy in a sobor set up by the Kremlin15—

Re-Evaluation, ed. Bert Groen and Wil Peter Van den Berken (Leuven, 1998).The best
historical study devoted to it thus far is that by Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform:
The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of
the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
13
Ivan Bilas, “The Moscow Patriarchate, the Penal Organs of the USSR, and the
Destruction of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church in the 1940’s,” Logos, 34 (1993),
532–76.
14
In “Orientales Omnes,” AAS, 38, no. 2 (1946), 33–63, Pius XII wrote: “Ita Rutheni
ritus clerus, ut affertur, in litteris ad rei publicae moderatores datis, conquestus est quod
sua Ecclesia in Ucraina occidentali, ut hodie vocatur, in difficillimis rerum condicionibus posita sit, propterea quod omnes Episcopi atque ex suis sacerdotibus multi
comprehensi sint, unaque simul prohibitum sit ne quis eiusdem Ruthenae Ecclesiae regimen suscipiat.”The pope stated later:“Sed res ipsae atque eventus facile declarant in
suaque luce ponunt quaenam fuerit ac sit harum saevitiarum causa. Quis enim ignorat
Alexium Patriarcham, nuper a dissidentibus Russiarum Episcopis delectum, in litteris
Ruthenae Ecclesiae datis—quae non parum ad eiusmodi insectationem ineundam contulere—defectionem ab Ecclesia catholica aperte efferre ac praedicare.”
15
On Khrushchev’s involvement in the 1944–46 persecution of the Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church, see William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York,
2003), p. 195. See Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, pp. 104–06. For a
study of the Lviv sobor, see pp. 148–88.

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

685

all without any say from the Ukrainian Catholic bishops.16 These dramatic events set the tone for decades to come, and the UGCC would
become a “Church of Silence.” Even when religious liberty was
included in the USSR’s constitution, it was merely a formal liberty, for
in reality, the Greek Catholic Church had no real right to existence. In
reaction, the Vatican under Pius XII repeatedly rebuked communism17
and sharply criticized the Russian Orthodox Church, which had
become subject to state government.18 Although the Kremlin had a
somewhat less restrictive attitude—due to the de-Stalinization of the
USSR to which Khrushchev’s February 25, 1956,“Secret Speech” contributed—the end of that decade was marked by new repressions of
Ukrainian Catholics as well as other religious minorities.19
The Rise of Catholic Ecumenism:
The Secretariat for Christian Unity
Simultaneous with the Vatican’s presentation of itself as an anticommunist stronghold in the decades before the Second Vatican
Council, the establishment of new ecumenical contacts on an international level facilitated attitudes quite different from the one found
in the 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos. Although ecumenical initiatives were not lacking before and during World War II,20 it was
mostly thereafter that a Roman Catholic awareness and engagement
in the ecumenical movement was seen. One year after the establishment of the World Council for Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam in
1948—led by Dutchman Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft—Pope Pius XII
published an Instructio de Motione Oecumenica on December 20,
1949.21 A year later Willebrands established the Catholic Conference
16
The documents on this mock synod of 1946 were published by Patriarch Pimen,
L’vovskij tserkovnyi sobor. Dokumenty i materialy 1946–1981, Moscow, 1983.Also on
this era, see the excellent study by Bernard Dupuy, “La dissolution de l’Église grécocatholique en 1945 par le régime soviétique dans les territoires conquis,” Istina, 3–4
(1989), 290–305.
17
Andrea Riccardi,“Antisovietismo e Ostpolitik della S. Sede,” in Melloni, Vatican II
in Moscow, pp. 227–68.
18
This attitude can be seen in a 1949 decree published by the Holy Office, declaring
all sympathizers with communism to be excommunicated. See AAS, 41 (1949), 334.
Further information can be found in Giuseppe Alberigo, “La condanna della collaborazione con i partiti communisti, 1949,” Concilium, 11 (1975), 145–58.
19
Repressions included the resentencings of Slipyj in 1953 and 1959.
20
See Jörg Ernesti, Ökumene im dritten Reich (Paderborn, 2007).
21
This instruction was an important step toward a somewhat less restrictive attitude
and soon prompted the foundation of new ecumenical organs within the Roman
Catholic Church such as the Foyer Unitas in 1950.

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

for Ecumenical Questions as a way to gather ecumenical expertise
within Roman Catholicism from international sources, uniting members from institutes such as Istina, the Foyer Unitas, and the JohannAdam-Möhler Stiftung. The Catholic Conference for Ecumenical
Questions was engaged not only with the WCC but also with individual members of other religions, including those behind the Iron
Curtain.22
Most relevant in this context were the contacts between the
Russian Orthodox Church and other denominations. In 1948 the
Moscow Patriarch Alexis had declined an invitation to join the WCC.
As a result, and a fortiori after the second WCC assembly at Evanston
in 1954, an ongoing process of correspondence was set up between
Geneva and Moscow, resulting in a meeting on August 8–10, 1958, in
Utrecht.23 These initial contacts between Eastern and Western Church
representatives proved to be crucial, even when no Roman Catholic
participants were officially present and even when the Soviet regime
controlled every move made by the Russian Orthodox Church on the
international scene.The Utrecht talks revealed the internal complexity of the Russian Orthodox Church and its attitude to the West, as
well as its willingness to engage in further communication. It also is
striking that the Russian delegates at the Utrecht meeting inquired
about the relationship between the WCC and the Roman Catholic
Church, and that both the 1949 Instruction and the activities of the
Catholic Conference and Istina were discussed.24 Significantly, at the
22
On the origins and importance of the Catholic Conference for Ecumenical
Questions, see Mauro Velati’s Una difficile transizione: Il cattolicesimo tra unionismo
ed ecumenismo (Bologna, 1996).
23
KDC, Archives Willebrands, 68, “Confidential Report of a Meeting between the
Russian Orthodox Church and Delegates of the WCC at Utrecht,” p. 9.
24
See the correspondence on the Utrecht talks between Willebrands and Cardinal
Bernard Jan Alfrink in Archives Willebrands, 223. The “Confidential Report” reads:“The
delegates of the Church in Russia asked about the relationship of the WCC with the
Catholic Church. Dr.Visser ’t Hooft replied:
“(a) There is no official relationship.
“(b) There is a common prayer for the unity of the church as both keep the Unity
Octave at the same time.The intentions are somewhat differently formulated by Fr.
Watson, Père Couturier, and the WCC’s Commission on Faith and Order, but the idea
is the same.
“(c) There is a ‘Catholic Conference on Ecumenical Questions.’This has studied several times—independently of the WCC—the themes which have been treated by
the WCC.
“(d) Dr.Visser ’t Hooft drew attention to the existence of the Instructio of the Holy
Office:‘De Motione Ecumenica.’

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687

WCC Central Committee meeting held in Rhodes in August 1959 the
presence of two “Catholic journalists” caused serious difficulties.25 As
a result of the Utrecht talks, the Russian Orthodox Church decided to
join the WCC in April 1961,26 and this would be confirmed and
accepted during the WCC conference in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, matters had undergone a thorough transformation at
the Vatican. On October 28, 1958, John XXIII was elected pope, and
on January 25, 1959, he convoked an ecumenical council.27 This decision would have far-reaching consequences for both the development
of Catholic ecumenism and the relationship among the Vatican, the
Kremlin, and the Moscow Patriarchate.The Rhodes incident had made
it painfully clear that the Vatican urgently needed an “official address”
for ecumenical affairs. Now, within the context of conciliar preparations, the June 5, 1960, motu proprio Superno Dei Nutu announced
the establishment of ten preconciliar commissions and three secretariats that included a Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity
(SPCU) with Cardinal Augustin Bea28 as its first president and
Willebrands as secretary.29 Given the SPCU’s mandate to invite
“(e) There were some difficulties with the Roman Catholic Church concerning the
persecution of Protestant minorities in Catholic countries.
“The delegates of the Russian Church have, at no time, said anything unfavourable
or aggressive towards the Catholic Church during the course of this meeting.”
25
See Karim Schelkens, “L’affaire de Rhodes au jour le jour. La correspondance
inédite entre J.G.M.Willebrands et Ch.J. Dumont,” Istina, 54 (2009), 253–77.
26
KDC,Archives Willebrands, 223, Letter from Visser ’t Hooft to Willebrands,April 25,
1961. In this letter, the WCC secretary general informed the SPCU of the upcoming
press announcement regarding the membership of the Russian Orthodox Church; in
this private letter he wrote: “Une des raisons principales pour laquelle nous avons
adopté une attitude positive vis-à-vis de cette demande est d’ailleurs aussi que nous
avons l’impression qu’en admettant l’église russe, nous pourrons du moins dans une
certaine mesure aider au soutien de la cause du christianisme en Russie dans un temps
où ceci est très nécessaire.”In the same archive folder, see Visser ’t Hooft’s note “Les faits
qui ont marqué le rapprochement entre l’Église Orthodoxe de Russie et le Conseil
Oecuménique des Églises.” This note mentions the fact that two delegates from the
Moscow Patriarchate (Borovoj and Alexejev) had come to Geneva in June 1959 to study
the WCC organization, as well as arrange a December visit by Visser ’t Hooft to Moscow.
27
Giuseppe Alberigo,“The Announcement of the Council. From the Security of the
Fortress to the Lure of the Quest,” in Alberigo and Komonchak, History of Vatican II,
2:1–54.
28
Stjepan Schmidt, Augustin Bea: Der Kardinal der Einheit (Graz, 1989).
29
Mauro Velati,“La proposta ecumenica del segretariato per l’unità dei cristiani,” in
Verso il Concilio Vaticano: Passaggi e problemi della preparazione conciliare, ed.
Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni (Bologna, 1993), as well as Mauro Velati, Una difficile transizione: Il cattolicesimo tra unionismo ed ecumenismo (Bologna, 1996).

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

observers from other denominations to the upcoming Council,
increasing contacts between Rome and the WCC,30 as well as
between Rome and Moscow, were seen. The latter arose from the
SPCU’s invitation to Moscow to send official observers to the Second
Vatican Council, which Moscow had initially rejected.31 Although at
the WCC’s 1962 Paris meeting Boris Nikodim, the metropolitan of
Leningrad and Minsk, spoke in favor of sending WCC observers, the
issue of Russian Orthodox observers at the Second Vatican Council
turned out to be far more complex, because of the difficult bilateral
relationships between various Orthodox Patriarchates.32 On that
occasion, on August 13,Willebrands, present in Paris, had private talks
with Visser ’t Hooft; Nikodim; and archpriest Vitali Borovoj, a professor at Leningrad Ecclesiastical Academy. During these conversations
he learned that establishing further contacts was not impossible, but
would require his presence in Moscow as a condition for obtaining
cooperation from the Russian Orthodox Church.33 Willebrands discussed briefly the fate of the Catholic Church under Soviet rule with
Nikodim,34 then asked Bea for permission to undertake the journey.
30
For example, Jérôme Hamer, O.P., attended the WCC Central Committee meeting
in Paris on August 7–17, 1962; he was the first official Roman Catholic SPCU representative. In his report on the meeting he underlines the important role of Nikodim in
obtaining a positive reaction to the SPCU’s invitation for sending WCC observers to the
Council. KDC, Archives Willebrands, 68: “Rapport du P. Hamer, Comité central du
Conseil Oecuménique des Églises,” Paris, August 24, 1962. Also see “Report by John B.
Sheerin,” September 10, 1962: “It was noteworthy that Archbishop Nikodim of the
Russian Orthodox Church spoke in favor of the resolution and his support may have
forestalled opposition from other quarters.”
31
During a conversation with Patriarch Alexis on June 15, 1960, Vladimir A.
Kurojedov, the new president of the Soviet Government Council for Church Affairs, had
taken a very negative stance toward John XXIII’s initiative to convoke the Council. See
Adriano Roccucci,“Russian Observers at Vatican II:The ‘Council for Russian Orthodox
Church Affairs’ and the Moscow Patriarchate between Anti-Religious Policy and
International Strategies,”in Melloni, Vatican II in Moscow, pp. 45–69, esp. p. 55.This had
resulted in the publication of the anonymous article Non possumus in the June 1960
issue of Žurnal Moskovskoj Patriarchii—the periodical of the Moscow Patriarchate.
32
For a more detailed study on these problems, see Roccucci, Russian Observers,
pp. 45–69.
33
KDC,Archives Willebrands, 68, Letter from Willebrands to Bea,August 12, 1962:“À
la fin, Nicodème a précisé: Nous espérons beaucoup que vous puissiez venir à Moscou
et encore une fois je vous assure que ce voyage ne sera pas infructueux.”
34
Nikodim’s answer was the following:“Je suis incapable de vous donner des informations sur la situation des évêques catholiques en Union Soviétique ou leur possibilité de se rendre à Rome à l’occassion du Concile. Cela dépend du gouvernement russe.
Or il y dans le gouvernement deux commissions pour les affaires religieuses: une pour
l’église orthodoxe, une autre pour toutes les autres églises.”

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

689

Well aware that the KGB was watching the Russian Orthodox Church,
Bea responded positively, but stated some conditions: First, the
Russian government had to grant permission to Catholic bishops in
Russian territory to participate in the Council. Second, Willebrands
was to be granted an official passport and visa for a visit to the
Moscow Patriarch so as to avoid accusations that the Vatican has sent
a “spy disguised as tourist.”35 So, only days before the solemn opening
of the Second Vatican Council and only weeks before the Cuban
Missile Crisis, Willebrands traveled to Moscow. He kept complete
records of the conversations he held there from September 27 to
October 2, 1962.36 On this occasion, the main discussion topic was
the practical organization of the Council, including the role of the
observers. Also, the Russians pointed out that the Council should
avoid an explicit connection of communist atheism with specific
nations.37 Yet, it is significant that Willebrands also cites Nikodim, who
was the Moscow Patriarchate’s president of the Department for
External Relations, raising the following issue:38

35
KDC, Archives Willebrands, 68, Letter from Bea to Willebrands, August 15, 1962:
“Per l’accettazione nostra di Osservatori della Chiesa Russa la condizione ‘préalable’ è
che il governo russo concede ai Vescovi che stanno nel territorio russo, di prendere
parte al Concilio, e che non—nè materialmente nè moralmente—impedisca gli Stati
con essa alleati o associati di fare lo stesso.” Bea proceeds:“Data questa assicurazione
ufficiale e autorevole si può continuare di trattare la questione degli Osservatori. Non
vi è alcuna obiezione di principio che V.S. Rev.ma vada per questo scopo anche a
Mosca, come ha visitato altri Patriarcati. Ma vi è una condizione: che non vi vada come
‘turista.’”
36
For an account of this journey, see Giovanni Turbanti, “Il problemo del communismo al Concilio,” in Melloni, Vatican II in Moscow, pp. 157–59. Also see Johannes
Willebrands,“La rencontre entre Rome et Moscou. Souvenirs,” in Melloni, Vatican II in
Moscow, pp. 331–38.
37
KDC, Archives Willebrands, 68, “Visite de Mgr. Willebrands au Patriarcat de
Moscou,” 13 pp., here pp. 2–3, on atheism:“Peut-on éviter d’en parler de telle façon qui
permettrait une interprétation politique, dirigée contre certains nations? Ne pensez-pas
que nous, comme évêques russes orthodoxes, défendent l’athéisme! Cela n’est pas vrai,
mais nous demandons de comprendre notre situation. On peut parler de l’athéisme
sans mentionner ou faire allusion à une nation déterminée, ce qui risquerait facilement
de tourner un document religieux en un document politique.”
38
KDC, Archives Willebrands, 68, “Visite de Mgr. Willebrands au Patriarcat de
Moscou,” p. 4: “Concernant la position des évêques catholiques en Russie, l’archevêque
Nicodème a entendu des rumeurs que certains Vicaires apostoliques en Russie ont
demandé un visa pour aller au Concile. Pourront-ils y aller? N’est-ce pas une situation
délicate si l’Église Orthodoxe Russe sera représentée, même par ses observateurs, si les
évêques ou leurs vicaires ne pourront pas être présent? Nous serons très contents de
rencontrer éventuellement à Rome des compatriotes catholiques.”

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Concerning the situation of the Catholic bishops in Russia, Archbishop
Nikodim heard rumors that some apostolic vicars in Russia applied for a
visa to go to the Council.Will they go? Would it not be an awkward situation if the Russian Orthodox Church be represented, even by its own
observers, without the presence of their bishops or vicars? We will be glad
to finally meet our Catholic compatriots in Rome.

Nikodim articulated the central issue with powerful clarity.To understand the reaction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic hierarchy to the
SPCU’s invitation to the Moscow Patriarchate, a look at the preparation in Rome for the Council is necessary.
The Hot Month of October 1962: Cold War in Rome
In the Council’s preparation phase, the bishops’ vota were collected and organized into a manageable list of topics.39 From summer
1960 onward the preconciliar commissions were active in Rome,
which included several UGCC representatives. Noteworthy is the
conversation between Maxim Hermaniuk, C.Ss.R., the Ukrainian metropolitan of Winnipeg (see figure 2), and John XXIII at Castel
Gandolfo on September 30, 1961. In his personal diary, Hermaniuk
wrote:
Upon entering the Holy Father greeted me in Bulgarian—kak su—“how
are you”, offering me the courtesy of using a Slavic language.
The discussion was very relaxed and cordial.The topics of the discussion
were the following:
1. The invitation, in some form (to show a solidarity of faith in one God
against atheistic communism), to the representatives of all who profess
one God (Jews, Muslims) on the occasion of the Ecumenical Council.
2. The invitation, in some form, of Orthodox and Protestants to this
Council.
3.The first provincial Synod of the Archeparchy of Winnipeg.
4. The persecution of the Church in Ukraine and the martyrdom of our
nation, especially the great Metropolitan J. Slipyj.
The Holy Father confirmed, concerning the first two points, that this is
very complex and is in the stage of study. He, with a sincere heart, con39
Many bishops asked for clear condemnations of communism, which explains why
the Synthesis Finalis of the Antepreparatory Commission of Vatican II places items
such as De communismo, De atheismo, De totalitarismo, De marxismo, and De
socialismo under the heading “Errors to Be Condemned.” See Acta et Documenta
I.2.1:197–231.

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691

FIGURE 2. At center: Maxim Hermaniuk, C.Ss.R., Ukrainian metropolitan of
Winnipeg, at the Second Vatican Council. Photo courtesy of the Center for the
Study of the Second Vatican Council, Catholic University of Leuven.

veyed his apostolic blessings to our Synod and to the whole Ukrainian
nation.The picture of Metropolitan Slipyj stands on his table.40

Members of the Ukrainian diaspora episcopate were hoping that
the Council would address the suppression of the Greek Catholic
churches in the Soviet Union. On the eve of the Council’s solemn
opening session, fifteen members of the Ukrainian diaspora hierarchy
gathered in Rome to set a public agenda. Several steps were initiated
at that meeting such as the preparation of a brochure and a letter to
the Council Fathers informing them of the situation of Catholic martyrs of the UGCC and Slipyj; a plan to publish an article on the imprisonment of Slipyj; and an intention to ask Cardinal Gustavo Testa41 to
appoint a procurator for Slipyj.42
40
Archives Metropolitan See Winnipeg, Canada (hereafter AMW), Council Diary
Maxim Hermaniuk (hereafter Council Diary Hermaniuk), September 30, 1961.The diary
will be published as The Council Diaries of Maxim Hermaniuk, C.Ss.R., Metropolitan
of Winnipeg, 1960–1965, annot. Karim Schelkens, trans. Jaroslav Skira (Leuven, 2011).
41
John XXIII, who was well acquainted with the Oriental Churches because of his
experience as a nuncio in Bulgaria, had asked his friend,Testa, on July 31, 1962, to take
up the post of prefect to the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.Testa agreed and
was officially appointed on August 2, 1962.
42
AMW, Council Diary Hermaniuk, October 10, 1962.

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Meanwhile, Patriarch Alexis and the Russian Orthodox Synod had
gathered at Zagorsk on October 8, 1962, and agreed to send two
observers to the Council: Borovoj, who had attended the Utrecht and
Paris meetings and also frequently visited the WCC headquarters at
Geneva as a delegate for his church; and Vladimir Kotliarov, vice-superior of the Russian Religious Mission at Jerusalem.43 They arrived in
Rome on October 12 (see figure 3), and action was swiftly taken by
the Ukrainian diaspora bishops. Hermaniuk’s diary entry of October
17, 1962, notes:
Meeting at the College of St. Josafat with Most Rev. Ivan Bučko, Most Rev.
A. Sapeljak and Most Rev.A. Hornjak on the issue of the ratification of the
text of a common letter of our Ukrainian Bishops to all the Fathers of the
Council regarding ”the observers” of the Russian Orthodox Church at the
Council. The discussion was very interesting and beneficial. I was
entrusted with preparing an outline of our lines of thought, and Most Rev.
Bučko is to prepare the full text in Italian. Afterwards we will determine
when that letter is to be given to the Fathers of the Council.44

As Nikodim had predicted, the Ukrainian diaspora bishops were
deeply shocked by the presence of Russian Orthodox observers,
given that many of their own bishops were still in exile or imprisoned.45 During these days just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the
conflict between the Russian Orthodox Church and the heavily persecuted Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was about to come to a
head. Over the next days, Hermaniuk drafted a public repudiation of
the Russian Orthodox observers invited by the SPCU, in which the
43
See the leaflet distributed by the SPCU, Observateurs délégués et hôtes du
Secrétariat pour l’Unité des chrétiens au deuxième concile oecuménique du Vatican
(Rome, 1965), p. 11.
44
AMW, Council Diary Hermaniuk, October 17, 1962.
45
On October 21, one day before Kennedy presented the public with photographs
of Soviet missiles in Cuba, Hermaniuk noted:“in the afternoon a reception hosted by
His Eminence Cardinal Agagianian in honour of the Patriarchs, Metropolitans,
Archbishops and Bishops of all the Eastern rites participating in the Council. At the
reception also were Cardinals Feltin,Tisserant,Amleto Cicognani, and . . .V.Valeri.Apart
from the cardinals there were also patriarchs: Maximos IV from Antioch, the Patriarch
of Armenia and the Maronite Patriarch. Among those present there were also—one
knows not why and what for—the ‘observers’ of the Russian Orthodox Church—Vitali
Borovoj and Vladimir Kotliarov. This is a real misfortune for the Council and for all its
manifestations. It is painful, especially for us Ukrainians, who have suffered so much and
our brothers who still continue to suffer under Moscow and its Orthodox Church—
especially our Confessor Josyf Slipyj—for fidelity to Christ and the Church.” See AMW,
Council Diary Hermaniuk, October 21, 1962.Also see Melloni, L’Altra Roma, p. 132.

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

693

FIGURE 3. Russian observers at the Second Vatican Council. Photo courtesy of
the Center for the Study of the Second Vatican Council, Catholic University of
Leuven.

Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet government were presented
as a single entity, making clear that the Council should denounce both
rather than invite “communist representatives” to Rome. At this point,
the Ukrainian hierarchy felt deserted by the Vatican administration,
and the Ukrainian hierarchs felt that they needed to respond to the
patronizing attitude of Vatican diplomats, who considered the UGCC
only as a small Eastern entity. Their initiative was hardly welcomed by
the SPCU.46 On October 25, Willebrands and Bea were aware of the
intention of the Ukrainian bishops to protest publicly the presence of
the Russian observers at the Second Vatican Council, and both
informed Monsignor Igino Cardinale, chief of protocol at the
Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Cardinale, in turn, made a note on
the matter for Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, secretary of state for the
Holy See.47
46
For an insider’s perspective, see Emanuel Lanne,“La perception en Occident de la
participation du Patriarcat de Moscou à Vatican II,” in Melloni, Vatican II in Moscow,
pp. 120–21.
47
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Report on the Events of October 23–27,” p. 2.Also see
Archives Willebrands, 324,“Diary Notes on the First Weeks of the Council,” for October
25, p. 3: “The Russian observers ask about the presence of Catholic bishops from Soviet
territory. According to the information of Msgr. Lupi, none of them are present at the

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

On that same evening, Bea had a private audience with John
XXIII,48 in which he informed the pope that, at earlier meetings, Ivan
Bučko had favored inviting representatives of the Moscow
Patriarchate, but had now changed his mind under pressure from the
Ukrainian diaspora episcopate. He, too, felt the risk that the Vatican
diplomats would opt for a modus vivendi with the Soviet Union,
rather than for a clear support of the Ukrainian martyrs. John XXIII
personally asked Bea to prevent such an action by the Ukrainian bishops, and on October 27 Bea met with Ukrainian Metropolitan
Ambrosij Senysyn—responsible for the U.S. Ukrainian diaspora—to
inform him that the pope wished the Ukrainian bishops to refrain
from action against the Russian observers. Also, Bea explained that
the SPCU had invited the Russian delegates on its own initiative and
not by order of the Holy See. These factors contribute to the
extremely complex background against which the negotiations leading to Slipyj’s release must be understood.
From Andover to Rome
When it came to the Vatican’s attitude toward communism, John
XXIII showed an astoundingly open and humanist attitude from the
earliest period of his pontificate. This is illustrated by a remarkable
peacekeeping initiative from the pope’s side. In August 1959 John
XXIII had private conversations with Belgian Dominican friar Félix A.
Morlion, who had previously been actively involved in actions against
Nazism and Stalinism (see figure 4). Morlion, now a director of the
New York-based American Council for the International Promotion of
Democracy under God (CIP), discussed two issues with John XXIII.
First was the possibility of establishing an “international university”
Council. Both of the Russian observers cannot understand this and deplore the fact
that, while they themselves are present, no Catholic representatives from the Soviet
Union are here. . . . Cardinal Bea informs me that he has learned from a reliable source,
that the Ukrainian bishops are planning to make public objections against the presence
of Russian observers, with Msgr. Bučko as spokesman. It is needed to prevent such
action from happening and the cardinal orders me to contact Msgr. Cardinale. Upon
returning to the office I did so, and Cardinale’s spontaneous reaction was:‘is he crazy’,
he would immediately prepare a note for Cardinal Cicognani.”
48
The audience was not noted in the pope’s diary (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pater
Amabilis. Agende del papa, 1958–1963, ed. Mauro Velati [Bologna, 2007]), but Bea
reported it to Willebrands. See the diary note in Archives Willebrands, 324, p. 1:“Cardinal
Bea has had an audience with the Holy Father, who appeared to be fully aware of the
Ukrainian initiative.The pope told the cardinal that he did not wish to see such actions,
and has ordered Cardinal Bea to inform the Ukrainian episcopate of this.”

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695

FIGURE 4. At left: Félix A. Morlion, O.P. Photo courtesy of KADOC, the
Documentation and Research Center for Religion, Culture, and Society of the
Catholic University of Leuven. At right: Norman Cousins, January 1943.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction no. LCUSE6-D-006885.

under CIP auspices, which ultimately was formed in November 1961
as the International Pro Deo University with Morlion as its first president. Second, Morlion and John XXIII talked about the need for a
series of books to explain to nonbelievers, including those under
communist rule, the new and more pastoral approach of the Catholic
Church.49 The pope intended that these six books would be issued
after events at the Vatican. With John XXIII’s approval, Morlion contacted Harper and Brothers in search of a writer who could advise
him on his project. In early 1960 the publishing house referred
Morlion to U.S. journalist Norman Cousins, editor-in-chief of the
Saturday Review and a founding member of the Committee for a
Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE; see figure 4). Cousins and Morlion quickly
became friends, and this friendship would have significant ecclesiastical and political implications. Cousins, who had had private contacts
with Khrushchev in Moscow and New York, was already acquainted
with some of Khrushchev’s close friends through semi-official USUSSR meetings held at Dartmouth. Another such meeting would be
held in October 1962 at Phillips Exeter Academy in Andover,
49
AAM,Archives Suenens, Félix A. Morlion,“Memorandum for John XXIII and John F.
Kennedy,” November 1962, p. 1.

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Massachusetts. This time, through the mediation of Cousins, Morlion
observed talks that took place on the eve of American congressional
elections amid the mounting tensions of the Cuba crisis.
On October 24, at the height of the crisis, Cousins, well informed
by his Washington connections, told Morlion of the political risks at
hand and asked him “if Pope John could make a very special appeal
for restraint on all sides.” Morlion then telephoned Cardinale, who
stated that such a plan was underway and that Kennedy would be
kept informed.50 On that day Morlion twice telephoned the Vatican,
making the case for Cousins as a possible link between the Vatican
and the Kremlin.51 The result of these communications is indicated
by Cardinale, who made clear that the pope was interested in receiving Cousins. Then, on October 25, 1962, John XXIII delivered a
speech on the radio that asked all parties to avoid nuclear warfare
and casualties. His appeal was published in the New York Times52 as
well as in Moscow’s Pravda.53 In the course of the next days both
Khrushchev and Kennedy gave proof of restraint.54 Meanwhile, at
Andover on October 25, Morlion met privately—without Cousins
and without the pope’s knowledge—with Evgueni Fedorov, chair of
50
AAM, Archives Suenens, Morlion, “Memorandum for John XXIII and John F.
Kennedy,” November 1962, pp. 3, 3a.
51
AAM, Archives Suenens, Morlion, “Memorandum for John XXIII and John F.
Kennedy,” November 1962, pp. 2–3. Regarding Cousins, Morlion wrote:

1. He is a rather unique case in having obtained special personal confidence of
Nikita Khrushchev as proved by certain questions asked him which cannot be
explained as ordinary moves of dissimulation. This has been favored by his books
and actions for peace which have been linked by Khrushchev and his friends, to
organizations as SANE which are not under his control.
2. He is widely known as a humanist who is not identified with any particular creed
and owes no allegiance to any church. My experience with him demonstrates that
he is a deeply spiritual man of sacrifice and prayer worthy of special confidence of
our headquarter [Vatican].
3. He is seen by Nikita Khrushchev and his friends as a typical leader of a new peace
loving generation, which in a certain sense can be expected to owe primary allegiance to the human family and the cause of peace.
At the time the United States did not have a formal diplomatic relationship with the
Holy See. For details on the U.S. relationship with the Holy See from the eighteenth century onward, see Andrew M. Essig and Jennifer L. Moore,“U.S.-Holy See Diplomacy:The
Establishment of Formal Relations, 1984,” The Catholic Historical Review, 95 (2009),
741–64.
52
“Text of Pope’s Appeal,” New York Times, October 26, 1962, p. 20.
53
Pravda, October 26, 1962, p. 5.
54
See Fogarty, The Council Gets Underway, pp. 100–01.

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

697

the Russian delegation, and Russian journalist Grigory Shumeiko.
Morlion’s three-hour talk with these men would prove quite important, as he solicited and obtained permission for Cousins to travel to
Moscow and meet with Khrushchev55 after a visit to the Vatican. In
other words, Morlion had managed to send Cousins to Moscow with
a specifically religious agenda. On October 29 Morlion had another
transatlantic phone conversation with Cardinale regarding the possibility of a visit by Cousins to the Vatican, which was planned sometime between December 8 and 13.56 In the days thereafter,
Washington was informed of this private initiative,57 and in late
November Cousins received a phone call from Anatoly Dobrynin,
Soviet ambassador to the United States, who indicated that Cousins
could meet with Khrushchev on December 14.As a result, a broader
triangular structure of private contacts was established among
Washington, Rome, and Moscow based on the personal contacts
established by Cousins and Morlion.
The presence of Russian Orthodox observers at the Second Vatican
Council stirred controversy, but could have been expected, given John
XXIII’s overall approach to outreach.Without the knowledge of members of the Ukrainian episcopate, contacts had been evolving
between the Vatican and the Kremlin since 1961. Such contacts were
largely separate from the SPCU’s ecumenical endeavors, but were
equally important. It was highly symbolic that in late November 1961,
John XXIII addressed a personal letter to Khrushchev,58 who in March
1958 had become premier of the Soviet Union. Such private letters
55
AAM, Archives Suenens, Morlion, “Memorandum for John XXIII and John F.
Kennedy,” November 1960, p. 5:“When asked [by the Russians] if I could give them this
information in writing [on the Second Vatican Council and on the new policies developed by the Vatican] I answered yes on the condition that NC [Cousins] will be
accepted by them to visit NK [Khrushchev] and inform him further on what he would
learn through private contacts with PJ [John XXIII].” On October 29, Morlion had a
second conversation with the Russian delegates and handed them a note he had prepared for Khrushchev that described the intentions of John XXIII and the upcoming
book project on the new Vatican policies.
56
AAM, Archives Suenens, Morlion, “Memorandum for John XXIII and John F.
Kennedy,” November 1960, pp. 10–11.
57
AAM, Archives Suenens, Letter from Ralph A. Dungan (special assistant to
Kennedy) to Cousins, December 6, 1962:“The President, knowing of your impending
visit to Rome, has asked that you convey to the Holy Father the President’s great relief
at the Holy Father’s recovery and asks that you extend his best wishes for the Holy
Father’s continued good health.”
58
Giorgio La Pira, Lettere a Giovanni XXIII: Il sogno di un tempo nuovo, ed.
Andrea Riccardi and Augusto D’Angelo (Milan, 2009), p. 393.

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

between the pope59 and the premier, however negligible in terms of
content, point to the growth of a mutual trust and openness. This
would become tangible in a much debated press statement offered by
Cardinale on November 9, 1962, in which the Vatican stated that it
was “ready to engage in relations with any state, but they have to be
founded on the reliable guarantee of the other party to assure freedom for the church and the sanctity of the moral and spiritual interests of its citizens.”60 Significantly, this statement went further than
John XXIII’s October 25 appeal: “I always speak well of all those
statesmen here and there, in this or that land . . . who promote, favor
and accept negotiations, at all levels and at all times.”61 Even before
Cousins and Morlion’s arrival in Rome in early December 1962,
Roman events in the public sphere, as well as behind closed doors, in
November would prove to be quite eventful. For a start, the Ukrainian
bishops at the Council, who noted the turn taken in Cardinale’s press
conference, decided to continue their course of action. On November
22, 1962, a statement was published in the Italian press, representing
a “Solemn and Dramatic Declaration on the Silent Church.”62 In
agreement with the Vatican Secretariat of State and in close contact
with Borovoj, the SPCU reacted the next day, issuing another press
statement that distanced itself from the Ukrainian initiative.63
59
Moreover, the pope was constantly informed of the ongoing contacts between
members of the Italian government and the Kremlin in the same era such as Fanfani
and Giorgio La Pira, the mayor of Florence, as is evident from their recently edited correspondence. See La Pira, Lettere, esp. letters 63, 79, 107, 108, 113, and 115.
60
Krassikov,“The Second Vatican Council in the Context of Relations between the
USSR and the Holy See,” in Melloni, Vatican II in Moscow, pp. 313–30, esp. p. 325.
61
Quoted in Zizola, L’Utopia, p. 7. See AAM,Archives Suenens, which contain a “Very
Restricted Memorandum” by Morlion titled “A Principle of Holy See Policies Applicable
in Relations with the East.” In it, the Vatican press conference is explained as follows:
“The occasion for the press conference was the necessity of counteracting pressures of
all kinds by less diplomatically subtle people in favor of the Holy See breaking diplomatic relations with Cuba.”
62
See F. Pucci, Una solenne e drammatica dichiarizione sulla “Chiesa del silenzio”: Invocata da 15 Vescovi ucraini al Concilio sulla libertà per i sacerdoti detenuti
oltrecortina, in Il Giornale d’Italia, November 21–22, 1962. Later, Hermaniuk would
comment on this in an interview with the Ukrainian Weekly, July 26, 1987, p. 4, stating
that “[a]s chairman of the Ukrainian Catholic delegation I and the other 14 signed a
joint letter calling for goodwill in releasing Slipyj. Up until that point, the issue was too
sensitive for any of the bishops to want to handle. So we printed it in the daily newspaper, II Giornale d’Italia[,] on November 22, 1962.That day all of the bishops attending Vatican II learned first-hand that we had no official voice. It was a day that the whole
Church listened to our voice.”
63
Vatican City,Vatican Secret Archives, Conc.Vat. II, Papers SPCU 1463,“Report of the
SPCU-Meeting of November 23, 1962,” which contains the following passage: “Mgr le

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

699

Moreover, Willebrands met with the Ukrainian bishop conference on
November 24, explaining to the bishops the precise reasons and circumstances behind the invitation extended to the Russian Orthodox
observers.64 The Ukrainians had clearly not realized that their action
was hardly appreciated by the pope, given John XXIII’s efforts in
diplomacy geared toward obtaining Slipyj’s release. For a start, on the
day that the Ukrainian press statement appeared in Il Giornale
d’Italia, private conversations took place between Semeion P.
Kozyrev, the USSR ambassador to Italy, and Amintore Fanfani, the
Roman Catholic prime minister of Italy.65 After these conversations,
Kozyrev believed an improved Holy See-Soviet Union relationship was
on the horizon,66 although this would later prove to be a somewhat
premature expectation.
From Rome to Moscow
On December 12, after Morlion and Cousins had cleared their trip
to Rome with Washington, they traveled to Rome and held conversations with Cardinals Cicognani and Bea, Monsignor Angelo
Dell’Acqua, and Cardinale. The non-Catholic Cousins—who did not
meet with John XXIII due to the pope’s illness—was now acting as an
unofficial intermediary for the pope on this trip to the Kremlin and
was preparing for his talk with Khrushchev. He studied the first chap-

secrétaire Willebrands met au courant l’assemblée au sujet du communiqué paru dans
la presse et attribué à l’Épiscopat Ukrainien en exil. Certains évêques ukrainiens se sont
désolidarisés de cette déclaration. Mais le Secrétariat a jugé bon, d’accord avec la
Secrétairerie d’État, de faire un communiqué de presse. Ce communiqué, conçu en
termes assez larges, peut aussi se référer à des allusions faites dans la presse allemande
et aussi aux États-Unis sur la question des observateurs. Il a semblé utile de faire ce communiqué. Mgr Willebrands en a parlé avec l’archiprêtre Borovoj. On espère que la déclaration des évêques ukrainiens n’aura pas de conséquences.”
64
AMW, Council Diary Hermaniuk, November 23–24:“Msgr.Willebrands spoke to our
bishops at the College of St. Josafat: 1. He spoke at length about the work of the
Secretariat in general; 2. He went to Moscow on behalf of the Secretariat; 3. In Moscow,
he wanted to raise the topic of Metropolitan J. Slipyj, but His Eminence Card. Cicognani
(Secretary of State) said to him that this is not his business and that he should not
pursue it.”
65
It should be noted that during this period, Fanfani led a coalition of Christian
Democrats and Italian socialists, rendering Italian politics open to left-wing political
ideas and softening its attitude toward the Kremlin. On Fanfani’s role and contacts with
the Vatican and Moscow, see Pietro Neglie, La stagione del disgelo: Il Vaticano,
l’Unione Sovietica e la politica di centrosinistra in Italia, 1958–1963 (Siena, 2010).
66
Krassikov, The USSR and the Holy See, pp. 325–26.

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

ter of the first volume in Morlion’s book series; talked to his Russian
friends Fedorov, Shumeiko, and others; and consulted with Vatican
officials. During his talk with Bea—who had been fully informed
about the state of church affairs in Moscow by Willebrands only three
weeks before67 and about the attitude of the Ukrainian hierarchy only
a week before—the topic of Catholic suppression under Soviet rule
was broached. Cousins stated:
For many years he [Bea] said, members of the religious community had
been imprisoned inside the Soviet Union. It would be a most favorable
augury if at least one of them could be released. Would there be any particular person he had in mind, I asked. “Yes”, he said, Archbishop Josyf
Slipyj of Ukraine, who has been imprisoned for eighteen years. He is a very
fine man. The Holy Father is concerned about him. The Holy Father would
like the Archbishop to live out those few years [left] in peace at some seminary, where he would be among his own.There is no intention to exploit
the Archbishop’s release for propaganda purposes.68

On December 14, Cousins flew from Rome to Moscow for a long conversation with Khrushchev.69 Many issues were discussed during this
meeting, including the Cuba crisis and Khrushchev’s Soviet
Communist Party reform. Cousins explained to Khrushchev the
importance of Morlion’s book project as well as the major role of the
pope during the Cuba crisis and the pope’s opinion that “the Church
should go deep into the spiritual problems of peace.A nuclear war is
not only a war against man, but a war against the Creator and his plans
for humanity’s future.”70 Cousins underscored the need “to avoid that
the pope’s mediation, his wish to serve the cause of peace, should
promote crisis.”71 The subject of religious freedom then was
67
See AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962.This sixteen-page report by Cousins offers
a full report of the dialogue.An English version was sent to Kennedy, and an Italian version was sent to John XXIII, Cardinale, Dell’Acqua,Tisserant, and Bea. Cousins’s report
mentions that Khrushchev was well aware of Willebrands’s first Moscow visit just
before the Cuba crisis.
68
Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate, p. 30.
69
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962, p. 1.
70
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962, pp. 5–6.
71
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962, p. 6, adding that “one could think that it
would be an expedient to have crisis, knowing that it would be possible to have
recourse of the Holy See to overcome them.”

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

701

addressed as well as the UGCC’s situation, with Cousins asking for a
sign of good intentions toward the Catholic Church by allowing it to
disseminate its holy literature and, to show that religious freedom was
taken seriously, liberating Slipyj. The latter request triggered some
reactions. Cousins’s private report of the meeting states:
Here Khrushchev used about fifteen minutes to explain thoroughly the
case of Bishop Slipyj, whom he had known; he had followed this case personally, from 1940, when he was President of the Cabinet of Ukraine. He
gave a detailed history of the religious events in Ukraine, expounding thoroughly the political questions around the figure of Slipyj’s predecessor, His
Excellency Bishop Prince Sheptytsky.72

Later, Khrushchev says that “I do not know where bishop Slipyj is
now, nor whether he is alive or not; but I shall deal with the matter
and have his case examined,” which seems to recognize the potential
for enormous scandal should Slipyj be released. But Cousins pressed
further, stating that the Vatican would promise that it would not
exploit any publicity, whereupon Khrushchev stated that “I will have
the case examined, and I do not exclude a release, provided there are
guarantees that nobody will make a political case out of it. I had other
enemies, too, and one more in freedom wouldn’t make me afraid.”73
At the end of his report, Cousins made clear that the conversation had
surpassed his expectations, as all of the points he had prepared had
been received positively. Some signals can testify to the mutual sense
of a positive atmosphere of the talk such as the fact that Shumeiko
72
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962, pp. 11–12. Regarding Sheptytsky,
Khrushchev indicated that “it was not possible to go back to the situation that had
existed under the Czar, when the priests were his gendarmes. His Excellency
Sheptytsky made a declaration in this sense.Then he was immediately struck by an illness, and died under rather mysterious circumstances.There are reasons for suspecting
that his death had been accelerated.”
73
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report of the Meeting between Mr. Nikita
Khrushchev and Mr. N.,” December 14, 1962, pp. 11–12A.The elaborate account given
in Cousins’s private report differs from the story published in The Improbable
Triumvirate, pp. 48–49:“I [Cousins] said that over the years, many attempts had been
made to obtain the release from prison of Archbishop Slipyj of the Ukraine. Pope John
was hopeful that something could now be done. He was not addressing himself to the
reasons for the internment; these reasons went back many years and there was no point
in rearguing the case.” Khrushchev then says:“It is not a good idea. I would like to have
improved relationships with the Vatican but this is not the way to do it. In fact, it could
be the worse thing we could do. The Chairman said if the Archbishop became free
there would be large headlines proclaiming,‘Bishop Reveals Red Torture.’”

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

and Fedorov insisted on sending an “open” (not codified, as was customary) telegram to Morlion, or the fact that Khrushchev sent along a
handwritten Christmas card for John XXIII.
Back to the Vatican
A few days later, Cousins headed back to Rome. There, the tumultuous first period of the Second Vatican Council had come to a close,
and an overall new direction shaping Roman Catholicism was gradually evolving. In Rome Cousins met with Morlion, Dell’Acqua,
Cardinale, and Bea, plus the dean of cardinals, Eugène Tisserant. To
these men he reported on his conversation at the Kremlin and again
noted Bea’s vivid interest in the possibility of religious amelioration
and the request for the release of Slipyj.74 He also had a private audience with the pope on December 19, 1962. On the basis of his own
report he had a lengthy conversation with John XXIII in which both
the pope’s diplomatic sensitivity and personal desire for world peace
on a humanitarian basis were clear. In a report on this conversation
written for Kennedy on January 17, 1963, Cousins recalls:
Pope John has profound convictions about the issue of war and peace in
our time.War can no longer be considered a purely political question.The
effects of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on man, on the human
germplasm, on the natural environment, on hundreds of millions of people
outside the nuclear nations, and on generations to come—these effects
clearly make the issue of war and peace a profound spiritual one. Every
resource must be tapped in behalf of the human situation. But the Holy
Father has no desire to create any embarrassment for the President or to
undertake any initiatives that are unacceptable to the President or to the
Chairman of the Council of Ministers.75
74

Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate, p. 58.
AAM, Archives Suenens, Cousins, “Report for President John F. Kennedy,” January
17, 1963, p. 1. In the same report to Kennedy, Cousins also articulates four aspects to
explore during the Moscow portion of his trip:
75

1. What are the prospects for enlarged religious freedom inside the Soviet Union?
Would it be possible to obtain the release of bishop Slipyj? What about publication
and distribution of holy literature?
2. How much could be ascertained about the nature and strength of the opposition
to N. K.’s no-war policy inside the Communist world in general and inside the Soviet
Union in particular?
3.What are the alternatives to the present Soviet leadership?
4. What are the prospects for opening up a responsible line of communications
between Rome and Moscow?

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

703

Also, it is evident that Cousins and John XXIII addressed topics
beyond the geopolitical implications of atomic warfare, including the
situation of religions under Soviet rule as well as the possibility of
securing the release of Slipyj.76 In his letter to the pope a few days
later Cousins would return to these topics:
I was grateful for the opportunity to report to you personally concerning
my visit with Mr. Khrushchev, from whom I sought assurances of enlarged
religious freedom inside the Soviet Union. He recognizes your desire to do
everything possible to keep the differences now separating the nations
from becoming the combustible material of a nuclear war. He welcomes
the establishment of unofficial and confidential contacts or communications. He will give consideration to your request that Holy Literature be
made increasingly available, with respect to both publication and distribution. He will look into the case of Bishop Slipyj.77

Cousins concluded that, like Vatican policy, Soviet policy at the
summit was in transition, with Khrushchev searching for a workable
relation to the West.Thus, a basic agreement among the three parties
was moving toward fruition. In examining this process, several conclusions can be drawn:
(a) First, the pope allowed for the offices of the Vatican to be made available for the purpose of averting or abating geopolitical crisis. Seemingly,
the Vatican was even willing to engage in actual mediation between political powers.Thus, the Vatican was emerging as a fully accredited subject in
international politics, maintaining its “third way” between Washington and
Moscow.
(b) Second, the absence of nuclear conflict, described in terms of peaceful coexistence or competitive coexistence, was to be maintained through
mutual respect for the conditions that make this possible.
(c) Third, beyond the negative condition of absence of nuclear conflict, the
possibility emerged for positive action. Such positive action was to be
rooted in a broad “humanistic consensus” designed to foster the full development of human resources and capacities on the planet.This perspective
could be shared by all parties involved.78
76
Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate, p. 64, reports that John XXIII said the following:“I have prayed for many years for the release of Archbishop Slipyj. Can you imagine what it must be like to be cut off for so many years from the kind of service you
have prepared yourself to live, and from life itself? What is your impression? Do you
think the Archbishop will be released?”
77
AAM,Archives Suenens, Letter from Cousins to John XXIII, December 21, 1962. Cf.
La Pira, Lettere, p. 393.
78
The U.S. position is clear in AAM, Archives Suenens, Letter from Kennedy to
Cousins, January 31, 1963:“I want to thank you for keeping me informed so fully about

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Against this background of growing consensus, the release of
Slipyj, as a result of the changing relationships between the political
forces and the Holy See, can be regarded as an important token of
mutual confidence and goodwill from the Kremlin and as a personal
gesture from Khrushchev to the pope. However, reducing the fate of
Slipyj to a simple result of grand diplomacy among major political
players does not reflect the full picture.
Moscow Revisited: February 2–4, 1963
Although there is no proof that Willebrands and Cousins met in the
last months of 1962, both had been key players behind the scenes in
Slipyj’s release. Both had interacted with major figures behind the
Iron Curtain and were therefore well aware that any type of accusation of political bias against the Vatican or the Council must be
avoided. Moreover, both were skilled in diplomatic encounters within
their domain—Cousins in cultural and political milieux, Willebrands
in ecumenical venues. In addition, both knew of the pope’s personal
longing79 for the liberation of Slipyj; in Willebrands’s case, it had
become clear that John XXIII had asked his old friend Testa to contact
the Russian observers at the Council in view of a possible release.80
Now, after Cousins’s return to the United States, a period of calm set
in. In early January 1963 Soviet government officials discussed a
report by Borovoj on the Second Vatican Council and invited him to
elaborate on it. Borovoj’s presentation addressed two main points: the
conversation with Testa regarding the release of Slipyj; and his intention to offer a full report on the Council to the patriarch of
Constantinople, as no official representatives from the Ecumenical
your trip to Rome and Moscow. It has been a most interesting and fruitful journey.
Certainly the results so far have been promising. As you know, any betterment of the
human situation in this world—whatever the country involved—is of importance to
the United States. The national interest and the human interest come together in our
fundamental objectives as a nation. I am certain that you have reflected this approach
in this important undertaking.”
79
It is noteworthy in this context that, via Don Giuseppe De Luca, John XXIII also
had approached Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, regarding
religious liberty in the USSR and the situation of Slipyj. See Riccardi, Il Vaticano e
Mosca, pp. 240–41.
80
See La politica del dialogo. Le carte Casaroli sull’Ostpolitik Vaticana, ed.
Giovanni Barberini (Bologna, 2008), pp. 798–801. Such contacts had indeed taken place
in November 1962. See the confidential note in KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Contacts
avec les autorités du Patriarcat de Moscou,” in which a conversation is mentioned in
view of Slipyj’s liberation among Testa, Bea,Willebrands, Borovoj, and Kotliarov.

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

705

Patriarchate had been present in Rome.Afterward, Borovoj stated the
reactions of these government members: “The first reaction to both
points was rather negative, and concerning the release of
Metropolitan Slipyj, they objected that the Vatican could exploit this
against the Soviet Union by means of hostile publicity.”81 Borovoj
insisted that Testa’s request came directly from the pope, and Borovoj
himself was personally guaranteeing that the Vatican would not abuse
such a gesture from the Kremlin.82 Borovoj’s statement had several
implications. It was clear that the pope was highly respected inside
the Kremlin, as had become evident during the December 14 CousinsKhrushchev talk. Also, it indicated a kind of benevolence toward the
West and a more open stance toward ecumenical engagement, given
the personal risk that Borovoj was taking to obtain the release of the
Ukrainian archbishop.83 Meanwhile, in Vatican circles, Monsignor
Pietro Pavan was preparing an encyclical letter, which would be
promulgated on April 11 under the title of Pacem in Terris.84 This
encyclical, to be presented by Suenens at the headquarters of the
United Nations in May 1963, would prove to be a worthy and lasting
testimony of John XXIII’s endeavors to safeguard world peace and for
Vatican diplomats meant the official opening up of a “third way”
between Washington and Moscow. In that regard the encyclical
remains a milestone that inaugurated a long process of the Catholic
Church’s dealings with the communist world.
“Slipyj Is a Free Citizen”
On January 18, Cousins received a phone call from Dobrynin, inviting him for a private lunch. At the lunch Cousins and Morlion were
informed of Khrushchev’s decision to release Slipyj from his Siberian
exile without further conditions and without a new trial.85 Morlion
81

KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités du Patriarcat de Moscou,”
p. 1:“La première réaction à tous les deux points a été plutôt négative, et au sujet de la
libération du métropolite Slipyj ils ont objecté que le Vatican pourrait exploiter ce fait
contre l’Union Soviétique, par moyen d’une publicité hostile.”
82
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Contacts avec les autorités du Patriarcat de
Moscou,” pp. 1–2:“À la demande des autorités soviétiques,‘quelle garantie avons-nous
que le Cardinal Testa tiendrait la parole?’, l’archiprêtre Borovoj s’est fait garant personnellement.”
83
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités du Patriarcat de Moscou,”
p. 6, refers to the following conversation as recorded by Willebrands:“Je lui ai demandé:
Pourquoi êtes-vous intervenu d’une manière si efficace, mais qui n’a pas été sans
risques, dans la question de la libération du métropolite Slipyj? Borovoj m’a repondu: je

706

VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

and Cousins used a public telephone to inform Cardinale of the news;
Cardinale then informed the pope.86 From that moment on the news
spread quickly, and by January 25 Kozyrev had informed Fanfani of
Slipyj’s release.87 On that same day, Cardinale and Dell’Acqua met
with Willebrands88 from the SPCU—in the absence of Bea, who was
in Copenhagen—and commissioned Willebrands to meet with
Kozyrev that evening to have the news officially confirmed.89 Their
conversation dealt mainly with practical issues regarding Slipyj’s
release and his journey from Moscow to Rome. Questions arose as to
whether Willebrands—who was charged with accompanying the

suis convaincu qu’en agissant ainsi j’ai servi l’Église, non seulement votre église, mais
l’église du Seigneur.” Borovoj goes on:“La libération du Métropolite Slipyj peut devenir
le signe d’un dévéloppement nouveau qui aura une importance très grande pour la situation de votre église dans notre pays et d’une manière indirecte aussi pour l’église
orthodoxe. Deux problèmes se présentent encore, un grand et un petit. Le grand problème, c’est le dévéloppement de votre église en Russie. Le petit problème, c’est ma part
et mon risque personnel.”
84
On January 7, 1963, John XXIII wrote in his diary: “Ho poi consacrato tutto il
Vespero, circa tre ore, nella lettura dell’enciclica di Pasqua in preparazione, fattami da
mgr. Pavan: La pace fra gli uomini nell’ordine stabilito da Dio e cioè.” See Roncalli,
Agende, p. 482. On the preparation of this encyclical, see also Turbanti, Un concilio per
il mondo moderno, p. 227.
85
Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate, pp. 68–70; Melloni, L’Altra Roma, p. 166.
86
On January 28, 1963, during a reception for the cardinals and bishops of the conciliar Coordination Commission in Rome, the pope had confidentially expressed his
personal joy regarding the news of the release.
87
Barberini, La politica del dialogo, p. 800, writes:“In Italia, l’On. Fanfani consegnava
alla Segretaria di Stato, su richiesta Sovietica, un appunto (25 gennaio 1963) nel quale,
fra l’altro, si ribadiva che il governo russo aveva ritenuto possibile soddisfare la
domanda in considerazione dell’interesse del Vaticano e particolarmente di Papa
Giovanni XXIII, come esclusivo atto di buona voluntà.” Also see KDC, Archives
Willebrands,“Conversation avec S. Exc. Mons. Kozyrev,” January 25, 1963, p. 1:“Pour ce
cas, tu devrais prendre contact avec le citoyen italien, avec lequel j’ai parlé de cette
affaire. L’ambassadeur pensait à Fanfani.”
88
Former SPCU member Thomas Stransky mentioned that Bea and Willebrands had
been informed on January 24—probably by the Vatican Secretariat of State—of Slipyj’s
release. See Thomas Stransky, “Memories of Johannes Willebrands at Vatican II: An
Insider’s Story,” in Les agendas conciliaires de Mgr. J.Willebrands. Secrétaire du secrétariat pour l’Unité des chrétiens, ed. Leo Declerck (Leuven, 2009), pp. vii–xviii, here
p. xiv.
89
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Conversation avec S. Exc. Mons. Kozyrev,” January 25,
1963, p. 1:“Je lui ai dit que le Saint Siège avait reçu des nouvelles que l’archevêque Josyf
Slipyj serait mis en liberté sans conditions. L’Ambassadeur a répondu: Je peux vous confirmer cette nouvelle, Slipyj est citoyen libre.”Willebrands proceeds, stating that:“Nous
voudrions le voir à Rome, prenant garde autant que possible qu’une publicité inopportune soit évitée. On m’a désigné pour aller à sa rencontre.”

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

707

archbishop from Moscow—and Slipyj should return via Vienna or not
and whether the two men would return by airplane or train. In these
matters the central issue was the avoidance of press sensationalism,
as the actions of the Ukrainian episcopate were still fresh in memory.
The same sense of diplomacy surfaced when Willebrands expressed a
need to visit the Moscow Patriarchate during his trip to ensure that
inadvertent offense was not given.90 Kozyrev’s wish to improve the
relationship between the Holy See and the Soviet Union also was evident. Given the positive sign offered from the Kremlin side, the expectation clearly was that the Vatican would now take the next step, as is
seen by the insistent questions in that direction.Willebrands wrote:
Then the Ambassador said: “Isn’t there something else that you should
speak to me about?” When I said “No”, he was a little disappointed and
said:“I thought there was something else you needed to tell me again. Are
you not aware that there have been contacts concerning the possibility of
relations with the Holy See?” I said, “I know there were contacts about
such a possibility in theory, but I do not know the details.” The Ambassador
responded:“In my opinion, the time has come to discuss the details.91

In the subsequent days Willebrands would prepare for his second
journey to Moscow, with departure scheduled for February 1, 1963.
Two days before, John XXIII had a personal message delivered to him,
as well as the gift of a rosary for Slipyj.92 As for Slipyj’s release, it
appeared that the Soviets thought it crucial that it was not to be considered a rehabilitation. It was emphasized that, even though a new
trial would not be held and conditions were not attached to the
90
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Conversation avec S. Exc. Mons. Kozyrev,” January
25, 1963, p. 2:“Dans l’éventualité d’un voyage à Moscou de ma part, je voudrais bien
faire une visite aux autorités du Patriarcat, étant donné que j’ai fait autrefois une visite
au Patriarcat. Si je ne ferais pas une visite au Patriarcat, cela créerait une mauvaise
impression.”
91
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Conversation avec S. Exc. Mons. Kozyrev,” January 25,
1963, p. 3:“Ensuite l’Ambassadeur a dit:Vous n’êtes pas chargé de me parler d’une autre
chose? Quand j’ai dit: ‘Non’, il était un peu déçu et disait: J’avais pensé que vous devriez
me parler d’une autre chose encore. Ne savez-vous pas qu’il y a eu des contacts au sujet
de la possibilité de rapports avec le Saint Siège? J’ai dit: Je sais qu’il y a eu des contacts
au sujet d’une telle possibilité en principe, mais je ne connais pas les détails.
L’Ambassadeur a répondu: À mon avis, le temps est venu pour entrer dans les détails.”
92
KDC, Archives Willebrands, Letter from John XXIII to Willebrands, January 30,
1963:“Santo Padre augura particolarmente a Msgr.Willebrands il buon viaggio, e lo assicura della Sua preghiera.Voglia Monsignore gradire medaglia d’oro. Il rosario benedetto
dal Papa per l’ecc.mo. Mr. Slipyj. Si possono dare a Msgr.Willebrands almeno una ventina
di medaglie d’argento del Concilio. Possono servire.”

708

VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

release, the release was to be regarded as an amnesty and that Slipyj
was still considered an enemy of the Soviet government.This specification posed potential difficulties in Slipyj reassuming his position as
archbishop of Lviv.This account shows Borovoj questioning whether
Slipyj, in the event that a “new leader” is sought for the UGCC, would
be the most suitable candidate.93
On Friday, February 1, 1963, Willebrands arrived in Moscow and
was met by Borovoj, who escorted him to the Hotel Metropol. The
next morning, he met with Vladimir A. Kurojedov—the president of
the Soviet Council for Ecclesiastical Affairs who in 1960 had been
vehemently against Russian participation in the Second Vatican
Council—as well as with Peter Makkarsev from the Soviet Council for
External Affairs.94 After mutual congratulations,Willebrands explained
that, once they reached Rome, Slipyj would spend some time at the
Greek Catholic Abbey of Grottaferrata; during this period the Vatican
would distribute a brief and sober press statement.95 The possibility
of establishing an official diplomatic relationship with the Vatican was
broached, which Willebrands again avoided discussing, explaining
instead the nature and role of the SPCU. Willebrands made clear that
the SPCU’s intentions lay primarily in the field of reuniting
Christianity as well as developing improved relationships with other
religions96 and secular entities and organizations. Finally, another con93
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités du Patriarcat de Moscou,”
p. 2:“La libération a été un acte de faveur du gouvernement soviétique, et surtout du
premier ministre Khruscev, pour répondre à une demande de Sa Sainteté le Pape. Un
retour événtuel du métropolite à Lemberg doit être traité avec beaucoup de prudence.
Il s’agit ici d’une question de première importance, notamment la position de votre
église dans l’Union soviétique. À mon avis, il y a la possibilité d’un nouveau dévéloppement, mais vous comprendrez aisémenent que cette question est extrêmement délicate
et compliqué. Si votre église à Lemberg devrait avoir un nouveau chef pour l’avenir, estce-que le métropolite Slipyj serait la personne la plus indiquée, dans les circonstances
actuelles, ou une autre?”.
94
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités civiles,” p. 1.
95
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités civiles,” p. 2:“J’ai demandé
Mr. Kurojev et Mr. Makkarsev de ne pas être exigeant au sujet de ce communiqué. Il sera
impossible, et d’ailleurs il n’y a pas de raisons, de tenir secrète la libération du métropolité, mais nous lui demanderons de ne pas donner d’interviews ou de ne pas faire des
déclarations, etc.”
96
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Contacts avec les autorités civiles,” pp. 2–3, has
Willebrands referring to a recent initiative involving Morlion:“Récemment, l’université
catholique ‘Pro Deo’ à Rome avait organisé un ‘agape’, à laquelle ont été invités des
représentants non seulement de l’église catholique et d’autres communautés chrétiennes, mais aussi d’autres religions, par ex. les Juifs, les Musulmans, etc.”

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

709

cern expressed during this conversation was the unpredictable reaction of the diaspora Ukrainians to the news of the release.97
In the afternoon of that day Willebrands paid his visit to the Moscow
Patriarchate’s Office for External Relationships, where he had a short
conversation with the Estonian bishop Alexis of Tallin, and the day after
he visited the monastery at Zagorsk for a meeting with Archimandrite
Pimen and the rector of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy.98 Of
greater interest is the fact that on the early morning of that day
Willebrands met with Slipyj at the Hotel Moskva. After presenting the
pope’s rosary to the archbishop,Willebrands explained the conditions
of his release and the need to avoid publicity.Then, once again, travel
practicalities came to the fore, as well as Slipyj’s personal wishes:
The Metropolitan desired to visit Lviv before leaving Russia. Due to the
great distance, a visit to Lviv would have taken four days. I told him that I
understood deeply his desire to see his church and his family again, but I
could not determine the possibility of such a journey.99

In a second meeting that evening the same wish was expressed again,
with Slipyj making clear that this was a question of conscience, and the
issue recurred until Willebrands,on the morning of February 4,presented
Slipyj with a schedule for the journey outlined by Testa and Dell’Acqua,
making clear that Slipyj was expected to come to Rome. By that time,
Slipyj had decided to ship his luggage to Lviv and stay with Willebrands,
but he also was considering how he should respond to the Russian accusation that he had simply acted to save his own life and liberty.100 Finally,
Slipyj sets aside all doubt, telling Willebrands the following story:
97
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Contacts avec les autorités civiles,” p. 4: “Une autre
préoccupation est l’attitude de certains cercles d’émigrés; quelquefois ils semblement
ne pas comprendre le dévéloppement des choses.”
98
KDC,Archives Willebrands,“Contacts avec les autorités du Patriarcat de Moscou,”
pp. 4–5: “Le recteur de l’Académie a exprimé sa joie de me recevoir ensemble avec
l’archiprêtre Borovoj et a dit:“Vous êtes les deux anneaux d’une chaîne, et je me réjouis
que la chaîne ne soit pas rompue.Vous êtes les deux hirondelles qui annoncent un nouveau printemps. Comme théologien je me demande quelquefois:‘pourquoi ne sommesnous pas unis?’”
99
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Conversations avec Son Exc. le Métropolite Joseph
Slipyj,” p. 1:“Le métropolite aurait bien voulu faire une visite à Lwow, avant de quitter
la Russie. À cause de la grande distance, une visite à Lwow demanderait quatre jours. Je
lui ai répondu que je comprenais très bien son désir de revoir son église et sa famille,
mais que je ne pouvais pas encore juger de la possibilité d’un tel voyage.”
100
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Conversations avec Son Exc. le Métropolite Joseph
Slipyj,” p. 2:“J’ai montré au Métropolite le schéma du voyage fait par son Éminence le

710

VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Before leaving the camp where he was interned, the commander asked
him if he was prepared to go to Rome in case the pope had expressed his
desire to go. And to this question he replied that, in this case, he would
not hesitate to go to Rome.101

In the afternoon, Slipyj clandestinely ordained Basil Velychskovsky as
bishop,102 thereby strengthening the underground episcopate in
Ukraine under Soviet rule. That evening, Slipyj and Willebrands took
the train to Vienna, where Papal Nuncio Opilio Rossi received them
on February 6, 1963.103 From Austria they traveled to Rome. On
February 10 Slipyj arrived at Grottaferrata, where “for the first time in
seventeen years he fully celebrated the high Slavic rite. Willebrands,
[Monsignor Jean-François] Arrighi and Stransky witnessed the
tears.”104
The Long Road toward Diplomatic Relations
At the moment of Slipyj’s arrival in Rome, most Council Fathers
were absent from the city, and so most diaspora Ukrainians received
the news quickly. For example, Hermaniuk heard the news on a
Canadian radio broadcast on February 10105 and met Slipyj in Rome

Cardinal Testa et d’accord avec Son Exc. Mgr. Dell’Acqua. Je lui ai dit que j’avais une
grande liberté. Le schéma est plutôt une indication qu’un ordre, mais la pensée des
autorités à Rome est claire: il nous attendent à Rome. Le Métropolite a répondu qu’il
avait beaucoup réfléchi pendant la nuit et que sa décision était prise: a) il ne veut pas
me quitter un instant avant l’arrivée à Rome; b) il expédiera ses bagages à Lwow.”
101
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Conversations avec Son Exc. le Métropolite Joseph
Slipyj,” p. 3.
102
The Willebrands report only states:“Dans l’après-midi du 4 février, une personne
de Lwow est venue faire une visite au Métropolite à Moscou. Cette personne avait reçu
la lettre que le Métropolite lui avait envoyée, en lui communiquant sa libération et son
adresse à Moscou. Cette visite a donné au métropolite la possibilité d’expliquer tout et
a enléver sa dernière hésitation.”Also see Choma, La vita e le opere del card. Slipyj, pp.
217–36; and Ulisse Alessio Floridi, Moscow and the Vatican (Ann Arbor, MI, 1986), pp.
172–80.
103
KDC, Archives Willebrands, “Conversations avec Son Exc. le Métropolite Joseph
Slipyj,” p. 4:Avant de quitter le camp où il était interné, le commandant lui avait posé la
question s’il était prêt de se rendre à Rome, au cas où le Pape aurait exprimé ce désir.
Et à cette question il a répondu que, dans ce cas, il n’hésiterait pas de se rendre à Rome.
104
Stransky,“Memories,” p. xv.Also see Roncalli, Agende, p. 489.
105
AMW, Council Diary Hermaniuk, February 10:“Today in the morning the Canadian
Radio conveyed the extraordinary joyful news from the Vatican, namely, that our heroic
Confessor of the faith Met. Josyf Slipyj, released from Bolshevik captivity, arrived last
night in Rome and has already been received by the Holy Father John XXIII.The Vicar

BY KARIM SCHELKENS

711

on March 2, 1963. But this event had a larger effect. On the same day
in February Morlion wrote a letter to Khrushchev at the request of
Bea, stating that “your personal gesture in liberating Bishop Slipyj and
the manifestation of good will avoiding political exploitation from our
part are proof that the revolution of esteem and mutual understanding has started a new kind of peaceful relations.”106 Yet the letter’s
main concern was the Kremlin’s hope that official bilateral diplomatic
relations could be established, with Morlion acting on behalf of
Bea.107 Along with his letter to Khrushchev Morlion sent a detailed
report of a February 6, 1963, meeting between Bea and Kozyrev,108
mentioning four fields of human life and liberty summed up by
Cousins on which agreement needed to be reached:

of Christ welcomed him with tears in his eyes.”Two days later his diary recorded the
following:“Today I received a very nice letter from the Apostolic Delegate in Ottawa,
His Eminence Sebastiano Baggio, on the occasion of the liberation of our dear
Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj. That was an extraordinarily nice gesture from the side of a
personal representative of the Vicar of Christ. A representative of the Winnipeg Free
Press appealed to me for information and stated that he will correct that unfortunate
mistake in the communiqué about the release of Metropolitan Slipyj, where the
Metropoltian is called:‘Polish Bishop.’ In fact, the evening edition of the Free Press delivered today contained that correction.”
106
AAM,Archives Suenens, Letter from Morlion to Khrushchev, February 12, 1963.
107
The letter states: “Acceptance by the Holy See of diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union implies that not only Catholics but also many other people would be
guided to change their image of the Soviet Union which has grown to be rather dark
during the Stalinist era.” Next, Morlion states that “before creating the sensational news
that Soviet Russia has asked and obtained diplomatic relations the Holy See must be
able to prove that it has guarantees that stalinist terror and totalitarianism are irreversibly suppressed. This is why His Eminence has insisted in further discussions first
through private contacts and then through mutual accreditation of a person or organization empowered to discuss these questions on a semiofficial level.”
108
AAM, Archives Suenens, Morlion, “Report of a Conversation between Bea and
Kozyrev,” February 6, 1963. In this report constant tension is evident between Bea, who
insists on preparatory unofficial contacts, and Kozyrev, who hopes for the immediate
establishment of official diplomatic relations. In the end, both conclude to the following, with Cousins in mind. See p. 5:“It seems that we must try what Khrushchev proposed: indicate an intermediary person that can inform the soviet Government of the
ideas of the Holy See and vice versa can inform the Holy See of the ideas of the
Government of Moscow.”A week later, on February 15, Willebrands met with Kozyrev
to inform him of the events during his Moscow trip. See KDC, Archives Willebrands,
“Visite de Mgr Willebrands à l’Ambassadeur russe auprès du Quirinal,” February 15,
1963. During that meeting Kozyrev made it quite clear that “si le Vatican désire des relations avec l’Union soviétique—et je crois bien que cela serait utile—on ne peut pas
poser des conditions. Il s’agit de sauver la paix. Les autres choses, qui intéressent l’église
catholique, viennent après.”

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VATICAN DIPLOMACY AFTER THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

(1) Freedom of worship with guarantees that church communities, seminaries, etc. can appeal to higher authorities if local organs hinder development, or refuse building permits or materials, when the legally required
number of signatures has been obtained.
(2) Freedom outside the school, of family meetings in which children are
given supplementary spiritual instruction in the tradition of their great
nation and full loyalty to the rightful authorities.
(3) Freedom of expression for organs (similar to the one permitted for the
Russian Orthodox Church) on which different religious and spiritual tendencies can develop, holy literature can be disseminated and commented.
(4) Freedom of charitable action, particularly in the use of savings and individuals and of enterprises for the help to the underprivileged in undeveloped nations.

It was clear that the road toward official relations between Rome and
Moscow would not be an easy one. Yet it was significant that John
XXIII granted an audience on March 7 to Alexei Adjubei, son-in-law of
Khrushchev,109 who was attending the presentation of the
International Balzan Peace Prize to the pope on March 10.
Nevertheless, the events preparing, surrounding, and following the
liberation of Slipyj did constitute a unique testimony to the importance of personal human encounter and to the courage required to
maintain confidence in the other individual.As Pacem in Terris stated:
We are hopeful that, by establishing contact with one another and by a
policy of negotiation, nations will come to a better recognition of the natural ties that bind them together as men.We are hopeful, too, that they will
come to a fairer realization of one of the cardinal duties deriving from our
common nature: namely, that love, not fear, must dominate the relationships between individuals and between nations.
109
In this context note that on that day, John XXIII jotted down the name “Josyf
Slipyj.” See Roncalli, Agende, p. 507. John’s decision to receive Adhzubei and to accept
the prize was highly controversial in Italian right-wing circles and received much negative press attention.As a result, for a planned meeting between Bea and Adhzubei, Bea
did not attend, but sent Willebrands in his stead. See KDC, Archive Willebrands,
“Rencontre de Mgr Willebrands et Mr.Adjubei,” March 13, 1963, p. 1:“Le Saint Siège avait
désigné, pour le rencontrer, Son Éminence le Cardinal Bea.Après la publicité provoquée
par l’audience chez le Pape, on voulait éviter une nouvelle agitation, et pour cette
raison, le Cardinal m’avait demandé d’aller le voir à sa place.” At this meeting,
Willebrands clearly and openly addressed the problematic issue of the UGCC under
suppression. See on p. 2: “Nous ne savons pas exactement quelle est la situation de
notre église en Russie. En Lithuanie, il y a un seul évêque en fonction, Mgr. Meselis, mais
il n’est pas normal de n’avoir qu’un seul évêque dans ce pays catholique. En Ukraine
notre église, qui autrefois comptait cinq millions de membres, officiellement n’existe
plus. Comment voulez-vous traiter avec quelqu’un qui officiellement n’existe pas!”

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:
A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?
BY

MARIE GAYTE*

Vatican-American relations were closer in the second half of the
twentieth century than at any time in their history; they were said
to have been particularly close during the presidency of Ronald
Reagan and the pontificate of John Paul II, in light of their
common anticommunist feelings. However, a closer look at the
nature of the relationship indicates that, although the United States
and the Vatican had a convergence of interests, this did not mean
that the Holy See backed all American initiatives, for the Vatican
pursued its own agenda and was not likely to change its stance
simply to satisfy the United States.
Keywords: cold war; diplomacy; Reagan presidency; U.S.-Holy See
relations
Regarding the relationship between the Vatican and the United
States during the cold war, the acute awareness by the United States
of the role of moral and religious forces in its ideological struggle with
the Soviet Union is evident.Vatican support was considered of particular value, as few other religions could boast as visible a leader as the
pope.Various administrations had the view that involving the Church
in their struggle would help challenge the morality of Soviet actions
in the face of global public opinion and bolster support for their policies from certain constituencies at home. From Harry S. Truman to
Ronald Reagan, relations with the Vatican were of differing intensity,
yet one remarkably constant preoccupation is clear: the need to
secure Vatican support, at least publicly, for American foreign policy
decisions. If, at times, the United States seemed to take Vatican support
for granted, this was not always the case.The question is particularly
relevant in the context of the Reagan administration, inasmuch as a
*Dr. Gayte is an associate professor of U.S. history in the English Studies department
at Université de Sud Toulon-Var in France, email mariegayte@orange.fr

713

714

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

perfunctory look seems to indicate a perfect ideological convergence
between the United States and the Vatican, which should have led to
an endorsement by the Holy See of major foreign policy and defense
choices. Furthermore, little exists in the various accounts of the
period that addresses the claims of an “alliance” between the pope
and the Reagan administration; the literature on Vatican-American
relations in the 1980s deals almost exclusively with the establishment
of diplomatic relations.1 Now that a wider access to archival material
is possible (specifically the Reagan administration papers, as well as
those of William Wilson, first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See), a preliminary analysis of the nature of Vatican-American relations in the
1980s seems appropriate.The case made here is that the relationship
between the Reagan administration and the Holy See, although close,
was nowhere near the perfect alliance as some have represented it.
The Vatican of Pope John Paul II, although undeniably moved by very
strong concerns about communism, pursued its own agenda as a
church consistent with the legacies of John XXIII and Paul VI—something that the Reagan administration had a hard time understanding
as it tended to see its interactions with the Holy See solely through
the prism of East-West relations.
In 1949, Pope Pius XII published a decree excommunicating all
Catholics collaborating in communist organizations. The pope’s hostility to this ideology and its manifestations was no secret, and it led
to a cooperation of sorts with President Truman.When, after trying to
convince the pope throughout World War II—to no avail—of the
benign attitude of Soviet Russia toward religion (the pope well under1
For accounts of a “secret alliance” between John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, see Carl
Bernstein,“The Holy Alliance,” Time, February 24, 1992, pp. 28–35; Carl Bernstein and
Marco Politi, His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Times (New
York, 1996); Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration Secret Strategy that
Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, 1994). For accounts of the establishment of diplomatic relations, see Gerald P. Fogarty, “The Vatican and the American
Church since World War II,” in The Papacy and the Church in the United States, ed.
Bernard Cooke (New York, 1989), pp. 119–40, and Gerald P. Fogarty,“The United States
and the Vatican: From Personal Representative to Ambassador,” Pro Fide et Iustitia,
Festschrift für Agostino Kardinal Casaroli (Berlin, 1984), pp. 577–89. For discussions
on the legal implications of diplomatic relations, see James A. Coriden, “Diplomatic
Relations between the United States and the Holy See,” Case Western Reserve Journal
of International Law, 19 (1987), 361–73; Michael Galligan, “United States-Vatican
Relations: Present Benefits and Future Precautions,” Journal of International Affairs,
38 (1985), 337–47; Samuel Bettwy,“United States-Vatican Recognition: Background and
Issues,” The Catholic Lawyer, 29 (1984), 225–65.

BY MARIE GAYTE

715

stood the intensity of suffering and persecution inflicted on Catholics
under the Soviet regime), the United States under Truman became
convinced of the expansionist aspirations of Stalin’s regime, it found
in Pius XII an eager partner. The pope felt no other nation but the
United States could protect Western Europe from Soviet expansion;
his fear of a communist takeover and the annihilation of Christian culture was all the more acute as the strongest communist party in
Western Europe was the Italian Communist Party. Therefore, in spite
of some reservations about the choice of dividing the world into two
blocs, he welcomed American aid to Turkey and Greece, as well as the
Marshall Plan, granting numerous audiences to congressional representatives.According to J. Graham Parson, who was assistant to Myron
Taylor,Truman’s personal representative to Pius XII,“it [was not] too
far to go in saying that most probably all the top people in the Vatican
saw the United States as the only possible salvation of the values
which they fundamentally stood for”; likewise, he noted “a very real
convergence of interests in relation to the Marshall plan” that “the
Vatican greeted with profound relief, satisfaction and hope” and as
“directly consonant with its own interests.”2 More generally, according
to J. Bryan Hehir,“Pius XII placed the full weight of Catholic teaching
and politics against the USSR and its allied governments,” and “while
careful reading of Pius XII teaching reveals a desire not to be simply
a voice for the West, the church’s de facto posture translated into religious and moral support for the Western alliance in its struggle with
the East.”3
The advent of Pius XII’s successor, John XXIII—as well as changed
circumstances in the USSR in the wake of Stalin’s death—led to a shift
in Vatican relations with the Soviet bloc and, as a result, with the
United States. The new pontiff wanted to obtain some latitude for the
Church behind the Iron Curtain, opening a dialogue with communist
regimes so as to reach a modus vivendi (conversations focused
mostly on the nomination of bishops, as many episcopal sees had
been vacant for some time, which had a significant impact on the
health of the Church in Eastern Europe). Pope Paul VI institutionalized
and expanded this policy with the help of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli,
2
Dianne Kirby, “Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment
and the Cold War,” in Religion and the Cold War, ed. Dianne Kirby (Basingstoke, UK,
2003), pp. 77–102, here p. 88.
3
J. Bryan Hehir,“Papal Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, Spring 1990, pp. 26–48, here
p. 29.

716

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

the secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical
Affairs. The new attitude of the Church toward communist regimes
was probably best embodied by the audience granted by John XXIII
to Rada and Alexei Adjubei, Khrushchev’s daughter and son-in-law;
this, as archives reveal, caused quite a stir in the Kennedy administration, something of which the Church was aware, as noted by Ralph
Dungan, special assistant to the president and his personal liaison
with the Catholic community: “[U]ndoubtedly the question of the
Church’s attitude toward modus vivendi with the Soviet Union will be
raised since they [Church officials] are anxious that we not be unduly
disturbed by the contacts which have already been made.”4 Similarly,
U.S. Ambassador to Italy Frederick Reinhardt reported that Cardinal
Augustin Bea, president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian
Unity, thought that the pope’s encyclical dealing with peace would
not find favor with the United States:
Pope expected to make public encyclical Pax in Terris [sic] in near future
reading text to diplomatic corps at special service in Vatican. Informed
source says this is what Cardinal Bea was probably referring to when he
recently said in effect if US was concerned about certain events at Vatican
recently (by which he probably meant Pope’s reception of Adjubei) it
would even be more “concerned” by something else that Vatican would do
in near future. Implication is that Pax in Terris will contain inference that
certain degree of peaceful cooperation is possible between Catholic
Church and Communist world—a reiteration on a higher level of encyclical of Pope’s already expressed ideas on “perfect” neutrality, essentially
coexistence with communism.5

The encyclical was published in April 1963 amid heightened international tensions, two years after the erection of the Berlin Wall and
only months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had brought the
world to the brink of destruction. In his encyclical, the first one
addressed not only to Catholics but to all men of good will, John XXIII
explained that conflicts should not be resolved by recourse to arms,
but rather by negotiations.6 The situation led Time magazine to spec4
Boston, John F. Kennedy Library (hereafter JFKL), Memo, Ralph Dungan to President
Kennedy, June 22, 1963, Folder: Vatican General 16 June–28 June 1963, Box 191A,
National Security Files-Countries.
5
JFKL, Telegram, Frederick Reinhardt to Secretary of State, April 5, 1963, Folder:
Vatican General, 1 January–30 April 1963, Box 191, National Security Files-Countries.
6
Pacem in Terris, Encyclical of Pope John XXIII on Establishing Universal Peace
in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty, April 11, 1963, http://www.vatican.va/holy_
father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html

BY MARIE GAYTE

717

ulate about the April 1963 visit of Bea to the United States that had
the official purpose of promoting interfaith dialogue:“In Washington,
through unofficial intermediaries, Bea will let the White House know
the reasoning behind John’s surprising new willingness to negotiate
with communism, perhaps explain what further diplomatic moves are
afoot.”7
Further, the two pontificates had a strong focus on peace (see John
XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris) and social justice and development (see Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio in 1967), with social justice and peace clearly linked in the latter encyclical, as Paul VI stated
that “development is the new name for peace.”8
In this context of Vatican “realignment,” the Holy See kept the
administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon apprised of its
strong reservations about escalation in Vietnam. Although it did not
go as far as publicly stating its strong reluctance at the modalities of
American involvement in Vietnam, it called time and again on
American presidents to end the violence. Before Johnson’s meeting
with Paul VI in New York in 1965, where the latter had traveled to
address the United Nations General Assembly, the president was
advised to emphasize the following: “it is of great importance to
impress the pope with our passion for peace in Vietnam, and everywhere else.There have been faint indications that not all Vatican circles are persuaded on this point.”9 The United States seems to have
been keen to avoid a Vatican portrayal of the United States as morally
equivalent to the other belligerents, lest such a representation benefit
its opponents in the war and its critics at home.This led to U.S. efforts
to influence Vatican pronouncements on several occasions, something of which there is ample evidence in the archives of the Johnson
and Nixon administrations.
7
“Ecumenical Voices,” Time, April 5, 1963, http://time.com/time/magazine/article/
0,9171,830066,00.htm.Archival material seems to suggest that the cardinal did not visit
the White House, and, according to Monsignor Igino Cardinale, head of Vatican protocol and a close adviser of the pope,“it was unfortunate that Time magazine had seen
fit to print the “silly things” it did about Cardinal Bea’s carrying a secret message to the
President.” JFKL, Memorandum of Conversation,April 25, 1963, Folder:Vatican, General
1/1/63–4/30/63, Box 191, National Security Files-Countries.
8
Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, March 26, 1967, http://www.vatican.va/holy_
father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html
9
Austin,TX, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Memo, Dean Rusk to Lyndon Johnson,“Your
Meeting with Pope Paul VI,” September 25, 1969, Folder: Ex CO 310 Vatican City, Box 76,
White House Central File.

718

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

Thus, in the 1960s and 1970s, although the Vatican did not engage
in outright condemnation of American actions, the time was no longer
one for open support and de facto alliances, as the Vatican tried to
reposition itself on more neutral ground between East and West and
started to emphasize other global issues vis à vis a North-South axis.
In the words of Hehir, “the basic change over this period [was] the
Vatican’s shift from a de facto alliance with the West to a position of
nonalignment with either East or West and critical of both.”10 The
Carter years constituted a reprieve of sorts in these somewhat more
tense relations, as the president’s human rights-based foreign policy
seemed very much attuned to Paul VI and John Paul II’s focus on
peace and development.The United States was indeed able to secure
support from the Vatican for several of its foreign policy pursuits such
as the Panama Canal Treaty, the Camp David accord, and efforts to find
a new home for Indochinese refugees.11
When President Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981, John
Paul II had been pope for more than two years.The new administration’s tone toward communist regimes was strongly ideological and
confrontational. As for the pope, he had openly attacked the Polish
regime’s religious liberty record in front of massive crowds during his
trip to his homeland in June 1979.12 The Vatican and the United States
under Reagan shared concern for certain areas of the world, with
Eastern Europe as an obvious focus of attention, and more specifically
Poland after martial law was imposed in December 1981. The pope
was unmistakably hostile to communism after living under a communist regime. His attitude toward the Eastern bloc marked a departure
from the more accommodating stance of his immediate predecessors;
some even believed the days of Pius XII to be back.13 The pope did
engage in dialogue with communist authorities, but on his own terms.
His demand was for unadulterated religious liberty. Central America
also was an area of mutual concern; the spread of liberation theology
caused disquiet at the Vatican, not only because of its Marxist-inspired
10

Hehir,“Papal Foreign Policy,” p. 27.
Mark R. Day, “The Checkered History of Vatican Envoys,” National Catholic
Reporter, October 2, 1981, p. 20.
12
Homily of His Holiness John Paul II, Victory Square, Warsaw, June 2, 1979, http://
www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_
hom_19790602_polonia-varsavia_it.html
13
Agostino Giovagnoli,“Karol Wojtyla and the End of the Cold War,”in Reinterpreting
the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, ed. Silvio Pons and
Federico Romero (London, 2005), pp. 82–90, here p. 83.
11

BY MARIE GAYTE

719

theories but also of the threat it posed to church unity. For the president, that movement was a source of uneasiness on account of the
challenge it posed to the political and economic status quo, and the
moral legitimacy with which it seemed to endow some pro-Marxist
regimes (notably the Sandinista junta of nearby Nicaragua). This parallel concern is evidenced in the “Santa Fe document,” published by
Republican advisers of Reagan during the 1980 campaign, which read:
US foreign policy should begin to confront liberation theology (and not
just react after the fact). . . . In Latin America, the role of the church is vital
to the concept of political freedom, unfortunately Marxist-Leninist forces
have used the church as a political weapon against private ownership and
the capitalist system of production, infiltrating the religious community
with ideas that are more communist than Christian.14

As for the pope, he had used the forum of CELAM, the Latin
Americans Bishops’ Conference, in Mexico in 1979 to voice strong
condemnation of those who attempted a rereading of the Gospel in
the light of liberation theology:
. . . people claim to show Jesus as politically committed, as one who
fought against Roman oppression and the authorities, and also as one
involved in the class struggle.This idea of Christ as a political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive man from Nazareth, does not tally with the
Church’s catechesis.15

Because of the shared anticommunist feelings and regional concerns between the Reagan administration and the Vatican, it could be
expected that the administration would be closely associated with the
Vatican in this later stage of the cold war. To be sure, they maintained
close ties throughout Reagan’s two terms; after Reagan appointed a
personal envoy to the pope early in his first term (in February 1981),
he established diplomatic relations with the Holy See in January
1984.16 A long list of top-ranking U.S. officials requested audiences
with the pope and his deputies (including Vice-President George H.W.
14

David Tombs, Latin American Liberation Theology (Boston, 2002), p. 27.
“Address of His Holiness John Paul II,” Third General Conference of the Latin
American Episcopate, Puebla, Mexico, January 28, 1979, http://www.vatican.va/holy_
father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1979/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19790128_
messico-puebla-episc-latam_en.html
16
For details about the history of diplomatic relations until 1984, see Andrew M.
Essig and Jennifer L. Moore, “U.S.-Holy See Diplomacy: The Establishment of Formal
Relations, 1984,” The Catholic Historical Review, 95 (2009), 741–64. In February 1981,
15

720

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

Bush; CIA Director William Casey, a Catholic; Secretary of State George
Shultz; Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger; Attorney General
Edwin Meese; and National Security Adviser William Clark, a Catholic,
and his successor, Robert McFarlane).The establishment of martial law
in Poland led to a close collaboration, with the United States and the
Holy See exchanging information as well as the president asking the
pope and Curia officials for guidance and support for policies such as
economic sanctions against Poland.17 Likewise, the Holy See let it be
known when sanctions, in its view, should be lifted.18
This led some, like journalist Carl Bernstein in a 1992 Time article,
to go as far as to assert the existence of a “holy alliance,” in which the
pope and the president, acting on their allegedly identical visions of
global issues in the 1980s, solemnly undertook to help sustain
Solidarity in Poland through a secret partnership, with the defeat of
communism as their ultimate goal.19 Yet, available evidence suggests
that the Vatican and the United States were not always on the same
wavelength during the Reagan administration. How can an undeniably close collaboration about Poland be reconciled with the fact that
the United States had to lobby intensively on numerous other issues
to convince the Vatican to back its policies, which seems to indicate
that Vatican support for U.S. foreign policy was not always forthcoming? The answer seems to lie in the fact that the United States tended
Reagan called William Wilson, a friend from California, to appoint him as his ambassador to the Holy See. Wilson had to correct the president and tell him that diplomatic
relations did not exist yet between the United States and the Holy See.Washington, DC,
Georgetown University Library (hereafter GUL), Letter,William Wilson to [Sen.] Charles
Percy, October 30, 1981, Box 1, Folder 9, William A. Wilson Papers (hereafter WAWP),
Special Collections.
17
After sanctions were announced by the United States in late December 1981, the
United States was informed by Silvestrini that the pope in fact approved of the sanctions for the time being (Simi Valley, CA, Ronald Reagan Library [hereafter RRL],Memo,
Dennis C. Blair to William P. Clark, January 7, 1982, Folder: The Vatican: Pope John Paul
II (8107378-8200051), Box 41, NSC: Executive Secretariat, PA: Head of State File). The
president apparently felt he could avail himself of the Vatican’s approval in public,
because he therefore declared at a press conference,“I’ve had a lengthy communication
from the Pope. He approves what we’ve done so far. He believes that it has been beneficial. . .” (“The President’s News Conference,” January 19, 1982, http://
www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/11982b.htm). Reagan’s statement led
the Vatican to issue a denial quickly.
18
RRL, Cable, Donald Planty to National Security Council, “Vatican’s Views on
Walesa’s Sanctions Statement,” December 23, 1983, Folder: January 1984, Poland
Memos 1984–1985, Box 90892, Paula Dobriansky Files.
19
Carl Bernstein,“The Holy Alliance,” Time, February 24, 1992, pp. 28–35.

BY MARIE GAYTE

721

to consider Vatican actions solely through the prism of anticommunism.Yet, this was only one of the motivations—albeit a crucial one—
of Vatican action at the time. Speaking to Wilson, at the time Reagan’s
personal representative to the Vatican, about U.S.-Vatican cooperation
on Poland, Archbishop Achille Silvestrini, secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Affairs, gave this enlightening insight:
The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See
does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. . . .The
Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane.The two planes (politics
and morality) can be complementary when they have the same objective.
In this case they are complementary because both the Holy See and the
United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to
Poland.20

Cooperation was possible indeed, but the Holy See’s agenda was not
always aligned with that of the United States. Very few members of
the Reagan administration seemed to have been fully acquainted with
this reality, something that led Martin Van Heuven, director of the
Office of European Affairs at the State Department, to comment that
[t]here is a disposition in Washington to think that the Vatican is always on
our side. . . .The notion is that the Pope embodies the core of Western values
which we claim as our own. It is therefore assumed the Vatican supports
our policies. The White House, in particular, tends to assume the Vatican
always backs us. Pope John Paul, with his anti-Soviet line and his reputation
as a conservative seems particularly compatible with this administration.
. . . The White House assumption leads to a sense of dismay whenever
Vatican policies depart from ours, and has triggered strong—almost kneejerk—Washington efforts to get Vatican views aligned with ours.

After listing a number of instances in which the Vatican’s official
position differed from that of the U.S. government, he concluded:
The Vatican has its own agenda which leads it to statements and actions
not always compatible with our policies. . . . I believe that the Vatican’s
activities are understandable and follow naturally from the position of the
pope as the spiritual leader of the Catholic world. . . . Automatic assumptions in Washington that the Vatican is always on our side are misplaced. I
20
RRL, Cable, Vatican Office to William Clark, “Letter from Pope John Paul II to
President Reagan,” January 1982, Folder:The Vatican: Pope John Paul II Cables [1 of 2],
Box 41, National Security Council: Executive Secretariat, PA: Head of State File.
Emphasis added.

722

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

think we should also be aware that the Vatican’s agenda is not likely to be
adjusted by quick efforts on our part.21

These discrepancies between U.S. and Vatican positions on foreign
policy can be explained if the pontificate of Pope John Paul II is not
examined from what historian Agostino Giovagnoli calls an “American
perspective.”22 Although the pope unambiguously opposed communism and adopted a much more confrontational stance than both
John XXIII and Paul VI, his pontificate also was one of continuity with
his predecessors as far as defense of the third world, peace, and social
justice were concerned; for Hehir, the shift from a de facto alliance
with the West to a position of nonalignment with either East or West
and critical of both, although effected by two of John Paul’s predecessors,“[had] become more visible and [carried] greater political significance in this [John Paul II’s] papacy.”23 Similarly, Giovagnoli noted
that the change in Vatican policy tends to be exaggerated and that the
strong emphasis placed by John Paul II on religious freedom had
already been central in the work of Paul VI; likewise, the new pope set
out to further the Vatican’s dialogue with communist regimes after
retaining the “foreign policy team” of Paul VI.24
The United States received an early warning in autumn 1981 that
the Vatican would not provide unqualified support of U.S. policies.
The pope had commissioned a study from the Pontifical Academy of
Science on the medical consequences of a nuclear attack (at a time
when the Reagan administration was talking about fighting, and winning, a limited nuclear war). He also was known to be preparing a
letter to Reagan and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that called on
them to seek genuine disarmament. The Reagan administration was
worried that the Vatican would imply that the two superpowers were
morally equivalent, which officials believed would weaken the U.S.
position in the upcoming negotiations with the Soviets in Geneva;
they also believed that this risked undermining arguments in favor of
increasing nuclear stockpiles, a policy already criticized at home and
in Western Europe. This led the president to write to the pope to
21
GUL, Memo, Martin Van Heuven to Ambassador Rozanne Ridgway,“The Vatican and
US Policy: Saturday Reading,” November 25, 1985, Box 2, Folder 25, WAWP, Special
Collections. Ridgway had served as U.S. ambassador to Finland and East Germany.At the
time this memo was written, she was assistant secretary of state for European and
Canadian affairs.
22
Giovagnoli,“Karol Wojtyla and the End of the Cold War,” p. 83.
23
Hehir,“Papal Foreign Policy,” p. 27.
24
Giovagnoli,“Karol Wojtyla and the End of the Cold War,” pp. 84–85.

BY MARIE GAYTE

723

explain his motives, in the hope that John Paul II would reconsider his
decision. Wilson, who was entrusted with delivering Reagan’s letter,
received the following instruction from the State Department:
In delivering this message, Vatican office should draw on the following
talking points: we are pleased at the Pope’s interest in the negotiations; it
would be misleading, we believe, to imply in any way that the US and the
Soviet are equally responsible for having created the conditions that pose
a danger of nuclear war.We would hope that His Holiness would give due
weight to this consideration as he determines the most appropriate means
of giving expression to the church’s views.25

Despite these efforts, the Vatican sent Brezhnev and Reagan the
same letter on November 25, in which both leaders also were asked
to receive a delegation from the Pontifical Academy of Science to
present the findings of the study on nuclear war. Once again, the
administration was worried; as Deputy National Security Adviser
James Nance wrote to Reagan,“we want to avoid any suggestion that
the Soviet Union and the United States are to be equated in the
Vatican’s antinuclear campaign.”26 The president eventually received
the delegation on December 14, 1981, but, as noted in the New York
Times, he gave it a rather frigid reception:
In 1981 the Academy held a study of the medical consequences of nuclear
war, after which the pope sent small groups of academy members to government leaders in Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States.
The delegations said they had been received cordially and had engaged in
substantive discussion by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, of Britain and
by Leonid I. Brezhnev, then the Soviet leader, but had been only given a 20
minute stand-up meeting with President Reagan.27

As recounted in the minutes of that meeting, the president told the
delegation members: “I may sound warlike, but I believe that unless
the Soviets know we can outbuild [sic] them if necessary, they will
not sit down and negotiate with us.”28 In addition, it took the presi25
RRL, Cable, Secretary of State to Vatican Office, November 20, 1981, Folder: The
Vatican: Pope John Paul II Cables [1 of 2], Box 41, National Security Council: Executive
Secretariat, PA: Head of State File.
26
RRL, Memo, James W. Nance to Ronald Reagan, December 4, 1981, Folder: The
Vatican: Pope John Paul II (8100301 810 6715), Box 41, National Security Council:
Executive Secretariat, PA: Head of State File.
27
Philip M. Boffey, “Once-Hostile Vatican Forges Close Links with Scientists,” New
York Times, November 14, 1983, p.A1.
28
RRL, Handwritten note, Folder:Vatican [7 of 10], Box 90587, Peter Sommer Files.

724

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

dent several months to thank the pope for his letter and the delegation’s visit—probably a sign of discomfort about the papal initiative.
In a memo, Dennis Blair of the National Security Council noted that,
although “messages have been flying back and forth between the
White House and the Holy See on Poland,” the administration had not
yet acknowledged the study and the letter.29 This was eventually rectified, with the president writing to the pope on January 11, 1982.30
From then on, it seems that the need to influence the Vatican and
secure its support for U.S. foreign and defense policy decisions (or, at
least, prevent any pronouncement that could be interpreted as critical) took center stage in the relationship. The administration sought
Vatican endorsement for several reasons: first, to occupy the moral
high ground as the Soviet Union tried to promote its image as “peacemaker,” and second, to offset critics at home who were challenging
the morality of certain U.S. foreign policy options such as support for
the contras in Nicaragua or nuclear deterrence as the cornerstone of
defense policy. Representatives from several religious denominations
were among the critics, with the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops as one of the most vocal groups.
The need to secure Vatican support for key U.S. foreign policy decisions is one factor that motivated the decision to establish diplomatic
relations on January 10, 1984, when Reagan appointed Wilson as the
first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Several U.S. officials clearly formulated this aim. A Department of Justice brief making the case for
diplomatic relations thus indicated that
[t]o the extent that the views of the Holy See command respect and attention on the world scene, it is imperative that the positions and interests of
the United States be communicated and understood before the views of
the Holy See are formulated and aired to the world.31

Pertaining to Wilson, the brief explained that “[h]aving a full time
ambassador here and a pro-nuncio in Washington would improve
29
RRL, Memo, Dennis C. Blair to William P. Clark, “Letter to the Pope on Effects of
Nuclear War,” January 8, 1982, Folder:The Vatican: Pope John Paul II (8100301-8106715),
Box 41, National Security Council: Executive Secretariat, PA: Head of State File.
30
RRL, Cable, State Department to Vatican office, January 14, 1982,“Reply to Pope’s
Letter on Nuclear War,” Folder:The Vatican: Pope John Paul II (8100301-8106715), Box
41, National Security Council: Executive Secretariat, PA: Head of State File.
31
Thomas J. Reese, “Diplomatic Relations with the Holy See,” America, March 16,
1985, pp. 215–16, here p. 216.

BY MARIE GAYTE

725

communications and provide more opportunities to ensure that the
Holy See understands and takes into account our position on important world issues and vice-versa.”32
Another factor that seems to have weighed in favor of diplomatic
relations was the pastoral letter published by U.S. Roman Catholic
bishops. In this document, the American episcopate challenged the
morality of a U.S. defense policy based on nuclear deterrence.33 The
letter, which took more than two years to prepare and received
unprecedented media coverage, was problematic for the Reagan
administration, as it could not dismiss the bishops’ claims as Sovietinspired propaganda (as it did for other peace groups).This made the
possibility of permanent contacts with the Holy See more appealing
in the hope that the United States would be able to convince the Holy
See of the bishops’ “errors.” In addition, an established ambassador
would help counter the impression that the Church was not on the
president’s side—something to be avoided for an administration that
prided itself on the morality of its actions.According to Elliot Abrams,
assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs,
establishing diplomatic relations with the Holy See “might signal that
there is a greater understanding between the Reagan administration
and the Pope that there is with some radical Catholic bishops in the
US on such issues as nuclear freeze.”34 For Wilson, who pushed hard
for his position of representative to be upgraded to that of ambassador,“[i]n the current situation where the bishops are taking a public
position in opposition to the administration on an important issue,
the pro-nuncio could and in this case would be a mediating influence
on the US bishops’ conference.”35
32
RRL, Cable, Vatican Office to State Department, “Recommendation that Full
Diplomatic Relations Be Established between US and the Holy See,” February 1, 1982,
ID#062639, CO 170,WHORM: Subject File.
33
“The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response,” May 3, 1983,
http://www.catholicbishops.org/sdwp/international/TheChallengeofPeace.pdf
34
RRL, Memo, Elliot Abrams to William Clark, July 12, 1982, Folder: Vatican 1983–84
[9 of 10], 90587, Peter Sommer Files.
35
GUL, Cable, William Wilson to Kenneth Dam,“Subject: Diplomatic Relations with
Holy See,” December 14, 1982,WAWP, Folder 43, Box 3, Special Collections.When establishing diplomatic relations in 1984, the Holy See sent an accredited diplomat to the
United States for the first time.Vatican ambassadors usually possessed the title nuncio,
which implied that the diplomat also was dean of the diplomatic corps of the country
to which he was accredited. In 1984, however, Pio Laghi was appointed pro-nuncio,
which meant he would not be dean of the diplomatic corps. The distinction was discontinued in 1991.

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THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

Initiatives by the United States to convince the pope that he should
not publicly reject the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the ground
and space antimissile project launched by Reagan in March 1983,
come across, as Van Heuven remarked, as one of those “almost kneejerk Washington efforts to get Vatican views aligned with ours” and
avoid public criticism of the morality of a major defense policy
option.36 In early 1985 the administration was concerned by the news
that the pope had asked the Pontifical Academy of Science to carry
out a study on SDI.The academy was to meet in January 1985 and subsequently submit its report to the pope. Carlos Chagas, the Brazilian
scientist who served as its chair, stated that “the weaponization of
space is the next step in this terrible, incredible race . . . to annihilate
the whole world.”37 According to Peter Murphy, who was chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See during the report’s preparation and debate phase:
It was well-known that Pope John Paul II was against such initiative, but, in
all fairness, he requested the prestigious Pontifical Academy of Sciences to
study the American initiative and report their findings to him; [it included]
distinguished members, many Nobel Prize laureates.Thus a report by such
a distinguished group of scientific leaders, members of the Academy, would
carry much weight in world scientific and public opinion.38

As a result, the administration became very worried that the pope
might issue a public condemnation of its initiative.According to Murphy,
[the American Embassy to the Holy See] had calls day and night from
Washington asking us to confirm if the rumors [that the report was negative about SDI] were indeed true. If true—to somehow convince the Holy
See of our defensive point of view.39

He further explained that he spoke regularly with the president of
the academy and that Wilson “also worked quite diligently in stemming the tide,” speaking with several influential people at the Vatican
to expound the U.S. point of view.40 As the United States tried to per36
GUL, Memo, Martin Van Heuven to Ambassador Ridgway, “The Vatican and US
Policy: Saturday Reading,” November 25, 1985, Box 2, Folder 25, WAWP, Special
Collections.
37
Samuel Koo, “Vatican Asks Soviet, US Scientists for Star Wars Talks,” Associated
Press, January 18, 1985.
38
Peter K. Murphy,Web Interview with Author, October 22, 2007.
39
GUL, Peter K. Murphy, Oral History Interview, April 4, 1994, Foreign Affairs Oral
History Collection.
40
Murphy, Oral History Interview.

BY MARIE GAYTE

727

suade the pope to endorse SDI, the Soviet Union was running a
counter initiative, sending Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to the
Vatican in February 1985 for discussions with the pope for the first
time in six years. According to Newsweek, the aim of the audience,
which lasted two hours, was “to drum up a little opposition to
President Reagan’s Star Wars initiative to persuade the Pontiff to
oppose the US plan.”41 At the end of the day, as noted by Murphy:
Nothing was ever issued by the Vatican . . . no paper . . . no press conference. The Pontifical Academy’s report was sent to the pope and nothing
more heard of it. The Embassy never received a copy of the final report
and several sources told us that it had been destroyed.42

Was the pope’s decision not to release the report or to speak publicly
against SDI due solely to Washington’s “lobbying”? Although American
arguments were likely to have influenced the Vatican, the pope also
was pursuing his own agenda as someone with a realistic view of the
East-West confrontation. In June 1982 at the United Nations Disarmament Session, Casaroli had read a statement on his behalf in which the
pontiff declared himself in favor of nuclear deterrence, provided it
was a step toward disarmament. Similarly, the pope told Weinberger
in 1986: “you know we are for peace of course, but we are not for
pacifists—unilateral pacifists.We know that is not the way to keep the
peace.”43 Yet, the Star Wars episode shows that Vatican support was
not automatic, because the Church, as an institution with a strong tradition of peace and justice advocacy since the days of the Second
Vatican Council, had consistently displayed disapproval of the arms
race, as it diverted resources from those most in need while escalating global tensions; this situation seems to have made the pope
engage in a delicate balancing act.
Another area in which the Reagan administration was keen on
obtaining the pope’s support was Central America—more specifically
Nicaragua, where it was involved in a protracted campaign to destabilize the Marxist Sandinista junta through military aid for a right-wing
resistance movement, the “contras.” The pope’s pronouncements, it
was felt, would carry much weight in this very Catholic country; in
addition, the morality of U.S. policy in the region was being severely
41

“Off Balance—But on Cue,” Newsweek, March 11, 1985, p. 47.
Murphy, Oral History Interview.
43
RRL, Memo, Caspar Weinberger to Ronald Reagan, October 22, 1986, Folder: The
Vatican 1986 [1 of 2], Box 90901,Tyrus Cobb Files (hereafter TCF).
42

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THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

challenged at home by none other than the Catholic bishops themselves, who regularly lobbied members of Congress and spoke publicly about the immorality of U.S. interference; the pope’s public
endorsement of U.S. policies in the region would have taken some
edge off the criticism. Although the pope was equally worried about
developments in the region, his endorsement for U.S. Central
American policy was far from a foregone conclusion; it involved
strong lobbying efforts throughout Reagan’s two terms by Casey,
Ambassador-at-Large Vernon Walters, Wilson, and even the president
himself. According to theologian David Tombs, “the Reagan administration took every opportunity to encourage the Vatican’s fears by
projecting their own concerns that the Sandinistas were a hostile
Marxist-Leninist force.”44 From the early days of the Reagan administration, Central America was pivotal in conversations with the Holy
See. A letter from National Security Adviser Richard Allen to newly
appointed personal representative Wilson leaves no doubt as to its
pivotal nature in his future conversations with Vatican officials:
Your discussions with the Vatican on the situation in Central America are
of the highest importance.We need the closest possible cooperation with
the Church in securing democracy, stability and social justice in the
region. You may wish to convey to Secretary of State Casaroli and others
that the President places the highest priority on achieving a working relationship with the Church in securing our mutually shared goals for Central
America.45

The Reagan administration made concerted efforts to secure
public Vatican endorsement for its policies; thus, in April 1985, Reagan
wrote to the pope on April 4, 5, and 19, asking for “anything that His
Holiness could do on behalf of the democratic opposition in
Nicaragua” in the context of the “peace initiative” launched by the
contras and the “democratic resistance,” an initiative that Reagan was
promoting.46 The plan had been devised to facilitate the president’s
request for renewed congressional aid to the contras.47
44

David Tombs, Latin American Liberation Theology (Boston, 2002), p. 232.
GUL, Letter, Richard V. Allen to William Wilson, June 24, 1981, Box 1, Folder 4,
WAWP, Special Collections.
46
RRL, Memo, Robert McFarlane to Ronald Reagan, July 23, 1985, Folder:Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092,
Nelson C. Ledsky Files (hereafter NCLF).
47
Military aid was first suspended in late 1982 by an amendment (known as the
Boland amendment, named for Rep. Edward Boland [D–MA], chair of the House
Intelligence Committee) to the Defense Department Appropriation Bill. It prohibited
45

BY MARIE GAYTE

729

Yet, his persistent quest for Vatican support did not yield the
expected results. In the wake of his letter-writing campaign, the president was told by McFarlane that although the pope in his reply had
“indicated that the Church [stood] ready to assist in devising a means
to reduce the distance between the ‘two sides,’” he had added that
“the situation currently [was] not favorable for a meaningful intercession by the Church, particularly in Nicaragua.”48 In addition,
according to Tyrus Cobb, director of Soviet, West European, and
Canadian affairs at the National Security Council, “the Vatican was
somewhat confused by this flurry of letters, which arrived rather
close together.”49 The president seemed to have been so eager for his
peace initiative in Nicaragua to be endorsed by the pope that he publicly invoked papal support without having received it. At a conference on religious persecution on April 16, 1985, where he had
strongly criticized the Sandinistas for what he described as their
harassment of churches, he declared, “I just had a verbal message
delivered to me from the pope urging us to continue our efforts in
Central America.”50 This statement caused quite a stir, especially as,
when pressed about it at a photo session the following day and asked
specifically if the pope supported military aid to the contras, the
president reaffirmed that “he [the pope had] been most supportive
of all of our activities in Central America.”51 This forced the administration to backtrack and the Vatican to issue a public denial.
According to Murphy,“as far as the 1985 claim by President Reagan

the use of U.S. funds “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.”
Following efforts by the Reagan administration to bypass the prohibition and revelations that the CIA had mined three Nicaraguan harbors, a second Boland Amendment
was passed, much more restrictive than the first, which read:“During fiscal year 1985,
no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or any
other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be
obligated or expended for the purpose or which would have the effect of supporting,
directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation,
group, organization, movement, or individual.” It was this amendment that led the
administration, through the National Security Council to resort to “alternative” means of
funding, which would become public in 1986 as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.
48
RRL, Memo, Robert McFarlane to Ronald Reagan, July 23, 1985, Folder:Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092, NCLF.
49
RRL, Memo, Tyrus Cobb to Robert McFarlane, July 15, 1985, Folder: The Vatican
1985 [1 of 2], Box 90901,TCF.
50
Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Press Conference on Religious Liberty,” April 16,
1985, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/41685d.htm
51
RRL,“Network News Summary,” April 17, 1985, Folder: The Vatican 1985 [1 of 2],
Box 90901,TCF.

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THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

that “the pope supports everything we do,” with regard to these
events, I would say that this was not true.”52
More generally speaking, the administration continuously sought
support for its contra initiative. According to Murphy:
[B]oth Elliot Abrams [now assistant secretary of state for inter-American
affairs] and Colonel Oliver North [deputy director for political-military
affairs at the National Security Council and one of the key architects of
Iran-Contra] attempted to convince Vatican officials of the validity of their
support for the “Contras” to no avail. I spoke with both men on various
occasions and they tried their best to convince us to have the Holy Father
or the Cardinal Secretary of State back their position in a public way—to
no avail of course.53

The minutes of a June 1987 meeting during Reagan’s second visit
to the Vatican give an interesting insight into the Vatican’s stance
on Central America. As recounted by U.S. Ambassador Frank
Shakespeare, during the meeting “Casaroli said that the Vatican
wanted to see “a true democracy” in every Latin American country, but
that this meant democracy “in the fullest sense of the word,” including
socially and economically just societies. The Vatican was concerned
about proponents of liberation theology, certainly, but even more concerned about the “concrete conditions” of economic and social injustice.”54 According to Cobb:
For John Paul II the concern was very much about the disparity of wealth.
In many meetings, the Vatican argued in favor of lesser developed countries; while there was some agreement on [Nicaraguan President Daniel]
Ortega (he did trample on the Catholic Church in Nicaragua), they also
said that the situation was unfair in Honduras.There was not the same unanimity on Central America that existed on Poland.Thus when we had discussions on it, it often resulted in “discussions.”55

Yet Pope John Paul II did issue strong condemnations of liberation
theology and made no secret of his aversion to the Sandinista junta.
During his trip to Central American and Caribbean countries in March
1983, he was very critical of the “popular church”—this parallel
church of the people who saw it as its mission to free the oppressed
52

Murphy,Web Interview. Emphasis in original.
Murphy,Web Interview.
54
RRL, Cable, Frank Shakespeare to U.S. Delegation, June 6, 1987, Folder Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092, NCLF.
55
Tyrus Cobb, Interview with the Author, September 27, 2007.
53

BY MARIE GAYTE

731

(which often led to political involvement) and who was often at variance with its bishops, something John Paul II considered a threat to
church unity. Footage of the pope chastising Father Miguel D’Escoto
for serving in the Sandinista government was well remembered. In his
sermon during the Mass he celebrated in Managua, the pope laid
heavy emphasis on the need for Church unity, using the word twentynine times (without counting the adjectives united or divided) and
condemned unequivocally the tenets of liberation theology, declaring
“the unity of the Church is challenged when to the powerful factors
that constitute it and maintain it, faith, the revealed word, the sacraments, obedience to the bishops and the Pope . . . are substituted
worldly considerations, unacceptable ideological compromises,
including conceptions of the church which supplant the true one.”56
These words must have been highly welcomed by the Reagan administration, as it maintained close contact with Managua Archbishop
Miguel Obando y Bravo, an ardent foe of the Sandinista who had
received U.S. funds on several occasions; the pope in his sermon had
called on Nicaraguan Catholics to obey the archbishop. The American
weekly National Catholic Reporter therefore concluded that “in El
Salvador and Nicaragua, the pope played ‘Washington’s game.’”57 In
September 1984, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published an Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of
Liberation.” The aim of the document was, as stated in the first sentences, to “draw the attention of pastors, theologians, and all the faithful to the deviations and risks of deviations, damaging to the faith and
to Christian living, that are brought about by certain forms of liberation theology which use, in an insufficiently critical manner, concepts
borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought.”58 Wilson
56
Homily of His Holiness John Paul II, Managua, Nicaragua, March 4, 1983,
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1983/documents/hf_jpii_hom_19830304_managua_sp.html. Author’s translation; emphasis in original: “En
efecto, la unidad de la Iglesia es puesta en cuestión cuando a los poderosos factores que
la constituyen y mantienen, la misma fe, la Palabra revelada, los sacramentos, la obediencia a los obispos y al Papa, el sentido de una vocación y responsabilidad común en
la tarea de Cristo en el mundo, se anteponen consideraciones terrenas, compromisos
ideológicos inaceptables, opciones temporales, incluso concepciones de la Iglesia que
suplantan la verdadera.”
57
Werner Levi, From Alms to Liberation: The Catholic Church, the Theologians,
Poverty and Politics (New York, 1989), p. 118.
58
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction
on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation,” August 6, 1984, http://www.vatican
.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_
theology-liberation_en.html

732

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

declared, shortly after the instruction was published, that U.S. officials
had been “glad to see the document. . . . We thought the time had
arrived when the world was interested in hearing what the Vatican
had to say on Liberation theology.”59 Furthermore, in 1985, Obando y
Bravo was made a cardinal.
Do these moves point to an underlying collaboration with the
Reagan administration? Not according to Juan Hernandez-Pico, a liberation theology proponent:
John Paul II’s trip to Nicaragua in 1983 and his later appointment of
Archbishop of Managua Miguel Obando as cardinal helped undermine support for the Sandinista government, already shaken by serious political,
economic and military mistakes, as well as crass errors in its relations with
the Catholic Church, . . . [yet] none of this leads us to conclude that there
necessarily was a strategic conspiracy between John Paul II’s Vatican and
Reagan’s imperial government. Coinciding objectives are not necessarily
strategic. In practice the two men simply functioned according to the
firmness of the ideologies or beliefs that sustained them: Cold War and
National Security interests on the one side, and on the other a profound
distrust of atheist communism and rejection of the existing form of socialism because it had been largely imposed by the Soviet Army.60

The imperative of church unity and the decisions resulting from it
seem to have sprung from the pope’s experience in Poland under a
communist regime. The only way for the Church to survive against
the threat of the Iron Curtain was to remain united, as Marxist regimes
tried to divide and rule by setting up “patriotic” or “national” churches
with government-appointed clergy. In addition, John Paul II had a
very hierarchical vision of the Church, in which obedience to the
bishops and the pope was central. As a consequence, the Holy See
made declarations that sometimes turned out to be advantageous to
the United States, which did not mean that they resulted from the
same motivations.Van Heuven understood the advantages of the situation for the Reagan administration, commenting that
[w]e profit from the fact that this influential pope frequently expresses
views convergent with our own—and does so independently. . . . We risk
jeopardizing this happy situation if we undertake an effort (not likely to
59
“Wilson Oversees Varied US Interests at Vatican,” National Catholic Reporter,
December 7, 1984, p. 5.
60
Juan Hernandez Pico, “From John Paul II to Benedict XVI: Memories, Analyses,
Fears and Hopes,” May 2005, http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/2936

BY MARIE GAYTE

733

be successful, in any case) to transform this powerful friend into a quasially.The Vatican will resist our embrace.61

Reluctance to establish diplomatic relations with the State of Israel
is one example of the Holy See acting according to its own agenda. In
spite of energetic American efforts during Reagan’s two terms to secure
Vatican recognition, it was not until December 1993 that this occurred.
It seems that the Vatican’s position as head of the Catholic Church and
as a body concerned with humanitarian issues prevailed over the “holy
alliance.” The Vatican had always set a number of conditions to diplomatic relations with Israel such as internationally recognized borders, a
special status for Jerusalem, and a homeland for Palestinians. In addition, the Holy See was said to be concerned about the repercussions
that recognition of the State of Israel might entail for Christian minorities in neighboring Arab countries. Toward the end of his tenure as
ambassador,Wilson, writing to Jewish Americans, explained:
I have personally discussed this matter with some of the high authorities
in the Vatican, and it is also a matter of public record that Secretary of State
Shultz has discussed this matter with the Secretary of State of the Vatican.62

His successor, Shakespeare, who was appointed in 1986, continued
pressing for relations.63 Murphy, when asked about the events that
occupied him at the embassy from 1984 to 1988, he replied:“top of
the list [were] Vatican-Israel relations.”64 Yet, in the course of a June
1987 audience with Casaroli, government officials were to learn that
the Vatican was not yet ready to move on the issue; Shakespeare
reported that Casaroli, although emphasizing the Holy See’s friendly
feelings toward Israel and its frequent consultations with Israel, had
explained that:
The Vatican and Israel must continue without formal relations. Casaroli
said that formalizing Vatican-Israeli relations now would only prevent the
Holy Father from playing any role on bringing peace to the Middle East,
because all the Arab states except Egypt would break relations and stop
talking to the Vatican if it exchanged ambassadors with Israel. Casaroli also
61
GUL, Memo, Martin Van Heuven to Ambassador Rozanne Ridgway,“The Vatican and
US Policy: Saturday Reading,” November 25, 1985, Box 2, Folder 25, WAWP, Special
Collections.
62
GUL, Letter,William Wilson to members of the Jewish American Community, June
30, 1986, Box 1, Folder 83,WAWP, Special Collections.
63
RRL, Cable, Frank Shakespeare to Ty Cobb, May 6, 1987, Folder: Vatican City, the
Holy See 1987–88 [Memos Letters Cables Intel Press Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92082, NCLF.
64
Murphy, Oral History Interview.

734

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

mentioned “Occupied Palestine” and the status of Jerusalem as other obstacles to formalizing relations with Israel.65

Despite the closeness of the relationship between the United
States and the Vatican, the latter was not disposed to change a longheld policy merely to satisfy the Reagan administration.
Similarly, during Reagan’s second term, the pope was considering a
pastoral visit to Cuba, much to the dismay of the administration.
Talking about reports of a possible papal visit to Cuba in 1986 or early
1987, Van Heuven commented that “having spent considerable effort
keeping international meetings and visitors away from Havana, a
papal visit to Cuba is not what we want.” 66 Yet, the pope had his own
reasons for visiting Cuba, including the need to promote religious
vocations and revitalize the Church in the face of dwindling membership, and he had to balance these pastoral concerns with the boost
in legitimacy that his visit was certain to give the Castro regime. As a
matter of fact, when John Paul II eventually visited Cuba in 1998, he
called the U.S. embargo “oppressive” in his farewell speech.67
Besides, the Holy See under John Paul II also pressed the United
States for measures in favor of the third world and chastised the
United States for its failure to do more at a time when the bulk of
American aid was directed to countries based on their ideological
affiliation and military value. According to historian Michael Schaller,
during the Reagan administration,
[n]early all American assistance flowed to a handful of countries, generally
for military purposes. Israel and Egypt received several billion dollars
annually, followed by the Philippines, Turkey, Pakistan, and El Salvador.
These six nations accounted for nearly three-fourths of all foreign aid.The
United States devoted less than one-third of 1% of its GNP to helping
others, a lower percentage than any other industrialized democracy.68

The Vatican was particularly keen on securing debt relief for developing countries. Shakespeare reported the following regarding a June
1987 meeting of Vatican and U.S. officials:
65
RRL, Cable, Frank Shakespeare to U.S. Delegation, June 6, 1987, Folder Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092, NCLF.
66
GUL, Memo, Martin Van Heuven to Ambassador Ridgway,“The Vatican and US Policy:
Saturday Reading,” November 25, 1985, Box 2, Folder 25,WAWP, Special Collections.
67
Address of John Paul II, Farewell Ceremony, Cuba, January 25, 1998, http://
www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/travels/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_25011998_
lahavana-departure_en.html
68
Michael Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan (New York, 1992), p. 125.

BY MARIE GAYTE

735

Casaroli said that for the Vatican, the North-South problem was no less
important and no less dangerous, than the East-West problem. . . . Casaroli
stressed that the Vatican was aware of the complex nature of international
indebtedness, and that the Vatican did not expect instant solutions to the
problem. But, he said, the potential dangers of the debt situation warranted
greater attention and sympathy on the part of everyone concerned, both
debtors and creditors.69

Those calls for increased aid to developing countries point to the
core of the discrepancy between the Holy See and the United States
in the 1980s, which made for a less than perfect “alliance.” If the Holy
See shared the U.S. fear of upheavals in Latin America, it did not agree
with the American diagnosis; whereas the Reagan administration saw
most conflicts of the time as the more or less direct consequence of
Soviet or Cuban interference, the Vatican saw them first as the consequence of problems intrinsic to the social and economic fabric of
those countries, problems that needed addressing. If the Holy See was
deeply concerned about Mexico, for instance, where it feared an
antireligious revolution might take place (as had occurred from 1917
through the late 1930s), to Casaroli, it was “poverty and injustice [that
could] lead the faithful and even some clergy toward ‘socialism.’”70
John Paul II himself reminded U.S. officials on various occasions of the
need to refrain from seeing everything through the lens of East-West
relations. After an audience with Reagan in June 1982, the pope laid
heavy emphasis on the necessity to promote development:
Relations between nations are greatly affected by the development issue,
which preserves its full relevance in this day of ours. Success in resolving
questions in the North-South dialogue will continue to be the gauge of
peaceful relations between various political communities and continue to
influence the peace of the world in years ahead. Economic and social
advancement, linked to financial collaboration between peoples, remains
an apt goal for the renewed efforts of the statesmen of the world.71

He pressed the point further when receiving the credentials of Wilson
on April 9, 1984, reminding the United States of its duty toward the
world’s peoples:
69
RRL, Cable, Frank Shakespeare to U.S. Delegation, June 6, 1987, Folder Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092, NCLF.
70
RRL, Cable, Frank Shakespeare to U.S. Delegation, June 6, 1987, Folder:Vatican City,
Holy See 1987–1988 [Memos-Letters-Cables-Intel-Press-Bios] (1 of 3), Box 92092, NCLF.
71
“Il Contributo dell’America alla Causa della Pace Mondiale,” Osservatore Romano,
June 7–8, 1982, p. 1. The pope’s speech appears in English in the Italian version of
Osservatore Romano.

736

THE VATICAN AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION:A COLD WAR ALLIANCE?

Part of the greatness of the American ideal is, without doubt, openness to
other peoples: not in the sense of “foreign entanglements”, but in the sense
of fraternal concern “for the well-being”, as you have stated it,“of our fellowmen throughout the world”. On this occasion I cannot fail to express
my conviction that the condition of today’s world depend in great measure on the way the United States exercise her global mission of service to
humanity. . . . It is my prayer, Mr. Ambassador, that America will not fail to
be herself and to renew her identity in fidelity to moral and religious principles, and in service to a world in need of peace and human rights, a
world hungry for bread and thirsting for justice and fraternal love.72

It is this strong concern for developing countries that led the pope
to set aside the distinctions usually drawn between East and West on
human rights, and more particularly religious freedom, to lament in
his 1987 encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, that “each of the two
blocs harbor in its own way a tendency towards imperialism, as it is
usually called, or towards forms of neo-colonialism: an easy temptation to which they frequently succumb as history, including recent
history, teaches.”73
If, to the United States, Vatican support was seen as an important
token of morality for its cold war foreign policy decisions, and if, obviously, the United States was better positioned than the Soviet Union
to benefit from this “morality boost,” Vatican endorsement was not
always forthcoming. Fearing the communist threat and the erosion of
rights of Catholics behind the Iron Curtain as well as the spread of
Soviet-backed regimes elsewhere in the world, especially in regions
with a high Catholic population, the Vatican may have made pronouncements that appeared to “play into the hands of Washington” in
its struggle against Marxist regimes. Nevertheless, the Vatican saw
most cold war conflicts and tensions not solely through the East-West
prism; following in the footsteps of John XXIII and Paul VI, John Paul
II believed the North-South dimension to be equally (if not more)
important in explaining current conflicts, something the Reagan
administration at times failed to take into account in its relations with
the Holy See.

72

“Il Papa: Collaborazione con gli Stati Uniti per la Difesa dei Diritti della Persona,”
Osservatore Romano, April 10, 1984, p. 6. The pope’s comments appear in English in
the Italian version of Osservatore Romano.
73
John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, December 30, 1987, http://www.vatican.va/
holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudorei-socialis_en.html

BOOK REVIEWS
________
General and Miscellaneous
The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature, Vol. 1: Genres and Types/
Biographies A–G; Vol. 2: Biographies H–Z. Edited by George Thomas
Kurian; James D. Smith III, coeditor. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. 2010.
Pp. xvi, 347; iv, 349–711. $180.00. ISBN 978-0-810-86987-5.)
“Literature” in this encyclopedia is understood very broadly indeed. It is
not a gathering of articles on literature in the romantic sense—poetry, fiction,
and the drama—but rather in the preromantic and postmodern sense of “writing.”That it aims to be encyclopedic is admirable, although potential readers
should be warned that it has a heavy bias toward the United States.
The encyclopedia has two volumes. The first begins with the genres and
types of Christian writing, and here one finds useful entries ranging from
apocalyptic literature to women’s literature. Thereafter, both volumes are
devoted to a wide range of authors, entries on whom are arranged alphabetically. The editor rightly distinguishes “Christian writers” from “writers who
are Christians” (1:xxi), as well as notes the inclusion “for the most part” of
“writers who are professing Christians” (1:xxi) and the exclusion of “works
by authors whose philosophy is in open conflict with Christianity” (1:xxi).
The last criterion must be laxly held, since there is an entry on John Hick
who, we are told, rejects the claim that Jesus is God incarnate and advises that
an afterlife is improbable (2:364).
Potential readers drawn to “religion and literature” will find pieces on G. K.
Chesterton,T. S. Eliot, George Herbert, G. M. Hopkins, Flannery O’Connor, R.
S.Thomas, and many other rightly expected literary figures.They will not find
anything on William Wordsworth, however, and will look in vain for
Frederich Hölderlin, Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, Angelus Silesius, and
Marco Girolamo Vida. Some choices make the American flavor of the venture
intense.There is a long entry on the younger American poet Scott Cairns and
a shorter one on Luci Shaw; yet in an anthology that seeks to be global, one
would expect articles on two important Australian Catholic poets: James
McAuley and Francis Webb.The British poet Geoffrey Hill certainly deserves
an entry. One might reasonably have expected an article on Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye.
Looking outside the fields of creative writing and literary criticism, readers will be enriched by familiarizing themselves with great Christian writers:
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Ss. John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus, for instance.There is an outstanding entry on Hugh of St. Victor. Why some important figures—St.
Gregory of Nyssa, for example—are mentioned in several entries but have no
article devoted to them must be due to oversight or to lack of space. Yet
space could have been saved by eliminating entries on some of the many
American evangelicals who are better known for their energy than their literary excellence.
The game of finding odd inclusions and unacceptable exclusions is one
that no editor of an encyclopedia likes a reviewer to play.Yet blind spots need
to be identified in a large-scale reference work. Alvin Plantinga is a fine
philosopher, but does his writing fall in any significant sense under “literature”? If it does, why is there no entry on Alasdair MacIntyre or Jean-Luc
Marion? Ludwig Wittgenstein is a groundbreaking philosopher, to be sure, but
is the information that he “has had a major influence on Christian thinkers”
(2:649) sufficient to warrant inclusion? There is far more reason to include
Immanuel Kant and J. G. Fichte, although neither appears in the encyclopedia.
Reference works need to be proofread to a very high standard; they may
be read and cited by many students over many years.We are told that Simone
Weil converted to Catholicism (1:122); later, we are correctly informed that
she might have been baptized on her deathbed (2:635). There is a world of
difference between the two statements. We are told that Karl Barth “began
producing” the Church Dogmatics in 1919 (1:158), yet he did so only after
finding the first volume of the Christliche Dogmatik (Munich, 1927) unsatisfactory. The philosopher’s name is Paul Ricœur, not “Ricouer” (2:518). To say
that Oswald Chambers “read philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. . .”
(1:248) is misleading: Socrates wrote nothing. Amazingly, Peter Damian is
named as “St. Peter Damian”; although Pope Leo XII named Damian a Doctor
of the Church in 1823, he has never been formally canonized.The honorific
is justified by saying “he was revered as a saint from the moment of his death”
(1:274). Yet the Venerable Bede, for instance, is simply listed by his surname
without reference to Pope Leo XIII naming him a Doctor of the Church in
1899. The bibliography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer should give the Augsburg
Fortress translation of the critical edition of his works, not dated English translations from the 1950s and 1960s.This catalogue of similar errors, omissions,
and inconsistencies could be extended far beyond what is acceptable in a
work of this size.
Some of the articles end with several “Principal Ideas” in bullet points.
Almost always, these are to be regretted. For example, do we really need to be
told of Evelyn Waugh that he thinks,“The struggle to maintain and spread civilization is continually threatened by barbarism”? (2:635). How could this
commonplace be one of anyone’s “principal ideas”?
Australian Catholic University and
the University of Virginia

KEVIN HART

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739

Vines Intertwined: A History of Jews and Christians from the Babylonian
Exile to the Advent of Islam. By Leo Duprée Sandgren. (Peabody, MA:
Hendrikson Publishers. 2010. Pp. xxvi, 838. $34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1598-56083-1.)
Over the last two generations there has been a revolution in the understanding of the relation between Christianity and Judaism in the ancient
world. Sixty years ago, the study of early Christian history was carried on
almost wholly without reference to the Jews. Scholars showed great interest
in the Judaism that existed prior to the beginning of Christianity, but once the
Church was established, the Jews were all but forgotten. Christian scholars
learned biblical Hebrew, but saw no need to master the language of the rabbis
or to study the Jewish communities that existed alongside of Christians in the
great cities of the Middle East.
Although it was well known that early Christian thinkers had written
works in response to the Jews (for example, Tertullian’s treatise Adversus
Iudaeos), it was thought that these treatises were dealing with a
“Scheinproblem”—an apparent, not a real, issue. With the publication of
James Parkes’s The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (London,
1934) and Marcel Simon’s Verus Israel. Étude sur les relations entre chrétiens et juifs dans l’empire romain (135–425) (Paris, 1948), Christian scholars began to realize that the Jews were very much part of the foreground of
early Christian thinkers during the formative years of the Church’s history.At
the same time the growing awareness in the West of the enormity of the
crimes against the Jews during World War II profoundly altered Christian sensibilities toward the Jews.
Vines Intertwined, a bird’s-eye view of the history of Jews before the rise
of Christianity and the interaction between Jews and Christians during the
first six centuries, is the fruit of more than two generations of scholarship.
Sandgren’s aim is neither to offer a new and overarching interpretation of this
long period nor to call attention to neglected or forgotten sources. He has set
out to write a survey of a vast historical period with many different players,
institutions, cultural contexts, events, and ideas. For scholars in the field, the
book may cover familiar terrain, but there is no book that sees things in such
a long historical perspective.
Sandgren has done his homework, and he deals with a number of writings
that are known only to specialists in the field—for example, the early
Byzantine work “The Teaching of Jacob Newly Baptized.” He has a long section
on Christians and Jews in the Persian Empire, a topic to which few western
scholars give much attention. At the same time he deals with major figures
such as Ss. John Chrysostom and Augustine, along with Pope Gregory the
Great’s dealing with Jews, Julian the Apostate, imperial laws on the Jews, the
Persian occupation of Jerusalem, and the Muslim conquest. Although in his

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account of the travails of Jerusalem he fails to emphasize that by the seventh
century Jerusalem was a Christian city.
Sandgren’s tone is irenic, and his judgments are fair-minded. He has no
obvious ax to grind. Because of the scope of the book, the treatment of individuals and events is brief and seldom touches on the theological issues
underlying the conflict between Jews and Christians. For a survey of the interaction between Christians and Jews and a précis of the modern secondary literature on many persons and events, readers will find Vines Intertwined a
useful guide.
University of Virginia (Emeritus)

ROBERT LOUIS WILKEN

Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. By Robert Eric
Frykenberg. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. Pp. xxxii, 564.
$165.00 cloth, ISBN 978-0-198-26377-7; $45.00 paperback, ISBN 978-0-19957583-1.)
From the 1990s Robert Eric Frykenberg has increasingly focused his historical attention on Christianity in the Indian subcontinent, and in this latter
work in particular Frykenberg’s South Asia expertise reflects his upbringing
in southern India, his identification as a Christian who believes in the positive
influence of that belief system on the subcontinent, and his professional training. The text covers the immense period between the first century to the
1990s with varying depth of coverage. It also introduces the varieties of
Christian expression in the subcontinent—Thomas Christians, Roman
Catholic, and “evangelical” as each became manifest within the myriad of
“Indian” ethnic and socioeconomic identities across the past 2000 years.
Frykenberg organizes what is by necessity a complex study in a manner
that both follows linear historic developments and that is partially organized
around the critical analysis of Christianity within the interface between the
subcontinent and its neighbors. After offering contextual arguments on the
physical, ethnographic, and religious environment to which Christianity was
introduced, he develops his history around the “nodes” of the genesis of the
Thomas Tradition—the introduction and development of Pfarangi and
Padroado Catholicism of the early-modern era, the developments of evangelicalism from early-modern continental pietism to the broad array of
modern evangelicals that traveled alongside modern European empires—
and finishes in the postcolonial era focusing on developments in the various
Indian Churches and Pentacostalism. Chapter 6, “Evangelical Christians as
Missionary Dubashis Conduits of Cross-Cultural Communication,” is of particular value in its analysis of Christian practice and belief as embedded in
the ethnic identities and historic specifics of a modernizing Europe—traveling alongside and sometimes in opposition to formal imperial economic,
political, and military networks—and as re-embedded in and variously

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741

accepted, modified, and rejected in the three communities discussed in this
chapter. The analytic approach continues, examining denominational struggles, the contribution made by Christians within formal imperial structures
and the field of education, and the criticisms levied by Christian converts
against missionaries and Western officials.The mostly southern-focused study
is broken by Frykenberg’s shift in chapter 14 to a case study of nineteenthcentury Adava–si movements in the northeast of the subcontinent. It might
be further developed—as it is, the rather short treatment feels added on to
the much more in-depth treatment of the southern half of the subcontinent,
which is in no way unsurprising given Frykenberg’s expertise. Additionally,
the text also could benefit from more detail about Christian communities
from the subcontinent in modern diaspora—there are apparently hundreds
of Thomas congregations in the United States alone, and that postcolonial
development is important. A more serious criticism has to do with any sort
of substantive treatment of the gender of imperial structures, faith, and institutional religious practice; the only substantive inclusion of gender focuses
on the exceptionalism of Pandita Ramabai, when a more full treatment might
have provided a link among structures, identity, and belief throughout the
text. The text’s notes alone make it an important addition to any library in
that they will lead readers to follow up on specific localized studies and perhaps those that allow local voices themselves to be heard, as in the approach
taken by editors Todd M. Johnson and Kenneth R. Ross in Atlas of Global
Christianity (Edinburgh, 2009). Given all this, Frykenberg’s volume provides
rich ground, in particular for students of historiography and the Christian
study of history; for example, the tension of belief and evidence evident in
Frykenberg’s rendering of foundation stories of the Thomas Tradition are
promising, given additional analysis.
Saint Francis Xavier University
Antigonish, Canada

RHONDA A. SEMPLE

Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600: Essays for Margaret Aston. Edited by
Linda Clark, Maureen Jurkowski, and Colin Richmond. [Papers in Mediaeval
Studies, 20.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2009. Pp.
xiv, 289. $90.00. ISBN 978-0-888-44820-0.)
This Festschrift in honor of Margaret Aston is testimony to the influence
of an extraordinarily gifted scholar. In chronological range and breadth of subject matter it is a fitting tribute to the scope and depth of Margaret Aston’s
own research and publications. The latter are fully documented in a bibliography at the end of the volume.An introduction, including a brief biography,
is followed by a touching personal appreciation by Colin Richmond.
Anne Hudson’s illuminating investigation of the books consulted by John
Wyclif during his time in Oxford is the first of eleven essays. Hudson makes a
persuasive case for Wyclif’s extensive and surprisingly pragmatic use of the

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library of the Oxford Greyfriars, perhaps right up to his departure from the
university in 1381. The other most likely source of material was the Merton
College library, where Wyclif had friends and supporters.
Ann Eljenholm Nichols examines the elaborate figural illustrations in latefourteenth-century copies of non–Wycliffite glossed gospels of Mark and
Luke in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 32. Containing an English commentary on the Latin gospels, the manuscript was probably intended for lay
liturgical and devotional use within the household. It provides further evidence of the circulation of non-Wycliffite English biblical material for the laity
before the fifteenth century.
Alison McHardy’s fascinating study of John Scarle, chancery clerk, reflects
Aston’s doctoral research on Thomas Arundel, Scarle’s master in the royal
chancery and later archbishop of Canterbury. Scarle advanced through royal
service, legal and parliamentary work for religious houses, money-lending,
and ecclesiastical preferment and prospered from the political turbulence of
the 1380s and 1390s. King Henry IV made Scarle chancellor at Arundel’s suggestion and bestowed on him the archdeaconry of Lincoln. Scarle recorded
some of King Richard II’s least flattering episodes in the Parliament Rolls and
provided eyewitness testimony and official documents for the Westminster
Chronicle’s uniquely well-informed account of Richard’s reign.
Arundel is the central focus of a typically perceptive essay by Jeremy
Catto; in this case, his personal devotional interests and efforts to mount an
orthodox response to the Wycliffite challenge that went beyond the often
ineffective use of the law. Arundel pursued scholarly tastes and shared an
interest in the contemplative life and the production of compilations for private meditation with his family circle and members of his household. From
his restoration in 1399 personal interest became national project as Arundel
strove for higher educational standards among the clergy and a revitalisation
of public religious rites alongside the dissemination of the mixed life to an
increasingly independently-minded laity.
Maureen Jurkowski’s reconstruction of the career of the Lollard preacher
Robert Herlaston is the first of three chapters on heresy. Ordained in 1392,
Herlaston was preaching Wycliffite ideas from at least 1409 and, until his
arrest in 1427, enjoyed the patronage of midlands gentry families either sympathetic to, or on the fringes of, Lollardy who had close connections with families associated with the Lollard knights. Gentry support for dissent clearly
continued for some years after the Oldcastle Rebellion. Norman Tanner
widens the focus to the ecumenical and general councils and the ways that
they addressed dissent. For a variety of reasons councils did not always name
individual dissenters in decrees that condemned their teachings, but the
Council of Constance (1414–18) did not just name Wyclif but issued the
longest personal critique of all the twenty-one councils, and emphatically
constructed Wyclif as the root of wider European religious dissent, not least

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743

that led by John Hus.Tanner demonstrates just how seriously the council took
Wyclif’s thought and underlines the very significant part played in its condemnation by senior English clerical figures. Ian Forrest sheds light on the
social dynamics of judicial procedure against heresy in fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century England in a valuable piece on defamation. There was a fine
line between defamation as slander—“bad” speech—and defamation as legitimate reporting of a crime—“good” speech. Fama or the social reputation of
both the defamer and the defamed could tip cases one way or the other leading either to the prosecution of individuals for slander or to the investigation
of the alleged heresy. Located within the limited social group of the
respectable, defamation was just one means of reinforcing that group’s values
and, somewhat paradoxically, its cohesion.
Two essays build on Aston’s pioneering work on the interrelated uses of
image and text in devotional culture. Richard Marks examines the use of text
in parish churches prior to the Reformation. There was a surprisingly large
amount of religious text in the pre-Reformation church after 1400. Much, but
not all, complemented images, and, although English became more prevalent
from the middle of the century, Latin remained the language of choice for
liturgical, biblical, and catechetical texts, perhaps because of Arundel’s
Constitutions. Elizabeth Eisenstein extends the chronological focus into the
seventeenth century in a nuanced chapter on disputes between Catholics and
Protestants on the relative merits of hearing and sight in devotional life.When
it came to accessing the truths of the Bible, Catholics favored orality and hearing, whereas Protestants prioritized writing and sight.This was complicated,
however, by a greater polemical divide: the continuing store that Catholics
placed on devotional images and the rejection by Protestants of visual representations of the divine. Hearing and seeing came to be seen as distinct
modes of communication, and yet silent reading of the scriptures by
Protestants was still described as “hearing God’s voice.”
Andrew Hope’s essay provides a fresh assessment of the significance of
John Colet within the religious changes of the early-sixteenth century. It rescues Colet from “the anachronism of a Catholic–Protestant binary divide in
religious thought” (p. 237) by identifying his “peculiar vision” (p. 236) of
ecclesiastical reform. Hope charts points of contact between the three accusations of heresy drawn from Colet’s sermons and the reported beliefs of
Lollards who favored his preaching. Colet’s opinions on images and pilgrimages, vernacular translation of the Bible, and on tolerance of heterodoxy
struck a chord with pre-Reformation dissenters and enabled early Protestants
to co-opt him as a precursor of reform, despite his adherence to an uncompromising clericism.
The final piece, by John Bossy, is a sensitive examination of the devotional
compositions of Lord Henry Howard. Howard, the leading intellectual aristocrat of his day, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1577 and was placed in

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custody in 1584. Around this time he set out to provide a set of devotions for
private prayer that built on, but reformed, pre-Reformation traditions.The six
Latin offices that he composed for his own use were Christocentric to the
point of excluding the Virgin Mary and the saints. The English version was
aimed at a sympathetic audience of interested friends and selected establishment figures who had taken against more radical Protestantism from the
1570s. Howard hoped that the offices might enrich an Elizabethan Church of
England that he viewed as part of the larger Catholic Church and counter the
rise of atheism.
The editors are to be commended for producing a volume that so eloquently demonstrates the pioneering nature of Aston’s work over the last five
decades and the advantages of working across divides of periodization and
the often unhelpful boundaries of orthodox and heterodox, Catholic and
Protestant. Long may her influence continue.
University of Nottingham

ROB LUTTON

The Papacy since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor. Edited by
James Corkery and Thomas Worcester. (New York: Cambridge University
Press. 2010. Pp. x, 275. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-521-50987-9.)
The ideal of analyzing the history of an institution—be it a religious order
or, in this instance, the postmedieval papacy—by means of a chronological
sequence of “case studies” is something associated with an editor of the present volume. Here it can be judged to have proved its value, fully justifying the
incisive summary provided by the editors’ conclusion, which extends to
remarks on the present pontificate of Benedict XVI. More clearly in the conclusion than in the introduction, the editors argue convincingly that an
evolving context of Italian, European, global, and media history has most
influenced the changes demonstrable in the development of the popes’ roles
since 1500. Despite a notional centrality of pastoral care constant in the
office of the bishops of Rome, there has been a dramatic shift, in the words
of the book’s subtitle, “from Italian Prince to Universal Pastor.” In that
process, for example, a painful reordering of papal response to war, however
“just,” and prioritizing of an imperative for peace have been necessary.
Obvious turns in this usually unsought and therefore essentially reactive
modification of behavior are identified, as with Revolutionary and
Napoleonic captivity, loss of the Papal States, and the perplexities of two
world wars.Admittedly the earlier chapters of the book, examining Julius II,
Clement VII, Pius V, Sixtus V, Urban VIII, and Clement XI, are accomplished
syntheses of existing research, such as one would expect from the scholars
of stature who are the chapters’ authors, rather than pioneering studies. But
Kenneth Gouwens makes a good case that the often-criticized Clement VII
rescued from seeming disaster not just Medici power in Tuscany but also
some precarious stability in Italian affairs.At about the halfway point, one of

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the volume’s editors, Thomas Worcester, introduces his chapter on Pius VII
with a valuable summary of some of the themes emerging in papal history
from 1500 to 1800.The development of Catholicism in the United States, not
neglected elsewhere in the later sections of the book, is included in the discussion of Pius VII, who also is treated appropriately to illustrate another role
of certain popes: patron of the arts. Comparably, the troubled history of Irish
Catholicism is brought within the chapter on the long and dramatic pontificate of Pius IX, alongside even larger considerations for the relationship of
popes, the Catholic Church, other Christians, and post-Revolutionary society.
Next analyzed is the pastoral sensitivity of Leo XIII as he responded to the
conditions initially associated with industrialization and arguably laid the
foundations for modern papal insistence on social justice as a human obligation. So, too, the subsequent exposition of the agonized decision of
Benedict XV to declare “impartiality,” not just “neutrality,” in World War I, provides a splendidly instructive prelude to the vexed question of Pius XII in
World War II. To John F. Pollard falls the task of assessing the notoriety (for
some) of Pius XII and his supposed “silence.” A magisterial balance is
achieved by placing the pontificate within a survey of papal use of
newsprint, radio, cinema, and television from Pius IX to John XXIII.The further advances on those fronts, as on that of global travel in person, are
accordingly noted in the final chapter on John Paul II.This comes after a sensitive, penultimate reflection on the questionable “reception” of teaching by
Paul VI and John Paul II on sexual behavior and war; although the volume
went to press before the recent possibility, identified by some commentators
elsewhere, that Benedict XVI intends to adjust a crucial element in the foundations of the former.
University of Leeds

A. D.WRIGHT

Returning Home to Rome.The Basilian Monks of Grottaferrata in Albania.
By Ines Angeli Murzaku. [´A␯␣⬘␭␧␬␶␣ ⌲␳␷␲␶␱␸␧⬘␳␳␩␨, 7.] (Grottaferrata
[Rome]: Monastero Esarchico. 2009. Pp xxi, 309. €25,00 paperback. ISBN
978-8-889-34504-7.)
The new book by Ines Angeli Murzaku, an associate professor of church
history at Seton Hall University, has added a new chapter to the understanding of the land on the other side of the Adriatic Sea, so close to the important
cultural centers of Greece and Italy and yet so different from them. It presents
the contribution of the community of the Basilians in Albania in a broad context, ending with the year 1946, when the Communist Party seized power in
Albania, expelled foreigners, and began the process of annihilation of the religious element in the daily pulse of the nation.
Murzaku may humbly describe the survey as an “interesting case study”
(p. 9), but there is much more to it than that. Based on the rich archival
material from the Albanian and Italian archives and the extensive literature,

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she gives an in-depth overview of the history of Christianity on the ground
of the present-day Albania—especially its southern part, in the slow death
of Christian communities after the occupation of the land by the Ottoman
Empire, and in the formation of the Albanian refugee communities in Italy.
In addition, she outlines the relationships between Eastern and Western
Christian churches that met in the area settled by the Albanian tribes and
in southern Italy.This is the setting of the Basilian monastic community and
its unique historical role. Monasticism brought from the East to southern
Italy all the wealth of the East, becoming a bridge between East and West
and thus enriching the communities in the Western Church. With the settlement near Rome in Grottaferrata shortly after the end of the first millennium of Christian history, the Basilian monks became “‘as a bridge
between East and West, as a living memory of the undivided Christendom’”
(p. 31).
The Eastern origin, organization, and discipline of the Basilian monks made
them, in the opinion of the church leadership, the most appropriate individuals to strengthen the Christian communities on the border between the
Greek and Latin worlds settled by the Albanian tribes and to establish links
between the two Christian traditions. They took over this task twice in history.Their role was to maintain the image of the Church as it had been before
the Great Schism, to sustain the wealth of both communities, and to point to
the goal ahead of them. Since they were the only living institution that had
existed before the division, their testimony and standing were significant.
When the Albanian population in the south started to show interest in greater
integration with the Latin Church, the authorities felt that the Basilian monks
were best equipped to perform the task of integrating and restructuring.The
author clearly states that the Roman institutions and their leaders had poor
knowledge of the traditions and spiritual wealth of the East, perhaps versed
more in principles rather than practice, and their requirements and expectations were unrealistic. When the initiatives came from the Albanians, it often
happened that they adopted the wait-and-see policy, which failed to reflect
the interest shown by the people in the pope and in better integration with
the West. Before World War II, the Basilian monks were again sent to the
Albanians, but the opportunity had been lost. It appeared that, during the
Italian occupation of Albania, which should have stimulated greater interest
on the part of the Albanians for linking with the Roman Church, the expectations of the Holy See were too high. With Muslims assuming the dominant
role in Albanian society, it was now the Albanians who adopted the wait-andsee strategy. Together with the Sisters of Saint Macrina, who focused mainly
on education and social work, the Basilians did not have many opportunities
to forge deep links with the people. Despite the Albanian roots of the
Basilians, the authorities and the people considered them foreigners. At the
time of the awakening national values and the emergence of a homogenous
ethnic country, the Albanians also were disturbed by the Greek language used
in the liturgy.

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The survey may not devote much attention to the situation in the monastic community or the attitude of individual members toward open questions,
which was ultimately not the purpose of the research, but it provides much
new information about the Grottaferrata Abbey. Indeed, the book aims to
inform readers about the original place of the Basilian community in the
Latin Church and about the history of connections of the Albanian nation
with Rome.The book helps us better realize how the “the Sons of the Eagle”
entered history and to understand Catholicism as their original faith and the
role of the Basilians in the relations between the Latin and the Eastern
Churches.
University of Ljubljana

BOGDAN KOLAR

Vita Communis:The Common Life of the Secular Clergy. By Jerome Bertram.
(Leominster, UK: Gracewing. 2009. Pp. x, 316. £15.99 paperback. ISBN 9780-852-44201-2.)
Jerome Bertram presents an analysis of the common life of the secular
clergy from the early Christian centuries into the modern era. Conceding that
it often has been argued that the unmarried clergy of the Catholic Church
would be better served if they lived in communities rather than in isolation,
Bertram proposes that rather than simply revive ancient models, the contemporary Catholic Church would be advised to reflect on precedents and the
reasons that such precedents were abandoned. The discussion and analysis is
informed by his own practical and personal experience as a priest of the
Oxford Oratory and by a detailed investigation of the history of the communal life, in theory and practice, over the best part of two millennia. What
emerges from the pages of Vita Communis is a convincingly articulated argument that diocesan bishops need to ponder the way in which priests in the
twenty-first-century Church live and are called on to serve the faithful.
Although seeking to address some of the problems and challenges facing
the Church today, almost half of Bertram’s study is devoted to the first thousand years of the history of the Church.The discussion of the communal life
of the secular clergy is informed by broader reflections on the nature of
Church and faith in the apostolic era, the early-medieval period and the
Carolingian reforms, and the significant debates of the Gregorian era.
Although the primary focus is on the historical function and living of the secular clergy, due consideration also is given to the parallel developments in the
history of monasticism, particularly in its prioritization of poverty. In a study
of this length, covering such a substantial chronology, discussion is, of necessity, general in tone, but the broader argument is punctuated by a number of
valuable and perceptive case studies, including an analysis of the relationship
between St. Chrodegang of Metz’s authentic Rule and the Rule of St. Benedict.
Bertram highlights some of the continuities in the life of the secular
clergy between the tenth and eleventh centuries; the common representa-

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tion of the eleventh-century reforms as an almost revolutionary moment in
the history of the Church is rejected in favor of a more sympathetic
approach to what can be learned from the models of the past. Chapter 7 provides a methodical and helpful commentary on the emergence and evolution
of canonical foundations in England and on the Continent, and the increasing prominence of the canons regular, whereas subsequent chapters examine cathedral chapters and other collegiate churches in the high Middle
Ages. A concern to outline the principal developments laid out in conciliar
decrees and episcopal demands is balanced by useful discussion of local
impact and examples. Many illustrations are drawn from the English context,
but there are some instructive comparisons made with developments in continental Europe; a section dealing with foundations by laymen ranges widely
from the well-documented lay foundation of Astley College in Warwickshire
to the role of the canons of St. Quiriace in Champagne. Surprisingly, perhaps,
the impact of the Protestant Reformations receives rather less attention.
Bertram reflects in rather more detail on the English context and the
Henrician suppression of the monasteries, but the potential impact of evangelicalism on the understanding of the priesthood and priestly life is left to
the margins.The consideration of the “Glorious Catholic Reformation” (chapter 12) focuses more substantially on developments outside England and
includes a detailed discussion of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri as well as the
emergence of new congregations in France.
Some significant, related topics are discussed alongside the central theme.
The opening chapter reflects on the nature of the clergy, differences between
clergy and laity, and the shifting role of the priest between the cultic and the
pastoral.The question of clerical celibacy is woven through the narrative, and,
perhaps unusually, a good deal of attention is paid to the minor clergy.
Throughout his analysis, the author is at pains to point out the important lessons that can be learned from the experiments and experiences of the past.
A final chapter, “Reaffirmation and Renewal,” makes this important theme
explicit in its call to approach the changes of the (often recent) past in terms
of what Pope Benedict XVI referred to as a “hermeneutic of continuity.”
Bertram draws on the broad historical scope of his work to propose a series
of potential models for the modern clergy and church, in the hope of enlivening debate while appreciating the extent of practical limitations. The concluding sentiment, that “we may call upon the experience of the past to
redress the problems of the present, for the future has a traditional flavour”
(p. 290) should serve as an incentive to maintain precisely this kind of reflection and discussion.
University of Reading, UK

HELEN PARISH

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Making Confession, Hearing Confession: A History of the Cure of Souls. By
Annemarie S. Kidder. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2010. Pp. xv, 349.
$34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-814-65497-2.)
Historical changes in the practice of the sacrament popularly known as
confession have been such that it can be difficult to discern continuity.When
Annemarie S. Kidder uses confession to include spiritual direction and other
practices and takes an ecumenical approach, the history becomes even more
convoluted. It is to her credit that she tells the story in a manner that is both
interesting and involving. In the first two parts she provides an historical
overview, first from biblical beginnings through the Middle Ages and then the
Reformation and after in both Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions.
Part 3 looks at contemporary confession, including decline in practice, and
the theologies of four twentieth-century figures (Karl Rahner, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Eugene Peterson, and Adrienne von Speyr). The final part offers
practical considerations for contemporary practice.
Inconsistencies in the use of confession, outdated translations of sources
when there are recent critical editions, and historically and theologically
questionable points are serious flaws. It is questionable, for example, that
there was “corporate knowledge of the sins committed” in the exomologesis
of public penance (p. 29), that private penance originated in pre-Christian
Celtic practice (p. 36), that it developed in Celtic society before the end of
the fourth century (p. 23), and that medieval penitentials have a value in
assigning penances today (p. 311). Her claim that clerical absolution ended
the practice of lay confession also is problematic, as it contradicts what she
says about lay spiritual direction. She is apparently unaware of Amédée
Teetaert’s Confession aux laïques (Paris, 1926), which analyzes the practice
through the fourteenth century; isolated instances are documented in the
sixteenth century.
Some statements regarding Catholic theology and practice also are problematic. Catholics are not required to confess their sins “prior to partaking of
the Eucharist or at least annually during Holy Week” (p. xiii). Nor does
Catholicism regard ordained male clergy as “Peter’s apostolic successors” (p.
35). Not every sin leads to the loss of the Holy Spirit and trinitarian
Communion (p. 320). Her description of indulgences in relation to remission
of sin is misleading (p. 52). Neither screen (p. 167) nor confessional (p. 172)
has been required except for hearing women’s confessions. Comments
regarding the sequence of the act of penance and absolution and implications
of the changed sequence (e.g., p. 312), the relationship of forgiveness and
absolution (p. 316), and the meaning of reconciliation in relation to the
sacrament (p. 317) need clarification. Gabriel Marcel was a philosopher, not a
theologian (p. 277).
The ecumenical perspective is valuable. The survey of contemporary
Protestant practice broadens the understanding of spiritual and pastoral

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care—preaching; pastoral visits, exhortations, and discipline; small accountability groups; altar calls; and revivals and crusades, including the use of counselors in Billy Graham’s crusades. But was it Christ’s “real presence” in the
Eucharist or the theology of transubstantiation that sixteenth-century
Lutherans and Anglicans rejected? (p. 157). Weren’t there English martyrs
under Elizabeth I as well as Mary Tudor? (p. 159). The first three volumes of
Hughes Oliphant Old’s The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the
Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, MI, 1998–99) indicate more
pre-Reformation preaching than Kidder acknowledges. She does not examine
Eastern Christian practice after the fourth century.
Kidder writes well, and her book is enjoyable to read. Unfortunately, it has
historical and theological inconsistencies and flaws that peer reviewers or
editors should have corrected.The book will likely be of most value to nonCatholic pastors and spiritual directors in all traditions who have been “hearing confession” without realizing it.
Gonzaga University
Spokane, WA

JAMES DALLEN

From Altar-Throne to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion
in the Catholic Church. By Joseph Dougherty. [ATLA Monograph Series,
No. 50.] (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press and the American Theological
Library Association. 2010. Pp. xxxv, 225. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-810-87164-9.)
One Sunday morning in spring 1899, a Boston priest noted in his diary
that, of the more than 700 Irish and German immigrant parishioners attending his 7:45 a.m. Mass, exactly forty of them came forward for Communion.
He did not do the calculation, but that is a little more than 5 percent, and he
was encouraged that it was as high as that.Today, most parishes report reception rates of 90 percent or above at every Mass. How Catholics, especially
those in the United States, got from Point A to Point B is the subject of Joseph
Dougherty’s study. The completeness and relative speed with which lay
Catholics changed longstanding habits regarding Communion richly merits
study.This book is far from exhaustive, and other scholars will want to refine
and expand it; but as an introduction to the subject, it is a welcome addition
to recent historiography.
In the first several chapters, Dougherty surveys reception of the Eucharist
from ancient times to the end of the nineteenth century. This is obviously a
huge subject and the evidence is highly fragmentary, but a disposition against
frequent Communion settled on the Church early and lasted a long time.
Bishops and priests consistently denounced laypeople who were too presumptuous in approaching the sacrament often—why, even married men
were doing it, one seventeenth-century hierarch exclaimed in horror—and
elaboration of the doctrine of Real Presence encouraged a lay piety that

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emphasized looking at the Eucharist, usually from a distance, rather than consuming it.This began to change in the nineteenth century, and Dougherty is
helpful in identifying some early sources of change. He reconstructs the theological arguments and overstates the impact of the newly created
Eucharistic Congresses:Were they not effect rather than cause? Nevertheless,
there is more to this story than we might have expected. The fight over frequency was really a fight over the proper dispositions a Catholic should have
when receiving, and the theological ground was well prepared for new attitudes by the time the decrees of Pius X—“the Pope of Holy Communion,” (p.
81)—validated changing practice at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The second half of the book shifts away from theology and attempts a
social history of the question, particularly in America. Theologians argued
and popes decreed, but what did laypeople do? Dougherty tries to get at this
question by looking at two periodicals that “orchestrated” (p. 111) a campaign for greater frequency—one the organ of the Priests’ Eucharistic
League, the other of the People’s Eucharistic League. Unfortunately, there are
inherent shortcomings in this method. Both magazines were official in
nature, produced under clerical auspices, and the lay role, even in the
“people’s” league, is hard to discern. Eliza O’Brien Lummis founded the
People’s Eucharistic League, but she merits only two sentences here. As a
first approach to the subject, all this may be forgivable, but the book only
underscores the need for more focused studies, including local cases, if real
laypeople are to be discussed. Among other things, we will want to know
more about why resistance to frequent Communion lasted as long as it did
(until after the Second Vatican Council), a topic about which Dougherty’s
conclusions seem tentative and not fully persuasive.
In all, the book is clearly written, although the absence of a summary conclusion brings it to a very abrupt end. The bibliography is helpfully extensive, as can be expected of a revised dissertation.The absence of an index is
surely a failing, the more so in a volume published under the auspices of a
library association. But any future studies of this important topic will have to
begin here.
JAMES M. O’TOOLE

Boston College
Ancient

Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early Jewish-Christian
Relations. By Thomas A. Robinson. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.
2009. Pp. xiv, 285. $27.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-598-56323-8.)
Catholic and Protestant scholars have debated the seven letters of St.
Ignatius of Antioch since the Reformation. After all, Ignatius is an early witness to the threefold ministry of bishops, elders, and deacons, and a vital the-

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ological link between the New Testament period and the so-called earlyCatholicism of the second century. In the last half of the nineteenth century,
the Zahn-Lightfoot consensus resolved many of the historical ambiguities surrounding the Syrian bishop (although by no means all); however, this was
challenged in the twentieth century by new concerns no longer focused on
the authenticity of Ignatius’s writings but rather on the authenticity of their
claims. Was Ignatius really a celebrated bishop carried off to martyrdom for
his faithful leadership of the Church in Antioch, or was he somehow a tragic
figure who was psychologically suspect and writing apologetically to defend
the discord over which he presided (or possibly caused) while shoring up his
legacy through voluntary martyrdom?
The debated figure of Ignatius also features largely in another debate: the
parting of the ways between Jews and Christians in antiquity. It is into this
matrix of unresolved issues that Thomas A. Robinson steps with remarkable
confidence and clarity. Whereas modern scholars have tended to view
Ignatius as an eccentric and unrepresentative figure in early Christianity, and
other scholars have begun to blur the alleged boundaries between “Judaisms
and Christianities” in the age before Constantine, Robinson has edged carefully but decisively in the opposite direction.
Methodologically, Robinson provides an historical overview of key features in the debate: the demographics and history of Antioch, the question of
proselytes and God-fearers on the boundaries of Judaism, and the motive for
Ignatius’s letters to the seven churches. In each case, supported by a comprehensive engagement with modern scholarship, Robinson disentangles key
suppositions and hypotheses that undergird much of modern scholarship’s
deconstruction and reconstruction of the two issues.
In chapter 1 key demographic and historical presuppositions are ferreted
out of the sparse but available evidence on Antioch, arriving at an account
that affirms the privileged, but politically contingent, place of Jews in Antioch.
By the time of Ignatius, this position was likely more fragile than at other
times, due to the war with Rome.The ambiguous position of the Jewish community in Antioch must have been a feature in anxiety over boundaries following the war and the rise of an increasingly gentile-Jewish Christianity.
Chapters 2 and 4 deal with the question of the parting of the ways
between Judaism and Christianity. In these analyses, the issue of boundaries
plays a major role. Was the Jewish community diverse and its boundaries
fluid, or were they aware of Christians and proselytes, and did the historical
exigencies of the war and refugees narrow their sense of insiders and outsiders? In particular, can the place of proselytes and God-fearers have featured
largely in this question about the boundaries and belonging? Robinson does
not think so, and he buttresses his view by undermining some untested
notions about these two allegedly significant groups.

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In chapters 3 and 5 Robinson takes on the Ignatian enigma by assessing
the fruits of twentieth-century scholarship on the new Ignatian perspective—
that Ignatius was a failed bishop embroiled in discord and moved by an unanchored psyche toward voluntary death. Robinson shows, first of all, that
Ignatius was a representative figure of a normative Christianity, as opposed to
the pluriform “Christianities” of the Bauerian hypothesis, and that he understood boundaries between “Christianity” and “the other” quite clearly, whether
this was “Judaism” or the docetic heretics. Second, Robinson undermines
many of the arguments used to construe an alternative narrative to the traditional “persecution and martyrdom” hermeneutic that posit discord, personal
ambition, and a rivalry between “Christianities” in Antioch.
The concluding chapter 6 addresses the weaknesses of revisionist interpretations of the parting of the ways that wish for no real animosity between
Jewish and Christian communities, or that minimize difference in theology,
demographics, and identity. Robinson notes with insight and caution the
influence of twentieth-century questions on the scholarship of the first centuries of the early Christianity and offers a new direction for research on both
Ignatius and the parting of the ways by appealing to a reasoned and historical re-engagement with the sources and a hermeneutic that is characterized
by better critical reserve and historical discipline.
Robinson succeeds in a remarkable doublet: He has reset the Ignatian
debate back to the Zahn-Lightfoot consensus and has critically undermined
much of the undisciplined ideology of the parting-of-the-ways perspective. If
his arguments are engaged with widely, they offer a major correction to contemporary trends on both fronts.
Christ Chapel
Centerville, MA

JOHN-PAUL LOTZ

The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity. By David
Brakke. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2010. Pp. xiii, 164.
$29.95. ISBN 978-0-674-04684-9.)
In this book the author takes up the issue of diversity in early Christianity,
with special attention to a group that he identifies as “Gnostics.” In the first
chapter (“Imagining ‘Gnosticism’ and Early Christianities”) he discusses the
current controversy on the use of the term Gnosticism and adopts the position of some scholars that there was no such thing. In his surveys of the history of scholarship on Gnosticism he takes strong issue with historians of religions who claim that Gnosticism can be seen as a religion that originated
independently of Christianity. I am one of his favorite targets (“easiest to criticize,” p. 25), especially because of my inclusion of the Mandaeans in my delineation of ancient Gnosticism. David Brakke erroneously dates the origin of
Mandaeans to the fifth century—Jorunn Buckley has dated the earliest
Mandaean colophons to the second century—and overlooks the strong cor-

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respondences between the Mandaean texts and some of those of the Nag
Hammadi corpus, as pointed out by Kurt Rudolph.
In chapter 2 (“Identifying the Gnostics and Their Literature”) Brakke
adopts the position of Bentley Layton (to whom he has dedicated the book)
that there was a special group of Christians known to Irenaeus (Haer.
1.29–31) who called themselves Gnostics. Some of their writings are preserved in the Nag Hammadi corpus. Brakke identifies as Gnostic the writings
that belong to a group identified by some scholars (such as Hans-Martin
Schenke) as “Sethian.” Brakke argues that the Gnostic myth reflected in those
texts was “one distinctive attempt to tell the story of God and humanity in
the light of the Jesus event” (p. 42). At the end of the chapter Brakke provides a list of the surviving works of the Gnostics and various ancient testimonia. As is well known, some of the “Gnostic” texts have no Christian elements in them at all.
Chapter 3 (“The Myth and Rituals of the Gnostic School of Thought”) is
the central chapter of the book. Brakke discusses what he sees as the essential features of the Gnostic myth: “God and the Divine Realm;” and “The
Material World, Biblical History, and the Possibility of Gnosis” (pp. 53–70). He
rightly regards the Apocryphon (Secret Book) of John (NHC II.1, III.1, IV.1,
BG 2) to be of central importance. Although he observes that Ap. John and
other Gnostic texts “do not explicitly claim that Jesus is the embodied incarnation of the savior” (p. 68), he insists that the Gnostics based their myth on
salvation through Jesus. He ignores the arguments of some scholars (including myself) that the only Christian elements to be found in Ap. John occur
in its secondary “Christianizing” framework featuring the risen Christ in dialogue with his disciple, John. In his discussion of Gnostic ritual Brakke
acknowledges that Gnostic baptism “appears to have shared few features
with the versions of baptism found in other early Christian sources” (p. 77).
He rightly argues that the Gnostics did not observe a Eucharist or other ritual
meals. Surprisingly, he gives no attention at all to the Ascent ritual discussed
by Schenke and others, for which the Three Steles of Seth (NHC VII.5) provides attestation.
Chapter 4 is devoted to “Unity and Diversity in Second-Century Rome” and
includes discussions of Marcion, Valentinus, and Justin Martyr. In the final
chapter (“Strategies of Self-Differentiation”) Brakke argues that there was no
single church that could accept or reject anything, even if Irenaeus and other
bishops laid the basis for the “catholic church” at the end of the second century. He ignores the work of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who provides the earliest
attestation to the “catholic church” and the monarchical episcopacy.
It unfortunately must be concluded that Brakke’s book is disappointing,
especially in its treatment of ancient Gnosticism.
University of California, Santa Barbara

BIRGER A. PEARSON

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Der Kaiser und sein Gott: Das Christentum im Denken und in der
Religionspolitik Konstantins des Grossen. By Klaus Martin Girardet.
[Millennium-Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n.
Chr, Band 27.] (New York: de Gruyter. 2010. Pp. x, 213. $98.00. ISBN 9783-110-22788-8.)
For almost two centuries, the field of Constantine scholarship was dominated by a single, overarching question: Was he, or wasn’t he? That is, was
Constantine truly converted to Christianity, or was he rather a supremely
ambitious politician who simply saw the Christian Church as a vehicle to
achieve world dominion? The main proponent of the latter view was Jacob
Burckhardt; an English translation of his Zeit Constantins des Grossen is still
in print more than 150 years after his work’s first publication.
Girardet’s book follows a counterargument by Norman Baynes in
Constantine the Great and the Christian Church (London, 1929). Here
Baynes argued for the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion, which followed
a test of the Christian God’s power at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in
October 312. Henceforward, Baynes said, Constantine sought consistently to
achieve “the triumph of Christianity and the union of the Roman state with
the Christian Church” (Baynes, p. 421n57). Like Baynes, Girardet dismisses any
apparent accommodation of the old religion as no more than expediency due
to a population, and particularly a Senatorial aristocracy, that remained overwhelmingly pagan. But he has updated Baynes’s case, primarily in two ways.
First, he accepts the argument that Constantine’s “vision of the cross”
occurred not in 312 but in 310 and was a “halo phenomenon”—an atmospheric condition that makes ice crystals form what appears to be a cross
superimposed over the sun. Second, Girardet not only accepts the authenticity of Constantine’s “Oration to the Saints”—dismissed by Baynes as a forgery—but also provides it with a specific date (314) and place (Trier).
Girardet has also broadened and deepened Baynes’s basic argument.A veteran
scholar with a long list of his own writings on church and state in the fourth
century, Girardet has read widely, and most of his chapters contain a full discussion of the evidence and literature for each period or topic, followed by
systematic and fully annotated discussion.
Nevertheless, an air of staleness hovers over this work.The problem lies in
the rigidity of Girardet’s approach. Intent on laying to rest once and for all any
doubt about the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion, he introduces at the
outset a monotheism/polytheism dichotomy that serves as an impenetrable
defense of his argument. Because there is such a vast and irreconcilable gulf
between monotheistic and polytheistic thought, he observes, once
Constantine started to believe in a single god, he had no alternative but to
reject polytheism completely and utterly. For this reason, Girardet depicts the
310 vision, usually described as a “pagan vision” because the orator who
relates it identifies the god as Apollo, as the beginning of a process of con-

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version that was fully completed with Constantine’s victory in 312. To the
same end, Girardet holds that recent scholarship on “pagan monotheism” is
mistaken since, at best, such thinking could only be labeled henotheism, and,
because henotheists recognize lesser gods, the same gulf does not exist
between them and polytheists; therefore, only Christians qualify as true
monotheists (Jews do not enter the argument). Accordingly, Constantine’s
own utterances demonstrate the gulf between the two systems and prove
that Constantine was Christian. This approach works well as a refutation of
Burckhardt, but it also freezes Girardet into a historiographic time warp.The
question of Constantine’s sincerity arose as a subset of theology and church
history; few serious scholars now see any reason to doubt that Constantine
became a Christian.The issue instead is to understand the coercive turn that
Christianity took in the decades following Constantine: was it inevitable,
because of Christianity’s inherent intolerance? To deal with this issue, the
important question is,“What kind of Christian did Constantine become?” For
this question, broader parameters than the rigid binaries on which Girardet
relies are needed.
In the compass of a brief review, two examples must suffice.
(1) Solar symbolism. Intent on refuting old arguments about Constantine’s attachment to Sol Invictus, Girardet slaps down any suggestion that
Constantine might have seen the sun cult as a way to create a space large
enough to accommodate Christians and non-Christian monotheists (or
henotheists). This is a daunting task, for Constantine’s use of solar symbolism
was rampant; see, for example, Martin Wallraff, Christus Verus Sol (Münster,
2001). In particular, there is the striking example of a gold multiple-image
coin now in the Bibliothèque Nationale that shows Constantine and Apollo/
Sol in twin profile. This coin was issued in 313, months after the victory at the
Milvian Bridge, and surely was meant to convey an important message. As part
of a late-Roman imperial ideology that demanded an emperor demonstrate
close ties to a divine “companion,” the coin makes sense; seen as part of a
policy to neutralize the toxic atmosphere created by the Great Persecution, it
takes nothing away from the sincerity of Constantine’s own belief. But
Girardet has nothing at all to say about this coin, other than two glancing references (pp. 81n372, 128). Instead, he is content with the general observation
that Christians could accept Apollo—the same Apollo they blamed for inspiring their persecution—as a symbol for Christ (p. 85).
(2) Constantine and Arius. Girardet devotes a chapter to Constantine’s
handling of the Arian controversy, but his interest is limited to the traditional
concerns of church historians with the Council of Nicaea and what it demonstrates about Constantine’s Christianity. He makes no mention of two of the
emperor’s letters regarding Arius, although these speak volumes about his priorities.The first, included by Eusebius in the Life (VC 2.64–72), is a letter the
emperor sent to Arius and his bishop,Alexander, in an initial attempt to settle

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the controversy. Here he repeatedly dismisses their dispute over the relationship between Father and Son as trivial, disruptive, and unnecessary. Such fine
points, Constantine insists, can be left to individual bodies to debate; public
order does not require them.The second is a letter written some years later,
after the exiled Arius petitioned him for permission to return. In that letter,
Arius said his only wish was to avoid “superfluous questions” and “offer our
accustomed prayers for your tranquil reign and on behalf of your whole
family” (Soc., HE 1.26, trans. NPNF). Even though Arius completely sidestepped the central issue, Constantine was overjoyed and wrote Alexander
that he was now completely satisfied (Gel., HE 3.15).These letters leave little
doubt that Constantine valued public order and loyalty over theological
nicety; they add point to Eusebius’s observation that “those [Christians] who
stayed unyielding he turned away from” (VC 1.44.4).
Girardet’s response to Burckhardt may be described as definitive, and his
methodical mustering of primary and secondary scholarship makes his book
extremely useful for scholars trying to work their way into a vast literature.
But for the same reason, his book can at best be only a starting point for further work.
University of California, Santa Barbara

H.A. DRAKE

Monachesimo orientale: Un’introduzione. Edited by Giovanni Filoramo.
[Storia,Vol. 40.] (Brescia: Editrice Morcelliana. 2010. Pp. 312. 22,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-837-22412-7.)
Students seeking an introduction to early monastic history have had few
good options in any language. Derwas Chitty’s The Desert a City: An
Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism in the
Christian Empire (Oxford, 1966) remains the classic narrative, but its usefulness as an introductory survey is limited by the fact that it deals only with two
regions of monastic development, and even its accounts of these have been
considerably outmoded by recent scholarship.
Most welcome, therefore, is the publication of Monachesimo orientale:
Un’introduzione. Clearly and elegantly written by a group of specialists
drawn mainly from the University of Turin, it provides a comprehensive introduction to the different “eastern” traditions that makes ancient monasticism
so complex and interesting to study: not only the Egyptian and Palestinian traditions but also those of Antatolia/Cappadocia and Syria that developed independently in the East Roman and Persian empires, as well as the Gallic traditions of Cassian and Sulpicius Severus that evolved in dialogue with the East.
Each regional tradition receives its own separate essay. Indeed, the book
offers almost everything to be desired in an introductory survey: concise
description of major regional figures, trends, and developments; explanation
of historical dynamics (with special focus on the production and circulation
of texts); discussion of hagiographical, archaeological, legal, and papyrological

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sources, including the interpretative challenges posed by each; and a generous engagement with a wide range of current scholarship, displayed in both
its essays and general bibliography.
The book begins with an historiographical overview that explains how
early monastic history, once mainly a subject of sectarian debate, has become
a lively field of secular inquiry, due not least to the impact of anthropology
and archaeology. The next four essays deal with historical developments in
Egypt, Anatolia/Cappadocia, and Syria, focusing not only on standard questions of origin, precedent, and innovation by figures both familiar (e.g.,
Pachomius, Evagrius Ponticus, Basil of Caesarea) and less so (e.g., Eustathius
of Sebaste, Philoxenus of Mabbug, Babbai the Great, Emperor Justinian) but
also on key debates within monastic culture (e.g., Origenism, anthropomorphism, Messalianism) and on the relation of monks to church hierarchies
before and after the Council of Chalcedon. Egypt receives two essays, the
second examining the regional dispositions that developed after Chalcedon
up to the Arab Conquests; most sweeping is the essay on Syria, a remarkable
synthesis that ranges from the second to the eighth century, showing how
Syria eventually broke from its own monastic traditions to adopt Egyptian
(especially Evagrian) monastic principles.The final two essays focus on Gaul
and Palestine and Sinai, explaining, among other things, how monastic life in
these regions also came under the influence of Egyptian or Anatolian/
Cappadocian traditions.
Specialists will not find many surprises here.This itself may be deemed a
virtue in a book that explicitly presents itself as an introduction; nonetheless,
it would have been interesting to have a concluding chapter that posed alternative ways to conceptualize ancient monastic traditions besides the regional
configurations around which the book is organized. For example, an exploration of evidence for tensions between an “apostolic” monastic model and a
“philosophical” or contemplative model (associated especially with Egypt), or
an analysis of other models or methods that transcend regional differences,
might be suggested.There also is little on female asceticism, gender issues, or
the role of lay patronage on early monastic formation. These omissions may
not be noticed, however, due to the laudably detailed and balanced attention
that so many other important topics receive. It is hoped that this book may
soon be translated into English.
University of Connecticut, Storrs

DANIEL F. CANER

La religione impura: La riforma di Giuliano Imperatore. By Giorgio
Scrofani. [Studi biblici, 163.] (Brescia: Paideia Editrice. 2010. Pp. 190.
€21,90 paperback. ISBN 978-8-839-40777-1.)
The careful and well-organized scholarly research of Giorgio Scrofani—a
professor of philology, linguistics, and classical history at La Scuola Normale

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Superiore de Pisa—has afforded his readers with an important reminder of
the flawed and failed imperial policy of Julian the Apostate during his
eighteen months (December 11, 361, to June 26, 363) as emperor. Julian’s
attempt to cleanse and purify the state from the destructive “pollution” of the
Galileans was completely ineffectual. The future development of Christian
civilization in Europe and elsewhere would prove that his efforts in “cleansing” did not succeed.
Flavius Claudius Julianus (331–63) was a well-educated, energetic, and
wide-ranging ruler of the Roman Empire and the last Roman emperor of the
Constantine dynasty (306–63). Although he was to be the emperor of Rome
only for a short time, he proved to be remarkably involved in his task of governance with his own personal policies.
Although Julian was reared as a Christian, he became disgusted with the
religion of the Christians—or the Galileans, as he derisively termed them. His
Hellenic religion was his personal synthesis of neo-Platonism, theurgy, and the
worship of the traditional Roman gods. As far as he was concerned, the
Galileans were a pestilence or sickness that had been polluting the Roman
religion and institutions for the last fifty years since the Emperor Constantine
began his rule.
Constantine’s dynasty would prove to be an extremely unstable period in
the Empire’s history, and this instability would touch and influence directly
Julian’s life. When Julian was in charge of Gaul, he himself would contribute
to this instability when his Gallic army revolted and proclaimed him emperor.
He and Constantius were on the verge of civil war when Constantius died of
fever. But surprisingly enough, he bequeathed to Julian, as his sole heir, the
imperial throne.
When the young Julian had inherited the full power as emperor, he was
convinced that he had a divine mission to reform the Empire’s corrupt administrative structure and cleanse it from the impure religion of the Galileans. He
refused, however, to follow the route of Diocletian, who as emperor (303–11)
had tried to eradicate the Christians through a state bloody persecution.
Instead, the Emperor Julian would issue imperial decrees that would indirectly undermine the unclean Galilean religion among the Roman elite.
For example, he issued in early 362 the edict assuring freedom of religion
in the Empire that was intended to encourage the return to pagan sacrifices
and to restore the neglected temples of the gods. His edict concerning education required all public school teachers to be approved by the emperor
since the state provided for most of their salaries.The Christian schools and
teachers were not supposed to teach the Hellenic classic literature.
In winter 362–63, before his disastrous and fatal campaign against the
Persians, the emperor found time to compose his polemic against the impure

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religion of the Galileans. He certainly hoped that this effort would bring the
Christian elite to their senses and that they would return to the pure and true
religion of Roman and Hellenic paganism.
His principal reason for characterizing the religion of the Galileans as
impure was their rejection of the stipulations of Mosaic Law, especially as
affirmed in the Book of Leviticus. Although Julian considered the Jews to be
barbarians, he admired the purity of their religion with its dietary laws and
other distinctions between pure and impure foods and activities. Another
reason for the impurity of the religion of the Galileans was their cult to the
martyrs; he accused the Galileans of impure worshiping of dead bodies.
Scrofani’s labors are admirable because his efforts to provide acquaintance
with Julian’s ideology and imperial policy can stimulate his readers to reflect
on the contemporary conflict between the state and religion. The objective
historical research into Julian the Apostate’s life and his intolerant imperial
policies should reinforce the conviction that the long-term search for peace
and human progress must be rooted in irenic dialogue and respect for the dignity and human rights of all.
Ignatian Institute of Religious Education Foundation
Davao City, Philippines

WILLIAM J. MALLEY, S.J.

Theodor von Mopsuestia. De incarnatione: Überlieferung und Christologie
der griechischen und lateinischen Fragmente einschliesslich Textausgabe.
By Till Jansen. [Patristische Texte und Studien, Band 65.] (New York: De
Gruyter. 2009. Pp. xii, 311. $140.00. ISBN 978-3-110-21862-6; ISSN 05534003.)
Till Jansen offers a careful and clear examination of the complicated tradition of the fragments of Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia’s De incarnatione
and argues for their value in understanding Theodore’s Christology.The two
parts, the tradition and analysis of the fragments (chapters 1–2) and an examination of the Christology of the fragments (chapters 3–5), are followed by a
new edition of the Latin and Greek fragments of the De incarnatione as well
as a German translation.
The contributions of Jansen’s work are twofold: first, the new edition of
the Latin and Greek fragments delivers a necessary update of Henry Barclay
Swete’s 1880–82 edition. Second, Jansen posits that a cohesive reconstruction of De incarnatione’s Christology is possible and argues against Marcel
Richard, who discredits the fragments as falsified. Such a historical theological contribution demands a meticulous setup. He first analyzes the Latin compilations for the Fifth Ecumenical Council and then turns to the Greek tradition. He reads Leontius of Byzantium (utilizing Brian Daley’s “Leontius of
Byzantium” [Oxford, 1978]) and Justinian concurrently. Noting that the coun-

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cil shows more usage of Theodore’s Contra Apollinarium and in a different
order, he concludes that although both traditions used florilegia, they drew
from different collections (p. 75). Jansen maps the tradition of the fragments
into four phases: the controversy arising after Theodore’s death; the Collatio
cum Severianis of 532; the Fifth Ecumenical Council preparatory writings of
Leontius, Justinian, and Innocent of 532–49; and the Council itself in 553
(which drew on the writings of Pelagius and Vigilius). Jansen’s focus on
Facundus of Hermiane—independent of the prominent textual material that
seems to have been drawn up for the express purpose of denouncing
Theodore—opens up the questions of reliability and the ever-present claims
of falsification that loom over Theodore’s work. These claims and the highly
biased selections of obscure passages by opponents lend a degree of uncertainty to what the fragments can indeed deliver as a resource for Theodore’s
Christology. Jansen does not succumb to the danger of overreaching. He does
not reject wholesale the compilations of critics, but in assessing their reliability and outlining the polemical context behind the selected passages,
Jansen offers a tempered perspective on the historical reliance on these
sources and demonstrates the importance of this for the reception of
Theodore’s Christology.
Jansen’s work succeeds in presenting a clearer and more nuanced view of
the tradition of the fragments that lets Theodore out from under the thumb
of later redactors and resituates his Christology back into its polemical context. The rub, however, is whether the limited, but important, fragments can
deliver as a resource for Theodore’s Christology—specifically on the unity of
natures in Christ—as Jansen claims. At the end, Jansen succeeds in this venture. By arranging the fragments in four groups with porous boundaries,
Jansen demonstrates the polemical nature of Theodore’s work against the
Apollinarians and Eunomians and shows how his terms and Christology are
formed as a defense within these boundaries (p. 159). Theodore lodges the
same basic complaint against both groups: the denial of the true and perfect
humanity of Christ. Jansen demonstrates that Theodore’s context (especially
terminology used for unity and the concept of indwelling) brings clarity to
Theodore’s conception of God. In shedding light on the development of presumptions and sources that fueled the discussions of fourth- and fifth-century
Christology in which Theodore plays an important role, Jansen not only
brings Theodore’s Christology into sharper focus but also shows how this
important dogmatic work is key to current discussions of the Nestorian/
Cyrillian debates. Jansen’s work is highly recommended.
Wheaton College
Wheaton, IL

AMY BROWN HUGHES

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Medieval
Remi de Reims: Mémoire d’un saint, histoire d’une Église. By Marie-Céline
Isaïa. [Histoire religieuse de la France, 35.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.
2010. Pp. 919. €67,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-08745-2.)
This book originated as a French doctoral thesis submitted in 2004. Like
most French theses turned into books, it is a weighty tome. In more than 900
dense, although elegantly written, pages, Marie-Céline Isaïa documents the
history of St. Remi of Reims and his construction as a holy figure from his lifetime up to the reign of the Capetian King Philip I (1060–1108), thereby covering seven centuries and three dynasties (the Merovingian, the Carolingian,
and the Capetian) in Francia.
Rather than presenting an overarching argument, the book simply follows
a chronological structure. Chapter 1 retraces the life of Remi, emphasizing the
senatorial Gallo-Roman nobility to which he was born and his long-time partnership with Clovis, which resulted in the baptism of the Merovingian king in
the late-fifth century or early-sixth century (Isaïa proposes 507 or 508, instead
of an earlier date put forward by other historians), a watershed event that
served to shape the cult of Remi in relation to the Frankish kings in the following centuries. Chapter 2 focuses on the Merovingian period and the composition of the first (extant) life of the saint in the middle of the eighth century. Isaïa sheds interesting light on the competition between different
political lineages, Neustrian as well as Austrasian, in the appropriation of his
cult, up to the time when Charles Martel definitively associated the saint with
the Pippinid family in the second quarter of the eighth century. The subsquent chapter is devoted primarily to Hincmar’s tenure as archbishop of
Reims (845–82) and his promotion of the cult of Remi.The national vocation
of the saint, whose baptism of the first Frankish king led Hincmar to proclaim
him the “apostle of the Franks,” signals an important shift in Remi’s constitution as a royal patron and protector of the Frankish monarchy, a process that,
following various developments discussed in chapter 4, comes to full fruition
only in the reign of the first Capetians—in particular, that of Philip I.
The broad chronological scope of the study, combined with its minute
examination of the extant documentation, forcefully establishes the slow formation of the cult of Remi and the constant interplay between local interests
and national pretensions that contributed to project Remi as the premier
saint of France. However, the reader can regret Isaïa’s somewhat parochial
approach and exclusive focus on Remi and Reims, which prevents her from
exploring the broader political and religious contexts that would have, for
instance, allowed her to situate the development of Remi as a royal saint in
comparison with the competing figures of Ss. Martin and Denis. In that
respect, a fuller treatment of Hincmar might have proven valuable, since he
spent the first part of his career at the abbey of St. Denis, at a time when the

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monastic community was busy promoting the role of the St. Denis as a
Frankish patron, before his appointment at Reims. Similarly, the establishment
of Remi as the protector of the Frankish monarchy at the time of Philip I
could have been compared to contemporary efforts on the part of the abbeys
of St-Denis and Fleury to attract royal attention by composing royal genealogies and histories of the Capetian dynasty.
Such reservations should not deter anyone interested in hagiography to
welcome this important contribution to the field. In the wake of previous
works by Felice Lifshitz and Thomas Head, Isaïa’s study illustrates the fact that
the cult of saints always lies at the intersection of religion and politics; of individual faith and personal ambitions; of local affairs and national aspirations.
University of Liverpool

DAMIEN KEMPF

Erzbischof Hinkmar und die Folgen: Der vierhundertjährige Weg historischer Erinnerungsbilder von Reims nach Trier. By Olaf Schneider.
[Millennium-Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n.
Chr., Band 22.]. (Berlin: de Gruyter. 2010. Pp. xii, 470. $137.00. ISBN 9783-110-20056-0.)
In 863 Archbishop Hincmar compiled a document for use in the trial of
one of his suffragan bishops, Rothad II of Soissons (832–62; 865–69).Among
many juridical and historical topics, Hincmar’s document outlined what he
thought should be the proper relationship between metropolitans and their
bishops. Olaf Schneider’s meticulous study focuses on seventeen lines of the
eighteen-page document in its Monumenta Germaniae Historica edition
(Epistolae 8/1 [1939], no. 160, ed. Ernst Perels, pp. 122–40).These lines make
up the eighth paragraph of the first part of the document and take the reader
back to the eighth-century history of Hincmar’s see when Milo,“by tonsure,
but not by living, a cleric,” “occupied” both Reims and Trier. The lands that
Reims lost during this time of turmoil were later restored with the support of
King Carlomann and the leadership of Archbishop Tilpin of Reims. Carlomann
was buried in the church of Saint-Remigius of Reims after he died in 771.
Schneider subjects all the rich details of this brief account, for which Hincmar
is the only source, to meticulous scrutiny.A good part of the analysis focuses
on the historicity of the “facts” of the account:Who were Milo and Tilpin? Was
Carlomann actually buried in Reims, and, if so, what happened to his tomb?
Establishing what can be known about the facts of the narrative allow
Schneider to explore a much larger canvas, the canvas on which historical
memories are created and then selectively viewed by later audiences. In the
case of the Milo, Reims, Trier, and Carlomann cameo, he builds a convincing
case that Hincmar had his own ninth-century lost property issues firmly in
mind when he re-created eighth-century Reims. A master impresario of historical texts with a rich cathedral archive, Hincmar worked as a mosaicist
might to construct a memory of eighth-century Reims that would serve ninth-

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century circumstances. (Was Hincmar a second Tilpin [p. 65], or Tilpin a first
Hincmar?) Only a perceptive viewer such as Schneider would detect that the
pieces do not quite fit together snugly. In the tenth century, when Flodoard
came to write his history of the church of Reims, Hincmar’s constructed
account of the eighth century had become canonical.The second part of the
book traces how bits and pieces of the memory Hincmar created lived on in
other lands, circumstances, and centuries to serve other needs. Here,
Schneider leads his readers away from Reims to Trier where, in the wake of
particularly destructive raids by Northmen,Trier lost not only its buildings to
fire, but its archives and libraries and with them its past as well.As tenth-century Trier clerics rebuilt the memory of their past, Hincmar’s account of their
city’s connection to Reims and especially to Milo proved helpful. Bits and
pieces of Hincmar’s construction took on new life in many different documents connected with Trier. Twice in his book Schneider makes the point that
“[i]n the beginning there was Hincmar” (pp. 1, 387). The second time he uses
the aphorism to preface his observation that by the end of his study Hincmar
is nowhere to be found. Such is the contingency of memory and historical
reconstructions. Schneider’s fascinating case study of seventeen lines of carefully crafted text that went on to have multiple lives joins a growing number
of fine studies of how memory was formed and re-formed in the Middle Ages.
Purdue University

JOHN J. CONTRENI

Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West.
By Lynda L. Coon. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. 2011. Pp. xii, 390. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-812-24269-0.)
Lynda Coon says that her purpose in this book is to “reconstruct the
gender ideology of clerical masculinity through an investigation of early
medieval readings of the body” (p. 2). She has chosen for her subject the work
of Hrabanus Maurus (780–856), a monk of Fulda who was one of the most
prolific and influential Carolingian authors. The text of Hrabanus that is her
main focus is the remarkable In Honor of the Holy Cross.
Beyond the writings of Hrabanus, Coon also analyzes some other
Carolingian remains—namely, the Westwerk of Corbey, the Michael Rotunda
of Fulda, and the Plan of St. Gall. In all these productions, Coon stresses the
element of bricolage—that is, the collecting of items from another culture to
make a point. Coon claims that the Carolingians liked to display materials
from Roman times to emphasize their role as the guardians of the frontier
against the barbarian east.
Overall, Coon’s analysis of these monuments is interesting and insightful.
However, the acrostic poem on the Holy Cross is so complex and esoteric that
it leaves the reader gasping. The author admits that even Hrabanus did not
fully understand what he was doing. But Coon proposes to read this material

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765

through gender theory—a method that poses problems, given that medieval
monasticism is heavily patriarchal, and it can be misleading to view any institution through a single analytical lens. Coon applies the theory to the
Carolingians and states that, for them, the great thing was proper speech.
Whoever could speak proper Latin could lead; he was a “mouth person.”
Whoever could not was a “body person,” fit only to listen and be led. In the
monastery, illiterates and boys were obviously in the second category. But
through the rubric of gender theory, that means they are “feminine,” which
means passive, heavy, subordinate.
When Coon applies this theory to the Rule of St. Benedict, she says that
the abbot is the quintessential “mouth man.” He does most of the talking in
the monastery; he is the main teacher. He also is the main disciplinarian, who
must sometimes physically beat dull or recalcitrant disciples (RB 28.3). Coon
adds:“In terms of the Benedictine gender pyramid, being able to beat others
(the abbot’s ultimate charge [emphasis added]) . . . is a key marker of status.”
A few sentences later we learn that the rod for beating (virga) is “capable of
inflicting blows from sexual penetration” (p. 87).Thus a view of abbot as pederast is presented.
In case the reader doubts that Coon is serious about this view of medieval
monasticism, read what she says about the dormitory: “Whereas the refectory
is a space devoted to the ascetic gullet, the dormitory is, symbolically speaking, a zone for the anus, itself a metaphor for illicit entry into the ascetic community” (p. 196). Apparently the Benedictine monastery is really just a male
brothel.
Despite this dubious representation of a respected institution, the reader
can learn a great deal from this book in terms of seeing things from a different angle.The author is extremely learned and a good writer. But casting the
Rule of St. Benedict as a “queer” document seems unfounded.
Assumption Abbey
Richardton, ND

TERRENCE G. KARDONG, O.S.B.

Die Päpstin Johanna: Biographie einer Legende. By Max Kerner and Klaus
Herbers. (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag. 2010. Pp. 173. €20,50. ISBN 978-3-41220469-3.)
Near the end of this brief, bracing book the authors ask if we need Pope
Joan. A reviewer might well ask if we need another book about her. But to
answer their question as they do: Yes, we need Joan because, since the thirteenth century, succeeding generations have needed her, or found her useful,
for various ideological and polemical reasons.
The authors leave no doubt that by any standard of historical scholarship
there was no Pope Joan. Joan’s medieval inventers and later defenders situate

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her 2.5-year “pontificate” after Leo IV (847–55), but the record is clear:
Benedict III succeeded Leo, and there is no gap in the succession. The idea
occasionally floated that the Vatican expunged the record is nonsense.
Treatments of the Joan story usually begin in earnest with Martin of
Troppau in the thirteenth century. Max Kerner and Klaus Herbers deal extensively with Martin but also add a good deal of material from the ninth century
to the thirteenth that has not always found a place in the discussion. For
instance, John VIII (872–82) was seen by Cesare Baronius (1538–1607) as a
pope of “womanly weakness” because he recognized Photius as patriarch of
Constantinople. This may have been an inchoate local Roman legend. Then,
too, Onofrio Panvinio (1529–68) quoted a letter of Leo IX (1049–54) to
Patriarch Michael Cerularius, alleging that there had once been a woman
patriarch. Panvinio believed that such a charge could not have been entered
if there was a risk that it might have been hurled back at Rome. Once again,
however, there were apparently legends swirling in Rome.
The authors pick major periods—quarrels over papal authority in the thirteenth century, Avignon and schism, humanism, reformation, enlightenment,
democratization, secularism, feminism—and then representative writers from
each period to show how Joan was used, or misused, to score debating points.
Their writers range from famous to obscure, and their material includes
novels, plays, and operas. Kerner and Herbers explicitly write the biography
of a legend and use the legend to shed light on contemporaneous debates.At
the end, they observe that since Durckheim and Weber began teaching us to
see reality as socially constructed, the boundaries between fact and fiction
have been steadily eroded. The enduring legend of Pope Joan, therefore,
makes new and more interesting work for historians to do.
University of Notre Dame

THOMAS F. X. NOBLE

The Lives of Monastic Reformers, 1: Robert of La Chaise-Dieu and Stephen
of Obazine. Introduced and translated by Hugh Feiss, O.S.B.; Maureen M.
O’Brien; and Ronald Pepin. [Cistercian Studies Series, No. 222.]
(Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications. Distrib. by Liturgical Press. 2010.
Pp. xvi, 255. $32.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-879-07322-0.)
For those who teach the history of twelfth-century monasticism, the
arrival of this translation of the lives of two reformers from that age is a
happy occasion. This volume has two lives of Robert of La Chaise-Dieu (d.
1067), who oversaw the creation of a congregation of new Benedictine
houses from the mother-abbey of La Chaise-Dieu in the Auvergne.The first is
by Marbod of Rennes (1035–1123) and the second by a monk of Robert’s
own abbey, Bernard of La Chaise Dieu, written c. 1160.The third life, of the
hermit and monastic founder Stephen of Obazine, is composed in three
books. The first of these was written about 1166, and the second and third

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books were composed about 1180. These were all by an unnamed author
who became a monk at Obazine after Stephen’s death, but had met Stephen
before Obazine’s foundation.1
In terms of elucidating the lives of monastic reformers of the twelfth century, this volume bears comparison to recent publications of the two lives of
Robert of Arbrissel (d. 1116) by Baudri of Dol (or Bourgeuil (c. 1118) and that
by a Robert’s chaplain Andreas of Fontevrault (c. 1120).2 Not only did Stephen
of Obazine cross paths with Robert of Arbrissel in western France, but
another companion was Blessed Bernard of Tiron, whose life as written by
Geoffrey Grossus c. 1147 has recently been published in English translation.3
As these Lives become more available, it should be possible not only to compare them to one another but also to the great exemplars on which they are
based: the lives of such heroes as St. Benedict of Nursia or St. Martin of Tours.
As our bookshelves of saints’ Lives expand, we can move as well in the direction of standard presentation, including manuscript tradition, date of composition, and possibly the library context within which such lives were composed. Even undergraduates might then be able to correlate the relationships
with earlier lives, making it possible that incorporating saints’ Lives into our
courses would include more than asking which miracles might be scientifically explained or what the tangential details of them may tell us about
medieval life more generally.
University of Iowa

CONSTANCE H. BERMAN

Preaching the Memory of Virtue and Vice: Memory, Images, and Preaching
in the Late Middle Ages. By Kimberly A. Rivers. [Sermo: Studies on Patristic,
Medieval, and Reformation Sermons and Preaching, Vol. 4.] (Turnhout:
Brepols. 2010. Pp.xviii, 377. €70,00. ISBN 978-2-503-51525-0.)
In this well-informed and clearly written book (despite its somewhat awkward title), Kimberly Rivers has consolidated the explorations of her 1995
University of Toronto dissertation and a handful of articles published since
then. She is basically concerned with the function of memory in later
medieval preaching, especially among the mendicant orders. The book proceeds along historical lines and investigates various aspects of the study and
use of memory from the twelfth to the early-fifteenth century.
1
See the Latin edition and French translation by Michel Aubrun, Vie de Saint Étienne
d’Obazine (Clermont-Ferrand, 1970), which establishes several possible manuscript traditions and provides the only modern Latin edition. Corrections to that Latin text by
editors of the volume under review do not appear to have consulted the manuscripts
or be based on the conventions of medieval as opposed to classical Latin.
2
Robert of Arbrissel. A Medieval Religious Life. ed. Bruce L. Venarde (Washington,
DC, 2003).
3
Geoffrey Grossus. The Life of Blessed Bernard of Tiron, ed. Ruth Harwood Cline
(Washington, DC, 2009).

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The early Middle Ages had inherited a precise technique for a speaker to
remember his subject matter by assigning the latter to imaginary places he
would, during delivery, visit in his mind sequentially such as the furniture of
a room or the stations on a journey. This was part of the pseudo-Ciceronian
Rhetorica ad Herennium. Although preachers throughout the Middle Ages
studied and quoted this work, its memory technique evidently fell into disuse,
with one exception: the ars praedicandi by Francesc Eiximenes, O.F.M. (d.
1409), which included a detailed account of Ad Herennium’s method. None
of the other two-dozen works on preaching available in modern editions
refers to or advises the use of this ars memorativa, and in fact one of the earliest formal treatises on composing the sermon (by Thomas of Chobham, d. c.
1233–36), distances itself from it and instead recommends the preacher to
rely on “practice and diligence” (p. 41), stressing especially the need for compositional order and coherence. Rivers leaves open the possibility that the ars
memorativa was in fact taught, but clearly the advance of Scholasticism
demanded and brought with it other means by which students, and by implication preachers, would fix and order material in their memory such as notetaking, dividing a text into smaller sections, assigning them to topics, and so
forth. In nine chapters Rivers leads us from memoria in monastic, particularly
Cistercian, meditation to the advice given to students by Hugh of St. Victor,
the scholastic interest in cognitive psychology, and finally the invention of
moralized pictures by fourteenth-century English friars. She then pursues the
influence of the latter in France (Pierre Bersuire and Jean de Hesdin),
Germany (Johannes von Werden and his sermon collection Dormi secure),
and Italy (Giovanni da San Gimigniano, Bernardino da Siena, and others). Such
new devices helped preachers to structure their sermons and to teach the
laity about vices and virtues, and helped the audiences to remember what
they had heard. In contrast to the more academic interest in “memory” among
the Dominicans, she finds that Franciscans tended equally strongly to connect
memory with meditation, especially in an effort to stir up emotions. A major
focus of her study here lies on David of Augsburg.
This rich study follows very much in the wake of the now classic work of
Frances Yates and, especially, Mary Carruthers, as well as of Beryl Smalley’s
bringing to light the “classicizing friars” of the fourteenth century. It takes its
place in ongoing concerns with “memory,” which for medieval thinkers
ranged from using simple or sophisticated techniques to reflecting on practically whatever is contained in human consciousness.
University of Pennsylvania (Emeritus)

SIEGFRIED WENZEL

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769

Financing Cathedral Building in the Middle Ages: The Generosity of the
Faithful. By Wim Vroom. Translated by Elizabeth Manton. (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press. 2010. Pp.ix, 734. $89.50 paperback. ISBN 9789-089-64035-2.)
This monumental study of financing of medieval cathedral-building projects was first published in 1981 in the author’s native Dutch. This welcome
English-language version presents a revised and updated version of his original work, incorporating new scholarship done on the topic over the past
three decades. It is the most complete, authoritative, and nuanced work of
scholarship yet published on the topic. As such, it will be welcomed by
anyone wishing to learn about all aspects of how Europe’s great medieval
cathedrals were financed.
Wim Vroom addresses four key questions:Where did the resources to pay
for cathedrals originate? By what means were these sources amassed? What is
the order of magnitude of the sums available to fund the building campaigns?
What was the pattern of ebb and flow of monies available to support major
building projects over time, and how did this affect the pace and timing of
building?
To answer these questions,Vroom has amassed an impressive body of data
drawn from the surviving fabric records of some eighty cathedrals where construction projects were undertaken during the later Middle Ages. He then
presents an exhaustively detailed case study (c. 130 pages) of the three centuries of building entailed in the construction of the Utrecht Dom, in turn
supplemented by briefer accounts from the fabric rolls that have survived for
building projects at eight additional cathedrals: Sens, Bourges, Exeter,Troyes,
Toledo, Milan, Segovia, and St. Peter’s in Rome.
The result is an analysis presented in two main parts that is at once broad
and deep. Part 1 of his book explains the common understandings of the time
about which parties—i.e., bishops and canons—should properly commission
building works and their obligations to draw on sources of income available
to them to help pay the costs. He then provides a systematic overview of the
various sources of income on which they drew to finance building works and
explains the methods they used to do so. His descriptions of the patterns of
funding in his individual case studies shows in illuminating detail the exact
impact that financing had on the pace and scope of building campaigns and
the modifications that were required in the face of funding shortages.
Several conclusions emerge from his study. One is that construction projects were never funded by any single source, or even a handful of them.The
bishops and cathedral chapters responsible for paying the bills drew on every
imaginable source of funds they could identify. The list includes gifts from
founding bishops and cathedral chapters responsible for paying the bills; initiation fees charged canons for becoming chapter members; fines levied

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against them for violating chapter rules; gifts from popes, kings, and other secular rulers; tithes levied against parish churches within the jurisdiction of the
bishopric in question; sales of indulgences; gifts given by pilgrims visiting the
shrines of saints housed by the cathedral; profits from fairs held in connection with major feast days; loans; and other sundry sources of income.Vroom
shows how the circumstance of each cathedral dictated the pattern of its
financing and in turn affected the scope of the design that was affordable and
the pace of work to implement it.
The result is a work so encyclopedic that it marks the essential beginning
point for any future study of cathedral financing that may be undertaken.
Scholars of the topic owe Vroom a major debt of gratitude for the care with
which he has assembled this detailed overview of an important aspect of
cathedral building during the Middle Ages.
Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University

ROBERT A. SCOTT

Kirche, Magie, und “Aberglaube”: Superstitio in der Kanonistik des 12. und
13. Jahrhunderts. By Patrick Hersperger. [Forschungen zum kirchlichen
Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht, Band 31.] (Cologne: Böhlau
Verlag. 2010. Pp. 533. €64,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-412-20397-9.)
Emerging from a doctoral dissertation at the University of Zurich, this
book is an extremely detailed study of magic and superstition as treated in
texts of canon law from Gratian’s Decretum, written around 1140, to the publication of the Liber extra in 1234. In the third chapter, Hersperger lays out
the development of canon law in this period, discussing the composition of
the Decretum, then methodically working through subsequent commentary
and scholarship on that text in Bologna (long the greatest center of legal
scholarship in medieval Europe and the place where the Decretum was composed), France, Germany, and the “Anglo-Norman” realm (meaning Angevin
England and Angevin holdings in France). Finally, he turns to recount more
briefly the emergence of decretales (subsequent papal rulings, eventually collected into the Liber extra) and treatment of matters of canon law in confessors’ manuals.This typology of sources forms Hersperger’s basic structure of
analysis, not only in this chapter but throughout much of the book.
Before turning to the issue of superstition, Hersperger provides some general background. After an introductory first chapter, he dedicates a brief
second chapter to an overview of the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth
century, of which the growth of canon law was a part. Chapter 3, already
described, is a detailed, text-by-text explication of the “Development of
Classical Canon Law.” With chapter 4, Hersperger addresses the topic of
superstition, offering a relatively brief survey of how superstition, magic, and
demonic power were treated in antiquity and in patristic and early-medieval

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sources. Chapters 5 and 6 are the analytical heart of the book. Chapter 5
examines how the Decretum, decretist commentaries, and other sources dealt
with superstition. In more than forty pages, Hersperger moves systematically
through each text introduced in chapter 3, explaining the manner in which it
addresses superstition. A gigantic chapter 6 (more than 200 pages) provides
topical analysis. Here, subsections dealing with the terminology employed for
superstitious and magical practices, with demonology, casting lots, astrology
and observance of days and times, incantations and amulets, maleficium, and
with penance and punishment for such activities are themselves chapterlength units.Within each unit, Hersperger’s approach is again to proceed text
by text, detailing how the particular topic is addressed.
Hersperger’s scholarship is exhaustive within the strict limits he defines.
The result is an extensive catalogue of what canon law in its classical period
says about superstition.As such, the book will appeal mainly to experts interested in specific details. Broader points, although present in the work, can get
somewhat buried in the painstakingly systematic approach or can be
addressed too quickly in various concluding sections. For example, given the
extreme conservatism of canon law and its reliance on earlier rulings, a looming question throughout the book is the degree to which canonists writing in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were depicting actual contemporary
practices, versus simply recapitulating traditional tropes. Hersperger engages
with this issue briefly in his overall conclusion (chapter 7), acknowledging
the problem but asserting that in general most of the material dealt with by
canonists must have had some contemporary relevance. No doubt his judgment here is based on the massive amount of data he has assembled in previous chapters, but very little direct argumentation is offered to support the
point. Certainly no contemporary cases are invoked. This is, first and last, a
study of a textual tradition.
Iowa State University

MICHAEL D. BAILEY

St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne: Relics, Reliquaries
and the Visual Culture of Group Sanctity in Late Medieval Europe. By
Scott B. Montgomery. (Bern: Peter Lang. 2010. Pp. xvi, 207. $60.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-039-11852-6.)
As Scott Montgomery argues, the cult of St. Ursula and her companion martyrs deserves attention as the most widespread in Europe. Given the treasure
trove of relics discovered in a cemetery under the medieval walls of Cologne,
identified and disseminated from the early-twelfth century as the relics of the
saint’s cohort (both male and female), such ubiquity is not surprising.
Montgomery’s task, however, is not primarily that of discussing the “bones,”but
rather, as an art historian,“to explore . . . collective imaging, investigating how
text, image and relic display . . . fashion[ed] a total cult environment that
expressed the power, presence and cohesion of [the] company of the Holy
Virgins of Cologne”(p. 3). Excepting the excellent 1997 study by Joan Holladay

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in Studies in Iconography, most work on Ursula is in German; so this book,
with its extensive bibliography, is a welcome addition for English readers.
Montgomery examines the visual manifestations of the cult from the fifthcentury stone plaque of the “Clematius” inscription to the seventeenth-century Golden Chamber of Sankt Ursula, the storehouse of the church’s some
120 reliquary busts, 670 additional skulls, and the many other bones that line
the walls—arranged to spell out prayers of invocation. Medieval Cologne,
with its busts, narrative paintings, and altarpieces, is clearly the primary focus
of the author’s attention, but discussion makes substantial forays to Basel (a
silver-gilt reliquary head), Bruges (Memling’s painted shrine), and Renaissance
Venice (Carpaccio’s frescoes). Unfortunately for the reader, some pieces
under discussion are not illustrated, and too often the small black-and-white
images do not always reveal the details mentioned in the text.
A discussion of the early foundation of the cult in the second chapter is
summary. The treatment of the Clematius inscription is minimal (what is its
archaeological status?), and we move quickly through sermons, martyrologies,
and vitae to the eleventh century—a moment when Ursula has been identified, in the vita Regnante Domino, as the leader of troupe of 11,000 virgins
(not eleven anonymous virgins as per the inscription).The more than 100 surviving copies of the Regnante Domino attest to the new urgency of the cult
and seem to have led in short order to the discovery and excavation of the
Roman cemetery in 1106 and the rebuilding of the church of “the Virgins.”
Nothing is more characteristic of the visual culture of later medieval
Cologne than the hundreds of pretty, smiling reliquary busts of painted wood
produced beginning in the thirteenth century and, for example, displayed in
its churches on the Feast of All Saints or carried in procession by Cologne’s
young women in an affirmation of civic unity (attested in the seventeenth
century, p. 77). Montgomery gives a useful tour of the German scholarship on
this and other visual material and emphasizes certain themes he finds compelling: the identification of Ursula with the Virgin Mary, especially as protector; the association of the Virgins with church walls and city walls; the “corporate identity” of the Virgins; and finally, a notion that to enter the spaces of
the shrine(s) meant to “become” part of the cohort oneself.
At certain moments, the author digs deeper—as when he provides an
explanation of how anonymous relics in Basel were transformed into those of
Ursula herself and further supplemented through a gift from Cologne of the
head of Pantalus, the Basel bishop who was martyred with Ursula.The result
was the creation of a second major center of the cult and a pair of beautiful
head reliquaries for the Basel treasury (chapter IX).This short book, however,
is primarily a survey of the many artworks inspired by the cult of Ursula. It is
filled with appreciative description, historical nuggets, and speculative suggestions of lines of investigation yet to be explored.
Hunter College, City University of New York

CYNTHIA HAHN

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Una leggenda in cerca d’autore: la Vita di santa Chiara d’Assisi. Studio delle
fonti e sinossi intertestuale. By Marco Guida. [Subsidia hagiographica, 90.]
(Brussels: Société des Bollandistes. 2010. Pp. x, 255. €65,00 paperback.
ISBN 978-2-873-65024-7.)
About the same time that Pope Alexander IV canonized Clare of Assisi in
1255, he commissioned a hagiographical legend to support her cult. The
resulting Life of Saint Clare never identifies its author, although surely it was
known to some contemporaries. Modern scholars have debated its authorship since early in the twentieth century as part of the “Franciscan
Question”—shorthand for the debates surrounding early sources for the life
of St. Francis of Assisi and his followers. Following some medieval manuscripts, St. Bonaventure was identified as Clare’s biographer, whereas others
claimed it was Thomas of Celano, who had written three biographical works
on Francis. Giovanni Boccali suggested an anonymous cleric within the papal
curia as author, based on its use of biblical citation and relatively little detail
concerning Francis. Marco Guido now presents a compelling argument in
favor of Thomas. In addition to resolving this issue, his important study sheds
additional light on the relationship between the early Franciscan brotherhood
and the female community at San Damiano, as well as the transmission of
Clare’s writings and biographical records.
The centerpiece of Guida’s study is a synoptic comparison of the three
thirteenth-century biographical sources for Clare’s life: the process of canonization, the bull declaring her sainthood, and the legend itself. A complex
table uses varying colors and typefaces to show the interrelationships
between these texts, as well as borrowings from other contemporary documents including Francis’s biographies and Clare’s writings. His methodology
follows that of the Federazione Santa Chiara di Assisi delle Clarisse di UmbriaSardegna, a research team of Franciscan sisters, whose similar treatment of the
Rule of Saint Clare in Chiara d’Assisi e le sue fonti legislative. Sinossi cromatica (Padua, 2003) provided new insights into the circumstances of its
composition.
This chart demonstrates how the Legend of Saint Clare frequently uses literal phrases from the canonization process. This is more significant than it
may seem. Clare’s process exists only in a vernacular version, prepared by the
Clarissan nun Battista Alfani in the late-fifteenth century.The correspondences
between process and legend indicate that her translation is a faithful version
of an earlier Latin text. It is thus not simply the best text we have, but an
authoritative one.
Guida also identifies fifteen direct borrowings from Thomas’s writings on
Francis. These passages—along with the use of similar liturgical phrases, analogous descriptions of events, and stylistic commonalities—contribute to his
identification of Thomas’s authorship. Furthermore, he establishes that the
author had to be someone with an intimate knowledge of Franciscan con-

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cerns and emphases, a description that fits the friar who effectively was the
order’s “official” hagiographer prior to Bonaventure.
Guida develops this connection by examining how oral testimony and
evidence from Clare’s writings were incorporated into the legend. He convincingly argues that details about her conversion and the early days of the
female movement could only have come from new testimony from sisters at
San Damiano and from those friars who were close to the women. These
included Ruffino, Angelo, and Leo, Francis’s so-called socii (“companions”),
who, the Legend uniquely records, attended Clare’s deathbed. These witnesses provided information about Francis’s role in Clare’s formation and her
confrontations with successive popes over the sisters’ ability to live without
possessions. Leo even may have collaborated with Thomas, Guida suggests,
and provided access to Clare’s writings (he has been identified as the scribe
of the earliest manuscript containing her works). Here Guida is following
other scholars in identifying a “magic circle” of figures (including Clare) who
testify to the early Franciscan movement, a resource that Thomas was best
suited to access.
In sum, anyone interested in early Franciscan history will benefit from
reading this convincing argument for Thomas’s authorship of the Legend of
Saint Clare. Guida confirms Thomas’s skill as an effective hagiographer,
although the friar and his relationship with the socii remain somewhat
opaque at the end of his study. For example, one of the legend’s most noteworthy omissions is any reference to Clare’s Rule, which is both mentioned
in the process and whose composition was shepherded by Leo, as recent
scholarship has shown. Guida’s study closely focuses on the textual evidence
and so addresses this omission only briefly and nonconclusively. He does not
speculate here about competing interests in the papal curia and Franciscan
Order, both of which advocated a more traditional form of female religious
life than that represented in Clare’s rule. It will be interesting to hear more
about Thomas’s compromises from this important new scholar.
Marquette University

LEZLIE KNOX

Greater than a Mother’s Love:The Spirituality of Francis and Clare of Assisi.
By Gilberto Cavazos-González, O.F.M. (Scranton: University of Scranton
Press. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2010. Pp. xx, 308. $28.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-589-66213-1.)
In the last couple of decades a number of significant works have been
written about Francis and Clare of Assisi in which the authors attempt to situate the two saints in the context of their social, economic, and religious
world of the thirteenth century. Authors Jacques Dalarun, Michael Cusato,
David Flood, and others have focused our attention on the issues of power,
money, and prestige (honor) in the religious world of Francis and Clare.They
have taught us that we must always begin with the writings of the two

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founders of the Franciscan movement before we turn to the early biographies
(hagiography). Many mistakes have been made in recent years by writers who
do not take these writings into consideration and base their studies on the
early biographies of the two saints. What is significant is that Gilberto
Cavazos-González in Greater Than a Mother’s Love bases most of his presentation on the writings of Francis and Clare and puts them to good use, but
incorporates what the biographical literature has to tell us about their families and kinship relations as well.
The book is divided into five chapters, the first of which discusses the role
of the family in the high Middle Ages. This is an informative introduction to
situating a particular person in the society of his or her time through the use
of cultural and human sciences.These many forms of knowledge contribute
to showing how the Holy Spirit (grace) worked on Francis and Clare in the
everyday social and cultural experience of the two saints (nature). CavazosGonzález discusses not only the role of the family but also the role of marriage and children, which is extremely helpful to understand the family of origins and family development of the two saints. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the
similarities and differences of Francis and Clare’s respective family and social
status (merchant class versus noble class) as revealed mainly in the early
hagiographical writings and modern studies. Chapters 4 and 5 delve into the
world of the writings of Francis and Clare to discuss their respective perspectives on kinship as reflected in their opuscula.Treated by way of exception are the issues of the role of Paternitas, Christology, and spirituality in
these last two chapters.
The book is an excellent introduction to the everyday spiritual lives of
Francis and Clare in their familial and communal context. Cavazos-González
shows how the experiences of their families of origin helped to shape, but
did not determine, their respective approaches to their newly founded
Franciscan family/religious community. He is successful in helping us “enter
into the ‘living personal images’ of mother, father, brothers, sisters, and
spouses as experienced in the cotidiano [everydayness] of Francis, Clare, and
their readers” (p. 205). He shows how their writings, in particular, reveal how
they approached living their respective lives, after their break from their
family of origin, in the spiritual family of the Franciscan community. Based on
his approach and methodology, excellent use of the sources, and judicious
findings, this book will be a standard textbook for any further studies on the
spirituality of Francis and Clare.
Prior Lake, MN

STEVEN J. MCMICHAEL, O.F.M.CONV.

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The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness. Hagiography, Patronage and
Ecclesiastical Politics. By Helen Birkett. (Rochester, NY: York Medieval
Press in association with Boydell & Brewer. 2010. Pp. xii, 326. $115.00.
ISBN 978-1-903-15333-8.)
Little is known of the life of Jocelin of Furness. He was a priest-monk of
the Cistercian abbey of Furness is what is now Cumbria, and his writings indicate that he was active from about 1174 to 1214 (when he probably died).
Efforts to identify him with two other Jocelins—one the abbot of Furness, the
other the abbot of Rushen (a daughter-house of Furness)—remain unconvincing. Jocelin’s literary endeavors compose the four saints’ lives that are the
subject of Helen Birkett’s detailed study, and (according to Thomas Tanner) a
work De Britonum episcopis, which, if it was indeed a product of Jocelin’s
pen, has not survived.
The four saints’ lives are those of Patrick who, as everyone knows, expelled
the snakes from Ireland (Jocelin is the earliest source for this tale); Helena, the
mother of Constantine; Kentigern († c. 612), the Scottish missionary who was
bishop of Strathclyde; and the more obscure but attractive figure of Waltheof
or Waldef (c. 1100–59), an Austin canon who transferred to the Cistercians
and became abbot of Melrose. Birkett’s admirable study of these four vitae
reveals the contexts in which they were composed, the audiences for which
they were intended, how they reflect the complex political and ecclesiastical
situation of the times, and how the author adapted the material to satisfy the
interests of his patrons.Who were these patrons?
The Life of Patrick was commissioned by Tomaltach, archbishop of
Armagh; Malachy, bishop of Down; and John de Courcy, the Anglo-Norman
ruler of what are now the counties of Down and Antrim, and the work attests
to “the close alliance of the reformed church and the new Anglo-Norman
regime in the north of Ireland” (p. 170). De Courcy was the founder of the
Cisterian abbey of Inch in County Down, and Inch was a daughter-house of
Furness. The vita is a decidedly political document, in which Jocelin clearly
reveals his talent for adapting older narratives to the current concerns of his
patrons. His life of Kentigern is similar. This was commissioned by Jocelin’s
namesake, Bishop Jocelin of Glasgow (formerly prior of Melrose), who died in
1199, and was intended to show that the diocese deserved an ecclesiastical
status independent of the English church. Jocelin, who was always happy to
moralize, also shows what, in his view, are the duties and responsibilities of a
true bishop.
The Lives of Helena and Waltheof are rather different. Birkett shows that
the former was probably commissioned by the nuns of either Elstow in
Bedfordshire or St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in London, and the work should be
understood “as both a window onto the Helena legend and a mirror of contemporary failings—both an idealized biographical study and a religio-political commentary on the early thirteenth century” (p. 256). As to the life of

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Waltheof, this, certainly, was intended to promote the cause of the abbot’s
canonization, although it did not succeed in its purpose.Waltheof was never
formally canonized, although he was the object of a popular cult until the
Reformation. Unlike the other vitae, Jocelin here includes eyewitness
accounts of undoubted historical importance.
Birkett’s excellent volume, rich in detail and with comprehensive footnotes, presents a wholly convincing reason for re-evaluating Jocelin and his
works. He is, she says, a writer “who has been undervalued for too long” (p.
285), and the book may be recommended unreservedly to any student of
hagiography and its purposes.
Memorial University of Newfoundland

DAVID N. BELL

Jocelin of Wells: Bishop, Builder, Courtier. Edited by Robert Dunning. [Studies
in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. XXXVI.] (Rochester, NY: The
Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2010. Pp. xiv, 202. $95.00.
ISBN 978-1-843-83556-1.)
This collection of essays on one of the most important bishops of his generation is divided into three sections: Jocelin as bishop, Jocelin as builder, and
Jocelin’s palace at Wells. Nestled between the covers of this volume is the collected wisdom of ten scholars, who have brought their expertise to the problem of understanding Jocelin of Wells (bishop from 1206 to 1242).
The outstanding essay in the collection is Sethina Watson’s delightfully
well-written piece exploring the relationship between the bishop and his two
urban communities of Bath and Wells, and placing the development of that
relationship within the general context of urban development in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. Watson examines the reasons for Bath’s failure to
thrive as an episcopal seat and then shows how Wells emerged as a preferred
location for the center of the bishop’s administration. In addition, Watson has
included a short and valuable essay on the hospital of St. John the Baptist at
Wells.Watson’s contribution has an extraordinary level of research embedded
within it and makes a genuinely new contribution to our understanding of
developments of episcopal towns; as such, it deserves to be cited by urban
and ecclesiastical historians alike.
Matthew Reeve’s essay on Robert Burnell’s transformation of Jocelin’s
episcopal palace at Wells is equally well provided with high-quality research,
if perhaps deployed without the wider vision so tellingly applied by Watson.
He shows that Burnell (r. 1275–92) was a builder of considerable influence
who played a crucial role in the development of Decorated style in domestic
architecture. His is an important piece of reconstructive archaeology that will
need to be referenced by anyone interested in the Decorated style and in episcopal palaces in general.

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Tim Tatton-Brown and Jerry Samson discuss Jocelin as a builder in Wells,
the former putting palace building in the wider context of episcopal building
works in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the latter looking at the archaeological evidence for Jocelin’s works on the palace and the cathedral; his is an
important and informative essay that brings up to date the published findings
on the standing remains of Jocelin’s work. Alex Turner, Christopher Gerrard,
and Keith Wilkinson report on the geophysical and geoarchaeological surveys
undertaken in 1998 and 2003–04. The evidence is presented in a clear
manner, so that even the uninitiated can make sense of the important results
achieved by those who conducted the surveys. Mark Horton sets the palace
in its historic landscape raising questions about the relationship between the
medieval bishop and his residence.
Three historical essays by Nicholas Vincent, Jane Sayers, and Diana
Greenway look at Jocelin, the thirteenth-century bishop in general, and the
cathedral chapter. All three pieces provide useful insights into Jocelin and his
milieu, although the hypercritical reviewer might notice that there is an
unfortunate degree of repetition between them, which a fiercer editor would
have eliminated. David Hill has a fascinating exploration of the lichens that
are to be found on the walls of the palace, illustrating the importance of the
palace as habitation for these composite organisms.
The volume is lavishly provided with illustrations, including twenty-two
color plates. These illustrations, in color and black and white, make a wonderful addition to the volume. The editor is to be congratulated for bringing
together such a distinguished group of scholars. This is a splendid volume and
is destined to become an important reference point for future studies.
University of East Anglia

S. D. CHURCH

Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval
Germany. By Erika Lauren Lindgren. [Gutenberg-e Online History Series.]
(New York: Columbia University Press. 2009. Pp. xvi, 190. $60.00. ISBN 9780-231-14238-0).
Erika Lindgren’s Sensual Encounters has a very interesting scope: The
author tries to unravel the interaction between environment and experience
of Dominican sisters in the upper Rhine area; she chooses six convents from
a wide range of possibilities (Unterlinden in Colmar, St. Katharinenthal,
Diessenhofen, and three convents in Freiburg/Breisgau:Adelhausen, St.Agnes,
and the Penitents of St. Mary Magdalene).These houses offer her a broad variety of sources; three of them left so-called Sisterbooks to posterity (which
Lindgren, unfortunately, uses quite uncritically).The author includes liturgical
and other manuscripts, economic and legal documents, materials related to
architecture, and artwork. However, Lindgren does not provide a reason why
she refers to these particular convents. She does not justify her inclusion of

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the Freiburg Penitents, which, strictly speaking, were not part of the Second
Order of St. Dominic at its inception, despite its close links to the Dominicans.
On the other hand, she excludes, for example, Töss and Oetenbach, the
Strasbourg houses. Her decision to concentrate on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries prevents her from using the rich source material extant from
the reformed convents since the end of the fourteenth century. In the first
chapter Lindgren turns to the “spatial environment” (p. 27), moving from the
center (church and choir) to the—arguably—less spiritually charged areas
(such as kitchen, dormitory, and garden); here, she detects a tension between
the legally prescribed uses of these spaces and “the female Dominicans subverting the specific officially designated functions of monastic spaces” (p. 50).
The second chapter explores the visual environment that has already
received wide-ranging scholarly attention, especially through the groundbreaking research of Jeffrey Hamburger; Lindgren relies predominantly on
remains of St. Katharinenthal and the Freiburg convents and correlates the
material sources with the written testimonies, giving a valuable insight into
the sisters’ spiritual interaction with and practical, hands-on use of the objects
in their environment. The next chapter scrutinizes the acoustic environment,
and appropriately Lindgren does equally refer to silence and sound in the sisters’ environment. Silence was as much part of the official regulations as it
was part of the women’s spirituality; but, as Lindgren points out, the sisters
could be quite noisy at times: they did not only sing the prescribed divine
services but also incorporated sounds of joy and suffering into their devotion
and, Lindgren argues, so defied the official regulations.The last chapter refers
to the “textual environment” (p. 142); the multiple tasks fulfilled by the sisters
required the daily use of written material. Since Lindgren restricts herself to
the prereform period she has to rely mainly on liturgical manuscripts that
were, of course, written in Latin. The author stresses the bilingual culture
within the Dominican convents and concedes that “the individual devotions
were often in the vernacular,” but does this not contradict her earlier statement of the “prevalence of . . . [the Latin] language in their conception of spirituality”? (p. 148).
On the whole, Lindgren provides an interesting insight into the lively spirituality of Dominican sisters in the context of their material environment.
However, at times she overstates the antagonism of male/official regulation
and female/spontaneous spirituality. Additionally, the book would have profited if Lindgren had referred to the large number of more recent publications
on her subject; the omission of Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton’s Defining
the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Burlington,
VT, 2006) is especially regrettable.
King’s College, University of Aberdeen

MARIE-LUISE EHRENSCHWENDTNER

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Die ältesten Viten Papst Cölestins V. (Peters vom Morrone). Edited by Peter
Herde. [Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum,
Nova Series, XXIII.] (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. 2008. Pp. xii,
282. €38,00. ISBN 978-3-775-20223-7.)
The oldest hagiographies of Pietro da Murrone, also known as Pope and
Saint Celestine V (1294), are three: an “autobiography,” the text De continua
conversatione, and the Tractatus de vita et operibus atque obitu ipsius
sancti viri. Peter Herde, who wrote Cölestin V (1294) (Stuttgart, 1981), provides an edited version here of the sole surviving medieval manuscript and
two earlymodern ones. The “autobiography” has been printed several times
before: by the Bollandists in 1866, by Arsenio Frugoni in 1954, and by
Vincenzo Licitra in 1992. These editions are deficient: the Bollandists merely
reprinted a faulty seventeenth-century text; Frugoni made transcription
errors and did not provide an apparatus fontium; and Licitra, not immune
from typographical errors himself, had his edition published by an obscure
Italian research institute which never distributed the volume to the public.
Licitra’s “publication” is the lone product of an ambitious project begun by
Raoul Manselli (1917–84) to re-edit all of the material related to Celestine V.
Out of deference to this project, Herde waited to publish his own edition,
turning in the typescript to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) in
1983. Some twenty-five years later, the MGH has published his updated work.
In his introduction and notes to the texts, Herde gently corrects minor misapprehensions in his previous publications and, more pointedly, substantial
mistakes in works of other scholars. His long introduction (pp. 1–62) provides
a clear and careful consideration of the provenance of the three texts. Although
the incipit of the “autobiography” states that it is a “tract . . . written by his own
hand and left in his cell,” the work is not really an autobiography: The conceit
of first-person narrative is abandoned abruptly after little more than a paragraph. Herde suggests that this work was actually written, perhaps before the
papal election that it does not acknowledge, by a confrère who knew the
pope from an early age. De continua conversatione (pp. 91–100) is shorter
than the autobiography (pp. 67–88) but more sophisticated in its range of references (e.g., Virgil, Ovid, Livy). De continua conversatione describes da
Murrone’s routine of prayer and ascetic exertions; only at the end does it
allude to his elevation to the throne of Peter in 1294 and resignation shortly
thereafter. Herde dates De continua conversatione to the beginning of the
canonization process under Clement V (1305–14) around the year 1306.The
last text in the volume is the longest (pp. 103–222) and most recognizable as
a conventional Vita. It covers the entire life of the saint and ends with a miracle collection. Herde suggests that this text, too, dates to 1306 or so.
As is typical of MGH volumes, this is a learned edition of medieval texts
that is unlikely to be superseded; it also is beautifully produced with a Veuve
Cliquot-orange cover.
University at Albany, State University of New York

PATRICK NOLD

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William Durand, On the Clergy and Their Vestments: A New Translation of
Books 2 and 3 of the Rationale divinorum officiorum.Translated and with
an introduction by Timothy M. Thibodeau. (Scranton: University of
Scranton Press. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 262.
$35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-589-66191-2.)
The Rationale divinorum officiorum, compiled c. 1292–96 by William
Durand, bishop of Mende, was the high-medieval synthesis of a long and
important tradition of liturgical commentaries. From the Carolingian era,
these commentaries were a key tool in the education and formation of the
Western clergy. Their production was closely linked to reform initiatives, and
Durand compiled his Rationale after a particularly fruitful period in the
development of the genre. He drew heavily on treatises by Lothario of Segni
(the future Pope Innocent III), Sicardus of Cremona, and William of Auxerre.
The comprehensiveness of Durand’s Rationale made it a medieval “best
seller”; Durand himself issued two editions that survive in more than 139
manuscripts.
This new translation of an important part of a very important work, therefore, is most welcome. The translator, Timothy M. Thibodeau, worked on the
critical edition of the text with Anselme Davril, O.S.B., in the series Corpvs
Christianorvm Continuatio Mediævalis and so knows this material intimately.
He published a translation of the prologue and book I, which treats church
buildings and furnishings as well as their dedications and consecrations (New
York, 2007). He now provides this volume, covering book II on the ecclesiastical orders and their offices (from cantor to bishop) and book III on vestments, insignia, and other liturgical equipment.Thibodeau gives a straightforward historical introduction that should be easily comprehensible to
undergraduates and seminarians alike. The translation is faithful to Durand’s
own workmanlike prose and errs only in some minutia of ecclesiastical vesture (e.g., p. 172: compagi are not “boots,” but elegant black leather slippers
depicted in numerous late-antique mosaics). Scholars using this translation
will want to keep two things in mind. First, for anything regarding ecclesiastical vestments, the learned Jesuit Joseph Braun’s Die liturgische Gewandung
(Freiburg, 1907) is still essential (for example, on compagi or campagi, p.
385). This encyclopedic and erudite guide is far superior to anything published in any other language on vestments, and its numerous indices ease consultation. Second, the annotation here—although perfectly appropriate to its
primary audience of students and seminarians—does not convey the full richness of Durand’s sources. That is available in the apparatus of the critical edition, and any scholarly use of Durand should rely on it and not the abbreviated notes here.
This translation certainly makes a salutary contribution to the study of
medieval ecclesiastical history. Those interested in the history of Holy Orders,
clerical education, and the material culture of Western Christendom will find

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it particularly rewarding.Thibodeau has provided, moreover, an inviting gateway to the rich and important genre of liturgical commentaries. One can only
hope that many enter it.
University of California, Berkeley

MAUREEN C. MILLER

Marriage Advice for a Pope: John XXII and the Power to Dissolve. By Patrick
Nold. [Medieval Law and Its Practice,Vol. 3.] (Leiden: Brill. 2009. Pp. xcviii,
206. $158.00. ISBN 978-9-004-17111-4.)
The standard histories of marriage law, at least the marriage law of the
Church, jump from the thirteenth century to sixteenth. Only the more careful writers pause to say that, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
popes began, quite quietly, to dispense couples who had formed a marriage
by the exchange of present consent but had not had sexual intercourse to
marry others—that is, to dissolve unconsummated present-consent marriages. Prior to that time, only the entry of one of the couple into the religious
life would release the other to marry a third person. That this was the only
ground for dissolving an unconsummated present-consent marriage was the
result of a decretal of Pope Innocent III (Ex parte tua, X 3.32.14). Innocent’s
predecessors had experimented with other possible grounds for dissolving
such marriages.
Virtually everyone who has told this story has ignored Pope John XXII’s
decretal Antiquae concertationi (December 1, 1322; Extrav. Jo. XXII 6.un).
Those simply tracing changes in legal doctrine can ignore it, because it simply
confirms the holding of Ex parte tua: Entry into religion is the only way in
which an unconsummated present-consent marriage can be dissolved. The
taking of higher orders, but remaining a “secular”—that is, not entering a religious order—does not serve to dissolve the marriage. Any man who is party
to an unconsummated present-consent marriage who takes higher orders
must either enter the religious life (in which case the marriage is dissolved)
or must return to his spouse (in which case the orders are invalid). In the context of the development of ideas, this decretal should have given rise to more
consideration. Why was the pope in the mid-1320s issuing a decretal on this
topic? After all, he did not think it necessary to confirm any of the other doctrines about marriage that had been established over the course of the latetwelfth and early-thirteenth centuries.
The answer, of course, is that the issue was controversial in the early-fourteenth century and had been controversial for some time (the antiqua concertatio referred to in the incipit of the decretal).The great mid-thirteenthcentury canonist Hostiensis had suggested that it was hard to distinguish
between entry into religion and the taking of higher orders (which contained an implied vow of chastity even if one was not expressly taken).The
sayings of Jesus on divorce in the New Testament were based on the state-

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ment in Genesis that the two had become one flesh—a fairly clear reference
to sexual intercourse (Mk. 10:6–10; Mt. 19:4–6, both quoting Gn. 2:24)—and
the sacramentality of marriage suggested in Ephesians 5:31–32 also relies on
the same Genesis text. If the divine prohibition on divorce was based on a
marriage’s being consummated, then the normal indissolubility of unconsummated present-consent marriages was a matter of church law, which the
pope could change.
What Patrick Nold has discovered is not only that there are hints of this
debate in the already published texts concerning marriage but also that
John XXII commissioned a group of thirteen cardinals, theologians, and
canonists, to advise him on the matter (some members gave two opinions).
One manuscript of these consultations survives, and it is this manuscript
that is edited here.
The edition is a fine piece of craftsmanship. The text itself should have
been edited years ago. It is one of the few that shows in one place the range
of possible views that lies behind a papal decision. Interestingly, all but one of
the consultants takes the position that the pope should not expand the
grounds for dissolution of unconsummated present-consent marriages. Most
of them, however, come to the conclusion that he has the power to do so.
Indeed, both the grounds for the dispensations that the popes began to issue
approximately a century later and their failure to publicize the fact that they
were doing so can be illuminated by the arguments presented here. The
grounds suggested for not changing the current practice vary and will need
to be studied with more care, but a basically conservative impulse seems to
be at stake (one should not lightly change what has been decided) and a perception of a quite wide gap between the secular life (even of the clergy) and
the religious life (even if not accompanied by orders). An interesting argument also is reported based on the equality of men and women in marriage:
If simply taking orders were enough to dissolve an unconsummated presentconsent marriage, then a man could unilaterally dissolve such a marriage in
circumstances where a woman could not.
Nold’s introduction is a careful exposition of all these issues. The relationship between John XXII’s method of proceeding in this case and in the
case of apostolic poverty is delineated. Nold’s command both of the theology and the law of marriage is impressive. Perhaps most interesting is his
argument that the dialogue between theologians and lawyers on the topic
of marriage continued into the fourteenth century. The prevailing view is
that it had ceased by the middle of the thirteenth century, and that view is
clearly wrong.
Harvard Law School

CHARLES DONAHUE JR.

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Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence. By Sharon T. Strocchia. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009. Pp. xviii, 261. $50.00. ISBN
978-0-801-89292-9.)
This book can be considered the mature fruit of an intense literary production on nuns and Italian and European nunneries in the medieval and
early-modern periods. For more than twenty years, under the aegis of social
history and women’s studies, research on female monasteries has emerged
from the exclusive circle of studies of ecclesiastical and religious history to
become the relevant object of the history of the Ancien Regime.The fortunate
encounters between the prevailing socio-anthropological directions of
English-speaking historians and Italian, political-institutional historians whose
work is concentrated on the history of the city has brought into focus the
importance of the monastic institution under the various headings of the history of the family, society, and culture.The book of Sharon T. Strocchia fills a
lacuna, focusing on a problem that up to now has been scarcely investigated,
such as the work of the nuns and the social relevance exercised by the nunneries in the urban economy.
The research, which utilized numerous unedited sources, investigated the
Florentine monastic institutions of the fifteenth century. The chronological
limits fixed by the author (1348, the year of the Black Death, and 1529–30, the
siege of Florence) indicate clearly the intent to examine the proper object of
study in the ambit of social and political urban history, considering the importance and role carried out by the nuns in the context of the repopulation and
of the economic recovery in the Renaissance period preceding the return of
the Medici to the city and the setting up of the Grand Duchy.
The volume is divided into five chapters that analyze the following topics
in depth: (1) the demographic aspect and the institutional development of
female monasteries in the chronological time span indicated; (2) the occupation and redefinition of the urban space through the neighborhood, the
extent of the property, and the competition among rival convents; (3) the
economy and financial structure of the convents, the rapport between the
private and communal property of the nuns, the relation between public
finance and monastic property; (4) the role of the labor of the nuns in the
ambit of conventual finance and the urban economy, the destination of the
production for the market, and the level of professionalization attained by the
nuns in silk production, culture, and education; and (5) the discipline of the
convents, the open monasteries, and reactions to the obligation of cloister.
The picture traced by this articulate volume shows an unedited aspect of
the development of female ecclesiastical institutions of the Quattrocento that
should necessarily be considered by those who study the religious movements of the Observance and seek to interpret the proliferation of the small
groups of tertiaries who lived in community supporting themselves by their
own labor.The volume also provides elements useful for a discussion of the

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785

concept of monastic poverty. A greater attention to the adherence of the individual monasteries to various religious orders and their institutional adjustment (true and proper monasteries or convents of tertiaries) could have
enriched the description of the interweaving among religious impulses, economic reasons, and social origin.That not withstanding, the design of a relevant female presence in the economic, social, and cultural reality of fifteenthcentury Florence is finely drawn and should be fully considered by scholars
of the Renaissance period.
The historiographical perspective of political, economic, and social history
of the city does not exhaust the spectrum of visual interpretations. In addition, some of the questions posed in the last decades from the historiography
of women are present: the problem of female identity in relation to the possession and transmission of money, the role of women in social mediation and
patronage, and the problem of cloister and sexuality in the convents.
Regarding the last theme, the author shows in the fifth chapter the interest of
civic institutions in the maintenance of monastic discipline and illustrates the
role exercised by the magistracy of the “officials of the night” in the repression of sodomy and in the exercise of a control over its monasteries. She properly points out, moreover, that the repeated accusations of scandals in the
convents on the part of male ecclesiastical reformers did not always correspond with actual facts, but often concealed a particular interest in a control
of the institution. Thus, the popular image of sexual abuses committed within
monastic walls pertains to a literary tradition that appears in contrast to disciplined industry of the Florentine nuns of the Renaissance period.
Although the volume does not consider the religious purpose of the
female monasteries and does not take into consideration aspects of monastic
life concerning worship and spirituality, it nonetheless represents an original
and high-quality contribution to the knowledge of the monastic institute and
to its relevance in the civil society of the fifteenth century.
Università degli Studi di Firenze

GABRIELLA ZARRI

Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the
Russian Identity. By David B. Miller. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University
Press. 2010. $38.00. Pp. x, 348. ISBN 978-0-875-80432-3.)
The Trinity Monastery north of Moscow, founded by St. Sergius of
Radonezh in the fourteenth century, was and is the most important Russian
monastic foundation. Until the eighteenth-century secularization of monastic
lands, it was the richest of the Russian monasteries and for the whole of its
history was one of the principal spiritual centers of the Orthodox Church.
Like other Russian monasteries, it has come late to historians. There is a considerable literature on the life of St. Sergius and on the texts that inform us
about it, and there have been studies of the estates. David Miller has put

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together their work and his own extensive studies of the manuscript evidence to draw a convincing portrait of the cult of St. Sergius and the
monastery as a center of devotion from the saint’s death in 1392 to the end
of the sixteenth century. For in spite of the title, the subject is not Russian
identity but the veneration of St. Sergius and the institutional structure of the
monastery.
Miller begins with a brief account of the life of St. Sergius, a thorny topic
because the principal texts come from the fifteenth century and present
many textual dilemmas. Miller has thought through the literature but judiciously avoids getting drawn into the intricate battles of the textologists and
presents a spare picture uncluttered with speculation and patriotic ideology.
The core of the book, however, consists of the chapters on the development
of the cult, the donations to the monastery as acts of piety (he leaves the economics to others), female veneration, and the practice of burial at the
monastery. He also provides us with a profile of the monks, their social and
geographic origins, and the internal ordering of the monastery.
Many of his conclusions parallel the findings of the few other studies of
Russian monasteries in the period such as those of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
Zimin and Ludwig Steindorf for the monastery of St. Joseph of Volokolamsk.
He finds that both the donors and the monks were overwhelmingly small
landholders with a sprinkling of aristocrats and some of lower rank. Not surprisingly the monks of higher social origins became the cellarers and hegumens of the monastery. Many of the monks, including those in higher positions among the brothers, also came from the Moscow clerks, the diaki, who
were so central to the formation of the Russian state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His chapter on female veneration raises issues rarely
investigated. Women, mostly widows, gave fewer donations, mostly in
memory of husbands and children. They seem to have had control of their
property—one more confirmation of an important aspect of the life of
women of the Russian landholding classes.
Miller’s work is not an account of Russian identity. (Why “the” in the title?
Was there only one form?) In the conclusion he describes the appearance of
St. Sergius in texts narrating the history of major events such as the conquest
of Kazan’. It is the case that the recorded miracles and appearances of St.
Sergius are rather “political,” but that does not provide a basis for the rather
broad claims sketched out by Miller. A few lesser issues: to demonstrate his
points about veneration and social origins he lists hundreds of names that
make reading difficult at times. It is misleading to describe the Golden Horde
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as “the Mongols.” These quibbles
aside, Miller has produced a convincing portrait of the Trinity Monastery as a
center of veneration and spirituality—a major contribution.
Yale University

PAUL BUSHKOVITCH

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Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts. By
Kathleen L. Scott. (London: The British Library. 2007. Pp. xiv, 194. $75.00.
ISBN 978-0-712-34936-0.)
This volume examines five little-studied English manuscripts of the later
medieval period that contain rare or enigmatic decoration and iconography.
Scott uses these examples to argue that although fifteenth-century manuscript illumination has often been derided as derivative and dull, these specific manuscripts not only contain strikingly inventive pictorial elements but
also raise intriguing questions about the broader contours of English book
production and the function of illustrations in late-medieval manuscripts.The
first chapter concerns Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156, an English modelbook for a work known as the Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam, a
widely used literal exegesis of the Bible composed by Nicholas of Lyra (d.
1349). Although this manuscript does not include the full text of the commentary, which typically ran from three to five volumes, it contains illustrations intended to accompany the text, including images that depict practical
information about the Bible such as diagrams, plans, and illustrations of the
Temple of Solomon, the Table of Shewbread, the Brazen Sea, the Altar of the
Holocaust, and so on. She posits that the Bodleian manuscript was a kind of
archetypal exemplar or modelbook that provided copyists with a repertoire
of imagery for use in the numerous other copies of the work produced during
the period.The second chapter considers All Souls Library, Oxford, MS 10, the
only surviving copy of an illustrated French Bible written in England.The origins of this manuscript are especially mysterious, as the text was written in
French at a time when Wycliffite Bibles were readily available, but produced
in an English illuminating shop by a prolific and well-known artist who seems
to have moved in the highest circles of noble book-commissioning patrons.
Although the manuscript contains many of the standard features of English
book art, some of its iconography was clearly influenced by French models;
moreover, it prominently features miniatures of readers and books. Scott
unravels some of the potential implications of this evidence for ownership
and, intriguingly, proposes that the book may have been commissioned by a
French patron in forced residence in England such as Charles d’Orléans. Scott
then focuses on British Library, Stowe MS 39, the only surviving English manuscript of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, a Middle English treatise of spiritual
guidance that employs architectural motifs to depict aspects of interiority.
This manuscript was made for a Northern Benedictine nunnery and contains
two adjoining pages of miniatures following the text that depict allegorical
nun figures within architectural frames performing the diverse tasks involved
in “building” the abbey. Scott shows that this “afterpiece” is innovative in both
form and content, notably showing nuns in a range of social roles, while also
offering an independent summary reading of the text. The fourth chapter
turns to a densely illustrated codex of the fifteenth century (BL Royal MS
ı.B.x, [part]), which contains a genealogical chronicle by Peter of Poitiers (d.
1205), Compendium historie in genealogia Christi.The text is a summary of

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biblical history written in the form of a diagrammatic genealogical chart, tracing Christ’s descent from Adam and Eve, usually represented in scroll format.
Scott focuses on the manuscript’s high-quality pen-and-ink drawings, which
contain elaborate scrollwork and architectural imagery as well as other
unique pictorial subject matter. She connects the manuscript to John Dygon,
scribe and recluse of Sheen priory, who probably commissioned the volume,
which was then used as an educational tool for training clerics.The last chapter discusses BL Additional MS 21974, an early-sixteenth-century liturgical
manuscript produced at two distinct artistic periods, with Gothic decoration
and script and (later) Renaissance miniatures.This manuscript is an interesting example of recycling, as John Longland, bishop of Lincoln from 1521 to
1547 and onetime confessor to King Henry VIII, was responsible for the
second stage of production and had two full-page miniatures and other decoration added in the continental style of Bruges that was fashionable then.
Scott uses the manuscript to illustrate a mid-century divide in the style of
book illustration, between the Gothic and humanistic modes of writing and
illuminating manuscripts.
One of the real strengths of this collection is Scott’s encyclopedic command of related examples of late-medieval English and Continental book art.
Because of this wide learning, she is able to contextualize these manuscripts
and show the dynamic interplay between tradition and innovation in their
design, decoration, and illustration. In short, this book provides an indispensible guide to some of the finest products of English book art while highlighting some of the most significant but little-known facets of manuscript production during the period.
Hunter College, City University of New York

MARLENE VILLALOBOS HENNESSY

Commonwealth and the English Reformation: Protestantism and the
Politics of Religious Change in the Gloucester Vale, 1483–1560. By Ben
Lowe. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing. 2010. Pp. xvi, 308. $124.95. ISBN 978-1-409-40045-5.)
From this case study of the middle-rank English city of Gloucester and its
surroundings, Ben Lowe argues that it was a combination of prophetic message and social and economic conditions that caused leading men in both
town and county to join and support the early Tudor Reformation. Rather than
seeing the disruptive nature of religious change, the analysis suggests there
was a growing momentum of reform from the 1530s through to King Edward
VI’s reign, only to be reversed under Queen Mary. Lowe takes issues with other
recent interpretations of the Reformation that have emphasized extensive
Catholic resistance to change, religious indifference among the laity, or the
economic interest of leading Protestants. His account returns to an older multidimensional approach in the tradition of A. G. Dickens. In considerable measure it is persuasive. Early chapters examine the economic, political, and ecclesiastical state of Gloucester before the Reformation with serious municipal

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conflict with the nine or so religious houses in and around the city, many in
decay; by comparison, parish religious life was more vibrant but (an important
point) selectively so. A further chapter looks at the rise of new gentry families
from the late Middle Ages, some trained in the law and officiating for religious
houses, others linked to Crown administration. Intermarrying and working
closely together, they took their functions seriously as local agents of the
Crown and as guardians of religious life. From the 1530s they consolidated
their own position by becoming chief enforcers of royal religious policies.
Both in city and shire the local elite tended to prop up the existing religious
order until the Reformation gave them the opportunity to seize church property for themselves and to endow a range of schools and charities—a concrete
local version of a Commonwealth program much talked about at the Henrician
Court. Lowe emphasizes the broad coalition of city leaders, county gentry, and
Court politicians and leading clergy that promoted these initiatives in
Gloucestershire.All this was reversed under Mary but at the cost of alienating
a large part of the ruling class in both city and county.
In the last part of the book Lowe argues that there were important parallels between the early Tudor reform movement and the early Stuart Puritan
regime of the city, when acute economic and social problems and civic
patronage of Puritan preachers and godly discipline turned Gloucester into a
famous bastion of radical Protestantism. But this may be misleading. In the
early-sixteenth century economic conditions in Gloucester (and the county)
were relatively good (western cities did better than those in eastern England),
and the acute pressures of large-scale poverty and immigration had yet to
make much of an impact. Even more important, although Lowe shows in the
early Tudor period city and landowners in close cooperation, by 1600 they
were at daggers drawn over jurisdictional disputes. The early Stuart city on
the hill was in part founded as a bastion against the shire. Overall, however,
this is an interesting, well-written book that provides useful detailed material
on both town and countryside. Hopefully, Lowe can be encouraged to write
a comparative study of the English urban Reformation in the future.
PETER CLARK

University of Helsinki
Early Modern European

A Renaissance Education: Schooling in Bergamo and the Venetian
Republic, 1500–1650. By Christopher Carlsmith. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press. 2010. Pp. xvii, 435. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-802-09254-0.)
Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of important
studies on education in early-modern Italy, including books by Paul Grendler
and Robert Black. With this multi-faceted study, Christopher Carlsmith has
made a worthy contribution to the literature. Carlsmith advances a number of
arguments about education in Bergamo (located on the western border of the
Venetian terraferma), but the most important is to emphasize the wide range

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of educational choices offered by the commune, lay confraternities, the diocese, religious orders, and noble parents.
Carlsmith begins with the efforts of the commune to instruct local youth
at the pre-university level. These fluctuated dramatically over time due to a
lack of consistent funding. From 1482 to 1524 the commune emphasized
grammar and humanities by hiring humanist masters such as Giovanni Batista
Pio and Giovita Ravizza, who were from outside the city. After 1525 the educational endeavors of the commune waned, and it experimented with a variety of approaches, including a public college, a joint venture with a local confraternity, sporadic efforts to teach law, and arrangements with religious
orders to supervise public instruction.The commune was unable to maintain
a school for more than a decade or two. When a dedicated teacher could be
found, the schools displayed some continuity, but when the master departed
or retired, the schools declined.
Lay confraternities, led by the powerful Misericordia Maggiore, were
remarkably prominent in promoting education among both lay boys and
clerics at Bergamo.The confraternities provided scholarships and hundreds
of one-time gifts to students. But the most significant contribution was the
Misericordia’s establishment of a day school in 1506 to remedy the problem
of clerical ignorance. The school functioned until 1566, when it was
replaced by a residential academy for clerics, which continued until 1610,
and then a new academy that was founded in 1617 and continued into the
eighteenth century.
The Council of Trent was a milestone in that the Church tried to reclaim
its primacy in education. New initiatives included the development of schools
of Christian doctrine, conducted by laypersons and open to all children of the
city, and the diocesan seminary, which was founded in 1567 with meager
resources and only twenty-five students. The post-Tridentine bishops encountered many difficulties when raising funds for the seminary, but by the seventeenth century the seminary was on stable ground. Carlsmith also devotes
a chapter to the work of the religious orders. Here it was the Somaschans who
succeeded in establishing a college (1632), whereas the Jesuits were repeatedly rebuffed, in part because the commune and the Venetian Republic were
wary of their reputation for close ties to Rome.
As in other cities, the wealthier families of Bergamo contributed to the mix
by attempting to provide private instruction for their children. Perhaps
because of a lack of suitable tutors, the families pooled their resources to
found their own schools, most notably the Caspi academy that functioned
from 1547 until 1556–57 and focused on younger boys between the ages of
five and thirteen.
Carlsmith’s work is based on extensive research at the archives of commune, diocese, seminary, religious orders, and lay confraternities, to name only

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the most important. His study centers on dozens of contracts with teachers,
supplemented by letters, orations, treatises on education, and inventories of
books. Carlsmith brings to life the stories of numerous teachers, lay and religious leaders, and educational foundations that graced Bergamo in this era. He
also develops a number of secondary themes, including the popularity of
humanism, the resurgence of Church-led education, the efforts of the noble
families to provide for their children, and the surprising degree of cooperation among commune, confraternities, bishops, and the religious orders. He
ends with a comparative analysis of other towns and cities in the Diocese of
Bergamo and in the Veneto to support the conclusion that in early-modern
Italy, Bergamo was not the only city to offer a complex and vibrant array of
educational opportunities.
St. Thomas More College
Saskatoon, Canada

THOMAS DEUTSCHER

That Men Would Praise the Lord: The Triumph of Protestantism in Nîmes,
1530–1570. By Allan A.Tulchin. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Pp. xxii, 297. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-199-73652-2.)
Because the southern French city of Nîmes was one of the success stories
of French Protestantism, it has been the subject of many scholarly works;Allan
Tulchin’s contribution is one of the best. It is more than a history of how
Nîmes became Protestant; it becomes, for Tulchin, a test study of how religious conversion takes place in a hostile society.
After a short but essential introduction to the social, political, and economic structures of Nîmes at the mid-sixteenth century, in which he shows
that law professionals were the most powerful group in the city (a valuable
appendix further explicates his methodology),Tulchin examines the religious
atmosphere of that era, concluding that although there were as yet no
Protestants among the elite, they clearly were dissatisfied with the Catholic
Church and its clergy. In setting the scene for the rise of Protestantism, he
provides an excellent summary of the interpretations of Eucharist and its
importance for the people of that time. He gives due attention to the arrival
of humanism in Nîmes but identifies the problem of poverty and the inability
of the Catholic clergy to remedy it as more crucial in allowing Protestants to
gain a toehold in the town, especially as bad harvests and other economic
problems drastically increased the number of poor in the 1550s. More seriously the 1557 flood put severe pressure on the city’s ability to cope while
serving as a portent of God’s wrath. Compounding the problems were the
monarchy’s tax demands as it waged war on the Habsburgs, which caused loyalty to it and its institutions, including the Catholic Church, to fray.
Tulchin does not assume that these circumstances explain the rise of
Protestantism in Nîmes; he provides a highly detailed analysis of the process
of conversion. One valuable opportunity for the Protestants came when the

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king convoked the Estates general in 1560, which required the drawing up of
cahiers des doléances to petition the monarchy. The author shows how
Protestants on the city council used the third Estate’s cahier to formulate the
grievances of the vast majority of townspeople, thus identifying themselves
with popular resentments and desires. It was “powerfully seductive” (p. 119).
Tulchin turns to anthropology for the concept of betweenness—a way to
measure social networking, for which he draws from the vast number of surviving notarial contracts (and provides a valuable discussion of how he used
them in a lengthy appendix). Protestants among the city’s elites, he demonstrates, showed a substantially higher connectedness than those who
remained Catholic; conversions most often occurred within a family or a
social network, and converts with a broad social network were most likely to
bring in larger numbers of additional converts. Less persuasive, however, is
Tulchin’s use of cognitive dissonance, another social science construct.
The book shows how Catholic efforts to derail Protestant growth floundered on inconsistency in royal policy after King Francis II’s death in 1560
and the rapid turnover in royal officials in Nîmes’s region. By late 1561, the
Protestants felt bold enough to attack Catholic churches and priests. Still, the
city was relatively peaceful during the First War of Religion, but in the second,
Nîmes was the site of a violent Protestant uprising and massacre of Catholics
known as the Michelade (for the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, September
29) in 1567.Tulchin can give only an estimate of Catholics killed, but with the
names he could determine, he demonstrates that about half were clergymen,
and most of the rest were from the Catholic lay elite.Thus he concludes that
politics were as essential to the event as religion: “It seems clear that one
cause of the Michelade was that the Protestants of Nîmes felt deprived of
what they saw as their right to rule” (p. 173).
Tulchin comes to two important conclusions from his study of Nîmes.
First, those prior studies of the religious wars that emphasized the fewer
Catholic deaths in Protestant uprisings are misleading in that they fail to recognize that religious massacres occur when one side has superiority of force
yet perceives the other as an existential threat; Protestants only occasionally
were in such a position. Second, conversion is a complicated affair that
cannot be ascribed simply to an individual’s sudden recognition of the truth;
numerous other factors, including social pressure from relatives and friends,
are important as is the forging of compromise among the converts.
The book is solidly based on archival sources, and Tulchin is careful not to
overreach in the conclusions he draws from those materials. One point is
worth noting: In Tulchin’s discussion of the seizure of power by the Guise
brothers under Francis II, he needed to mention the pertinent fact that their
niece was Mary Stuart, Francis’s wife.
This is a provocative book that provides crucial insights into the rise of
Protestantism in Nîmes; it should stimulate similar studies in other cities

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(where the local archival resources allow) to test its conclusions for the rest
of France.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER
Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions. By G.W. Bernard. (New Haven:Yale University
Press. 2010. Pp. x, 237. $30.00. ISBN 978-0-300-16245-5.)
G.W. Bernard’s Anne Boleyn is Anne Boleyn as we have never known her.
Despite the claim of the inside cover, it is not really a biography. It is a book
about interpretation—a series of intricate arguments unpicking previous
interpretations of a historical character whose role and importance have
always been contested. Interpretation is everything, because, in Anne’s case,
the surviving evidence is regrettably incomplete and impressionistic. Indeed,
much of the evidence comes down to little more than early interpretations.
Even Bernard’s favorite source, Lancelot de Carles’s contemporary poem on
the queen’s unhappy fall and fate, was originally drawn up as an object lesson
in mutability, an exploration of patience and providence, and not in any sense
a simple history or testimony.The scantiness of the sources gives the book an
inevitably unbalanced structure.Anne’s reign as queen—her last three years—
takes up two-thirds of the book, and half of that focuses on her fall, her last
three months. Yet the book is both entertaining and instructive. Bernard is
nothing if not argumentative, and the reader is always drawn into the debate,
applauding as the author slaughters another sacred cow or else raising an eyebrow at some dubious move in the argument.
The absence of evidence is Bernard’s stock in trade, and it is in negative
mode that he is at his best. His book is an extraordinarily successful demonstration of how much less we know of Anne than we had thought.A shrewd
critical eye is turned on the circumstances and motives of those who created
the historical record on which our limited knowledge depends; and an even
sharper eye distinguishes between evidence and interpretation or opinion.
Thus he points out that there is simply no contemporary evidence for the
almost universally shared opinion that Anne resisted Henry’s advances for
years, making marriage the price of sexual surrender—although there is no
more evidence for his own theory that it was Henry, not Anne, who wanted
marriage rather than an affair. Bernard’s insistent skepticism has many triumphs along the way. The notion that Anne’s final and miscarried pregnancy
delivered a deformed foetus is decisively swept away, as is the equally curious
notion that accusations of witchcraft were overshadowing the queen in her
final months. The idea that Cromwell orchestrated a fiendish plot to bring
about Anne’s destruction is shown to rest on nothing more than a somewhat
ambiguous remark of Cromwell’s, hearsay evidence after the event. Bernard’s
skepticism, however, is not entirely consistent. His most eye-catching, albeit
tentative, claim is that maybe Anne really was guilty of at least some of the
charges of adultery on which she was convicted.Yet the evidence here is thin

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and for the most part goes no further than the charges formally brought in
court. These charges, as Bernard himself acknowledges, contain some striking
inconsistencies and hardly constitute evidence in their own right.
In other directions his skepticism can go too far.There is rather more evidence for Anne’s religious interests than for most other aspects of her life and
character.Yet Bernard is so determined to brush aside any idea of “Lutheran”
or “evangelical” sympathies on her part that this evidence is neither fully presented nor always fairly handled. Thus his discussion of Anne’s ornate vellum
copy of the 1534 edition of Tyndale’s New Testament veers into special pleading. The significance of this artifact is not adequately dismissed with the comments that it was “sent to her as a present” and that it does not “offer convincing proof that Anne herself was a Lutheran” (p. 97). There can, moreover,
be a surprising lack of sensitivity in Bernard’s assessment of religious issues,
evident for example in his claim on the same page that Thomas Gascoigne’s
Mirror of Our Lady, by providing English translations of the Our Father, Hail
Mary, and Creed,“in some respects anticipated the Book of Common Prayer”
(p. 97): a judgment that is literally true but utterly misleading. Important facts
can be overlooked. In emphasizing the lack of evidence that Anne lobbied to
have William Barlow promoted to the episcopate (pp. 111–12), Bernard does
not remind us that Barlow was “one of her chaplains” (as reflected on p. 45).
Nor is there any mention of the fact that in 1531 Barlow was forced to publish a book recanting Lutheran opinions, an episode that puts heresy well
within touching distance of Anne herself.
Anne Boleyn is a fascinating but also a flawed book. Its most important
lesson is that we do not know enough about Anne to attempt a proper biography.The book is more a collection of essays on various aspects of her life—
an unfailingly provocative and intriguing series of reflections and ruminations
in which forensic brilliance jostles with special pleading and even a certain
naïveté—as in the idea that what de Carles meant by the “many signs” of “dishonest love” shown by the countess of Worcester “can only be” that she was
pregnant (p. 154).Yet, whatever its weaknesses, it remains a bracing read.The
reader might almost call it an antidote to Tudor history, or to a lot of what
passes under that label. Bernard never leaves the reader thinking about a subject exactly the way he or she did before. Anne Boleyn is not the last word,
but Anne Bullen will never be the same again.
Queens’ College, Cambridge

RICHARD REX

The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations. By Henry A. Jefferies. (Dublin:
Four Courts Press. Distrib. by ISBS, Portland, OR. 2010. Pp. 302. $70.00.
ISBN 978-1-846-82050-2.).
Henry Jefferies’s aim in his new book is “to put religion back at the heart
of the on-going debate on the Reformation in Ireland” (p. 12). This is a laud-

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able objective, and he deserves commendation for reminding us that Ireland’s
Reformation experience is unintelligible unless due consideration is given to
the religious convictions of its sixteenth-century inhabitants. It is disappointing, then, to discover that his own treatment of religion is self-consciously
regressive and that ultimately he presents an account of the religious developments of the period that closely resembles the traditional and, prior to the
1970s, predominant Catholic-nationalist narrative of the failure of the
Reformation in Ireland.
Given the rhetorical method employed, this outcome is inevitable. Jefferies
pits himself against the “revisionist successors” of the older generation of Irish
Catholic/nationalist historians, who, he argues, have “tended to project their
own secularist mentalities onto the past and deny religion its significance as
an important influence in Tudor times” (p. 11). As a remedy, he elects throughout his book to set those modes of inquiry and argument that do not focus
specifically on religion in opposition to those that do, suggesting, repeatedly,
that the former are necessarily inferior when they are utilized to explore any
aspect of the history of the Reformation in Ireland. This uncompromisingly
dualistic approach is particularly marked in the final chapters of the book,
where the author offers an analysis of the series of rebellions that erupted in
Ireland from the late 1570s. Here, the historians who have advanced political,
constitutional, or economic explanations for the outbreak of the rebellions
are successively dismissed, generally because they are adjudged to have
“played down,” or “failed to appreciate” the religious dimensions of the revolts
(pp. 208, 278).
Jefferies’s implicit rejection of the possibility that secular modes of inquiry
may offer useful perspectives on the religious history of Tudor Ireland is
symptomatic of a more general tendency to simplify or reduce any argument,
and the supporting evidence, that complicates that history. Consequently, far
from putting religion back at the center of the debate on Ireland’s
Reformation, he merely reframes that debate as a closed and problemless
entity, which enables him to create a clear, untroubled space in which to
establish his own narrative. That narrative is ultimately revealed in the final
part of the book in a committed and lengthy description of pan-Irish resistance to the Elizabethan settlement. Familiar motifs emerge as this narrative
unfolds: a steadfast Irish communal attachment to traditional Catholicism, the
buttressing effect of a steadily emerging Counter-Reformation Church, and
the ineffectiveness of a weak and corrupt Church of Ireland. His conclusion—
that these factors led inexorably to the failure of the Reformation—is reminiscent of historians such as M.V. Ronan and Robin Dudley Edwards not only
in terms of the final judgment but also in regard to the evidence used to support it, namely, the series of despatches preserved in the Irish State Papers in
the National Archives of the United Kingdom, which were penned by ecclesiastical and state officials and which lament the obdurate nature of Irish religious conservatism.

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This approach is unsatisfying because it not only accepts uncritically the
evidence for the existence of an undifferentiated, communal attachment to
Catholicism but also endeavors to construct a late-medieval wellspring for the
phenomenon built on an equally questionable evidential base. In the opening
section of the book, the Irish Church is portrayed as a healthier and more
coherent, island-wide entity than many contemporaries were prepared to
admit, on the basis of a dubious simplification of the island’s complex politics, culture, geography, and economy; through his avoidance of contemporary
evidence detailing the widespread lay despoliation of ecclesiastical property;
and through some extravagant claims made for a relatively modest renewal of
the late-medieval Church’s physical infrastructure. Although Jefferies’s
account certainly challenges the old view that the medieval Irish Church was
everywhere in decay, the modest vitality he reveals—when compared to that
of the English Church which, as Eamon Duffy’s ground-breaking scholarship
shows, underwent a more spectacular renewal but still succumbed to the
Reformation—hardly explains the emergence of staunch Catholic resistance
under Queen Elizabeth I. Indeed, the author does not carry the theme forward
with conviction in the succeeding section of the book, which provides standard modern accounts of the religious changes effected under King Henry
VIII, King Edward VI, and Queen Mary. Here, the author might have done
better to follow the older school of historiography more closely, which, for all
its faults, correctly identified the reinforcement of Catholic identity in the
mid-Tudor period as the progenitor of the church papism, recusancy, and
rebellion that emerged in Elizabethan Ireland. Jefferies’s explanation, in contrast, is an implausible alternative both to this and to the complex, nuanced,
and altogether more broadly informed arguments that he expends so much
energy rebutting elsewhere in his book.
National Qualifications Authority of Ireland

JAMES MURRAY

The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print 1550–1625.
By Walter S. Melion. [Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series,
Vol. 1.) (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2009. Pp. x, 431.
$90.00. ISBN 978-0-919-10160-2.)
Walter Melion, professor of art history at Emory University, investigates
how and why devotional prints and printseries produced in the Low
Countries (mostly in Antwerp) in the period 1570 (not 1550 as the title suggests) up to 1620 were seen and used, as the book jacket notes, “as instruments of Christian meditation and contemplation.” After an introductory
chapter, which makes a cogent case for choosing to concentrate on the given
period and geographical boundaries, Melion analyzes nine different cases in
depth, using examples ranging from well-known and often discussed illustrated books such as Jeronimo Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in
Evangelia (1595) to series that have escaped attention by scholars such as
Septem Psalmi Davidici, produced and published by the Wierix family in

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1608. In most chapters the focus is on what is generally, though not without
problems, defined as reproductive printmaking, whether it be series of prints
or single sheets that are in most cases part of a larger publication. In two
chapters Melion, however, also shows how individual works of art in other
media stand in the same tradition of meditation and contemplation such as
Hendrick Goltzius’s 1608 drawing of The Adoration of the Magi (chapter 7)
and Otto van Veen’s painting The Carrying of the Cross (c. 1610, chapter 8).
In contrast to the first sentences of his introduction, where Melion presents
the outline of his study, this broadening of the scope, in fact, only reinforces
his argument and demonstrates the strength of the tradition of using devotional images as a source of meditation. Although Melion occasionally refers
to images in other media in his case studies, a more systematic inclusion of
such examples would have enhanced this rich and rewarding study.
The strength, wealth, and importance of Melion’s study—as in most of his
other publications—lie in his extraordinary understanding of religious
(printed) Catholic and Counter-Reformation imagery in the Netherlands as
well as related theological and ethical literature. His analysis of the images
selected is convincing and proves that in Antwerp—with the Jesuits as a
determining actor—an entirely innovative range of printed images was created. The Meditative Art certainly stimulates us to re-examine the Antwerp
production of devotional images with fresh eyes and is without a doubt a
major and lasting contribution to the study of religious imagery in this period.
There are, however, some drawbacks. More attention to the importance of
artistic means (style, composition, artistic rivalry, and so forth) to reach specific visual results would have been welcome. Addressing the intended audience for the particular work and its relationship with that work are crucial in
this context. In this sense, the magnificent Goltzius drawing, created for an
unknown purpose and patron; the rather boring Van Veen painting made for
a church; and Wierix’s print series of David’s psalms are all entirely different.
Unfortunately, too little attention is paid to such major differences in use and
intended audience. In addition, Melion largely ignores the variety of, and differences in, artistic and intellectual networks that surround the creation of
the individual works of art. A quintessential study such as Evelyne Verheggen’s
Beelden voor Passie en Hartstocht: bid- en devotieprenten in de Noordelijke
Nederlanden (Zutphen/Nijmegen, 2006)—missing from the bibliography—
shows how and in which context devotional prints were effectively used and
provides a welcome counterpoint to the more theoretical and theological
approach by Melion.
These comments, however, do not in any way diminish appreciation for
Melion’s study. It stands as a major contribution to our understanding of religious imagery in one of the important crossroads in art history.
Musea Brugge
Brugge, Belgium

MANFRED SELLINK

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Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. By Eamon Duffy. (New
Haven: Yale University Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 249. $28.50. ISBN 978-0-30015216-6.)
Few other living historians have had as much of an impact on the history
of the English Reformation as Eamon Duffy. He boldly challenged many longheld assumptions in Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, 1992), proposing
that England did not turn into a Protestant nation very eagerly, as had been
argued for generations. Opposition to Duffy’s Altars was intense. Chief among
the charges leveled against Duffy was that of stacking the evidence—that is,
hand-picking facts that would support his thesis and ignoring those that
would not. Later Duffy offered a counter-blast to his critics, The Voices of
Morebath (New Haven, 2001), an exhaustively detailed microhistory of a
Devonshire village during the most critical years of the Tudor dynasty. In
Voices, as in Altars, Duffy contested the notion that the English Reformation
was a smooth and well-received transition.
Now, another nine years later, Duffy continues his revisionist campaign in
Fires of Faith, a reassessment of the reign of England’s most vilified monarch,
Mary Tudor, otherwise known as Bloody Mary. Revising the history of Mary’s
reign is perhaps the greatest challenge yet to be tackled by Duffy, not just
because of her role as chief villain in English history and in the dominant
Reformation narrative but also because of the indisputable fact that she did
execute 284 Protestants during her five-year reign. In our day and age, such
unenlightened cruelty seems so unacceptable that it is next to impossible to
attribute any positive qualities to those responsible for it.
Undeterred by such obstacles, Duffy offers as serious a challenge to the
dominant Reformation narrative in this book as in his previous ones.
Acknowledging up front that the burning of so many men and women was
reprehensible, Duffy quickly moves on to contest a series of longstanding
myths about Mary’s reign. In the process, ironically, a historian who has never
viewed Reformation iconoclasm in a positive light proves himself a master
iconoclast. One by one, he gleefully strikes down conventional assumptions.
First, he argues that the Marian persecution was not a tactical error in the
struggle against Protestantism. Appalling and inexcusable though it was,
Mary’s reign of terror did manage to cripple seriously the Protestant movement. Moreover, it should not be assumed that all of her efforts were in vain,
or that England had already become irreversibly Protestant. Popular support
for Mary’s policies was intense, Duffy insists.The Marian persecution cannot
be ascribed solely to the queen and her rabidly Catholic clergy, he claims, for
the persecution of Protestants was also enthusiastically embraced by lay
people and especially by magistrates, informers, executioners, and spectators
who assumed their roles with evident relish. At the very top, he also argues,
cruelty was never the objective: Cardinal Reginald Pole seemed even more
tolerant than many in his flock, favoring conversion over punishment.

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Duffy tackles a long list of long-held assumptions about Mary’s reCatholicizing efforts, building up to his central argument: Queen Mary was no
mere reactionary, he avers, but a true reformer who in many ways was leagues
ahead of the Council of Trent.The same can be said of Pole, who is portrayed
as England’s own version of St. Carlo Borromeo, the ultimate reforming prelate.
Preaching? Yes, he says, preaching was central to the work of Pole’s clerics.
How about the quality of the clergy, especially the bishops? Exemplary, he says:
Mary appointed more learned and zealous bishops than any other monarch of
her age: “Marian England was the hare to the rest of Europe’s tortoise,” he concludes (p. 25). Seminaries? Mary and Pole were not only ahead of Trent on this
issue, but provided the Council with patterns to follow. Printing and publishing? Mary did not neglect books, as previously thought. If liturgical and devotional texts are taken into account, the number of titles published under Mary
compares most favorably or even surpasses that published under the nonCatholic Tudors. How about insularity? Was Mary’s Catholic reform an aberrant
exception, a deformed shoot from an already damaged and isolated branch of
the Church? No, not at all.The Marian reform, argues Duffy, was most definitely
well connected to currents on the Continent.
Duffy’s summation of Mary’s reign is as bold and controversial as they
come: The Marian church was so progressive, he says, that it not only preceded the Counter-Reformation, but actually “invented “ it (p. 207).
Two factors, above all, make Mary’s reign a minefield for any historian.
First, there is the highly argumentative, intensely polarized, either/or dialectic
that guides most historians of the English Reformation. At one extreme there
are those who cling to the traditional Whig narrative, which portrays
Protestantism as an inevitable step forward in England’s steep and rapid climb
toward modernity, enlightenment, and empire-building. At the other extreme,
there are those who, like Duffy, view English Catholicism with no small measure of sympathy and prefer to see England’s Protestant turn as a painful and
ultimately unnecessary turn of events. Between these two extremes, too few
historians dare to argue for complexity and the both/and rather than the stark
either/or. Second, all must also contend with the brevity of Mary’s reign and
the limits naturally imposed by time itself on her efforts to re-Catholicize
England. Mary attracts speculation and counterfactual approaches, for her
every move led to a dead end, literally, since her own death marked the end
of Catholicism in England. This leads many to ask the “what if?” question
implicitly and explicitly:What if she had lived longer?
Ultimately, Duffy is not only keenly aware of these two factors, but actually
relies on them and enhances their intensity. Fires of Faith is a daring and masterful reinterpretation of a key moment in English history and also in the history of Catholicism. Although many will surely challenge its assertions, this
book’s significance is beyond dispute, precisely because it encourages disputation. Duffy questions the dominant narrative created by Protestants long

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ago and, in the process, opens doors that only the timid and the foolhardy will
dare to ignore.
Yale University

CARLOS M. N. EIRE

Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence. By Nicholas Terpstra.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 244. $50.00.
ISBN 978-0-801-89499-9.)
This unusual and ingenious academic book, written in the manner of a
detective story, has a great many advantages, but the snag is that most of them
are double-edged. It is set in Florence, the city at the heart of the Renaissance,
with the greatest potential to attract a wide readership; had it been set, for
example, in Perugia, no one would have cared. The topic of the Casa della
Pietà, a home for abandoned or unprotected young girls in the second half of
the sixteenth and first two decades of the seventeenth centuries, is felicitous,
mirroring as it does the interest in contemporary and recent church-run institutions supposedly concerned with child protection.The book’s subtitle contains the words sex and death, two areas of constant human interest across
the centuries as well as the two words most guaranteed to attract sales and
media attention. It is written with gusto and panache, in a nonacademic,
accessible style, but with a good scholarly apparatus. The crime victims are
obvious enough—the vulnerable young girls themselves—although the
causes of death, and consequently the human perpetrators, are more elusive.
The author has set himself the task of analyzing why the death rate of girls
entering the Pietà in the early years was so high; of 526 who entered between
1554 and 1558, only 202 survived (two other comparable shelters had death
rates of 11 percent and under 20 percent). His constant refrain is “What was
killing the girls of the Pietà?”, and his possible explanations include dangerous working conditions, pregnancies and abortifacients, and syphilis.What is
indisputable is that in sixteenth-century Florence there was a culture of prioritizing male interests, whether sexual or political, over female interests, and
shelters for young girls would never have been able to exist outside this cultural context.The tensions inherent in addressing historical material academically, while writing it up methodologically as a true-crime mystery set in the
past, are navigated with considerable skill, but the tensions do not evaporate.
There are several excellent pieces of documentation from or about the Pietà
such as a pledge book, account books, a run of recipes, and a chronicle, seemingly offering the possibility of clarification and understanding. Yet on close
inspection, these prove illusory:The benefactors give minuscule amounts; the
account books focus on food and basic materials; the recipes are from the
recipe book of the guild of doctors and apothecaries and their purpose
remains unknown; and the multi-author chronicle peddles its own version of
events, some of which are untrue. The book is pleasingly broad-based in its
approach, able to make effective use of much recent secondary literature in
areas such as the histories of female confraternities and silk weaving.

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However, this breadth also exposes drawbacks, because in the absence of
‘hard’ facts, there is a surfeit of suggestively scandalous hypotheses. The tortuous lurches, inspired guesses, and numerous dead ends of archival research
are well incorporated into the narrative of detection, making it a good read,
but archival historians in particular may feel either that these are best when
filtered, or that they are best experienced in person. Even the dust jacket is
perplexing, as the rather lovely, melancholic, solitary, scantily clad young girl
holding a skull on her lap was painted not by a Florentine in the mid- to latesixteenth century, but by a Frenchman in the mid-seventeenth century.
Nevertheless, those interested in the history of early-modern Catholic Europe
and Catholic institutions on the Italian peninsula will find much to think
about while reading this book.
Queen Mary, University of London

KATE LOWE

Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l’ultima fase del concilio di Trento.Atti del
convegno “Il cardinale Giovanni Morone e l’ultima fase del Concilio di
Trento.” Trento, 5–6 giugno 2009. Edited by Massimo Firpo and Ottavia
Niccoli. [Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Quaderni,
80.] (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2010. Pp. 293. €23,00 paperback.
ISBN 978-8-815-13811-8.)
This volume illuminates significant facets of one of the most prominent
clerics in early-modern Italy, Cardinal Giovanni Morone. Massimo Firpo and
Dario Marcatto blazed the trail leading to the sophisticated, nuanced portrait
of Morone that emerged over the past thirty years, and the essays here collected represent a substantial further contribution. All who study the age of
the Council of Trent will find this book valuable.
In the introduction, Firpo and coeditor Ottavia Niccoli set the stage perfectly for the excellent studies that follow. Firpo and Niccoli insist that
Morone, as legate to the final sessions at the council, beautifully reflects the
diversity and complexity—if not to say the contradictions—of the sixteenthcentury Church. Readers learn thereafter of interesting twists in the work of
Morone after the election of Pope Pius IV until the death of the cardinal in
1580. Elena Bonora, Umberto Mazzone, Alain Tallon, and Alessandro Paris
focused their fine studies on the well-established political savvy of Morone
and his diplomatic relationships, but related some surprises. Morone, the great
ecclesiastical politician and diplomat, apparently was manipulated by the
very pope who rehabilitated him when negotiations with the Hapsburgs
required it. Political expediency seemingly determined a great deal of his own
operation as legate at Trent, as he attempted to divide adversaries, and to forge
compromise when necessary with unlikely partners—like the cardinal of
Lorraine—to secure the papal agenda. Some of Morone’s closer collaborators
were politically suspect in the papal curia such as the pro-imperial Cristoforo
Madruzzo, who strongly criticized Pope Paul IV’s early appointments of cardinals. So, when Morone stared down the barrel of an inquisitorial investiga-

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tion, his enemies were apparently motivated by an anti-imperial political
agenda, not just by Paul IV’s storied intransigence toward heresy. Likewise,
when the path for Morone to the papal throne was blocked, it probably had
as much to do with the political role he had played as with his infamous trial
before the Roman inquisition.
Gigliola Fragnito, Lucia Felici, and Maurizio Sangalli have contributed rich
works on the reform commitments exhibited by Morone in relationships with
Ludovico Beccadelli; Egidio Foscarari, O.P.; and St. Carlo Borromeo.They found
Morone taking sides at times with pope and curia against members of the
spirituali on significant reform matters while assisting to secure, through
publication, the ideas of its most prominent members: Gasparo Contarini and
Reginald Pole. Morone may thus have spent his last years struggling to reconcile pro-papal activities against fidelity to his intellectual, cultural, and religious patrimony. Surely, the best essay in this volume is Sangalli’s contribution
on Morone’s interaction with Borromeo. To Sangalli, Morone was neither a
revolutionary reformer nor the quintessential ecclesiastical prince, whereas
Borromeo appears more conciliatory, less austere, and more willing to take
the advice of his friend, Morone, toward compromise on reform matters.
Much more, that is, than we have been conditioned to think.
Two other essays here—a study of images of Morone in art by Roberto
Pancheri and one on images of the prelate in history by Pierroberto
Scaramella—are fascinating but less satisfying. Pancheri provided more of a
list of works with illustrations than an analysis of iconography. Scaramella
traced presentations of Morone in historical works from Iohannes Georg
Frickius in the early-eighteenth century to Hubert Jedin in the twentieth, but
apparently in part to discredit Jedin. Scaramella began noting that differences
in interpretation—and, it would seem, in the level of familiarity with Morone’s
complexity—were affected by the focus chosen by individual scholars. We
could not expect the same on Morone, he implied, from historians telling the
tale of the Council of Trent, as from biographers. But the courtesy of scholarly
understanding suggested here Scaramella extended to all except Jedin. He
finds Jedin in the fourth volume of his monumental history voicing the same
opinion of Morone as the inquisitor Guido Ascanio Santoro did in 1580,
renouncing further study of Morone’s personality, and choosing to say no
more. Now, Jedin did not say what Santoro said, and that is a matter of fact.We
could endlessly debate whether or not Jedin implied what it seems Santoro
did: that Morone was a man of little religious integrity. Of course, it is somewhat commonplace in Italian historiography—by Tommaso Bozza, by Paolo
Simoncelli, and now by Scaramella—to treat the memory of Jedin as a whipping-boy, an ideologue who ignored evidence or fabricated narratives to serve
a doctrinal agenda, and perhaps that is the real point.
But Jedin did not miss complexity and contradictions in this era. He found
complexity beyond the demonized portrait of counter-reform drawn by nine-

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teenth-century nationalist inspired, anticlerical historians. Still greater complexity surely marks the personal history of reform protagonists, as the editors and authors in this volume admirably argue and persuasively illustrate.
So, our pictures may be better than those of Jedin, but these, too, are hardly
the final word. An author here presents an image that could be found only
through our contemporary historical practice: one of sexual abuse of a minor
by an employee in a cardinal’s household. The perpetrator was in Morone’s
employ, and an extrajudicial settlement was arranged by none other than
Borromeo, considered heroic by so many over the 500 years since. Historians
of the next generation will find still more truths to further enrich understanding of the early-modern world. It will be most productive to abandon
any search for heroes and demons—whether historical or historiographical—
as our investigation continues.
Bloomsburg University

WILLIAM V. HUDON

Recusancy and Conformity in Early Modern England: Manuscript and
Printed Sources in Translation. Edited by Ginevra Crosignani,Thomas M.
McCoog, and Michael Questier; with the assistance of Peter Holmes.
[Studies and Texts 170; Catholic and Recusant Texts of the Late Medieval
and Early Modern Periods, 2.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies. 2010. Pp. xxiv, 464. $95.00. ISBN 978-0-888-44170-6.)
In 1567, an Italian merchant whose extensive trading network throughout England made him an ideal intelligencer sent an account to Rome on the
condition of Catholics that he had seen in his travels throughout the country. At least two-thirds of the population remained true to “the authority of
the Holy See and of our Sovereign Pontiff,” he wrote, but they could not
“show this openly in act on account of the severe edicts of her who reigns
at present, which obliges them to the contrary” (p. 81). He portrays here the
practice of occasional conformity, one to which this large percentage of the
population had resorted in the face of the legal demand that they attend
Protestant services or suffer the consequences of financial ruin, imprisonment, and—in some cases—execution. By physically attending the services
of their parish church, they avoided these stringent penalties, but even as
they did so, they remained spiritually committed to the Catholic faith. In
other words, they dissimulated.
Church Papists, Alexandra Walsham’s landmark work on church papism
(Rochester, NY, 1993), opened up for scholars the complex landscape of casuistical argument within which the theological and political problems that
faced Catholics after Queen Elizabeth I’s accession and subsequent legislation
for religious practice were debated and negotiated. Until this publication, the
view had been somewhat obscured by confessional historiographical tradition and, dare we say it, seemingly unapproachable texts, pamphlets, and manuscripts.We now know, thanks to Walsham’s careful reading and exegesis, and

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later work by others such as Michael Questier and Stefania Tutino, the
debates, arguments, and counterarguments that surrounded this complex theological dilemma.
The editors have succeeded admirably in gathering together representative key documents by Catholic polemicists that show the nature of the
debate and how it developed throughout the reign up to, and just beyond, the
accession of King James I. Some of these, including the report from the Italian
merchant previously mentioned, are published here for the first time. It also
is pleasing to note the inclusion of documents relating to the Scottish recusant dilemma of occasional conformity.This is a field of study that, although
there presently appears to be a lack of primary sources, is ripe for research.
Within a few years of the accession of James I, the criterion of Catholic orthodoxy had changed; it was no longer the issue of occasional conformity but the
question of the oath of allegiance.We might perhaps look forward to a second
volume of texts and documents relating to this debate.
The editors are to be congratulated for their meticulous transcription of
this collection of documents in their original language with careful English
translations and for providing in the introductory essay a lucid exposition of
their background and context.Together with the excellent footnotes, bibliography, and indices, they provide an invaluable resource for scholars and students not only of post-Reformation Catholicism but also for everyone working on the history, literature, and theology of this period.
University of Exeter

ANNE DILLON

The Correctores Romani: Gratian’s Decretum and the Counter-Reformation
Humanists. By Mary E. Sommar. [Pluralisierung & Autorität, Band 19.]
(Munster: LIT Verlag. Distrib. Transaction Publishers. 2009. Pp. xxii, 139.
€24,90. ISBN 978-3-643-90019-7.)
This book is prefaced by Peter Landau’s account in German of the history
of the Roman Correctors of the Corpus Juris Canonici and of Mary E.
Sommar’s undertaking. In Sommar’s introduction she discusses the official,
three-volume edition of the Corpus issued in 1582; the first volume, composed of Gratian’s Decretum, included not only the marginalia of the
Correctors but also extensive notations in the body of the text. In referring
to this edition, she uses the page numbers of the volumes on the UCLA
Library Web site.
The Roman Correctors were a group of mainly humanist scholars who, in
the wake of the Council of Trent, set about editing the texts of canon law.
Sommar responds to the mainly negative or apologetic assessments that have
been made of their work, first by examining the charge that the scholarly credentials of the committee were insufficient. Three of the five cardinals who
composed the core of the original congregation (established in 1566 under

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the direction of Pope Pius V) were renowned scholars: Ugo Buoncompagni
(later Pope Gregory XIII), probably the most expert canonist in the papal
curia; Guglielmo Sirleto, expert in both Greek and Latin manuscripts, and
director of the Vatican libraries since 1554; and Francesco Alciati, former professor of law at the University of Pavia.There were twenty-eight other members, both lay and clerical, many with outstanding dossiers. The effective
leader of the committee was Miguel Thomás Taxaquet, protégé of the famed
canonist Antonio Agustín, archbishop of Tarragona (who preferred to stay outside the group; his assessment of their work was published in 1587, the year
after his death).
In the second chapter Sommar examines the finished product, the first
volume (Gratian) of the 1582 edition; and in the third chapter she studies the
minutes and working papers of the Correctors that survive in Vatican manuscripts, which are summarized in an appendix (pp. 105–22). She demonstrates that they did their work diligently and intelligently, although there was
a division “between those who believed that good Humanist text-critical practice was of primary importance and those who were reluctant to part with
medieval tradition” (p. 62). One point in which tradition triumphed was their
defense of the Donation of Constantine (pp. 79–81, 95). In her analysis of the
edition itself, she sums up (pp. 27–29) the Correctors’ statement of purpose
in their long note to the reader and discusses their corrections and additions
to the text. In chapter 4, she presents specific examples from Gratian’s Causa
2. She summarizes her findings in a conclusion.
The two most important tools for using the 1582 edition of Gratian are the
Margarita at the end, which is not a commentary but a subject index to the
canons, and the Notatu digna table at the beginning, an index not only to the
Ordinary Gloss but also (it claims) to novae notationes, but these indexed
“new notations” do not include the even newer notations of the Correctors
(for instance, the long comment on the Donation of Constantine). It should
be noted that Sommar states (p. 46) that I suggest that the Correctors were
following the texts of the canons and decretals as found in the edition of Jean
Chappuis at the beginning of the sixteenth century. However, I was speaking
not of the canons and decretals but rather of the additions to the Ordinary
Gloss, which, like the indices and other front-matter and back-matter, were
inherited from earlier editors and which received only occasional comments
from the Correctors in marginalia.
Sommar’s book is a solid achievement, which may stimulate others to
study further how the great corpus of canon law evolved up to its official
presentation in 1582.
University of California, Los Angeles

HENRY ANSGAR KELLY

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The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the
Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae. Edited by Rebecca Zorach. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 2008. Pp. 184. $25.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0943-05637-1.)
Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, “The Mirror of Rome’s Magnificence,” is one of the more remarkable publishing ventures of the sixteenth
century, an ingenious do-it-yourself kit that allowed even moderately well-off
visitors to Rome to assemble a collection of prints showing the city’s ancient
and modern monuments and supply it with a lavish title page, engraved,
c.1575, for the project’s creator, the French-born, Rome-based printer Antonio
Lafreri. Because the sheets, including the title page, were sold individually, no
two Speculum collections are alike; many of them contain prints from
Lafreri’s competitors, and many contain later material that has nothing to do
with Lafreri, but everything to do with Rome.The most extensive Speculum
collection to survive to the present day is housed in the Department of
Special Collections of the University of Chicago libraries: It includes 994
pieces ranging in date from the 1540s to 1762. In many ways Lafreri’s project
represented a triumph of new media in his own era, and it seems eminently
appropriate that the Chicago Speculum collection can be consulted today
online as well as in situ. A special exhibition in 2007–08 called attention to
the completion of the digital project, to the Chicago Speculum collection
itself, and to the extraordinary supplemental holdings of the university’s
Department of Special Collections. Curated by University of Chicago art historian Rebecca Zorach, it includes specialized essays by Zorach, Birte Rubach,
David Karmon, Rose Marie San Juan, and Nina Dubin, as well as catalogue
entries by Chicago graduate students.The book follows the extremely attractive format used by Special Collections on other occasions, with lavish illustrations and elegant graphics, enabling readers who have never seen this
remarkable collection to garner a vivid idea of its depth and quality. As a
whole, the catalogue provides a series of glimpses into the Speculum’s holdings rather than a commanding overview. On the other hand, there is really
no more effective way to capture the peculiar, episodic nature of this
uniquely open-ended publishing and collecting venture than by showing
some of the ways that the Speculum and especially its supremely extensive
Chicago version can be used to shed light on a bewildering variety of subjects—from Lafreri’s other publications and printmaking to urban planning
and historic preservation. In addition, David Karmon’s excellent account of
protecting monuments in early-modern Rome demonstrates some ingenious
ways to use the digital Speculum.
As Zorach notes, Lafreri stressed the “public utility” of his enterprise. His
virtual Rome promised tangible benefits to artists, antiquarians, pilgrims, and
individuals on the Grand Tour. The mood and quality of the prints vary widely,
from Lafreri’s own stately classical views to the atmospheric ruins of
Hieronymus Cock, the most evident precursor to Piranesi. At times, the cata-

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logue shows its origins in Chicago rather than Rome; otherwise, Dubin’s essay
on the eighteenth-century French printmaker Jean Barbault would have made
more of the fact that Barbault’s title page selects, of all the Eternal City’s possible monuments, Francesco Borromini’s quintessentially Baroque San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane. Another Barbault illustration in Dubin’s text focuses on
yet another Borromini treasure, Sant’Ivo.To current tastes, Borromini certainly
ranks alongside Hadrian among the greatest architects of all time, but it was
not always so.
All told, this virtual Rome is thoroughly enchanting, and, best of all, available online in its entirety—a “public utility” indeed.
University of Notre Dame, Rome

INGRID ROWLAND

The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance. By Henry Kamen. (New
Haven: Yale University Press. 2010. Pp. xvi, 291. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-30016244-8.)
The belief that great buildings are the work of those who commissioned
them is as old as history, even if this is never strictly speaking true. It is said
“Julius Caesar built a bridge,” but neither he nor Solomon—any more than
Hadrian, Justinian, Abbot Suger, Pope Julius II, or King Philip II of Spain—
mixed mortar for their great works of architecture.We hold them responsible,
although this is not to say that there were not professional master builders,
architects, designers, and artisans of all sorts who were also involved. The
person art historians call “the patron” is given a pre-eminent place in discussions of great buildings, because we believe this person has a uniquely creative part in the conception and design of the building even as it was executed by others.
The distinguished historian Henry Kamen has taken this view very much
to heart in The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance, which is ostensibly about the huge monastery of San Lorenzo el Real at El Escorial outside
Madrid that Philip II founded in 1563 and saw to completion (except for
some of the memorial statues for the cenotaphs in the basilica) before his
death in 1598, but is really a book about Philip II as Kamen wishes us to see
him. He writes:
It is apparent that the Escorial has seldom been judged simply on its own
merits, but rather as a reflection of the personage who created it, a fact
that makes it even clearer that we should first seek to understand Philip II
before evaluating his masterpiece. (p. 241)
Kamen sets out well armed—he is the author of the serious biography
Philip of Spain (New Haven, 1998)—to dissipate the dark clouds of the
“Black Legend” that still linger over Philip II’s reputation and replace the old
“black spider of the Escorial” and the evil bigot of Friedrich Schiller’s Don

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Carlos with the humanist prince he believes the king to have been. In each
of nine chapters, he takes up a different aspect of Philip II’s personality (and
the legend and scholarship that surround it) and adjusts the portrait to depict
Philip II as more like other contemporary rulers. Much of this is welcome:
Philip II’s intelligence, personal tolerance, skillful governance, peace-loving
character, and profound religious faith are clearly brought out in this wellwritten book. However, in seeking evidence of the inner man and assuming
this to be knowable, Kamen plays down external pressures in the culture that
were certainly present and must have been internalized by the king to some
extent. No CEO, no matter how principled, can be fully in control of an organization if he or she is to lead it; and no human is free of contradictions.
What does Kamen’s portrait of the king reveal about the Escorial? It is
always interesting when a historian uses visual evidence as collateral for arguments founded on written texts. Kamen gives an excellent overview of Philip
II as a collector (of information, books, paintings, and much else besides), but
to see architecture as one of the king’s “great hobbies” (p. 52) fails to capture
the intensity and scope of Philip II’s relationship with building. Philip II’s
involvement with architecture was deeply felt; however, it is not wise to
ignore that it also was a dimension of his statecraft, a vital part of the magnificence and attention to reputación that were expected of kings. Philip II’s
style of architectural patronage—down to his intimate involvement in the creation of his buildings—followed the humanist project that was first fully articulated by Leon Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century and was carried out
with all the tools that Renaissance artists had devised to make it possible.To
have undertaken a project such as the Escorial is to have entered assertively
into an existing culture of relationships among buildings that always transcends and transforms personal idiosyncrasies.
Brown University

CATHERINE W. ZERNER

Faith and Patronage: The Political Career of Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, c.
1560–1629. By Benjamin Hazard. [New Directions in Irish History.]
(Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Distrib. ISBS, Portland, OR. 2010. Pp. xviii,
222. $64.95. ISBN 978-0-716-53048-0.)
Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, also known as Florence Conry, was undoubtedly
one of the most gifted and energetic Irish Franciscan friars of the seventeenth
century; in an age in which there were many notably talented Irish
Franciscans, Ó Maolchonaire was truly a man of many parts: poet, exiled
scholar, military chaplain, founder (in 1607) of the Irish Franciscan friary of
St.Anthony in Leuven, catechist, proto-Jansenist theologian, European powerbroker, military strategist, political agitator, author, translator, bishop, and
pastor—a figure at various times of immense influence and importance for
the Irish at the Spanish court of King Philip III. Although many facets of Ó
Maolchonaire’s career have been examined in broader contexts in the past

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(often in connection with Ireland’s political relations with the Iberian peninsula or in the context of Ó Maolchonaire’s catechetical concerns), this is the
first real attempt at a full biography. What makes it particularly welcome are
Hazard’s efforts in uncovering and comprehensively treating little-known primary source materials such as letters, papers, and dispatches found in
archives at Simancas, in the Vatican Library, in Brussels, and other places.
Consequently, Hazard’s chapters are heavily but not intrusively annotated,
running to well over 400 endnotes in some instances.
Hazard’s work consists of four chapters, detailing Ó Maolchonaire’s
upbringing and family background (especially the change in landholding in
his native Connacht in the 1580s that affected the future friar’s exile and
political leanings). He traces Ó Maolchonaire’s rise to prominence on the
Continent, his education at Salamanca, and his difficulties with Jesuit authorities that led him to embrace religious life with the Friars Minor (he alleged
that the Jesuits favored Irish students from Munster and Leinster who were
loyal to the Crown rather than their more rebellious counterparts from
Connacht and Ulster). During the Nine Years’ War, Ó Maolchonaire became
confessor and adviser to chieftain Red Hugh O’Donnell, and he petitioned
Pope Clement VIII in 1600 to grant crusade-like indulgences to those fighting
with the native Irish earls. By the following year, Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone,
and O’Donnell were petitioning King Philip III to nominate Ó Maolchonaire
for a bishopric in Ireland. From 1603 to 1606, he functioned as intermediary
at the Spanish court, working to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers
of Irish military migrants petitioning the Spanish Crown. His influence at the
Spanish court and proclivity for favoring the claims of the native Irish over
their Old English counterparts created much resentment and led to accusations by the Jesuit James Archer that Ó Maolchonaire was abusing his position as relator. One of the greatest legacies of this friar was the foundation of
St.Anthony’s College, Leuven, in 1607.This community of Irish friars would go
on to become a powerhouse of catechetical, theological, and devotional publications in the Irish language, including large-scale scholarly projects such as
the Annals of the Four Masters and the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae.
Ó Maolchonaire’s nomination as archbishop of Tuam in 1609 proved to
be a highly divisive move that deeply concerned Old English émigrés. His frequent absences from his see of Tuam and continued embroilment in political affairs, especially on behalf of O’Neill in Madrid, also concerned prominent prelates such as Peter Lombard, archbishop of Armagh. Ó
Maolchonaire’s continued support for O’Neill’s return to Ireland at the head
of an army was dealt a serious blow with O’Neill’s death in 1616. Later years
saw a decline in his influence at the Spanish court and his return to the
College of St.Anthony at Leuven.
The publication of this highly readable yet meticulously scholarly work
three years after the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the foundation

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of St. Anthony’s College is timely and should be warmly welcomed. Hazard
also helpfully includes a biographical chronology and selected transcripts of
key primary source documents relating to this fascinating friar.
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth

SALVADOR RYAN

Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles. The Counter Reformation in the
Upper Palatinate. By Trevor Johnson. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation
History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xvi, 354. $124.95.
ISBN 978-0-754-66480-2.)
In the short period that he was a graduate mentor at Cambridge during the
1980s and 1990s, Bob Scribner trained a brilliant stable of early-modern
German historians. As a group, they have ensured Great Britain’s continued
prominence in the field for at least another generation, as well as the ongoing
fertility of Scribner’s methods of historical investigation. Among these scholars,Trevor Johnson proved to have an eye for the highly unusual and distinctive, as evidenced in a number of articles he published in the early years of
his career. Specialists thus anxiously awaited the publication of his first book.
Unfortunately on June 25, 2007, Johnson died suddenly, claimed by an undiagnosed congenital heart defect.
This volume presents the text of Johnson’s study of religious change in the
early-modern Upper Palatinate, largely as it stood at the time of the author’s
death. The Upper Palatinate’s tortured sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
confessional history has long called out for treatment in English, for in the
course of the later sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, the state
changed its confessional allegiance no fewer than seven times among
Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Eventually, as a result of the misfortunes of its ruler, Frederick V, the “winter king” of Bohemia, the Upper
Palatinate reverted to Bavaria, and in the 1620s a careful process of
Wittelsbach reconversion began that was to continue for much of the rest of
the seventeenth century.
Of the three religions practiced in the state in the period before the reconversion, Johnson found that Calvinism seemed to have had the least appeal,
setting down only shallow roots in places where the nobility favored
Frederick’s policies. The rigors of its reforms had never appeared particularly
attractive to most Oberpfälzer, who lived in a remote region, where a rich
lore of lay practice had long been of almost equal importance to the highly
structured liturgical religion practiced in parish churches. Certain Lutheran
reforms—most notably hymn singing and the wedding rite—had been
actively embraced in this milieu; yet as Lionel Rothkrug once argued in his
controversial Holy Shrines, Religious Dissonance and Satan in the Origins
of the German Reformation (Waterloo, Can., 1987), Johnson sees that many
Protestant reforms faced strong headwinds from perceptions that singled out
the preservation of home and community as the proper sphere of religion.

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Yet for Counter-Reformation Catholicism to be firmly established, parishes
needed to be restocked with clergy devoted to the catechization of the laity
in the specifics of Catholic teaching and ritual practice. In addition, monasteries and convents needed to be rebuilt, seminaries constructed, and the network of Catholic sodalities built up that would serve as an enduring wellspring of affection for the early-modern Church. To accomplish these
long-term goals, the Wittelsbach state at first proceeded slowly, only replacing
Lutheran and Calvinist ministers when their livings fell vacant and allowing
Lutherans to be buried in church yards upon application to the state. Interimlike measures, which gave nods to certain innovations of the Protestants in
worship, were another tool by which evangelicals found re-admission to the
Catholic Church. Such measures found a degree of resistance among the local
nobility, many of whom remained tied to the territory’s former duke, the illfated Frederick.Yet over time, the patience the state evidenced bore fruit. By
the fourth quarter of the seventeenth century, the Wittelsbach state saw the
task of re-Catholicization as largely complete.
Johnson’s study thus reads as a fascinating case study of a region that had
one of the most controversial histories of reform and counter-reform in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is lamentable that this text, so
admirably edited by Simon Ditchfield and Raingard Esser, represents the
author’s final word, for as this volume shows, this would have been a career
of unique achievement.
University of Maryland–College Park

PHILIP M. SOERGEL

The Annals of the Four Masters: Irish History, Kingship and Society in the
Early Seventeenth Century. By Bernadette Cunningham. (Dublin: Four
Courts Press. 2010. Distrib. by ISBS, Portland, OR. Pp 348. $70.00. ISBN 9781-846-82203-2.)
Like iconic texts the world over, the Annals of the Four Masters, an earlyseventeenth-century manuscript compilation of Irish history in Gaelic, is a
work frequently cited, seldom read, and rather poorly understood. From John
O’Donovan’s partial edition of 1851 through the various instrumentalizations
of the text by cultural agents associated consecutively with the Gaelic revival,
the nascent Irish state, and the reformed “brown” Franciscans, this seminal
text has been rather badly served by the Irish academic community, who
acknowledged it without explaining its significance. Thus, the work of Paul
Walsh and other twentieth-century scholars notwithstanding, Bernadette
Cunningham’s volume is both timely, in that it subjects yet another cultural
icon to dispassionate intellectual scrutiny, and also significant, because the
Annals emerge from this study with their importance contextualized not only
within the early-modern Irish but also the European intellectual world. The
contrast frequently drawn by Cunningham between the apparent insularism
of the Annals and the internationalism of contemporary Gaelic works like

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Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éireann (c. 1634) serves to specify rather
than devalue the importance of the continental link.
The book is divided into three parts. In the first, consisting of three chapters, Cunninghnam sets the background for the text in the continental connections of the Irish Franciscans (one of the Annals’ editors, Micheál Ó
Cléirigh, belonged to the order). She then presents an overview of the Irish
annalistic traditions before engaging in a detailed investigation of the
approach of the text’s editors (traditionally called “The Four Masters”) to the
past. In the second part, she examines the form and structure of the text, the
methodology of the editors, and the way that the material was collected, transcribed, and arranged. She takes two case studies (the annalists’ treatment of
secular heroes and religious figures) to explain how the Four Masters’ reverence for the tradition in no way stymied their central aim of establishing the
history of Ireland as chronological, contextualized, and continuous. The last
part of the book consists of a chapter on the scholarly and patronage networks that made the work possible. In the tantalizingly and somewhat disappointingly brief concluding chapter she draws the many threads of the investigation together in a more philosophical commentary on the Annals as a
paradigmatic exercise in making history, or, as she puts it elsewhere,
weaving together a new and comprehensive historical compilation,
encompassing origin legends, genealogies of saints and king lists as well as
annals . . . in the manner of the great medieval miscellanies, but now
addressed to a wider readership because of the potential of access to
print. (p. 42)
The potential of publishing looms large on the horizon of the editors’
motivation and goes far to explain the editing and selection processes that
took the Annals from their multiple manuscript sources to the versions of
the text now held in the libraries of University and Trinity Colleges and the
Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. It also explains, Cunningham suggests, why
the editors eschewed the term king (rí) when speaking of the minor “kings”
in Ireland, preferring tighearna (“lord”) to underscore the importance of the
high kingship of Ireland and hence its historical conformity with the emerging nation-states familiar to the eventual intended audience. Interestingly,
there is no hint here of a transfer of sovereignty by disgruntled Gaelic underlings to the king of Spain (p. 122), but rather a practical acceptance of the
legitimacy of the Stuarts. For these editors, what counted was the sovereign
power of the king of neither Spain nor England but rather the kingship of
Ireland. In chapter 7, Cunningham discusses the ideological concerns underpinning the selection and arrangement of the entries, stressing their belief in
the value of memory itself in the new Ireland emerging from the great travails of the sixteenth century.This superseded the editors’ commitment even
to the Catholic reform (although entries inconsistent with current church
custom were omitted, p. 236), as the changing balance between ecclesiastical and secular entries suggests. Secular history is neatly nested within the

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religious, and the overarching concern is with continuity, as the stress on
Malachy’s twelfth-century church reform illustrates.The nonspecialist reader
will probably find chapter 9 on scholarly networks the most immediately
accessible. That they transcended religious differences is not really surprising, but Cunningham’s discussion of the political loyalty and official standing of the work’s secular patrons will give traditional cultural nationalists
pause.The crucial role of the Franciscans in providing patronage and scholarly infrastructure in a time of profound transition is emphasized.This important book, however, is much more than an homage to the Friars Minor. It is a
fresh contribution to the study of early-modern intellectual life in Gaelic
Ireland and its continental disapora.
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

THOMAS O’CONNOR

Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621): Mikropolitische Papstgeschichte. By Wolfgang Reinhard. [Päpste und Papsttum, Band 37.] (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag. 2009. Pp. xxv, 715, with CD-Rom. €218,00. ISBN 978-3-77720901-2.)
Wolfgang Reinhard stands out as perhaps the most prominent German historian of early- modern Europe, although he is not as well known in North
America as he deserves to be. He has written extensively on the expansion of
Europe and on the Reformation and Catholic Reform, where he has contributed significantly to the development of the confessionalization theory.
Yet the first and principal object of his research since the late 1960s has been
the history of the papacy, especially the “micropolitics” of Pope Paul V
(Camillo Borghese, 1605–21). Making use of the rich materials in the Vatican
Archives for the Borghese pontificate and especially the correspondence of
the papal nephew, Scipione Borghese (readers may recall the magnificent
bust of Scipione by Bernini in the Villa Borghese), Reinhard, his many students, and his colleagues have produced so many articles and books that one
can only agree when he asserts that the Borghese papacy has attracted more
scholarship than any other early-modern pontificate. The hefty volume at
hand attempts to lay out a summary of this research. Some chapters, Reinhard
notes, for the most part summarize work of his students—for example, Birgit
Emich’s Bürokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621) (Stuttgart,
2001), which was reviewed ante, 90 (2004), 127–29.
Fundamental to understanding Reinhard’s approach are the concepts of
Mikropolitik (micropolitics) and Makropolitik (macropolitics), which he has
taken over from organizational sociology and, to a lesser degree, political science. Analysis of its micropolitics can tell us much about the character of a
pontificate, Reinhard believes correctly. Micropolitics is a “depth politics”
analogous to depth psychology. It has to do with persons, not institutions,
with the allocation of offices or positions and the granting of favors and privileges for the advancement of private interests, not the formulation of policy

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for the common good. Macropolitics, on the other hand, is concerned with
visible decisions made for the welfare of the particular political entity or state
and their execution. The practice of micropolitics may undermine or foster
the welfare of the community; the two types of politics can overlap; for example, a prince might not be able to conclude a favorable peace treaty without
buying off the minister of the other state. Nor should we identify micropolitics with corruption. Fairly clear norms existed—albeit informal ones, according to Reinhard—for the practice of micropolitics. In this context he stresses
the importance of the virtue of pietas that dated back to the Romans and
required that one honor one’s obligations to parents and children, family and
clan, ancestors and compatriots. St.Thomas Aquinas, he notes, defined pietas
as “the practice of charity towards one’s parents and native country.” This
virtue provides a positive foundation for nepotism, local patriotism (campanilismo), and clientism. It is by no means dead today.
For Reinhard, the case of the Borghese represents a model instance of the
rise of a papal family.The author sketches the normal career path of a papal
bureaucrat with its many variations; the goal was usually the cardinalate.
Cardinal Scipione then played a major role in many aspects of papal government. For this reason, Reinhard argues, similar to Emich, that he and other
papal nephews should be considered “favorites” just like his contemporaries
Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, the duke of Lerma, in Spain or George
Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, in England, even though they operated in an
elective monarchy. But the literature on favorites has ignored them.Although
most of the correspondence of the secretariat of state went out under the cardinal-nephew’s signature, he held this office only briefly.As time went on, he
focused on the micropolitics of the pontificate, serving as a chief of patronage, as it were, charged with the responsibility of building up networks of
Borghese clients and advancing the fortunes of the family. He acquired wealth
to the extent of 6.5 million scudi between 1605 and his death in 1633, so
beyond the end of the pontificate. He tended to interpret the norms of
micropolitics more broadly than the pope, who conscientiously sought to
remain within the letter of the law, especially regarding the residence of bishops. Reinhard hesitates to assess the influence that the cardinal-nephew exercised on the macropolitical policy of the pope, foreign or domestic, given that
the documentary record does not support such an analysis, as much of their
business was carried on verbally. Nor does the author state clearly whether,
on balance, Borghese micropolitics in the circumstances genuinely advanced
the welfare of the Church and the Papal States.
The first half of the book deals with the methods and objects of patronage: benefices, offices (venal and nonvenal), reservations, pensions, privileges,
export licenses, intervention in court cases, and many other items.The most
valuable gift that a pope could bestow was the cardinalate. Reinhard distinguishes ten categories of cardinals, some overlapping, among the 125 that
served during the papacy of Paul V. The whole pattern and operation of papal

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government are described. At one point Reinhard analyzes the many letters
of recommendation in Cardinal Borghese’s correspondence, distinguishing
the levels of warmth to be assigned to various formulations in the letters. He
also looks at the families for which the cardinal served as godfather. Both
methods help to uncover Borghese’s clients and friends.
The second half of the book analyzes the Borghese networks, an important term for micropolitics; they constitute a universal historical, anthropological phenomenon. Paul V, who had served as an extraordinary nuncio in
Spain, generally inclined to that nation rather than to its rival, France,
although he tried to preserve a reputation as a neutral padre comune. Spain
and the Duchy of Tuscany represent the foreign states where the Borghese
networks penetrated most fully. According to Reinhard, the king of Spain
took in as much revenue from the Church in Spain as from the mines of the
Americas. One striking transaction with the king of Spain exchanged the gift
of the cardinalate and archbishopric of Toledo, the wealthiest and most prestigious ecclesiastical office in Spain, for the ten-year-old Ferdinand, the
Spanish Infante and later victor at Nördlingen, in return for the title of
grandee of Spain for the pope’s nephew, Marcantonio. The value of micropolitical networks appeared in 1605 to 1607 in papal conflicts with Genoa
and Venice over issues of jurisdiction. Many informal contacts existed
between Rome and Genoa, but this was not the case between Rome and
Venice.Thus the dispute with Genoa was quietly resolved, whereas that with
Venice led to the famous controversy over the Interdict.
The book is a difficult one that does not read easily, sometimes overwhelming the reader with detail. A rigorous editorial hand would have been
helpful. Nonetheless, it constitutes a major contribution to scholarship and
includes an enormous amount of information.An index adds to its usefulness.
Accompanying the book is a CD-Rom with a rich prosopographical data bank
of the persons and positions of the Roman Curia; it can be purchased separately from the publisher.
Loyola University Chicago

ROBERT BIRELEY, S.J.

Leonarde’s Ghost: Popular Piety and “The Appearance of a Spirit” in 1628.
Translated with introduction and annotations by Kathryn A. Edwards and
Susie Speakman Sutch. [Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 82.]
(Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press. 2008. Pp. xiii, 127. $19.95
paperback. ISBN 978-1-931-11279-6.)
In 1628 a feverish and bedridden woman who had recently given birth
claimed to receive numerous visitations from a spirit. At first, the ill woman
(Huguette Roy, the wife of a guard in the local militia who was most likely a
tradesman) could not identify the ghost, and the ghost was stubbornly
unforthcoming about her identity. Eventually, however, it was revealed that it

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was the spirit of Roy’s deceased aunt, Leonarde Colin. Colin, so Roy reported
to the clergymen who were notified of the visits, had been sent by God to
assist Roy in her daily housekeeping duties that she could not perform herself.
Eventually Colin revealed that this was penance for her earthly sins and had to
be performed to release her from purgatory. Roy was the only earthly creature
who ever heard or saw Colin, but the local clerical authorities, and Christophe
Mercier in particular, were convinced of the reality of the ghost. Indeed,
Mercier wrote “The History of the Appearance of a Spirit which Happened in
the City of Dole” (1628), the text that the editors translated for this volume.
The editors/translators try to preserve “the roughness, vitality, rhythms,
and ambiguities of the original manuscript” (p. xiii), but they are cautious to
avoid didactically telling readers how to interpret the text.They do, however,
offer an extended introduction (forty-one pages) that provides a useful setting
for Mercier’s account.We are encouraged to see the connections between the
popular piety in the daily lives of ordinary people alongside and in conjunction with the concerns and teachings of the institutional church during a
period of intense Catholic reformation. A sort of skepticism was invoked by
the authorities to determine the veracity of the spirit (demonic or not), but
along the way, we glimpse how ordinary people like Roy understood theological teachings of purgatory and, in the demand by the spirit for pilgrimage
to Marian shrines in the region, how redemption immersed itself in their own
sense of salvation. Roy’s religiosity comes through clearly, but, given the
apparent skepticism in the gossip of townsfolk and neighbors, readers might
wish for more of an interrogation of how the news of this spirit spread and
might have been understood by fellow townsfolk.
This modest volume could be useful as an ancillary text in an undergraduate course on early-modern religiosity. It holds few surprises for specialists
in the field, but the able introduction provides useful insights into popular
piety not easily gained from printed texts. If readers grant that the story is
based on Roy’s projection of what spirits are and can do, then they can discern from this text popular notions of the other world—how it intrudes on
this one, what spirits from it can do, what the relation between the living and
the dead might be, and what role these notions can fulfill in the ever-changing schemes of salvation to which early-modern folk like Roy and her neighbors were presented with, and upon which they did so earnestly seize.
Purdue University

JAMES R. FARR

War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713. Edited by David
Onnekink. [Politics and Culture in North-Western Europe, 1650–1720.]
(Burlington,VT:Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xvi, 274. $124.95. ISBN 9780-754-66129-0.)
The treaty of Münster has been considered a watershed of early-modern
history for a considerable period of time.Whereas up to 1648 religion—or, to

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be more precise, the confessional divide—was the determining factor of
internal and external politics, it ceased to be so once the Thirty Years’War had
come to an end; instead, politicians (mostly monarchs) began to form
alliances and wage war purely from considerations of “reason of state”; if religion played a role in international politics at all, it merely served as a convenient means of conveying higher dignity to “Machiavellian” interests that
were in need of benevolent disguise. This understanding of early-modern
international relations, the conviction that war and peace underwent a rapid
process of secularization after 1648 has been questioned for at least the last
ten years; the diplomacy of individual nation-states such as England and
France or the “international” outlook of the semi-sovereign principalities of
the Holy Roman Empire have come to be interpreted as mirroring their
power politics as well as the religious convictions of their princes.This reinterpretation of post-Westphalian politics, however, has not yet led to a fundamental reappraisal of the international system of that period; in so far, the
eleven articles collected in this volume (together with the editor’s introduction and Benjamin Kaplan’s concluding remarks) represent a new approach
to the political history of the second half of the early-modern age and to the
complex question of the relationship between politics and religion on the
eve of the Enlightenment.The majority of the contributions deal with British
and Dutch phenomena; during the reign of William III of Orange
(1689–1702), Great Britain and the Netherlands were, indeed, hardly distinguishable as factors of international politics. Consequently, the volume can
hardly be considered a balanced account of Western European perceptions of
international politics between 1648 and the end of the War of the Spanish
Succession, let alone of Protestant and Catholic perspectives alike (as is suggested in the introduction); instead, the reader is presented a picture of the
growing fears of Protestant Europe toward an inexorable Catholic supremacy
embodied by belligerent France, which had come to supplant Habsburg Spain
as the epitome of an aggressive Counter-Reformation Catholicism.Although it
is, without a doubt, correct to assume that many English and Dutch politicians
in that period conceived Louis XIV’s France a threat to European
Protestantism and, consequently, felt the need to unite against the universal
aspirations of the Bourbon monarchy, this does not imply either that the
cause of Protestantism was in truth at risk at the time or that Catholics did
not feel more or less the same toward the emerging Protestant powers,
notably Great Britain and the States General.
One of the major results of the essays collected by David Onnekink is that
religion did play a considerable role in the politics of war and peace at the
turn of the seventeenth century.This is the case both for the concrete ways
of doing politics, fighting wars, and forming alliances, as well as for the perception and discussion of international affairs in pamphlets and manifestos.
The greater part of the contributions illustrate the high degree to which
politicians perceived and judged political developments in late-seventeenthcentury Europe according to their religious convictions. This holds equally

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true for English envoys at Catholic courts under the reigns of Charles II and
James II, as is demonstrated by Stéphane Jettot; for aristocratic Huguenot
émigrés in the service of William III, as discussed in Matthew Glozier’s article;
and for the “Puritan Whigs,” whose convictions and political outlooks can be
deduced from Roger Morrice’s “Entring Book,” as it is analyzed by Stephen
Taylor. Public opinion in the Netherlands was very much shaped by the conviction that the defense of liberty, Protestantism, and “fatherland” were basically synonymous and that the fight against Catholic aggressors, notably Louis
XIV and James II, was a sort of patriotic duty—a theme discussed by Donald
Haks, Jill Stern, and Emma Bergin.
The rhetoric of religion did not disappear from the political discourse
after 1648; on the contrary, it maintained a very prominent presence and, in
this respect, did not only affect the political language of the time but also politics itself. On the other hand, religious or confessional considerations did not
determine hard-and-fast political decisions (such as the forming of international alliances) that likewise had not been the case in the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries. The question that is open to debate is the degree to
which religious convictions influenced politics in comparison with other factors of Realpolitik; it is the volume’s great merit to have drawn attention to
this issue.
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

CHRISTIAN WIELAND

“The Horrid Popish Plot”: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of Political
Discourse in Late-Seventeenth-Century London. By Peter Hinds. [British
Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monographs.] (New York: Oxford
University Press. 2010. Pp. xiv, 457. $100.00. ISBN 978-0-197-26443-0.)
The story of the Popish Plot of 1678 and the subsequent alarums, trials,
and executions often has been told. Frequently it is treated as the prologue to
the profound political crisis, labeled (among others) as the exclusion crisis or
the succession crisis, which lasted from 1679 until about 1682. The greater
part of this book by Peter Hinds, however, focuses on the plot, and its subtitle gives an accurate description of its contents. Although there is considerable discussion of events and politics, the main emphasis is on the rumors,
controversy, and polemic provoked by the plot and the most prolific—and in
some respects the most effective—writer who contributed to them. It is
about reporting, representation, and reception, understanding and misunderstanding. The major part of the discussion is based on texts, particularly
printed texts (with due emphasis on the form of those texts, as well as their
content). But there also is material on visual images, street theater (especially
pope-burning processions), and word of mouth. Much of this is fairly familiar
territory, but Hinds covers it with greater breadth and depth than most.There
are many reproductions of prints and texts, making this a handsomely pro-

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duced book.The approach is scholarly and careful, with little that is provocative or tendentious.There is much interesting and illuminating detail, but few
big surprises.
Two major points need to be made. First, there is a great deal about
Catholics and Catholicism, and many aspects of antipopery, but very little on
how antipopery could include hostility to Protestant Dissent. There was a
widely held belief that the papists had contrived the Civil War and King
Charles I’s death. Titus Oates’s narrative included this, as well as claims that
Jesuits, disguised as Presbyterians, were to incite Scotland to rebel against the
king. The most effective print of Presbyterian plotting was titled “The
Committee or Popery in Masquerade.” Just as there were similarities between
the king-killing doctrines of Jesuits and Presbyterians, so (argued Roger
L’Estrange) there were increasingly sham popish plots and increasingly real
republican plots hiding behind a veil of antipopery. As he wrote in 1679, the
popish plot had been investigated and the guilty men punished, but the plotting of “the faction” went on.The second point is that for a book about controversy and conflict, it focuses too much on texts and decoding meanings.
Dialogues in print score debating points but do not end in blows. There is
little sense of the day-to-day viciousness of partisan politics in the tavern and
the street—of clashes between the supporters of the dukes of York and
Monmouth, and their attempts to compel passersby to drink the health of
their hero and to suffer great indignities if they did not.There is little of the
sense of menace and anger found in Tim Harris’s work on London crowds or
Mark Goldie’s recent rumbustious account of popular politics.
These are not negligible weaknesses, but they should not distract attention
from the fact that this is a solid, scholarly book that appreciably advances our
understanding of the politics of the period.
Queen Mary, University of London

JOHN MILLER

Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV
through Napoleon. By Noah Shusterman. (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 299. $74.95. ISBN 978-0-81321725-3.)
By the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church controlled the calendar just as the liturgical year organized the daily lives of millions of ordinary
individuals. In Noah Shusterman’s words:“In Old Regime France, people perceived and understood the passage of time through a religious framework”
(p. 57).
In this richly detailed study, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation
completed at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004, the author examines the “politics of time” in the largest Catholic country of Europe over 175

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years. Not only did the liturgical calendar with its fifty-two Sundays require
attendance at Mass but also marked these as obligatory days of rest (fêtes
chomées). It also mandated observance of various sacred holidays, most
notably Easter and Christmas. Days devoted to local saints added to the proliferation of fêtes chomées.
According to Shusterman, in the mid-1600s an average of thirty-three
weekdays were religious holidays. By the end of the 1700s, however, this
number had fallen to only eighteen (p. 38). Such a gradual reduction in holidays was achieved by bishops who recognized that idleness on such days of
rest resulted in heavy drinking, debauchery, and even devil worship. In addition, excessive days of religious observance when labor was forbidden
deprived poorer Frenchmen of income needed to support their families.
Consequently, both religious and economic reasons induced bishops to
reduce the number of holidays either by outright suppression or by transferring their celebration to a Sunday (p. 83).
But it was the Revolution of 1789, with its brutal assault on the Catholic
Church, that instituted state control over the politics of time. During the
Terror the republican government sought to replace the Catholic liturgical
year with a new, secular calendar that would regenerate France while rationalizing time. This republican calendar, with its twelve equal months composed of three décades each, and a leap year of five or six days, brought the
state into sharp conflict with traditional French society. As Shusterman
observes, the new decimalized calendar “was the national government’s first
attempt to regulate time without the aid of the Catholic Church” (p. 138).
After the Terror ended in 1794, traditional religious practices regained
much of their authority. Although enforcement of the republican calendar
declined, it remained official, at least for state purposes. However, after the
coup of 18 fructidor year V (September 4, 1797), the government of the
Directory moved vigorously to enforce its usage in everyday life.
The author devotes considerable space to the period 1797–99, when strict
measures were introduced throughout the country mandating that Tenth Day
(décadi) and national festivals were obligatory days of rest. Marriages could
now only be celebrated on Tenth Day, and fairs and markets were strictly regulated. Enforcement, however, remained difficult.
Napoleon’s seizure of power in November 1799 led to the undoing of the
republican calendar. To improve relations with the Catholic Church, the new
master of France relaxed the Directory’s strict enforcement policy and, by
1806, completely abandoned the Revolutionary system of time. Simultaneously, thanks to an indult issued by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Caprara,
even most traditional religious holidays also were eliminated or relegated to
Sunday observance. As Shusterman concludes,“There was a shift in the authority over the holidays from the Catholic Church to the French State” (p. 242).

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The author’s study rests on extensive research in the French archives. His
bibliography alone occupies twenty-two closely printed pages. Shusterman’s
direct prose enables the reader to follow his argument with little difficulty.
In summary, Religion and the Politics of Time is a model of both scholarly
thoroughness and skillful analysis. It provides a valuable source for historians
of religion and society in France over a wide swath of time. It is an impressive
achievement.
Montana State University Billings

JAMES FRIGUGLIETTI

L’Islam visto da Occidente. Cultura e religione del Seicento europeo di
fronte all’Islam. Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Milano, Università
degli Studi, 17–18 ottobre 2007). Edited by Bernard Heyberger, Mercedes
García-Arenal, Emanuele Colombo, and Paola Vismara. (Milan: Casa Editrice
Marietti. 2009. Pp. xxii, 356. €24,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-821-19409-2.)
This volume grew out of a 2007 conference held in Milan, which brought
together scholars from France, Great Britain, and Italy to consider the
European response to Islam over the course of the long seventeenth century.
Organizationally, the book begins with an introduction that places the somewhat disparate essays into dialogue with one another and situates them in a
broader historiographical context.The volume is then divided into two sections:“Images and Practices of Islam in European Culture,” which considers
ways in which scholars, travelers, philosophers, and others depicted Islam;
and “Politics and Religion Confronted by Islam,” which examines how political, diplomatic, and military encounters informed evolving European views
of Islam.
Some of the volume’s more notable essays include Mercedes GarcíaArenal’s examination of how Spanish historians dealt with the problematic
Islamic past of Andalusia. The standard early-modern narratives portrayed
Spain’s Islamic period as an anomalous interlude of foreign invasion; however,
in the case of Granada this did not work since the city’s long Muslim history
left it lacking the ecclesiastical chronology that was integral to these histories. The solution was found in a number of spurious ancient texts that
remade the region’s early Arab and Jewish settlers into more acceptable
groups, all in the service of manufacturing a purer and less problematic
Spanish identity.
Loubna Khayati argues in her contribution that, although the
Enlightenment is held to have had a generally favorable view of Islam, the persistence of highly critical stances with deep historical roots often is ignored.
Also overlooked is the existence of more nuanced views on Islam that preceded the seemingly more tolerant eighteenth century. This is evident in the
works of various seventeenth-century libertine writers who found in Islamic
attitudes toward sex and politics ideas quite compatible with their own.

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In her essay on Veneto-Ottoman relations, Maria Pia Pedani shows that the
hostilities of the second half of the seventeenth century had a profound
impact on Venice’s dealings with its powerful neighbor. Prior to the outbreak
of the War of Candia, the Venetians maintained a policy of pragmatism and
accommodation. The half-century of war saw a fundamental shift in which
Venice ceased to fear the Ottomans, who became instead the object of both
growing study as well as some derision. Emanuele Colombo also examines the
failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 and its impact on Jesuit views of Islam.
The victory was perceived as an act of God, and its aftermath saw a reassessment of the appropriate approach to Islam. Some Jesuits held that the time
was ripe for a renewed evangelical attempt in the Islamic world, which flew
in the face of centuries-old assumptions that Muslims were nearly impossible
to convert.
These and the other essays in the volume fit into an extensive and wellestablished historiography on European responses to Islam. Groundbreaking
studies by Clarence Dana Rouillard, Samuel Chew, R. W. Southern, Norman
Daniel, and Robert Schwoebel developed a synchronic depiction of hostility
and misunderstanding that varied little during the medieval and Renaissance
periods that were their focus. More recent works by Maxime Rodinson,
Lucette Valensi, Joan-Pau Rubiés, and others have complicated this monochromatic picture and have instead suggested a more nuanced and historicized understanding of changing early-modern views of the Ottoman Empire
influenced by evolving political and economic ties with Europe.
L’Islam visto da Occidente fits squarely and modestly into this new scholarship; its contribution is in expanding the conversation into the often overlooked gap between these early treatments and those of the late-eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries discussed by Edward Saïd in his influential
Orientalism (New York, 1978). As this volume contends, the long seventeenth
century “marked an important step forward in western knowledge of Islam”
(p. xvii), giving rise to a plurality of views of Islam that ranged from antagonism to derision and from Orientalist curiosity to Jesuit hopes for conversion.
Brigham Young University

ERIC R. DURSTELER

A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. Edited by Ulrich L.
Lehner and Michael Printy. [Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition,
Vol. 20.] (Leiden: Brill. 2010. Pp. vi, 462. $230.00. ISBN 978-9-004-18351-3.)
This is the first of the companions in Brill’s series to deal with a topic that
is itself questionable.A good many scholars of the Enlightenment and probably a good many more students of the Roman Catholic Church reject the
notion of Catholic Enlightenment as a contradiction in terms. That was evidently what Pope John Paul II thought, and it also is the view of Jonathan
Israel, the author of the latest blockbuster account of the Enlightenment.

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Sebastian Merkle coined the term Catholic Enlightenment as long ago as
1908, and the concept has been under discussion ever since, although more
intensively from about 1970.The nine authors of the chapters in this volume
accept it. But they define it in a variety of ways, and some of them are much
concerned to distinguish it from other related tendencies. For example, Harm
Klueting’s valuable chapter on “Austria or the Habsburg Lands”—a particularly tough assignment—contains this statement (p. 143):
I do not use the term “Reform Catholicism.” I speak about “Enlightenment
in a Catholic country” contrary to “Catholic Enlightenment”. Catholic
Enlightenment was anti-baroque and reform-orientated. Catholic
Enlightenment sometimes overshot the mark but it was consistently
Catholic.Therefore the Catholic Enlightenment was truly Catholic. . . .What
some scholars call “Reform Catholicism” was not Catholic. It was heretical.
There is perhaps a translation problem here, as in some other places in the
chapter. But this statement as it stands is more puzzling than helpful, especially since other contributors strongly disagree—for example, coeditor
Michael Printy, whose fine chapter focuses on “Catholic Enlightenment and
Reform Catholicism in the Holy Roman Empire.” Coeditor Ulrich Lehner
claims that “one root of the Catholic Enlightenment” was “the application of
Tridentine Reform” (p. 18), and Jeffrey Burson tells us that “the Catholic
Enlightenment in France, as in the rest of Catholic Europe, was a child of the
sixteenth-century Catholic Reformation” (p. 66). This can reasonably be said
of the concept of Reform Catholicism, but hardly of Catholic Enlightenment
as naturally understood.The dogmatic rigor of the Council of Trent was surely
anti-Enlightened, and it is questionable to talk of Enlightenment of any kind
before the later seventeenth century. In a path-breaking chapter on PolandLithuania Richard Butterwick argues for the formula enlightened Catholicism
rather than Catholic Enlightenment.
If some of the terminology used by the contributors seems problematic,
their essays are all thoughtful and well researched, showing the continuing
significance of the Church and religion in a supposedly secularizing age, and
bringing out the interaction of Catholic with Enlightened thinking.They also
address the relationship between Catholic Enlightenment and a range of
other contemporary tendencies: Gallicanism and regalism, enlightened absolutism or despotism, Jansenism, and Protestant thinking.The campaign to suppress the Jesuits is, of course, much mentioned, but distinguished by most of
the authors from Catholic Enlightenment: it comes over as an especially
equivocal case, since the Society of Jesus had taken Descartes’s philosophical
method to its bosom and yet was assailed as reactionary and papalist.
Perhaps the wisest and most rounded chapter is Mario Rosa’s, discussing
the position in Italy within an exceptionally broad frame of reference and
with cautious application of the concept that he interestingly calls “the

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Catholic Aufklärung” (p. 215). He is unusual among the contributors in discussing the place of “positive science” in the story (pp. 240–41) and in suggesting that ‘the Catholic Aufklärung . . . had given the Church a boost that
would allow it over a long period to open itself up to the modern world” (p.
246). Burson, dealing skillfully with the rich topic of France, is at pains to distinguish “the Augustinian Enlightenment” from “the Pro-Unigenitus Enlightenment.” Frans Ciappara produces a lively essay on the strange special case of
Malta in which he identifies with unusual clarity those aspects of Catholic
Enlightenment that can be found there and those that cannot. Evergton Sales
Souza on Portugal and Andrea Smidt on Spain bring out the peculiarities and
limitations of Enlightenment in these countries.
Some of the articles seem too much in the shadow of the ultramontanism
of modern Roman Catholicism. More should perhaps have been said about
the low reputation and limited power of the eighteenth-century papacy, sidelined by Gallicanism and Febronianism as well as damaged by its botched condemnation of Jansenism, its acceptance of the suppression of the Jesuits, and
by the political imprudence of Pope Clement XIII.The doctrine of papal infallibility, though already cherished in Rome, was a joke to many Catholics.
Hence it did not trouble them much if the pope declared an Enlightened position heretical or forbade them to be Freemasons. More might also have been
said of the laicism of the Enlightenment—the resentment of lay writers and
thinkers at priestly domination of education and intellectual life. But this is a
distinguished collection of essays, which can claim to “serve as a recovery of
a forgotten episode” (p. 166), of a time when the Catholic Church was in
many respects a broader church than it was to become in the nineteenth century after it was confronted by revolution.
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

DEREK BEALES

The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and
Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth-Century France. By Jeffrey D.
Burson. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2010. Pp. xxiv, 494.
$55.00. ISBN 978-0-268-02220-4.)
The abbé Jean-Martin de Prades is well known to students of the French
Enlightenment. He figures in all the standard accounts and works of reference, both as the author of a controversial entry in the Encyclopédie
(Certitude) and as the victim in 1752 of a condemnation by the Sorbonne.
After approving his doctoral thesis without dissent, the faculty suddenly
reversed its position and stripped him of all his degrees. The Parlement of
Paris then ordered his arrest, and he was forced to flee the country. Diderot
and Voltaire took up his case, and thanks to Voltaire, he received a position at
the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. There he flourished as a famous
martyr to religious bigotry and intolerance, before the king began to suspect

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him of spying for France. Never able to return home, he died in obscure exile
in Prussia, thirty years after his brief moment of notoriety.
Jeffrey D. Burson argues that Prades deserves much more than a footnote
or passing mention in the history of the Enlightenment. He sees the condemnation of 1752 as nothing less than a turning point in its whole evolution. He contends that, without the unpredictable set of contingencies that
brought it about, rational religion and advanced free thought might have
managed to coexist without the bitter antagonism that marked their relationship right down into the French Revolution.They had already coexisted,
he argues, since the expulsion from the Sorbonne of Jansenist doctors under
the impulsion of Fleury in 1729. Unencumbered by Augustinian intransigence, the Sorbonne over the next quarter of a century espoused a theology
born of Jesuit attempts to integrate the arguments of Malebranche and Locke
into Christian doctrine. Burson’s term for it is theological Enlightenment,
and he suggests that Prades’s ambition was nothing less than to synthesize it
into a form that the most modern thinkers might broadly accept. This was
why Diderot invited him to contribute to the Encyclopédie. Several impressive chapters are devoted to the key elements of this modern theology. But
Prades submitted his thesis at a bad moment, when Jansenist zeal was being
rekindled by the provocative determination of a new archbishop to make
the dying attest their orthodoxy in confession notes.This in turn stirred up
Jansenist magistrates in the parlement, who saw an opportunity to avenge
the exclusion of their fellow travelers while pursuing the sovereign court’s
old ambition to oversee the affairs of the proudly autonomous Sorbonne.To
fend off such interference, the faculty felt constrained to flaunt its orthodoxy, encouraged to do so by the archbishop.The thesis of Prades offered the
occasion, but not only he paid the price. Enlightenment theology was
squeezed out. While freethinkers, disgusted by the vicious infighting among
divines, turned increasingly toward an anticlerical atheism, believers began
to close ranks against them. In these developments lay the seeds of the
Jesuits’ downfall in the next decade, not to mention the emergence an
aggressive counter-Enlightenment so recently highlighted by Darrin
McMahon. At the other extreme the radical Enlightenment broke into the
intellectual mainstream for the first time.
Yet none of this, Burson insists, was inevitable. He reaches this conclusion
through careful and exhaustive combing through all the evidence, including
some fairly esoteric theology. In the process he resolves numerous side issues
such as the role played by Diderot and others in Prades’s writings to vindicate
himself. To make the hapless abbé the catalyst of the entire later
Enlightenment is to make him bear a huge burden, but no future students of
the subject will be able to avoid engaging with Burson’s very impressive
scholarly achievement.
University of Bristol

WILLIAM DOYLE

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Carteggi con Quadrio . . . Ripa. Edizione Nazionale del Carteggio di L. A.
Muratori, Vol. 35. Edited by Ennio Ferraglio and Marco Faini. [Centro di
Studi Muratoriani, Modena.] (Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki.
2008. Pp. 654. €120.00. ISBN 978-8-822-25767-3.)
Fortunately, a re-evaluation of the role played by the historian and reformer
Ludovico Antonio Muratori in the Italian pre-Enlightenment has not had to
wait for the completion of the national edition of his correspondence, but has
accompanied this ongoing editorial venture, which is now in its thirty-fifth
year and still has some twenty-nine volumes to go. The editors of the most
recent installment, covering somewhat more than one letter of the alphabet,
have adhered scrupulously to the project’s high standards and strict criteria.
They have looked far and wide to add material supplementing the main body
of documents that exists in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena. In the case of
letters by Muratori himself, rather than simply reprinting those published by
Matteo Cámpori at the beginning of the twentieth century (14 vols.,
1901–22), they have corrected the transcriptions against the originals wherever possible and have added any recently discovered letters. They provide
detailed introductions to each correspondent, ranging from mini-dissertations
up to eight pages long (for the more important figures) to short paragraphs
(for the lesser-known figures), along with explanatory footnotes.The appendices round out the collection, adding letters not to or from Muratori himself
but clearly intended for his perusal.
The letters here constitute a particularly challenging portion of the series,
including no fewer than seventy-one correspondents from all over Europe,
referring to every period of Muratori’s long career—from the early studies on
poetry and good taste to the later ones on legal and political reform to the
immense masterworks on medieval and modern history—during a key period
in Italian and European culture: from the War of the Spanish Succession and
the rise of Frederick II to the papacy of Benedict XIV.They show the difficulties of obtaining and confirming knowledge in a regime of bibliographical
fragmentation and the trials of publishing in a regime of censorship, experienced not only by Muratori himself for the Annali d’Italia and other works
in various states around Europe but also by Francesco Algarotti, author of a
layman’s manual on Newtonian philosophy, and many others.They convey a
sense of the debate on witchcraft and the spread of Jansenism, as well as the
attempts of intelligent Europeans to come to terms with the first classics of
the French Enlightenment.
Highlights include the 169 letters exchanged with Angelo Maria Querini—
antiquary, Vatican librarian, and eventually a cardinal based in Brescia and
Rome.These contain much about Querini as priest and prelate, publishing his
periodical bulletins to members of his diocese, with words of edification and
church news, in the midst of a tireless search for information about local literary history and lore. Another highlight is the series of 114 letters by

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Giovanni Giuseppe Ramaggini, to whom none by Muratori survive. Although
a minor figure, Ramaggini spent much of his career in the retinue of various
prelates in Rome and eventually as a secretary to the reforming minister Karl
Firmian, who would become the Austrian plenipotentiary in Milan. His long
communications to Muratori give an intensely reflective account of intellectual developments at the time, from some of which Ramaggini remained
aloof, closing his mind to the more radical contributions such as La Mettrie’s
L’homme machine of 1748 (“such monstrous abortions of human ingenuity!”
p. 258). Fewer in number but important because of the reputation of the
sender are the letters by Emmanuel de Richecourt, Tuscan grand duke Francis
Stephen’s regent in Florence; Bernardino Ramazzini, the father of occupational medicine; Luigi Riccoboni, actor and author of a manual on theater performance; Francesco Saverio Quadrio, Jesuit author of a history of poetry; and
Giambattista Recanati, author of an early anthology of women poets. Overall,
we are reminded that the innovative trend of the eighteenth century did not
only arrive at the conclusion suggested by Jonathan Israel but also at the one
proposed by Franco Venturi, and it is encouraging to see more of this story
come to light.
BRENDAN DOOLEY

Jacobs University
Bremen, Germany
Late Modern European

Realism, Tolerance, and Liberalism in the Czech National Awakening:
Legacies of the Bohemian Reformation. By Zdeněk V. David. (Washington,
DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press. 2010. Pp. xxi, 479. $70.00. ISBN 978-0-801-89546-3.)
This impressively-researched work argues that the Czech national awakening was neither rooted in the nineteenth century nor in language. Zdeněk
David advances a revisionist thesis arguing that its roots may be located in the
“happy marriage” of the Catholic Enlightenment and the Bohemian
Reformation. He agrees with Thomas Masaryk against Josef Pekař and mainstream historiography. Unlike the former, David prefers the utraquist stream
of the Hussite tradition rather than the Czech Brethren, suggesting that the
toleration and liberalism exhibited by utraquism formed the intellectual basis
for the national awakening.
There are two major foci: first, the nature of the Czech national awakening, and second, an interpretation of later Hussite history. On the first, David
is masterful. Eschewing the calamity of the Counter-Reformation, David
regards the Catholic Enlightenment as the incubator. German ascendancy
was foisted on Czechs by Austrian bureaucrats rather than voluntarily
embraced by the awakeners. Johann Gottfried Herder was not a key player,
and David presents compelling supporting evidence for that conclusion.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is left out (quite rightly), whereas Immanuel
Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling are
overshadowed by the towering influence of Bernard Bolzano. Chapters 5–11
constitute a mighty achievement that no student of modern Czech history
can ignore.
The other focus of the study is not as convincing. David consistently
stresses utraquist tolerance, which is a problematic claim. The utraquists
actively persecuted the Czech Brethren, were opposed to any legal recognition of the Brethren, and lobbied to exclude them from the “Peace of Kutná
Hora” (1485). At least one man was burned alive (1511) for protesting idolatry at a Utraquist Mass.The preacher at Prague’s utraquist Tyn Church collaborated in the repression of the Brethren, and the sixteenth-century Utraquist
Consistory was sometimes a tool used by royal authorities to suppress and
persecute. David mentions none of this. He glosses the history as “liberal,”
“mellow,” “irenic,” “tolerant,” and “permissive” and suggests this formed the
basis of the national awakening.
In his earlier work, David noticed that a large number of sixteenth-century
works were republished in the late-eighteenth century, and the present book
is a fuller exploration of that phenomenon. Adopting R. G. Collingwood’s
“theory of reenactment,” David argues that reading historical sources allows
the reader to think the thoughts of the writer and bring the past to actuality
in the present.The republication of sixteenth-century utraquist texts presents
David with prima facie evidence supporting the Czech national awakening
as the legacy of the Bohemian Reformation. David quotes Frantisek Pelcl, who
claimed in 1781 that any Czech reading Czech-language books and familiar
with Bohemian history was already something of a Hussite.The claim is spectacularly specious. Political uses of the past are detectable in the Czech
revival. For example, the expulsion of a professor from his university post in
Prague was likened to Hus’s execution.
Although the book is not an easy read, it exhibits tremendous erudition,
deep reading of the sources, and expansive knowledge; it is superbly
researched and characterized by unusual dexterity especially on the national
awakening. One can only admire the industry and learning of the author.The
connections to the Bohemian Reformation are less convincing and considerably more tenuous, and the plot is nearly lost in the denseness of the “epiphenomena of a reified national spirit” and “ontically individualistic, epistemologically empirical” philosophy that characterized the awakening. Historians of
philosophy and those interested in the emergence of Czech nationalism will
find the book useful and provocative. For the student of the Bohemian
Reformation, David’s thesis must be tempered by the fact that at the height of
the putative appropriation of utraquist history by the awakeners, Jan Hus’s
Bethlehem Chapel in Prague was pulled down.
Washougal, WA

THOMAS A. FUDGE

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Inquisizione spagnola e riformismo borbonico fra Sette e Otttocento. Il
dibattito europeo sulla soppressione del «terrible monstre.» By Vittorio
Sciuti Russi. [Studi e testi per la storia della tolleranza in Europa nei secoli
XVI–XVIII, Vol. 13.] (Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki. 2009. Pp. xxii,
374. €39.00. ISBN 978-8-822-25808-3.)
Vittorio Sciuti Russi’s intellectual history, Inquisizione spagnola e
riformismo borbonico fra Sette e Ottocento, is an important and useful addition to our knowledge of the Spanish Holy Office, particularly in its last
decades. Sciuti Russi’s work is significant for two reasons: first, it provides an
understanding of the Holy Office and its fortunes in the period in which it has
been least studied—namely, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and
second, it provides an understanding of the intellectual and political context
in which these courts operated, and distinguishes between the place of the
Spanish and Sicilian courts in local politics in the Age of Enlightenment. In the
process, Sciuti Russi provides a persuasive explanation for why the Sicilian
court system was suppressed so much earlier than its Spanish counterpart,
even though both were technically under the authority of the Suprema.
In the first part of the book,“La tigre annichilata: I Borbone di Napoli e
l’inquisizione,” Sciuti Russi demonstrates that the Holy Office in Naples was
not simply an element of Spanish imperial power over the Two Sicilies.As in
places such as the Crown of Aragon, the establishment of the Spanish Holy
Office was fiercely resisted on the Italian peninsula. But as the Two Sicilies
passed from Spanish to Hapsburg to Bourbon rule, the inquisition became a
distinctly provincial institution, under the control of the cadet branch of the
Bourbon family ruling there. Enlightenment thinkers, together with government reformers, succeeded in ending long-standing prerogatives and powers
associated with the Spanish inquisition in the Two Sicilies, before abolishing
it entirely in 1782.
In Spain, by contrast, those arguing in favor of the continued existence of
the Holy Office had much greater influence, as Sciuti Russi explains in the
second part of his book,“La tigre ostinata: I Borbone di Spagna e l’inquisizione.” There, Enlightenment reformers waged a slow, pitched battle with
higher clergy who argued for the continued importance of the inquisition as
a bulwark of public morals. Yet here, too, an international group of bishops,
diplomats, liberals, and thinkers that included Spaniards and other Europeans
weighed in on the merits and significance of reforming this institution. The
cast of characters here ranges from the abbé Grégoire; Lutheran theologian
Friedrich Münter; and Spanish Enlightenment figures such as Gaspar Melchor
de Jovellanos to the cleric and writer Juan Antonio Llorente; José Nicolás de
Azara, Spanish ambassador to the Holy See; and the artist Goya. Carlos III and
Carlos IV attempted to reform the Holy Office in a move toward liberalization
and strengthened royal authority, weakening the institution as the eighteenth
century drew to a close.The year 1797 was, Sciuti Russi says, a year of crisis

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for the tribunal (p. 205). Napoleon’s abolition of the Holy Office marked the
beginning of decades of debate, abolition, and brief periods of restoration for
the Inquisition before its final demise in 1834—a process made elegantly
clear by Sciuti Russi.
The political and intellectual context described by Sciuti Russi makes for
fascinating reading. Even those inquisition historians familiar with Llorente
will find much here to contextualize and help explain that first great history
of the Holy Office. Equally helpful is Sciuti Russi’s discussion of Friedrich
Münter, whose earlier history of the inquisition should be better known.The
useful appendices include Münter’s work, a letter by the abbé Grégoire, and
a late defense of the Spanish Holy Office, as well as a letter regarding the
Sicilian Holy Office. In short, this is a monograph well worth reading.
University of Kentucky

GRETCHEN STARR-LEBEAU

Katholische Aufklärung, Volksfrömmigkeit und “Religionspolicey”: Das
rheinische Wallfahrtswesen von 1816 bis 1826 und die Entstehungsgeschichte des Wallfahrtsverbots von 1826. Ein Beitrag zur aufklärerischen Volksfrömmigkeitsreform. By Volker Speth. [Europäische
Wallfahrtsstudien, Band 5.] (New York: Peter Lang. 2008. Pp. xii, 555.
$124.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-631-58009-7.)
This volume studies a pivotal moment in the social history of modern
German Catholicism, when church and state officials joined efforts to bring
order and reason to popular religion. But history did not pivot as the reformers intended. Volker Speth’s book details the ten years of administrative
machinations leading up to the official 1826 ban on pilgrimages in the
Prussian Rhine Province, an event that set the stage for a massive religious
revival. Speth focuses on the Rhineland pilgrimages as the clearest indicator
of a growing social and cultural confrontation among popular religious identity, statist social discipline, and local communal autonomy.
Prussia was just beginning to assert authority over the Rhine Province,
part of the post-Napoleonic conservative Restoration, and Rhenish Catholics
viewed Prussian rule as foreign. In truth, Prussia had reason to question the
loyalty and political stability of the new province. Public assemblies such as
pilgrimages, involving the orchestrated movement of large or small groups of
people through villages and towns en route to a mass gathering, were a security concern. Some of the popular pilgrim destinations such as Kevelaer and
Neuss involved sizable numbers of people crossing district territorial borders.
Pilgrimages were a unique problem for the contemporary Catholic hierarchy as well. From the perspective of church leaders whose careers advanced
during the Enlightenment, Revolutionary, and Napoleonic periods, pilgrimages were part of an outdated folk culture. The destinations were deemed

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sacred through long-established folk tradition. Whereas the participants saw
pilgrimages as an act of piety—and an excellent opportunity to get away from
home for a brief time—officials reported instances of public drunkenness and
carousing as well as pointing up the moral dangers for young women and
men trekking across the countryside and sleeping in barns or the open air. For
churchmen advancing a more enlightened faith, these pilgrimages were a cultural accretion at best.
In the interest of compromise, church and state officials first hammered
out schemes for regulating pilgrimages. As Speth shows, however, these
attempts only led to frustration as local communities, district administrators,
and diocesan clerics could not agree on the pilgrimages to permit or the rules
to enforce. Ultimately, the authoritarian state’s interest in controlling public
assemblies was more pressing than church efforts at convincing peasants to
abandon their pre-modern rituals. The study thus culminates with the pilgrimage Verbot in 1826 by Baron Ferdinand August Spiegel, archbishop of
Cologne. At first glance, it was an overwhelming victory for modern reformers. But, as Speth argues, the 1826 ban was only a temporary victory for the
state administration and a failure for the Enlightened religious reform movement. As an expression of popular piety and local identity, the pilgrimage
remained important in the small towns and farming communities. The official
ban only deepened the chasm between Catholic Rhinelanders and the
Prussian government.
What makes this volume particularly important is its exhaustive research
on church and state practices as well as its detailed social analysis of the pilgrims. Speth thoroughly covers the historiography of early-nineteenth-century German Catholicism, and his work deepens our understanding of the
face-off between popular religion and the Prussian state. Officials interpreted
Volk pilgrimages as an expression of an unruly and superstitious culture.
Speth’s research provides the detailed and nuanced analysis of precisely how
the bureaucracies attempted to hem in popular Catholicism.
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

ERIC YONKE

Konfession, Nation und Rom. Metamorphosen im schweizerischen und
europäischen Katholizismus des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. By Urs
Altermatt. (Frauenfeld: Verlag Huber, an imprint of Orell Füssli Verlag,
Zurich. 2009. Pp. 442. €39,90. ISBN 978-3-719-31457-6.)
The well-known Swiss historian Urs Altermatt, emeritus professor of the
University of Fribourg, has published an impressive study on the relation
between Catholicism and the nation-state in Switzerland. He mainly focuses
on the cultural discourse about the religious and national identity of Swiss
Catholics in connection with the process of their political emancipation.

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After the defeat of the Catholic cantons in the Sonderbundskrieg and the
formation of a federal Bundesstaat in 1848, Catholics stood outside the Swiss
nation, which in fact was constructed by Protestant and liberal elites.
Catholics were branded as enemies of the fatherland, and they withdrew into
their own subculture. Slowly, they regained ground in the political institutions
of their Stammländer, but on the federal level they were confronted with a
national government that was monopolized by Protestants and radical
Liberals. In those difficult circumstances, they strove for the greatest possible
autonomy of their Church and for a policy of decentralization. As was the
case in other countries, international ties with the papacy strengthened the
cohesion among Catholics in the Pianische Epoche. A number of very interesting pages in the book are devoted to this aspect.
As in Germany, anti-Catholicism culminated in the 1870s in a virulent
Kulturkampf. This culture war forced Catholics onto the defensive, but at the
same time it increased their strength. Social mutations and the starting process
of democratization further extended their political influence. Anticlerical
Liberals subsequently saw themselves compelled to abandon their politics of
exclusion. In 1887 the Katholisch-Konservativen acquired the status of a recognized opposition, and in 1891 they obtained, for the first time, a representative in the federal government. Consequently, Catholics gradually accepted the
1848 constitutional framework and associated themselves more and more
with the nation. Their slow march out of cultural exile began after 1900.
Changes in the electoral system (the introduction of proportional representation in 1919) reinforced even more their political power, and, in 1948, during
the celebration of the centenary of the modern Bundesstaat, they manifested
themselves as unconditionally loyal Swiss citizens.
Their successful integration into Swiss society weakened the cohesion
among Catholics. Different other factors, such as an increasing secularization
and growing individualism, caused the religious-cultural factor to become
less important to their sense of identity. The secular culture of the nation
state showed itself stronger than religion, which was slowly reduced to its
ethical dimension. The assimilation with the dominant cultural pattern
amounted to a kind of “Protestantization” of Swiss Catholicism. Analogously,
bonds with the papacy gradually weakened as a binding element in the
Catholic community.This is explained in detail in a very interesting and clarifying chapter (pp. 227–59).
The changing relationship between Swiss Catholicism and the papacy constitutes the most important European dimension in Altermatt’s book, together
with a short account of “religion and nation in Europe” (pp. 27–54). The rest
of the study deals exclusively with Swiss Catholicism and has to be seen as an
excellent case study in that area. It offers a solid and well-founded survey of
the interrelationship between Catholicism and the nation state in Switzerland.
Catholic University of Leuven

EMIEL LAMBERTS

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833

Eglise et nation: La question liturgique en France au XIX e siècle. By Vincent
Petit. [Collection « Histoire »] (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
2010. Pp. 199. €18,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-753-51014-2.)
Vincent Petit offers this study of the Romanization of the liturgy in France
in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The Ultramontane movement in the Catholic Church was a great ecclesio-political and ecclesiological
movement away from older, largely national, forms and modes of Catholicism
and toward a universal, international Catholicism centered on the papacy and
the Church of Rome. In liturgy, this entailed the replacement of older national
and local forms of worship in various countries by those favored and practiced in Rome.
In relating how this came about, Petit, a professor of history at Université
Paris-I and Fribourg, really does not do justice to the great idealism of the first
generation of Ultramontanes inspired especially by Félicité de Lamennais in
the 1820s. They were reacting to centuries of Gallican state control of religion, to the Revolution’s attempt to regiment religion in renewed and largely
unfriendly ways, and to the continuation of Gallicanism by Napoleon and the
Bourbon Restoration. They turned their eyes beyond the Alps to the distant
Holy Father down in Rome, revering him rather uncritically as embodying the
lofty Christian values they found lacking in the French state system. In pressing for the adoption in France of the Roman liturgy, they thought of themselves as reviving the earliest forms of liturgy that had been preserved in
Rome and largely lost in other countries, especially in France. Thus, it is not
really correct historically to keep calling their ideas, as Petit does, reactionary,
integralist, and foreign.
But Petit does very scholarly work on an abundance of primary sources in
tracing the rapid growth in acceptance of Roman modes in France.The most
prominent figure is, of course, Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., in his youth an
admirer of Lamennais. Like other Mennaisians offended by the Gallican state
system, he turned to what he considered earlier and more authentic Catholic
history and tradition, and in the spirit of Romanticism, wrote numerous works
promoting the acceptance of the Roman liturgy.The number of French clergy
and some laity impressed by this grew steadily and rather rapidly.There had
been regional and local missals, breviaries, and hymnbooks across France, and
the process of replacing these with Roman books is Petit’s main subject. He
has gone through a large number of books, articles, and ecclesiastical documents and shows clearly and succinctly how the process of replacing French
with Roman modes took place. By the 1860s, before the First Vatican Council,
the adoption of Roman forms of liturgy in France was largely complete.
The book is rather brief. The main text is 106 pages, followed by fifty-eight
pages of annexes that offer charts, maps, and key texts of French bishops. He
gives a listing of sources in chronological order in seven double-columned
pages. There is no other bibliography, but there are abundant references in

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footnotes to primary and secondary sources.The book includes a useful glossary of terms that appear in the text.Thus, Petit offers a historical study that
is quite scholarly and informative.
Saint Louis University

RICHARD F. COSTIGAN, S.J.

Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–1897). Biographie. By Guy Gaucher. (Paris:
Les Éditions du Cerf. 2010. Pp. 683. €29,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-20409270-8.)
In the introduction the author tells us that his work will be based on
authentic documents, and his method will be chronological. The enormous
amount of available documentation has made the publication of this volume
possible.The average reader would not have the time to seek out and read all
the materials that are now accessible. Guy Gaucher has put this information
at the disposal of the interested reader. His work is based on the eight volumes of the Nouvelle Edition du Centenaire and the Archives de famille published in the revue Vie thérèsienne.
The author has made every effort to keep his work faithful to St.Thérèse of
Lisieux, as befitting someone who said that we must not say unlikely things
concerning the lives of the saints. Our reflection and devotion should be based
on facts, not on conjecture. Gaucher’s impressive work follows this directive.
His work will enable the reader to better appreciate all Thérèse’s surroundings: her family, her Carmel, and the Church of her time. Her writings and
words will become more understandable in the light given by this biography.
The author deals with the following periods and events in the life of
Thérèse: the Martin family in Alençon (1858–77); the move from Alençon to
Lisieux (1877–81); Thérèse’s experience as a student at the Benedictine
Abbey School (1881–86); her complete conversion during Christmas 1886
(Ms A, 45r); the pilgrimage to Rome, 1887 (Ms A, 55v); the solitude of Carmel
(1888–97); and her move to the infirmary (July 8–September 30, 1897).
Gaucher has included a posthumous history and a plan of the Lisieux Carmel
in 1897.There also is a general chronology, a glossary of religious terms, the
bibliographical sources, and the genealogy of the Martin and Guerin families.
The longest chapter is that concerning Thérèse’s life in Carmel.The author
begins with her postulancy and describes Carmel as it existed at the time. Her
experience in the novitiate and her life as a professed nun are all included.
Gaucher discusses in chronological order the significant amount of writing
produced by Thérèse during her short life: the Manuscripts, the Pious
Recreations, the poetry, and the letters.
Of particular note is the description of Thérèse’s “Little Way.” She always
wanted to be a saint. Such an ideal seemed impossible to her, yet she realized
that God would not inspire desires that could not be fulfilled. Basing her phi-

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losophy on Proverbs 9:4 and Isaiah 66, she accepted that she must remain
little; only then could the arms of Jesus lift her up.The author provides helpful background material to enable the reader to appreciate her remarkable
contribution to spirituality.
Thérèse and others in her time suffered from a certain atmosphere where
fear of God was all pervasive, reinforced by the frightening sermons of some
of the clergy and the widespread Jansenism of the period. Given this atmosphere, Thérèse’s “Little Way” and her “Offering to Merciful Love” are quite
extraordinary.
In conclusion, this book is a welcome addition to the Theresian literature.
It is full of important, detailed information and accurately relates the background, the life, and the death of the Little Flower to those who would want
to know her better.
Carmelite Monastery
Brighton, MA

SALVATORE SCIURBA, O.C.D.

Friedrich Loofs in Halle. Edited by Jörg Ulrich. (New York: DeGruyter. 2010.
Pp. x, 349. $140.00. ISBN 978-3-110-24634-6.)
Ulrich has edited a scholarly and lucid collection of essays devoted to the
life and work of Friedrich Loofs (1858–1928), a Protestant professor of the
history of dogma at Halle University. Loofs was the oldest of eleven children,
and his father was a pastor in Hildesheim. He academically matured in a culture permeated by neo-Lutheranism, which he studied in Leipzig. He also was
interested in the cultural Protestantism taught by Albrecht Ritschl and the
developmental dogma ideas propounded by Adolf Harnack, who was consumed with investigating the origins of early Christian dogma.
A portion of the research on Loofs is based on his archive at Halle, which
contains more than 3000 letters that offer reflections on a variety of topics,
including the work of his contemporary, Harnack.The first edition of Loofs’s
Dogmengeschichte appeared in 1889. He subsequently wrote a number of
shorter pieces, including those on St.Augustine and Pelagianism, which solidified his reputation as an expert in classical Christian history. Two themes
seem to have influenced his academic endeavors and his theological reputation.The first is the doctrine of justification and its existential consequences
for evangelical Christians. The second theme is focused on the relation of
Jesus of Nazareth to the Christological dogma of the patristic church.Within
this context he defined church history as the theological and historical discipline that interacts with all the models of historical, critical research but is
oriented to the needs of contemporary and future pastors.
Church history is theological knowledge, according to Loofs, developed in
the context of ecclesial activities in the present and yet retains its critical

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capacities. In essence, Loofs has offered the contextual theological model
characterized by the relationship of Theorie to praxis. In this respect he
shows his rootedness in the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Dogmas for
Loofs, therefore, emerge out of the community as a whole or at least out of its
theological component. Significantly, while Catholics were assaulting modernism, Loofs insisted that the history of dogmas had to be seen as a genuine
theological discipline that did not lead to relativism. Although sensitive to
Harnack’s hellenization theory of early Christianity, Loofs nevertheless opted
for a narrower connection between the New Testament kerygma and subsequent dogma formulations. In brief, Loofs offers a substantive example of an
eclectic theologian who does not seem to be constrained by any specific systematic theological perspective.
Essays in this collection also point out the effectiveness of Loofs through
his homilies as well as through his social concerns. One of his concerns
revolved around the German horror toward the sanctioned murder of the
Armenians during World War I. Before the war, Loofs and others were quite
focused on bringing Armenian students to German universities and formed a
German Armenian Society to improve relations.The essay by Hermann Goltz
suggests that the German compassion toward the Armenians was developed
through intimate associations, a condition that would later be lacking toward
Jews.This essay nicely addresses the formation of bystander empathy.
This collection of essays leads the reader to wonder if more figures like the
eclectic Loofs could have changed the outlook of Protestant theology when
confronted with the Third Reich. Some of the authors in this volume also
question the insidious role of nationalism in the formation of theological perspectives. Such an insight would be useful in helping both Protestants and
Catholics in critiquing the nexus of faith and culture.
Boston College

DONALD J. DIETRICH

Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life. By Oliva Blanchette. [Ressourcement:
Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought.] (Grand Rapids, MI:William B.
Eerdmans Publishing. 2010. Pp. xvi, 820. $45.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0802-86365-2.)
Without any exaggeration, it can be said that for a second time in his
career, Oliva Blanchette has made the most substantive English-language contribution to date to study of the French Catholic philosopher Maurice
Blondel. Back in the 1980s, dissatisfied with the earlier translation of Blondel’s
early masterwork Action (Paris, 1893), Blanchette provided an improved version that long ago became the standard for Anglophone Blondel scholarship.
The contribution he makes now with the present book is an intellectual biography, in the truest sense, of this seminal, difficult, and often overlooked
thinker.The book superlatively satisfies needs of a number of related fields.

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Historians of ideas interested in the intellectual, social, and religious milieu
of 1860s–1940s France will appreciate Blanchette’s handlings of the background to Blondel’s works and thought. He provides nearly full overview of
the wide ambit of Blondel’s thought for church historians and others curious
about this polarizing, energizing, original thinker who disliked controversy
and whose influence is discernible in nouvelle théologie and transcendental
Thomist thinkers who played important roles in the Second Vatican Council
and later Catholic theology. For anyone interested in Blondel’s philosophical
development, commitments, positions, and works, Blanchette has worked out
invaluable explorations whose length and depth go far beyond mere summaries. He discusses the main features of nearly the entire Blondelian corpus
and introduces, where appropriate or illuminating, the voluminous archived,
unpublished Blondelian materials.
Given that the majority of Blondel’s published works remain untranslated,
Blanchette’s detailed and accurate discussions of nearly all of Blondel’s texts
assume even greater importance. In five chapters (and more than 200 pages),
he renders accessible to the reader who is unfamiliar with French the main
arguments and systematized insights of Blondel’s later metaphysical and
moral masterwork: his trilogy of Thought, Being (and Beings), and the radically reworked Action. Another two chapters are devoted to Blondel’s ultimately unfinished philosophy of the (Christian) supernatural, the culminating
work planned to turn the trilogy into a tetralogy. The availability in translation
of most of Blondel’s early works does not nullify the usefulness of
Blanchette’s studies in this volume, providing both clear and correct
overviews to Blondel neophytes and thought-provoking interpretations for
Blondel scholars. Blanchette also examines nearly every untranslated piece of
Blondel’s hitherto under-researched but very fertile middle period, blazing
trails for further Blondel scholarship.
Every period and each piece are contextualized not only within the
French intellectual scene but also within the scope of Blondel’s life, vocation,
teaching, and relationships. Blanchette brings Blondel to life as a human personality by making copious use not only of Blondel’s published correspondence, memoirs, interviews, and notebooks but also materials from the Centre
d’Archives de Maurice Blondel. For example, we discover not only the multifarious contents of the courses Blondel taught but also that he antedates Étienne Gilson (who is more typically credited) in introducing medieval
thinkers to the French philosophy curriculum. Blanchette offers reasons why
Blondel employed so many pseudonymous personae in commenting on his
own work and combating his opponents.The turns, developments, decisions,
setbacks, and triumphs of Blondel’s philosophical vocation—his “intellectual
apostolate” (p. 181)—are mapped out.
Given a work of this value, it seems pedantic to fault Blanchette’s eminently readable style for frequently calling Paris an “intellectual Mecca” (e.g.,
pp. 37, 188) or for a few repetitions from one chapter to another. The bibli-

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ography of Blondel’s works is nearly, but not entirely, comprehensive, since it
includes only those that Blanchette references; and one chapter,“The Problem
of a Catholic Philosophy,” does uncharacteristically neglect several Blondelian
interventions within the 1930s Christian philosophy debates. That these are
the worst complaints a fellow Blondel scholar can make of an 800-page tome
hopefully speaks volumes about the admirable quality of Blanchette’s work as
a historian and a philosopher.
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY

GREGORY B. SADLER

Il modernismo in Italia e in Germania nel contesto europeo. Atti della L
settimana di studio, Trento, 23–26 ottobre 2007. Edited by Michele
Nicoletti and Otto Weiss. [Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in
Trento, Quaderni, 79.] (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2010. Pp. 498.
€33,00 paperback. ISBN 978-8-815-13720-3.)
A distinct approach of this volume of papers is to explore possible
crosslinks of modernism with other fields of scholarship. Some pertinent connections with developments of the period 1890–1930 are brought to light,
often for the first time, in the contributions dealing with ecumenism (by
Annibale Zambarbieri); feminism (by Vittorio Carrara and Roberta Fossati);
canon law (by Carlo Fantappiè); secular historiography (by Franziska
Metzger); “folkish” movements (by Uwe Puschner); Italian neo-idealist philosophy and politics (by Mauro Visentin and Rocco Cerrato); literature (by Paolo
Marangon on Antonio Fogazzaro); university life in Germany (by Christopher
Dowe); and pedagogy, through such figures as Maria Montessori (Fulvio De
Giorgi). Fantappiè draws attention, for example, to the significant overlap in
both period and personnel between the Vatican’s campaign against modernism and the drafting of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Weiss’s unusually
helpful introduction serves to direct the reader to other contributions of
most interest to individual research interests.
The conference where these papers were originally presented was a
“study week” that convened German and Italian scholars; the German papers
have been translated into Italian for this publication. It took place one hundred years after some modernist figures consulted with each other in
Molveno, near Trent, shortly after the antimodernist syllabus, Lamentabili,
came out (July 3) and before Pascendi (September 8, 1907), as Michele
Nicoletti discusses.
Beside the new questions explored, the central issues of modernist
research receive renewed attention, especially those affecting German or
Italian actors. Giovanni Vian tries to get a handle on censorship and self-censorship among the consequences of antimodernism that characterized the
years after Pascendi. Claus Arnold examines German theologians after 1918
and concludes that their pro- or antimodernist leanings were not much of a

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predictor in regard to their stance toward Nazism.The inspiration of scripture
was another delicate subject, as was the historicity of dogma (discussed by
Peter Neuner) and issues of church authority in matters of belief (examined
by Davide Zordan), provoking antimodernist disciplinary measures.
Vatican players such as Louis Billot, S.J., figure prominently in Weiss’s thematic paper; Modernists Ernesto Buonaiuti and Romolo Murri in those by
Nicoletti and Cerrato.Two cases deal with progressive figures who nevertheless escaped public disavowal by the Vatican: Although Franz von
Hummelauer, S.J., was forced out of scriptural studies, Erich Wasmann, S.J., as
a Catholic biologist who softened the apologetic stance against evolution,
was merely asked to stick to noncontroversial subjects (as Klaus Schatz
explores). Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., seems even more surprising (as Wolfgang
Mueller discusses): How did he manage to escape censure as founder of the
Dominican scholasticate of Le Saulchoir?
All papers are sedulously footnoted, bringing the reader up-to-date with all
but the most recent editions and publications.
Marquette University (Emeritus)

PAUL MISNER

De Constantinople à Athènes: Louis Petit et les Bollandistes. Correspondance d’un archevêque savant (1902–1926). Edited with commentary by
Bernard Joassart. [Tabularium Hagiographicum, 6.] (Brussels: Société des
Bollandistes. 2010. Pp. 183. €45,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-873-65025-4.)
The enigmatic figure of Louis Petit (1868–1927), the French Assumptionist
priest who served as archbishop of Athens from 1912 to 1926, has been the
subject of a number of studies in recent years. In 1997 the Pontifical Oriental
Institute in Rome sponsored a colloquium dedicated to his life and work; the
acts were published in 2002. One paper was by Bernard Joassart, S.J., on the
correspondence between Petit and members of the Bollandist Society in
Brussels, the prestigious institute for the study of hagiography founded by the
Jesuits in the seventeenth century.The great majority of his correspondence
was with Hippolyte Delehaye, S.J., the Bollandist president from 1912 until his
death in 1941. In the present volume, Joassart has edited and published these
letters and offers a more in-depth analysis of their contents.
Petit was born in France in 1868 and joined the Assumptionists in 1885.
Without finishing his formal studies, Petit was named superior of his community’s new foundation in Kadiköy (ancient Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus
from Constantinople) in 1895. Under his direction the foundation would
become an important center of research, publishing the influential review
Échos de l’Orient beginning in 1897. In the meantime, Petit had taught himself the skills needed to undertake serious research in various aspects of
Byzantine studies and published an increasing number of articles and books
in the field.

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It was the Bollandist publication of an edition of the Synaxarion of the
Church of Constantinople in 1902 that occasioned the first contact between
Petit and the Belgian Jesuits. He wrote for a copy, asking if he could delay payment as well. The Bollandists were understanding of his financial situation
and sent him a copy on credit, beginning a correspondence that would last
throughout the final twenty-five years of Petit’s life.
Altogether seventy letters have survived. Joassart has edited and painstakingly annotated all of them, carefully identifying the people and publications
mentioned and providing historical details where needed. In the missives it is
Petit who comes across as the more interesting personality. He writes quite
openly about his disappointments and frustrations, and reveals an inquisitive
mind with very broad interests and a voracious appetite for new publications
in what was then the quickly expanding field of Byzantine studies. By contrast, Delehaye is more austere, writing more briefly, much less often, and
never veering away from strictly scholarly matters.
The letters in this volume show that Petit’s devotion to scholarly activity
did not lessen after he was appointed archbishop of Athens in 1912. His correspondence with Delehaye continued unabated, and he was constantly
asking for books, planning new publications, obtaining manuscripts, etc.
Although Pope Pius XI’s decision to ask for Petit’s resignation in 1926 was
attributed to a lack of pastoral skills and an overzealous promotion of French
interests in Greece, one must wonder if another reason was the extent to
which Petit was distracted by his scholarly activity. In his letter to the
Bollandist president in July 1921, for example, Petit wrote that he had just
returned to Athens after spending “six or seven weeks” on Mount Athos; a
great wealth of Byzantine manuscripts were held in its monastic libraries. No
doubt the Roman authorities noticed such lengthy absences from his diocese.
Joassart and the Bollandist Society have rendered a great service in publishing this correspondence, for it provides us with a remarkable window
into the beginnings of the revival of Byzantine studies at the turn of the last
century.
Secretariat for Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

RONALD G. ROBERSON, C.S.P.

Modernists & Mystics. Edited by C. J. T. Talar. (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 152. $44.95. ISBN 978-0-81321709-3.)
If the modernist crisis is a crucial key to understanding the tensions in the
Roman Catholic Church today, as the preface claims, then this collection of
essays about our past sheds important light on the present situation.

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841

C. J. T. Talar and William Portier provide a useful introduction to contextualize the essays. They argue that part of the context of the modernist
movement was the constriction of Catholicism exemplified in the rejection
of quietism in the seventeenth century and the increasing institutionalization of propositional theology as a definitive and limiting religious norm.
They also helpfully explore the historiography of “mysticism,” indebted to
Michel de Certeau’s analysis in volume 1 of The Mystic Fable (Chicago,
1992) that shows the profound significance of the different historical
understandings of the mystical, symbolized by the adjective mystical
becoming the substantive mysticism.
Lawrence Barmann argues that Baron Friedrich von Hügel was a modernist because he was a mystic and vice versa. Barmann’s analysis of the
baron’s “Official Authority and Living Religion” (1904) masterfully explicates
the point. Talar exegetes Henri Bremond’s Apologie pour Fénelon (Paris,
1910) to show the sympathy of Bremond in particular (and many of the modernists in general) with Fénelon over Bossuet regarding quietism, uncovering
a rarely recognized context for the modernist movement. Michael Kerlin
examines the mystical telos of philosophy in Maurice Blondel’s work. Talar
analyzes Albert Houtin’s “exposé” of the alleged mysticism of Mère Cécile
(1845–1909) of Solesmes as a way of highlighting the inevitable prejudice of
historians; this is the least interesting essay in an otherwise enlightening
volume. Harvey Hill explores Alfred Loisy’s book-length response to Henri
Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Paris, 1932). Bergson contrasts static religion and closed (tribal) morality with dynamic religion and
an open (universal) morality; the latter erupts (divinely) in the context of the
former, as Jesus did in late-Second-Temple Judaism. Loisy finds that all religious traditions developed both patterns, that Jesus was not such an eruption, and that Bergson has tailored history to fit his philosophy. Although Hill
grants points to both in their battle, today Loisy seems far more plausible, at
least in method.
These essays remind us that all the major “modernists” (save George
Tyrrell) did substantial work long after the movement was suppressed. It is
necessary, as they remind us, to see the modernists in the full range of their
work to understand their contributions.That almost all were mystics in some
sense also is clear.
Yet mysticism is an essentially contested concept. That the older senses of
the term did not limit mystical practice to an esoteric elite is clear. That the
increasing rigidity of the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made mysticism suspect and contributed both to the esotericization of mysticism and to the unbalancing of the mystical (sacramental
and embodied practical), intellectual (theological), and institutional elements
of religion (as von Hügel so brilliantly put it) is clear.That the solution to the
present crises is not the heightening vigilance of the third element of reli-

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gion, but the increased vitality of the other two elements is the subtext of this
fine collection of historical explorations.
Fordham University

TERRENCE W.TILLEY

George Tyrrell and Catholic Modernism. Edited and introduced by Oliver P.
Rafferty. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distrib. ISBS, Portland, OR. 2010. Pp.
187. $65.00. ISBN 978-1-846-82236-0.)
This collection of strong contributions to Roman Catholic modernism
studies originated from a laudable desire to commemorate George Tyrrell, a
so-called modernist and former member of the English Province of the
Society of Jesus, on the centenary of his death. Oliver Rafferty’s chapter I historically contextualizes what follows. The book’s centerpiece is Clara
Ginther’s superb essay on Tyrrell’s seminal article,“The Relation of Theology
to Devotion” (1899). Ginther smartly shows how this article gives his corpus
coherence. Anthony Maher’s equally superb essay on Tyrrell’s ecclesiology
flows from his understanding of “devotion” as rooted in religious experience,
which, in Tyrrell’s case, was grounded in his Ignatian spirituality and
Christology. For Tyrrell, religious experience is what primarily authorizes, a
view that coheres with Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman’s view of
authority: It is, first of all, internal. Out of a thorough knowledge of Tyrrell’s
writings, Maher shows how false was the ecclesiology of Pope Pius X and
Cardinal Merry del Val compared to Tyrrell’s, which inveighed against an idolatrous ultramontanism that led to abuse of authority such as virtually ignoring the religious experience of the laity and regarding bishops as mere delegates of the pope. Readers will find cogent resonances between Tyrrell’s
ecclesiology and what many Catholics today desperately long for. The richness of these two essays suggests that Ginther and Maher are working on
monographs.They are to be strongly encouraged.
Andrew Pierce’s essay on the relationship between Tyrrell and Newman is
the very best of a substantial body of such literature.This work is especially
helpful in showing how Tyrrell could emerge from a formation in neoScholastic philosophy and theology into a mode of thinking that was open to
what could be most fruitfully mined of Enlightenment and postEnlightenment thought for Catholic theology. However, Pierce’s characterization as “bizarre” of my failure to include Newman under “greater and lesser
lights” (in George Tyrrell, [Shepherdstown, WV, 1981], pp. 189–207) may be
misguided. I think I made it clear that Tyrrell regarded Newman as not so
much a greater or lesser light in his firmament, but as the supernova that
guided him toward a more fruitful way of reflection than could be found in
neo-Scholasticism.
The other essays in the collection are complementary. Certainly not to be
missed is Anthony Carroll’s “The Philosophical Foundations of Catholic
Modernism.” The essays by Michael Hurley and Michael Kirwan interestingly

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relate Tyrrell’s thought to “ecumenical spiritualty” and “the theology of Vatican
II.” Rafferty rounds off the collection with a poignant, if derivative, treatment
of Tyrrell’s relationship to the Jesuits of his English province.
This text is best suited for graduate students.Although uneven in terms of
richness and marred by inconsistent copyediting, the essays are intelligently
conceived and well written. This valuable collection belongs in every academic library.
Marquette University

DAVID G. SCHULTENOVER, S.J.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 8: Letters and Papers from Prison, English
Edition. Edited by John W. de Gruchy; translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E.
Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens.“After Ten Years” translated by
Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt, and supplementary material translated by
Douglas W. Stott. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2010. Pp. xxiii, 750. $60.00.
ISBN 978-0-800-69703-7).
Fortress Press has devoted nearly two decades to the publication of sixteen annotated volumes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings. The arrival of
volume 8, Letters and Papers from Prison, means that only two volumes, 11
and 15, remain in this prodigious undertaking that is now under the general
editorship of Victoria Barnett and Barbara Wojhoski and assisted by numerous
Bonhoeffer scholars and translators.The entire project relies, of course, on the
original German edition, edited by Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer,
Eberhard Bethge, plus seven others, and completed in 1998. Few theologians
or historical figures inspire this level of interest and effort. It is clear, however,
that Bonhoeffer is worthy of the attention. He first emerged in the 1950s and
1960s as a major figure of both historical and theological interest. It is now
clear that Bonhoeffer was no passing fad.
A large part of the interest in Bonhoeffer rests on his nearly unique
response to the horrors perpetrated by Germans under Hitler. Instead of welcoming him, as many Christians mistakenly did, Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler
and the Nazi ideology from the start. Furthermore, after he could not convince even the Confessing Church to criticize Nazism as he did, he joined the
conspiracy trying to overthrow the regime. This activity led to his arrest and
imprisonment in April 1943, followed by his execution in April 1945, even as
the Nazi regime was crumbling.We now admire Bonhoeffer’s political insight
and moral courage. Bonhoeffer also emerged as one of the most influential
Protestant theologians in the second half of the twentieth century.
All sixteen volumes give us important access to Bonhoeffer; however, this
volume concentrates on two of the most central aspects of his story: the
human cost of his courage and martyrdom and the radical nature of his theology for “a world come of age.” Letters and Papers from Prison also is the
book—now greatly enlarged, heavily annotated, and newly translated—which

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first brought Bonhoeffer to the attention of the postwar world. In 1945
Bethge dug up a cache of letters buried in the backyard of the Bonhoeffer
home in Berlin. For six years he held onto these and other letters written and
received by Bonhoeffer during two years in prison. Some of these—between
Bonhoeffer and his family—had been legally written and thus were self-censored. Others represented an illegal correspondence, mainly between
Bonhoeffer and Bethge, smuggled in and out of prison by a friendly guard.
Bethge published a selection of these letters under the title Widerstand
und Ergebung (Munich, 1951).They appeared two years later as Letters and
Papers from Prison, placing Bonhoeffer quickly into the theological conversation. John Robinson,Anglican bishop of Woolwich, made headlines with his
reading of Bonhoeffer in Honest to God (London, 1963), and Bonhoeffer soon
became the starting point for various developments in secular theology, Godis-dead theology, and liberation theology. Most of this was rooted in eight socalled “theological letters” that Bonhoeffer wrote to Bethge from April 30 to
July 21, 1944, supplemented by two papers from the same period:“Thoughts
on the Baptism of Dietrich Bethge” and “Outline for a Book.”
John de Gruchy, the editor of volume 8, gives an excellent introduction to
what Bethge called the “new theology” produced by Bonhoeffer in prison.As
a biographer of Bethge in Daring, Trusting Spirit (Minneapolis, 2005) as well
as a longtime Bonhoeffer scholar, de Gruchy alludes to Bethge’s significant
role in these developments, and he largely accepts Bethge’s understanding of
the relationship between the early and late Bonhoeffer. De Gruchy acknowledges that Bonhoeffer first seemed to preach a church “against the world” (p.
21). His Discipleship (originally, The Cost of Discipleship, Munich, 1937) criticized the “cheap grace” to be found in casual Christianity, and his Life
Together (Munich, 1939) described a Christian life virtually monastic in its
religious intensity. His later “theological letters,” by contrast, advocate a more
secular Christian message and a Christian behavior more accepting of a world
in which people are strong, intelligent, and able to lead good lives without
relying on the church.
According to both Bethge and de Gruchy, the roots of the “new theology”
can be found even in Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum
Communio (Berlin, 1927). Throughout his career, but especially in his last
two years, he was thinking of a Christian message that could be appreciated
by people like his physicist brother, Karl-Friedrich, and a message that could
reach out to a pluralist world. In de Gruchy’s words,“Bonhoeffer’s concern
now was how to speak of the God of Jesus Christ without the need for a religious worldview that was no longer credible” (p. 23). De Gruchy also sees
“the persecution, incarceration, and death of the Jews and other ‘undesirables’ in Nazi Germany” as “undoubtedly” sparking this new emphasis: “If
Jesus exists only for others, then the church must not seek its own selfpreservation but be ‘open to the world’ and in solidarity with others, espe-

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cially those who are oppressed and suffering” (p. 26).The Christian community might retain its rituals and practices as an “arcane discipline,” but its
public face should now become only that of a loving church, a church emulating Jesus, a church “for others.”
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA

ROBERT P. ERICKSEN

A Heart in My Head: A Biography of Richard Harries. By John S. PeartBinns. (New York: Continuum. 2007. Pp viii, 275. $33.95. ISBN 978-0-82648154-2.)
An experienced biographer of modern Anglican bishops, Peart-Binns turns
his attention to one of the Church of England’s major recent figures. Until his
retirement in 2006 Harries (born in 1934) was bishop of Oxford for nineteen
years, thus holding one of the Church’s most influential and ancient sees; he
currently is a member of the House of Lords with the title of Baron Harries of
Pentregarth. Before that he had served various parishes and academic institutions. In the process he had become a noted leader and author. His influence
as bishop would deepen considerably.
Yet Harries cut a different path and emerged as a different sort of bishop.
To be sure, his theological orientation and positions on social issues could be
stamped as liberal. But Peart-Binns gets beneath labels. Harries brought intellectual acumen and a commitment to Christianity’s core affirmations. He saw
himself as avoiding the pitfalls of uncritical liberalism or conservatism. On
some issues his position was clear and grounded. But as a whole, the mosaic
of his views and actions proved complex and difficult to explain.
Peart-Binns has faced a considerable challenge in trying to assess Harries’s
career. First, the volume of his activity has been extraordinary. A biography
becomes a dizzying account of committees chaired, books and articles published, national and international issues addressed, and international and religious leaders consulted. The reader struggles through a numbing sequence of
meetings, issues, and personalities.
Second, Harries has been a private figure—warm and receptive at one
level, but obscure about himself and his deeper motivation. Access to him and
to a large amount of unpublished material has given Peart-Binns an enviable
opportunity to probe his subject closely.Although admiring, he has not hesitated to reveal aspects of Harries’s personal struggle or to question his actions
at points. No simple key to the man emerges, but the narrative suggests a
theme that the author could have done more to develop.
While functioning readily within the Church of England, Harries instinctively sought impact beyond it. In effect, he intended to update the church’s
role as a religious establishment. As one of its senior bishops, he assumed

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responsibility for addressing the major issues of the day. More even than a
church leader, Harries achieved wider public influence in this way. Like many
of his colleagues he spoke out against apartheid in South Africa and communism in Eastern Europe. He reached out to Orthodox, Roman Catholic,
Jewish, and Muslim leaders. He encouraged nuclear disarmament and a
thoughtful approach to ethical issues.
What distinguished Harries, even as his role within the church grew, was
the extent of his attention to the world beyond it. As Peart-Binns notes,
Harries was alert to the changing status of religion within English life. He
revealed an ability to deliver publicly compelling statements on major social
issues. He intended less to change the church than to impact public discussion. He grasped the truth of new forms of human experience without compromising basic tenets of Christian commitment. This fueled his core intention, for which he encouraged the rise of various extra-ecclesial interest
groups and untraditional groups within the Church.
He was convinced that Christianity must be restated in a way that was
morally compelling for a new age. Judging by the sheer weight of his activities, Harries developed considerable influence. It is not clear that he changed
the church, but he advanced public understanding and, in doing so, presented
the Church of England in a more substantial public light.
After tracing Harries’s accession to the episcopate, Peart-Binns turns to a
more thematic and less strictly chronological approach. Yet the blur of
detail remains. In Peart-Binns’s effort to encompass all that Harries has
done, he risks losing narrative control. But he has ample command of his
material and insight into a subject whom he admires. What results is an
account that is important, if difficult, reading. The quality of Harries’s
endeavors and his person make this biography worth pursuing. PeartBinns’s dedication to his task is rewarded by the sympathetic insight into an
influential leader that emerges.
Richmond, VA

WILLIAM SACHS

La revue «L’Art sacré»: Le débat en France sur l’art et la religion
(1945–1954). By Françoise Caussé. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2010. Pp.
683. €58,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-08891-6.)
This exhaustive work investigates the dominant personalities, artistic projects, and theological controversies surrounding the highly influential periodical L’Art sacré in the wake of World War II. As its subtitle indicates, the contentious debates were framed in terms of reconciling religion and art. Today,
we can see the conflict as a flashpoint within larger battles over relationships
between Catholicism and modernity, Christ and culture, grace and nature. L’Art
sacré was of a piece with other postwar phenomena: biblical renewal, liturgical reforms, social engagement (e.g., worker-priests), the nouvelle théologie.

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Françoise Caussé arranges her vast study under three large tents. Part I surveys L’Art sacré’s inception and evolution. By starting out with late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century invented qualifiers of art—for example,
“sacred,”“religious,”“Catholic,” and “Christian”—Caussé situates the “art versus
religion” opposition within the broader context of European secularization
and, more particularly, French anticlericalism. After noting earlier ventures
such as sacred art ateliers, Caussé moves on to the launch of L’Art sacré in
1935. An ambitious project in the midst of the depression, it was soon suspended with the outbreak of world war in 1939.
Following the 1944 liberation, L’Art sacré resumed publication under the
formidable directorship of Dominicans Marie-Alain Couturier and PieRaymond Régamey. By 1949, however, awareness dawned that the war had
been a watershed. Old formulae would no longer suffice, and changed conditions required new perspectives. “The haunting problem was the divorce
between the Church and living art: the works for the church needed to stop
‘crying out mediocrity, timidity’”; the periodical needed to shed its “overly
didactic” tone (pp. 141, 142). For the next five years, L’Art sacré engaged in
daringly bold projects. In 1954 Couturier’s untimely death at age fifty-seven
dealt this enterprise a critical blow.
Part II surveys “Protagonists, Places, and Highlights.” After biographical
overviews of the two main actors (Couturier and Régamey), Caussé considers
their visionary projects in detail.Three especially stand out. Prominent modernists (including Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Jean Lurçat,
Henri Matisse, Germaine Richier, and Georges Rouault) created pieces for the
Alpine church of Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce at the Plateau d’Assy. Matisse
lovingly and lavishly adorned the Dominicans’ convent chapel at Vence. Le
Corbusier designed the Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp, dedicated a year after Couturier’s death. These and other works actualized a
prophetic vision of the Church in the modern world.
Predictably, others quickly and fiercely contested this vision, and part III
provides an intellectual history of these “Debates and ‘Disputes’ [Querelles].”
One chapter considers the theoretical positions staked out in L’Art sacré.
Another surveys disputes arising out of specific projects: for example,
whether a non-Christian or Marxist creator could produce “religious possibilities.” A specifically twentieth-century problem arose at the Audincourt
church of the Sacré-Cœur: Could “nonfigurative” (i.e., “abstract”) art convey
“religious” or “sacred” meanings? This question strikes a present-day reader as
particularly curious—not only because such abstraction is so widespread in
today’s Catholic churches; but also because of ecumenical awareness of
Jewish, Muslim, and certain Protestant practices avoiding all “figurative” representations in observance of the Decalogue’s prohibition against “graven
images” and of centuries of iconoclastic struggles between Latin and Eastern
Christianity. However, as Caussé notes at the beginning of her study:

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“Catholicism was the religion of images par excellence,” making it the logical
arena for this confrontation (p. 9).
It should also be remembered that these “disputes” of 1945–54 occurred
contemporaneously with postwar shifts in the art world. Within the Church
itself, these disputes were related to the nouvelle théologie crisis, the
response of Humani Generis (August 1950), and consequent disciplinary
actions imposed on French Dominicans. Caussé includes nuanced considerations of two ecclesiastical documents regarding “sacred art” promulgated in
1952: the French bishops’ declaration on April 28 and the Holy Office’s
Instruction of June 30.The latter reaffirmed earlier directives from Trent: nothing should “shock,” be “profane,” or seem “out of place.” It also applied Pope
Pius XII’s 1947 liturgical instruction rejecting representations that seemed to
be “a deformation and a depravation of healthy” (or sane = sain) art.The popular press predictably formulated provocative headlines such as that appearing in Arts:“Does the Pope Condemn Abstract Art?” (pp. 537–39).
Caussé perceptively notes that the terms of these debates, although “multiform” in their particulars, were nevertheless “strangely constant,” because
they were fundamentally about “the difficulty of thinking through art and the
Church in a secularized society [dans une société laïcisée]” (p. 500). The
point might be made more strongly:“art” represented “modernity.”
This comprehensive volume is rounded out by wonderful historical photographs and meticulously annotated indices, the periodical’s tables of contents, and bibliography. Caussé has produced an indispensable resource.
Loyola University Chicago

STEPHEN SCHLOESSER

American and Canadian
Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame, 1665–1700.
By Patricia Simpson. [McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion,
Series 2, No. 42.] (Montreal: McGill-Queens’s University Press. 2006. Pp.
xxvii, 292. $34.95. ISBN 978-0-773-52970-0.)
In Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640–1665 (Montreal, 1997),
Patricia Simpson chronicled her subject’s participation in the founding of the
colony of Ville-Marie (Montreal) as an experiment in Christian living. This
follow-up volume focuses on the efforts of St. Marguerite Bourgeoys to establish what became the first uncloistered community of women in North
America.
Simpson’s narrative of the years 1665 to 1680 focuses on Bourgeoys’s two
trips to France to obtain letters patent and advice about securing ecclesiastical recognition for the fledgling community. During this period, several
women from France and Canada joined the original four French women, and

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the group established missions in the Montreal area, Trois Rivières, and
Champlain. They provided elementary education for the children of settlers
and native peoples, training in homemaking skills for young women, and religious instruction for children and women. Serving initially through missions
ambulantes, they lived with local families in more distant areas until the
Congregation was able to purchase property.
The last two decades of the seventeenth century saw geographic expansion as far as Île d’Orléans and Quebec city, as well as an increase in the
number of Canadians, along with some native women and two Englishspeaking former captives who had converted to Catholicism. Those years
also were marked by three major crises for the Congregation: a fire that
destroyed their main house; an ultimately unsuccessful movement to establish a single “spiritual” community replacing the Congregation, Hotel Dieu,
and Sulpicians; and controversy with Bishop Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de
Chevrières de Saint-Vallier over their rule and possible incorporation into
the cloistered Ursulines of Quebec. In Simpson’s view, de Saint-Valler and
his predecessor, François de Montmorency Laval, understood the
Congregation’s uncloistered way of life to be simply a temporary expedient,
whereas the sisters believed it to be the way God had called them to live.
The intervention of Louis Tronson, the Sulpician superior general, caused
the bishop to mitigate some provisions of the rule and remove all direct reference to cloister, and thirty Congregation sisters agreed to the rules and
pronounced vows in 1698, less than two years before the death of
Bourgeoys at age seventy-nine.
The fact that most Congregation records from the seventeenth century
have been destroyed by fire presents a major challenge to historians. Simpson
supplements the fragmentary writings of Bourgeoys with such contemporary
sources as the letters of Tronson and the Sulpician Dollier de Casson and the
annals of the Quebec and Montreal Hôtel-Dieu communities. She draws on
the work of earlier biographers, including the eighteenth-century Sulpician
Étienne Montgolfier, on the assumption that some of his material came from
interviews with sisters who had lived and worked with their founder.
Simpson carefully mines the information contained in parish, court, and other
government records to provide details concerning several of the seventeenthcentury Congregation sisters, notably Marie Barbier, the first Montrealer and
second superior.
Where the sources disagree, Simpson usually presents the evidence for
each perspective and leaves it to the reader to determine what most likely
transpired. As a result, this work is more demanding than a simple narrative
would have been, but the effort is well repaid for anyone who seeks a greater
understanding of early Canadian history, early-modern religious history, or the
evolution of religious life for women.
University of Scranton

MARY ANNE FOLEY

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Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans: Long-Term Processes and
Daily Practices. By Maria F.Wade. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
2008. Pp. xxiii, 301. $69.50. ISBN 978-0-813-03280-1.)
This comparative study is woven around the leitmotiv of conversion. Its
conceptual framework centers on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus,
interpreted by Maria F.Wade as the habits of nourishment and requirements
of subsistence among native peoples, in which their seasonal movements
contrasted with the daily and weekly schedules established in the missions.
The book provides a broad view, stretching from Florida to the Californias,
but skipping over the longstanding mission fields of Sonora-Sinaloa and
Nueva Vizcaya. Wade brings her anthropological training to bear on the
questions of directed culture change and the unintended consequences of
mission programs that were focused on the indigenous groups gathered in
the reducciones of northern New Spain. Her comparative framework opens
a fresh perspective on questions of intent and the methods for establishing
and maintaining missions by the Franciscan and Jesuit orders; Wade’s
overview and thoughtful comparative summaries in a number of chapters
as well as the final conclusions helps us to understand that mission methodologies were not religious blueprints for conversion, but rather projects
that underwent considerable experimentation and modification in different
natural environments and cultural settings. The discussion in part 1 of the
basic philosophies and internal conflicts within the Society of Jesus and the
Order of Friars Minor provides a useful preface to the author’s examination
of the mission programs and their outcomes in the regions she has chosen
to compare.
Perhaps because of the author’s ambitious comparative scope, the analysis of historical processes in each region is at times thin, and the treatment
of the book’s main themes is uneven across the geographical and temporal
perimeters of the study.Wade’s discussions of the failed Jesuit sixteenth-century mission to the Calusa in Florida and of the early Jesuit and Franciscan
missions in Coahuila and Nuevo León are weaker than those of the
Franciscan missions in Texas and of the Jesuits and Franciscans in Baja and
Alta California. The author focuses on settlement, work regimes, and patterns of religious conversion, presenting very interesting information drawn
from inventories and mission reports on handicraft production, crop cycles,
and livestock in different mission districts; however, she stops short of quantitative analysis or even tabular presentation that would clarify the comparison across these regions and permit meaningful engagement with recently
published historical literature on the missions. Similarly,Wade’s treatment of
the thorny issues of repression and punishment in the missions remains at
the level of description, drawn largely from missionary manuals rather than
from litigated cases that might have yielded unexpected complaints and
illustrated the ways in which indigenous peoples framed their mission
experiences.

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The author returns repeatedly to the question of conversion, understood
to mean the degrees of acceptance by the Indians of Christian precepts and
practices. She offers interesting observations concerning the alteration of
native life ways (habitus) through both the work regimes and the sacramental life course that marked the central tenets of ritual and discipline in the
missions. Even so, she does not bring to this discussion the cosmographies
recorded in published ethnographies and anthropological archives that
would permit formulating hypotheses concerning the transculturated construction of spiritual power by indigenous groups that lived in the missions—
in some cases, over multiple generations. The depth and persuasiveness of
this comparative study would have been strengthened if the author had made
more extensive use of archival sources. Unquestionably she has mined well
the microfilm and manuscript collections available at the University of Texas
at Austin, and Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. Her findings are
limited primarily, however, to transcribed formal reports that Franciscan and
Jesuit mission administrators prepared for their superiors, which Wade paraphrased and summarized in several chapters of the book. The impressions
drawn from them are telling, but they could have been nuanced and enriched
by the candid remarks that frequently appear in less guarded correspondence, ledger sheets, and chance notes exchanged among the missionaries
themselves or with presidial officers, merchants, and colonial settlers in the
region. Despite these limitations, the book raises foundational questions for
the ethnohistory of missions and opens a broad comparative perspective on
five mission provinces of northern New Spain.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CYNTHIA RADDING

A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite
Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia. By Lauren F. Winner. (New
Haven: Yale University Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 272. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-30012469-9.)
Lauren F. Winner’s ambitious new work attempts to redraw the historiographic landscape of colonial Virginia’s Anglican past. Strategically placing her
book between competing historical interpretations of the established church
as either hegemonically functionalist or as penitently pious, Winner argues
that Anglican elites seamlessly blended the sacred and secular into “a cheerful
and comfortable faith”—a religious worldview simultaneously at peace with
both sincere devotion and the hegemonic secular aspirations of a slaveowning oligarchy. Importantly, Winner argues that elite Virginians demonstrated this worldly-wise yet deeply spiritual faith, most often within the confines of their homes. Her emphasis on elite domestic spirituality permits
Winner to utilize a wide range of material evidence. A silver bowl intended to
cool wine glasses but also used to baptize members of the Mason family, a
satin baptismal gown, two pieces of religiously inspired needlework, elegantly
bound prayer books, recipes for food served in liturgical seasons, articles of

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mourning attire, and genealogical lists in family Bibles are all used to suggest
the vitality of elite Virginians’ home-bound piety.
Although Winner describes eighteenth-century Anglicanism as a “religion
at ease with the world” and attempts to highlight the blending of devotional
and secular life in colonial Virginia, she devotes much of the book to describing Anglican domestic “lived religion” as intensely devout (pp. 2, 15). Indeed,
the Anglicans she describes were more spiritual than worldly; these were
Christians who prayed with fervor, aspired to personify biblical heroes of the
faith, and firmly believed in the doctrines of their church. Although elite
parishioners may have modified the prescriptive messages of their ministers
to suit their social positions—especially with reference to their preference
for having baptisms and burials conducted in their homes rather than in
churches—they, nevertheless, wholeheartedly embraced most of their
church’s teachings. Although Winner describes deviance from Anglicanism—
manifested by evangelicals and slaves—she does not describe deviance
within Anglicanism.There is no indication in her work that some Anglicans,
particularly those of the middling sort not addressed in her work, may have
been less than enthusiastic devotees of even a “cheerful and comfortable
faith.”There is little room in Winner’s book for the snoozing and inattentive
parishioners that were perennial features of Virginia church services.
Despite its monolithic and monochromatic view of Anglican piety,
Winner’s work makes some important interventions into the field of early
American religious studies.Through a creative emphasis on material culture,
Winner makes a poignant case for the religious piety of some Virginia women.
For example, in deconstructing the religiously themed needlework of two
Virginia girls, Winner extrapolates the religious messages—obedience and
virtue—that presumably preoccupied the minds of their creators. Yet, the
reader is left questioning whether Winner’s interpretations of material
objects—as universal harbingers of intense domestic piety—are the only way
that such objects were understood by their original owners or creators.
Winner’s depiction of Anglicanism as both worldly-wise and especially
pious does not succeed in redrawing the historiographical landscape of
Anglicanism in colonial Virginia. Even in a faith attuned to the world, multivalent parochial responses—ranging from the sacred devotion she describes to
the secular disinterest she ignores—undoubtedly existed. Nevertheless,
Winner’s book is an important, if incomplete, addition to studies of material
culture, lived religion, and the established church in colonial Virginia.
Texas Woman’s University

JACOB M. BLOSSER

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853

A History of Georgetown University, Vol. 1: From Academy to University,
1789–1889; Vol. 2: The Quest for Excellence, 1889–1964; Vol. 3: The Rise
to Prominence, 1964–1989. By Robert Emmett Curran. (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press. 2010. Vol. 1: pp. xix, 476, ISBN 978-1-58901688-0;Vol. 2: xix, 476, ISBN 978-1-589-01689-7;Vol. 3: xix, 348, ISBN 9781-589-01690-3. $39.95 each volume; $119.95 boxed three-volume set, ISBN
978-1-589-01691-0 for the set.)
Robert Emmett Curran’s three-volume history of Georgetown University
is a magnum opus that reflects credit on both subject and author. Lavishly
and copiously illustrated, these volumes appear in a large format (8  10-inch
pages) and are handsomely boxed. The full text runs to 1328 pages, including more than 200 pages of appendices, notes, and bibliographies.
Thoroughly researched and meticulously presented, this history of
Georgetown University sets a high standard as the definitive scholarly
account of the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. It is
a complex institution and a multifaceted story that Curran introduces with a
preface that successfully lays out the general organization and the structure
of the three volumes.
The first volume, presenting the first century, was published separately in
1993 and has been slightly revised (reviewed by Philip Gleason, ante, 81
[1995], 103–05). Gleason drew attention to the rich database that disclosed
the demographic characteristics of students and alumni as well as described
“the uncertain, up-and-down rockiness of Georgetown’s development, and . . .
the crucial role of individual leaders in moving it ahead” (p. 104).Those patterns of irregular progress and uneven leadership were to persist during
Georgetown’s second century.
The second volume, covering 1889 to 1964, is divided into three parts,
roughly corresponding to the interval before the depression, years of depression and war, and the postwar period.This period, Curran notes, was “bookended” by two very strong Jesuit presidents: Joseph Havens Richards
(1888–98) and Edward Bunn (1952–64). Richards was a man of vision who
labored hard to make Georgetown a modern university with the requisite
facilities, faculty, and resources. Besides his support for the law and medical
schools, he expanded the undergraduate curriculum, began allowing elective
courses, and established formal programs in graduate studies. Over the next
six decades, his successors opened the schools of business administration,
continuing education, dentistry, foreign service, languages and linguistics,
and nursing. But it took Bunn to bring this highly complex enterprise up to
a level of true excellence with an ambitious building and fund-raising program, centralized administration, professionalized standards, institutional
support for the faculty, and a formal planning process. He succeeded in unifying Georgetown as “an actual university rather than a collection of
schools” (2:391).

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The third volume covers Georgetown’s “rise to prominence” as an international university during the quarter-century before the bicentennial.There
are two sections. Part 1 offers three chapters, including an inevitable and
lively chapter on the institutional impact of the 1960s.The second part’s two
chapters consider the presidency of Timothy Healy (1976–89). This volume
concludes with a brief but useful epilogue of a dozen pages that carries the
story forward into the administration of the first non-Jesuit president, John
DeGioia (2001 to the present). President Gerard Campbell (1964–68) refashioned Georgetown as a modern university by opening governance to faculty
participation, according a full welcome to African Americans and women,
sponsoring the first comprehensive capital development campaign, and facilitating separate incorporation of the Jesuit community. Healy was, arguably,
the most forceful president in the school’s history. He could be arbitrary, as in
his decision to discontinue the dental school, his tendency to disregard faculty views, and his decision to override protests and award honorary degrees
to President Ronald Reagan and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. But his personality, insight, and energy made him an influential national leader in higher
education; he made the university more diverse, helped define the Jesuit and
Catholic nature of the institution, and raised the endowment substantially.
Under his leadership, Curran asserts, Georgetown adopted an identity with
four characteristics: “a Catholic institution, academic renown, a location in
Washington, and an international composition and focus” (3:188). Building on
those four pillars, Healy was able to bring Georgetown “to the brink of
becoming a truly great institution” (3:xv).
Both the second and third volumes contain appendices detailing student
enrollment and listing the presidents and deans of the various schools.
Imbedded within the chapters are data regarding the religious identity of students and faculty, and lists of prominent alumni and faculty and their achievements. Curran takes up the issues of Georgetown’s religious identity, as the
faculty and student body became proportionally less Catholic, and the
responses that were devised—a strong commitment to the Catholic intellectual tradition, a task force during the 1990s to report on religious identity, and
a 2001 mission statement that defined Georgetown as “a Catholic and Jesuit,
student-centered research university. . . , [promoting] education in the Jesuit
tradition—for the glory of God and the well-being of humankind” (3:281).
Accounts of student life and varsity athletics are highlighted in these volumes, including a lively narrative of the tensions that arose during the
Vietnam War, and an enthusiastic account of the rise of varsity athletics—
especially Hoya basketball—that sidesteps controversies over athleticism.
A History of Georgetown University might be viewed as two distinct
books.The first volume can stand on its own as a brilliant work located in the
nineteenth century, the period in which Curran has done much of his work.
The wealth of demographic information and the comparative intimacy of an
institution that was still small are among the advantages that communicate a

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special quality to the first volume. Its wonderful data banks could not be carried forward into the second century as the university grew in numbers and
complexity.The second and third volumes are long.The editorial decision to
allot more than 700 pages of text and notes to the second century proves to
be a mixed blessing: on one hand, many details are now available in print in
a well-structured presentation; on the other hand, the lists and accounts can
read more like reportage than history. That may be a result of the fact that
Curran has been associated with Georgetown since 1972; inevitably, his personal experiences and memory influence his analysis of recent years. To his
credit, he addresses this issue in the preface, explaining his decision to bring
this history as close as possible to the present,
knowing that recent history is always different from the older kind to
which there is paradoxically greater access with less of a tendency to
bring presuppositions to the weighing of people and events. Georgetown
. . . should have a living history that tries as best it can to tie past to present. However realized, that has been my aim. (1:xiii)
In this history, his aim is true and effective.
College of the Holy Cross

ANTHONY J. KUZNIEWSKI, S.J.

St. James’ Church in the City of New York, 1810–2010. By Francis J. Sypher
Jr. Foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu. (New York: St.
James’ Church. 2010. Pp. 383. $35.00. )
Francis Sypher’s recently published history of St. James’ Episcopal Church,
commissioned in celebration of the church’s bicentennial celebration, gives a
clear and well-written introduction to this urban church’s founding and 200year history. Sypher weaves the history of St. James’ together with the story
of New York City and the history of the Episcopal Church in America, and creates a readable and interesting introduction to these topics.
Throughout its history, the leadership and congregation of St. James’ has
worked to live out its Christian mission through evangelization and direct
social service work. Sypher describes how, from its first years, St. James’
worked to help the poor. In 1811, Samuel F. Jarvis, the first rector of the
church, helped start a “free day school ‘for poor people’” (p. 57), and, over the
years, the church continued to adapt “its concept of social mission” as the situation in the city changed (p. 185). For instance, as homelessness became a
larger issue in New York City in the 1970s, St. James’ started a nonprofit corporation that partnered with other local churches and synagogues to address
the homeless crisis, eventually buying a building to serve as a residence for
homeless people (p. 224). In the late 1970s and 1980s, the rector, Hays
Rockwell, and the congregation began to support Bishop Desmond Tutu in
South Africa in his struggle against apartheid and Bishop Gordon McMullan in
Northern Ireland as the latter pursued efforts to heal the violence between

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Protestants and Roman Catholics (pp. 228–29). The parish continues to support international causes of justice and peace in the present day.
Yet, in describing the parish’s individual history, Sypher also merges the
history of St. James’ with the history of New York City—specifically with the
Upper East Side. He links the changing neighborhood and city with corresponding change in the church’s congregation, following the transformation
of the church’s neighborhood from a place where families came for the
summer in 1810 to the bustling neighborhood of today, observing how the
city’s economics have affected the size of the church’s congregation. He
points out how decisions such as the one to replace the elevated trains on
Second and Third Avenues with an underground subway increased property
values and thereby changed the size and make-up of the church’s congregation (p. 183).
Through the lens of St. James’, Sypher also focuses on the changing history
of the Episcopal Church. For instance, with the calling of the charismatic John
Coburn to be rector in 1965, St. James’ began to engage with contemporary
questions facing the larger church: questions about the role of the laity in
church services; the revision of the Prayer Book; and women’s ordination,
including the ordination of Carol Anderson in 1977, the first woman to be
ordained in the Diocese of New York (p. 217).
Sypher concludes with a description of the last twenty years at St. James’,
including a portrait of Brenda Husson’s current tenure as rector of the
church. Husson, at the time of her installation in 1997, became the first
woman rector of a “cardinal church” on the East Coast (p. 244).
The book provides not only a comprehensive and balanced portrait of the
rapidly changing ethos of one parish but also reveals how the Episcopal
Church has coped with the realities of urban and social change.
New York, NY

MEDORA BROSS GEARY

Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism,
1835–1860. By W. Jason Wallace. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 200. $30.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-04421-3.)
Due to their increasing numbers, Catholics became threatening to the
Protestant-dominated United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Animated
by the Irish Potato Famine and the failed 1848 revolutions in Europe, many
European Catholics had fled to a largely unwelcoming United States, swelling
the ranks of U.S. Catholics into a visible minority. W. Jason Wallace’s fine
monograph—drawn from the antebellum religious press, books, and sermon
literature—explores the significance of this infusion of Irish, German, and
French Catholics in the cauldron of American Protestantism after the Second
Great Awakening. Set against the backdrop of the sectional discord involving

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slavery and competing visions of nascent nationalism, this increasingly vocal
Catholic presence helped shape the antebellum debate over God and country. For the New England Protestants, Catholics and slaveholders became the
dreaded other—threats to a millennial vision of a righteous, free-labor,
Constitutional Republic. In defending themselves against Protestant assaults,
Catholic apologists appeared to support Southern Evangelicalism’s understanding of the Bible and social relations. In reality, the Catholic defense constituted more of a critique of the loose, subjective theology of much of the
“Benevolent Empire,” rather than an affirmative defense of slavery.
Catalyzed by a belief that the self-evident principles of the Declaration of
Independence found fullest expression in its view of constitutional government and that its reformed Calvinism constituted the purest soteriology, antebellum New England Protestantism imagined itself as the de facto national
church. Although Catholicism represented an ecclesiastical threat, it was its
alleged ties to papal hierarchy and European despotism that invited the ire of
Protestant writers and preachers. Furthermore, Protestantism considered
Catholicism a relic of the social, economic, and political order of the Middle
Ages, rather than an expression of moral and material progress represented by
the antebellum United States. The newly constituted Leopoldine Society
served as proof of Catholicism’s desire to destroy political and religious liberty in the United States. The anti-Catholic arguments of Lyman Beecher,
Albert Barnes, and Samuel Morse, among many others, provided grist for the
emerging American Party, whose anti-Catholic nativism held sway in many
parts of the antebellum United States.
Slavery provided the other target for Northern evangelical ire. Like
Catholicism, it represented an outmoded system of despotism, and Northern
evangelicals targeted it for extinction, because it was anti-American and thoroughly un-Christian in concept and practice. Although a few Catholic laymen
undertook to defend Southern social relations from Northern evangelical critiques, Catholic bishops such as Augustine Verot, John England, Patrick
Kenrick, and Martin John Spalding (along with Bishop John Hughes of New
York) wrote lengthy defenses of the welter of social relations that Catholicism
tolerated as a consequence of human sin, slavery being among these.
Although slavery did not represent God’s law, it was protected under natural
law that accommodated the sinful nature of humanity.The Thomistic Catholic
defense of slavery was not unlike the evangelical defense of slavery, which
held that slavery, in se, was not unscriptural, although it could be practiced in
a sinful manner. Slavery, like the republic extolled by Northern evangelicals,
was a temporary and imperfect human institution operating in a sinful world.
For Catholics, a Protestant theology that extolled progress and human perfection at the expense of traditional theology was both an expression of
hubris and expediency. In both its Northern and Southern form, Protestantism
lacked the “vigorous political realism that took seriously both the history of
church-state relations and the development of moral doctrine over time” (p.

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150). Thus, in Wallace’s treatment, a diverse, rather than unitary, American
Protestantism became one symbol of nationalism, rather than the arbiter of
nationalism.
Adams State College
Alamosa, CO

EDWARD R. CROWTHER

Citizens of a Christian Nation: Evangelical Missions and the Problem of
Race in the Nineteenth Century. By Derek Chang. [Politics and Culture in
Modern America.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2010.
Pp. viii, 237. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-812-24218-8.)
Derek Chang’s title reflects two unrealized dreams: that of full citizenship
on the part of African Americans and Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth
century, and that of a wholly Christian nation on the part of evangelical missionaries in the United States. Together, the three groups imagined a “national
citizenship based on shared Christianity” (p. 3).
Chang focuses on white missionaries in the American Baptist Home
Mission Society and their converts in an African American mission in Raleigh,
North Carolina, and a Chinese mission in Portland, Oregon. He argues that
mission participants renegotiated the meanings of race, citizenship, and
Christianity during a brief window of opportunity after the Civil War and
before the end of Reconstruction in the South and the 1882 Chinese
Exclusion Act.
Chang demonstrates that American Baptists and other Northern missionaries believed African Americans and Chinese immigrants to be a threat to
their expanding evangelical empire. But they also believed in their own
power and obligation to meet that threat with conversion rather than to repel
it through restrictive laws. Even as they stood up to exclusionary white
supremacists, American Baptist missionaries of European descent crafted
equally exclusive—and rather more insidious—depictions of cultural and
racial difference. White missionaries argued that black Southerners and
Chinese immigrants could become Christian, but then deemed them defective Christians and defective Americans—African Americans with all the spirit
and none of the understanding of their faith, and Chinese with the reverse.
The missionaries spoke widely of these perceptions, their words ringing with
the authority of the racial expert.
But the missionaries’ commitment to what Chang terms “evangelical
nationalism” also helped to create physical space and points of cultural contact through which African Americans and Chinese immigrants challenged
white supremacist understandings of race fostered both within and without
the missions (p. 7).They applied “the creativity of their solutions to the problem not of difference but of white supremacy” and took advantage of the

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opportunity to connect with supporters across racial lines and to build
autonomous institutions of their own (pp. 157–58).
Participants in the Raleigh and Portland missions experienced and
responded to white supremacy in distinct ways. African Americans in Raleigh
“balanced the hierarchy of uplift with a commitment to material and structural change” (p. 125), clashing with white administrators who denied them
access to leadership and power. Chinese immigrants in Portland enlisted elite
white supporters to help build a network among West Coast Chinese
Christians. Even after the Exclusion Act was passed, they worked to demonstrate their worthiness of citizenship in a Christian nation—sometimes at the
risk of reprisal not only from anti-Chinese whites but also from Chinese immigrants who rejected Christianity.
A few years separate the two missions’ establishment, but Chang compares
them at equal stages of development, rather than at the same moment in time.
If it sometimes takes the reader a moment to catch up to his quick shifts from
East Coast to West and small jumps in chronology, Chang always makes it
worth the effort.The interwoven analysis of the two missions makes Chang’s
story national rather than regional and buttresses his argument regarding “the
mutually constitutive nature of race, religion, and the nation” (p. 8). Chang’s
creative use of denominational and institutional archives is a model for historians of religion and race, and his argument that evangelical nationalism had
broad and lasting implications make his book essential reading for anyone
interested in race and ethnicity, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and
American religious history.
Mississippi State University

ALISON COLLIS GREENE

Holy Jumpers: Evangelicals and Radicals in Progressive Era America. By
William Kostlevy. [Religion in America Series.] (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 240. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-195-37784-2.)
Holy Jumpers offers a well-crafted account of the small but influential
Metropolitan Church Association (MCA), a communitarian Wesleyan Holiness
group that made a colorful splash onto the American religious scene at the
turn of the twentieth century. With roots in the Methodist church and parallels to the rise of other radical social and political movements, the MCA challenges modern assumptions about theological and social uniformity among
evangelicals.
The MCA was founded in the 1890s in Chicago, emerging from urban
working-class culture. Founded by two successful businessmen, the group
rejected private property and was one of at least a dozen Holiness communal
societies at the time.The group relocated in 1906 to Waukesha,Wisconsin, and
started a number of missions in the United States and abroad, most notably a
thriving project in India. By 1901, the group had adopted two controversial

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practices that distinguished it from other Holiness groups: holy jumping (the
MCA’s jumping worshipers were widely caricatured in religious and secular
newspapers); and the expectation that truly sanctified Christians would sell
their personal possessions and live communally.
The MCA was popularly known by the title of its caustic periodical, the
Burning Bush, which imitated the muckraking journalism of the day and
ridiculed more moderate Holiness leaders.“Burning Bushers,” also known as
“holy jumpers,” served, variously, as an inspiration, irritant, or a source of
humor to a generation of radical evangelicals.
Holy Jumpers enriches the understanding of the development of other
Holiness groups such as the Salvation Army, the Free Methodist Church, and
the Church of the Nazarene, which share overlapping histories with the MCA.
The MCA influenced key Holiness leaders, including Seth C. Rees,Alma White,
and Bud Robinson.
Importantly, the MCA was a catalyst in the emergence of Pentecostalism.
MCA leaders excoriated the “tongues movement,” rejecting it as based on ethical and doctrinal irregularities.Although the MCA objected to the Pentecostal
identification of glossolalia as evidence of Spirit-baptism, the MCA had its
own evidence—jumping. Kostlevy points out that the MCA contributed many
members and leaders to the Azusa Street Revival (1906–09) in Los Angeles,
California, which was a focal point of the young Pentecostal movement. MCA
leader A. G. Garr folded his Los Angeles congregation into the Azusa Street
mission and, in 1906, became the first missionary commissioned at Azusa
Street. Oneness Pentecostal pioneer Glenn Cook also came from the MCA.
Curiously, Kostlevy did not mention that Church of God in Christ cofounder
and publisher D. J.Young also had roots in the MCA.
Kostlevy, a noted bibliographer of the Holiness movement, based his
research on the MCA’s extensive archives (now housed at Fuller Theological
Seminary, Pasadena, California), which were previously inaccessible. This
important study of the MCA, which Kostlevy calls the “anarchists of the
Holiness Movement” (p. 10), is a lively account of how one group at the margins left its mark on the broader Christian tradition. Holy Jumpers sheds light
on currents and fissures in evangelicalism usually neglected in the standard
church histories and will be warmly welcomed by those interested in the history of American religion, the Holiness movement, and Pentecostalism.
Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
Springfield, MO

DARRIN J. RODGERS

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American Crusade: Catholic Youth in the World Mission Movement from
World War I through Vatican II. By David J. Endres. [American Society of
Missiology Monograph Series, 7.] (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, an
imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2010. Pp. xiv, 197. $23.00 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-608-99071-9.)
Throughout the nineteenth century America was a mission field for the
Roman Catholic Church, a status it retained until 1908. Ten years later, the
American Catholic Church became a mission-sending church. This timing is
ironic in that the great explosion of American Protestant interest in missions
had occurred in the generation before World War I and probably peaked in
terms of its visibility in the general culture just as American Catholics were
entering the field in the years immediately following the war’s end. One of
the great engines of this Protestant movement, which saw the number of
American Protestant missionaries soar from about 900 in 1890 to perhaps
14,000 in the 1920s, was the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign
Missions (SVM). The SVM was a recruiting and mobilizing organization for
missions that worked on behalf of all the mainline Protestant denominations.
American Catholics, marveling at this organizational juggernaut, attempted to
create one of their own: the Catholic Students’ Mission Crusade (CSMC).
The SVM and the CSMC were similar in that they both reached out to
youth, adopted the heroic rhetoric of the period, attempted to mobilize youth
in an effort to evangelize the world, and were energized by the optimism and
belief in a special American destiny that characterized nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century America. Until the 1920s, the SVM reflected a broad
Protestant consensus that embraced both evangelical Christianity and the
Social Gospel. When this consensus became untenable in the 1920s as the
battle between modernism and fundamentalism roared to life, the SVM soon
lost its way and ceased to be an effective organization.The CSMC, unencumbered by this crisis of authority in American Protestantism, was rapidly rising
in stature just as the SVM was becoming moribund. The CSMC would endure
for another half a century, becoming a fixture in American Catholic life.
David Endres does an excellent job bringing this history to life, charting
the CSMC’s story through four generations: the World War I generation that
mirrored the Victorian optimism of the SVM; the interwar generation that saw
itself as producing Crusaders to conquer the infidel; the post–World War II
generation that produced Cold Warriors for Christ; and the generation of the
1960s that alternately gloried in and was mired in the social and ecclesial revolutions of the period. Endres’s account, well written and convincing in its
depiction of the evolution of the organization, is essential reading for anyone
interested in twentieth-century Catholic missions.
The reader, however, is left wondering at times just how influential and
important the CSMC actually was.We are told, on the one hand, that in the late
1960s, the organization had 1 million student members in 3100 American edu-

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cational institutions, but, on the other hand, that these numbers were clearly
inflated because some dioceses simply enrolled all the students in their
schools into the organization. Moreover, the reader is never told how much
money for missions the organization raised or how many missionaries it succeeded in recruiting. Perhaps this type of hard evidence is difficult or impossible to obtain. One would expect, then, that the writer would provide copious amounts of anecdotal evidence, but even this is scant.
The CSMC disbanded in 1970, just one year after the SVM was formally terminated. Endres uses this and other evidence to conclude that “the collapse
of the CSMC was impacted by broader changes in the mission world and
Christianity in general” (p. 158).This is true as far as it goes, but he fails to note
that the decline in mission activity was largely limited to the mainline
churches associated with the World Council of Churches, and that the SVM
had long since been replaced as a missionary recruiter of college students by
the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and the Student Missionary
Conventions at Urbana, Illinois. Moreover, the American Protestant missionary
effort had been growing by leaps and bounds since the end of World War II
and would continue to see dramatic increases in the numbers of long-term
missionaries through the 1980s.
As a rising tide lifts all boats except those with holes in their hulls, the collapse of the CSMC ought to be seen, frankly, for what is was: a failure in the
midst of a general success. Endres concludes on a celebratory note; indeed,
there are things to celebrate. But the story of CSMC also might have been told
as a cautionary tale.
World Mission
Presbyterian Church U.S.A.

MICHAEL PARKER

Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to
Congress. By Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. (New York: Fordham University
Press. 2011. Pp. xviii, 393. $32.95. ISBN 978-0-823-23304-5.)
It is difficult to categorize this book. It lacks the depth of research and
analysis to be considered a scholarly biography, but is more than a simple
memoir by a sympathetic fellow Jesuit. Raymond A. Schroth, currently an
associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, has had a long career as a
journalist, teacher, and commentator on culture, politics, and religion. Perhaps
it is the result of Schroth’s own social and political perspectives that this
book might provide the reader with more of an insight into the tenor of the
radical politics of the 1970s than into the life and motivations of the subject,
Robert Drinan (1920–2007).
Schroth is careful to acknowledge the difficulty of exploring the early as
well as the inner life of a man who, although a very public figure, appeared to
maintain the cloak of privacy intact throughout the course of his life.There is

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little insight provided even by those who lived and worked with him in academia, Congress, or Jesuit communities. This was, apparently, a man of some
enigma and mystery. To compensate for what we do not know, Schroth
embarks on some lengthy explanations of the Jesuit subculture of the 1940s
and 1950s in the hope of suggesting what might have influenced and motivated the man. If this was his purpose, he is not very successful.The result is
two stories: the somewhat inexplicable contradictions involved in the public
life of Drinan, the professed Jesuit and the politician, and a thickly descriptive
account of some aspects of the Jesuit world that provided a platform for his
public life.
Admirably, Schroth is not hesitant to raise repeatedly the question of
Drinan’s changing position on abortion as well as his apparent dissimulation
with regard to ecclesiastical permission to run for public office. What
Schroth does not directly address or explore is the culture of support within
the leadership of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus for
Drinan’s political and moral public stances.This culture is what perhaps provided the grounds as well as the “political cover” for the generation of selfidentified Catholic politicians who have believed that their support for
“abortion rights” is compatible with their religious commitment and profession as Catholics.As Schroth points out, Jesuit superiors in the United States
were ever-ready to threaten their superiors in Rome with the supposed dire
consequences of intervening in the case of Drinan. The authors of fin-desiècle Americanism would have been proud that their tactics were still proving useful.
Schroth’s perspective on Drinan’s opponents is at least partially summed
up in his scathing judgment on
those who strongly disliked him . . . because of his abortion position; they
were one-issue pro-life, often more concerned for life in the womb than
for starving children of the poor throughout the world, the victims of war
and torture, and prisoners on death row. (p. 344)
In the end, on this matter particularly, we know much less about Drinan
than Schroth appears to know about the motives of his critics. As to Drinan’s
own take on his opponents in any of the significant battles of his life, we are
left with little insight into his thoughts. He was evidently a very hard worker
who had ambitions for influence on the national scene. As the Jesuits did not
provide this opportunity for him as a university president, the Democratic
Party of the day did.
According to Schroth, Drinan often was publicly ruthless with those who
did not agree with his moral judgments, which appear to have consistently
coincided with the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Schroth
paints a picture of a man who believed himself to be “the moral architect”
of a new generation, particularly suited to pronounce judgment, and dis-

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missive of those who failed to reach the same conclusions. He also was dismissive of the senior members of his party and of Congress, assuming that
he was much more in touch with politically active youthful sentiment of his
day than they were.
There is much important information in this volume, and it provides a
fuller picture of the ecclesiastical and political framework of the times than
is often available; however, sadly, it lacks significant theological analysis.
Cardinal Humberto S. Madeiros, a significant figure in the story, does not
appear in the index.This priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, is
dismissively referred to as having “[flown] in from Texas” (p. 144), when he
was transferred, in 1970, from his post as bishop of Brownsville, Texas, to
become the archbishop of Boston. His predecessor, Cardinal Richard Cushing,
who is reported to have supported the candidacy of Drinan for Congress, is
treated much more warmly.
The book might be recommended for students of the period. At the end
of the day, Schroth, despite his conclusion that Drinan left a legacy of friends
and satisfaction in his work, leaves the reader with the image of a distant
figure, whose ambitions were never quite met.
Mount Olive College
Mount Olive, NC

JAMES F. GARNEAU

The FBI and the Catholic Church, 1935–1962. By Steve Rosswurm.
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2009. Pp. xi, 330. ISBN 978-1558-49729-0.)
The author, a professor of history at Lake Forest College in Illinois, spent
two decades filing Freedom of Information and Privacy Act requests with the
FBI, attempting to learn how close the relationship was between J. Edgar
Hoover’s investigators and high Roman Catholic prelates in this country
during the Depression,World War II, the Second Red Scare, and the Kennedy
administration.This book is largely a recounting of what was in the files, supplemented by other scholarly works and interpreted in the standard left-ofcenter approach. Sadly, Steve Rosswurm’s research reveals little new information, and this study will probably be of importance only to a handful of
specialists.The book also has some irritating flaws.
After all of his labors, Rosswurm discovered, apparently to his shock, that
in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover and his top agents, several
leading Catholic clergy, and the public in general believed in Christianity,
patriotism, the traditional family, and anticommunism; perhaps worse, they
rejected sodomy. All of these Americans, he contends, had “a profound distaste for modernity” (p. 71). That would draw titters in a historical methodology class.

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We also read that the FBI engaged in some underhanded tactics to defend
the morality and safety of the vast majority of Americans. This is not exactly
news. Rosswurm informs us as well that church figures such as Cardinal
Francis Spellman, Cardinal John O’Hara, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and Father
John F. Cronin, not to mention numerous Jesuits, shared the values of the
period and helped the FBI in numerous, unofficial ways such as exposing
communists. A few of his details are interesting (the chapter on Cronin is the
book’s best), but the thesis will surprise no scholar in the field. Rosswurm
sheds no new light on Spellman or Sheen. Curiously, he fails even to mention
Senator Joseph McCarthy (R–WI), a Catholic with close ties to both his
Church and the FBI.
The book is not well written (see esp. pp. 12–13, 19, 227, 275–77). Feminist
jargon appears on some pages; in chapter 6, the narrative turns into a firstperson account; the introduction appears (p. 227); and we encounter sentences such as “[t]he Catholic seminary trained men to be priests” (p. 30), and
“[o]ne of the problems with zeroing in on just one part of a person’s life is
that the rest gets lost” (p. 227).
To his credit, Rosswurm acknowledges the recent research revealing the
presence of several hundred Soviet spies in the United States during the
period. So, then, was Hoover right? Were the clerics correct? And what about
McCarthy and the Second Red Scare? Was it all just a political trick, or was the
country in danger? The author does not answer these questions with any clarity. For example, we are told (p. 176) that Cronin was right about Red spies in
America, but the author assures us at the same time that we are not to take
Soviet imperialism as seriously as Cronin did.The book might well have been
improved by a conclusion.
Franksville, WI

THOMAS C. REEVES

The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern
America. By Sarah Barringer Gordon. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 316. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-67404654-2.)
Given the author’s attention to and repetition of the phrase “the new constitutional world” (starting on p. 1), Sarah Barringer Gordon, a law and history
professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is clearly seeking and should win
a patent on the invention.An invention is something one finds or makes, and
Gordon does both. She finds that this “world” has existed since the 1940s but
has needed a name, and she also makes it by providing a framework for interpreting the U.S. Constitution and then building on that framework by presenting five chapter-length case studies.
The world she discusses implies but is not focused on the whole
Constitution; in fact, some U.S. Supreme Court decisions of 1940 and espe-

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cially 1947, her concern, dealt chiefly with the religion clauses of the First
Amendment to the Constitution. Readers of this review in Myanmar,
Vladivostok, or even some U.S. cities may need to be informed or reminded
that the Establishment clause reads:“Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion.” From 1789 until 1940, only two explicitly religious cases had been settled at the Supreme Court level, and they were
argued on grounds other than those in this clause. During that period, religious legal judgments were left up to the several states.
The Everson v. Board of Education case “incorporated” the substantive
provisions of the Bill of Rights to limit state and local governments as they
had in the historic federal cases.This was new. Since the original Bill of Rights
stipulated that there be no state establishments of religion, the new understanding or declaration had to be controversial. With “incorporation,” everything—from using public funds to transport children to parochial schools to
allowing for special arrangements for religious education and displays on
public property—was up for grabs federally, and many grabbed. Most decisions on the new grounds were unpopular on the local level—the setting of
the battle scenes covered by Gordon.They have been bloody.
The author quotes Alliance Defense Fund litigator Jordan Lorence:“Every
time religion is denied in one place, it squirts up in another” (p. 295). The
chosen squirted-up cases receive mention in the book’s final paragraph:“The
constitutional practice that drew Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants devoted to
separation of church and state, the Nation of Islam, conservative evangelical
women, and progressive clergy to law has become a staple of religious life
over the past seven decades” (p. 216). Staple? Yes. Stable? No, Gordon herself
judges this new world to be unstable.
She isolates the problem of definition as a plague in the “new constitutional world,” which has become old, and is in danger of being “bull-dozed.”
More and more legal and religious scholars point out that it is difficult if not
impossible to define religion, and even attempts to define whatever it is are
themselves religious acts. A fair-minded scholar, she shares the uneasiness of
many citizens with the effects of living in this “new-old” world. At the end,
however, she calls on former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who said that, for
all the flaws and the controversies, the system “worked.” Gordon is not so sure
that in many respects it has been a success, but judges, with O’Connor, that it
has helped the polity and citizens within it to sustain a subworld marked by
religious tolerance on a global stage in which all alternatives are destructive.
So: “Two Cheers for the New Constitutional World,” ill-defined and unstable
though much in it may be.
University of Chicago

MARTIN E. MARTY

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Latin American
The History of the Catholic Church in Latin America: From Conquest to
Revolution and Beyond. By John Frederick Schwaller. (New York: New
York University Press. 2011. Pp. x, 319. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-814-74003-3.)
John Frederick Schwaller has taken on a most monumental task in writing
the history of the Catholic Church in Latin America from the late 1400s to the
present. This overview of an enormous topic provides the necessary information on Iberian religions, including the Jewish and Muslim faiths, and the
history of Portuguese and Spanish exploration of Africa as background to the
“discovery” of the Western Hemisphere and the Treaty of Tordesillas, which
dates to the start of international law.Then, the author leads readers through
the intellectual debates over sovereignty and property rights,“just war,” and
whether or not the native peoples were human and capable of becoming
Christians. He rightly notes that despite the many missionaries in Mexico and
Peru, many native peoples remained uncontacted and uninitiated for many
years. His discussion of church finance, the Bourbon initiatives of the eighteenth century, and the Enlightenment’s impact end his discussion of the
colonial era.
After Schwaller’s discussion of independence, his narrative summarizes
the checkered history of the Church.The section on how governments negotiated or not with the Holy See and how agreements could potentially affect
everyday life is followed by a fascinating few pages on the role of family politics in Chile, through which one large patrilineage controlled both church
and state. The nineteenth century also saw popular religion and uprisings
gaining prominence in Brazil; the rise of the “Protestant ethic,” especially in
Central America; and the conservative First Vatican Council in 1869–71.
Regarding the twentieth century, he retells the history of the Church
against a background of revolution in Mexico;“la violencia” in Colombia; and
the rise of fascism, socialism, the populists, the Marxists, and Catholic-based
trade unions. Throughout, the Church was viewed by many as a stabilizing
influence. However, the Church was not a homogeneous institution. It
included groups that ranged from those against the reforms of the Second
Vatican Council who supported a Tridentine church to progressive liberationists and Catholic socialists. Furthermore, he notes the increasing challenges to the once near-monopoly of spirituality exercised by the Catholic
hierarchy, citing popular religion, like Candomblé in Brazil, secularization, and
Protestant and Evangelical inroads. To summarize, Schwaller reiterates the
diversity within the Church, focusing on two dominant perspectives: the topdown view, or the view of Church as a hierarchy of divine authority; and the
bottom-up view, or the view after the Second Vatican Council that represents
the Church as the pilgrim people of God. Over time, the latter position has
gained ground over the former.

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Congratulations are due for the concise way in which the author populates the major trends with representative persons or key organizations or
meetings. This makes the text both more interesting than a straight, unembellished institutional history, and not a catalogue, especially after independence. His review of papal initiatives such as the establishment of the Colegio
Pío Latino Americano in 1859 and their repercussions emphasizes how Latin
America cannot be studied and understood in a vacuum. The history of the
Latin American Catholic Church and the peoples and nations of the region
need to be placed in the proper temporal and wider international contexts.
The book, however, leaves the reader wondering about the rise and influence of the Masonic Orders, which are mentioned (pp. 161, 168, 207) but do
not receive full coverage. Native religious antecedents to Catholic contact
also need more space to appreciate better the challenges of the early missionaries. Furthermore, Schwaller territorializes religious jurisdictions such as
bishoprics before boundaries were clearly designated and marked (compare
pp. 77 and 151). Parishes and bishoprics were originally jurisdictions defined
as power over groups of people; they were not defined by fixed and demarcated geography until the middle of the nineteenth century in Argentina, for
example. His use of words such as pagan (p. 85) and dictator (pp. 126, 137,
143–44) seems value-laden and somehow out of place in this increasingly pluralistic era. The mention of Cuba (p. 227) emphasizes the fact that the
Caribbean is almost entirely missing from the volume, as is a discussion of the
role of nuns and beatas on the islands and the mainland. Finally, grammatical,
spelling, and proofreading errors in the text distract from the easy flow of the
narrative (pp. 30–32, 62, 115, 123, 127, 137, 144–45, 193, 196, 255, 263–64).
These relatively minor points detract little from this conceptualized
chronology of one of the foundational institutions in Latin America.This book
merits space on the bookshelf of any serious scholar.
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX

SUSAN ELIZABETH RAMIREZ

Death and Conversion in the Andes: Lima and Cuzco, 1532–1670. By
Gabriela Ramos. [History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and
Portuguese Worlds.] (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2010.
Pp. xii, 356. $39.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-04028-4.)
Gabriela Ramos has produced a deeply researched study that argues that
the Christianization of death was crucial to the conversion of indigenous
Andean peoples and to the construction of a colonial order. Her work compares the urban settings of Lima, a Spanish-created site with a small indigenous (mainly migrant) population, and Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca
Empire. In her examination of mortuary practices, notions of the body and the
beyond, and the relationship between the dead and the living, she draws on
archaeological and ethnohistorical findings, church council records, notarial

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sources, and studies on early-modern European Catholicism. She concludes
that by the mid-colonial period, former burial stone towers (chullpas), caves,
and other sacred sites were no longer at the center of the religious and political life of these urban Andean people; in fact, their mortuary practices had
transformed completely.
Chapter 1 considers the diversity of burial practices in the coast and highlands and the way that distinct ancestor veneration practices “contained and
symbolized the past of these groups” (p. 20).The conquest (chapter 2) led to
a collision of Spanish and Incan mortuary practices and brute force on the
bodies of people now categorized as indios. This included the use of fire (also
common in Castile for criminals) to mutilate mummified ancestors of the
sinful indios and to erase their past. Ramos then provides a richly detailed
analysis of several versions of the death of the Sapa Inca, Atahualpa, which,
she argues, became a key metaphor for the conquest of the Andean polity, in
life and in death. During the Civil War period, Spaniards gradually gained mastery over indigenous spaces through public executions, even when the victims were tyrannical Spaniards. In the “Conquest of Death” (chapter 3), Ramos
shows how church and secular authorities grappled with how to explain
Christian ideas about the body and the existence of an eternal soul, how to
discourage Andeans from tending to the dead and making offerings, and how
to emphasize the need to bury their dead in churches. Indoctrination through
sermons proved successful in explaining the “good death” and concepts of
purgatory and sin. In chapter 4 she explains why the creation of new institutional spaces—including hospitals (organized and administered differently in
Lima and Cuzco), parishes, confraternities, and even funerary vaults in
churches—reunited displaced families (and the departed) in one location and
became the centers of ritual activities. Further elaboration on how confraternities in Lima and Cuzco enabled immigrants to forge new kinship bonds,
connect themselves to specific devotions, and gain leadership roles would
have further strengthened her argument. Ramos is strongest in her analysis of
more than 500 indigenous wills that details the distinct funerary rites and processions in Cuzco and Lima, and how the complicated inheritance practices
(especially among caciques) helped crystallize new social bonds and preserve
memory (chapter 6). The appendices detail the comparative findings from
wills on confraternity memberships, burial practices, heirs, and executors
between 1571 and 1670.
If, as Ramos asserts, a complete transformation of the funerary beliefs
occurred among the indigenous inhabitants of colonial Lima and Cuzco, her
thesis remains to be tested in other Andean locations. But even in the urban
contexts she examines, questions remain. Although she shows clearly how
externalized manifestations of faith such as burial requests in wills (part of a
larger prescribed Catholic narrative) or participation in confraternities dominated in these urban milieus, can we tease out the mutual sense-making (what
made these rituals meaningful) that occurred among native peoples (many of

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them migrants) and the priests administering to them? What was colonial
Catholicism? Despite the overarching goal to create a unified Christendom,
studies on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Castile and Peru reveal a plurality of local practices (including some “borrowed” from native Andeans) and
a wide array of beliefs about death, salvation, the beyond, and the body (and
especially relics) among nonindigenous Catholic peoples. But, indeed, these
are large questions left to future projects.
Ramos has produced a fine and important work of scholarship that is key
to Andean studies and will contribute to ongoing discussions of how and why
native Andean peoples responded, adapted, and made sense of Catholic tenets
about the here and now and the hereafter.
Queen’s University
Kingston, Canada

NANCY E. VAN DEUSEN

The Jesuits in Latin America, 1549–2000: 450 Years of Inculturation,
Defense of Human Rights, and Prophetic Witness. By Jeffrey L. Klaiber, S.J.
[Series III: Scholarly Studies Originally Composed in English, No. 21.] (St.
Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources. 2009. Pp. viii, 463. $28.95 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-880-81071-9.)
The Society of Jesus has been a central player in the historical development of Latin America. Klaiber presents a fascinating survey of the contributions of the order to the region and studies the interplay of the region and the
order. This is a broad, sweeping history, providing fascinating details while
covering much ground and 450 years.
The book has three main themes, as reflected in the title: inculturation,
human rights, and witness. Klaiber explains the importance of inculturation.
Coined by Pedro Arrupe, superior general of the Jesuit Order from 1965 to
1983, the term refers to the action of evangelization that brings out the best
in the non-Christian culture without destroying that culture. Klaiber sees this
as springing directly from the Jesuit “Spiritual Exercises” that also ensure that
Jesuit spirituality is forever modern and is continually improved through the
use of reason. From this point he then outlines the broad units through which
the order worked in Latin America, including the geographical areas, the
higher education institutions, and the rural estates in his discussion.
Chapter 1 focuses on the activities of the Jesuits in Peru, from the important ethnographic and historical works of José de Acosta and the extirpation
to the eighteenth-century expulsion of the order and possible ties to an indigenous uprising. The impact of the order on colonial policy aimed at the natives
and on African slaves in Peru, Chile, and Brazil in the colonial period is the
topic of chapter 2. The frontiers form the background for chapter 3, where
Klaiber considers the contributions of the Jesuits to the evangelization of the
far north (Florida to Sonora) and the far south (specifically Paraguay).With the

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expulsion of the order from the Hispanic realms after 1762, Jesuit intellectuals
created works of great importance in helping modern scholars understand the
cultural realties of the Americas in that period. Chapter 4 outlines the contributions of those Jesuits in exile. Independence in Latin America and the
restoration of the Society of Jesus occurred at roughly the same time.
In chapter 5, Klaiber considers the role of the order in the creation of the
political environment of Mexico up into the 1930s, where the Catholic
Church, in general, played an active role in politics. Klaiber studies the role of
the Jesuits in the less confrontational political environment of the Church in
Brazil and Chile, in chapter 6, which contrasts with the Mexican experience.
Chapter 7 is extremely important in that it focuses on the period of political
turmoil and social change that followed the Second Vatican Council in Latin
America.The order played a critical role in interpreting the various arguments
of the period, particularly in Brazil, Venezuela, and the Antilles. In chapter 8,
Klaiber continues his analysis of the order in the period after the Second
Vatican Council to the close of the twentieth century, looking at the Southern
Cone, the Andean Republics, Central America, and Mexico. The last chapter
takes an overview of the whole work and interprets the trajectory of the
order in the light of inculturation and the implications for faith and social justice. The role of the Jesuit universities and liberation theology also are considered here.
Covering a vast amount of material in a relatively short space, the book is
a significant work that will prompt much discussion and, one hopes,
enlighten many about the contributions of the Society of Jesus to Latin
American culture and history.
State University of New York at Potsdam

JOHN F. SCHWALLER

Report on the Island and Diocese of Puerto Rico (1647). By Don Diego de
Torres y Vargas. An annotated translation into English by Jaime R. Vidal,
with historical essays and commentary by Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo.
[Ecos,Vol. 1.] (Scranton: University of Scranton Press. Distrib. University of
Chicago Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 264. $25.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-58966189-0.)
Don Diego de Torres y Vargas, a canon of the San Juan Cathedral in the
middle of the seventeenth century, was asked by Don Juan de la Calle, royal
Spanish chronicler of the Indies, to write a history of Puerto Rico as part of a
major work on the history of the Spanish colonies. Don Diego’s final work is
important, since it is the first history of the island written by a criollo, or son
of Spaniards born in America.
This book is important because it is the first translation of Don Diego’s
seventeenth-century Spanish text into the English language. It also is significant because of the essays that accompany the translation. The author

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of these essays, Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, provides useful information that
can help resolve many doubts of readers regarding how this history came
into existence and the background in which it took place. Through these
essays, we learn about Don Diego’s lineage, education, and social position
as well as how this background influenced his ability to gather the official
governmental, ecclesiastical, and private documents that he used to write
his history.
For those who are already acquainted with the original Spanish edition of
Don Diego, Stevens-Arroyo’s essays may be the most important part of this
edition. However, for those who have not read the text in the original language, the book provides a good opportunity to understand the history of a
colonial Spanish Caribbean island and its development from 1493, the year of
its discovery by Columbus during his second voyage, to 1647, when Don
Diego finished his work on the text.
This book helps clarify some aspects of Don Diego’s text as well as uses
sidebars instead of footnotes. The translator, Jaime R.Vidal, created the latter
to provide further explanation on aspects of the text. The language used
throughout the text in the Spanish edition corresponds to that spoken by an
illustrious clergyman of the seventeenth century. Therefore, the section
“Glossary Items” at the end of the book assists readers in understanding many
words and concepts no longer in use. Likewise, the essays provide clarity on
aspects from Don Diego’s time that were common knowledge then but now
have lost most of their original meaning for the modern reader.
For English-speaking historians, the work of Vidal and Stevens-Arroyo has
shed new light on the development of a small Spanish colony in the
Caribbean from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. For the Spanish-speaking historians who already know Don Diego’s history, the tools provided by
the authors are very useful in better understanding that time.
Inter American University at San Germán
Puerto Rico

FLOYD L. MCCOY JORDAN

The Very Nature of God. Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in
Bourbon Mexico City. By Brian R. Larkin. (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press. 2010. Pp. xiv, 312. $27.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-826-34834-0.)
Is the essence of God contained in the objects of liturgy and worship? The
dispute over the concept of transubstantiation was at the bottom of the split
of Christianity in the sixteenth century, with the Roman Catholic Church
adhering firmly to the canon that at the height of the Mass, the host is changed
into Christ.Were most faithful aware of centuries of discussion over this point?
Possibly not. It certainly was a moot point among most Catholics in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexico.Their belief in sacred immanence was

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unquestioned. They also believed in the efficacy of prayer, the sacredness of
charity, and the active involvement of spiritual beings in daily life.
In this work Brian Larkin dives into the difficult waters of the nature of
belief to assess the nature of devotion in Mexico throughout the colonial
period. One of his objectives was to learn whether there was a discernible
change in the character of observance that would reflect any departure in the
understanding of the linkage between humankind and the divine. Since the
expression of devotion was so tied to the belief that there was immanence in
the sacred objects, he addressed all the material expressions of faith to capture the way in which the splendor of liturgy wrapped the senses in music,
sound, and a feast of ornaments and helped to heighten the religious experience of the devout.This is the base for understanding the meaning of other
acts of devotion and worship.
Scholars have proposed that the dynastic change from the Habsburgs to
the Bourbons in the eighteenth century prompted a switch toward undercutting baroque piety in style and content affecting the expression of worship. Using the sermons of three leading eighteenth-century archbishops,
Larkin leads the reader to understanding their desire of seeing a more transcendent faith that was less attached to costly pomp, miracles, and physical
expressions of piety such as flagellation. They wished to guide their flock
toward a more conscious distinction between outward piety and a truly interior search for God. The use of sermons as a venue to gauge changes among
the clerical hierarchy calls our attention to this often neglected approach to
religious culture. A similar treatment of seventeenth-century sermons could
have helped to make the contrast even sharper. Despite the best intentions of
reforming bishops, Larkin contends that in everyday life the faithful continued to observe traditional forms of worship and, therefore, that a true change
in religious culture did not take place. He surveys wills, almsgiving, and confraternity practices as more realistic venues to ascertain how people in general satisfied their religious needs, disregarding calls for change coming from
ecclesiastic authorities. His sources tell him that “baroque” sensibilities survived through the end of the colonial period. He sees meaningful differences
between hierarchical directives and personal practices and argues that the
influence of the former over the latter was neither profound nor significant.
Testing cultural parameters by any means will remain a challenging task.
Larkin proposes a complex model whereby the “reformist” movement toward
a more simplified observance was an outer skin concealing a deeper affective
interior that remained alive despite reforms. Devotion remained traditional
among the general population and even among the lower clergy. For Larkin,
the renovation of religious observance to achieve a modern form of piety was
a long-term process rather than a palpable reality at the end of the colonial
period. It is true that architectural styles changed and that bishops and civil
authorities preferred less melodrama in religious expressions, but at the pop-

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ular level, people stuck to known and tried practices that satisfied their emotional needs. Overall, his conclusions are sound. Attention to liturgy and writings such as devotional books continue to be necessary to balance the picture, but this work fits well among others that search for the inner meaning
of faith through its outward devotional expressions. Those who see value in
this approach will welcome this book.
Arizona State University (Emerita)

ASUNCIÓN LAVRIN

Peripheral Visions: Politics, Society, and the Challenges of Modernity in
Yucatan. Edited by Edward D.Terry, Ben W. Fallaw, Gilbert M. Joseph, and
Edward H. Moseley. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 2010. Pp.x,
275. $46.50 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-817-31680-8; $25.00 paperback, ISBN
978-0-817-35564-7.)
This volume includes eleven papers by diverse authors, plus a final note,
that address aspects of “modernizing” in Yucatan at some time between the
achievement of independence and the present day.
The seven papers of part I, “Society and Politics,” are especially diverse,
although arranged in roughly the chronological order of their specific subjects. Marie LaPointe provides a summary background of the Caste War, the
rebellion of eastern Yucatecan campesinos that stretched over the second half
of the nineteenth century. Helen Delpar describes Yucatan’s indifferently successful participation in the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.
This is followed by Paul Eiss on the liberal-proclaimed politics of labor following the 1910 revolution, which freed peons from debt servitude but left
them with no place to go from the haciendas. Stephanie Smith treats socialist-inspired attempts to improve the position of women, with headway limited to upper urban classes. Ben Fallaw discusses presidentially supported and
minimally successful efforts in the 1930s to change agrarian practice within
the declining remnants of the Yucatecan henequen boom. Eric Baklanoff
treats minority Lebanese immigrants as entrepreneurs significant in the posthenequen shift from fiber production toward diversified industry. Finally,
Othón Baños Ramirez considers the rocky course of privatization of
henequen ejidos lasting into the modern period.
The second section, “Religion,” provides the closest approach to an integrated sweep of events. Lynda Morrison focuses on reasons why Yucatan was
less militant in its nineteenth-century anticlericalism than was the general
case in Mexico, finding that Yucatecan priests were frequently active in liberal
politics whereas the Yucatecan church was relatively impoverished as an institution that was never a major landowner.Terry Rugeley, on popular religion,
covers the period from 1815 to the twentieth century, including the cult that
began in the 1850s of the divinely speaking crosses of the Caste War rebels;
he finds that it was based on popular elements of church-derived religion and
that it survives today in the hinterlands as the Church has become more

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urban in appeal. Hernán Menéndez Rodriguez and Ben Fallaw focus on “The
Resurgence of the Church in Yucatan,” bridging the time of shortly after independence from Spain to the revolution of the early-twentieth century,
when—especially following the French Intervention of the 1860s—
Yucatecan liberals were split. The moderate branch established closer ties
with the Church, encouraged by a pair of bishops of the late-nineteenth century. The economic position of the Church was improved by the de facto
renewal of tithe collection, which had been officially outlawed in Mexico
since the mid-nineteenth century. In the final paper of part II Fallaw traces the
slow increase in church influence between 1915 and 1940—even under
socialist governors of the state—as the dovish but persistent efforts of
Archbishop Martín Tritschler y Córdoba encouraged a Yucatecan retreat from
the anticlericalism then strong in Mexico.
One of the “Final Thoughts” in conclusion (Gilbert Joseph) is that “good
regional history cannot be insular” (p. 254). But from the reader’s viewpoint,
with each of the diverse papers referring to conditions across national boundaries, there is little in the volume to explain an essential part of the story—
the sweep of Mexican history in which an anticlerical liberalism has shifted
in strength from period to period, in a counterdance with a proclerical conservatism.This conflict provides a crucial backdrop to every paper in the collection, but nothing is provided to give this larger scale. Although the national
sweep is not the subject of this collection, it is crucial—for it is this that
Yucatan has modified in one degree or another.
DON E. DUMOND

University of Oregon
Asian

Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late
Imperial China. By Eugenio Menegon. [Harvard-Yenching Institute
Monograph Series 69.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2009.
Pp. xxii, 450. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-03596-6.)
Eugenio Menegon’s Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars: Christianity as a Local
Religion in Late Imperial China is a path-breaking contribution to scholarship on Christianity in China. Drawing on Chinese and European archival
and published materials, Menegon examines the Chinese Catholics of Fuan
county in Fujian, an area evangelized by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Spanish Dominicans, and shows how Chinese Catholics made Christianity a
Chinese religion.
Christianity may be universal, equally true in all places and at all times, but
it also is a historical phenomenon, a product of a particular time and place. In
China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (New York, 1982),
Jacques Gernet argues that

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everything that goes to make up Christianity—the opposition in substance
between an eternal soul and a perishable body, the kingdom of God and the
earthly world, the concept of a God of truth, eternal and immutable, the
dogma of the Incarnation—all this was more easily accessible to the inheritors of Greek thought than to the Chinese, who referred to quite different
traditions.
Christianity and China were incompatible, Gernet suggests, because of “fundamental differences between two mental universes.”1
Menegon effectively refutes this view. He demonstrates that Chinese
Catholics transformed Christianity from a foreign religion into a Chinese one
with “a new religious identity, both Chinese and Catholic, local yet universal
in aspiration” (p. 8, emphasis in original). He shows as well what the localization of Christianity in this part of southeast China reveals about the relationship between late-imperial Chinese society and religion. Although proscribed
in 1724 and thereafter regarded as a heterodox sect, Christianity, like other illegal popular religions, generally enjoyed local de-facto toleration. Menegon
shows that it functioned much like indigenous lay devotional groups in popular Buddhism and Daoism such as the Non-Action Sect and the cult of the Lady
of the Water Margins.
Chapters 2 to 4 offer a chronological overview of Catholicism in Fuan.
Chapter 5 shows how Christianity embedded itself within kinship networks
and found a place for itself in local society. Chapter 6 deals with the role of
priests, both Chinese and Europeans, in pedagogical and catechetical instruction, as healers and exorcists, and as enforcers of control and discipline over
Christian communities. Incidentally, Menegon’s assertion that marriage,
although a sacrament,“remained outside the purview of missionaries in China”
(p. 221n22) is questionable. This may have been the case in the Dominican
Fuan mission, but evidence from eighteenth-century Sichuan shows that
European missionaries and Chinese clergy labored, persistently but often
unsuccessfully, to enforce canon law on marriage, even though Catholic norms
often conflicted with Chinese custom. Church practice in late-imperial China
varied from time and place, and no place was completely representative.
Menegon is particularly insightful in examining the religious life of Chinese
Catholics. Chapter 7 offers fresh perspectives on the issue of Chinese rites,
showing how the Dominicans tried and largely succeeded in redefining the
central Chinese virtue of filial piety in a way that would not conflict with the
Church’s prohibition of ancestral rites. Chapter 8 deals with the beatas,
women who took vows of celibacy as members of the Third Order of
Dominicans. Chinese culture valued female chastity but rejected virginity as
1

Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (New
York, 1982), pp. 3–5.

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an ideal. Menegon examines how the beatas’ embrace of religious virginity
gave them agency and gradual acceptance, challenging patriarchal authority
both in their society and the Church.
Ancestors, Virgins, & Friars is superb. Grounded in Chinese and European
missionary materials and informed by Menegon’s training in Chinese social
history, it is well written and analytically rigorous. It is an important original
contribution to both Chinese history and the history of Christianity.
St. Olaf College

ROBERT ENTENMANN

Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late
Imperial China. By Florence C. Hsia. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. 2009. Pp. xv, 273. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-226-35559-7.)
There is no shortage of books, in several languages, on the Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China, and on the European science that a few of these Jesuits taught in China. If any subject in the history
of late-imperial or early-modern China has attracted enough scholarship to do
it justice, it would probably be this one. But much of the more recent scholarship on this subject rather neglects the European audience and background
of the scientific mission of the China Jesuits (just as Robert A. Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land [New York, 1961] does not tell us much of what
we might like to know about Valentine Michael Smith’s Martian background
and support network).
But whereas Heinlein does tell us quite a bit about Smith himself, Hsia’s
account of the China Jesuits is cast more as a “biography in a collective
mode” (p. 7) in which individual personalities do not stand out as clearly or
vividly as in the Jesuit historiography of an earlier generation. Although Hsia
demonstrates an admirable competence in the field of spherical astronomy
(starting on p. 100), neither does the book focus on the science that Jesuits
taught in China or even much on the Chinese reception. Hsia’s niche in this
comparatively oversubscribed field is, rather, “the historical emergence and
fortunes of this puzzling figure” (p. 2) of the Jesuit missionary scientist in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China—an individual who transmitted
European science and personal discoveries to the Chinese literati, European
savants, and other interested parties of the European proto-Enlightenment.
But what is really mystifying about this book is Hsia’s own apparent puzzlement about the figure of the Jesuit “missionary scientist,” “saintly mathematician” (p. 147), and “missionary as a man of scientific expertise” (p. 2) and
her presentation of such phrases as if they were evidently oxymoronic. Had
Hsia read more carefully John L. Heilbron’s The Sun in the Church
(Cambridge, MA, 1999), which is included in her bibliography, she might have
been struck by the first sentence: “The Roman Catholic Church gave more
financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries,

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from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the
Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions” (p. 3).
Granted that the Jesuits of this era might be fairly characterized as “shapeshifters” (p. 1) or even as “masked men,” where is the evidence that the guise
of missionary-scientist was one of the more unusual, if not the “most peculiar”
(p. 2), of these shapes? Indeed, the figure of the missionary scientist was not
that uncommon a sight in colonial Latin America. In that case, the authorities,
as well as the colonial audience, might have occasion to ask,“Who was that
masked man?” (title of Hsia’s chapter 1).
The most valuable part of the book is the discussion of the literary genres
through which the Jesuits communicated with one another and their various
publics. It is clear that China became a sort of scientific colony in which the
Jesuits began the process of mapping out the universalist pretentions of
European science, which in turn transformed China into a not-so-strange
land—still exquisite, perhaps, but no longer exotic.
Louisiana State University

JOHN B. HENDERSON

Growth and Decline: Essays on Philippine Church History. By John N.
Schumacher, S.J. (Quezon City:Ateneo de Manila University Press. 2009. Pp.
x, 291. $43.00 paperback. ISBN 978-9-715-50588-8.)
John N. Schumacher is a recognized authority in Philippine Church history. His works Father José Burgos, Priest and Nationalist (Manila, 1999);
Revolutionary Clergy (Quezon City, 1981); and Readings in Philippine
Church History (Quezon City, 1987) are materials used in courses on the history of Catholicism. His latest book is an anthology of essays that span 1979
to 2006 and have been revised.The revisions have been prompted by the publication of newer material and by Schumacher’s re-examination of his conclusions and generalizations. In these essays, he presents a nuanced and well
thought-out writing of history, avoiding simplistic generalizations and reflecting knowledge of the changes that have occurred over time and space.
The theme of “Growth and Decline” links the six chapters that trace the
development of the Catholic Church in the Philippines:“Bishop Domingo de
Salazar and the Manila Synod of 1582 Fight for Justice”;“The Golden Age of
the Philippine Church, 1700–1768”;“The Early Filipino Clergy,: 1698–1762”;
“Sycretism in Philippine Catholicism: Its Historical Causes”; “The Burgos
Manifesto: The Authentic Text and Its Genuine Author”; and “A Hispanicized
Clergy in an Americanized Country, 1910–1970”.
Chapter 2 was specifically written for this collection, serving as a linchpin that binds the other five chapters together. Here, Schumacher re-examines previous periodizations of Philippine history, proposes a more nuanced
frame, and sounds the theme of growth and decline. He disputes John Leddy
Phelan, who had a positive opinion of initial evangelization and a pes-

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simistic view of the period after 1630, because he drew mainly on sources
pertaining to only the Tagalog-Kapampangan lowland region. The effective
evangelization of other regions such as the Visayas and Mindanao came
later; for example, the Recollects established themselves in eastern
Mindanao in the 1620s, taking charge of the area because the Jesuits were
undermanned.
Schumacher proposes the following three periods for the evolution of the
Church in the Philippines: 1570–1650 (first evangelization), 1650–1700
(maturing Church), and 1700–1768 (full blossoming of the Church).The last
he calls the “golden age,” because, during this period, more and more Filipinos
took active part in church life—shown by their spiritual practice, the emergence of religious life for men and women (the beatas and the beaterios), and
the creation of the Filipino secular clergy. However, this blossoming came to
an abrupt end with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1768. A vacuum resulted.
The religious were reshuffled, and secular priests were hastily ordained, with
the outcome of a poor public perception of the Filipino clergy because of
their lack of proper training.
The book shows the caliber of Schumacher’s scholarly work, characterized
by a critical reading of documentary sources as well as an examination of
assumptions, conclusions, and generalizations of historians—including his
own.
Ateneo de Manila University

RENÉ B. JAVELLANA, S.J.

Missionaries and Their Medicine:A Christian Modernity for Tribal India. By
David Hardiman. [Studies in Imperialism.] (New York: Manchester University Press, Palgrave. 2008. Pp. xviii, 261. $84.95. ISBN 978-0-719-07802-6.)
David Hardiman is a distinguished historian of South Asia, bringing to his
study of medical missions broad knowledge of the social, religious, and political history of colonial and postcolonial western India. His study of medical
missions conducted by the Anglican evangelical Church Missionary Society
among the Bhil people of northern Gujarat is based on his own fieldwork as
well as extensive research in the manuscript records and publications of the
mission, government reports, and oral recollections by Bhil Christians. Studies
of imperial medicine have focused on the bureaucracies of the colonial state
rather than missionary clinics and hospitals, which in many parts of the world
were far more important. Hardiman documents the ways in which missionary
medicine was different from government medicine, despite a common commitment to the germ theory of disease, antiseptic surgery, and quinine. Unlike
government doctors, though, missionary doctors simultaneously battled a
belief in witchcraft and sorcery among Christian and non-Christian Bhils
alike, and introduced their own supernatural dimension to medicine by promoting the healing power of prayer.

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Hardiman stresses the inequalities of wealth and status that left multiracial
Christian institutions stratified along racial lines, creating little “mini-empires”
within a Christian world that was formally opposed to racial distinctions. In
chapter after chapter Hardiman tells fascinating tales of encounters between
missionaries and Bhils, relationships fraught with misunderstanding because of
vast inequalities of power, wealth, and knowledge. He often neglects to give
credit to the other side of the story, to the persistent attempts to overcome
racial and professional divisions with sympathy, spiritual fellow-feeling, and
ongoing (if often contentious) negotiations over good-faith attempts to foster
a self-governing Christian church among the Bhils.
Hardiman is at his best when telling these micro-stories of religious and
imperial encounter. He is less persuasive when invoking his chosen master
narrative of modern history, which, according to him, is a universal path
toward modernity. He recognizes that modernity can take both religious and
secular forms, but explicitly asserts that in modern history a dialectical relationship between the religious and the secular “has never been, and perhaps
never can be, transcended within the framework of modernity as we know it”
(p. 6).
As a result, the efforts of missionaries among the Bhils are repeatedly measured against his yardstick of modernity in which an effort to “civilize” people
triumphs over an effort to introduce them to a new religion. The dialectic
between the secular and the religious in Hardiman’s story becomes a unilinear process in which the synthesis is always a secular one. In an otherwise
judicious and informative chapter on women working with women,
Hardiman concludes with an astonishing argument unrelated to anything
preceding it in the chapter.The failed struggle for “sisterhood” on the part of
women missionaries is interpreted as a displaced struggle for class and
gender status, not in Gujarat, but back home in Great Britain. Having reduced
the work of female missionaries in the Bhil mission to a class and gender
struggle at home, he loses sight of the dialectic between their civilizing mission and their Christianizing mission in India, and with the conflict between
their entirely genuine egalitarian concern for Bhil women and their own elite
professional status as trained missionaries.
In his conclusion, Hardiman observes that Anglican missionaries had succeeded in their mission because the Bhil Christian community today is a “civilized” one by their definition. It is certain that missionaries would reject this
definition of success, which lies instead in the fact that Bhil Christian community is Christian, whether civilized or not. To understand that story,
Hardiman needs to think about a better master narrative, one that allows for
a common religious faith that in some circumstances survives the dialectic of
the religious and the secular, and even transcends the boundaries of race,
nation, and empire.
University of Iowa

JEFFREY COX

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BRIEF NOTICES
Burkey, Blaine, O.F.M. Cap. Seelos:The Cumberland Years.The Life and Labors
of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos in Maryland’s Allegheny Mountains,
1857–1865. (New Orleans: The Redemptorists/Seelos Center. 2010. Pp. 92.
$13.65 paperback. ISBN 978-0-972-71695-6.)
This small but scrupulously researched work offers a glimpse into the
mind and heart of a Redemptorist immigrant priest during a critical period in
U.S. history: the years just before and during the Civil War. The setting is
Cumberland, a city in the border state of Maryland. The author’s ancestors
were parishioners of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, and a great-great uncle
was Seelos’s confrere in religious life. This personal connection wreaths the
author’s portrait of his subject.
Seelos’s letters, whether he was writing to friends in his adopted country
or to family back home in Bavaria, bring to life a charming, decent, passionate, and perfectly human young man. After one mission, Seelos complained
that the schedule was punishing. After another, he lamented the damage done
in the parish by previous pastors he deemed unworthy.
At various points in the narrative, we see a city teeming with soldiers and
hear gunshots; we cringe as a confrère maligns Seelos; and we mourn as illness, war, and poverty fell the city’s youth. Seelos writes little about these matters, but in letters to family he writes at length, with humor and exasperation,
about bedbugs. Was he fixating on small, manageable problems during a
period of unbearable stress?
At times Seelos’s candor is disturbing, revealing the impact of the political
and social climate. He calls abolitionists hypocrites and accuses them of conspiring to send freed slaves to a distant colony. A helpful footnote by the
author explains the history behind such scorn. Dozens of photographs and
illustrations with explanatory captions also help to illuminate the text. One
unfortunate lacuna: The work lacks a table of contents.
This meticulously footnoted work is not for the general reader so much as
for historians and devotees of Seelos.When placed within the context of this
decade’s particular storms, some letters take on fresh meaning. In a few pages
the reader is transported to another time when priests were suspect, and new
immigrants were despised by their fellow Americans. Into this hostile world
stepped one brave-hearted immigrant priest. He laid down his life in joyful
service to all, dying far too young. But his example lives on through the letters and testimony presented here. ALICIA VON STAMWITZ (St. Louis, Missouri)

882

BOOK REVIEWS

Kanawada, Leo V., Jr. The Holocaust Diaries: Book I: The Souls of the Just:
Rome, Italy. (Pp. xvi,393. $15.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-452-05704-0.)
Book II: The Righteous and the Just: Côte d’Azur, France. (Pp. xiv, 299.
$14.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-452-05719-4.) Book III: A Homeland for the
Just: Palestine. (Pp. xxvi, 197. $14.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-452-05796-5.)
Book IV: Saviors of the Just: Romania. (Pp. xxvi, 229. $14.99 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-452-05792-7.) Book V: The Innocence of the Just: Hungary and
Slovakia. (Pp. xx, 707. $20.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-452-05784-2.)
(Bloomington, IN:AuthorHouse. 2010.)
The author of a 1982 PhD dissertation on “Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
Diplomacy and American Catholics and Jews” has written these five historical
novels as “a labor of love, realized after more than a decade of research, writing, and devotion” (I:393). He relates the story through fictionalized, firstperson diary entries of some of the principal actors. In the first volume, for
instance, these are Ernst Weizäcker (misspelled “Weizacher”), German ambassador to the Holy See 1943–45, and Henry Morgenthau Jr., Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury and the president’s liaison to Rabbi Wise of New York.
Book I is the only one to deal with the role of Pope Pius XII (although he is
also mentioned in book IV). Kanawada portrays him as well informed about
the progress of the Holocaust and working effectively with the anti-Nazi
Weizäcker to save as many Jews as possible—a version of the story that,
despite fictionalized details that strain credulity, corresponds roughly with
the historical record. The principal value of these volumes would appear to
be to introduce general readers to a portrayal of events strikingly different
from those routinely disseminated by the mass media, driven by the quest for
sensations and the desire to discredit persons in authority and the institutions
they serve. JOHN JAY HUGHES (Archdiocese of St. Louis)

NOTES AND COMMENTS
________
Vatican Exhibition in San Marino
In the State Museum of the Republic of San Marino, the Vatican Museums
are presenting the exhibition “The Man, the Face, the Mystery.” The works on
display from the Vatican collections document how artists from antiquity
until today have represented human facial features in an attempt to represent
the soul.The medieval and modern sections feature many depictions of Christ
and the saints. The last section of the exhibition is dedicated to the “Holy
Face” of Jesus Christ and includes a copy of the “acheiropoieta” from the
Lateran and of the “Veronica” from the Pontifical Sacristy, the painting Sainte
Face of George Rouault, and works of several twentieth-century artists.
Ratzinger Prize
The Ratzinger Prize, founded in March of this year by the Joseph RatzingerBenedict XVI Vatican Foundation and funded in part by the royalties from
Pope Benedict XVI’s books and by private donations, was presented to three
writers for excellence in theological scholarship. Manlio Simonetti, an eightyfive-year-old Italian layman who is an expert on ancient Christian literature
and theology, was one of the first winners of this prize, valued at $70,000.
Libraries and Archives
The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana is in discussions with the Library of
Congress and UNESCO to create the World Digital Library that aims to collect
on a single site those rare or unique documents that tell the history of the
world’s cultures. The Vatican Library also is participating in a project to reconstitute virtually the ancient library of the monastery of Lorsch by allowing
142 manuscripts in its Palatini collection to be digitized. It is participating as
well in the project of the Chinese National Committee for the Compilation of
Qing History to digitize some 1300 items for a total of 100,000 folios that deal
with Chinese history from the seventeenth to early-twentieth centuries and
are preserved in the Vatican Library.
Daughters of Charity New Province of St. Louise USA Archives
to Be Located in Emmitsburg, Maryland
Four North American provinces of the Daughters of Charity of St.Vincent
de Paul merged on July 31, 2011, and formed the Province of St. Louise USA
with administrative offices located in St. Louis, Missouri. The archival col883

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lections of the former provinces (Albany, New York; Emmitsburg, Maryland;
Evansville, Indiana; and St. Louis, Missouri) will be consolidated in a new
20,000-square-foot facility located within the former St. Joseph’s Provincial
House, in Emmitsburg. The new archives also will house records of the
Province of St. Louise. The facility will include a state-of-the-art repository,
exhibit areas, and a research and reading room. Part of a multiphase construction project now underway, the archives is expected to be ready for
transfer of records in late summer 2012, with opening anticipated in 2013.
The committee planning the new archives is chaired by Sister Margaret
John Kelly, D.C.; members include archivists John Diefenderfer; Lois Martin;
Sister Betty Ann McNeil, D.C.; and Carole Prietto. For more information, contact Sister McNeil, the archivist, at mcneilsrba@doc.org, or visit the Web site
thedaughtersofcharity.org.
Conferences and Lectures
On October 6–8, 2011, a Maryknoll Centennial Symposium under the title
“Church in Mission: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” will be held at the
Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. It will explore new perspectives of
faith from Asia,Africa, and Latin America. For more information, contact Greg
Darr at gdarr@maryknoll.org.
On October 12, 2011, a symposium will be held to evaluate the book of
Paolo Prodi, Il paradigma tridentino: Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa
[Storia, 42] (Brescia, 2010). The speakers include Prodi, Maria Teresa Fattori,
Giuseppe Ruggeri, Fabio Milana, and Patrizio Foresta. For more information,
visit the Web site www.fscire.it.
On March 8–10, 2012, the eighteenth biennial New College Conference on
Medieval and Renaissance Studies will take place in Sarasota, Florida.The program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute
papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, and
religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work
is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are welcome.The conference will be held on the
campus of the New College of Florida, located on Sarasota Bay adjacent to the
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Information will be posted on the
Web site http://faculty.ncf.edu/MedievalStudies. Inquiries and abstracts
(email without attachments preferred) should be sent to Nova Myhill at the
Division of Humanities, New College of Florida, 5800 Bay Shore Road,
Sarasota, FL 34243, email nmyhill@ncf.edu.
On May 10–12, 2012, the XL Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana
will hold a conference on “Law and Religion in Late Antiquity” at the
Augustinianum in Rome. It will study the evolving understanding of law (e.g.,
lex christiana, lex Christi, religious legislation, and imperial law that was not
divorced from religion but even regulated it).Those wishing to participate in

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885

the conference with a fifteen-minute presentation or a twenty-five-minute
paper should send the title and an abstract by November 30, 2011, to
Segretaria Incontri Augustinianum,Via Paolo VI 25, I-00193 Rome, Italy, email
incontri@patristicum.org. Proposals will be evaluated at a meeting of the
organizing committee in January 2012.
On May 10–13, 2012, the Working Group on “Re-Thinking Reform” will
meet at the 47th International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, cosponsored by EPISCOPUS (an interdisciplinary society fostering
the study of the medieval episcopate and secular clergy) and the International
Society of Medieval Canon Law. Maureen C. Miller (University of California,
Berkeley) and William L. North (Carleton College) are organizing a working
group to explore new ways to understand and interpret the eleventh-century
reform movements and the investiture conflict. Two sessions and a roundtable will be held. One session will be dedicated to “Re-Thinking Reform:
Bishops, Issues, Texts.” Research on reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has, for some time now, expressed dissatisfaction with the standard narratives (Augustin Fliche, Gerd Tellenbach) of this period in ecclesiastical history. But new, broad interpretations have not yet emerged.This session invites
papers that take a fresh look at a leading clerical figure, issue, or source.The
second session will focus on “Re-Thinking Reform: Law and Change in the
Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.” Legal developments figure prominently in
the “classic” narratives (Fliche, Paul Fournier,Tellenbach, and Harold J. Berman)
of reform and the investiture conflict. Yet much recent work on canon law
and canonical collections does not exactly fit these interpretative frameworks. A roundtable on “Re-Thinking Reform,” cosponsored by EPISCOPUS
and the working group, will feature participants from sessions 1 and 2 and
offer a further opportunity to reflect critically on the papers of both sessions.
It will discuss the advantages/disadvantages of the traditional law and change
narrative and the advantages and disadvantages of the Gregorian reform narrative. The session looks to suggest how these reassessments of traditional
narratives concerning reform and law can be extended at future congresses.
For more information, contact Miller at mcmiller@berkeley.edu. Another session at the conference is dedicated to the theme “Ecclesiastical Hierarchies:
Law and Custom” and is sponsored by the Stephan Kuttner Institute of
Medieval Canon Law. This session will consist of three or four papers on
topics about the customary practices of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the canon
law about this power structure, and/or about how these customs often
afforded ways to avoid the letter of these laws. For more information, contact
Atria Larson at atria.larson@gmail.com.
On September 1–22, 2013, the conference “Das Konzil von Trient und die
katholische Konfessionskultur” will be held in Freiburg im Breisgau to commemorate the 450th jubilee year of the closing of the Council of Trent (1563).
It will be cosponsored by the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus
Catholicorum e.V. and the Katholische Akademie der Erzdiözese Freiburg. For

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more information, contact Peter Walter at corpus.catholicorum@theol .unifreiburg.de.
Causes of Saints
On June 6, 2011, in Burgo de Osma, Spain, Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect
of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, presided over the beatification ceremonies for Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600–59), former bishop of
Tlaxcala/Puebla de los Angeles (1639–53), administrator of the Archdiocese
of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain (1642), and bishop of Osma (1653–59).
A man of vast culture and profound spirituality, he was a reformer, tireless
pastor, and protector of the indigenous peoples. At a public Mass in Zagreb,
Croatia, on the same day, Pope Benedict XVI praised Palafox as an outstanding bishop.
Publications
In March 2010 the Institución «Fernando el Católico» in Zaragoza held the
conference “Fábrica de Santos. España, siglos XVI–XVII.” Four of the papers
presented on that occasion have now been coordinated by Eliseo Serrano
Martín and published in no. 85 (2010) of the institution’s journal Jerónimo
Zurita: Revista de Historia, as follows: Guillermo Fatás, “La santidad y sus
antecedents. Santos antiguos y santos anómalos” (pp. 13–37); José Ignacio
Gómez Zorraquino, “Los santos patronos y la identidad de las comunidades
locales en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII” (pp. 39–74); Cécile VincentCassy, “Los santos, la poesía y la patria. Fiestas de beatificación y de canonización en España en el primer tercio del siglo XVII” (pp. 75–93); and José
Luis Bertrán Moya, “Culto y devoción en la Cataluña Barroca” (pp. 95–132).
The same issue carries two other articles pertaining to the sixteenth century
in Spain under the heading “Referencias”: Enrique García Hernán,“El ambiente
alumbrado y sus consecuencias en la Compañía de Jesús según Jerónimo
Nadal” (pp. 193–205); and Fernando Javier Campese Gallego, “Rodrigo
Álvarez, SJ (1523–1587). El successor del profeta” (pp. 207–28).
The Dallas Center for Thomas More Studies invited scholars to examine
the saint’s influence on William Shakespeare during its seminar and conference held in November 2010. Six papers from that gathering have been published in vol. 48, no. 183–84 (2011) of Moreana. Following an “Editorial” in
English and in French by Marie-Claire Phélippeau (pp. 3–8) are the articles (all
in English): Robert S. Miola,“Shakespeare and The Book of Sir Thomas More”
(pp. 9–35); Gerard Wegemer, “England’s Civil Wars: Young Thomas More’s
Assessment and Solutions” (pp. 37–71); John E. Alvis, “Thomas More and
Shakespeare: A Proposal for Furthering an Inquiry” (pp. 73–101); Steven W.
Smith, “The Politics of Imitation: Exploring Connections between Thomas
More and William Shakespeare” (pp. 103–28); Joshua Avery,“From ‘Obloquy’ to
‘So Great Trust’: Broken Judgment in More’s and Shakespeare’s Richard III ”

NOTES AND COMMENTS

887

(pp. 129–43); and Andrew Moran,“‘What were I best to say?’ Hasty Curses and
Morean Deliberation in Richard III ” (pp. 145–61).
“Women Religious: Conflict and Dissent in Nineteenth-Century Communities” is the theme of the seven articles published in vol. 29, no. 1 (2011) of the
U.S. Catholic Historian: Catherine O’Donnell, “Elizabeth Seton: Transatlantic
Cooperation, Spiritual Struggle, and the Early Republican Church” (pp. 1–17);
Mary Ellen Doyle, S.C.N., “‘Contending Parties’: Bishop John David and the
Sisters of Charity of Nazareth” (pp. 19–31); Florence Deacon, O.S.F., “‘What a
Lie! Slander!’ Franciscan Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin” (pp.
33–57); Cecilia Murray, O.P., “The Least Qualified: A Leadership Crisis in the
Newburgh Dominicans” (pp. 53–71); Joseph M. White,“Path to Sainthood and
Episcopal Leadership: Mother Theodore Guérin and Célestin de la Hailandière
in History and Memory” (pp. 73–94); Eileen Flanagan, “Poor Clare Life
Incompatible with American Lifestyle, 1876–1889: Mother Maddalena
Bentivoglio Challenges the Perception” (pp. 95–111); and Edward T. Brett,“Race
Issues and Conflict in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Religious Life:
The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family” (pp. 113–27).
The current issue of the Passionist Heritage Newsletter is now available
in a free electronic version at http://www.cpprovince.org/archives/heritage/
pdf/spring2011.pdf. Suggestions and correspondence related to the newsletter should be sent to Rob Carbonneau, C.P., Historian/Director, The Passionist
Historical Archives, 526 Monastery Place, Union City, NJ 07087, email robcarb
@cpprov.org.
Personals
Susan Eason, archivist of the Texas Catholic Archives, was awarded the
Carlos E. Castañeda Award of the Texas Catholic Historical Society at its meeting on March 4, 2011, in recognition of her many valuable and dedicated services to the society. She has kept the society’s records, edited its newsletter,
hosted the meetings of its Executive Council, and served as its president.
Patrick Foley has been named to the Faculty Advisory Board of the John
Paul II Institute of Lay Ministries for the Diocese of Fort Worth.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE
________
General and Miscellaneous
Kardinäle als Kirchenfürsten? Eine wechselvolle Geschichte mit zahlreichen
Merkwürdigkeiten. Klaus Ganzer. Stimmen der Zeit, 136 (May, 2011),
313–23.
La pace nel pensiero dei Papi del Novecento. Francesco Occhetta. La Civiltà
Cattolica, 161, IV (18 Dec., 2010), 540–51.
À plus de cent ans de Pascendi (1907–2007). Édouard Divry, O.P. Divinitas,
LIV (2, 2011), 217–36.
Autour d’un Centenaire (1909–2009): Les débuts du mouvement liturgique:
Beauduin, Marmion, Festugière et…les autres. R. Ferdinand Poswick and
Lambert Vos. Questions Liturgiques, 92 (1, 2011), 3–28.
L’influsso del cardinale Ratzinger nella revisione del sistema penale canonico.
Juan Ignacio Arrieta. La Civiltà Cattolica, 161, IV (4 Dec., 2010), 430–40.
Italia hagiographica (VIII). Chronique d’hagiographie italienne. Robert
Godding. Analecta Bollandiana, 129 ( June, 2011), 175–210.
In the Orbit of Copernicus: A Scholar’s Serendipitous Journey, a Discovery of
the Great Astronomer’s Bones, and a Reburial Ceremony in His Native
Poland. Owen Gingerich. American Scholar, 80 (Summer, 2011), 43–49.
Les Fétes des saints papes dans les livres liturgiques du XVIIe siècle à 1960.
Philippe Beitia. Ephemerides Liturgicae, CXXV ( Jan.–Mar., 2011), 3–39.
The Historiography of Bohai in Russia. Alexander Kim. The Historian, 73
(Summer, 2011), 284–99.
La povertà e l’obbedienza nelle costituzioni dell’Ordine dei Minori
(1239–1517) e dei Frati Minori Conventuali (1517–1932). Binoy Thomas,
O.F.M. Conv. Miscellanea Francescana, 111 (I–II, 2011), 77–122.
Leone XIII e la Famiglia francescana. Emil Kumka, O.F.M. Conv. Miscellanea
Francescana, 111 (I–II, 2011), 186–207.
Perfil socio-económico de los Obispos del Reino de Valencia durante el
antiguo régimen (1556–1834). Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo. Anthologica
Annua, 50 (2003), 311–71.
Ancient
Clément de Rome et l’Église: quels modes de construction identitaire? (1
Clément, 36–44). Roger Gil. Revue des sciences religieuses, 85 ( Jan., 2011),
45–64.
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889

Teología política en el cristianismo primitivo. Fernando Rivas Rebaque.
Estudios Eclesiásticos, 86 (Apr.–June, 2011), 241–66.
Becoming Heretical: Affection and Ideology in Recruitment to Early
Christianities. Kendra Eshleman. Harvard Theological Review, 104 (Apr.,
2011), 191–216.
The Chronographiae of Julius Africanus and Its Jewish Antecedents. William
Adler. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 14 (Mar., 2011), 496–524.
From Hellenistic to Christian Universal History: Julius Africanus and the
Atthidographers on the Origins of Athens. Umberto Roberto. Zeitschrift
für Antikes Christentum, 14 (Mar., 2011), 525–39.
The Beginnings of Christian Universal History: From Tatian to Julius Africanus.
Martin Wallraft. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 14 (Mar., 2011),
540–55.
Dai Chronici Canones di Eusebio al Chronicon di Girolamo: translatio come
costruzione di un nuovo modello cronografico. Osvalda Andrei. Vetera
Christianorum, 47 (1, 2010), 5–22.
Rituales goéticos y muertes pavorosas en los primeros momentos de la
querella arriana: el brazo de Arsenio y la muerte de Arrio. José Antonio
Molina Gómez. Latomus, 70 ( June, 2011), 464–77.
Illusive Idols and the Constantinian Aesthetic: a Note on the Lateran
Fastigium. Lisa A. Hughes. Latomus, 70 ( June, 2011), 478–92.
A Catechetical Address on the Nicene Creed? D. H. Williams. Harvard
Theological Review, 104 (Apr., 2011), 217–32.
Milan, Ravenna, Rome: Some Reflections on the Cult of the Saints and on Civic
Politics in Late Antique Italy. Filippo Carlà. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura
Religiosa, XLVI (2, 2010), 197–272.
Martinian Veneration in Gaul and Iberia: Martin of Tours and Martin of Braga.
Alberto Ferreiro. Studia Monastica, 51 (1, 2009), 7–32.
Susanna, the Fathers and the Passio Sereni (BHL 7595–6): Sexual Morals,
Intertextuality and Early Christian Self-Definition. Danny Praet. Zeitschrift
für Antikes Christentum, 14 (Mar., 2011), 556–80.
Les théophanies composites des arcs absidaux et la liturgie eucharistique.
Marcello Angheben. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 54 (Apr.– June,
2011), 113–41.
Vita sancti Marciani oeconomi. John Wortley. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 103
(2, 2010), 715–71.
Cesario d’Arles scrittore. Francesco Trisoglio. Vetera Christianorum, 47 (1,
2010), 117–34.
La disciplina delle confessioni religiose nella sistematica del Codex
Iustinianus e i profili teologici del potere normativo. Francesco Grelle.
Vetera Christianorum, 47 (1, 2010), 85–98.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Benoît et le Maître. Benoît Standaert. Collectanea Cisterciensia, 73 (2, 2011),
321–34.
Medieval
Bede’s Sacred Order: Schemes and Tropes in the Historia Ecclesiatica: Part I.
David Allison Orsbon. American Benedictine Review, 62 (Mar., 2011),
3–26.
Bede’s Pepper, Napkins and Incense. Daniel J. Heisey, O.S.B. Downside Review,
129 ( Jan., 2011), 16–30.
Boniface and the Irish Heresy of Clemens. Sven Meeder. Church History, 80
( June, 2011), 251–80.
Conversion et passion d’Afra d’Augsbourg. Réouverture du dossier et édition
synoptique des versions longue et brève. Monique Goullet. Revue
Bénédictine, 121 ( June, 2011), 94–146.
Le flabellum liturgique carolingien de Saint-Philibert: du don d’un soufflé à la
geste des moines. Isabelle Cartron. Revue Belge de Philologie et
d’Histoire, 88 (2, 2010), 153–74.
Sirmonds verlorener Lütticher Codex der Hinkmar-Schriften: ein erhaltenes
Inhaltsverzeichnis. Rudolf Pokorny. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des
Mittelalters, 66 (2, 2010), 511–33.
Santa Maria in Castro Aureo. Note di storia e di topografia. Daniela Calcagnini.
Vetera Christianorum, 47 (1, 2010), 23–39.
Avant que le Crucifié ne «parle» à S. François: les mentions de crucifix parlants
antérieurs à celui de San Damiano à Assise. Jean-Marie Sansterre. Analecta
Bollandiana, 129 ( June, 2011), 71–79.
Cynewulf’s Recharacterization of the Vita Sanctae Julianae and the Tenth
Century Benedictine Revival in England. Lenore Abraham. American
Benedictine Review, 62 (Mar., 2011), 67–83.
Fondazioni monastiche e organizzazione del territorio. Il caso di Brione. Parte
prima: secoli X–XIII. Giancarlo Chiarle. Bollettino Storico-Bibliografico
Subalpino, CVIII (2, 2010), 325–416.
La correspondence entre Adelbold d’Utrecht et Egbert de Liège au sujet des
modes du plain-chant. Michel Huglo. Revue Bénédictine, 121 ( June, 2011),
147–64.
Le rituel irlandais de consécration des églises au Moyen Âge: le témoignage
des sources irlandaises et bretonnes. Dominique Barbet-Massin. Annales
de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 118 ( June, 2011), 7–39.
Oliba: le moine, l’abbé. Daniel Codina i Giol. Studia Monastica, 51 (1, 2009),
79–106.
Quomodo si non omnia. Agostinismo e dialettica della potenza divina nell’opera di Anselmo d’Aosta. Manlio della Serra. Studia Monastica, 51 (1,
2009), 107–17.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

891

A Monastic Death Ritual from the Imperial Abbey of Farfa. Susan Boynton.
Traditio, 64 (2009), 57–84.
Defection across the Border of Islam and Christianity: Apostasy and CrossCultural Interaction in Byzantine-Seljuk Relations. Alexander D.
Beihammer. Speculum, 86 ( July, 2011), 597–651.
Worms, Rom und Canossa (1076/77) in zeitgenössischer Wahrnehmung.
Rudolf Schieffer. Historische Zeitschrift, 292 ( June, 2011), 593–612.
El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista. Simon Barton. English
Historical Review, CXXVI ( June, 2011), 517–43.
Troia, Montecassino e i Normanni: la traslazione di s. Eleuterio tra identità cittadina e dinamiche di potere. Amalia Galdi. Vetera Christianorum, 47 (1,
2010), 63–83.
Catálogo de los documentos medievales relativos a los obispos de Segovia y a
las instituciones eclesiásticas de la ciudad (1107–1398). Bonifacio
Bartolomé Herrero. Anthologica Annua, 50 (2003), 417–767.
The Medieval Cult of St Agatha of Catania and the Consolidation of Christian
Sicily. Paul Oldfield. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62 ( July, 2011),
439–56.
I templari e la guerra: strategie militari ed ascesi monastica. Cristian Guzzo.
Studia Monastica, 51 (1, 2009), 61–77.
Un hagiographe face aux critiques. Le recueil des miracles de S. Liesne de
Melun (1136). Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq. Analecta Bollandiana, 129
( June, 2011), 13–70.
Women and the adoption of charters in Scotland north of Forth, c.
1150–1286. Matthew H. Hammond. Innes Review, 62 (Spring, 2011), 5–46.
L’enregistrement et la transmission de donations au moyen âge central. Un
témoignage historiographique réévalué: l’Historia fundationis de l’abbaye
de Waulsort (1152). Nicolas Mazeure. Revue Bénédictine, 121 ( June,
2011), 165–213.
Re-Covering Christ in Late Medieval Rome: The Icon of Christ in the Sancta
Sanctorum. Kirstin Noreen. Gesta, 49 (2, 2010), 117–35.
Procellosa illa persecutio. Die Ketzerverfolgung Konrads von Marburg und
Roberts le Bougre und die Geschichtsschreibung ihrer Zeit. Andrea
Sommerlechner. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische
Geschichtsforschung, 119 (1–2, 2011), 14–43.
Beyond the Filioque Divide: The Late Thirteenth Century Revisited.Aristeides
Papadakis. St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 55 (2, 2011), 141–63.
Ela Longespee’s Roll of Benefits: Piety and Reciprocity in the Thirteenth
Century. Emilie Amt. Traditio, 64 (2009), 1–56.
Aberdeen’s Mither Kirk. Uncovering seven centuries of cemeteries. Alison
Cameron. Current Archaeology, Issue 258 (Sept., 2011), 12–19.

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Miraculous Images in Renaissance Florence. Megan Holmes. Art History, 34
( June, 2011), 432–65.
How a “Brood of Vipers” Survived the Black Death: Recovery and Dysfunction
in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Order. Michael Vargas. Speculum, 86
( July, 2011), 688–714.
Der Streit um die Pfründe—Das päpstliche Benefizialwesen in den Gutachten
des Rotaauditors Thomas Fastolf (†1361). Kerstin Hitzbleck. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 121 (3, 2010), 289–304.
Absolutions and Acts of Disobedience: Excommunication and Society in
Fourteenth-Century Armagh. Jay Gundacker. Traditio, 64 (2009), 183–212.
‘Ibi Papa, ubi Roma’: Urban V and His Household between Avignon and Rome,
1367. Ivan Polancec. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62 ( July, 2011),
457–71.
“In mortis articulo…”: A Fourteenth-century Rite from Durham Cathedral
Priory to Implement a Papal Plenary Indulgence. Robert N. Swanson.
Studia Liturgica, 41 (1, 2011), 9–15.
A monk from Melrose? St Cuthbert and the Scots in the later middle ages, c.
1371–1560.Tom Turpie. Innes Review, 62 (Spring, 2011), 47–69.
Ad portum non precogitatum. The Homecoming of the Birgitta Relics to
Sweden (1374). Anders Fröjmark. Analecta Bollandiana, 129 ( June,
2011), 81–104.
L’abbaye de Saint-Claude ( Jura) à la fin du Moyen Âge. Enjeu et enseignements
d’un grand chantier. Aurelia and Sébastien Bully. Revue d’Histoire de
l’Église de France, 97 ( Jan.–June, 2011), 5–33.
Central authority and local powers: the apostolic penitentiary and the English
church in the fifteenth century. P. D. Clarke. Historical Research, LXXXIV
(Aug., 2011), 416–42.
Die Verbrennung Johannes Grießers am 9. September 1411 Zur Entstehung
eines Klimas der Verfolgung im spämittelalterlichen Österreich. Karl Ubl.
Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 119
(1–2, 2011), 60–90.
L’abat Antoni d’Avinyó i la reforma observant de Santa Maria de Montserrat
(1439–1450). Francesc Xavier Altés i Aguiló. Studia Monastica, 51 (1,
2009), 197–329.
Die Kartäuser und das Basler Konzil. Thomas Woelki. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 121 (3, 2010), 305–22.
Sixteenth Century
From the Myth to the Margins:The Patriarch’s Piazza at San Pietro di Castello
in Venice. Areli Marina. Renaissance Quarterly, 64 (Summer, 2011),
353–429.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

893

The Lost Decoration of the Chapel of the Magdalene by Giulio Romano and
Giovanni Francesco Penni in SS. Trinità dei Monti in Rome: Some New
Drawings. Linda Wolk-Simon. Master Drawings, XLIX (Summer, 2011),
147–58.
Die ersten drei Amtsjahre Jeremias I. von Konstantinopel nach dem Codex
Ann Arbor 215. Vasileios Tsakiris. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 77 (1,
2011), 213–36.
Correspondencia epistolar inédita entre fray Juan de Miranda y fray Diego de
Sahagún (1523–1525). Ernesto Zaragoza Pascual. Studia Monastica, 51 (1,
2009), 119–61.
Une impasse historiographique: Érasme contre Luther, une opposition de tempéraments. Matthieu Arnold. Revue des sciences religieuses, 85 ( Jan.,
2011), 65–76.
Luther on the Legend of St. Christopher. Johann Anselm Steiger. Lutheran
Quarterly, XXV (Summer, 2011), 125–44.
The Trinitarian House of David: Martin Luther’s Anti-Jewish Exegesis of 2
Samuel 23: 1–7. John T. Slotemaker. Harvard Theological Review, 104
(Apr., 2011), 233–54.
The Social History of Communion and the Reformation of the Eucharist.Amy
Nelson Burnett. Past & Present, No. 211 (May, 2011), 77–119.
Apuntes sobre Gaspar Zapata: De disidente católico a disidente reformado.
Tomás López Muñoz. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXXIII
(1, 2011), 125–41.
Vasari’s Calling of Sts. Peter and Andrew and a Recent Acquisition by the
Fitzwilliam Museum. Rick Scorza. Master Drawings, XLIX (Summer, 2011),
163–70.
Recueils et miroirs de l’infamie: Les stratégies d’écriture de Vies dans la littérature de controverse confessionnelle (XVIe–XVIIe siècles). Marion
Deschamp. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme
Français, 157 (Apr., May, June, 2011), 133–45.
Poverty or Prosperity? The Economic Fortunes of Ministers in PostReformation Fife, 1560–1640. John McCallum. Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 62 ( July, 2011), 472–90.
Rural Memory, Pagan Idolatry: Pieter Bruegel’s Peasant Shrines. Stephanie
Porras. Art History, 34 ( June, 2011), 486–509.
Quo Vadis? Catholic Perceptions of Flight and the Revolt of the Low
Countries, 1566–1609. Geert H. Janssen. Renaissance Quarterly, 64
(Summer, 2011), 472–99.
La negación pertinaz de un solo artículo lleva a la herejía. Enseñanza de fray
Luis de León (1568–1569). Ignacio Jericó Bermejo. Estudio Agustiniano,
XLV (Sept.–Dec., 2010), 423–48.

894

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Poesia, musica, censura. Testi italiani del XVI e del XVII secolo. Manuel
Bertolini. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLVI (2, 2010),
273–300.
El asentamiento jurídico del primer Vicariato Apostólico Misionero, Holanda
1592–1626. Eutimio Sastre Santos. Anthologica Annua, 50 (2003),
167–242.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
La quête franciscaine en question (1600–1670). Grégory Goudot. Revue
d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 97 ( Jan.–June, 2011), 57–79.
Parti sans «esprit de retour»? Adrian de Rocquigny, ancien, diacre et poète «officieux» de l’Église française de Londres. Julien Goeury. Bulletin de la
Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 157 (Apr., May, June,
2011), 147–57.
‘Convenient to the Piety of Our Signoria and to the Honor of the Lord God’:
Gender and Institutional Honor on the Early Modern Dalmatian Frontier.
Eric Dursteler. Journal of Early Modern History, 15 ( July, 2011), 367–84.
Die apostolische Ordensgründung Mary Wards (1585–1645). Ursula Dirmeier.
Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift Communio, 40 (May–June, 2011),
273–83.
Saint Louise de Marillac’s Uncle: Louis XIII’s Garde des Sceaux, Michel de
Marillac (1560–1623). Donald A. Bailey. Vincentian Heritage, 30 (2, 2010),
91–104.
Renaissance d’un sanctuaire. Notre-Dame de Verdelais en Guyenne
(1620–1624). Nicolas Balsamo. Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 97
( Jan.–June, 2011), 81–101.
Une chaire aux enchères. Ambassadeurs catholiques et protestants a la conquête du patriarcat grec de Constantinople (1620–1638). Dénes Harai.
Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 58 (Apr.–June, 2011), 49–71.
Two Realms of Light: Peter Paul Ruben’s “Assumption of Mary” (1626) and
Gregory Schneider’s “End” (2008). Friedhelm Mennekes. Religion and the
Arts, 15 (3, 2011), 263–76.
Les mystères de l’institution liturgique (1629–1662). Frédéric Gabriel. Revue
de l’histoire des religions, 228 (Apr.–June, 2011), 207–25.
Lettres du jésuite Pierre Poussines à Bolland, Henschen, Papebroch et Janning.
Bernard Joassart. Analecta Bollandiana, 129 ( June, 2011), 105–74.
Una nueva fuente histórica para el studio de San Giacomo degli Spagnoli: la
prueva evidente de Miguel de Erce Jiménez. Rosa Margarita Cacheda
Barreiro and Rosa Vázquez Santos. Anthologica Annua, 50 (2003),
375–416.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

895

Catholic Nuns and English Identities. English Protestant Travellers on the
English Convents in the Low Countries, 1660–1730. Liesbeth Corens.
Recusant History, 30 (May, 2011), 441–59.
Les curés médiateurs sociaux: genèse et diffusion d’un modèle dans la France
du XVIIe siècle. Anne Bonzon. Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 97
( Jan.– June, 2011), 35–56.
‘Filipinos’ and Other Non-Spanish Missionaries During the Early Years of the
Mariana Mission 1668–1673.Augusto de Viana. Philippiniana Sacra, XLVI
(Sept.–Dec., 2011), 565–94.
Defining Puritanism in Restoration England. Richard Baxter and Others
Respond to A Friendly Debate. Michael P.Winship. Historical Journal, 54
(3, 2011), 689–715.
Le «Notizie Storiche» del P. Giancarlo Caputi di S. Barbara. Giancarlo Caputi.
Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXXV (No. 69, 2011), 3–43.
From Patmos to Venice:Two Greek translations of Paolo Segneri’s works and
their long journey to publication. Vasileios Tsakiris. Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies, 35 (2, 2011), 185–97.
L’abjuration des époux Dacier, le 20 septembre 1685. Eliane Itti. Bulletin de
la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 157 (Apr., May, June,
2011), 159–85.
Une foi au secret? Captivité, homage à Dieu et clandestinité protestante
(1685–1971). Chrystel Bernat. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 228 (Apr.–
June, 2011), 175–205.
The Saviour of Christendom? [Pope Innocent XI]. Graham Darby. History
Today, 61 (May, 2011), 17–23.
The Politics of Anglican Martyrdom: Letters to John Walker, 1704–1705.
Matthew Neufield. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 62 ( July, 2011),
491–514.
Matthew Tindal’s Rights of the Christian Church (1706) and the Church-State
Relationship. Dmitri Levitin. Historical Journal, 54 (3, 2011), 717–40.
Il lento tramonto del Sant’Uffizio. La giustizia ecclesiastica nel Regno di
Napoli durante il secolo XVIII. Pasquale Palmieri. Rivista Storica Italiana,
CXXIII (Apr., 2011), 26–60.
Toleration and Freedom of Expression in the Hispanic World between
Enlightenment and Liberalism. Javier Fernández Sebastian. Past & Present,
No. 211 (May, 2011), 159–97.
De l’abbé de L’Epée à l’abbé Tarra. La conversion des ecclésiastiques
catholiques à la méthode orale dans l’éducation des sourds (1760–1880).
Florence Engrevé. Revue d’Histoire de l’Église de France, 97 ( Jan.–June,
2011), 103–20.

896

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Francisca Salinas (1726–1813),Abadesa de Santa Clara la Real de Murcia, una
eficiente gestora en las postrimetrías del antiguo régimen. María José Vilar.
Verdad y Vida, LXVIII ( July–Dec., 2010), 461–45.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
A Challenge to Napoleon:The Defiance of the Daughters of Charity. Elisabeth
Charpy, D.C. (Clara Orban and Edward R. Udovic, C.M.,Trans.) Vincentian
Heritage, 30 (2, 2010), 47–89.
P. Carlo Maria Lenzi de S. Francisco, Prepósito General de la Orden de las
Escuelas Pías (1765–1819). Adolfo García-Durán. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XXXV (No. 69, 2011), 131–216.
Les soubassements religieux d’une réussite éditoriale: le cas de la maison
Mame à Tours. De la bibliothèque de «bons livres» aux collections pour la
jeunesse chrétienne. Marie-Pierre Litaudon. Annales de Bretagne et des
Pays de l’Ouest, 118 ( June, 2011), 135–58.
The Making of a Convert: John Henry Newman’s Oriel and Littlemore
Experience. Peter Nockles. Recusant History, 30 (May, 2011), 461–83.
L’engagement social des chrétiens dans la région du Rhin supérieur. De l’histoire aux perspectives socio-éthiques. Marc Feix. Revue des sciences
religieuses, 85 (1, 2011), 77–99.
»Innere Differenzen des religiösen Lebens«. Die Debatte um das Verhältnis von
lutherischem und reformiertem Protestantismus im 19. Jahrhundert.
Martin Laube. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 108 (Mar., 2011),
50–71.
History as Form:Architecture and Liberal Anglican Thought in the Writings of
E. A. Freeman. G. A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin. Modern Intellectual
History, 8 (2, 2011), 299–326.
L’Évangile aux bains de mer. Protestantisme et «désir de rivage» en CharenteInférieure au XIXe siècle. Nicolas Champ. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays
de l’Ouest, 118 ( June, 2011), 117–34.
Translating Dharma: Scottish Missionary-Orientalists and the Politics of
Religious Understanding in Nineteenth-Century Bombay. Mitch Numark.
Journal of Asian Studies, 70 (May, 2011), 471–500.
The French MacDonald: Catholic Connections. Alasdair Roberts. Innes
Review, 62 (Spring, 2011), 82–97.
Les écoles du dimanche en France (1852–1902). Histoire d’un dispositif éducatif «pananthropique».Anne Ruolt. Etudes Théologiques & Religieuses, 86
(1, 2011), 71–99.
That All May Be One? Church Unity and the German National Idea,
1866–1883. Stan M. Landry. Church History, 80 ( June, 2011), 281–301.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

897

Nazione, esercito e religione nel Regno d’Italia: chiesa evangelica militare e
cattolicesimo tra Ottocento e Novecento. Maria Paiano. Rivista di Storia e
Letteratura Religiosa, XLVI (2, 2010), 303–39.
Entre ombres et lumières, profits et conflits. Les relations entre les Jésuites et
l’État independent du Congo (1879–1908).Anne-Sophie Gijs. Revue Belge
de Philologie et d’Histoire, 88 (2, 2010), 255–94.
L’epistolario di Giuseppe Sarto, futuro Pio X, con il vescovo Giuseppe
Callegari. Elisa Santinato. Studia Patavina, LIII ( Jan.–Apr., 2011), 85–113.
Los religiosos en Salamanca durante los episcopados de Cámara y Valdés: cartografía y conexiones internacionales. Eduardo Javier Alonso Romo. La
Ciudad de Dios, CCXXIV (May–Aug., 2011), 435–82.
Une médiation pontificale: Léon XIII et les massacres arméniens dans
l’Empire ottoman des années 1894–1896. Georges Ruyssen, S.J. Orientalia
Christiana Periodica, 77 (1, 2011), 153–68.
Family, clergy, conviviality and morality among the Greek-Orthodox in Izmir
at the end of the Empire. Vangelis Kechriotis. History of the Family, 16
( June, 2011), 88–97.
Los partidos confesionales españoles. Historia y valoración. Rafael M.a Sanz de
Diego. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 86 (Apr.–June, 2011), 359–411.
The Tale of Joseph and Zulaykha on the Volga Frontier: The Struggle for
Gender, Religious, and National Identity in Imperial and Postrevolutionary
Russia.Agnès Kefeli. Slavic Review, 70 (Summer, 2011), 1–22.
Ein Atheist auf der Kanzel? Die Kontroverse um Albert Kalthoffs Beitritt zum
Deutschen Monistenbund. Thomas Auwärter. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 121 (3, 2010), 323–47.
La “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” (1907) vista desde los modernistas. Cristóbal
Robles Muñoz. Anthologica Annua, 50 (2003), 11–166.
Conventual Franciscans and the Common Life (III). Its Final Implementation
after 1907. Timothy Kulbicki, O.F.M. Conv. Miscellanea Francescana, 111
(I–II, 2011), 136–62.
Rozanov, the Creation, and the Rejection of Eschatology. Adam Ure. Slavonic
and East European Review, 89 (Apr., 2011), 224–47.
Socio-political Aspects of the Mannix Episcopate 1913–1931: Part II. Race
Mathews. Australasian Catholic Record, 88 (Apr., 2011), 202–18.
‘War is a Scourge’:The First Year of the Great War 1914–1915: Catholics and
Pastoral Guidance. John Davies. Recusant History, 30 (May, 2011),
485–500.
Regional Republicans: The Alsatian Socialists and the Politics of Primary
Schooling in Alsace, 1918–1939. Alison Carrol. French Historical Studies,
34 (Spring, 2011), 299–325.

898

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Ocho cartas del Padre Odo Casel al Padre Adeodat Marcet. Alexandre Olivar.
Studia Monastica, 51 (1, 2009), 49–60.
The significance of the Bonnybridge School Case of 1922–1929 for Catholic
education in Scotland. Andrew Bain. Innes Review, 62 (Spring, 2011),
70–81.
Federico Alessandrini: un fucino a «L’Osservatore Romano.» Raffaele
Alessandrini. Istituto Paolo VI, Notizario n. 61 ( June, 2011), 21–30.
I rapporti fra Santa Sede e Germania nazista negli anni della nunziatura di
Pacelli. Note su una recente indagine.Assunta Esposito. Rivista di Storia e
Letteratura Religiosa, XLVI (2, 2010), 379–93.
Anticlericalismo incendiario en el comienzo de la II República española
(11–13 de mayo de 1931), a la luz de los informes inéditos vaticanos. José
Ramón Hernández Figueriedo. Anthologica Annua, 50 (2003), 243–310.
Franz von Papen, Catholic Conservatives, and the Establishment of the Third
Reich, 1933–1934. Larry Eugene Jones. Journal of Modern History, 83
( June, 2011), 272–318.
L’entente Pie XI-Baudrillart contre l’axe Rome-Berlin en 1938. Une letter
retrouvée du cardinal Baudrillart. Paul Christophe. Revue d’Histoire de
l’Église de France, 97 ( Jan.–June, 2011), 121–29.
Les protestants français dans l’entourage du général de Gaulle (1940–1945).
François Boulet. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme
Français, 157 (Apr., May, June, 2011), 187–228.
Una lettera di Pio XII ai cattolici tedeschi. Giovanni Sale. La Civiltà Cattolica,
161, IV (20 Nov., 2010), 327–40.
Secularisation, Church and Popular Religion. Steve Bruce. Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 62 ( July, 2011), 543–61.
Die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland und die vertriebenen Ostdeutschen.
Dorothea Wendebourg. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 108 (Mar.,
2011), 16–49.
Liturgische Großveranstaltungen als kirchengeschichtliche Ereignisse.
Impulse einer deutschen Teilkirche für die Liturgiereform des Zweiten
Vatikanums. Hanns Peter Neuheuser. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte,
121 (3, 2010), 348–78.
Padre Secondo Mazzarello, scolopio, un latinista a servizio della rinnovazione
liturgica. Goffredo Cianfrocca. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXXV (No.
69, 2011), 101–30.
American and Canadian
Circulation, conversation, créolisation. L’intégration atlantique des phénomènes
religieux (1630–1760). Lauric Henneton. Etudes Théologiques &
Religieuses, 86 (1, 2011), 49–70.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

899

A Key into The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. Jessica R. Stern. Early
American Studies, 9 (Fall, 2011), 576–616.
A Long Time Coming: The Seventeenth-Century Pueblo-Spanish War. John L.
Kessell. New Mexico Historical Review, 86 (Spring, 2011), 141–56.
John Locke, Christian Mission and Colonial America. Jack Turner. Modern
Intellectual History, 8 (2, 2011), 267–97.
“I Speak It Well” [Illinois Indians and Jesuit missionaries]. Robert Michael
Morrissey. Early American Studies, 9 (Fall, 2011), 617–48.
Man on a Mission: Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787) and the
Lutherans in America. Gerhard Bode. Concordia Historical Institute
Quarterly, 84 (Summer, 2011), 67–78.
H. M. Muhlenberg as Strategic Correspondent. Wolfgang Splitter. Lutheran
Quarterly, XXV (Summer, 2011), 145–63.
John Carroll, the Amplitude Apologetic and the Baltimore Cathedral. Michael
DeStefano. American Catholic Studies, 122 (Summer, 2011), 31–61.
Charles Thomson and the First American New Testament. J. Ramsey Michaels.
Harvard Theological Review, 104:3 ( July, 2011), 349–65.
“A Base and Unmanly Conspiracy”: Catholicism and the Hogan Schism in the
Gendered Religious Marketplace of Philadelphia. Rodney Hessinger.
Journal of the Early Republic, 31 (Fall, 2011), 357–96.
Eucharistic Sacrifice, American Polemics, the Oxford Movement and
Apostolicae Curae. Kenneth L. Parker and Daniel Handschy. Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 62 ( July, 2011), 515–42.
Getting Out of the Crescent City: Irish Immigration and the Yellow Fever
Epidemic of 1853. Patrick Brennan. Louisiana History, LII (Spring, 2011),
189–205.
Brothers Jungck: An Odyssey in Luthern Synodical Affiliation and Ordination
History. Russell P. Baldner. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 84
(Summer, 2011), 79–107.
Sisters and Smallpox: The Daughters of Charity as Advocates For the Sick
Poor in Nineteenth-Century Los Angeles. Kristine Ashton Gunnell.
Vincentian Heritage, 30 (2, 2010), 9–26.
The Old Atheism Revisited: Robert G. Ingersoll and the Bible. Eric T. Brandt
and Timothy Larsen. Journal of the Historical Society. 11 ( June, 2011),
211–38.
Pictures from the Past: The First University of Dallas. Stafford Poole, C.M.
Vincentian Heritage, 30 (2, 2010), 105–18.
Describing Luther: Images from the 400th Anniversary of the Reformation
(1917). Don Heinrich Tolzmann. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly,
84 (Spring, 2011), 24–36.

900

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Bonhoeffer at Union. Critical Turning Points: 1931 and 1939. Clifford Green.
Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 62 (3–4, 2010), 1–16.
The West Looks East: The Influence of Toyohiko Kagawa on American
Mainline Protestantism. David P. King. Church History, 80 ( June, 2011),
302–20.
American Postwar “Big Religion”: Reconceptualizing Twentieth-Century
American Religion Using Big Science as a Model. Benjamin E. Zeller.
Church History, 80 ( June, 2011), 321–51.
After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern
American Encounter with Diversity. David A. Hollinger. Journal of
American History, 98 ( June, 2011), 21–48.
‘It used to be about the kids’: Nutrition Reform and the Montreal Protestant
School Board. Lana Povitz. Canadian Historical Review, 92 ( June, 2011),
323–47.
Latin American
Indigenous Intellectuals in Early Colonial Mexico: The Case of Antonio del
Rincon, Nahua Grammarian and Priest. Kelly S. McDonough. Colonial
Latin American Review, 20 (Aug., 2011), 145–65.
Um bispo no Concílio Vaticano II: D. Geraldo de Proença Sigaud e o Coetus
Internationalis Patrum. Rodrigo Coppe Caldeira. Revista Eclesiástica
Brasileira, 282 (Apr., 2011), 390–418.
I rapporti fra Paolo VI e Oscar Romero. Anselmo Palini. Istituto Paolo VI,
Notizario n. 61 ( June, 2011), 31–43.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED
________
Anderson, David G. (Ed.). The 1926–27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions.
(New York: Berghahn Books. 2011. Pp. xiv, 332. $95.00.)
Andretta, Stefano, Stéphane Péquignot, Marie-Karine Schaub, Jean-Claude
Waquet, and Christian Windler. Paroles de Négociateurs. [Collection de l’École Française de Rome—433.] (Rome: École Française de Rome. 2010. Pp.
iv, 446. €42,00.) This volume contains eighteen papers that were presented
at an international seminar held in Rome.Among them are “La nomination
d’un cardinal de famille entre l’Empire et la papauté: les pratiques de négociations de Bartolomeo Bonatti, orateur de Ludovico Gonzaga (Rome,
1461),” by Isabella Lazzarini (pp. 51–69);“Switching Roles in Negotiation:
Levels of Diplomatic Communication between Pope Paul V Borghese
(1605–1621) and the Ambassadors of Philip III,” by Hillard von Thiessen
(pp. 151–72); “La difficile négociation de la neutralité: les entretiens
d’Henri IV avec Piero Priuli, ambassadeur de Venise, et Maffeo Barberini,
nonce en France, au début de l’Interdit vénitien (1606),” by Sylvio
Hermann De Franceschi (pp. 173–91); “Le cardinal de Polignac face à
Benoît XIII: négocier l’accommodement du cardinal de Noailles,” by Albane
Pialoux (pp. 271–94); and «Parlare fra i denti»: gli entretiens diplomatiques
del cardinale Consalvi al Congresso di Vienna (1814–1815),” by Francesca
Cantù (pp. 355–74).
Bodo, Murray. Francis: The Journey and the Dream. Fortieth anniv. ed.
(Cincinnati: St.Anthony Messenger Press. 2011. Pp. xxx, 258. $24.99 paperback.)
Busch, Eberhard. The Barmen Theses Then and Now: The 2004 Warfield
Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary. Translated and annotated by
Darrell and Judith Guder. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing. 2010. Pp. xii, 102. $16.00 paperback.)
Carlson, Keith Thor. The Power of Place, the Problem of Time: Aboriginal
Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2011. Pp. xx, 376. $32.95 paperback.) The author treats the work of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate
among the Stó:lõ in chapter 7,“Identity in the Face of Missionaries and the
Anti-Potlatch Laws” (pp. 181–208).
Carroll, Stuart. Martyrs and Murderers:The Guise Family and the Making of
Europe. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2011. Pp. xvi, 346. $19.95
paperback.) First published in 2009 and reviewed by Frederic J.
Baumgartner, ante, XCVII (2011), 142–44.
901

902

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Chazkel,Amy. Laws of Chance: Brazil’s Clandestine Lottery and the Making
of Urban Public Life. (Durham: Duke University Press. 2011. Pp. xx, 348.
$89.95 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.)
Coolman, Boyd Taylor, and Dale M. Coulter (Eds.). Trinity and Creation: A
Selection of Works of Hugh, Richard and Adam of St Victor. [Victorine
Texts in Translation, 1.] (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press. 2011. Pp. 430.
$39.95 paperback.)
Elisha, Omri. Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in
Evangelical Megachurches. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011.
Pp. xii, 264. $24.95 paperback, $60.00 clothbound.) “This book is about
evangelical Protestants affiliated with megachurches and faith-based ministries in the city of Knoxville,Tennessee” (p. 1).
Evdokimov, Paul. Orthodoxy. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press. 2011. Pp. 376.
$34.95 paperback.) Translated by Jeremy Hummerstone and updated for
this edition by Callan Slipper from the 1979 edition published by Desclée
de Brouwer.
Feiss, Hugh, O.S.B. (Ed.). On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam,
Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St Victor. [Victorine Texts in Translation,
2.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers. 2011. Pp. 392. €60,00.)
Fiss, Karen. Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the
Cultural Seduction of France. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009.
Pp. ix, 286. $99.00.)
Freeman, Charles. A New History of Early Christianity. (New Haven: Yale
University Press. 2011. Pp. xxi, 378. $23.00 paperback.) Originally published in 2009.
Glancy, Jennifer A. Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies. (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2010. Pp. xviii, 190. $45.00.)
Lachapelle, Sofie. Investing the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism
to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853–1931.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2011. Pp. x, 199. $50.00.)
Laurence, Patrick. Le Monachisme Féminin Antique: Idéal Hiéronymien et
Réalité Historique. [Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Études et Documents, Fascicule 32.] (Leuven: Peeters. 2010. Pp. viii, 362. €70,00 paperback.) In this volume are collected thirteen articles published in various
journals between 1996 and 2007. Their common theme is the treatment
of the Christian women of antiquity in the writings of St. Jerome.
Lehfeldt,Werner, ed. Studien zur Wissenschafts- und zur Religionsgeschichte.
[Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Neue
Folge, Band 10, Sammelband 2.] (Berlin: De Gruyter. 2011. Pp. viii, 376.) The
first of the four articles herein published is “Martin Luthers Reise nach
Rom—neu datiert und neu gedeutet” by Hans Schneider (pp. 1–157).

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

903

Levy, Ian Christopher (Ed. and Trans.). The Letter to the Galatians. [The Bible
in Medieval Tradition.] (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
2011. Pp. xii, 278. $34.00 paperback.) The editor has collected six commentaries on the Letter to the Galatians written by theologians between
the ninth and the fourteenth centuries that have never before been available in English. In the individual introductions he has situated these texts
in their historical and theological contexts.
Myers, William David. Death and a Maiden: Infanticide and the Tragical
History of Grethe Schmidt. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
2011. Pp. xiv, 270. $35.00.)
Payton, James R., Jr. Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some
Misunderstandings. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic.
2010. Pp. 272. $23.00 paperback.) “This book is intended for readers from
Christian backgrounds who recognize their roots in and look positively on
the Reformation of the sixteenth century” (Preface, p. 13). In particular, it
is written for use in Christian university or college upper-level courses on
the Reformation, as well as for more introductory courses on the history
of Western civilization or religion courses that deal with the Reformation.
It could also be useful for church pastors in their preaching and teaching
and for catechetical instructors.
Santiago, Mark. The Jar of Severed Hands: Spanish Deportation of Apache
Prisoners of War, 1770–1810. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
2011. Pp. xiv, 258. $29.95.)
Tagliacozzo, Eric, and Wen-Chin Chang (Eds.). Chinese Circulations: Capital,
Commodities, and Networks in Southeast Asia. (Durham: Duke University
Press. 2011. Pp. xvi, 536. $99.95 clothbound; $27.95 paperback.) Jean
DeBernardi has contributed an essay on “Moses’s Rod: The Bible as a
Commodity in Southeast Asia and China” (pp. 380–404).
Wells, Kevin. Burst:A Story of God’s Grace When Life Falls Apart. (Cincinnati:
Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press. 2011. Pp. xii,
146. $14.99 paperback.)
Wicks, Jared, S.J. (Ed. and Trans.). Cajetan Responds:A Reader in Reformation
Controversy. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2011. Pp. ii, 292.
$32.00 paperback.) Originally published by The Catholic University of
America Press in 1978 and reviewed by Nelson H. Minnich, ante, LXV
(1979), 488–89.
Wintz, Jack, O.F.M. Father Jack’s Favorite Prayers. (Cincinnati: St. Anthony
Messenger Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 114. $12.99 paperback.)