THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 100

WINTER, 2014

NO. 1

The “False Chronicles,” Cardinal Baronio, and
Sacred History in Counter-Reformation Spain
KATRINA B. OLDS*
The forged histories known as the “false chronicles” touched upon many
controversial matters in early-modern Spain. Less familiar to scholars
is that the forger, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, was also reacting to
the Roman reforms spearheaded by Cardinal Cesare Baronio.
Higuera’s 1589 letter to Baronio reveals his principal preoccupations,
as well as the maneuvers that he would later employ in the false chronicles. These included direct interventions by Higuera on behalf of communities such as Sigüenza, which were attemptinag to protect local
historical and hagiographic traditions that they believed were jeopardized by Baronio’s revisions of the Church’s liturgical texts.
Keywords: Baronio, Cesare; falsos cronicones; Liberata, Saint;
Román de la Higuera, Jerónimo; Wilgefort, Saint

I

n 1594, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera (1537–1611) claimed to have
received four lost annals from a fellow Jesuit in central Europe. Three of
the texts, which chronicled Iberian history from Christ to the early Middle
Ages, were known to early-medieval authors, but had since disappeared
without a trace. The fourth—a history of the eleventh-century Christian
conquest of Islamic Toledo—was entirely unknown. According to
Higuera, a fellow Spanish Jesuit had sent him the texts from the Benedictine abbey of Fulda, home to a rich monastic scriptorium raided by Renaissance manuscript-hunters such as Poggio Bracciolini.

*Dr. Olds is assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of San
Francisco, email: kbolds@usfca.edu. Unless otherwise noted, translations have been provided
by the author. The author thanks William Christian Jr., A. Katie Harris, Erin Rowe, Nelson
H. Minnich, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions.

1

2

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

These prestigious origins helped grant the texts entrée among the
several scholarly acquaintances who received them from Higuera in the
last years of the sixteenth century. With their concatenation of details
about the antiquity and continuity of the Iberian Church that featured a
continuous chain of exemplary martyrs, saints, and bishops across the centuries in Spain, Portugal, Rome, and Spanish Sardinia, the chronicles—
first in manuscript and later in print—proved particularly appealing to
fellow students of the sacred past such as seventeenth-century authors of
local sacred histories. Thanks to their combination of both new and familiar sacred traditions, the texts were destined to have an enduring influence
among generations of readers, not only among prominent intellectuals but
also among small-scale enthusiasts of the sacred past, well into the nineteenth century.
However, the texts possessed one disadvantage, at least from the perspective of their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century critics: Higuera had
fabricated them. This inconvenient fact earned the annals their disparaging
nickname of the falsos cronicones (“false chronicles”) from their first systematic critic, Nicolás Antonio (1617–84). Yet such was the value of these purportedly late-antique and medieval chronicles as sources that, even after
Antonio’s treatise was published in a posthumous eighteenth-century edition, Spain’s intelligentsia could not agree unanimously that Higuera’s
texts should be rejected entirely. Instead, in the intervening centuries, the
chronicles’ confirmation of familiar traditions—as well as their introduction of new holy people, objects, and narratives—continued to provide raw
material for more vivid visions of the sacred past in Iberian history, hagiography, and liturgy.
Higuera’s role in prompting the seventeenth-century heyday of Iberian historia sacra has long been acknowledged, albeit in a backhanded
manner. Antonio was the first to complain about the many spurious histories that Higuera’s texts were engendering:
Every day countless Histories of Cities, Churches, Religious Orders, and
Kingdoms are born, which treat almost nothing except fabulous origins,
Apostles, and supposed Preachers of the Faith, Martyrs carried from distant lands to falsely ennoble places that were not their motherlands, and
badly-invented or ridiculous Antiquities.

Thanks to the wide circulation and appeal of the false chronicles, Antonio
lamented, “there is no place in Spain, no matter how small or obscure, that
is not thinking of writing its own history now with the material it finds in
this recently-discovered mine, which is most abundant in oddities and

KATRINA B. OLDS

3

novelties.”1 More recently, scholars have moved beyond simply deploring
Higuera’s forgeries to analyze the texts’ depiction of some of the most controversial matters in Spanish society and religion of the time, including the
status of Jews and Jewish converts (conversos) to Christianity and the
authenticity of the forged “lead books” of Granada.2
Thus, it is now possible to reexamine Higuera’s role in the evolution
of Spanish sacred history from a different vantage point, one that takes
seriously his enduring preoccupation with the sources and narratives of the
past, particularly as Roman reformers began to reevaluate and reshape
them in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Higuera’s texts
appeared at a pivotal moment when antiquarian and philological erudition
were being pressed into the service of Tridentine reform. In Rome, scholars such as Cardinal Cesare Baronio were rewriting Catholic liturgy, history, and hagiography and, in the process, effectively encouraging the
efflorescence of sacred history as a genre, as regional scholars responded to
their inquiries in kind.3 Like many of his counterparts in Italy, Higuera
wrote in dialogue—part real, part imagined—with Baronio, as will be seen
in a remarkable and little-noticed document (a 1589 letter from Higuera
to the Roman reformer), in which, just as in the false chronicles, Higuera
simultaneously emulated and countered Baronian visions of the sacred
past. By considering the letter and the chronicles as part of this broader
Counter-Reformation context, Higuera’s motives and methods come into

1. “Nacen cada dia libros sin numero de Historias de Ciudades, de Iglesias, de Religiones, de Reinos, en que no se lee casi otra cosa, que origenes fabulosos, Apostoles, i Predicadores de la Fè supuestos, Martires traidos de tierras mui distantes a ennoblecer falsamente la
tierra que no tuvieron por madre; Antiguedades, mal inventadas, o ridiculas: que si los limpiassen destas Fabulas, quedarian ceñidos a mui pocas hojas. No ai lugar en España, por corto
y obscuro que sea, que ya no piense en hacer propia historia con los materiales que halla en
esta mina recien descubierta, y copiosísima, de extrañezas y novedades.” Nicolás Antonio,
Censura de historias fabulosas (1742; repr. Madrid, 1999), p. 4. For more along these lines, see
the foundational works by Julio Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia (Barcelona, 1991),
and by José Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica de los falsos cronicones (1868; repr. Granada,
1999).
2. Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, “Jerónimo Román de
la Higuera and the Lead Books of Sacromonte,” in Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval
Spain and Beyond, ed. Kevin Ingram (Leiden, 2009), pp. 243–68; Juan Gil, “Judíos y conversos en los falsos cronicones,” in Inquisition d’Espagne, ed. Annie Molinié-Bertrand and JeanPaul Duviols (Paris, 2003), pp. 21–43.
3. Simon R. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria
Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, UK, 1995); Katherine Elliot Van
Liere, Simon R. Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan, eds., Sacred History: Uses of the Christian
Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012).

4

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

focus, as does the larger question of the chronicles’ enduring presence in
Iberian historiae sacrae.4
The False Chronicles in Spanish History
The interpretation of the past was of intense importance for earlymodern European scholars of all confessional stripes, thanks in part to the
religious controversies of the sixteenth century that used history as an
important polemical weapon. Protestant attempts to claim the mantle of
the apostles by tracing a continuous chain of witnesses to the truth, as in
the Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries, were countered by Catholic scholars
such as Baronio in his magisterial and detailed Annales Ecclesiastici.5 Yet
historical research was also an important dimension of reform from within,
as was the case with the less familiar but equally important scholarly
endeavors undertaken by Baronio, the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine,
and other members of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. These included, for example, an
overhaul of the principal Roman liturgical books. As part of the comprehensive liturgical reform that Pius V had initiated in the 1560 and 1570s
(and that would continue under successive popes well into the seventeenth
century), single, Roman versions were created of texts that had previously
existed in a multiplicity of forms. Thus, local variations in the breviary,
martyrology, and missal—which, with their prescribed readings and calendar of the feasts of saints and martyrs, structured the cultic calendar—were
now suppressed unless they could demonstrate that they had been in uninterrupted use for 200 years. They would be replaced with the standard
Roman version such as the revised Breviarum Romanum of 1568, which
was to determine the shape of the liturgical year, and the remembrance of
saints and martyrs, on a universal level.6
Regarding the liturgical texts devoted to the saints, revisers faced the
complex task of making them internally consistent, historically accurate,
and theologically appropriate. To achieve this standard, they were forced
to expunge questionable or apocryphal material, correct errors of fact or
chronology, and occasionally incorporate information from non-Roman
liturgical texts such as breviaries from elsewhere in Italy and beyond.7 To
4. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica, pp. 155–56.
5. Irena D. Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden, 2003); Pontien Polman, L’élément historique dans la controverse
religieuse du XVI e siècle (Gembloux, 1932).
6. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, p. 43.
7. Ibid., p. 52.

KATRINA B. OLDS

5

achieve this standard for the martyrology, Roman scholars struggled to reconcile the often contradictory accounts of the place, date, and manner of
the martyrs’ deaths in their principal sources such as the late-antique and
medieval Latin martyrologies of Bede, Ado, and Usuard.8
It should be noted that, in these attempts, reformers were not always
willing to clear away all the legendary undergrowth.9 One example is
Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian convert of the apostle Paul (Acts
17:34) who, over time, became confused with St. Denis of France, the first
bishop and patron saint of Paris. In the Middle Ages, these two figures
were further conflated and merged with a third, the pseudonymous author
of the group of late-antique and neo-Platonic texts known as the
Dionysian corpus. Although Lorenzo Valla and other humanist critics had
challenged the equivalence of the three figures, Baronio retained the composite figure of Denis-Dionysius as a Parisian martyr and neo-Platonic
author in the revised Martyrology.10
If Baronian revisions sometimes fell short of the standards of their harshest contemporary critics, they provoked a rather different reaction among
regional clerics.11 As the reformers applied the higher critical standards evolving in learned European circles to local cultic texts and histories, scholars such
as Pietro Maria de Campi in Piacenza responded in kind and attempted to
demonstrate that their particular visions of the sacred past and their own religious traditions possessed the requisite antiquity increasingly required by the
universal Church.12 It is important to note that, in this reciprocal process that

8. Ibid., pp. 23–67; Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Cesare Baronio e il Martyrologium
Romanum: Problemi interpretativi e linee evolutive di un rapporto diacronico,” in Nunc alia
tempora, alii mores: Storici e storia in età postridentina, ed. Massimo Firpo (Florence, 2005), pp.
47–89.
9. Polman, L’élément historique, p. 535; Cyriac K. Pullapilly, Caesar Baronius, CounterReformation Historian (Notre Dame, 1975), pp. 163–72; Stefano Zen, Baronio storico: contrariforma e crisi del metodo umanistico (Naples, 1994).
10. Cesare Baronio, Martyrologium Romanum ad novam kalendarii rationem & ecclesiasticæ historiæ veritatem restitutum (Venice, 1597), pp. 456–58 (October 9); Jean-Marie Le
Gall, Le mythe de Saint Denis: Entre renaissance et révolution (Paris, 2007), Erick Wilberding,
“A Defense of Dionysius the Areopagite by Rubens,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 52, no. 1
(1991), 19–34.
11. For Isaac Casaubon’s critiques of Baronio, Anthony Grafton, Bring Out Your Dead:
The Past as Revelation (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 56–57.
12. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History; idem, “Historia Magistra Sanctitatis: The
Relationship between Historiography and Hagiography in Italy after the Council of Trent,”
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser., no. 3 (2006), pp. 158–84; Ditchfield,
“Tridentine Worship and the Cult of Saints,” in Reform and Expansion 1500–1660, ed.

6

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

Simon Ditchfield has characterized as the universalizing of the particular and
the particularizing of the universal, Spain was at a distinct disadvantage. Little
evidence existed to support many beliefs about the first centuries of Iberian
Christianity, a situation that was not necessarily improved by the efforts of
Renaissance-era scholars such as Lucius Marineus Siculus, Pere Antoni
Beuter, and Johannes Vasaeus to chronicle the early saints and bishops of
Roman Hispania in their respective historical treatments.13
Early-modern Spanish scholars attributed the significant lacunae in
the historical record to the eighth-century Islamic invasion of the Iberian
Peninsula; it was believed that historical records, like saints’ relics, had
been destroyed, concealed, or lost during the invasion. It was partly to
recover these that King Philip II sent the antiquarian scholar Ambrosio de
Morales (1513–91) to canvass ecclesiastical archives and treasuries in
northern Spain in the 1570s; the specimens, or portions thereof, were sent
back for Philip’s royal book and relic collections.14 Philip also commissioned Morales to continue Florián Ocampo’s General Chronicle of Spain;
Morales subsequently published a three-volume history along with a separate volume of antiquities (1574–77).15
In spite of these and other efforts, the sense remained that many hidden
treasures awaited rediscovery in Spanish churches and that the history of
Spanish Christianity had yet to be written.16 Into this apparent void there
suddenly erupted the four historical chronicles that Higuera claimed to have
received from Fulda in 1594. The texts chronicled the entire arc of historical
Christianity in Spain. The first ran from the birth of Christ to the eleventh
century; the second ranged from the apostolic visits of Ss. James, Peter, and
Paul to the age of martyrdom in the centuries after Christ; the third covered
the early-medieval Islamic conquest; and the fourth described the Christian
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, [The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6], (Cambridge, UK,
2007), pp. 201–24.
13. Katherine Elliot Van Liere, “Renaissance Chroniclers and the Apostolic Origins of
Spanish Christianity,” in Sacred History, ed. Van Liere, Ditchfield, and Louthan (Oxford,
2012), pp. 121–44.
14. Guy Lazure, “Possessing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II’s Relic
Collection at the Escorial,” Renaissance Quarterly, 60 (2007), 58–93.
15. Richard L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early
Modern Spain (Baltimore, 2009), pp. 109–14.
16. For another forgery that addressed this perceived gap for Granada, Mercedes
García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, Un oriente español: Los moriscos y el
Sacromonte en tiempos de contrarreforma (Madrid, 2010); A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to
Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, 2007).

KATRINA B. OLDS

7

political resurgence known as the Reconquest in the high Middle Ages.
With their wealth of detail, the chronicles confirmed familiar pious traditions such as the legends surrounding Santiago (St. James the Greater). In
many cases, they also introduced information not available in other written
sources on the history of Christianity for Spain’s most renowned religious
and cultural centers (such as Toledo and Santiago) as well as for places outside the powerful centers of early-modern religious, political, and economic
life in Spain (particularly in Andalusia and central Castile).
The first and most popular of Higuera’s forged annals was the Chronicle of Universal History that was attributed to Flavius Lucius Dexter, a
fourth-century praetorian prefect who was mentioned in St. Jerome’s Viri
Illustri.17 In Higuera’s rendering, Dexter was a crucial source for the first
four centuries of Christianity, including the establishment of the first Iberian episcopal sees from the first century to the wave of martyrdoms during
the Great Persecution of Diocletian. In the first half of the 1600s, Dexter’s
chronicle was printed in three editions.18 The next two chronicles were
ascribed, respectively, to a seventh-century bishop of Saragossa named
Marcus Maximus and to a tenth-century Lombard bishop cum Toledan
subdeacon named Luitprand.19 Maximus detailed the conversion of the
Visigothic dynasty from Arian to Catholic Christianity in the sixth century; Luitprand remembered the eighth-century Islamic invasion and the
subsequent development of an oppressed Mozarabic Christian population
in al-Andalus.20 The final text was attributed to one Julián Pérez, a fic-

17. St. Jerome, On Illustrious Men, trans. Thomas P. Halton (Washington, DC, 1999),
pp. 1, 165.
18. Francisco de Bivar’s 1627 Lyons edition was one of many texts reprinted in the
nineteenth century by the Abbé Migne in his Patrologiae collection: Francisco de Bivar, ed.,
“Chronicon omnimodae historiae,” in F. L. Dextri necnon Pauli Orosii hispanorum chronologorum opera omnia, Patrologiae cursus completus, ed. J.-P. Migne, [Series Latina, Vol. 31],
(Turnholt, 1968), hereafter cited as PL 31. For a cautionary guide to Migne, see R. Howard
Bloch, God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the
Abbé Migne (Chicago, 1994).
19. Isidore of Seville had mentioned Maximus as an actual seventh-century bishop of
Saragossa in his treatise on illustrious men. Higuera created Luitprand by merging the tenthcentury bishop of the Lombard city of Cremona—whose name is usually spelled “Liutprand”
or “Liudprand”—with a fictional seventh-century subdeacon of Toledo. Godoy Alcántara,
Historia crítica, pp. 129–98, 230–34.
20. The most complete edition is Francisco de Bivar, ed., Marci Maximi episcopi Caesaraugustani … Continuatio chronici omnimodae historiae (Madrid, 1651); see also “Chronicon
Liutprandi Ticinensis Diaconi,” in Ratherii Veronensis Episcopi, opera omnia […] accedunt
Liutprandi Cremonensis [hereafter cited as PL 136], Patrologiae cursus completus, ed. J.-P.
Migne, [Series Latina, Vol. 136], (Paris, 1881).

8

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

tional eleventh-century archdeacon of Toledo, who described the reconquest of Toledo by northern Christian forces, events in which he participated personally, alongside his friend, the Reconquest warrior El Cid.21
Even as he focused on Iberian concerns, Higuera remained alert to
contemporary debates about the evolving shape of history, hagiography,
and liturgy, both among his fellow Spanish interpreters of the sacred past,
and between them and their Roman counterparts. The false chronicles
make apparent Higuera’s often deliberate opposition to the reforms supervised by Baronio, as in the several instances in which the Spanish Jesuit
restored traditions that Baronio had excised from the Roman Martyrology
or rejected in the Annales Ecclesiastici. Higuera’s interventions are first visible in the letter he sent to Baronio in 1589, in which the Spanish Jesuit
critiqued recent revisions of the Roman Martyrology and urged Baronio
and his fellow “grave and learned men” to restore five martyrs that, he
believed, had been unjustly omitted in the text’s most recent recension (see
appendix A). These were Constantine’s daughter, Constantina (also
known as Constance), as well as four saints of Iberian origin: three virginmartyrs named Obdulia, Liberata, and Seculina; and a child-martyr,
Christopher, an alleged victim of ritual murder by the Jewish community
of the Castilian city of La Guardia in 1490.22 To understand the nature of
Higuera’s objections and his focus on these martyrs—two of whom actually
had not been removed from the Martyrology—it is necessary to examine
parallel polemical responses to Baronio’s liturgical revisions in Spain.
These, in turn, will help illuminate the larger vision of sacred history that
animated Higuera in these and other efforts to bring his alternative historia
sacra Hispana to life.
Higuera and Early-Modern Erudition
The question of how to craft sacred histories, and of how to evaluate
the sources that would inform such narratives, occupied some of the best

21. Richard Hitchcock, “The falsos chronicones and the Mozarabs,” Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 3 (1994–95), 87–96. The only edition was Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado,
ed., Iuliani Petri Archipresbyteri Santae Iustae Chronicon cum eiusdem adversariis [hereafter cited
as Ramírez de Prado, Chronicon and Adversaria (foliated separately)], (Paris, 1628).
22. Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, “Epistola XVI. Caesari Baronio Hieronymi
Higueras” [hereafter cited as Higuera, “Epistola”], in Venerabilis Caesaris Baronii […] Epistolae et Opuscula, Tomus Tertius, ed. Raymundus Albericius (Rome, 1770), pp. 163–64. Based
on Higuera’s confused chronological references, it seems that he was consulting either the
1586 or 1587 edition.

KATRINA B. OLDS

9

minds of sixteenth-century Spain. In the generation preceding Higuera,
these included Ambrosio de Morales, as well as the learned bishop of Tarragona, Antonio Agustín (1516–86), and the biblical scholar Benito Arias
Montano (1527–98).23 Thanks to his education at the University of
Toledo in the middle decades of the century, Higuera had also been introduced to the scholarly circles around Toledo’s university, cathedral, and
archiepiscopal palace.24 As a mid-level Jesuit of strictly local renown,
Higuera admittedly could not attain the social or political capital of these
more famous figures, but he did share their conviction of the importance
of recovering documentary and material evidence of the past—what we
would call primary sources—for the writing of Spanish history. Like his
more renowned precursors, Higuera collected and shared these sources
with fellow enthusiasts of the past, including some he had met when he
served as rector and instructor of humanities in various Jesuit collegia in
Castile in the second half of the sixteenth century.25
Higuera’s contacts, as well as his decades of research, enabled him to
accumulate an enviable arsenal of sources. The rich collections of the
cathedral library of his native Toledo were particularly important. In the
1580s and 1590s, Higuera worked there alongside other learned men such
as García Loaysa de Girón, Juan Bautista Pérez, and André Schott.26 Judging from his extant manuscripts and from references in the false chronicles,
Higuera copied virtually every source he could find on Iberian sacred history such as medieval missals, sanctorales, breviaries, martyrologies, chronicles, episcopal lists, and royal diplomas. He also collected inscriptions in
Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic and, of course, acquainted himself with
23. See Adam Beaver, “A Holy Land for the Catholic Monarchy: Palestine in the
Making of Modern Spain, 1469–1598” (PhD Diss., Harvard University, 2008); Zur Shalev,
Sacred Words and Worlds: Geography, Religion, and Scholarship, 1550–1700 (Leiden, 2011);
William Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History (London, 2005); Van
Liere, “Renaissance Chroniclers and the Apostolic Origins of Spanish Christianity”; eadem,
“Shared Studies Foster Friendship: Humanism and History in Spain,” in The Renaissance
World, ed. John Jeffries Martin (New York, 2007), pp. 242–61.
24. Gregorio de Andrés, “El helenismo del canónigo toledano Antonio de Covarrubias:
Un capítulo del humanismo en Toledo en el s. XVI,” Hispania Sacra, 40 (1988), 237–313.
25. For biographical details, see J. Escalera, “Higuera, Jerónimo (Romano, Roman) de
la,” in Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, ed. Joaquín María Domínguez and Charles
E. O’Neill (Rome, 2001), II: 1923–24. On Toledan intellectual life, see Ramón Sánchez
González, “La cultura de las letras en el clero capitular de la catedral toledana,” in Sociedad y
élites eclesiásticas en la España moderna, ed. Francisco José Aranda Pérez (Cuenca, 2000), pp.
163–235.
26. Richard L. Kagan, “The Toledo of El Greco,” in El Greco of Toledo, ed. Jonathan
Brown (Boston, 1982), pp. 35–73.

10

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

well-known historical narratives from classical antiquity to his own day. He
poured the results of this research into his ongoing writing projects, which
included a survey of Spanish ecclesiastical history, a massive history of
Toledo, several genealogies, lives of saints, scriptural commentaries, hagiographical hymns, historical editions of Latin classics, and even a poetic epic
on the reconquest of Cuenca in dactylic hexameter.27
Baronio versus Spain
None of Higuera’s other texts were ever printed, and it was the false
chronicles for which he would be remembered. Yet often neglected in
modern analyses of these notorious annals is the fact that they were confected simultaneously with Baronio’s Annals and the successive editions of
the Roman liturgical books. Although Baronio was regarded by some critics as insufficiently rigorous, he was widely despised in Spain for wielding
his critical knife rather too liberally.28 Particularly galling was the 1602 edition of the Roman Breviary, which characterized the apostle Santiago’s
evangelization of Iberia as a provincial tradition. The implication, at least
for Spanish readers, was that the apostolic mission had been demoted from
fact to fiction.29 Even before its publication, anxiety had been stirred up;
Higuera fretted about the attacks of “foreigners” on Santiago in 1595 and
sent a defense of the historicity of the apostle’s Spanish mission to Baronio

27. Nicolás Antonio, Biblioteca hispana nueva, trans. Miguel Matilla Martínez, 2 vols.
(Madrid, 1999), I:630–61, to which must be added the evidence of Higuera’s own papers,
which survive in significant clusters in the Real Academia de Historia and the Biblioteca
Nacional in Madrid. There is no comprehensive index of Higuerania, and additional
Higueran autographs have been located in a number of other repositories; see, for example,
José Martínez de la Escalera, “Jerónimo de la Higuera, S.J., Falsos cronicones, historia de
Toledo, culto de San Tirso,” in Tolède et l’expansion urbaine en Espagne, 1450–1650. Rencontres
de la Casa Velázquez (Madrid, 1991), pp. 69–97.
28. For the complaint that Baronio had added too many saints to the Martyrology, see
Bernard Joassart, “Un lettre inédite d’Aubert Le Mire à Héribert Rosweyde,” Analecta Bollandiana, 124 (2006), 44, and, more generally, Jan Machielsen, “Heretical Saints and Textual
Discernment: The Polemical Origins of the Acta Sanctorum (1643–1940),” in Angels of Light?
Sanctity and Discernment in the Early Modern Period, ed. Jan Machielsen and Clare Copeland
(Leiden, 2012).
29. The “offending phrase” (“Ecclesiarum illius provinciae traditio est”) was removed in
all the subsequent editions; see Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, p. 57. For another
controversy, on the treatment of the Habsburg claims to Sicily in volume eleven of the Annales
(1605), see Agostino Borromeo, “Il Cardinale Cesare Baronio e la corona spagnola,” pp. 56–
166, here pp. 111–66, and Pérez Villanueva, “Baronio y la Inquisición española,” pp. 5–53,
here pp. 32–51, both in Baronio storico e la controriforma, ed. Romeo de Maio, Luigi Gulia,
and Aldo Mazzacane (Sora, Italy, 1982).

KATRINA B. OLDS

11

five years later.30 Once the Breviary was printed, proponents all the way up
to King Philip III were disappointed and outraged.31 Baronio and Bellarmine omitted the qualification in subsequent editions, although this was
hardly relevant to many wounded Spanish partisans, who continued to
publish refutations of Baronio for decades afterward.32
Baronio’s collaborator Bellarmine had anticipated the dangers that an
excessively rigorous approach to revising the Roman liturgical books would
pose, and he recognized that skepticism would need to be moderated by
respect for longstanding hagiographic tradition. To this end, Bellarmine
had developed guidelines for revisions that would respect scripture and tradition but also adhere to the more stringent criteria of early-modern philological and historical scholarship. As Simon Ditchfield explains, Bellarmine otherwise envisioned “drastic consequences,” including “the near
emptying of the [Martyrology] and the correspondingly drastic reduction
of the Proprium sanctorum in the [Breviary].”33 This is precisely what the
Discalced Carmelite historian Francisco de Santa María (1567–1649)
imagined that Baronio had in mind: as he noted, Baronio initially added
many new saints to the Martyrology, but then removed even more than he
added. “In the month of January alone,” Santa María estimated, were 138
erstwhile saints who, “along with many companions, had been dislodged”
from their rightful places among the holy.34 Santa María implicitly compared Baronio to an unscrupulous, eviction-happy landlord: “The liberty
[that he took] seems all the worse to me, because to knock a saint out of

30. See the 1595 letter to Pedro de Castro in Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, Discurso
histórico por el patronato de san Frutos contra la supuesta cathedra de San Hierotheo en Segovia y
pretendida authoridad de Dextro (Saragossa, 1666), pp. iii–v; for Higuera’s defense to Rome,
see Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica, p. 39.
31. Ibid., pp. 38–40; Kendrick, St. James in Spain, p. 53; Erin K. Rowe, Saint and
Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Avila, and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (University Park,
PA, 2011), p. 43. Baronio also ruffled feathers in France; see Georgiana Davidson, “Divine
Guidance and the Use of Sources: A Case from the Annales of Caesar Baronius,” in Culture,
Society, and Religion in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ellery Schalk (Waterloo, Canada, 1988), pp.
114–29.
32. This was published nearly four decades later: Miguel de Salinas Viñuela, España
primogenita de Iesu Christo con decision de la venida, y predicación de nuestro Padre y Apostol Santiago el año 37, disputada en singular certamen, y forma de vatalla contra la nueva opinión del
Eminentissimo Cardenal Cesar Baronio (Madrid, 1640).
33. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, p. 59, quoting Bellarmine.
34. As a Carmelite, Santa María was particularly irked by the fact that Baronio had
challenged the identification of Bishop John of Jerusalem, the legendary primeval founder of
the Carmelites, as a saint. On these claims, see Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002).

12

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

the place and tenancy that he already possessed in the Church raises
qualms.”35
Yet, in fact, in the Martyrology and Breviary, Roman revisers retained
most pious traditions and only excised the more dubious. Reformers also
engaged in ongoing conversations with the representatives of particular
churches, especially after 1588, with the creation of the new papal Congregation of Rites. The cardinals began to receive petitions from dozens of
dioceses, particularly in Italy, for permission to maintain their officia propria, readings dedicated to particular saints on their feast day, and often
printed separately from the breviary. This was thanks to the fact that the
papal bull that preceded the 1568 revised breviary, Quod a nobis, stipulated
that any particular diocese or religious order demonstrate that its particular
officia propria had been observed continuously for 200 years, or the readings
would be suppressed.36
Higuera, like Bellarmine and Francisco de Santa María, sensed the
danger implicit in the revisions, particularly in light of the fact that many
local liturgical traditions simply did not possess documentation stretching
back 200 years. For this reason, Higuera felt it was incumbent upon him
not simply to preserve the particular but also to enhance it by rescuing
obscure and perhaps even forgotten saints out of the oblivion to which the
suppression of local breviaries, it was feared, would permanently consign
them. Higuera was abetted in this effort by a remarkable privilege granted
to Iberian churches by Pope Gregory XIII. His 1573 brief Pastoralis officii
stipulated that a saint not included in the Roman Breviary could still be
commemorated with an officium proprium if he were a native or patron
saint of the diocese or if his body, or “notable” relics thereof, rested in the

35. Santa María’s comments come from a now-lost history of the town of Arjona written sometime between 1628 and 1649, portions of which the Jaén antiquary Martín de
Ximena Jurado (1615–64) copied in the mid-1600s: “Fray Francisco de Santa María Carmelita descalzo en un tratado que hico por los sanctos de Arjona §9 n. 14 haciendo mas advertencias al Martyrologio Romano dice assi el tercero que no contento Baronio con haver añadido tantos sanctos quito muchos y solo en el mes de enero he hallado ciento y treinta y ocho
con gran numero de compañeros de los assi despojados y esta liçençia aun me parece maior
porque derribar a un sancto de el lugar y posession que ya tenia en la iglesia toca en escrupulo
y ya no me espanto que aya quitado a nuestro Padre San Iuan Hierosolymitano obispo de
Jerusalen de la opinion de Sancto que en todos los siglos tubo hasta Baronio pues a tan gran
numero de Sanctos privo de el honor que en los Martyrologios tenian.” Real Academia de
Historia, Madrid (RAH), 9/3572, fol. 5356v. On Santa María, see Rowe, Saint and Nation,
p. 157.
36. Ditchfield, “Tridentine Worship and the Cult of Saints.”

KATRINA B. OLDS

13

diocese.37 Higuera attempted to exploit this loophole by combing through
local breviaries, particularly in Castile, in search of saints whose officia propria might be saved by the terms of either the 1568 bull or the 1573 brief.
This is evident both in the 1589 letter to Baronio and later in the false
chronicles, where Higuera anchored obscure local traditions in something
resembling solid, historical grounding, presumably so that they could not
be erased by subsequent Roman revisions.
Higuera’s Efforts to Counter Baronio in the False Chronicles
The author of an early-seventeenth-century history of Valencia
acknowledged this important function of Higuera’s chronicles when he
asserted that it must have been God himself who revealed the texts so that
Spain could challenge Baronio more effectively.38 Yet Higuera looked to
Baronio not only as a foil but also as a model. Like Baronio, he rewrote
Catholic history not in an eloquent historical narrative, but in the chronologically-ordered ecclesiastical annal of the type pioneered by Eusebius of
Caesaria and continued by Jerome. In the false chronicles, as in Baronio’s
Annales ecclesiastici, the Church was, already in the first century of its existence, institutionally mature and fundamentally identical to its current
shape, semper eadem.39 Like the Roman reformer, Higuera imagined sixteenth-century Catholicism as continuous with the Church of the apostles,
although with the significant difference that its center of gravity was not
Rome, but Spain. In Higuera’s rendering, the Iberian Church also closely
resembled Counter-Reformation ideals—it was always led by bishops,
peopled by martyrs and other saints, and only lightly touched by monasticism and high politics.40
At the same time, Higuera’s texts were also a bold and contrary
attempt to recomplicate the Baronian texts by repopulating them with traditions that had been eliminated in the revisions. Thus, like his peers,
Higuera responded vigorously to challenges to beliefs about Santiago. In
Dexter’s chronicle, the apostle was depicted in completely traditional terms
as the evangelizer of the Iberian Peninsula who had erected a church in
37. Printed in unfoliated front matter of Proprium sanctorum hispanorum, qui generaliter
in Hispania celebrantur, ad formam officij novi redactu[m], ex Apostolica concessione, & auctoritate
Pii V, Gregorii XIII (Salamanca, 1591).
38. Gaspar Escolano, Decada primera de la historia de la insigne, y Coronada ciudad y
Reyno de Valencia, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1610–11), I: col. 216.
39. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History, p. 283.
40. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica, pp. 154–55.

14

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

honor of the Virgin in Saragossa and who, after his martyrdom in Rome,
was brought by boat to be buried in Compostela.41 Yet Higuera went even
further to make Santiago not simply the apostle to the Spanish but also the
founder of what was, for all intents and purposes, a simulacrum of mature
Tridentine Catholicism in first-century Spain. According to Dexter, Santiago encouraged the practice of pilgrimage, converted many Jews (especially near Madrid), and instituted observance of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin.42 Moreover, rather like the delegates assembled at the
mid-sixteenth-century Council of Trent, for example, the apostle was sensitive to the importance of bishops for church governance and so appointed
them in a dozen places throughout Roman Hispania.43 In this sense, the
early Iberian Church was fundamentally an episcopal institution, in which
the bishops and their urban sees were the many points of light in the still
predominantly pagan landscape of Hispania.44 Among these were the
“Siete Varones Apostólicos,” the legendary first bishops of Spain commemorated in the distinctive Mozarabic liturgy.45
Beyond Santiago, Higuera restored traditions that Baronio had rejected
outright in the Annales and Martyrology, and amplified their specifically Iberian origins or flavor. In this regard, the treatment of Dionysius the Areopagite in Dexter’s chronicle is apposite. There, the proverbial apostle to the
French was furnished with an Iberian itinerary in the early-second century,
as well as Spanish disciples whom he installed as bishops. Here, as elsewhere,
Higuera was not inventing whole cloth; in fact, previous authors had identified Eugenius, the legendary first bishop of Toledo, as a disciple of the Are-

41. PL 31, cols. 91–147. Higuera was not the first to do so; see Katherine Elliot Van
Liere, “The Missionary and the Moorslayer: James the Apostle in Spanish Historiography
from Isidore of Seville to Ambrosio de Morales,” Viator, 37 (2006), 519–43.
42. On the latter, see Kendrick, St. James in Spain, pp. 86–103; Suzanne L. Stratton,
The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art (Cambridge, UK, 1994).
43. PL 31, col. 129. On bishops, see A. D. Wright, “The Borromean Ideal and the
Spanish Church,” in San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second
Half of the Sixteenth Century, ed. J. M. Headley and J. B. Tomaro (Washington, DC, 1988),
pp. 188–207.
44. In reality, the episcopal presence was quite light in fourth- and fifth-century Iberian
Christianity. Kimberly Bowes, “‘Un coterie espagnole pieuse’: Christian Archaeology and Christian Communities in Theodosian Hispania,” in Hispania in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives, ed. Kimberly Bowes and Michael Kulikowski (Boston, 2005), pp. 188–258.
45. José Vives, “Tradición y leyenda en la hagiografía hispánica,” Hispania Sacra, 17.
(1964), 495–508. For the complexity of historical claims about the Mozarabic liturgy, which
most early-modern authors attributed to St. Isidore, see Susan Boynton, Silent Music:
Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 2011), pp.
3–14.

KATRINA B. OLDS

15

opagite.46 In Higuera’s version of events, Bishop Eugenius of Toledo became
the second Spanish disciple of Dionysius and also was converted into “Marcellus Eugenius,” a Roman from the imperial family. Higuera furnished
Dionysius with another Spanish disciple, Hierotheo, who was named for a
figure in the writings of pseudo-Dionysius; in Higuera’s imaginative rendering, Hierotheo became a native Segovian who returned to occupy that city’s
see after his better-known stint as bishop of Athens.47
Higuera also pushed against Baronio’s efforts to debunk the legend
that Seneca the Younger, the Roman philosopher and a native of Córdoba,
had corresponded with the apostle Paul and that, as a result of their epistolary exchange, Seneca had secretly converted to Christianity.48 Baronio,
like Desiderius Erasmus, had rejected both the legendary correspondence
and the later conversion myth due to their historical inaccuracies.49
Higuera responded by writing the letters right into Dexter’s chronicle and
giving the relationship a distinctly Spanish flavor: to wit, Seneca had sent
many letters to Paul while the apostle was visiting the Iberian Peninsula in
AD 64 and, for this reason, “it is believed” that Seneca had become Paul’s
disciple as well as a hidden Christian.50
Local Traditions in the False Chronicles: St. Liberata in Sigüenza
Higuera did not limit himself to buttressing familiar apocryphal figures and traditions. He also retrofitted wobbly hagiographical structures so
that they might withstand more bracing winds to come. This is evident in
his 1589 letter to Baronio, in which Higuera attempted to reshape the
hagiographic narratives emerging in Baronio’s successive editions of the
Martyrology into new tales that tied each of the Iberian saints more closely
to Spain, while also compromising the internal clarity and consistency that
Baronio and his collaborators had worked so hard to achieve. This is exemplified in Higuera’s argument for Obdulia, who had not actually been
omitted from the Martyrology. She was listed under September 5 as “Holy
Virgin of Toledo, Obdulia”—a terse characterization that belied a more
46. Van Liere, “Renaissance Chroniclers and the Apostolic Origins of Spanish Christianity,” pp. 126–27.
47. PL 31, cols. 239–41, 269–71, 293.
48. The pseudepigrapha dated to the fourth century, whereas the idea of Seneca as a
secret Christian was a later, Renaissance-era invention. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Note sulla leggenda del Cristianesimo di Seneca,” Rivista di Storia Italiana, 62 (1951), 325–44.
49. Cesare Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici, (Rome, 1593), I:641–42 (AD 66); James F.
Brady and John C. Olin, eds., Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1992), 61:72.
50. PL 31, col. 189.

16

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

complex hagiographic tradition, which Baronio had streamlined. As the
cardinal averred in the commentary, there were two saints of similar
names: this Obdulia, who was commemorated every September in Toledo,
the location of her relics; and Oddilia, who had been one of the 11,000 virgins martyred with St. Ursula in fourth-century Cologne. Baronio also
pointed out that, in spite of the similarity of their names, the Toledan and
French saints were not the same.51
Higuera purposefully and forcefully repulsed these sensible moves
toward clarification and told Baronio that, according to Toledan records
(“tabulis Toletanis”), they were most definitely the same. Moreover, this
Toledan-French-virgin-martyr was also known by a third name, Ottilia,
and her relics were currently in Toledo.52 By making the Toledan Obdulia
one of Ursula’s French companions and in tethering her to yet a third saint,
Higuera was providing additional historical heft to a relatively lightweight
hagiographic record. In the process, he attempted to transform a minor
and obscure martyr into a recognizable and historically attested figure so
that, unlike many other saints commemorated in the old Toledan officia
propria, she would not disappear without a trace. To complete this metamorphosis, Higuera ensured that Obdulia was included in the chronicle of
Luitprand, where he recorded the translation of her relics to Toledo from
Palma (Majorca) in the year 907.53
With these maneuvers, Higuera ran directly against the prevailing current among the most rigorous scholars of sacred history, complicating traditions rather than clarifying them and retaining loose threads rather than
snipping them. He did so to make a place for local traditions within the
liturgical year of the universal Church. This seems to have been the rationale behind his urging Baronio to add an even more obscure martyr,
Seculina, to the Martyrology. Higuera had found her liturgical office in a
parchment breviary in Ávila and later wrote her into the chronicle of Luitprand as a pious Benedictine nun who “flourished with the reputation of
rare sanctity” in mid-ninth-century Zamora.54 Higuera also brought to
Baronio’s attention Christopher, the child-martyr of La Guardia who
enjoyed merely local veneration.55

51. Baronio, Martyrologium Romanum (Venice, 1587), fol. 403 (September 5).
52. Higuera, “Epistola,” p. 164.
53. PL 136, col. 111.
54. Ibid., col. 1103.
55. Higuera, “Epistola,” p. 164. On the trial and cult, which received papal approval in
1805, see Patricia E. Grieve, The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian,

KATRINA B. OLDS

17

If these saints were commemorated only on a local level, then the survival (or rebirth) of their cults—specifically, of their officia propria—would
depend upon Roman recognition.56 This is crucial to understanding
Higuera’s advocacy for the fifth and final saint, Liberata, who, he seemed
to suggest, was also known as Wilgefort. In fact, as Higuera would have
known, the two were commemorated separately in the revised Martyrology:
Liberata on January 18 as a virgin from Como (Italy) and Wilgefort on July
20 as a Portuguese martyr also known in German as “Ontcommora” who,
“for the love of chastity and the Christian faith,” had been crucified.57 In
these spare entries, which were characteristic of the Martyrology, Baronio
declined to include a number of colorful details about Wilgefort. These
included the legend that, in order to repel the fiancé to whom she had been
promised, she begged God to make her unattractive; whereby, lo and
behold, she grew a beard. Thus in many late-medieval visual representations in northern Europe, Wilgefort was depicted as a bearded, crucified
woman with a fiddler—a poor devotee—at her feet.58
Higuera was not the first to link Liberata with Wilgefort; the Flemish
theologian Johannes Molanus had equated them in his 1568 edition of
Usuard’s martyrology, although he reversed his position in subsequent editions.59 Yet Higuera’s efforts were the most influential, probably because
they came at a crucial moment when historical evidence for the antiquity of
Liberata’s cult was desperately needed in the Spanish city of Sigüenza, where
her relics were believed to have been venerated since approximately 1300.
The sixteenth century brought signs of life to the long moribund cult—her
relics were translated to a new marble altar in 1537, and Liberata’s medieval
Muslim, and Jewish Conflict (Baltimore, 2009), pp. 98–104, 227; John E. Longhurst, The Age
of Torquemada, 2nd ed. (Lawrence, KS, 1964), pp. 142–54; and Pedro Sainz de Baranda,
Clave de la España sagrada (Madrid, 1853), pp. 314, 412.
56. Less clear is why Higuera was trying to convert Constantina from a pious virgin, as
she was depicted in medieval hagiographies and martyrologies, into a martyr. Higuera, “Epistola,” pp. 163–64.
57. “In Lusitania sanctae Vuilgefortis virginis & martyris, quae pro Christiana fide ac
pudicitia decertans, in cruce meruit gloriosum obtinere triumphum.” Baronio, Martyrologium
Romanum (1587), pp. 321–22, and, for Liberata, p. 34.
58. The images date from the fourteenth century, but the legends do not seem to have
been written down until the sixteenth century. Ilse E. Friesen, The Female Crucifix: Images of St.
Wilgefortis since the Middle Ages (Waterloo, Canada, 2001); Elizabeth Nightlinger, “The Female
Imitatio Christi and Medieval Popular Religion: The Case of St Wilgefortis,” in Representations
of the Feminine in the Middle Ages, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Dallas, 1993), pp. 291–328.
59. “Item sanctae Vvilgefortis virginis & martyris filiae … quam nonnulli latinè Liberatam, Teutonicè autem Ontcommeram agnominant.” Usuard and Molanus, Vsvardi Martyrologivm (Louvain, 1568), (July 20), s/f.

18

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

officium was revised and printed in the Sigüenza breviary of 1561. However,
the publication of the new Roman Breviary only seven years later meant that
her officium was effectively suppressed, at least until the cathedral chapter
could provide evidence that her cult dated back at least 200 years.60
A cluster of sixteenth-century hagiographical texts regarding Liberata,
as well as the 1569 translation of a rib-bone from Sigüenza to her native
Bubáguena, point to an attempt to renew and document the history of the
cult in the wake of its suspension.61 An anonymous mid-century pamphlet
presents the outlines of her life and death as they had been recorded in the
suppressed medieval officium: Liberata had been one of the female nonuplets
born to the wife of the ruler of Lusitania. Out of shame, the queen ordered
her midwife to have the newborns drowned, because nine offspring was
“monstrous, even in pigs or other animals,” let alone in a woman of high
birth.62 The sympathetic and Christian midwife took pity on the infants and
raised them as her own; the girls emulated her piety and continence, and all
nine ultimately were beheaded due to their commitment to Christianity.63
In the early 1600s, the cathedral and municipal councils of Sigüenza
appealed to the Congregation of Rites for approval of the medieval officium. Their first two petitions were unsuccessful. In the 1605 denial, the
adjudicating cardinal explained that the lectiones submitted by Sigüenza on
Liberata’s behalf “seemed apocryphal.”64 In response, Sigüenza revised and
shortened the officium in honor of Liberata; in the new reading, she was

60. Jacques Gélis, “Le culte de Santa Librada à Sigüenza: Patronage urbain et emblématique impériale,” Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares, 51 (1996), 221–40.
61. María Eugenia Díaz Tena, “La vida de Santa Librada y su fuente medieval,” Culturas populares, 8 (2009), 1–22, here pp. 4–5 and 14–22. The most comprehensive history is by
Toribio Minguella y Arnedo, Historia de la diócesis de Sigüenza y de sus obispos, 3 vols. (Madrid,
1910).
62. “Y considerava, que si se supiesse, que sería a ella gran oprobio e a su linaje y que
sería el rey su marido gran offensa si tal cosa della se dixesse; lo qual, aún a los puercos o a otras
animalias es cosa monstruosa.” La vida y martirio de la bienaventurada Sancta Librada virgen y
martyr hija del rey Cathelo y de la reyna Calsia reyes de una ciudad llamada Balcagia la qual nascio
juntamente con otras ocho hermanas todas de un parto: cuya maravillosa criança y sancta vida la presente obra recuenta (n.p, no year, n.pag.). See Díaz Tena, “La vida de Santa Librada,” pp. 8–10.
63. La vida y martirio (s/f). For the other sister-virgin-martyrs, see Allyson M. Poska,
Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (Oxford, 2005), pp. 208–
10; Cécile Vincent-Cassy, Les saintes vierges et martyres dans l’Espagne du XVII e siècle: Culte e
image (Madrid, 2011), pp. 256–62, 503–04, 507–08.
64. “lectiones petitae de Sancta Liberata non esse concedendas, quia apocriphe videntur”: quoted by Diego Eugenio González Chantos y Ullauri, Santa Librada, vírgen y mártir,
patrona de la Santa Iglesia, ciudad, y obispado de Sigüenza, vindicada (Madrid, 1806), p. 85.

KATRINA B. OLDS

19

equated for the first time with Wilgefort. Yet this second petition was not
satisfactory to Bellarmine who, in his 1621 denial, noted that the two
saints were not commemorated on the same day in the Martyrology. Nor
did any liturgical or historical document seem to contain any information
whatsoever about the specifics of Liberata’s life and death. Since the acts
of martyrdom were not preserved, all that was certain was that she had
been a nonuplet, born to gentiles, and crucified in Lusitania. When this
happened, or who had instructed her in the faith, was unknown.65
Higuera’s 1589 entreaty to Baronio came in the midst of this decadeslong effort on the part of Sigüenza to rescue Liberata’s officium. In his
letter, he reminded Baronio of Liberata’s distinguishing characteristics and
repeated the tale that she was one of several daughters of the king of Portugal. Higuera also alerted Baronio to the fact that Liberata’s relics were
kept in a magnificent mausoleum “frequently visited by the faithful”—in
other words, that her cult in Sigüenza was active and continuous. In parting, Higuera requested that Baronio send him any information he had
about the Italian Liberata in the Martyrology. Although Higuera asserted
that this Liberata—and not the one from Como, who was already in the
Roman liturgy—was the same as Wilgefort, he did not mention the
would-be suitor, the beard, the fiddler, or any other elements of the Wilgefort tradition.66
Higuera was not one to leave matters to chance, and so he also wrote
the composite figure of Liberata-Wilgefort into his chronicles. Dexter and
Julián Pérez commemorated her as one of nine Portuguese sister virginmartyrs who resisted marriage. She was not only beheaded, as in the Liberata tradition, but also crucified, like Wilgefort.67 Higuera wisely omitted
the unseemly detail about the beard, possibly cognizant of the fact that it
was precisely the sort of risible anecdote that reformers were suppressing in
their revisions. Instead, he grafted the beard onto yet another saint, Paula
of Ávila (also known as “Barbata”), who had been mentioned by medieval
authors such as Gregory of Tours.68
65. Bellarmine’s decision is quoted in ibid., pp. 91–93.
66. Higuera, “Epistola,” p. 164. In 1602, a Sigüenza canon attempted a similar tactic
and requested Baronio transform the existing Martyrology entry on Liberata; he succeeded
only in receiving a referral to another learned cleric for further information. González Chantos, Santa Librada … vindicada, pp. 78–81.
67. PL 31, col. 321, Ramírez de Prado, Chronicon, pp. 21, 25, 113 and Adversaria, pp.
54, 84.
68. Julián Pérez, Adversaria, p. 125, and “Varia carmina” in her honor, pp. 157–58; see
Nightlinger, “The Female Imitatio Christi,” p. 310.

20

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

Higuera’s entreaties failed to persuade Baronio, and the entries for
Liberata, Wilgefort, and Obdulia remained the same in the 1597 Martyrology. Nor did Baronio deign to add Constantina, Seculina, or Christopher to the ranks of martyrs of the universal Church. Yet Higuera’s efforts
on behalf of Liberata were successful in the long run. In 1625, Sigüenza
submitted a third petition for the officium proprium, now enriched with
details from the false chronicles.69 The Congregation approved the petition; thus, a new officium cum octava bearing the names of both saints and
describing the saint as crucified was printed the next year. The cathedral
chapter also moved her feast day from Liberata’s customary day in January
to Wilgefort’s day, July 20.70
Future research will be necessary to clarify if Higuera’s texts were decisive, or if the Congregation of 1625 was well disposed to this third petition
for other reasons (such as the replacement of Bellarmine, who had died in
1621, with a former papal legate to Spain).71 Regardless, Liberata was
hereafter intertwined with Wilgefort in Sigüenza and elsewhere. The
beard was not mentioned in the new office, nor did it appear in Liberata’s
chapel in Sigüenza when the latter was renovated in 1694.72 Yet it sprouted
in other visual representations, beginning with the first and only edition of
Julián Pérez’s chronicle, which was prepared by the royal courtier Lorenzo
Ramírez de Prado and printed in Paris in 1628. The Adversaria included
an engraving of a bearded, crucified “St. Wilgefort, alias Liberata, who the
Belgians … call Ontcommera,” with a fiddler at her feet, just as in the parallel iconography of Wilgefort in northern Europe. This was not an isolated case, for, as Ramírez noted, he had beheld similar images in Madrid
and Saragossa while traveling with the royal court (see figure 1).73

69. The petitioners also sent Prudencio de Sandoval’s Antigüedad de la ciudad y iglesia
cathedral de Tuy (Braga, 1610), which followed Higuera’s account of the nine sisters; see fols.
35r–44v. González Chantos, Santa Librada … vindicada, pp. 96–102; Vincent-Cassy, Les
saintes vierges et martyres, pp. 192–94.
70. Yet note that the canons had voted down similar proposals on at least three previous
occasions; ibid., p. 101. For the new lectiones, see Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur. Julii
Tomus Quintus, ed. Joannes Baptista Sollerius et al. (Paris, 1868), pp. 50–70, here pp. 55–56.
71. González Chantos, Santa Librada … vindicada, p. 98.
72. She did not have a beard in the sculpture commissioned for her chapel in 1694. Juan
Antonio Martínez Gómez-Gordo, Leyendas de tres personajes históricos de Sigüenza: Santa
Librada, Virgen y Mártir, Doña Blanca de Borbón, Reina de Castilla y el Doncel de Sigüenza
(Sigüenza, 1971), pp. 13–15, 21. For other beardless depictions in the late-seventeenth century, see Vincent-Cassy, Les saintes vierges et martyres, figs. 119–25 and pp. 189–95.
73. Ramírez de Prado, Adversaria, p. 54, and the plate on the following page (reproduced here as figure 1).

KATRINA B. OLDS

21

FIGURE 1. Liberata-Wilgefort in Julián Pérez, Adversaria, Biblioteca General
Histórica de la Universidad de Salamanca, BG/23186.

Higuera was so successful in linking the Iberian nonuplet to the
bearded virgin-martyr that, after his texts were revealed in the eighteenth
century as forgeries, the beneficiaries of his efforts were placed in an awkward position, hard-pressed to find verification of their beloved local cults
that did not rely upon the historical testimony of Higuera’s texts. This is
what prompted Diego Eugenio González Chantos y Ullauri, dean of
Sigüenza’s cathedral, to write an 1806 Vindication, in which he argued
strenuously, and sometimes speciously, for the great antiquity of Liberata’s
cult.74 For one modern bishop of Sigüenza, the associations with the false
chronicles seemed insuperable, and so he simply changed the city’s patron
saint to the Virgin Mary in 1962.75
74. González Chantos, Santa Librada …vindicada.
75. The bishop’s decision was opposed by cathedral chapter, which successfully
reversed it in 1967; see Martínez Gómez-Gordo, Leyendas, pp. 7–8.

22

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

Conclusion
This is just one example of how Higuera intervened in local cultic politics through his writings, which he seems to have composed while keeping
one eye on Rome and the other on the Iberian religious landscape. It is also
one of several instances in which modern historians of the sacred have
since attempted to disentangle their holy traditions from the false chronicles and, by extension, from Higuera’s reverse engineering—which, ironically, might have been what saved them for posterity in the first place.
After all, Higuera’s resolve to reinforce jeopardized local saints made his
texts irresistible fonts of information for seventeenth-century sacred histories, local patriots, and other students of the sacred past.76 These uses took
a variety of forms. In the case of Madrid’s St. Isidro, for example, the
chronicles were cited to provide additional support for an already familiar
holy figure.77 In other cases, they helped identify anonymous relics such as
those of St. Anglina in Valencia, Bonosus and Maximianus in Arjona, and
Victor and his companions in Baeza.78 Many other tangible effects of
Higuera’s texts on local religion and historical scholarship elsewhere in
Spain and Portugal await more detailed study.
In the meantime, it is worth noting that, in composing the false
chronicles, Higuera was also drawing on a number of sources unknown to
Baronio. These included oral traditions such as the tale of an eighth-century Benedictine nunnery in Carpetania. As the story went, the nuns
prayed to God for protection from the advancing Moors, and he obliged
them by having the earth swallow the convent whole. Ever since then, local
residents could hear the convent’s bell summoning the faithful to pray, as
if it were still marking the monastic hours. Far from a fanciful invention,
the tale of the buried convent was traditional lore in the mountains south

76. On these, José Miguel Morán Turina, La memoria de las piedras: anticuarios, arqueólogos y coleccionistas de antigüedades en la España de los Austrias (Madrid, 2010).
77. Enrique Cordero de Ciria, “Huellas de los ‘falsos cronicones’ en la iconografía religiosa madrileña,” Villa de Madrid, 26, no. 95 (1988), 59–79; María José del Río Barreda,
Madrid, urbs regia. La capital ceremonial de la Monarquía Católica (Madrid, 2000), pp. 106–07.
78. For Anglina, see Pedro de San Cecilio, Historia de la vida y martyrio de Don Fray
Pedro de Valencia (Granada, 1629), p. viii recto; for Arjona, see Katrina Olds, “The Ambiguities of the Holy: Authenticating Relics in Seventeenth-Century Spain,” Renaissance Quarterly, 65 (2012), 135–84; eadem, “Visions of the Holy in Counter-Reformation Spain: The
Discovery and Creation of Relics in Arjona, c. 1628,” in The “Vision Thing”: Studying Divine
Intervention, ed. William A. Christian Jr. and Gábor Klaniczay (Budapest, 2009), pp. 135–
56; for Baeza, see Francisco de Rus Puerta, Historia eclesiastica del reino y obispado de Iaen
(Jaén, 1634), pp. 225–27.

KATRINA B. OLDS

23

of Toledo, according to the priest who recounted this and a number of
other legends of the area near Ajofrín in his correspondence with Higuera,
which the Jesuit dutifully recorded in the chronicles of Luitprand and
Julián Pérez.79
Although it might seem that, in giving credence to such stories,
Higuera was once again working in direct contrast to his illustrious nemesis Baronio, matters are not quite so simple. After all, Baronio seems to
have been rather generous in his approach to local cults, which he would
preserve as long as advocates could present “any kind of a written document, inscription, or local tradition … unless there was strong historical
evidence to the contrary, or if the sanctity or theological orthodoxy of the
recommended saint was seriously in question.”80 The cardinal had revised
the Martyrology with the help of many Higuera-like figures throughout the
Italian peninsula such as parish priests and other enthusiasts of sacred history, who sent old breviaries and other documentation to the Congregation
in support of their local cults.81 In one case, Baronio even resorted to something that seems to resemble popular acclamation—rather than documentary or other evidence—to justify adding a previously unattested martyr, St.
Cesidio, to the Martyrology; it just so happened that the saint was believed
to have been put to death in the hometown of the cardinal’s mother.82
Far from a pitiless demoter of longstanding saints, as envisioned by the
wounded partisans of Hispanic traditions, the Baronio that emerges here
shows sensitivity to the value of local devotions. Yet if Baronio might, from
some angles, bear a passing resemblance to Higuera, the Jesuit forger also

79. RAH 9/1013, fols. 294–301; for an excerpt, see William Christian Jr., Religiosidad
local en la España de Felipe II, trans. Javier Calzada and José Luis Gil Aristu (Madrid, 1991),
pp. 277–98, 340n2. The convent is linked to a shrine to St. Quitería, Liberata’s sister, in
Ramírez de Prado, Adversaria, p. 127, and see PL 136, col. 1079 (year 744). For a more
extensive discussion of the role of vox populi in Higuera’s project, as well as a deeper examination of his motives, methods, and legacy, see Katrina Olds’s monograph on the false chronicles (New Haven, forthcoming).
80. Pullapilly, Baronius, p. 39. On the importance of tradition for post-Tridentine
Catholicism, Polman, L’élément historique, pp. 284–309, 516–17.
81. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History.
82. “Celebris est eius memoria Transaquis apud Fucinum lacum, ubi & multis quotidie
miraculis illustratur. Inde enim maternum genus ducentes res testatas atque expertas loquimur.” Baronio, Martyrologium Romanum (1597), p. 395 (August 31); Ditchfield, Liturgy,
Sanctity and History, p. 98; Stefania Mezzazappa, “Cesidio e Rufino ‘martiri’: tracce archeologiche del culto,” in Baronio e le sue fonti, ed. Gulia Luigi (Sora, Italy, 2009), pp. 341–76;
Pullapilly, Baronius, pp. 39–41.

24

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

occasionally played the role of the learned cleric. Both Higuera and the
reforming cardinal shared the ability to demythologize, if not a consistent
desire to do so. Like many other early-modern antiquarian scholars,
Higuera tended to record the totality of what he collected, even if he did not
necessarily believe it all himself.83 This dynamic is at work in a remarkable
passage in Higuera’s manuscript Ecclesiastical History of Toledo regarding the
story of the miraculously tolling bells of the buried convent. Here, Higuera
adopted a rather critical attitude that seems to have been completely missing
from the false chronicles. During an extended discussion (in the manner of
Pliny the Elder) of a variety of natural phenomena, Higuera drew an analogy between the concave depression created by the disappearing Spanish
convent with an English cave, which, according to Clement of Alexandria,
produced a sound like the clashing of cymbals when the wind passed
through it. This led Higuera to deduce that, by analogy, the noises coming
from the site of the former convent in Ajofrín could not have been bells:
“Since, if they have the same causes, the same effects necessarily follow.”
Sounding rather like the learned Jesuit that he was, Higuera evinced a condescending sympathy for those unlearned folks who “exaggerate when they
say that [the bells ring] at certain hours and a certain number of times a day,
and it could be that the wind rushes in sometimes at those times, and it produces those effects.” After all, “this, for somebody who does not know natural philosophy, would seem like a great miracle.”84
Yet, in the end, it was not Higuera’s command of natural philosophy
that made him an infamous yet obligatory reference in Spanish history. It
was instead his dogged efforts to grant saints like Liberata-Wilgefort a
permanent place in Catholic history and liturgy. This determined and
flawed undertaking earned him enduring infamy, all the way from the
eighteenth-century founding charters of the Royal Academy of History in
Portugal—which prohibited the use of Higuera’s texts and their ilk by any
of its members—down to the many places in Spain and Portugal where,
83. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13 (1950), 285–315, and, more recently, M. H. Crawford and
Christopher Ligota, eds., Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo
Momigliano (London, 1995).
84. “Atribuyendolo la gente a milagro, y puedese dar de ello causa natural corriendo la
misma disposicion en la cavernas de aquellas ruinas que se hallan en el monte de Ynglaterra,
y siendo las mismas causas, es necesario se sigan los mesmos efectos; creo que encarecen
diciendo a tales horas, y tantas veces al dia, y puede ser acudir a aquellas horas algunas veces
el viento, y producirse los efectos ya dichos, que para quien no sabe philosophia natural, parecen grandes milagros.” Jerónimo de Román de la Higuera, “Historia eclesiastica de la imperial
ciudad de Toledo,” Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. 6939, fol. 132v.

KATRINA B. OLDS

25

often to the chagrin of local supporters, the saints and histories inspired by
Higuera still provide the raw material for civic and religious heritage.85
APPENDIX A. Letter 16: Hieronymus Higuera to Caesar Baronio
He praises the nocturnal studies of Baronio and asks that he [Baronio] make an effort that
the names of many of the saints who used to be venerated in Spain be restored to the
Roman Martyrology, by those to whom this task was entrusted.
Although four years and even longer ago you brought to light the most learned
and most complete observations on the Gregorian Martyrology, they nonetheless
came into my hands only a few days ago, either because they are books of that type
that quickly sell out in various places, or due to the fault of the booksellers, who
seldom import for us these indeed precious rewarding works. Naturally I was wonderfully delighted by the book; and it approached the peak of joy, because you indicated in it that you will shortly publish the Annales Ecclesiastici, worked on by you
with the greatest care over the past ten years (as I infer from bits and pieces). May
God quickly confirm your confidence, freeing us by such a great treasure you wish
to adorn.86 I can truly confirm for you one thing, that the men of our country
greatly yearn to have either one of your works. Produce, I beg, by your kindness and
conscientiousness, the diligent work, lest learned men become frustrated by their
such-longstanding expectation.
Because of the highest regard with which I venerate and revere our saints, I
wish to implore you, most kind man, that you impel those grave and learned men,
to whom is entrusted in these days the task of perfecting the Roman Martyrology,
to restore not a few saints omitted in that work. For you know what kind of
[woman] and how great was Lady Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great,
of whom with singular praise Lord Ambrose made mention, who nevertheless was
omitted [from the Martyrology]. The Ambrosian Missal mentions her on February
18, and in the book of Greek and Latin prayers printed in Paris in 1549 on [the
press] of Jacques de Puys under the shop sign of the Samaritan, [she is mentioned]
on February 17.
There is also the infant of four years of age, born Johannes, with the first name
Christopher, who was crucified by the Jews in the year 1490, on the day of preparation before the Sabbath, on April 9, about whom a book circulates. He has a
basilica in the city of La Guardia in the region of Ocaña. The Jews, indeed, were
ordered to be burned by the inquisitors.

85. “Assento, que se tomou sobre a autoridade, que se devia dar a alguns Escritores, e
Catalogo dos reprovados,” in Collecçcam dos documentos, estatutos e memorias da Academia Real
da Historia portugueza (Lisbon, 1721), n.pag.
86. “Faxit Deus cito fidem tuam liberans nos tanto thesauro velis locupletare.”

THE “FALSE CHRONICLES”

26

Also, she who is called Obdulia, Ottilia, or Odilia appears in the Toledan registers [tabulis]. She was one of the companions of Saint Ursula.
Add, that there is Lady Wilgefort, a Portuguese virgin and martyr.
[Consider] Saint Liberata, the sister of Saints Quiteria, Basilica, and others,
who was begotten by C[aius] Attilius, ruler of Portugal (who, in the generally
known codices, is incorrectly put as “Cattilius,” with letters conjoined that should
have been otherwise separated). This [man] (as is known from the registers of the
church of Pamplona) was related by blood to the Emperor Julian. The body of this
virgin and martyr is preserved in the episcopal temple of the church of Sigüenza, in
a magnificent mausoleum, which [body] is honored with the frequent reverence of
the faithful.87
I will add in this last place that the festival of Saint Latro [the “Good Thief”]
falls on March 26, according to the plain manner of counting. For the year in which
Christ suffered was [AD] 34; dominical letter C, golden number 16, puts Easter
on March 28, and hence, Good Friday was March 26.
I had omitted that, in the church of Ávila, on July 23, is venerated Lady
Seculina, born in the town of Albi, the daughter of Gravescus, Count of the Aquitanians, who was joined in marriage to Guindulphus, a most illustrious man, preserving her perpetual virginity after the death of her husband in a monastery; she
died famous for miracles.
There is one thing that I pray at the end of the letter, that if you have [something] on the life of Saint Liberata of Como you might share [it], oh illustrious one,
and if you have already published your Annales, you might notify me.
Farewell, most learned man, and continue what you are doing to honor scholarship [bonas litteras] with your sacred labors.
Ocaña, April 1, 1589

87. In Albericus, this passage reads: "Adde, quod D. Vvilgefortis Lusitana Virgo, &
Martyr est. S. Liberata soror SS. Quiteriae, Basilicae, & aliarum, quas genuit C. Attilius
Lusitaniae Regulus (in vulgatis Codicis perperam ponitur Cattilius, conjunctis litteris, quae
debuissent alias esse separatae).” The awkward syntax suggests a transcription error, which
cannot be confirmed until the original manuscript is located.

The Demands of Humanity and Religion:
The U.S. Catholic Church, Colonization,
and the Mission to Liberia, 1842–44
NICHOLAS M. CREARY*
The failure of the U.S. Catholic Church’s mission to Liberia in the
mid-nineteenth century represented the Church’s inability to practice
its idealistic teaching concerning slavery and manumission, as well as
to cope with the situation of free persons of color in a culture where race
and ethnicity were of the greatest significance. The mission’s lack of
success can be attributed to a dearth of ecclesiastical personnel equipped
to work among Americans or Africans; a predominantly Protestant
environment hostile to the Catholic Church; large-scale immigration
from Europe; and cultural differences between European churchmen
and their American and African flocks.
Keywords: African Church; Barron, Edward, Bishop; Kenrick,
Francis Patrick, Archbishop

O

n February 13, 1845, Edward Barron, the titular bishop of Eucarpia
and vicar apostolic of Upper and Lower Guinea, was at the Irish College in Rome. Propaganda Fide had accepted his resignation as vicar, his
health had been broken by “the African fever,” and the deaths of eleven of
thirteen missionaries he had recruited to work in his vicariate had broken
his spirits. Writing Francis Patrick Kenrick, then the bishop of Philadelphia and his former ecclesiastical superior, Barron expressed the hope that
you will do all in your power to prevent any possible chance of poor
Catholics being sent to Liberia or to any part of West Africa. The
colonists from America are in a very bad condition morally as also temporally. I don’t much confide in their future prospects in consequence of
very serious conflicts with the natives, especially when the American
squadron, now on the coast, will be withdrawn. I have sent back to
America the only father of a family who loved and practiced his Religion.
He with five children ought to be with you in Philadelphia before this

*Dr. Creary is lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies at the University at
Albany, SUNY, email: ncreary@albany.edu.

27

28

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION
period. The name is Brooks. I shall do all in my power to recall from
Liberia a few more of them. Of the original number of Catholics (14)
several apostatized. Should others be sent, they will be deprived of the
resources of Religion. Even during Rev. J. Kelly’s stay at Palmas of the
number of those who alone had approached the Sacraments I found two
of them had apostatized. I hope shortly after Easter, when I leave this for
America via Liverpool, to forward to you about 100 pounds, in order, if
possible, to contrive measures for their return with the merchants trading
with West Africa. This matter gives me great concern … I would willingly make any expense to bring those poor Catholics back; humanity as
well as Religion demands it.1

So ended the U.S. Catholic Church’s first mission to Liberia. More than a
century would pass before another Catholic missionary left the United
States for the Liberian mission fields. The failure of Barron’s mission,
however, points to a much greater failure on the part of the Catholic
Church in the United States prior to the Civil War. It represented the
Church’s inability to put into practice its idealistic teaching concerning
slavery and manumission, as well as to cope with the situation of free persons of color in a culture where race and ethnicity were of the greatest significance. Many of the same reasons that thwarted the Church’s implementation of its teaching on slavery also affected the outcome of its
mission to Liberia: insufficient numbers of ecclesiastical personnel capable
of working among Americans or Africans; an environment that was predominantly Protestant and anti-Catholic; large-scale immigration from
Europe; and cultural and linguistic differences between European churchmen and their American and African flocks.
There was a significant incongruity between church teaching on slavery and slavery as practiced in the United States. One such conflict concerned the manumission of slaves. The Church long held the tradition of
encouraging slaveholders to free their slaves, and outside the United States
several theologians called for the emancipation of slaves either in a gradual
or immediate manner. In U.S. states where slavery existed, regulations
governing manumission were very stringent, often requiring the emigration of the freedmen from the state.2 The plight of free Americans of
1. Letter from Edward Barron to Francis Kenrick, February 13, 1845, Records of the American Catholic Historical Society [hereafter noted as Records], 7 (1896), 384, emphasis in original.
2. Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York, 1991),
pp. 62–66; Madeline Hooke Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy (New
York, 1944), pp. 20–21; Joseph Delfmann Brokhage, Francis Patrick Kenrick’s Opinion on
Slavery (Washington, DC, 1955), pp. 217–22.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

29

African descent was rather dismal. In both North and South, whites held
blacks in inferior social and economic status, segregated them, and considered them dangerous to the general welfare of American society.3
This created a dilemma for Catholic intellectuals of the day. How
should they reconcile a teaching that stresses the inherent humanity of
slaves with a practical system that considers slaves as chattel and neither
allows for their general emancipation nor their full inclusion in society after
manumission? Since, in the view of the Church, slavery was not incompatible with natural law, it is not surprising that American Catholics—both
episcopal and lay—espoused the expatriation of free people of color to the
African continent as the solution.
Several prominent antebellum Catholics either became intimately
involved in the colonization movement or supported it in word and deed.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton served as the second president of the American Colonization Society (ACS) from 1830 until his death in 1832. Luke
Tiernan of Baltimore served as the treasurer of the Maryland State Colonization Society. Philadelphians Mathew Carey and Robert Walsh wrote
at length in favor of the cause. Kenrick and John England, bishop of
Charleston until his death in 1842, were instrumental in launching the illfated Catholic mission to Liberia (see figure 1).4
Stephen L. Theobald, one of the first African Americans to be
ordained a Catholic priest in the United States, claimed that Catholics
were caught up and borne along apparently by [the] wave of sentiment in
favor of repatriation [sic], for we find [the bishops] at the Second Provincial Council of Baltimore, 1833, providing not money, but missionaries
for the Liberian Colony, the mission being confided to the care of the
Jesuits with the approval of Propaganda.5

Henry P. Fisher argued that the bishops were “trying to meet a need” and
that they rooted their intentions in concern and charity for the expatri-

3. Cf. Robert Walsh, An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United
States of America (Philadelphia, 1819), Section IX, especially 388–401 and Mathew Carey,
Letters on the Colonization Society [hereafter noted as Letters] (Philadelphia, 1832), pp. 5, 12.
4. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 20–21; Rice, American Catholic Opinion, p. 53;
Celestine Joseph Neusse, The Social Thought of American Catholics, 1634–1829 (Washington,
DC, 1945), pp. 262–63.
5. Stephen L. Theobald, “Catholic Missionary Work among the Colored People of the
United States (1776–1866),” Records, 35 (1924), 325–44, here 332.

30

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

FIGURE 1. Left: Francis Patrick Kenrick. Illustration from Diary and Visitation
Record of the Rt. Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick, Administrator and Bishop of Philadelphia, 1830–1881 (Lancaster, PA, 1916), frontispiece. Right: John England. Illustration from Diurnal of the Rev. John England, D.D., First Bishop of Charleston, S.C.,
from 1820 to 1823 (Philadelphia, 1895), frontispiece.

ates.6 It is evident that both intentions motivated the Catholic supporters
of colonization and found expression in their writings and actions.
Francis Patrick Kenrick and Catholic Episcopal Perspectives
on the Morality of Slavery
In 1841, Kenrick published the first volume of the first edition of his
Theologiæ Moralis, a textbook on Catholic moral theology intended to prepare American Catholic men for ordination. Born in Ireland in 1797 and
trained in Rome, he came to the United States shortly after his ordination
in 1821 and worked with Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget in the missions of
the Diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky. Kenrick accompanied Flaget to the
first Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829 as the bishop’s personal theologian. In 1831, the Vatican appointed him coadjutor bishop cum iure successionis (with right of succession) and administrator of the Diocese of
Philadelphia. Twenty years later he was elevated to the archiepiscopal see of
Baltimore, which he held until his death in 1863.7 Kenrick’s understanding
6. Henry P. Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” Records, 40 (1929), 249–310,
here 265.
7. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 2–3; Davis, History of Black Catholics, p. 268n68.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

31

of the morality of slavery is particularly useful in that he was an accomplished theologian, had lived in both North and South, and would have
been aware of the many facets of the issue and the dilemma it posed to
Catholic doctrine. His explication of the Church’s view of slavery was consonant with those of his brother bishops of the antebellum United States.8
Kenrick defined slavery as “the state of perpetual subjection by which one
is held to give his labors to another in return for his maintenance.”9 Thus, in
the eyes of the Church, slavery was a system of mutual rights and obligations
between the slave and slaveholder. The slave at all times maintained the rights
of a human person. The slaveholder only received the right to use the slave’s
services, not the right to direct ownership that belonged solely to God. A slave
retained the right to all spiritual goods (e.g., marriage and religious instruction), as well as the right to life, property, and the integrity of his person:
“Hence the master is guilty of a grave injustice to the slave if he cruelly beats,
mutilates, or otherwise hurts him, or weighs him down with too much work,
or fails to provide sufficient and proper clothing.”10
In a similar manner, slaves were expected to obey slaveholders and had
sinned “if they neglect the work assigned to them.”11 Slaveholders were justified in punishing slaves if the latter were not fulfilling the obligations of
their state—especially if the slaveholder fulfilled his—but such punishment
had to be “appropriately just [for] a human being made to the image and
likeness of the Creator’s, and consequently their equal.”12
Kenrick said very little concerning fugitive slaves, mentioning that St.
Paul returned the slave Onessimus to Philemon, his slaveholder. He also
noted that priests could not refuse a fugitive slave absolution because of his
intention not to return to his slaveholder.13
Slaveholders were not to expect slaves to perform more work for them
than if they were working for themselves, nor was a slaveholder to give a
slave work that exceeded his strength or ability. On the other hand, he
should not “be given the occasion of idleness, since the slaves lack the
enjoyment of letters; by idleness they easily fall into crimes.”14
8. See Davis, History of Black Catholics, pp. 28–66.
9. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 54–55.
10. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 56–57.
11. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 203.
12. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 237.
13. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 204–05.
14. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 80, 237.

32

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

Kenrick found it “regrettable” that there were so many slaves whom
civil law forbade to receive education. Although he wrote that a slave who
“neglect[ed] to learn the truths of faith, or to practice the duties of religion
when given an opportunity” was “obviously guilty of sin,” the obligation
devolved to the slaveholder,
without whose permission and favor the education of the slave could
hardly be effected. … Masters [sic] must solicitously provide for the
Christian instruction of their slaves, seeing to it that they are instructed
and encouraging them to embrace the faith.15

Kenrick further warned slaveholders that they
sin gravely if they are so intent on their own gains that they neglect to
instruct their slaves, or do not provide them with the opportunity of
receiving the sacraments, or fail to safeguard their morals. Masters sin
most gravely … if they place obstacles in the way of the slaves practicing
their religion, or if they encourage bad morals by example or wicked
solicitations.16

Concerning the sacrament of marriage, Kenrick explicitly taught that
slaves retain the right to enter matrimony, provided that they preserve the
slaveholder’s right to their service, even if the slaveholder “unjustly refuses
to permit them to marry, [because] they may use the right that nature itself
gives to them and makes the contract for life between themselves, even
without the assistance of a priest.”17 Because many states had passed laws
that forbade slaves to marry without the consent of the slaveholder, however, Kenrick strongly encouraged them to obtain the necessary consent.18
Kenrick also taught that the Church recognized marriage between
blacks and whites as valid, provided “there is no impediment from the
servile condition,” even if civil law or public opinion did not, because they
use their natural right.”19 He felt, however, that a priest should not assist
at such a marriage because of the possible dangers or penalties that might
be incurred.20
The Catholic Church recognized four valid titles by which a slaveholder was lawfully allowed to hold slaves: capture in war, punishment for
15. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 172.
16. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 173.
17. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 188.
18. Ibid.
19. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 190.
20. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 190–91.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

33

a crime, sale, and nativity. In considering the validity of the title to “the
descendants of those who were abducted from Africa and reduced to slavery” in the United States, Kenrick opined that the original title of the slaveholders to the Africans who were originally brought to America was defective but “validated by the lapse of a very long time, since otherwise, the
condition of society would be uncertain, with very great danger resulting to
the people.”21 This would seem to contradict his teaching that it is “seriously sinful to abduct a Negro and reduce him to slavery.”22 With regard
to slaves, he thought that
Since such is their condition, nothing contrary to the Civil Law should
be attempted … in order to liberate them. … Rather, the prudence and
charity of the clergy should be exerted to teach them Christian morals,
and to encourage them to obey their masters and to venerate God, the
Supreme Lord of all; [and that] the masters should be encouraged to
show themselves just and meek so that they will lighten the conditions of
the slaves by humane treatment, and the desire of salvation as the apostle
[St. Paul] taught.23

Kenrick further admonished that those who reject Pauline doctrine in a
spirit of humanity by trying to change the social order will only worsen the
lot of the slaves.24
Kenrick held that slavery, as previously defined, was not contrary to
natural law. He relied on the Old and New Testaments, as well as the
Patristics and church councils to justify its lawfulness. He further implied
that a slave’s right to his liberty might be limited in the interest of the
common good, citing the instability of society and the danger to its people
if slavery were abolished: “Thus slavery might be justified for the sake of the
common good” by the state, whose end was to secure the common good.25
With regard to the manumission of slaves, Kenrick said very little.
The 1860 edition of Theologia Moralis said that “people are to be praised
who, from a motive of humanity or religion, give liberty to their slaves by
manumitting them, when this can be done with their own utility and without detriment to the country.” Nearly twenty years previously, however, the
first edition of Theologiæ Moralis stated, “they are to be praised who [out]
21. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 115, 122–23.
22. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 77–78.
23. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 123.
24. Ibid.
25. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 110–14, 149–50, 160.

34

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

of humanity and religion give liberty [to their slaves] by manumitting
them, when there happens [to be] an opportunity to send them to the
colony of Africa which is called Liberia.”26 It then noted that “two priests
from this diocese [Philadelphia]” had already been sent to Liberia at the
behest of the Apostolic See.27 Clearly the failure of Barron’s mission influenced Kenrick, now an archbishop, to rethink his position and ultimately
reject the idea—or at least the morality—of expatriating manumitted slaves
to Africa.
Although Kenrick believed in the humanity of slaves and taught on
the subject, paying particular attention to the mutual rights and obligations
of both slave and slaveholder, he and other bishops in the antebellum
United States failed to call Catholic slaveholders to observe the dictates of
the magisterium. Surely the precarious position of the Catholic Church in
American society weighed heavily on his mind: anti-Catholic sentiment,
including violent attacks on churches and convents, was rampant throughout the nation; Catholic immigrants streamed into the cities of the East
Coast, taxing the institutional Church’s capacity to minister to them effectively. The Church was understaffed in a hostile environment, often
attacked by the same people who advocated the abolition of slavery. Then,
too, many of the priests who worked with American Catholics came from
Europe and very often faced barriers of language and culture. Randall
Miller observed that the worst of these priests “alienated Protestant and
Catholic alike and set back Catholic efforts to win converts and social
acceptance.”28 Thus, the evangelization and the pastoral care of Americans
of African descent was not a high priority for most American bishops.
The disparity between church teaching on slavery and the American
practice thereof was overwhelming. Most Catholics—including many
priests and nuns—who held slaves did not abide by the moral code for the
26. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 216; Kenrick, Theologia Moralis (Mechelen, Belgium, 1860), p. 167: “Cæterum laudandi sunt qui humanitatis et religionis studio eos libertate
donant manu-mittendo, quando id fieri possit cum eorum utilitate et absque publicæ salutis
detrimento.” Cf. Kenrick, Theologiæ Moralis (Philadelphia, 1841), 1:258: “Cæterum laudandi
sunt qui humanitatis et religionis studio eos libertate donant manu-mittendo, quando copia
fit in Africæ coloniam, quæ Liberia dicitur, se conferendi.”
27. Kenrick, Theologiæ Moralis [1841], 1:258: “Iis ut consulant, subsidiis religionis
præstitis, sacerdotes duo, ex hac diœcesi, Sede Apostolica jubente, vela jam faciunt.” Only one
priest, Barron, was from Philadelphia. Kelly was from the Diocese of New York.
28. Randall Miller, “The Failed Mission: The Catholic Church and Black Catholics in
the Old South,” in Catholics in the Old South: Essays on Church and Culture, ed. Randall M.
Miller and Jon L. Wakelyn (Macon, GA, 1983), pp. 149–70, here p. 153.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

35

treatment of slaves.29 One readily understands why the bishops demurred
at proclaiming so radical a doctrine in a land where slaves were generally
considered to be—and treated as—chattel, and the economy in a large portion of the nation was founded upon such an idea.
Yet the American Catholic teaching on slavery also was at variance
with—if not in direct opposition to—the doctrine of the wider Church. In
1839, Pope Gregory XVI condemned “the inhuman traffic in Negroes” in
his encyclical letter In Supremo Apostolatus. The Holy Father “admonish[ed]
and adjure[d]
in the Lord all believers in Christ, of whatever condition, that no one
hereafter may dare unjustly to molest Indians, Negroes, or other men of
this sort; or to spoil them of their goods; or to reduce them to slavery; or
to extend help or favour to others who perpetrate such things against
them; or to exercise that inhuman trade by which Negroes, as if they were
not men, but mere animals, howsoever reduced into slavery, are, without
any distinction contrary to the laws of justice and humanity, bought, sold,
and doomed sometimes to the most severe and exhausting labours.”30

According to Kenrick, however, a slaveholder could sell his slave
owing to the “unfortunate condition” of the latter; that it “behoove[d]” the
slaveholder to find a Catholic slaveholder “who was humane and just”; but
that such practice “should be avoided [as far as possible] as the mind
cringes at the sale of human beings.”31
In response to a letter critical of the papal encyclical, Bishop England
wrote and published a series of eighteen letters that argued that Pope Gregory had condemned the slave trade as practiced by the Spanish and Portuguese and “not that sale and purchase which must frequently occur in
domestic slavery.”32 Kenrick apparently agreed with the distinction
between domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade made by England.
Although the bishops’ motives for not preaching the stated doctrine of
the Church concerning the treatment of slaves are understandable, it is
29. The examples are numerous. See especially R. Emmett Curran, “‘Splendid Poverty’:
Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1805–1838,” in Miller and Wakelyn, eds., Catholics in the
Old South, pp. 125–46; Davis, History of Black Catholics, pp. 28–66; Stafford Poole and Douglas Slawson, Church and Slave in Perry County, Missouri, 1818–1865 (Lewiston, NY, 1986).
30. In Supremo Apostolatus, Papal Encyclicals Online, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/
Greg16/g16sup.htm; http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_gr16is.htm. Retrieved
December 15, 2006.
31. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, pp. 70–71.
32. Cited in Davis, History of Black Catholics, p. 47.

36

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

hard to excuse this abnegation of their pastoral responsibilities. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if these pastors of souls had
proclaimed this radical message to their flocks and if Catholic slaveholders
had fulfilled their moral obligations.
Catholic moral theology concerning slavery, as impractical as it was,
was an attempt to protect American slaves of African descent and their
rights as human beings. Unfortunately for both the slaves and the Church,
the strictures of American society and economic self-interest prevented
church leaders from proclaiming anything that would disturb the consciences of Catholic slaveholders.
Catholic Lay Perspectives on the Colonization Movement
Many Catholics believed that the immediate abolition of slavery
would have a ruinous effect on American society. Some held that blacks
were inferior to whites and incapable of properly using their freedom for
the common good. Emancipation would be more harmful than good to
blacks because they, being given to idleness, would have to struggle for
their survival, and without the discipline of the slaveholder they would
pose a security risk to whites. Others thought that immediate emancipation would wreak havoc with the economic structures of the United States,
especially in the South where agricultural production was largely dependent on slave labor.33
Several states accordingly enacted laws that severely regulated the manumission of slaves. Many of the states where slavery existed required the emigration of the freedmen from their territory, and many of the states in the
North and West forbade the immigration of free persons of color. Whites
feared that free blacks might seek retribution and collaborate with slaves to
foment rebellions; or that they might become an economic burden.34
Many had come to believe in the inherent inferiority of blacks because
they had been subjected to servility for so long. Others were genuinely
moved by the plight of free blacks and felt something had to be done to
ameliorate their situation.
Thus in 1816, Presbyterian minister Robert Finley of Basking Ridge,
New Jersey, founded the ACS with the intention of removing freed slaves

33. See Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 161.
34. Brokhage, Kenrick’s Opinion, p. 219.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

37

to Africa. Finley was convinced that expatriation from the United States
was the only practical solution to the twofold problem of slavery and the
wretched conditions of free persons of color. Expatriation would effectively
cleanse America’s national soul from the blight of African slavery; it would
bestow upon Africa “partially civilized and Christianized” settlers; and it
would give blacks the opportunity to ameliorate their situation by creating
a society for themselves in which inequality and restrictions placed by
whites would not exist.35
Finley convinced several prominent members of the federal government to join the movement for colonization, including Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington (George Washington’s nephew), and
many others. Beginning in 1820, the ACS, after receiving substantial
funding from prominent benefactors and the federal government, began
transporting freed American slaves to the colony of Liberia and its principal settlement Monrovia (named for President James Monroe).36 By the
end of the century, the ACS had expatriated more than 15,000 Americans
of African descent.37
Three prominent Catholics associated themselves with the national
movement: Carroll, Walsh, and Carey. ACS president Carroll was the
only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the cousin of
John Carroll, archbishop of Baltimore. Walsh was a journalist and the
publisher of the American Quarterly. Carey was a Philadelphia publisher,
economist, and author. Walsh was born in Baltimore in 1784. After graduating from Georgetown College in 1801, he received a master’s degree
from Saint Mary’s seminary in Baltimore and then studied law under
Robert Goodloe Harper.38 After several years in Europe, Walsh settled in
Philadelphia. In 1811, he established the American Review of History and
Politics and became its first editor. Nine years later, he and William Fry
founded the National Gazette and Literary Register. In 1827, Walsh inaugurated the American Quarterly Review that ran for ten years until his poor
health necessitated a move to Paris. From the French capital Walsh served
35. See P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York,
1980), p. 17; see pp. 12–35 for a fuller explanation of the rationale behind colonization.
36. See Bell I. Wiley, Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia, 1833–1869 (Lexington, KY,
1979), pp. 1–11; Richard West, Back to Africa: An Interpretive History of Sierra Leone and
Liberia (New York, 1971), Part II.
37. Wiley, Slaves No More, p. 36; West, Back to Africa, p. 251.
38. Harper was an advocate of colonization and had a significant role in founding the
Maryland State Colonization Society in 1831. See Penelope Campbell, Maryland in Africa:
The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831–1857 (Urbana, IL, 1971), p. 21.

38

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

as the foreign correspondent for the National Intelligencer and the Journal
of Commerce.39
In 1819, Walsh published An Appeal from the Judgments of Great
Britain Respecting the United States of America, a prodigious work refuting
the extensive criticism by the British press of American social and economic practices. Walsh devoted an entire section to the question of slavery,
also expressing his views on free blacks and colonization.
Carey was born in Ireland in 1760. An avowed Catholic, he published
a protest against the English treatment of Catholics in his homeland. To
protect him from English reprisals his family sent him to Paris where he met
Benjamin Franklin. He returned to Ireland briefly and then in 1784 went to
Philadelphia, where a year later he established the Pennsylvania Herald that
covered sessions of the state legislature. Although he was a Jeffersonian
Republican, Carey supported the Bank of the United States and industrial
development.40 In 1832, he wrote a series of fourteen letters that were an
apologia in favor of colonization and a response to the vitriolic attacks of
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison against the colonization movement.41
Both Walsh and Carey presented social, rather than economic, arguments in favor of expatriation. Although Carey was a brilliant economist,
he did not offer an original economic case supporting colonization. Rather,
he quoted the fears and concerns of white slaveholders at length.42
Walsh presumed the natural inferiority of blacks to whites and their
status as slaves as well. He feared that any attempt to educate slaves would
be futile and a grave threat to white security. Although he argued that the
British practice of withholding education from the “labouring classes” was
unwarranted in both England and the United States with regard to whites,
he believed that it was justified in the case of slaves:
An effectual training of the kind [letters and sciences] is incompatible
with their very being as slaves, and with the nature of the toil incident to

39. For a biography of Walsh, see M. Frederick Lochemes, Robert Walsh: His Story
(Washington, DC, 1941).
40. G. L. A. Reilly, “Mathew Carey,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington, DC,
1965), 4:108.
41. Garrison published Thoughts on Colonization (Boston, 1832), in which he argued
that expatriation was a slaveholders’ ploy to dupe the North into removing free persons of
color so that the slave system could be maintained.
42. Carey, Letters, pp. 26–27.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

39

their situation. It presupposes their emancipation, or such modification
of their existence as would be equivalent, in reference to their value as
property, or to the danger threatened by their exemption from restraint
… that doctrine [withholding education from the lower classes], if the
right of the southern American to consult his own safety and the ultimate
happiness of his slaves, be admitted, is unquestionably just in relation to
the body of the southern negroes.43

He further warned that any attempt to educate the slaves would risk exposing one’s self “to formidable combinations among them, for extricating
themselves from groveling and severe labour at once, and for gaining, not
merely an equality in the state, but an ascendancy in all respects.”44
Walsh exculpated the United States for the existence of slavery within
its borders, placing the responsibility firmly with the British monarch.
Citing a prominent Southern gentleman, Walsh felt that the young republic was not in a position to abolish slavery “safely … until the foundation
of our newly established governments had been found capable of supporting the fabric itself, under any shock, which so arduous an attempt might
have produced.”45 Thus, owing to the potential social chaos, immediate
abolition was impossible.
Yet Walsh also railed against gradual emancipation without expatriation. He feared that the continued presence of free blacks would pose a
great danger to the integrity of white American culture:
The gradual emancipation of the negroes of our southern states, if we
suppose them to remain, would, in the end produce … a two-fold, or a
motley nation; a perpetual wasting strife, or a degeneracy from the European standard of excellence, both as to body and mind. As far as [cohabitation of the races] has been tried, it has inspired no confidence, whether
as regards the happiness of the blacks, or the security of the whites.46

With regard to free blacks in the North, Walsh believed that their
experience “is not, on the whole, much more encouraging,” despite the fact
that schools, churches, and self-help societies were available to them: “The
number of respectable individuals is considerably greater indeed, but the

43. Robert Walsh, An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Regarding the United
States of America [hereafter cited as An Appeal] (Philadelphia, 1819), p. 389.
44. Ibid.
45. Walsh, An Appeal, p. 391.
46. Walsh, An Appeal, p. 392, emphasis in original.

40

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

character of the mass is nearly the same.”47 This gave him cause to justify
racial segregation:
They [free blacks] do not make part of our society, indeed, they are not
invited to our tables; they do not marry into our families. . .There must
remain, in any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an inconvenience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and interests. Nature and
accident combine to make it impossible. Their colour is a perpetual
memento of their servile origin, and a double disgust is created. We will not,
and ought not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were, to be stained
in our blood, and disposed in our relation of being towards the stock of our
forefathers in Europe. This may be called prejudice; but it is one which no
reasoning can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished.48

The existence of slavery itself and the free blacks’ very own color,
according to Walsh, bore the responsibility for the “unfortunate condition
and character.” Thus, it was neither surprising nor lamentable that Southern states had enacted laws to discourage manumission. Walsh remained
thoroughly convinced that
the existence of a class of free people of colour in this country is highly injurious, to the whites, the slaves, and the free people of colour themselves:
consequently, that all emancipation, to however small an extent, which
permits the persons emancipated to remain in this country, is an evil, which
must increase with the increase of the operation, and would become altogether intolerable, if extended to the whole, or even to a very large part, of
the black population. I am, therefore, strongly opposed to emancipation, in
every shape and degree, unless it is accompanied by colonization.
Colonization is, in fact, the only reliance in this great question.
Without it, no plan of abolition can be effectual for the security of the
whites or the good of the blacks; since the permanence of the latter, free
or enslaved, within the abode, or the neighbourhood, of the former, is the
main danger.49

After enumerating several difficulties that expatriation faced (including financial), Walsh discussed the problem of the location of a colony,
explaining that to move slaves to the West would only incite wars with
Native Americans and that to leave them any place within American territory (including western states) would result “only in their extirpation or
final expulsion.” He mentioned some of Britain’s problems with its colony
47. Walsh, An Appeal, pp. 394–95.
48. Walsh, An Appeal, p. 397.
49. Walsh, An Appeal, p. 398, emphasis in original.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

41

of Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa and several failed schemes for
expatriation, including several from the Virginia legislature.50
Acknowledging the successful establishment of the ACS in 1816 and its
plan to settle free blacks near Sierra Leone, Walsh “confess[ed] that I have
no hope of its success” because of the poor relationship between Britain and
the United States in the wake of the War of 1812. As long as the slave trade
were practiced in any form on the African coast, Walsh opined, any colony
would become “either its prey or one of its factories.” Walsh did not specify
a site for the proposed colony, but concluded that “there cannot be wanting
a spot within our reach, free from all invincible objection. The object is of
infinite importance; it calls for the earnest attention of the whole nation, and
the unanimous agency of the federal government.”51
Carey had a far more benign view of free persons of color. Although
he made frequent reference to the risks posed to whites by slave rebellions,
he was apparently motivated more by a concern for the welfare of free
blacks. Slavery was a pernicious evil in Carey’s view, and immediate emancipation was not feasible owing to the danger to whites. As blacks were not
allowed to integrate into American society, colonization was the only
viable option to solve the “negro problem.”
Carey illustrated this point by assessing the long-term effects of the
1831 Nat Turner rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, in which sixty
whites were killed. He stated that the rebellion had
awakened the slave states out of their slumbers, and excited considerable
attention towards our coloured population, and the awful consequences
that may ensue, sooner or later, from the admixture of two heterogeneous
castes in the country, without the least probability, at any future period,
however remote, of an amalgamation between them, in consequence of
the diversity of colour.52

Unlike Walsh, Carey was very critical of the “Constitutional legitimation of the slave trade,” because it “sowed a seed which has germinated
with fatal fertility, and threatens a heavy retribution.” He also believed that
free persons of color were “entitled to the advantages and privileges of
freemen,” but that unfortunately they were “subject[ed] to rules and regulations and proscriptions, of the most oppressive and galling kind.” Expa50. Walsh, An Appeal, pp. 398–99.
51. Walsh, An Appeal, pp. 400–01.
52. Carey, Letters, p. 5.

42

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

triation, therefore, was “the best means of averting, or at least mitigating
the evil to be dreaded” from the presence of so debased a group of people.53
Carey, like Walsh, thought that the only significant question surrounding
colonization was the location of the colony.
The aims of expatriation that Carey cited included the following: to
“rescue free coloured people from the disqualifications, the degradations
and proscriptions to which they are exposed in the United States”; to place
them somewhere they could enjoy “the benefits of free government”; “to
avert the dangers of a dreadful collision at a future day of the two castes,
which must inevitably be objects of mutual jealousy to each other”; to “civilize Africa;” and to give slaveholders “who are conscientiously scrupulous
about holding human beings in bondage, an asylum, to which they [may
send] manumitted slaves.”54 Carey thought the “asylum” necessary because
several slave states prohibited manumission without removal, and others—
slave and free—forbade the immigration of free persons of color; thus
“manumissions without deportation appear to be wholly at an end.”55
Carey confessed that he initially thought the scheme for colonization
was “one of the wildest projects ever conceived by enlightened men” and
that he originally had no intention of contributing any money to the cause.
Yet, after “mature reflection,” he became convinced that it was “not more
benignant and beneficent, than practical,” provided the federal government, state governments and public-spirited individuals supplied adequate
financial support “in any degree commensurate with its importance.”56 He
considered it a “service to his country” to write a series of letters intended
to gain converts for the cause of colonization.
After briefly describing the different plans and attempts to resettle
blacks considered by Americans from both North and South, Carey related
the story of the ACS and its establishment of the West African colony of
Cape Mesurado. Citing the slave rebellion in Haiti in 179157 and the
Christmas rebellion in Jamaica in 1831–32, he expressed some surprise
that there would be opposition to expatriation, especially in the South:
Humanity shudders at the thought of [the] possible success [of slave
rebellions]. … On this view of the subject, it could scarcely have been

53. Ibid.
54. Carey, Letters, pp. 5–6, emphasis in original.
55. Carey, Letters, p. 6.
56. Ibid.
57. See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (New York, 1963).

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

43

anticipated, the scheme proposed by the Colonization Society, of removing such of the free people of colour as are disposed to emigrate to the
land of their fathers, and such slaves as are emancipated, on condition of
removal to that land, and affording strong inducement to emancipation,
of whose benign effects, we have recently seen so many instances, should
have been met with opposition.58

Carey was entirely encouraged by
the numerous manumissions that have taken place in almost all the slave
states, on the express condition of the freed people being sent to Liberia
. . . [because] they have been thus released from the debasement and
degradation of slavery, and sent to the land of their fathers, to partake of
all the happiness that freedom and the certainty of enjoying all the fruits
of their labour, can inspire.59

Citing numerous examples of support for colonization by many ecclesiastical and governmental organizations, as well as a plethora of Southern
white fears concerning the growing number of free persons of color,60
Carey erroneously argued that the colonists in Liberia were at least as well
off as the best of the free blacks in the United States, North or South.61
Carey showed evidence of a greater compassion for the plight of free
persons of color than Walsh. It also appears that, unlike Walsh, some of
the more basic elements of Catholic doctrine concerning slaves and manumission, as well as the basic tenets of colonization, influenced Carey’s
thought. He referred to the humanity of the slaves and the enduring state
of servitude despite the passage of time, which were crucial components of
Kenrick’s teaching. Both Finley and the Maryland State Colonization
Society expressed the concern that only those freedmen who chose to go
were to be expatriated—in other words, colonization was to be voluntary,
not forced. Despite the very different points of departure from which
Walsh and Carey viewed colonization, they both arrived at the same conclusion: that it was in the best interests of both whites and blacks—
58. Carey, Letters, p. 12.
59. Carey, Letters, p. 14.
60. Carey, Letters, pp. 17–26.
61. Carey, Letters, pp. 27–28. For a description of the circumstances of the colony of
Liberia, see Campbell, Maryland in Africa, pp. 30–58. The experiences of the first group of
settlers from the Maryland State Colonization Society were so adverse that negative reports
nearly caused its collapse. Disapproval by the State Board of Managers of the lax administration of the Monrovia settlement and other factors led the State Society to establish its own
colony at Cape Palmas in 1832.

44

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

whether or not the latter were free or enslaved—that the project of emancipating and expatriating blacks to Africa be carried forward. Thus it is
possible to speak of Catholic rationales in favor of colonization.
The Mission to Liberia
Bishop England first voiced concern for the Catholics among the early
settlers in Liberia. He hoped that the first Provincial Council of Baltimore
in 1829 would take note and support the work of the ACS.62 He
approached Propaganda Fide with the idea of starting a mission to
Catholic Liberians shortly before the second Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1833.63 The fathers of the council requested and received permission from the Holy See to establish a mission “for the salvation of the
negroes, who are migrating to the Liberian Colony of Africa . . . under the
care of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus.”64 For reasons that remain
unclear, the Jesuits never sent any missionaries to Liberia.65
It is of relatively minor consequence whether the Jesuits failed to
respond because they were understaffed, or because of a cultural or linguistic barrier between them and their prospective pastoral charges. Their lack
of response points, rather, to the larger problems that faced the nineteenth-century Catholic Church in the United States and prevented it
from implementing its teaching on slavery: insufficient ecclesiastical per-

62. Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, 1786–1842 (New York, 1927),
2:275.
63. Baltimore, Archives of the Archdiocese of Baltimore (hereafter noted as AAB),
Letter from John England to James Whitfield, May 14, 1833, James Whitfield Collection,
23-G-5.
64. Concilia Provincialia Baltimori (Baltimore, 1842), p. 100; Letter from [Carlo Maria
Pedicini], Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda Fide, to Whitfield, June 15, 1833, AAB, Whitfield
Collection, RG-I-4, Box 1, 23-R-26.
65. Martin Bane posited that the Jesuits had recently undertaken several missions in the
American West and could not spare anyone for work in Africa; see Bane, The Catholic Story
of Liberia (New York, 1950), p. 26. Hugh J. Nolan argued, however, that the Jesuits never
took up the mission because they lacked a sufficient number of priests who spoke English; see
Nolan, The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, Third Bishop of Philadelphia, 1830–1851
(Philadelphia, 1948). There is only one letter from an official of the Maryland State Colonization Society to the Jesuit Maryland Province’s Superior responding to an apparent request
for information concerning the conditions of the Cape Palmas colony. There is no documentation of the Jesuits having received communication from the American bishops, Propaganda
Fide, or the Jesuits’ Superior General concerning a mission to Liberia. Washington, DC,
Archives of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, Georgetown University Special
Collections, letter dated October 17, 1834, Box 13, Folder 4.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

45

sonnel who often were unequipped for work among Americans; a predominantly Protestant environment intensely hostile to the Church; large-scale
immigration from Europe; and cultural and linguistic differences between
European churchmen and their American flocks. Variations of these same
themes resulted in the ultimate failure of the Church’s mission to Liberia.66
When the Church began preparations for the mission in earnest in
1841, Propaganda Fide requested that Kenrick and Bishop John Hughes
of New York each send one priest to Liberia. Barron, Kenrick’s vicar general, and his fellow priest, John Kelly, volunteered later during the year.
When they sailed from Baltimore in December with Denis Pindar, a lay
catechist from the metropolitan see, Kenrick notified the Propaganda and
requested that one of the priests be granted the authority of a vicar apostolic.67 Barron was elevated to the Vicariate Apostolic of Upper Guinea,
which included not only Liberia and Sierra Leone but also the entire west
coast of Africa.68 Thus Barron’s mission encompassed roughly 5000 miles
of coastline without any delineation of the interior. Ministering to individuals in this vast territory clearly was beyond the capacity of two priests
and a layman. Consequently, Barron was only in Liberia for two months
before he left for America and a two-year residence in Europe as he
sought additional missionaries.69 This effectively left Kelly alone to carry
on the mission work requested by the Holy See from April 1842 until January 1844.
Despite the good intentions of these men, they were ill-prepared to
undertake the mission on which they were sent. Kelly’s diary told of
repeated bouts with “the African fever,” its debilitating effects, and the
great lengths of time in which the work of the mission could not be carried
out.70 Moreover, the missionaries’ competence can be called into question.
Although Barron was apparently motivated by a sincere desire to alleviate
66. See Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia.” Much of Bane’s narrative (pp. 18–
75) is taken from Fisher’s work.
67. Wynnewood, PA, Archives of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (hereafter noted as
AAP), Letter from Propaganda Fide to F. P. Kenrick, June 19, 1841, Propaganda Fide Collection (hereafter noted as PF), letter 12; abstract of letter from F. P. Kenrick to Propaganda
Fide, December 24, 1841, in Finbar Kenneally, United States Documents in the Propaganda
Fide Archives: A Calendar, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1966), no. 170.
68. Letter from Propaganda Fide to Barron, January 22, 1842, AAP, PF, no. 17; Letter
from Propaganda Fide to F. P. Kenrick, January 31, 1842, AAP, PF, no. 18.
69. See Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” pp. 273–76.
70. “The Mission to Liberia: Diary of the Rev. John Kelly” [hereafter noted as Kelly
Diary], Historical Records and Studies (New York, 1920), 14:120–53.

46

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

the plight of free blacks in Philadelphia and elsewhere,71 his peers and
superiors did not think him competent to serve as a bishop in his own right
in the United States. In 1840, Kenrick submitted Barron’s name to Rome
as one on the terna of candidates for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Michael
O’Connor, who worked with Barron in Philadelphia and became the first
bishop of Pittsburgh, gave the following assessment of Barron to Peter
Richard Kenrick, Francis’s brother and the future archbishop of St. Louis:
Dr. Barron is a most excellent and amiable man, but is too good and too
easily imposed on. His readiness to follow the bishop’s view is, to be sure,
a great recommendation so far but it goes to an excess, for it renders him
incapable of being of any assistance to him [the bishop] worth speaking
of in anything out of his own immediate sphere; for he is only an echo of
whatever is said to him by anyone he esteems, amongst whom of course,
the bishop is first. His anxiety to follow up this has often frustrated the
very end in view. To whatever length virtue and amiability will lead a
man he will succeed, good intentions will always justify his acts, but
where any great discrimination is required to originate anything, or even
to follow up what he is advised to by the bishop, he is [as] likely to fail as
to succeed.72

Thus, Barron was a well-meaning, friendly person who was not predisposed to originality, judiciousness, nor consistent performance in carrying out his superior’s recommendations. This more than likely influenced
Francis Patrick Kenrick’s determination that Barron should not be elevated
to the bishopric of Pittsburgh in 1840.73 Kelly, for his part, was motivated
by concern for free persons of color and a love of his religion. Yet his good
intentions did not prevent the loss of money intended to erect a school for
Africans because he “good naturedly but very unwisely” paid the African
carpenters in advance.74 Kelly thus lacked the acumen in temporal affairs
necessary to conduct the mission effectively, requesting almost $800 for
goods between late November 1842 and early February 1843. It is hard to
avoid the conclusion that freed African American Catholic expatriates did
not received the best-qualified pastors to minister to their religious needs.
Just as anti-Catholic prejudice hindered the Church from teaching its
theology of slavery with any efficacy, so, too, did it contribute to the failure
71. See Ella M. E. Flick, “The Right Reverend Edward W. Barron, D.D.,” Records, 34
(1923), 99–112, here 103.
72. Cited in Nolan, The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, pp. 253–54.
73. Nolan, The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, p. 254.
74. Kelly Diary, p. 148.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

47

FIGURE 2. John Brown Russwurm. Illustration from Carter Godwin Woodson,
The Negro in Our History (Washington, DC, 1922), p. 160.

of the Catholic mission in Liberia. There were between twelve and twenty
Catholics in the Cape Palmas colony when Barron, Kelly, and Pindar
arrived, yet most had apparently fallen away from the faith.75 Barron and
Kelly had decided to turn their efforts toward evangelizing the African
inhabitants of the area prior to Barron’s departure to recruit more laborers
for the vineyard.
For several reasons, a chilly relationship existed between the colonists
and the Africans.76 The latter did not look with a favorable eye on the
former’s efforts to evangelize them. Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopalian missionaries had preceded the Catholics. There also were tensions
between the Protestant missionaries, most of whom were white, and the
colonial administration, especially after the Maryland State Colonization
Society’s Board of Managers appointed John Brown Russwurm, the first
black graduate of Bowdoin College and former editor of the abolitionist
Freedom’s Journal, as governor in 1836 (see figure 2).
Unlike the Protestants, the Catholics met with initial success in their
efforts to preach the Gospel to Africans, so much so that they made plans
75. Kelly Diary, p. 122.
76. See Campbell, Maryland in Africa, 30-92, 124-72, 211-37. See also M. B. Akpan,
“Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples of Liberia, 1841–1964,”
Canadian Journal of African Studies, 7 (1973), 217–36.

48

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

to build a school for the people who were receiving instruction, especially
the children.77 In February 1842, Presbyterian minister John Wilson convinced the headman of the village to stay away from Catholic instruction,
although “a crowd of women and boys were present.” Kelly also referred to
Wilson’s “spies” following him to and from the African villages, noting that
the headman said Wilson “feared their [Africans] hearing us [Catholics].”78
The Presbyterians and Methodists continued such practices, resulting in the
attendance of fewer Africans at Catholic services and instruction sessions.79
When some Africans robbed the Presbyterians’ store in August 1842,
the ministers, rather than consulting with the colonial administration (as
unfriendly relations existed between Russwurm and the Presbyterians),80
sought the assistance of the nearby warship U.S.S. Vandalia to force the
Africans to make restitution.81 Because Kelly and Pindar were on good
terms with the headmen and Russwurm, they did not associate with the
crew of the Vandalia and helped the headman pay the cost of the indemnity.
Shortly thereafter, a Methodist justice of the peace spread rumors that Kelly
had written to America to have another warship sent “to drive off [the]
natives.” This was followed by an “attempt to excite the natives against our
Mission by a disciple of J[oh]n Wesl[e]y and a Justice of the P[eace]!”82
The situation that Kelly faced was a difficult one. He was the sole
Catholic priest in a settlement of more than 600 colonists, with a maximum
of twenty who were his co-religionists; he and his assistant suffered from ill
health; he faced hostility from his fellow Christian missionaries at every turn;
and he received little support from his superiors in Rome or the United
States. The apparent Protestant efforts to subvert his ministrations to indigenous Africans evidently were a contributing factor to his lack of success.
Foreign priests in Catholic parishes in the United States—who were
predominantly Irish, French, and German—had a significant effect on

77. Kelly Diary, pp. 122–27.
78. Kelly Diary, pp. 126–27.
79. Kelly Diary, pp. 128–34.
80. See Campbell, Maryland in Africa, pp. 124–49.
81. Kelly noted in his journal that “[m]uskets are too light for such gentlemen [Wilson
and the other Presbyterian ministers]—they seem to prefer the cannon. They hate the colored
man and show it more here than in America.” Wilson’s reasons for leaving Liberia, said Kelly,
were “[b]ecause he could not submit to the colored laws [and] because the Catholics had
planted themselves here.” Kelly Diary, p. 150.
82. Kelly Diary, p. 150; Letter from Barron to Dr. Kirby, February 9, 1843, Records, 7
(1896), 373.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

49

the level of acceptance of the Church by Americans, both Catholics and
those of other faiths. Similarly, the recruitment of foreign priests would
have a devastating impact on the outcome of the Church’s mission to
Liberia.
When the Holy See made Barron vicar apostolic of Upper and Lower
Guinea in January 1842, he became responsible for the African coast from
Dakar to the region surrounding the Congo River.83 He realized that he
needed many more priests and religious if the mission were to meet with
any success. Accordingly, he departed Cape Palmas in April 1842 and
returned to Philadelphia to consult with Francis Patrick Kenrick. Kenrick
suggested that Barron seek personnel in France, turn the mission over to a
religious congregation, and come back to Philadelphia. He did not think
that “the life of this excellent man should be rashly exposed again to peril
among wild men, with almost no hope of results.”84 Kenrick apparently
was not optimistic about the prospects for Barron’s mission.
The vicar apostolic spent the next two years traveling throughout
Europe searching for people willing to serve with him in the missions.
Eventually he secured seven priests and three laybrothers of the Society of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary in France, and a priest and a brother from
Ireland.85 After several extended delays, Barron sent the Frenchmen to
Africa while he remained in Europe.
Arriving at Cape Palmas in December 1843, the French priests and
brothers all came down with “the African fever” within two weeks of their
arrival, the first dying on December 30. Pindar died two days later of sunstroke. After nursing the Frenchmen back to health, Kelly left the mission

83. The Holy See had intended for Barron to resurrect and care for the missions that
had been established by the French and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
but had been largely abandoned by the seventeenth century, leaving only European trading
posts dotted along the west coast of Africa. See Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” pp.
260–62; Bane, The Catholic Story of Liberia, pp. 18–22.
84. Letter from Francis Patrick Kenrick to Peter Richard Kenrick, July 20, 1842, in The
Kenrick-Frenaye Correspondence, 1830–1862, ed. Francis Edward Tourscher (Philadelphia,
1920), pp. 149–50.
85. Salvatore J. Federici, “The Collaboration of Venerable Libermann and Bishop
Barron,” Records, 53 (1942), 68–71; Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” pp. 273–76;
Bane, The Catholic Story of Liberia, pp. 50–55. Venerable François-Marie Libermann founded
the Society of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1838 to work in the African missions. In
1848, the Holy See combined the Order with the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (the Spiritan Fathers), which became one of the most active orders in the Church in Africa.

50

THE DEMANDS OF HUMANITY AND RELIGION

on January 17, 1844, bringing to a close the American involvement in the
Church’s first mission to Liberia.86
Barron returned to Cape Palmas in March 1844 with instructions to
disperse the priests and brothers to French trading posts in the nearby
Ivory Coast (Assinie and Grand Bassam) and as far away as Gabon. One
priest and one brother were left behind to close down the mission at Cape
Palmas and later join Barron at Assinie. The Catholic missionaries abandoned the American colony of free blacks in May 1844.87
Barron did not want to end the mission in Liberia, but had little
choice in leaving Cape Palmas in favor of the French settlements. After
Barron’s two years of recruitment efforts in Europe, François-Marie Libermann’s priests and brothers were the only men willing to go to the missions
with him. Libermann had made an agreement with the French government to allow his men to work in the French commercial centers in West
Africa. The government agreed to pay for the missionaries’ travel to Africa
and to subsidize their supplies. The missionaries had to present an annual
report to the French governor on their activities and whereabouts, as well
as the financial state of the mission. Although they were free to evangelize
Africans in the interior, they were required to leave at least one priest and
one brother at the trading post on the coast.88
Thus, Barron’s hands were tied and the mission to Liberia doomed to
failure. Even though Barron was not expressly limited to working with the
French centers, the vast majority of his missionaries were bound by the
agreement with the French government. Even if he had not been restricted
by Libermann’s agreement, the likelihood of success of ten Frenchmen in
an area settled by freed American blacks and inhabited by nominally
Anglophonic Africans is doubtful.
86. Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” p. 277; Bane, The Catholic Story of
Liberia, pp. 50–55; Federici, “The Collaboration of Venerable Libermann and Bishop
Barron,” pp. 76–78. Kelly wrote a letter to Barron explaining his reasons for departing that is
no longer extant. In a June 1843 letter to Francis Patrick Kenrick, Kelly complained of being
“annoyed [by] the inability, from affairs of almost entirely a secular nature, of attending properly to the duties of my vocation.” It is probable that there also were intercultural differences
and difficulties between Kelly and the newly arrived Frenchmen.
87. Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” pp. 278–79; Bane, The Catholic Story of
Liberia, pp. 50–55; Federici, “The Collaboration of Venerable Libermann and Bishop
Barron,” pp. 79–80.
88. Federici, “The Collaboration of Venerable Libermann and Bishop Barron,” pp.
74–75.

NICHOLAS M. CREARY

51

Sadly, the missionaries met with everything but success. All of them,
with the exception of one priest and one brother, had died by July 1844.
Consequently, Barron decided to give up the mission, resigned as vicar
apostolic in August, and returned to Rome.89 The Holy See entrusted the
missions in West Africa to Libermann’s congregation.
The American Catholic Church’s mission to Liberia failed in almost
every respect. The causes of its failure were very similar to the factors that
prevented the leaders of the Church in the United States from preaching
and practicing the Catholic tradition regarding slavery, and that caused
them to seek and support the ill-fated tertium quid of colonization.
Catholics in Liberia, as in America, were faced with an extreme shortage
of qualified personnel in an environment beset by intercultural conflict, a
harsh climate, and anti-Catholicism. It would not be until the first decade
of the twentieth century that the Church established a permanent mission
in Liberia and not until 1948 that the first American Catholic missionaries
would arrive in the former African colony of the United States.

89. Ibid., pp. 80–85; Fisher, “The Catholic Church in Liberia,” pp. 277–81. Brother
André died five months after returning to France.

Sisterly Advice and Eugenic Education:
The Katholische Deutsche Frauenbund
and German Catholic Marriage Counseling
in the 1920s and 1930s
ANETTE LIPPOLD*
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Deutscher Caritasverband and the
Katholische Deutsche Frauenbund spearheaded German Catholic marriage counseling. But the two organizations and the predominantly
female Catholic marriage counselors disagreed about the nature and focus
of the counseling work. By the early 1930s, the public image of Catholic
marriage counseling indicated increased support for eugenics. The
Frauenbund and the marriage counselors, although they did not reject
eugenics outright, did not wish counseling to be a tool for the implementation of eugenic ideas. Instead, they hoped to preserve it as a domain for
women, focusing on offering emotional and spiritual assistance.
Keywords: Deutscher Caritasverband; eugenics; Katholischer
Deutscher Frauenbund; marriage counseling

I

N THE LATE 1920S the German Catholic Church decided to join the

existing array of professional and pseudo-professional marriage assistance clinics to combat their perceived negative impact. For the most part,
marriage counseling of the 1920s did not necessarily mean the type of psychotherapeutic assistance now associated with the term. Instead, marital
assistance services more frequently focused on medical questions about
human sexuality, with information about and access to birth control, a
common desire of clients. German eugenicists, who hailed from a variety
of political and religious backgrounds, worried about the genetic impact
of freely available contraceptives. After the idea of requiring the submission of health certificates before marriage registration did not gain acceptance on the national level, the Prussian government supported the creation of marital health-counseling services at the municipal level. Use of
*Ms. Lippold is a PhD candidate and assistant to the president at the University at
Albany, SUNY, email: anettelippold@gmail.com. Unless otherwise noted, translations have
been provided by the author.

52

ANETTE LIPPOLD

53

these new clinics was voluntary, and Weimar Germans apparently had
little interest in them while their advice remained purely eugenic. Over a
relatively short period, several municipal clinics broadened the available
services, moving steadily closer to the work of birth control and sex-education counseling clinics.1
Observers in both the Protestant and the Catholic churches in Germany were concerned about birth control and sex-education counseling
clinics as well as the newly broadened municipal health counseling clinics and considered the moral implications of their work symptomatic of
the general changes in social norms and mores. Popular movies and
novels showed that the “New Woman” demanded more from life and
marriage than keeping the home and raising children. High divorce
rates and low birth rates indicated especially to devout Catholics that
the teachings of their religion on marriage as a sacrament and procreation as the primary purpose of sex no longer held sway with many
Weimar Germans. Even traditionalist authors like the popular romance
novelist Hedwig Courths-Mahler portrayed divorce as an acceptable
solution when innocent marital partners found that they had been mistaken in their choice of bride or groom.2
1. For a discussion of municipal and private marriage-counseling services, see Annette
Timm, The Politics of Fertility in Twentieth Century Berlin (New York, 2010); Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control & Abortion Reform, 1920–1950
(Oxford, 1995); and Kristine von Soden, Die Sexualberatungsstellen der Weimarer Republik,
1919–1933 (Berlin, 1988). Von Soden’s interpretative framework, however, has been criticized frequently—most recently by Timm, Politics of Fertility, p. 87. For the changes in
municipal marriage-counseling services and the political maneuverings that led to their creation, see Michael Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik: Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten
und Politik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890–1933 (Bonn, 1995) as well as Timm, Politics
of Fertility, pp. 97–108.
2. Standard readings on sexuality in the Weimar years remain Cornelie Usborne, The
Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany: Women’s Reproductive Rights and Duties (Ann Arbor,
MI, 1992), and Grossmann, Reforming Sex. Ann Taylor Allen provides an excellent overview
of changes in women’s role during World War I and the 1920s, although her work is not specific to Germany; see Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970: The Maternal
Dilemma (New York, 2005). For a good description of conceptions of the “New Woman” in
the Weimar Republic, see Kerstin Haunhorst, Das Bild der neuen Frau im Frühwerk Irmgard
Keuns: Entwürfe von Weiblichkeit am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg, 2008). For the
role of women related to Weimar popular culture, see Kerstin Brandt, “Mothers, Citizens,
and Consumers: Female Readers in Weimar Germany,” in Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects.
Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s, ed. Kathleen Canning, Kerstin
Brandt, and Kristin McGuire (New York, 2010), pp. 95–115 and Vibeke Rützou Petersen,
Women and Modernity in Weimar Germany: Reality und Representation in Popular Fiction (New
York, 2001).

54

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

Given the Catholic conception of marriage as a sacrament and its doctrine against the use of artificial means of birth control, it is clear that
Catholic conceptions of marriage counseling had little in common with birth
control and sex-education clinics. If the relationship between the Catholic
Church and services related to birth control and sex education can only be
described as antagonistic, historians such as Ingrid Richter and Annette
Timm have argued that there was a clear affinity between Catholic marriagecounseling services and eugenics. In essence, eugenics “viewed humanity and
society in biological terms,” making the human gene pool the focus of intervention.3 Influencing human procreation, then, became the main tool in the
implementation of eugenic ideas. In such general terms, eugenic ideas had
reached a broad cross section of the German population and had prominent
supporters in both the German Protestant and Catholic churches.4
The role of eugenics in German Catholicism has garnered steady academic attention in the last decades, drawing the conclusion that support for
eugenic ideas was common and particularly strong in the Caritas, the
umbrella organization of Catholic welfare. Much of the scholarly work has
focused on Hermann Muckermann, the best-known Catholic advocate of
eugenics, frequently discussing his role in the context of more general studies
on race, sexuality, and German antisemitism.5 In regard to Catholic marriage
counseling, the conclusion that eugenic ideas were prevalent has led Richter
to argue that eugenics had come to replace an earlier focus on spiritual and
emotional assistance in Catholic marriage-counseling services.6 Timm has

3. Donald J. Dietrich. “Catholic Eugenics in Germany, 1920–1945: Hermann Muckermann, S.J. and Joseph Mayer,” Journal of Church and State, 34 (1992), 575–600, here 576.
4. Usborne, The Politics of the Body, pp. 133–39.
5. In addition to Dietrich, see also Ingrid Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik in der
Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich: zwischen Sittlichkeitsreform und Rassenhygiene (Paderborn, 2001); John Connelly, “Catholic Racism and Its Opponents,” The Journal of Modern
History, 79 (2007), 813–47; Hans-Walter Schmuhl, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1927–1945 (Dordrecht, 2008); Heide Fehrenbach,
Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton,
2005); Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, 2005); John J. Michalczyk, Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich: Historical
and Contemporary Issues (Kansas City, MO, 1994); Rebecca Heinemann, Familie zwischen
Tradition and Emanzipation: katholische und sozialdemokratische Familienkonzeptionen in der
Weimarer Republik (Munich, 2004); Christian Jetzslsperger, “Caritas und Eugenik: Katholisches Milieu, katholische Fürsorge und Eugenik im Spiegel der Verbandszeitschriften,” Historische Mitteilungen, 15 (2002), 195–219.
6. Ingrid Richter’s argument appears in two separate publications. See Richter,
Katholizismus und Eugenik, pp. 101–39, and Richter, “Von der Sittlichkeitsreform zur
Eugenik: Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund und eugenische Eheberatung,” in Katholikin-

ANETTE LIPPOLD

55

echoed that argument in her assessment that “the general thrust of Catholic
marriage counseling was to combine eugenics with religious ethics.”7 This
article takes the current research on eugenics in German Catholicism a step
further, with a focus on elucidating the importance given to eugenics in
Catholic circles rather than adding to the scholarship that seeks to illuminate
the presence of a diverse range of eugenic ideas. The argument presented is
that, although many involved in Catholic marriage counseling held eugenic
ideas, Catholic marriage counseling was a contested field and disagreement
existed about the role eugenics ought to play in Catholic marriage-counseling practice.
Central to Catholic marriage counseling in Germany were the Caritas
and the Katholische Deutsche Frauenbund, a progressive women’s organization. In September 1927 Cardinal Adolf Bertram charged both organizations with the creation of denominational marriage-counseling services.8
The idea of denominational marriage-counseling services had gained support when it became increasingly clear that attempts to use the political
system to redirect the developments in municipal-level marriage counseling were failing.9 This attempt to withdraw into the Catholic milieu, however, was not inevitably crowned by success, provoking the question of the
strength of the Catholic milieu in the 1920s. Although Catholic organizations remained strong in Weimar Germany, Catholic marriage counseling
shows that they did not necessarily share a unified opinion on methods and
means to achieve desired goals.10
Both the Caritas and the Frauenbund shared concerns about ongoing
developments in nondenominational marriage-counseling services.
Whereas the Caritas increasingly sought to turn Catholic marriage counseling into a tool for the implementation of eugenic goals, the Frauenbund
nen und Moderne: Katholische Frauenbewegung zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation, ed.
Gisela Muschiol (Münster, 2003), pp. 255–79.
7. Timm, The Politics of Fertility, p. 106.
8. Freiburg, Archiv des Deutschen Katholischen Caritasverbands (hereafter ADCV),
Wilhelm Wiesen, Entwurf, Denkschrift über die Einrichtung von Eheberatungsstellen,
March 1927, ADCV 349.4, Fasz.01.
9. Schwartz, Sozialistische Eugenik, p. 224.
10. Oded Heilbronner shows convincingly that the notion of a unified, cohesive
Catholic milieu can no longer be maintained for rural areas on the periphery of Catholic
strongholds; see Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History
of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998). Andreas Henkelmann, however,
cautions that conflict within and between Catholic organizations need not be seen as a sign for
the disintegration of the Catholic milieu; see Henkelmann, Caritasgeschichte zwischen katholischem Milieu und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Das Seraphische Liebeswerk (1889–1971) (Paderborn, 2008).

56

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

resisted such efforts. But the subject of the conflict was not as much a disagreement about eugenic principles. Rather, the bone of contention for the
Frauenbund was that a eugenic focus would turn Catholic marriage counseling into a medical service to be offered by trained medical professionals.
In consequence, women’s distinctive experiences and contributions to
assisting marriages in need would be lost.
The Caritas, from the beginning, did not object to the idea of marital
health counseling influenced by eugenics. Rather, observers in the Caritas
were concerned about the extension of state authority inherent in the creation of marriage-counseling services at the municipal level.11 For example,
the Catholic theologian Peter Richter, who worked for the Caritas, argued
in 1928:
The statistics about the activities of the inclusive marriage and sex counseling services show clearly that an area which for century had been the
undisputed domain of the Church, in part has been separated and been
assumed by institutions that have no connections with the Church.12

The same year, Wilhelm Wiesen, general secretary of the Caritas, asserted
that, although the state had the right to make policies to ensure the health
of the population, such policies should not interfere with the individual’s
rights and Catholic doctrine. Hence, Wiesen rejected the notion that the
state had the authority to prohibit marriages through the use of medical
certificates.13 Pushing the idea of denominational marriage-counseling
services, Wiesen wrote a memorandum in which he described Catholic
marriage-counseling services as one tool in a larger and much needed educational campaign to restore the importance of Catholic teachings on marriage and family in the lives of individual Germans and in German society
in general. Although his programmatic focus centered on pastoral care,
Wiesen initially included the Vereinigungen für Familienhilfe (Organizations of Family Assistance) with the Frauenbund and the Caritas as the
organizations that should conduct Catholic counseling services.14
11. Clipping, Wiesen, “Amtliche oder Private Eheberatungsstellen,” Kölnische Volkszeitung, September 20, 1927, ADCV 342.
12. Cited in I. Richter, “Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 261: “Die Statistiken über die Tätigkeit
der erweiterten Ehe- und Sexualberatungsstellen zeigen klar, wie ein Gebiet, das jahrhundertelang unbestrittene Domäne der Kirche war, zum Teil abgewandert ist und von Stellen
besorgt wird, die keinen Kontakt haben mit der Kirche.”
13. Wiesen, Denkschrift über Errichtung und Organisation von Eheberatungsstellen,
March 15, 1928, p. 5, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 0.
14. Wiesen, Entwurf, Denkschrift über die Einrichtung von Eheberatungsstellen,
March 1927, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01. Wiesen’s position as referent for ‘Caritashilfe in der

ANETTE LIPPOLD

57

Founded in Cologne in 1921, the Organizations of Family Assistance
were based on Muckermann’s ideas of using educational methods to
achieve eugenic goals; in this case, this meant support for what Muckermann had called the genetically healthy “naturtreue Normalfamilie” (natural, normal family).15 Muckermann played a leading role in popularizing
eugenic ideas among German Catholics. A priest and member of the Society of Jesus until 1927 who had studied biology, Muckermann had expertise both in theology and science. Initially rejecting the eugenic concept of
biological degeneracy, he embraced eugenics as a way to control the societal cost of unrestrained procreation of less fit members of society. The
extent that his views on eugenics followed the National Socialist trajectory
of establishing a racial hierarchy is a question that defies an easy answer.
Clearly, he shared commonly held racist assumptions of his time, proclaiming, for example, that interbreeding with Africans and Jews had
tremendous consequences. At the same time, however, Muckermann
remained a devout Catholic and shared the Catholic view that all people
were God’s creation. Hence, in the late 1920s, he opposed abortion and
euthanasia for eugenic purposes, earning him the scorn of some of Germany’s most prominent racial eugenicists.16
Muckermann’s avid propaganda on eugenics certainly made his views
not only known within the Caritas but also familiar to members of the
Frauenbund. Nevertheless, in the early Frauenbund conceptions of
Catholic marriage counseling, eugenic considerations did not play an obvi-

Seelsorge” (Caritas aid in care for the soul) certainly provides one explanation why his conception of Catholic marriage counseling focused on pastoral care. For evidence that the
Frauenbund had little to no input up to April 1928—despite its presence as a signatory to this
memorandum—and that the draft stemmed from Wiesen and others in the Caritas, see
Cologne, Archiv des Katholischen Deutschen Frauenbundes (hereafter AKDFB), Auszug
aus dem Protokoll über die Sitzung des engeren Vorstandes, April 22, 1928, AKDFB 1-4-7.
For other conceptions of Catholic marriage counseling from the Caritas that failed to gain
acceptance and hence were never implemented, see I. Richter, “Sittlichkeitsreform,” pp. 260–
63; and I. Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik, pp. 112–13, 133–34.
15. See I. Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik, pp. 92–93; Heinemann, Familie, pp.
259–60; “Die Vereinigung für Familienhilfe in der Diözese Breslau,” Caritas, May 1929, 188.
The overall social and eugenic impact of these Organizations of Family Aid was rather limited, as organizations only existed in Limburg, Cologne, Breslau, and Augsburg.
16. For the argument that Muckermann shared National Socialist views on the superiority of the Nordic race, see Connelly, “Catholic Racism,” pp. 821–24; for the opposing view,
see Dietrich, “Catholic Eugenics,” pp. 580–82. I. Richter provides the most nuanced assessment, arguing that Muckermann expressed opinions aligned with National Socialist racist
views but remained strongly influenced by Catholic doctrine; see I. Richter, Katholizismus und
Eugenik, pp. 274–80, 314–19.

58

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

ous role. Founded in 1903, the Frauenbund was the leading organization
in what Birgit Sack has called the Catholic women’s movement as opposed
to Catholic women’s organizations under the auspices of the clergy.
Organized independently from the Church and under female, rather than
clerical, leadership, the Frauenbund brought together Catholic women
who were more highly educated, more politically active, and more frequently held paid employment. In terms of its goals, the Frauenbund
sought to represent the interests of Catholic women not only vis-à-vis
German society in general but also vis-à-vis the Catholic Church.17 By the
late 1920s, the Frauenbund, which had maintained a committee on marriage and family throughout the decade, increasingly included questions of
marriage and family in its array of activities. The 1928 Frauenbund meeting, for example, was dedicated to the question of marriage counseling.
The speakers outlined the current situation in the nondenominational
counseling centers, in which Catholic ideals about marriage were absent.
Not unlike Wiesen, the Frauenbund concluded that a more active Catholic
approach to reviving the importance of Catholic teachings on marriage and
family to Weimar Germans was needed.18
In the end, it was interested Catholic women, many of whom affiliated
with local Frauenbund organizations, who arranged and staffed the first
Catholic marriage-counseling services.19 Although individual marriage
counselors certainly had direct connections with or showed explicit support
for eugenics, the goal of Catholic marriage counseling in these Frauenbundaffiliated services was, according to the Frauenbund guidelines for its marriage-counseling services, “to mediate, to help, to give solace, to reunite.”20
For the Frauenbund as well as the female leaders and practitioners of
17. Birgit Sack, Zwischen religiöser Bindung und moderner Gesellschaft: katholischer
Frauenbund und politische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik (1918/19–1933) (Münster, 1998),
pp. 1–3. See also Michael Phayer, Protestant and Catholic Women in Nazi Germany (Detroit,
1990) and Muschiol, ed., Katholikinnen und Moderne.
18. Abschrift: Die Frage der Eheberatung auf der Beuroner Tagung des katholischen
Deutschen Frauenbundes, Schlesische Volkszeitung, January 19, 1928, ADCV 342; I. Richter,
“Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 264.
19. “Kursus für Katholische Eheberatungsstellen, veranstalted vom Kath. Deutschen
Frauenbund im Hedwig Dransfeld Haus in Bendorf vom 7.–9. März 1931,” Die christliche Frau,
29 (1931), 115–18, here 115. By 1931, thirty-four Catholic counseling services existed, located
in major urban areas and in traditional Catholic strongholds (with the exception of Berlin).
20. Richtlinien zur Errichtung von Eheberatungsstellen im KDF, p. 4, AKDFB 1-47: “auszugleichen, zu helfen, zu trösten, wieder zu vereinen.” Information on the support for
eugenic ideas among Catholic marriage counselors is rather anecdotal, but still conveys a clear
impression that it was not unusual. Anna Beckmann, founder of the first Catholic counseling
clinic and avid promoter of Catholic marriage counseling, had served in the Organizations of

ANETTE LIPPOLD

59

Catholic marriage counseling, it was their contribution to marriage counseling, based on their qualifications as mothers and wives, that was of
utmost importance to the success of their mission. In the words of Maria
Heßberger, Center party representative in the Prussian Landtag and head
of the Frauenbund committee on marriage, Catholic marriage counseling
was to assist clients in a “sisterly” manner.21 Even though the Frauenbund’s
wide-ranging interests became confined in the late 1920s to more traditional female topics, it continued to remain dedicated to the pursuit of its
original goals; the promotion of the interests of Catholic women.22
The role of eugenics in Catholic marriage counseling did not become
an issue of contention between the Caritas and the Frauenbund until the
early 1930s, when new guidelines for Catholic marriage counseling disseminated by the German bishops in August 1930 and the papal encyclical
Casti Connubii issued in December 1930 spurred the possibility of change
in Catholic marriage-counseling practice. Disregarding current practice,
the bishops’ guidelines consigned Catholic marriage counseling to medical
professionals. Focused on the role of Catholic marriage counseling in
implementing Catholic doctrine against contraceptives and abortion, the
bishops clearly viewed it as a medical field. The guidelines only referred to
the work of women in the last of seven points: “Good services in marriage
counseling can be rendered by experienced Catholic women or female
social workers, who work in a loving and intelligent manner.”23 Any expansion of Catholic marriage-counseling services under the auspices of these
guidelines undoubtedly would have reduced the role played by laywomen.
Whereas the bishops envisioned Catholic marriage counseling as a
medical province, the position of the Catholic Church on eugenics was
officially clarified in Casti Connubii. Eugenics, of course, played only a limFamily Assistance. See Anna Beckmann, “Vereinigung für ‘Familienhilfe’ zur Behütung und
Förderung der naturtreuen Normalfamilie,” Die christliche Frau, 20 (1922), 105–08. Barbara
Joos, Catholic marriage counselor and member of the Frauenbund, publically endorsed
eugenics, declaring her agreement with Muckermann’s analysis on the problem of “unnaturally” large families of alcoholics and other asocial groups in a published article. Compare to
Sack, Zwischen religiöser Bindung, p. 326.
21. Cited in I. Richter, “Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 264: “schwesterlich.”
22. See Sack, Zwischen religiöser Bindung, pp. 298–308. Sack sees the developments
mainly in terms of forced retrenchments of the formerly broad, and even progressive, interests
of the Frauenbund. The interpretation here underscores that the move toward more conservative thematic foci did not successfully co-opt the nature of the organization.
23. Albert Niedermeyer, Handbuch der speziellen Pastoralmedizin, 2 (Vienna, 1950), pp.
377–80, citations on p. 378: “Gute Dienste in der Eheberatung können erfahrene, ebenso
liebevoll wie klug vorgehende katholische Frauen und Sozialbeamtinnen leisten.”

60

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

ited part in Casti Connubii, which was primarily dedicated to detailing
Catholic doctrine on the sanctity of marriage as well as laying out Catholic
teachings on gender roles within marriage, the role of procreation within
marriage, and the Catholic position on abortion and contraceptive use. In
regards to eugenics, Pope Pius XI explicitly supported the giving of “salutary counsel for more certainly procuring the strength and health of the
future child,” but he rejected the idea of preventing “from marrying all
those whom, even though naturally fit for marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would, through
hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring.” In addition to
rebuffing the concept of limiting access to marriage to those likely to have
unhealthy offspring, the pope also rejected eugenic sterilization.24
For Catholic supporters of eugenics, the encyclical left few options
to implement their ideas other than through premarital education and
counseling that could persuade individuals to base their choice of marital
partner on eugenic considerations. The papal endorsement of counseling
to promote healthy offspring suggested a medical focus of Catholic marriage counseling, which coincided with the marriage-counseling guidelines issued by the German bishops only a few months earlier. Similarly,
the pope’s vision of marital counseling had little in common with current
counseling practice that usually did not include premarital counseling.25
In response to the papal encyclical, Cardinal Bertram called on the Caritas and Catholic organizations to ensure the well-being of marriage and
family, which only increased the pressure on both organizations to review
current marriage-counseling practice in light of the new papal
encyclical.26
If eugenics had not been an important aspect of Catholic marriage
counseling in the late 1920s, these developments in 1930 and 1931 certainly promoted a rethinking of that approach. A March 1931 meeting of
Catholic marriage counselors provided the Frauenbund with the opportunity to discuss “our perspective on questions of eugenics,” calling it “an
24. Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, articles 68, The Papal Encyclicals, 1903–1939, ed.
Claudia Carlen (Wilmington, NC, 1981), pp. 401–02. For a full review of how Muckermann
and other leading German Catholic eugenicists interpreted the papal encyclical, see I.
Richter, Katholizimus und Eugenik, pp. 257–87.
25. Niederschrift der Fachberatung des Reichsausschus für Katholische Eheberatung in
Berlin/Charlottenburg Frauenbundhaus, February 20, 1933, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt.
012.
26. Abschrift: Der Vorsitzende der Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz, G.K. 2488, Breslau,
April 16, 1931, p. 2, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 0.

ANETTE LIPPOLD

61

urgent necessity.”27 The position that emerged from this conference solidified the cautious stance of the Frauenbund and its affiliated marriage
counselors toward the role of eugenics in Catholic marriage-counseling
practice. In the lead presentation on eugenics in Catholic marriage counseling, psychiatrist Rudolf Allers of Vienna took a rather critical position,
questioning the validity of current understanding of the hereditary nature
of illnesses. The ensuing discussion showed that Catholic marriage counselors were certainly interested in the topic. Overall, Catholic marriage
counselors agreed with the papal position on sterilization and rejected it as
a tool to rectify human frailty in favor of a recognition of the immortality
of the soul, regardless of the genetic fitness of the body. Although the conference participants debated Allers’s position on the medical understanding of heredity, the discussion did not focus on eugenics itself, but rather
on ways to counsel clients whose religious beliefs conflicted with medical
doctrine on eugenics. Catholic marriage counseling, then, was to remain
focused on emotional and spiritual assistance.28
With the Frauenbund retaining its cautious stance about the use of
Catholic marriage counseling to implement eugenic goals, the Caritas took
the lead in attempting more fundamental changes in Catholic marriage
counseling in the early 1930s. Its president, Monsignor Dr. Benedikt
Kreutz, suggested a new administrative approach, including a broadening
of the organizational support of Catholic marriage counseling to include
organizations that focused on youth and the move of the administrative
headquarters of Catholic marriage counseling to the Caritas headquarters
in Freiburg. However, the Frauenbund had just initiated the creation of a
“Zusammenschluss katholischer Eheberatungsstellen,” a loose organization of Catholic marriage-counseling services, in an effort to improve the
training of marriage counselors as well as the exchange of ideas and the
geographic reach of Catholic marriage-counseling services. Unsurprisingly,
Frauenbund general secretary Antonie Hopmann opposed the suggested
move, arguing that the Frauenbund had not only played a major role in initiating Catholic marriage counseling but also that women dominated the
practical work (see figure 1). Placing the administrative reins in the hands
of the Caritas, therefore, was not suitable. Hopmann’s counter-proposal—
27. Comments Zur Sitzung des Zentralvorstandes am 8.2. 1931, Zu Punkt I/1. Ehefragen, AKDFB 1-110-2: “Bei dieser Gelegenheit muss auch unsere Stellungnahme zu den
Fragen der Eugenik klar herausgearbeitet werden; das ist eine dringende Notwendigkeit.”
28. See Zusammenfassung der Aussprache auf der Aussprachetagung der Katholischen
Eheberatungsstellen im KDF vom 21. bis 23. September 1931 im Hedwig Dransfeld – Haus
in Bendorf/Rhein, AKDFB 1-110-2.

62

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

FIGURE 1. Antonie Hopmann, 1930s. Photograph courtesy of the Archives of
Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund, Cologne.

that the Frauenbund could serve as administrator of a new organization of
Catholic marriage counseling—received an immediate negative answer.29
The establishment of the Reichsausschuss für katholische Eheberatung
(Reich Association for Catholic Marriage Counseling) in April 1932
seems to be a compromise in many ways, yet also signaled a new opportunity for eugenic influence. The presidency of the organization was to alternate each year between the Frauenbund and the Caritas, with Frauenbund
president Gerta Krabbel heading the Reichsausschuss in its first year (see
figure 2). Anna Beckmann, a marriage counselor and the most tireless supporter of Catholic marriage counseling, served as the administrative officer,
with an assistant at the Caritas, Sister Christa Jagemann, and one at the
Frauenbund, Sister Clara Limper. In addition to involving more Catholic
organizations, the Reichsausschuss had an advisory council of Catholic
experts in fields such as theology, pastoral care, law, and medicine. For the
29. Auszug aus dem Protokoll der Sitzung des engeren Zentralvorstandes am 6.12.31
an der Zentrale des K.D.F., January 13, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7; Zusammenschluss katholischer Eheberatungsstellen [Union of Catholic Marriage Counseling Centers], March 14,
1931, AKDFB 1-4-7; Bericht über eine Besprechung mit Herrn Präsidenten Kreutz am 14.
Januar 1932 in Mainz, Cologne, January 16, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7.

ANETTE LIPPOLD

63

FIGURE 2. Gerta Krabbel, 1920s. Photograph courtesy of the Archives of Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund, Cologne.

first time since the inception of Catholic marriage-counseling services, the
two leading eugenicists in German Catholicism—Muckermann and
Joseph Mayer, a moral theologian affiliated with the Caritas—achieved an
official role in Catholic marriage counseling.30
Both Muckermann and Mayer had attempted to uphold the legitimacy
of their views after the issuance of Casti Connubii. Muckermann, for example, proposed that the papal position on the question of sterilization need
not be seen as the final word, but rather as a preliminary opinion. Mayer,
who concurred with Muckermann on eugenic sterilization, argued that ster30. Reichsausschuss für katholische Eheberatung [Collection of the Reich Association
for Catholic Marriage Counseling], ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 0; Bericht über die konstituierende Sitzung des Reichsausschusses katholischer Eheberatungsstellen am Samstag, den 2.
April 1932 im Konferenzzimmer der kath. Schulorganisation in Düsseldorf, Canisiushaus, pp.
2–4, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 01. The Frauenbund leadership had discussed the possibility
of establishing a council of expert advisers at an earlier point, suggesting two female members
of the Frauenbund’s committee on marriage and family as experts on law and medicine, and
the primary religious counsel to the Frauenbund as the expert on religion. This council was
much smaller than the 1932 advisory council, and neither Muckermann nor Mayer was considered. See untitled Meeting Notes, Cologne, March 11, 1931, AKDFB 1-4-7.

64

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

ilization was not morally wrong in principle. He continued to claim that,
although the encyclical had precluded Catholic support for eugenic sterilization, the pope had not explicitly rejected the use of sterilization or castration as punishment for, or a preventative measure against, sexual criminal
conduct.31 By 1933, as the National Socialist state turned the German
eugenics movement into an instrument for its program of racial hygiene,
Muckermann accepted Catholic doctrine against sterilization more readily
than Mayer.32 At that point, Muckermann’s conception of eugenics became
rather more akin to a traditional “quantitative population politics” and a
demand for “moral return to self-control.”33 In this approach, marriage
counseling held a position of great importance, explaining the increased
presence of Muckermann in Catholic marriage counseling.
In their role as expert advisers for Catholic marriage counseling, both
Muckermann and Mayer presented at various conferences in 1932 and
1933. In May 1932, for example, the Caritas and the Reichsausschuss
hosted a public event in Freiburg im Breisgau (site of the Caritas headquarters) that featured four presentations by Muckermann, with his two
public presentations attracting a large audience. To the general public and
the Catholic Church, the May gathering could only suggest that Catholic
marriage counseling was well on its way to becoming the main tool for
implementing a premarital education program influenced by eugenics. In
reality, however, the event, although officially sponsored by the Reichsausschuss with the Caritas, had been planned by the Caritas before the
creation of the Reichsausschuss, motivated primarily by the 1930s guidelines for marriage counseling issued by the bishops.34
31. Monika Löscher, “‘… der gesunden Vernunft nicht zuwider…’ Katholizismus und
Eugenik in Österreich vor 1938,” in Vorreiter der Vernichtung? Eugenik, Rassenhygiene und
Euthanasie in der österreichischen Diskussion vor 1938, ed. Heinz Eberhard Gabriel and Wolfgang Neugebauer (Vienna, 2005), 219–40, here pp. 226–28. For a fuller review of Mayer’s
views, see Dietrich, “Catholic Eugenics,” pp. 586–98, and I. Richter, Katholizismus und
Eugenik, pp. 267–74, 401–02.
32. I. Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik, pp. 314–19; Connelly, “Catholic Racism,”
pp. 823–24; Dietrich, “Catholic Eugenics,” pp. 584–85, 587.
33. I. Richter, Katholizismus und Eugenik, p. 138: “quantitative Bevölkerungspolitik”
“sittliche Umkehr zur Selbstkontrolle.”
34. Vertraulich! Bericht zu der Tagung über die Probleme der Eheberatung veranstaltet
vom 3.-6. Mai 1932 in Freiburg i/Br. in Verbindung mit dem Deutschen Caritasverband
durch den Reichsausschuss, p. 3, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 01; Eindrücke aus der Tagung
über die Probleme der Eheberatung in Freiburg vom 3. bis 6. Mai 1932, Cologne, May 10,
1932, p. 5, AKDFB 1-110-2. Rather than symbolizing a “endgültigen Durchbruch” (final
breakthrough) of eugenics in Catholic marriage counseling, as I. Richter puts it (“Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 269), the Freiburg meeting aptly underscored the different opinions of the

ANETTE LIPPOLD

65

As the Caritas was making headway in reshaping the public image of
Catholic marriage counseling, the Frauenbund and Catholic marriage
counselors feared that the Caritas vision would change Catholic marriagecounseling practice. From their perspective, allowing the Caritas to control
the future of Catholic marriage counseling would push the work “onto a
wrong path,” as the board of directors of one regional Frauenbund affiliate
put it.35 The reaction of the Frauenbund and Catholic marriage counselors
to the Freiburg gathering offers clear insights into their views on the future
of Catholic marriage counseling. At an impromptu meeting called at the
behest of Catholic marriage counselors at the end of the Freiburg conference, the women listed four major areas of concern: the admission of too
many participants, including many young individuals; the discussion of
intimate aspects of marriage in a public setting; the lack of discussion of
psychological and spiritual aspects of counseling; and the lack of women in
the conference leadership. The last complaint and the explicit request to
exclude men from the spontaneous gathering indicate that the female marriage counselors felt at odds with the male supporters of Catholic marriage
counseling.36
The aftermath of the May Freiburg meeting offers further evidence
that the role of women in Catholic marriage counseling was a primary
locus of contention. Hopmann repeatedly requested changes to the conference minutes, mindful that the minutes would be disseminated to the episcopate and the wider Catholic community. Hopmann’s suggestions
addressed both the role of eugenics in Catholic marriage counseling and
the position of women. She insisted that the conference minutes, in spite
of previous adjustments, gave too much weight to eugenics so that the
emotional and spiritual aspects of counseling had insufficient emphasis.
She indicated that a section on premarital counseling needed further revision. Her additions to reflect better the role of women in Catholic marriage counseling, she stated, “are also important for the assessment of the
work of the women in marriage counseling as well as their fundamental
position and practical participation in the future.”37
Caritas, the Frauenbund, and Catholic marriage counselors regarding the nature of Catholic
marriage counseling.
35. Letter from Antonie Hopmann to Gerta Krabbel, March 5, 1932, AKDFB, 1-4-3:
“auf ein falsches Geleise.”
36. Bericht über die Besprechung mit den Eheberaterinnen bei Gelegenheit des Eheberatungskursus in Freiburg am Abend des 5. Mai 1932, Cologne, May 10, 1932, AKDFB
1-110-2.
37. Letter from Hopmann to Kreutz, Köln, June 17, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7; citation in
letter from Hopmann to Kreutz, June 28, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7: “sondern sind auch für die

66

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

Hopmann’s adamant stand regarding changes to the Freiburg minutes
shows that the female leaders of Catholic marriage counseling, especially
Krabbel and Hopmann, feared for the position of the Frauenbund and that
of the female marriage counselors in Catholic marriage counseling. In
March 1932, Hopmann’s request for financial assistance from the Berlin
Frauenbund organization for an upcoming conference came with the argument that the next meeting would have to be particularly effective in light
of the Caritas’ “serious intentions” to take complete control of Catholic
marriage counseling.38
Beckmann, who was not part of the Frauenbund leadership but certainly a dominant figure in Catholic marriage counseling, shared the
Frauenbund’s concerns. In June 1932, Beckmann relayed in a meeting with
the Frauenbund leadership that she had gained the impression in Freiburg
that the Caritas had a “very strong connection to Professor Muckermann.”
In spite of her own connections to the Organization of Family Assistance,
Beckmann did not see the ties between Muckermann and the Caritas as
beneficial for Catholic marriage counseling. On the contrary, she expressed
concern that this situation could mean that marriage counseling would be
“one-sidedly eugenically influenced.”39 Fearing that Muckermann could
use the September 1932 Catholic Day as another opportunity to sway
Catholic opinion on Catholic marriage counseling and favor eugenic
implementation as its main goal, Beckmann suggested that Krabbel, as the
president of the Reichsausschuss, should be involved.40

Bewertung der Arbeit der Frauen in der Eheberatung sowie für ihre grundsätzliche Stellung
und praktische Mitarbeit in der Zukunft bedeutsam.”
38. Letter from Hopmann to Fräulein Weber, Berlin, March 3, 1932, AKDFB 1-1088: “ernstliche Absichten.” Hopmann likely was referring to an April 1932 meeting that focused
on premarital counseling. The fact that the meeting included a colleague of Muckermann in
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, who spoke on eugenic considerations in premarital counseling,
does not seem to be a sign that the Frauenbund desired a shift in the focus of Catholic marriage
counseling toward implementation of eugenic ideas as claimed by I. Richter, “Sittlichkeitsreform,” pp. 268–69. Rather, the pressure from the Caritas, which Hopmann notes, suggests
that the choice of topic and speaker might not have been fully voluntary.
39. Bericht über die Besprechung über Fragen der Eheberatung am 1.6.1932 an der
Zentrale des KDF, Cologne, June 3, 1932, p. 2, AKDFB 1-4-7: “sehr starke Verbindung zu
Prof. Muckermann,” “einseitig eugenisch beeinflusst.” This evidence clearly suggests that I.
Richter is mistaken in stating that Beckmann was “eine der treibenden Kräfte für die Öffnung
der Eheberatung hin zur Eugenik” (one of the driving forces for the opening of marriage
counseling to eugenics). See I. Richter, “Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 273.
40. Bericht über die Besprechung über Fragen der Eheberatung am 1.6.1932 an der
Zentrale des KDF, June 3, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7; Letter from Hopmann to Sister Clara
Limper, June 2, 1932, AKDFB 1-4-7.

ANETTE LIPPOLD

67

The guidelines for Catholic marriage counseling developed by Muckermann’s subgroup, “Katholisches Ehe- und Familienleben in der Großstadt”
(Catholic Marriage and Family Life in a Large City), left room for eugenic
considerations, but did not limit the goal of Catholic marriage counseling to
such aspects—an apparent result of the restraining influence of Krabbel and
Beckmann. Requiring the participation of the clergy, physicians, legal counsel, and representatives of welfare organizations, marriage counseling was
clearly not limited to implementing a eugenic program. Instead, in the counseling work “beyond eugenic criteria, those aspects are to be highly regarded
that relate to the harmonious cooperation of the two individuals.” Finally, the
guidelines stated that Catholic marriage counseling should be the task of “an
experienced woman and mother.”41 This conception of marriage counseling
reflected neither Muckermann’s original views, nor the 1930 guidelines issued
by the bishops, both of which had assigned counseling to physicians.42 It did,
however, echo the views of the Frauenbund and Beckmann, whose concern
was not primarily whether eugenics was a valid aspect of Catholic marriage
counseling, but that eugenics should not supplant spiritual and emotional
marital counseling and make the work of laywomen unnecessary.
The rise to power of Hitler and his National Socialist Party in 1933,
although it shifted the political context of the struggle between the Caritas and the Frauenbund, initially did little to change their relative positions.43 At that time, the Reichsausschuss, now under the presidency of
Kreutz from the Caritas, pursued a strategy of focusing on commonalities
with National Socialist policy, stressing in particular the potential role of
Catholic marriage counseling in implementing eugenic educational
41. “Katholisches Ehe- und Familienleben in der Großstadt, Leitsätze des Essener
Katholikentages,” Caritas, September 1932, 540–43, here 542: “einer erfahrenen Frau und
Mutter,” “Außer den eugenischen Kriterien sind jene Gesichtspunkte hoch zu werten, die
sich auf den Zusammenklang der beiden Menschen beziehen.”
42. Hermann Muckermann and Otmar Verschuer, Eugenische Eheberatung (Berlin,
1931), pp. 65–67.
43. Neither did it have an immediate impact on the work of Catholic marriage counseling services although the restrictions on advertisement, led to a reduction in the number of
clients. See Bericht über die Eheberaterinnen-Konferenz am 12. u. 13. 12. 33 im Hause der
Zentrale des KDF, Cologne, December 16, 1933, ADKFB 1-110-2. For the developments
in marriage counseling outside of the denominational context, see Gabriele Czarnowski, Das
kontrollierte Paar. Ehe- und Sexualpolitik im Nationalsozialismus (Weinheim, 1991); Michele
Mouton, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi Family Policy,
1918–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Grossmann, Reforming Sex.
44. I. Richter shows that since the late 1920s, Kreutz had taken an active interest in
eugenics and supported Catholic eugenicists like Mayer; see I. Richter, Katholizismus und
Eugenik, pp. 324, 355–66.

68

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

goals.44 For example, in a memorandum presented to Leonardo Conti, the
Reichsgesundheitsführer (leader for health), the Reichsausschuss noted
that it presented “the government with an organization of strong and pure
will for its work of renewal of our people.”45 Kreutz’s Reichsausschuss
report for 1933–34 made it clear that he perceived a strong connection
between eugenics and the future of Catholic marriage counseling: “In the
future our marriage-counseling services will have or will not have social
importance to the extent to which they are successful or unsuccessful in
serving the goals of positive eugenics.”46 To what extent this strategy was
supported by the Frauenbund cannot be fully assessed. That the Frauenbund was not represented at the Reichsausschuss meeting with Conti and
that, according to Hopmann, “no one seemed to have had the notion to
invite Dr. Krabbel” suggests that the Frauenbund was not involved in
these efforts.47
The conferences for marriage counselors that followed the National
Socialist rise to power point in the same direction, suggesting that the
Frauenbund and Beckmann maintained their efforts to balance eugenic
considerations with spiritual and emotional counseling. For example, an
April 1933 meeting for the leadership of Catholic marriage-counseling
services had two topics: “modern psychology and its role in marriage counseling and the problem of sterilization.”48 Interestingly, the controversial
Mayer gave a talk at the April meeting and a December 1933 conference.
The choice of Mayer is surprising, given his positions on sterilization and
castration as well as the Frauenbund’s attempts to curb even the more
moderate Muckermann.49 Whether Mayer had been the choice of the
45. Report Reichsausschuss für katholische Eheberatung, May 12, 1933 (Mn. Rat Dr.
Conti am 15.5.1933 überreicht), citations on pp. 3 and 4, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 0: “der
Regierung eine Organisation starken und reinen wollens für ihre Arbeit zur Erneuerung
unseres Volkes.” Kath. Eheberatungsarbeit: Bericht des derzeitigen Vorsitzenden des Reichsausschusses für katholische Eheberatung über das Geschäftsjahr 1933–34, ADCV 349.4,
Fasz., 01, Abt. 012: “Unsere Eheberatungsstellen werden in Zukunft soziale Bedeutung
haben oder werden sie nicht haben, in dem Masse, wie es ihnen gelingt oder misslingt, den
Zielen positiver Eugenik wirkungsvoll zu dienen.”
46. Kath. Eheberatungsarbeit: Bericht des derzeitigen Vorsitzenden des Reichsausschusses, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 012.
47. Bericht betr. Eheberatung, June 12, 1933, AKDFB 1-4-7.
48. Letter: An die Leiterinnen der katholischen Eheberatungsstellen, Aachen, July
1933, AKDFB 1-08-1: “die moderne Seelenheilkunde in ihrer Bedeutung für die Eheberatung und das Problem der Sterilisierung.”
49. In addition to the previously mentioned plan to limit Muckermann’s influence at
the 1932 Catholic Day, Beckmann and Hopmann agreed in August 1933 that Beckmann
would attempt to influence Muckermann’s presentations on marriage counseling at a planned

ANETTE LIPPOLD

69

Frauenbund and Beckmann for the April conference cannot be established.
That, in the aftermath of the April conference, Beckmann was wary of
Mayer’s reputation is evident in her concern about publishing his entire
presentation in the April conference report.50 Mayer was, however, the first
choice of neither the Frauenbund nor Beckmann for the December meeting. In planning the December conference, Beckmann and the Frauenbund leadership had chosen eugenic and biological questions as the central
topic but decided on a program of “simple, orienting presentations” and
discussions. The group agreed that presenters should be those “who are not
in the center of the struggle of opinions and are themselves untouched by
the problems of the issues.” Given those considerations, it is not a surprise
that Mayer was not on the list of possible presenters compiled by the
group. In fact, indicative of the general view of the Frauenbund and Beckmann on Catholic marriage counseling, the list included only women.51
Despite the presence of Mayer at the Catholic marriage-counseling
conference in 1933, the Frauenbund did not waver from its position that
the value of Catholic marriage counseling did not reside in its ability to further eugenic goals. When Hopmann visited Silesia and Saxony in fall
1933, she reported a significant lack of understanding of the need for
Catholic marriage counseling, claiming that many she encountered
assumed that the support of marriage and family by the National Socialist
state made further measures of assistance unnecessary. Hopmann, however, had promoted a more reserved assessment of National Socialist counseling, pointing out that the emphasis on physical and genetic health in
regard to marriage and family left out significant areas of potential concern.
Hence, she sought to impress on the local Frauenbund representatives that
medical counseling was valued, but that spiritual and emotional counseling
was equally worthy and remained a necessity.52
Caritas event in Cologne. See untitled document, August 22, 1933, signed Hopmann,
AKDFB 1-4-7.
50. Letter from Beckmann to Hopmann, Bonn, May 15, 1933, AKDFB 1-4-7; I. Richter,
“Sittlichkeitsreform,” p. 271. I. Richter suggests that the presence of Mayer was surprising, since
Muckermann had been the leading eugenic influence in Catholic marriage counseling throughout the Weimar years. However, both Muckermann and Mayer joined the Reichsausschuss’
advisory board of experts at the same time and were scheduled to make their first public appearances in their new positions at the Freiburg conference. Therefore, a difference in direct influence
on Catholic marriage counseling during the Weimar years is difficult to ascertain.
51. Bericht über die Besprechung über Fragen der Eheberatung am Samstag, den
18.11., 15h an der Zentrale des K.D.F. Köln, Cologne, November 20, 1933: “einfache, orientierende Referate” “die nicht im Kampf der Meinungen stehen und die selbst möglichst
unbeschwert von der Problematik der Dinge sind.”
52. Letter from Hopmann to Beckmann, Cologne, October 16, 1933, AKDFB 1-108-1.

70

SISTERLY ADVICE AND EUGENIC EDUCATION

In the same vein, Catholic marriage counselors renewed their argument that the value of Catholic marriage counseling was based in the fact
that “in Catholic marriage counseling that is headed by women the individual in all his needs, afflictions, and doubts is addressed.” Since neither
the marital health counseling mandated by the National Socialist state, nor
marital assistance by the Catholic clergy, adopted a similarly holistic
approach, the need for marital counseling as offered by Catholic women
remained acute.53 The Reichsausschuss report for the year 1934–35, which
was under the leadership of the Frauenbund at that point, underscored that
this holistic approach focused on spiritual and emotional counseling. It
noted that in the recent educational conferences for marriage counselors,
particular attention had been paid to spiritual and emotional aspects of
marriage counseling, so as to “redirect any overemphasis on the purely natural and biological aspects into an appropriate sphere.”54
At this point, other approaches to Catholic marriage counseling had
been thwarted because of the limitations that the National Socialists
placed on the activities of the Catholic Church and its organizations. But
the Frauenbund and Catholic marriage counselors valued their methodology highly enough to continue their work, strongly believing that marriage-counseling work that focused on eugenic parameters was insufficient to address the marital needs of German men and women. If, by
1937, Beckmann had to note that Catholic marriage counseling was in
decline, this comment was not made in resignation, but rather intended
as a rallying cry to do better. The future, so argued Beckmann, lay in
expanding on the success of the existing services that combined Catholic
marriage counseling with Catholic matchmaking services.55 Even in
decline the female leadership of Catholic marriage counseling sought
ways to rejuvenate the concept so they could extend their ability to offer
Catholic marriage counseling.
53. Bericht über die Eheberaterinnen-Konferenz am 12. und 13.12.33, Köln 16.
Dezember 1933, AKDFB 1-110-2: “in der von Frauen geführten katholischen Eheberatung
der Mensch in seinen Nöten, (und) Bedrängnissen und Zweifeln angesprochen wird.”
54. Tätigkeitsbericht der Geschäftsstelle des Reichsausschusses für Katholische Eheberatung über das Jahr 1934–35, p. 3, ADCV 349.4, Fasz. 01, Abt. 0123: “die Überbetonung
der rein-natürlichen und biologischen Belange in die richtige Sphäre zu leiten.”
55. Besprechung des Reichsausschusses katholische Eheberatung in Altenberg, am 7.
Juli 1937, Cologne July 17, 1937AKDFB 1-110-2. With an ever-increasing focus on matchmaking, some Catholic marriage-counseling services continued their work into fall 1938 and
possibly later. See Bericht über die Besprechung am 2. Juli 38 in Köln, Cologne, July 9, 1938,
AKDFB 1-110-3 and Bericht über die Besprechung am 4. Oktober 1938 in Köln, Cologne,
October 5, 1938, AKDFB 1-110-3.

ANETTE LIPPOLD

71

Catholic marriage counseling, then, provides an excellent case study
for examining not as much the extent of the presence of eugenic ideas, but
assessing the relative importance of such ideas. Adding to current research
that has conclusively shown that the Catholic Church was not a bulwark
against eugenics, this article shows that, although eugenic ideas might have
been pervasive in the German Catholic Church, not all Catholic organizations agreed that such ideas ought to be given a dominant role in all aspects
of their work. In the case of marriage counseling, conflict played out on
two interrelated levels: the primary nature of marriage counseling and the
role of women in the field. From its inception, the Catholic Frauenbund
and Catholic women dominated the field of Catholic marriage counseling.
Their counseling work focused on providing emotional support and spiritual guidance as well as advice on obtaining material assistance. That is not
to say that the Frauenbund or Catholic marriage counselors rejected
eugenics. On the contrary, evidence suggests that they, like many others,
supported basic eugenic ideas. However, under pressure by German bishops, the Caritas, and leading Catholic eugenicists to hand over Catholic
marriage counseling to medically trained professionals and to change the
focus of the counseling work to implementing eugenic ideas, the Frauenbund and Catholic marriage counselors resisted. From the Frauenbund
perspective, women’s unique, holistic approach to marriage counseling
offered more important benefits than a focus on eugenics could achieve.
The Frauenbund and female Catholic marriage counselors fought to preserve their counseling work even when the Weimar policies that had
prompted the creation of Catholic marriage-counseling services had been
eliminated and a system of eugenic education for marital partners had been
instituted.
Hence, German Catholic marriage counseling of the late 1920s and
1930s shows the continuous efforts of the Frauenbund to fashion opportunities for women to make their unique contribution to society. The resistance to the plan for eugenic-dominated Catholic marriage counseling did
not signal a rejection of eugenic ideas, but rather, showed that other considerations could supersede the implementation of such ideas. Catholic
marriage counseling illustrates that, although the Frauenbund drew “nearer
to the church hierarchy and congregations, [and was] more cooperative in
regard to working with clerical organizations and more conservative,” it did
not lose sight of its goal of representing the interests of Catholic women.56

56. Sack, Zwischen religiöser Bindung, p. 321: “kirchen- und pfarrnäher, [und war] kooperativer in Bezug auf die Zusammenarbeit mit den klerikalen Verbänden und konservativer.”

Archbishop Francis J. Spellman’s
Visit to Wartime Rome
GERALD P. FOGARTY*
Francis J. Spellman (1889–1967), archbishop of New York and later
cardinal, was a friend of Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), with
whom he worked in Rome (1929–33). As auxiliary bishop of Boston
(1932–39), he had contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding possible diplomatic relations between the United States and the
Holy See. He had closer relations with Roosevelt after his appointment
to New York and as Military Ordinary. His visit to U.S. troops in the
European theater in 1943 was extended, at the pope’s request, to
include the Vatican. Afterward, he met Winston Churchill and other
Allied leaders.
Keywords: Churchill, Winston; de Gaulle, Charles; Pius XII,
Pope; Spellman, Francis J., Cardinal

I

n the archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, one
file for the 1930s and 1940s is unique, for it alone bears a person’s
name—“Monsignore Spellman.”1 The file begins in 1936 when Commendatore Guido Segre, the Italian consul in Boston, wrote to Fulvio
Suvich, the Italian ambassador to the United States, to nominate Francis
Spellman, then an auxiliary bishop of Boston, for the award of “Grand
Official of the Crown of Italy.” Segre noted that Spellman had earlier
worked for some years at the Vatican and, “during a moment of tension”
in 1931, had transported Pope Pius XI’s condemnation of fascism, “Non
abbiamo bisogno,” out of Italy to be published in Paris. The consul’s proposal, moreover, coincided with the negotiations of Spellman, among
others, to arrange for Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of
state, to visit the United States.

*Father Fogarty is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Religious Studies and History
in the University of Virginia, email: gpf@virginia.edu. Unless otherwise indicated, translations have been provided by the author.
1. Rome, Archives of the Ministero affari esteri, Farnesina [referred to hereafter as Farnesina], Pacco 193–B-77: Stati Uniti, Spellman.

72

GERALD P. FOGARTY

73

Early in October 1936, Pacelli began a month-long visit to the United
States that took him by train along the East Coast and by chartered plane
to the Midwest and West Coast. Spellman accompanied him throughout
his journey, often acting as what later would be called a “political handler”—shielding his charge from journalists and photographers. He may
have gained national limelight, but it cost him the friendship of Duchess
Genevieve Garvan Brady, who had invited the cardinal to be her house
guest for the month and who now eliminated the bishop from her will.
Spellman even had Pacelli as his guest at his parish in Newton Centre,
Massachusetts, and introduced him to his family—much to the chagrin of
Cardinal William O’Connell of Boston, who had nothing but disdain for
his auxiliary.2
But the highlight of the visit and one of its prime purposes was a visit
to President Franklin D. Roosevelt a few days after his election to a second
term. Spellman had arranged the meeting through Joseph P. Kennedy, a
friend of the president and father of future president John F. Kennedy.
One topic they discussed was the establishment of some type of diplomatic
relations between the Holy See and the United States, an issue on which
Spellman had been working since 1933.3 The Italian foreign office placed
the reports of Pacelli’s American visit and of Spellman’s later acceptance of
the Italian award in the bishop’s file. The attention given by the Italian
government to a relatively insignificant assistant bishop was indicative of
its evaluation of his future potential. The next entry was by far the most
extensive: Spellman’s visit to Rome early in 1943, a visit that drew the
attention of the Italian, German, British, and even the Soviet governments. By that time, Spellman was no longer an auxiliary bishop, but the
archbishop of New York, a position that then brought with it the office of
Military Ordinary (bishop for the American armed forces; see figure 1). He
now had the greatest access to Roosevelt of any bishop. His trip is a
vignette of the growing recognition by the Holy See of the importance of

2. For an overview of Pacelli’s visit, see Leon Hutton, “The Future Pope Comes to
America: Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli’s Visit to the United States,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 24,
no. 2 (2006), 109–30. A detailed file on the visit also exists in the Vatican archives; see Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano [hereafter referred to as ASV], Apostolic Delegation to
the United States [hereafter referred to as DAUS], V. 194 Pacelli Visit.
3. See Gerald P. Fogarty, Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965
(Stuttgart, 1982; Collegeville, MN, 1985), pp. 248–49. The material on the possibility of
diplomatic relations with the United States, beginning in 1934, is in ASV, DAUS, V. Pos.
178. For a contrary view arguing that Pacelli and Roosevelt discussed the danger of communism rather than diplomatic relations, see Charles R. Gallagher, Vatican Secret Diplomacy:
Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII (New Haven, 2008), p. 87.

74

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

FIGURE 1. Archbishop Francis J. Spellman views bomb damage with U.S military
personnel in Sfax, Tunisia, April 1943. Photograph by Nick Parrino. Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction no. LC-USW3033171-E.

the United States, even though it was a republic with religious pluralism—
something new for the Vatican.
On September 4, 1938, Cardinal Patrick Hayes of New York died.
Rumors immediately began circulating that Spellman was a candidate for
the see. On the day of Hayes’s death, Spellman recorded in his diary “the
battle is certainly starting soon but with all the opposition I believe it is
impossible.”4 Even at this early date, he knew he was a contender for the
nation’s most important see and understood its relationship to the Vatican’s desires for closer relations with the United States.
Spellman, however, was not the only one working for closer relations
between the United States and the Vatican. Although Spellman’s star was
rising, Roosevelt’s closest acquaintance in the hierarchy was Cardinal
George Mundelein of Chicago. Mundelein was not unacquainted with
4. Yonkers, NY, Archives of the Archdiocese of New York [hereafter referred to as
AANY], Spellman Diary, Sept. 4, 1938.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

75

controversy. In May 1937, he drew the wrath of the German government
when he called Adolf Hitler an Austrian “paper hanger and a poor one at
that.”5 Pacelli not only refused to reprimand Mundelein or demand that he
apologize but also informed the German government that it was the Nazi
persecution of the Church that led to Mundelein’s statement. In protest,
the German government withdrew its ambassador.6
Mundelein presided over Hayes’s funeral on September 9, 1938, after
which he discussed both diplomatic relations and the New York post with
Spellman, who also was in attendance.7 A short time later, he went to the
Eucharistic Congress in New Orleans to which he had been appointed
papal legate. On October 26, he stayed overnight at the White House
before heading for New York and his ship to Rome where he would report
on the congress. Roosevelt did everything possible to impress on the Italian
and German governments that the cardinal enjoyed his government’s
approval; German newspapers reported that Mundelein would announce
the establishment of diplomatic relations as Roosevelt’s reward to
Mundelein for delivering the Catholic vote in 1936.8 Although
Mundelein’s denials left the impression that recognition of the Holy See
by the United States was indeed part of his mission, the archival evidence
is unclear on whether he discussed that issue or the New York succession
with the pope.
On February 10, 1939, Pius XI died. Cardinal O’Connell, Spellman’s
ordinary, managed to reach the brief conclave in time to participate in the
election of Pacelli as Pius XII—for the previous two conclaves, the cardinal
arrived after the election of the new pope. In an unprecedented gesture,
Roosevelt named Kennedy, then U.S. ambassador to the Court of St.
James, as his personal representative for the coronation. With the election
of Pacelli, Spellman obtained the most important Roman patron possible.
On April 12, he received his official appointment as archbishop of New
York.9 The Italian government duly noted his experience in Rome and

5. New York Times, May 20, 1937, 1.
6. Vatican City, Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari, Segretaria dello
Stato [hereafter referred to as AA, EE, SS], America, 1937–1938, Pos. 247 P.O., fasc. 88. For
the most recent account of this episode, based on the newly opened Vatican Archives, see
Robert Trisco, “The Holy See and Cardinal Mundelein’s Insult of Hitler, 1937,” Pius XI and
America, ed. Charles R. Gallagher (Vienna, 2012), pp. 151–91.
7. AANY, Spellman Diary, Sept. 9–10, 1938.
8. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 253–54.
9. Ibid., p. 257.

76

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

known sympathy for the Italian people.10 Spellman’s sympathy for the Italian people, however, did not extend to their government.
In October 1939, Mundelein died. The mantle of his influence on
Roosevelt now passed to the younger man in New York. Within a few
months of taking office, Spellman was working with Roosevelt on establishing some formal contact with the Vatican. On Christmas Eve 1939, the
president announced that he was appointing Myron C. Taylor, chairman
of the U.S. Steel Corporation, as his personal representative to Pius XII—
a substitution for formal diplomatic relations that would have needed the
Senate’s approval.11 One of Taylor’s tasks during his first visit to the pope
in February 1940 was to attempt to keep Italy from allying with Germany,
a U.S. policy that coincided with that of the Vatican. Overtures from both
Roosevelt and Pius XII to Mussolini, however, were unsuccessful as Italy
entered the war on June 10, 1940, as Germany’s ally.12 By the summer, Il
Regime Fascista was attacking Spellman for being the “agent of Jews in
America.” Through the money he sent to the Vatican, the journal charged,
he encouraged the Holy See’s antifascist attitude and created an alliance
between the Church and the Jews.13 Although Spellman made a formal
protest about the article to the Italian consul in New York, the fascist journal continued its attacks for several more weeks on Spellman, the Osservatore Romano, and the Holy See.14 Whatever had been the original attitude
of the Italian government toward Spellman, it now saw him as one of the
strongest antifascist churchmen in the United States.
On September 17, 1942, Taylor returned to Rome for a nine-day visit.
In his first of three audiences with the pope, Taylor presented two documents. In the first, he noted that the purpose of his visit was to explain that
the United States was waging war against the Nazis and the Japanese, but
had no enmity for the Italian people. He presented the second document
in his own name, but, in fact, it was drafted by Archbishop Edward
Mooney of Detroit, chairman of the administrative board of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC); Bishop Joseph Hurley of St.
10. Farnesina, Pignatti to minister, Rome, Apr. 24, 1939.
11. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 259–63. See also 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.
12. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 264–65.
13. Maglione to Cicognani, Sept. 3, 1940, Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à La
Seconde Guerre Mondiale [hereafter referred to as ADSS], ed. Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini,
Robert Graham, and Burkhart Schneider, 11 vols. (Vatican City, 1965–81), IV:135–36.
14. Maglione to Cicognani, Vatican, Sept. 26, 1940, ADSS, p. 163.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

77

Augustine, Florida; and Monsignor Michael J. Ready, general secretary of
the NCWC—Spellman’s name was noticeably absent, since he had little
sway with the NCWC. Approved by Sumner Welles, the undersecretary
of state, it pointed to the similarities between papal pronouncements and
American objectives and pledged that the United States would pursue the
war until the Axis collapsed. In short, it seemed to anticipate the demand
for an “unconditional surrender” that Roosevelt and Churchill would propose at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. In audiences with the
pope and other Vatican officials, Taylor also protested the deportation of
French Jews and Nazi brutality, argued that the Soviet Union would grant
religious toleration if it were admitted to the family of nations, and sarcastically countered the plea to spare civilian populations in Italian and
German cities by showing photographs of the effect of German bombing
of London and Warsaw. In replying to Taylor’s second document, the
pope relied on Vincent McCormick, S.J., an American living at the Jesuit
curia. The reply stated that the pope had “never thought in terms of peace
by compromise at any cost.”15 Behind the Vatican argument for sparing
civilian populations was the question of sparing Rome. On December 7,
Spellman discussed the issue with Roosevelt, but recognized that the
United States could make no guarantee of sparing Rome.16
But there was another issue threatening Vatican-American rapport.
Although the Holy See had given reluctant approval to the extension of
Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union in summer 1941, it balked at signing the
Allied statement in December 1942 that condemned Nazi atrocities against
Jews, given the emerging evidence for these practices. Pius XII explained
that the Vatican could not sign such a statement without also condemning
the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union, one of the Allied nations.17
In the meantime, Spellman, in his role as Military Ordinary, made
plans to visit American troops abroad. Roosevelt, however, asked Spellman
to postpone his trip until Roosevelt returned from Casablanca. On February
4, 1943, the two met at the White House, and Roosevelt promised to place
at Spellman’s disposal all the resources of the armed forces. The next day,

15. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 284–86, 291; for Hurley’s role in drafting the memorial, see
Gallagher, Hurley, pp. 136–39.
16. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 288–89.
17. For the text of the Allied statement, see New York Times, Dec. 18, 1942, 1.
Tittmann referred to his conversation with the pope in his letter to Hull, Dec. 30, 1942, in
Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers 1943 (Washington, DC, 1964),
II:912.

78

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

Mussolini removed Count Galeazzo Ciano as foreign minister and named
him ambassador to the Holy See. As McCormick recorded in his diary, an
Italian sentiment for peace was growing by this stage.18 On February 6,
Cardinal Luigi Maglione, secretary of state, cabled Spellman asking him to
come to Rome. Roosevelt gave his approval to the Roman trip and had the
State Department arrange for Carlton J. H. Hayes, the ambassador to
Spain, to arrange with Italian authorities for a safe-conduct.19 As will be
seen, however, for reasons that remain unknown, the State Department
failed to notify its representative at the Vatican, Harold Tittmann.
Spain was one of several places where American and Vatican diplomatic policy coincided. General Francisco Franco had received substantial
aid from Hitler during the Spanish Civil War. Now both the Vatican and
the United States wanted to keep him from joining the Axis. Straining
relations between the United States and Spain was the American alliance
with the Soviet Union. Perhaps to prove that the alliance did not mean
American sympathy with communism, Roosevelt had appointed Hayes, a
Catholic and renowned professor of history at Columbia University, as
ambassador. At the same time, incidentally, the Holy See named Gaetano
Cicognani as nuncio to Spain; he was the brother of Archbishop Amleto
Cicognani, the apostolic delegate to the American hierarchy. Gaetano had
been the nuncio to Austria, where he was in close touch with the American
chargé d’affaires and voiced his strong opposition to Cardinal Theodor
Innitizer’s initial support of the Anschluss.
On February 9, Spellman left New York by clipper, heading for
Bermuda and Lisbon, amid rumors that he was carrying a secret message
from Roosevelt to open negotiations with Italy. After an overnight stay in
Lisbon, he arrived in Madrid on February 12. He visited Hayes and
received an invitation to meet Franco. He reported to Roosevelt that any
residual sympathy on the part of Franco and the Spanish for the Axis was
due to fear of communism. He pointed out to Franco that the Soviet Union
had signed the Atlantic Charter and had no desire to expand its territory or
impose its government on any nation. Although Spellman was a bit naive
in his assessment of Soviet intentions, no one could have been more useful
to Roosevelt than a Catholic archbishop to convince Franco to remain neutral. Franco still held out hope for a negotiated settlement between the Axis
18. James Hennesey, “American Jesuit in Wartime Rome: The Diary of Vincent A.
McCormick, S.J. (1942–1945),” Mid-America: An Historical Review, 56 (1974), 35–38.
19. Cicognani to Maglione, Washington, Feb. 6, 1943, ADSS, VII:218; Feb. 7, 1943,
p. 221.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

79

and the Allies, but Spellman noted the impossibility of such an approach
after Roosevelt and Winston Churchill’s Casablanca declaration regarding
unconditional surrender. The archbishop also strongly protested the proGerman and Italian slant in Spanish newspapers.20
During his trip, Spellman sent a series of letters, addressed to “Dear
Friends.” Some resembled travelogues, such as his description of his visit to
the Escorial and Toledo. Others contained detailed information on his conversations such as the one with Franco. Unfortunately, the one recounting
his eleven days in Rome fell under the first category; that is, he wrote in
broad generalities. On February 12, the Italian government received its first
official notice of Spellman’s impending arrival when Maglione requested
that Ciano obtain permission for Spellman to stay at the villa of the College
of Propaganda Fide, located on the Janiculum outside the Vatican.21 Spellman, however, wrote his friends that he stayed at the “American College on
the Janiculum,” a piece of property purchased some years before as the site
for the new building for the college that would be erected after World War
II. There was already a residence, the Casa San Giovanni.22 Not every Italian official was in favor of the visit. Brigadier General Cesare Ame, in
charge of the secret police, saw no reason to grant permission, since such a
visit fell under neither the Lateran Treaty nor Concordat that provided for
visits by cardinals or diplomats.23 But the government decided otherwise.
The Italian ambassador to Spain was told to issue the necessary safe-conduct. Spellman was to travel from Madrid to Barcelona, then fly to Rome
on February 17; significantly, the minister of the interior had decided it was
preferable not to have the “customary escort” ride in Spellman’s car in
Rome, but “discreetly follow in another automobile.”24 Due to bad weather
20. New York, NY, Hayes Papers, Columbia University [hereafter referred to as Hayes
Papers], Box 3, Spellman account of meeting with Franco, Feb. 16, 1943 (copy). See also
Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 291–92.
21. Farnesina, nota verbale, Feb. 12, 1943; nota verbale, Maglione to Ciano, Feb. 16,
1943; Ciano to Maglione, Rome, Feb. 17, 1943.
22. Hayes Papers, Box 3, Spellman to “Dear Friends,” Feb. 28, 1943. It is possible that,
because of the exigency of the war, title to this American property was temporarily conveyed
to Propaganda Fide.
23. E.U.R., Italy, Archivio Centrale dello Stato [hereafter referred to as ACS], Ministero Interno–Direzioni generale pubblica sicurezza, A 16 Cesare Ame, Brig Gen and Capo
servizio, Comando Supremo S.I.M, to Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of Interior, Feb. 14,
1943.
24. Farnesina, [Illegible] to Ciano, n.d.; Ciano to Maglione, Rome, Feb. 15, 1943
(copy): “Si aggiunge inoltre, ad ogni buon fine, che il R. Miistero dell’Interno è stato richiesto
di disporre perchè la consueta scorta dall’aeroporto di arrivo alla Città del Vaticano non
prenda posto nella vettura dell’Archivescovo, ma segua discretamenta in altro automobile.”

80

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

and mechanical difficulties with the plane, however, Spellman’s departure
for Rome was delayed until February 20.
In Rome, according to a police report, Spellman landed at 1:40 p.m.
and was accompanied by Emmanuele Clarizio, an official of the Secretariat
of State. Waiting for him at the airport was an old friend, Enrico Galleazzi—Roman agent for the Knights of Columbus, engineer of the sacred
palace, and close friend of Pius XII. Also at the airport were Monsignor
Egidio Vagnozzi, who had a position in the Secretariat of State and was a
former member of the apostolic delegation in Washington; Joseph
McGeough, a priest of New York who worked in the Oriental Congregation; Walter Carroll, a priest of Pittsburgh who had succeeded Spellman at
the Secretariat of State; and Monsignor Primo Principi, a curial official.
The two Americans would be Spellman’s housemates during his sojourn.
Other members of the welcoming party were the Spanish minister to the
Holy See, the first secretary of the Embassy of Spain to the Quirinal, and
the Portuguese chargé d’affaires to Italy. Spellman was obviously receiving
the red-carpet treatment. Ten minutes after arriving, he was escorted, discreetly, to St. Peter’s for a brief visit and then to the Janiculum.25
Unfortunately, Spellman confided neither to his diary nor to his official biographer (Robert I. Gannon, S.J.) what he discussed during his
visit.26 The Italian and British archives, however, provide enough information to fill in much of the story. The Italian police reports, moreover, frequently noted that Galleazzi accompanied Spellman on his visits to and
from the Vatican. Given his closeness to the pope, his presence on so many
occasions was sufficient to attract attention.
Spellman’s trip was cloaked with secrecy that caused speculation.
Tittmann, Taylor’s assistant who had the title of chargé d’affaires and lived
at the Vatican, was not notified of Spellman’s visit until February 18.27
After the archbishop’s arrival in Rome, the British Foreign Office sought
to obtain other information. On February 25, it cabled its embassy in
Washington, D.C., asking if there was reason to suppose that “special significance attaches to the visit of Archbishop Spellman to the Vatican.”28 As
the Foreign Office awaited a response from Washington, it received a mes25. ACS, 097-R, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Riservato, Spellman, Feb.
20, 1943, phonegram from Questura di Roma.
26. Robert I. Gannon, The Cardinal Spellman Story (Garden City, NY, 1962), p. 204.
27. Hennesey, “McCormick,” pp. 40–41.
28. Kew, Public Records Office [hereafter referred to as PRO], UK National Archives,
Foreign Office [hereafter referred to as FO] 37546—File 1688, no. 2.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

81

sage from Sir D’Arcy Osborne, British minister to the Holy See, who did
“not think there is any truth in any of the fantastic stories in circulation”
about Spellman’s visit. He, too, reported that Tittmann had “received no
information from his Government about the visit.” Osborne then added
his own speculations, some of them a bit creative:
Monsignor Spellman came to Europe in his capacity of Ordinary to the
Forces on his way to North Africa where he is to visit American troops.
He took occasion before proceeding to Africa to go to Madrid, and
thence he was summoned here by the pope. This seems quite natural: he
is an old friend of the pope and he is the first American Bishop His Holiness has had the opportunity of seeing for three years. It is also possible
that the Pope desired to create him a Cardinal in Petto.
Monsignor Spellman in his conversations here seems to be emphasising [sic] the power of the American people in their determination to
achieve complete victory, and his visit may therefore be helpful.29

As will be seen, however, Osborne would soon change his mind regarding
the helpfulness of some of Spellman’s conversations.
In the meantime, the Foreign Office finally received a reply from
Edward Wood, Viscount Halifax and British ambassador to the United
States. State Department Undersecretary Welles, he reported, “disclaimed
the idea that Spellman’s visit had any significance.” Roosevelt, he continued,
“only heard of the visit when Spellman told him. The President told Roman
Catholic circles to keep in touch with the Vatican in order to keep the latter
informed about American opinion.” As Wood’s telegram passed through the
Foreign Office in London, several officials who read it concluded that there
was no need to invite Spellman to London, for it “might exaggerate the
importance of the visit.”30 They would soon change their position.
Italian authorities, meanwhile, had Spellman under surveillance, as
they were convinced that his mission had some political or diplomatic purpose. Although the reports of the agent for public security are incomplete
and are missing for some days, the Italian authorities tracked Spellman’s
movements from the Janiculum to the Vatican and back and noted visitors
to his residence. Although the police official recorded that Spellman was
the guest of Tittmann on February 22 (George Washington’s birthday),31

29. Ibid., no. 6. Osborne, Feb. 25, 1943, transmitted from Berne on Mar. 1, 1943.
30. Ibid., nos. 7–9.
31. ACS, Ministero Interno–Direzioni generale pubblica sicurezza, A 16, Pro-memoria, Feb. 22, 1943.

82

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

he wrote nothing about the supposed visit of Prince Erwin Lobkowicz,
representative of the puppet Croatian state in Rome. Nor did he record any
visits of highly placed Italian dignitaries who, according to Lobkowicz’s
companion, had left calling cards on March 2.32 In his letter to his friends
written after his departure from Rome, Spellman provided few specifics,
but did report that he dined with or received visits from most cardinals resident in Rome. In addition, he met with most of the generals of religious
orders that had houses in the Archdiocese of New York. He noted also that
he “was able to care for many matters which for months have been waiting
a solution.” He described the reception at Tittmann’s residence alluded to
by the police official. He noted that all the Latin American diplomats were
present; that he later had dinner with Hildebrando Accioly, the Brazilian
ambassador to the Holy See and dean of the diplomatic corps; and that he
visited the other diplomats accredited to the Holy See.33 Presumably he
meant the other Allied diplomats who were resident inside the Vatican.
But Spellman was under observation by another agent who reported to
a certain Dr. Carlucci at the Palazzo Venezia, who submitted a report to
Mussolini on March 7—three days after Spellman’s departure. This agent
seems to have had more accurate information from inside the Vatican. On
February 27, he noted that, in view of Spellman’s friendship with both Pius
XII and Roosevelt, his visit ought to be seen as part of an effort to conclude
some type of “compromise between Italy and the United States with England.”34 The next day, the agent noted that Spellman had met with the
pope four times, but the overall purpose for his visit to Rome was
unknown. He suggested that Spellman was following through on Taylor’s
visit the previous September and that the pope wanted to know the concessions made by Great Britain and the United States to the Soviet Union.
The pope was concerned at the length to which the Allies were willing to
allow the Soviet Union and Bolshevism to dominate Europe.35
In Carlucci’s subsequent report to Mussolini, he added more details.
The visit, he wrote, was circumscribed with the “most rigorous and
32. Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (Boston, 1970), pp. 371–73. Since there is no
police report for March 2, it is difficult to determine the accuracy of Lobkowicz’s report. It
seems highly unlikely, however, that Italian officials would have met Spellman at his residence.
33. Hayes Papers, Box 3, Spellman to “Dear Friends,” Feb. 28, 1943.
34. ACS, 097-R, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Riservato, Spellman, Feb.
27, 1943. Efforts by the author and Giovanni Coco of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano have
failed to find any further identification for Dr. Carlucci, whose name does not appear in any
of the published lists of Fascist Party officials.
35. Ibid., Feb. 28, 1943.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

83

reserved diplomacy.” In the ambiance of the Vatican, Spellman’s long daily
talks with the pope “without any formality of etiquette” gave his mission “a
great importance and an inarguably political character.” Carlucci inferred
that Spellman clearly came as a representative of Roosevelt, who preferred
to use the archbishop’s relationship with the pope rather than sending
Taylor back on an “official” mission. In a confusing section, Carlucci went
on to state that obviously the visit was not “displeasing to the Italian government,” which could have prevented it since Spellman was neither a cardinal nor a diplomat (officials who were guaranteed access to the Holy See
by the Lateran accords); yet, the evidence was clear that the Italian government had authorized Spellman’s visit. Newspapers had conjectured, Carlucci continued, that the mission pertained to relations between the Holy
See and Washington, with which Spellman had been so actively involved.
Within the Vatican there was speculation that Spellman’s mission was
“analogous to that of Taylor the previous September” and was, therefore,
“connected with the actual international political situation which offers
some opening to a partial compromise solution.” In particular, Carlucci
thought the visit stemmed from the Casablanca conference and was related
to “recent manifestations favorable to Russia from various spokesmen of
the United States Catholic world, among whom were certain professors at
the University of Notre Dame.” The writer probably had in mind Francis
E. McMahon, professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, who took part in
the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship in New York early in
November 1942. According to Carlucci, the Vatican was particularly concerned about such manifestations, and one of Spellman’s tasks was “to
induce the pope to establish normal diplomatic relations with Russia.”
Despite the far-fetched nature of such a proposal, Carlucci was convinced
that Spellman would be the “bearer of secret documents,” since the archbishop was planning to stay in Lisbon at the Hotel Avie, a “covo di spie”
(den of spies). Carlucci concluded that Spellman’s visit also had to be
placed in the context of Ciano’s transfer to the Holy See. He further
believed that Ciano and Spellman probably met in secret. In any event,
Spellman’s visit had also “alarmed” the German ambassadors to the Holy
See and Italy, “who try to follow with great attention his diplomatic activity.” Vatican officials, furthermore, said that “Germany greatly fears a separation of Italy from the Axis.” As a result of this anticipated scenario,
Joachim von Ribbentrop was soon to arrive in Rome to acquire more information on Spellman’s visit.36 Although Ribbentrop did visit Rome shortly

36. Ibid., Carlucci report, Mar. 8, 1943: “L’arrivo del prelate al Vaticano ha messo in
allarme le ambasciate germaniche presso la S. Sede e press il Quirinale, che cercano di seguire

84

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

before Spellman’s departure, there is no extant documentation that Spellman was a topic of his conversations.
In the meantime, Ciano’s presentation of his credentials as ambassador to the Holy See had been delayed. Whether or not he actually met with
Spellman is unknown, but he did add some additional details about Spellman’s visit. Halfway through Spellman’s visit, he reported from a Vatican
source that the archbishop came with two purposes, one international and
the other internal. On the one hand, his visit was consistent with Taylor’s
earlier one and was meant to calm the pope “about the danger that the
USSR would represent in Europe.” On the other hand, he was to counter
the tendencies, particularly among Irish Americans, toward neutrality and
Anglophobia (Spellman’s parents were Irish immigrants).37
After Spellman’s departure, however, Ciano treated the significance of
his visit more lightly. That the archbishop met five times with the pope
and with other civil and ecclesiastical officials of the Vatican, he said,
stemmed from his ten-year service in Rome. From Vatican contacts such
as Maglione and Domenico Tardini (the substitute secretary of state for
extraordinary affairs), Ciano learned that the Holy See had a great concern
for the Church in the United States, since Pius XII thought “the mass of
Polish, French and German Catholics would emerge from this war prostrate and mortified” and saw “especially in Italian and American Catholicism the basis for a possible renewal” of the world. The sole political issue
discussed by Spellman and Pius XII, he said, was for Spellman to convey
to the United States the “profound concern of the Holy See for the inhuman bombing of Italian cities and for the cruel threat held with constant
uncertainty of British propaganda, of a bombardment of the capital of the
Catholic world.” According to Ciano, Prince Carlo Pacelli—general counsel of the Vatican City State and the pope’s nephew—attended one papal
audience with Spellman that discussed the prevention of the bombing of
Rome and lasted for more than three hours. Ciano then quoted at length
a letter from his Vatican source about the nature of that discussion. His
source concluded that this question arose only between the Holy See and
the United States, because

con molta attenzione la di lui attività diplomatica. In Vaticano si dice che la Germania tema
molto un distacco dell’Italia dall’Asse.” On McMahon and the Congress of American-Soviet
Friendship, see New York Times, Nov. 8, 1942, 36. Shortly later, McMahon left Notre Dame
rather than submit his planned speeches to the administration.
37. Farnesina, Ciano to Foreign Ministry, Feb. 24, 1943: “di tranquillizzare il Pontefice
circa il pericolo che l’URSS rappresenterebe per l’Europa.”

GERALD P. FOGARTY

85

Great Britain has shown itself intractable. It is the United States that
until now has succeeded in restraining its allies whether in regard to the
Catholics of the United States itself or in regard to Latin America where
news of an aerial bombardment would have a disastrous effect.38

The bombing of Rome, however, was only one of several issues that Spellman probably discussed with the pope.
There was, however, another bone of contention between the Vatican
and Britain. The British viewed Italian nationals, regardless of their function, as potential enemy agents. From the apostolic delegation in London,
they expelled Monsignor Umberto Mozzoni. They then expelled Vatican
officials from other British-occupied territories, including Monsignor
Gustavo Testa, the apostolic delegate to Egypt and Palestine—a controversial move. Moreover, they incarcerated or expelled 450 Italian priests
and nuns in Egypt and Palestine. Osborne originally resisted these moves,
but was reluctantly forced to comply with his government’s policy.39 Spellman now became embroiled in this controversy.
On March 1, Osborne cabled Berne, stating that “I am sorry to say
Monsignore Spellman has swallowed all Vatican grievances against His
Majesty’s Government … including the myth that anti-Catholicism
inspired our demands for the recall of Monsignore Testa etc.” Since Spellman was leaving Rome for North Africa and would proceed to Cairo,
Osborne recommended that
it would be very desirable to make every effort at Cairo to convince him
that the removal of Monsignore Testa and our other measures were fully
justified by security needs and were based upon ascertained facts. And
every effort should also be made to dispel the anti-Catholic legend.40

The Foreign Office immediately notified future prime minister Harold
Macmillan, who had broad-reaching powers over the Mediterranean as
resident minister in Algiers, to “avoid detailed discussion” with Spellman
and explain that “we cannot . . . run the risk of allowing persons of enemy

38. Ibid., Mar. 5, 1943: “La questione del bombardamento di Roma è attualmente
oggetto di colloqui della Santa Sede solo con gli Stati Uniti perche la Gran Bretagna si è
dimonstrata intrattabile. Sono gli Stati Uniti che finora sono riusciti a trattenere i loro alleati
sia per riguardo ai cattolici degli Stati Uniti stessi, sia per riguardo all’America Latina ove la
notizia di un bombardamento aereo di Roma avrebbe un effetto disastroso.”
39. Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (New York,
1986), pp. 187–89.
40. PRO, FO 37546–File 1688, no. 13: Osborne telegram, Mar. 1, 1943.

86

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

race, whether or not they enjoy Vatican citizenship, to occupy important
posts, from which they could exercise considerable influence and if inclined
do considerable harm.”41 The Foreign Office also notified the government
of India, to which Spellman was heading, of the problem.42
The British, however, were not the only ones concerned about Spellman’s visit to the pope. If nothing else, Spellman’s presence in Rome had
attracted international attention. Because of the number of times the archbishop was closeted privately with the pope, journalists speculated that the
American was involved in some kind of overture for the Vatican to mediate
for peace. This resulted in a flurry of diplomatic activity. Diego von
Bergen, the German ambassador to the Holy See, unexpectedly left Rome
on February 27 for Berlin. Ciano’s presentation of his credentials as
ambassador, moreover, was further postponed, apparently at the Italian
government’s initiative. On February 28, German foreign minister von
Ribbentrop arrived in Rome reportedly in an effort to replace Ciano with
an Italian ambassador to the Holy See who was more amenable to Axis
interests. Newspapers reported that he met with Maglione in the Vatican
and spoke at length with Spellman.43 He did, in fact, discuss at length the
tension with the Holy See over German policy in Poland,44 but it is highly
unlikely that he would have met with Spellman.
In the meantime, on March 3, Spellman had flown from Rome to
Seville. The Spanish government newspaper noted his arrival, he recorded,
and with the added note that U.S. consul John N. “Hamlin says this is a
first. He said I had done more for good relations between Spain and the
U.S.A. in 24 hours than any other in a period of months.”45 On March 4,
Spellman took the time to write Roosevelt. His only mention of the nature
of his discussions with the pope was to say that the pontiff continued to
express his gratitude for Taylor’s appointment. He did, however, detail the
general Italian situation. The Italian people, he said, continued to regard
Americans with friendship and actually hoped for an American liberation.
He reported that he had “received many letters which began ‘Caro
Nemico’” (Dear Enemy), but unfortunately he does not seem to have preserved them. “The Italians,” he continued, “especially appreciate the fact

41. PRO, FO 37546–File 1688, nos. 15–16: FO to Resident Minister, Algiers, March
10, 1943 (draft).
42. Ibid., no. 20: Secretary of State for India to Government of India, Mar. 19, 1943.
43. New York Times, Feb. 27, 1943, 1; Feb. 28, 1943, 2; Mar. 1, 1943, 5.
44. ADSS, III:742–52: Maglione to von Ribbentrop, Mar. 2, 1943.
45. Quoted in Gannon, Spellman, p. 204.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

87

that the Italian Nationals in America have not been treated as enemy
aliens.” Nevertheless, he continued, “the people are suffering tremendously”
with the selling of food and other commodities at inflationary prices. “The
anti-German feeling is very strong and deep,” he went on, and added:
ninety-nine percent of the Italians, in my opinion, would, if they could,
make peace tomorrow, and the only obstacles to peace that I see are Mussolini and the fact that if peace were obtained, then the Germans would
retaliate by bombing Rome.

No one in Italy, he asserted, “thinks that Italy can win the war, with the
exception of Mussolini.” To illustrate this, he repeated a story that a government prefect, seeking to flatter Mussolini, had greeted him with the
salutation “Vinceremo” (We will win). Mussolini replied, “Imbecile! abbiamo vinto!” (Idiot! We won!). Spellman did not address the Allied bombing of Italian cities in his letter. In a postscript, he suggested that Roosevelt
could show the letter to Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles, but it should be
destroyed afterward.46 The president obviously retained it.
From Seville, Spellman proceeded to Gibraltar to begin his visit of
American forces in North Africa. He arrived at the end of a major crisis
that jeopardized British-American relations. Awaiting his transportation
from Madrid to Rome, he learned on February 17 of Field Marshall Erwin
Rommel’s counterattack on General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of
the Anglo-American forces, and drive through the Kasserine Pass. The situation was critical until February 27, when Spellman was in Rome. On
February 22, King George VI expressed his dissatisfaction to Churchill
about leaving the North African political and military situation in American hands while the British dealt with Spain and Portugal so as to keep
them “friendly during the time the operation was going on.” He also feared
that American representatives had too much contact with the Vichy government and that, with the American defeat the week before, “we shall
have to do all the fighting there.” This, he concluded, would definitively
postpone the planned invasion of Sicily.47

46. Hyde Park, NY, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, PSF 185, Spellman to Roosevelt,
Seville, Mar. 4, 1943; see also Fogarty, Vatican, p. 293. Despite Spellman’s assertion that Italian nationals in the United States were not treated as enemy aliens, many Italians and Italian
Americans were severely restricted by the government; see Department of Justice Report to
the Congress of the United States, Nov. 2001. Retrieved on Dec. 10, 2013, from http://judiciary.house.gov/legacy/Italian.pdf.
47. Cambridge, UK, Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Churchill Papers,
Chartwell Trust, 20/92, nos. 19–20: George RI to Churchill, Buckingham Palace, Feb. 22, 1943.

88

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

Churchill defended his American allies. The American contact with
French officials in North Africa, he argued, did not make them pro-Vichy
but was intended to uphold General Henri Honoré Giraud and prevent an
“irruption” from General Charles de Gaulle who was hostile to the British.
As for the American defeat, he commented,
What a providential thing it was that I perpetually pressed for General
Eisenhower to take Command, as the defeat of the American Corps, if
it has been under a British general, would have given our enemies in the
United States a good chance to blaspheme.

But the prime minister had things on his mind other than North Africa
and revealed his attitude toward the decline of the British Empire by
attacking a later icon of nationalism and pacifism. “Old humbug Gandhi
is lasting much longer than we were assured was possible,” he wrote, “and
one wonders whether his fast is bona fide. I have sent a private telegram to
the Viceroy exhorting him to unflinching steadfastness.”48
By the time Spellman arrived in Algiers, however, the Allied forces
had regained the offensive. On March 8, he met Eisenhower and presented his letter of introduction from Roosevelt. Then, almost as though
he knew of Churchill’s sentiments, he had lunch as the guest of General
Giraud.49 For the next ten days, he said Mass for the troops and visited
hospitals. His presence in North Africa, however, drew the attention of
prominent political figures in Great Britain. Josiah Wedgwood, baron of
Barlaston and descendant of the famous china maker, included Spellman
in his March 17 speech in the House of Lords against another speaker’s
statement that there could be no negotiations with Hitler or any Nazi government but omitted mention of fascist governments. For Wedgwood,
Spellman’s stay in Spain and Italy raised the specter that Britain might
become a party to “the preservation of the [fascist] status quo in Italy, in
France, in Spain, in Portugal.”50 It was a bit of a reach, and Spellman
referred to it in his diary. He then recorded that he celebrated Mass for the
troops on St. Patrick’s Day and was in British General Harold Alexander’s
headquarters when he learned that Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, archbishop of
Westminster, had died. Although he had intended to visit the British Isles

48. Ibid., nos. 24–28: Churchill to George VI, Feb. 22, 1943.
49. AANY, Spellman Diary, Mar. 8, 1943; Gannon, Spellman, p. 205.
50. The Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, Official Report, Eighth Session of the
Thirty-Seventh Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 6 & 7
George VI (London, 1943), 2nd vol. of session, 1942–43, p. 719.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

89

later in his travels, he now decided to fly to England immediately. Due to
inclement weather, he was unable to leave until late on March 19 via a mail
plane. “It was awful,” he recorded, “cold & lumpy and I had no covering.
It was a long ride to England.”51
Making the arrangements for Spellman’s flight was Macmillan in
Algiers, who wished to avoid the damage that could result if Spellman
publicly addressed the situation of the imprisoned Italian missionaries.52
Reversing its earlier posture against the archbishop’s British trip, the
Foreign Office now approved the visit.53 As Spellman was on his way,
the Foreign Office busily prepared for his arrival. One official after
another recommended that Churchill meet him but first be carefully
briefed on the “alleged anti-Catholic attitude on the part” of the government. One added the note that Churchill or someone “as high as possible” should “say to him [Spellman] how greatly he touched us in June
1941 by offering a ‘Solemn Pontifical Mass for the suffering people of
Britain’ in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, N.Y.” But they also recognized the
need for caution. Since Osborne only suspected that Spellman had discussed the treatment of Italian ecclesiastics and the bombing of Rome
with Vatican officials and had not discussed these issues with Spellman
personally, it was recommended that, if the topics arose in conversation,
“they sd. be introduced as two topics in which we know the Vatican to be
greatly interested.”54
The draft of the briefing for Churchill summarized Osborne’s cable
reports and other “secret sources.” Since Osborne had recently received a
note from the Vatican stating that, if Rome were bombed, the pope would
“make a public protest,” he surmised that Spellman had discussed the issue
with the pontiff. The Foreign Office was certain that the archbishop
brought no assurances from Roosevelt, but “he himself must be expected
to share the Vatican’s views on this subject” and probably gave “it as his
own opinion that the reactions of American Catholics would be so strong
that the U[nited]. S[tates]. G[overnment]. would never in fact agree to the
city being bombed.” This may in fact have been the view of the United
States, but then, in language similar to later discussions on nuclear deterrence, the brief noted that the United States

51. AANY, Spellman Diary, Mar. 17–19, 1943.
52. PRO, FO 37546–File 1688, no. 23: Minister to FO, Mar. 18, 1943.
53. Ibid., no. 26: FO to minister, Mar. 18, 1943, copy distributed to War Cabinet.
54. Ibid., nos. 36–40: minutes on proposed visit, Mar. 19, 1943.

90

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME
have, however, agreed with us that whether or not we actually decide to
bomb Rome it is important that we should maintain the threat to do so,
and it has been suggested to the Secretary of State that he should inform
the U.S.G. that this is still our opinion.55

The brief then turned to Osborne’s report that “Spellman has been
convinced by the Vatican arguments for maintaining Italian ecclesiastics in
the Middle East and Abyssinia and that he shared the Vatican view that
our desire to get them removed is fundamentally anti-Catholic.” The Vatican was reluctant to act on British requests to remove Italian ecclesiastics
without “definite proof of anti-British activities,” which the government
did not feel obliged to produce. Repeating some of the arguments already
sent to Macmillan in Algeria, the brief merely noted “the risk of allowing
persons of enemy race, whether or not they enjoy Vatican citizenship, to
occupy important posts” and do potential harm to Allied interests.
Osborne also thought the Vatican would “try to exploit the great sympathy
for the Holy See and the Pope personally which unquestionably prevails at
the White House against the supposed lack of understanding and sympathy in Whitehall.” Osborne further believed Spellman had great influence
in Washington “in view of the Catholic vote in the U.S.,” which would “be
of great importance in the presidential elections next year.”56
The briefing draft for Churchill then made a proposal that was omitted
from the final version. Since Spellman would probably report to the Vatican
on his British visit, “it is therefore important both from the point of view of
our relations with the Vatican and to ensure that there is no divergence of
view between ourselves and the U.S.G., that Mgr. Spellman should be convinced that H.M.G. are not opposed to Catholicism as such.” Why this was
omitted from the final version is unclear, but both versions concluded with
the note that “Mr. Osborne thinks that Monsignor Spellman might be susceptible to flattery.” In this context, it was suggested that Churchill thank
him for the special Mass in St. Patrick’s in 1941.57
Spellman celebrated Mass in Westminster Cathedral for Cardinal
Hinsley on Sunday, March 21. Two days later, he attended the funeral and
gave one of the absolutions.58 The next day, he had lunch with Churchill
and his wife, Clementine. Churchill immediately wrote an account of the
visit for his cabinet. When Spellman was asked, “Are you a Short55. Ibid., nos. 41–42: Draft minute to the prime minister.
56. Ibid., nos. 42–43.
57. Ibid., nos. 43–44. See nos. 45–47 for the final version.
58. AANY, Spellman Diary, Mar. 21 and Mar. 23, 1943.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

91

Snorter?,” he “produced his credentials, which were in due form.”
Although there were other uses of the term, the Short-Snorters, in this
instance, derived from the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in the
North Atlantic. Shortly thereafter, Roosevelt sent Churchill about a dozen
new dollar bills that he and Harry Hopkins, one of his principal advisers,
had signed. Churchill and King George then signed them and returned
them to Roosevelt for his inner circle; thus Spellman, by producing the
appropriate credentials, was clearly a member of the circle. The “conversation,” Churchill continued, “proceeded with the utmost friendliness and
jollity.” Spellman complained only that the governor of Kenya obstructed
the transmitting of information about prisoners to the Vatican. Churchill
promised to look into the matter. The prime minister also promised that
the British “would not bomb Rome without talking it over with the President first, but there was no reason why the enemy should be relieved of
their anxiety on the point.” With this Spellman concurred. Churchill then
promised to do everything possible “to make the Catholic vote go straight
at the next Presidential election.”59
Spellman flatly denied the report that he held “the view that the British
were anti-Vatican and anti-Catholic.” In fact, he expressed his pleasure at
the government’s presence at Hinsley’s funeral and “the manifestations of
gratitude to this outstanding English Catholic.” Churchill got “the impression that he is a good friend.” Spellman, moreover, promised that on his
visit to Ireland, he would “not on any account go to stay with the Southern
Irish Government, and in the North he would stay at the American High
Command.” Since he was then returning to Africa, Churchill arranged
more comfortable transportation for him from Gibraltar and suggested to
the Foreign Office that the archbishop be “invited to hold a service and
preach a sermon” to any British Catholic troops in the area. He had not
brought up the issue of any “peace overtures by the Vatican,” but thought
Spellman would “be dead against them,” since “he is all for F.D.R. and a
fight to a finish.” Churchill concluded his report on Spellman that “he certainly compared very favourably with his British archiepiscopal opposite
numbers, but my adherence to the Protestant faith remained unshaken in
spite of this drawback.”60 Churchill followed up his report with a short
telegram to Roosevelt that stated, “I had a very pleasant talk at luncheon
yesterday with Archbishop Spellman, who is a worthy short snorter.”61

59. PRO, FO 37546–file 1688, no. 50: Churchill, “Interview with Archbishop Spellman, March 24, 1943,” dated Mar. 27, 1943.
60. Ibid., nos. 51–52.
61. Ibid., nos. 53: Churchill to Roosevelt, Mar. 25, 1943.

92

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

On April 1, the Foreign Office transmitted a summary of Churchill’s
account of his meeting to Osborne at the Vatican, with copies to the
embassy in Washington, Macmillan in Algiers, and Richard G. Casey
(minister of state in Cairo, former Australian ambassador to the United
States, and later governor general of Australia [1965–69]). The summary,
however, added a different account from Churchill’s original report. This
version stated that, although Churchill did not initiate any discussion
about the pope making any peace initiatives:
Spellman himself volunteered that the Pope had abandoned any hopes
that the Vatican could serve as an instrument for a negotiated peace . . .
[and] could not have been more emphatic in recording that the Pope
believed that it was in the interests of civilisation [sic] that the Axis
should be defeated.62

This information may have been derived not from Spellman’s interview with Churchill, but from a dinner conversation later that evening at
the residence of Brendan Bracken, minister of information. Also present
were Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, duke of Norfolk; Richard Law, parliamentary undersecretary of state; Bishop David Mathew, auxiliary of Westminster; and Archbishop William Godfrey, the apostolic delegate. Law
reported not only the remark about the papal decision not to pursue a peace
initiative but also another equally important one. In an episode unrecorded
in Spellman’s diary, Law said that Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle (the U.S.
ambassador to the governments in exile in London) had taken Spellman to
meet with de Gaulle and that Spellman had accused the general of placing
“personal considerations above the interests of France,” which was having
a negative effect on his reputation in both France and the United States.
He urged de Gaulle “to place himself at the disposal of General Giraud.”
As an analogy, he reportedly stated that “everyone in the United States
knew that General Alexander was a better general than General Eisenhower, but that did not prevent the first serving under and working in
unison with the second.”63
Spellman must have been quite garrulous at that dinner. Bracken
informed Sir Orme Sargent, an official of the Foreign Office, that he
learned another piece of information. Spellman said that, soon after he
arrived in Rome, the Italian Crown Prince Humberto asked if he could call

62. Ibid., nos. 54–55: FO to Osborne with copies to Washington, Algiers, and Cairo,
March 1943 (draft); no. 56: FO to Osborne, Apr. 1, 1943.
63. Ibid., no. 63: P. T. Grey to Sir Orme Sargent, Mar. 26, 1943.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

93

on him. Bracken reported that the archbishop, presuming such a visit
would be of a political nature and wishing “to avoid talking politics with an
enemy, … sent a polite refusal.”64
The British seemed pleased with Spellman’s visit, but were not quite
willing to share with all their allies the information gained from him. On
March 24, Jean Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to Britain, spoke to Sir
Alexander Cadogan, permanent undersecretary for foreign affairs, to find out
if the archbishop was working for a compromise peace on the pope’s behalf.
Cadogan, at this point, seems to have been unaware that Spellman and
Churchill actually met, but assured the ambassador that the British would not
accept any such initiative.65 Only on April 10 did Cadogan respond to Maisky
in writing that Spellman had come to London only to attend Hinsley’s
funeral, had not “been entrusted by the Pope with any mission of a political
nature,” and had discussed only ecclesiastical matters at the Vatican.66
In the meantime, Spellman continued his tour of the troops in the
British Isles. “Mons. Godfrey,” he recorded “is grateful for my visit as the
English authorities are showing him more consideration than formerly.”67
Although he kept his promise to Churchill not to stay with officials of the
Irish Free State, he did attend a state dinner given in his honor by President Eamon De Valera in Dublin.68 Returning to England, he left for
North Africa on April 8 to resume his journey that would take him
through the Mideast to India (see figure 2). This time, instructions to
British officials were quite different than those given only a month before.
British officials were now instructed to assist Spellman in any way possible.
As D. F. Howard of the Foreign Office informed Morley J. Clauson of the
India Office, “the fears expressed in our telegram to Algiers … have proved
largely groundless.” The government of India, in the meantime, had
received an application from Franciscan Bishop Giuseppe Angelo Poli of
Allahabad on behalf of interned Italian missionaries, who requested that
Spellman visit their camp. The British officials in India thought they
should bend the rules and allow the Spellman visit. The Foreign Office
concurred.69 Late in May, Spellman intervened on behalf of Italian and
64. Ibid., nos. 61–62: Bracken to Sargent, Mar. 26, 1943.
65. Ibid., no. 66: Cadogan, memo, Mar. 25, 1943.
66. Ibid., nos. 69–70: Cadogan to Maisky, Apr. 10, 1943 (copy).
67. AANY, Spellman Diary, Mar. 28, 1943.
68. Ibid., Mar. 31, 1943.
69. PRO, FO 37546–file 1688, nos. 91–92: Government of India, Home Department
to Secretary of State for India, Apr. 6, 1943; nos. 87–88: D. F. Howard to Morley Clauson,
Apr. 12, 1943.

94

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

FIGURE 2. Archbishop Francis J. Spellman with Corporal George Joseph Robinson (second from right) and other members of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Tunisia,
April 1943. Robinson had received his B.S. degree from Spellman at the Fordham
University commencement in 1937. Photograph by Nick Parrino. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, reproduction no. LC-USW3-033164-E.

German missionaries interned in Egypt and then took up the matter with
Roosevelt. Only in December did the president discuss the issue with
Churchill.70 By that time, the Italians had ceased to be a threat.
As Spellman was achieving only a certain degree of success in changing British policy toward interned Italian missionaries, the Italian press
portrayed the archbishop as an active agent for the Allies. On April 7,
1943, a photograph in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph showed
Spellman with the crew of a bomber. Il Messagero reprinted the photograph
with the information that the crew was about to bomb the civilian population of a town in Belgium. As the current Italian administration neared its
end, it tried to portray Spellman in particular and the Americans in general
as in favor of the bombing of civilians.71

70. Gannon, Spellman, pp. 209–11.
71. ACS, 097-R, Segreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Riservato, Spellman,
photo from the Daily Telegraph, Apr. 7, 1943.

GERALD P. FOGARTY

95

By the end of June, Spellman was in Nairobi, where he also dealt with
the problem of interned Italians. He sent Churchill a leopard skin “as a
token of my esteem and appreciation of many kindnesses. It is not, I may
add, any token of my ability as a marksman!”72 Churchill did not receive
the gift until September—when he had to pay duty on it. He thanked
Spellman for the “very fine specimen, and I am very glad to accept this gift
as a souvenir of our pleasant talk together.”73 On July 19, he was in South
Africa when he recorded in his diary: “Rome bombed!!!!”74 He immediately cancelled his plans to go to China and returned to New York.
The bombing of Rome was probably inevitable. On July 10, the combined forces of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain invaded
Sicily. A week later, Allied planes dropped leaflets on Rome calling in the
name of Roosevelt and Churchill for the Italian people to rise up against
fascism and Nazism. Two days later, bombers attacked the freight yards,
severely damaged the nearby church of San Lorenzo, and killed 1500
people in the neighborhood. Pius XII visited the site. On July 26, Mussolini resigned as premier. Marshall Pietro Badoglio formed a new government and began making overtures to Washington through the Vatican to
declare Rome an open city. On August 13, American planes again bombed
the city, this time hitting two churches. In the meantime, Badoglio began
negotiations for a surrender, which occurred on September 8, but German
troops then occupied Rome.75 Rome would not be liberated for another
eight months, and the war would continue for a year beyond that.
Spellman’s visit to wartime Rome provides a glimpse into the complex
relations between the United States and the Vatican during the war. From
the available evidence, the original purpose of Spellman’s trip was simply
to visit American troops. He received the pope’s summons to Rome in
light of the turmoil in the Italian government, represented by Ciano’s dismissal as foreign minister. A friend of pope and president, Spellman
enjoyed a position unequaled by any other American churchmen. To the
pope, he could explain the American intent on defeating fascism and
Nazism without any negotiation. To Franco and the pope, he could argue
that an alliance with the Soviet Union did not mean sympathy for communism. With Churchill, he could discuss the problem of interning Italian

72. Churchill Papers, 2/469 B 131: Spellman to Churchill, Nairobi [apostolic delegation], June 26, 1943.
73. Ibid., 132: Churchill to Spellman, Sept. 22, 1943.
74. AANY, Spellman Diary, July 19, 1943.
75. Fogarty, Vatican, pp. 295–303.

96

ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS J. SPELLMAN’S VISIT TO WARTIME ROME

missionaries when Italian sentiment was turning against Mussolini and
toward the Allies. Although he may not have been successful in his efforts
to gain the freedom of the internees, he did establish himself as the foremost spokesman for the Catholic Church in the English-speaking world.
Whether the pope was still considering a “compromise peace” at this stage
of the war is unknown. The pope’s experience of World War I would make
such an overture highly doubtful. Moreover, in this war, he had a trusted
lieutenant who, unlike Cardinal James Gibbons in 1917, did have direct
access to the president of the United States.
But the significance of Spellman’s role during World War II goes
beyond his efforts at mediation. The Vatican had long been suspicious of
republican government and religious pluralism. Its only experience of the
former began with the French Revolution and the European republics that
were inspired by it in the nineteenth century. These regimes all seemed to
embrace rationalism and anticlericalism. Religious pluralism smacked of
religious indifference to the European Catholic mind of the nineteenth
and early-twentieth centuries. During the 1930s and the war years, Pacelli
developed a new appreciation for the American republic, even with its toleration of all religions—an appreciation that would bind the Holy See and
the United States in a closer alliance during the cold war.

Book Reviews
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism. Edited by Julia A. Lamm.
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2013. Pp. xx, 651. $199.95. ISBN 978-14443-3286-5.)
Julia Lamm has assembled a valuable collection of forty articles by leading
scholars in this treasury of studies of (mainly) Christian mysticism. A lengthy and
expert introduction by Lamm leads to the first section: five articles on “Themes in
Christian Mysticism.” These include an exploration of the Song of Songs, gender,
Platonism, aesthetics, and heresy, which, although incisive and richly detailed,
seem somewhat randomly selected. The more explicitly historical sections include
scriptural and early Christian elements, late-ancient Christian (i.e., “Patristic”)
contributions (including Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Augustine, and St.
Benedict), eleven essays on medieval mystics and mysticism (the largest section),
and eight on Reformed traditions and “modernity” (including the twentieth century). The concluding section provides six articles on “Critical Perspectives” from
theology, epistemology, linguistics, and neuroscience, including brief examinations
of the social-scientific study of mysticism and interreligious aspects of the comparative study of mysticism, two excellent and heuristic contributions.
As with the introductory essays, much more could be said in this section and
elsewhere, but at more than 600 pages, much has been. Perhaps unavoidably in so
wide-ranging a compendium, some repetitiveness occurs, not least in the medieval
section. Topics include St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians; the Victorines; the Byzantine tradition; the principal Franciscans (Ss. Francis, Clare, and
Bonaventure) as well as the Spiritual Franciscans; the Nuns of Helfta; the Beguines
and the Low Countries (including Ruusbroec); the Rhineland tradition of Meister
Eckhart, Henry Suso, and Johannes Tauler; the English mystics of the fourteenth
century; Italian women mystics of the later Middle Ages; and Nicholas Cusa and
his era. Under the rubric of “Reformation and Modernity” are found an essay on
the Protestant reformers (mainly Martin Luther and John Calvin), the great Spanish mystics (mainly Ss. Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross),
the French “School,” Pietism, Russian mysticism, and five contributions that cover
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Despite its largely sequential organization and the emphasis on historical figures and movements, the volume is a semi-encyclopedic resource, not a history of
Christian mysticism on the order of the monumental series by Bernard McGinn,
The Presence of God (New York, 1991–), although McGinn’s presence is felt
97

98

BOOK REVIEWS

throughout. It is difficult to find an essay that does not appeal in one way or another
to his investigations, which have, quite rightly, set a very high watermark for comparative studies as well as history. However, there is no contribution by McGinn
himself, although several of his former students contribute to the collection.
Some muddle results from a lingering reluctance adequately to distinguish
religious experience from mystical experience—indeed, the whole matter of the
interpretation of experience versus textual analysis dogs the volume as a whole
despite Lamm’s strenuous effort to tilt the balance toward textual study. But mystical texts tend to refer to experience, and the circle remains unbroken. Here the
breakthrough work of William E. Hocking early in the twentieth century, particularly The Meaning of God in Human Experience (New Haven, 1912), would have
helped clarify the issue, just as closer attention to the seminal essay of Louis Bouyer
on the history of the word mysticism would have spared repeated forays into sometimes questionable etymological inquiries. Bouyer is at least noted several times in
passing. Hocking is never mentioned, nor are other pioneers of mystical study such
as William Inge, Josiah Royce, Georgia Harkness, and Msgr. Ronald Knox.
Samuel Terrien’s masterwork, The Elusive Presence (San Francisco, 1978), could
have been profitably consulted for insight into Hebrew and Christian scriptural
antecedents. The Jesuit writer William Johnston is also ignored. Surprisingly, the
development of the Holiness-Pentecostal movement was bypassed, as was the
manifestation of mystical exuberance by George Fox and the early Quakers, the
Shakers, Ranters, and other enthusiasts. But a single volume cannot include all possible subjects or references, and a scattering of absences does not detract from the
overall excellence of the contributions or the book as a whole.
A few infelicities of translation appear. Typographical errors are fortunately
rare. Inexplicably, however, the issuance of the 1329 papal bull In Agro Dominico,
in which eleven propositions of Eckhart were (erroneously, as it turned out) condemned by Pope John XXII, is attributed (p. 93) to his successor, Benedict XII,
who did not assume the papacy until 1334, an error rectified by Charlotte Radler
on page 340.
At a list price of nearly $200, the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism is too expensive for the average undergraduate or even graduate student as a
textbook, but it will become an important resource for professional study and
libraries for years to come.
Dominican University
River Forest, IL

RICHARD WOODS, O.P.

BOOK REVIEWS

99

Monasticon Carmelitanum: Die Klöster des Karmelitenordens (O. Carm.) in Deutschland von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Edeltraud Klueting,
T.O.Carm.; Stephan Panzer, O.Carm.; and Andreas H. Scholten, O.Carm.
[Monastica Carmelitana, tomus II.] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2012. Pp.
1032. €68,00. ISBN 978-3-402-12954-8.)
It is doubtful that many people will read every word of this book, but it will
be an invaluable reference work to anyone who is interested in any aspect of the history of the German Carmelites. The provinces of Upper and Lower Germany
(since 2013, a single province) commissioned in 2005 histories of all the Carmelite
houses situated within the current boundaries of the Federal Republic between the
arrival of the Carmelites in Cologne in 1256 and today. Fifty-five scholars worked
on the project. The first part covers fifty-eight houses from their foundation until
their dissolution in the Reformation or until their secularization in 1802–03. The
second deals with the twenty-three friaries that were refounded or established in
the modern period, mainly after World War II. Each entry includes extensive
archival and bibliographical sections about each foundation. The level of scholarship is high, and the amount of information is staggering.
It is hoped that someone will be inspired to tackle the numerous questions
raised by the book. Six colored maps show the distribution of the friaries at key
moments. The Carmelites founded only a few houses in Eastern Europe during the
late Middle Ages—for example, in Prague in 1347—and assigned them initially to
the province of Upper Germany. The delineation of the boundaries between the
German and Polish Dominican and Franciscan provinces proved highly controversial in the thirteenth century. Did the memory of these fights retard and limit the
expansion of the Carmelites in this region? There were no Carmelite friaries in
northern Germany, none in medieval Westphalia, and only two in Old Bavaria.
Why not? Most of the houses were situated in the Low Countries, in the Rhine
Valley as far south as Strasbourg, and between the Main and Danube. Many of these
were located in obscure places. The most extreme case is Appingen, a village in eastern Frisia that no longer exists, but many of the other locations (such as Hettstedt,
Perleberg, or Pössneck) may not be in the forefront of the minds of historians. How
can such foundations be reconciled with the order’s alleged urban apostolate?
Part of the answer is that the Carmelites were the last of the four mendicant
orders to arrive in Germany and had often to be satisfied with marginal locations.
Six maps show the location of the houses of the four orders in six episcopal sees (why
not in imperial cities like Frankfurt and Nürnberg?), but there is little discussion in
the individual articles whether the Carmelites appealed to a different urban audience
and no overall summary of this or any other topic. Their mission in Regensburg was
largely limited, for example, to caring for women in a hospital; and they moved in
1367 to Straubing, the only house in continuous existence—barely—until the present. (Friars from Straubing started the Carmelite mission in the United States in
1864 in Leavenworth, Kansas.) In spite of their work with women in Regensburg,
the Carmelites established their first German nunnery, Geldern, only in 1452. In

100

BOOK REVIEWS

contrast, there were seventy-four nunneries in the Dominican province of Teutonia
by 1303. Since the Dominican nunneries became centers of German mysticism, the
Carmelite emphasis on contemplation should have appealed to women; but the
friars seemingly were unwilling or failed to satisfy this longing, and that failure may
have impeded their own expansion. Finally, although a few houses were active in reCatholicization, the striking thing is the low level of involvement of the Carmelites
in the Counter-Reformation. For instance, the Wittelsbachs preferred the
Capuchins, the Jesuits, and the Discalced Carmelites in Munich. Abensberg and
Straubing remained the only Carmelite friaries in early-modern Bavaria. The contributors should be thanked for assembling the raw material that may prompt them
or other scholars to probe deeper for answers.
Illinois State University (Emeritus)

JOHN B. FREED

An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern
Europe. By Douglas H. Shantz. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
2013. Pp. xxii, 490. $70.00 hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4214-0830-9; $35.00
paperback, ISBN 978-1-4214-0831-6.)
Explications of Pietism range from denial of its existence as a particular historical-theological phenomenon to claims that it is both little understood and the
most significant religious movement since the Reformation. Although Englishlanguage church histories recognize the contributions of such major Pietist figures
as Philipp Jakob Spener, August Hermann Francke, and John Wesley, the vast
bulk of scholarship on Pietism is in German. Shantz, professor of Christian
thought at the University of Calgary, assesses and makes accessible this German
scholarship for English readers. In doing so, he accomplishes far more than “an
introduction” with his well-written account and analysis of the contexts, developments, and influences of Pietism upon modern history and theology. Although he
focuses on German Pietism, his comprehensive narrative engages its transnational
and transdenominational roots and developments from the Reformation period
into modern world missions.
Shantz’s brief “Introduction” reviews the state of research and presents his
approach to the “theological, devotional, and social dimensions of Pietism” incorporating the “rich variety of disciplines that have made Pietism their focus: church
history, political history, sociology, musicology, literary history, and gender history,
to name a few” (pp. 8–9). He “describes not only the godly intentions but also the
failings of the Pietists, noting the real world consequences of their beliefs, ideas,
experiences, and actions” (p. 9).
The book has four major parts: (1) the setting for Pietism from the Reformation through the Thirty Years’ War and seventeenth-century Calvinism; (2) attention to the major centers of Pietism in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Halle, including
their major leaders and institutional developments; (3) Pietism’s social and cultural
worlds in Europe and North America, including gender issues, contributions to

BOOK REVIEWS

101

modern biblical studies, and missions to India and Labrador; and (4) Pietism’s positive and negative contributions to modernity. Appendices include translations and
excerpts of primary sources, a prosopography of the Leipzig Circle of Pietists, and
discussion questions to facilitate classroom use. The extensive discursive endnotes
(pp. 361–452) and the comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary
sources (pp. 453–75) are treasure troves of information. The book is further
enhanced by images of major figures; maps; and tables of the founders of the
Leipzig Collegium Philobiblicum, models of Radical Pietism, and German Pietist
Bible translations and editions.
Pietism may be described as a turn to “experiential-expressive” religion (à la
George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine, Philadelphia, 1984). A model for this
turn is Francke’s emphasis upon a datable conversion experience of new birth and
new life (p. 107). On the one hand, this impelled an optimism “that society and
human existence can be shaped and improved” (p. 274). On the other hand, this
led to a “spiritual elitism” and “perfectionist ecclesiology” that could spark “division
and conflict” (p. 286). “The Pietists’ religion of inward renewal and Spirit-inspired
prophecy often left them unable to distinguish God’s leading from their own inclinations and passions” (p. 287). This may be a clue to the ambivalence seen by
Shantz in the relationship of Pietism to the Enlightenment and modernity. If religious experience displaces scripture and tradition, how is the Holy Spirit distinguished from other spirits? Reason? Kant (with a Pietist background) proposed
“religion within the limits of reason alone,” and Schleiermacher (“the father” of
Protestant Liberal theology) referred to himself as “a Moravian of a higher order.”
Perhaps that nexus can be Shantz’s next project. Meanwhile, he has provided an
excellent entrée to the history and character of Pietism.
Boston University School of Theology (Emeritus)

CARTER LINDBERG

One Firm Anchor: The Church and the Merchant Seafarer, an Introductory History. By
R. W. H. Miller. (Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press. 2012. Pp. 364. $50.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-7188-9290-6.)
One Firm Anchor is more than a mere introduction to maritime mission work
and the religious life of sailors. Instead, R. W. H. Miller has utilized a host of primary documents to write a thought-provoking missiology (study of missions) that
incorporates not only the Catholic Church’s efforts to administer to the spiritual
needs of seafarers but also similar efforts by other evangelical and charitable organizations, both denominational and nondenominational. Miller concentrates, however, on Great Britain and the Catholic Church because most sources regarding
maritime missions are British and Catholic. Keeping this limitation in mind, he
adeptly corrects the omissions and inaccuracies of other historians, especially Peter
Anson. Although Anson (The Church and the Sailor, 1949) was, according to
Miller, “the first significant maritime missiologist” who “paved the way for others
to follow” (p. 15), his vague footnotes coupled with recent discoveries of additional
primary documents made an updated treatment necessary. Miller carefully lays out

102

BOOK REVIEWS

the general trends of maritime mission work before more in-depth analysis of individual missionaries and organizations. Before the Reformation, sailors tended to
stay close to shore (short-sea shipping) and were viewed as any other member of
the Church under the authority of their geographically based bishop. There was no
need, therefore, for a separate mission to seafarers. The Reformation, however,
brought about a dramatic change by breaking up the once homogeneous Church’s
clear line of authority. Shipboard services now varied by the denominational beliefs
of the captain. The parish system still worked for those on land and seafarers who
stayed close to home, but sailors traveling far from home were viewed as wayfarers
without a bishop. Protestants and nondenominational organizations were first to
come up with creative solutions. Waterside missions, floating churches, and Salvation Navy services aboard ships gave maritime evangelists a platform to convert the
so-called “degraded” sailor. The Catholic Church, however, was less than effective
until the turn of the century when a study of Protestant efforts by Valentine Francis
Taubman-Goldie, S.J., prompted similar missionary efforts by the Catholic Truth
Society and others.
LORI BOGLE

United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD

ANCIENT
Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea. By Geza Vermes. (New Haven:
Yale University Press. 2013. Pp. xvi, 288. $30.00. ISBN 978-0-300-19160-8.)
Geza Vermes, who passed away in May 2013, focused most of his scholarly
attention on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on the historical Jesus. Christian Beginnings:
From Nazareth to Nicaea was his final book, and in it Vermes endeavors to build
upon his work on the historical Jesus through an assessment of how Jesus went
from Galilean holy man to the second person of the Trinity at Nicaea in 325.
Vermes argues that this metamorphosis developed over two unequal phases. The
first phase was the short Jewish phase that lasted from AD 30 to 100, with the Synoptic Gospels, the first twelve chapters of Acts, and the Didache being the texts
that correspond to this phase. These texts demonstrate that early Jewish-Christian
followers did not view him as divine, but understood Jesus simply to teach total surrender to God in expectation of the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. Ss.
Paul and John, however, definitively alter perceptions of Jesus. Paul, whose writings were addressed to Gentile rather than Jewish audiences, draws attention to
Jesus himself rather than to his message, elevating Jesus to the triumphant Son of
God who is the source of universal salvation. John’s Jesus bears no resemblance to
the charismatic holy man from Galilee, but is turned into a celestial savior through
John’s appropriation of terminology derived from Plato and Philo. One finds in
both Paul and John a harbinger of things to come, for it is during the second phase
(the Gentile phase from the early-second century to the Council of Nicaea in 325)
that we find Jesus and his religion fundamentally transformed to become that
which would have been unrecognizable by Jesus and his first followers. With refer-

BOOK REVIEWS

103

ence to an array of Christian texts from the second through the fourth centuries,
Vermes traces the progressive elevation of the figure of Jesus by Gentile Christians,
an elevation that corresponded to the influx of Graeco-Roman ideas and modes of
thinking foreign to Judaism. Thus one finds Justin Martyr, for example, initiate
and explicate a Christology deeply imbued with Greek philosophical thought, and
later thinkers develop an understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ along these
lines. Vermes notes in particular the contributions of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian, and Origen, the latter representing the summit of pre-Nicene Christian
thought. What develops from these thinkers, however, is the transformation of “the
charismatic religion of Jesus into the majestic philosophical theology of the Greek
church” (p. 199). In short, Jesus comes to look less and less like himself, the charismatic Jewish teacher.
This leads Vermes to a discussion of Nicaea. Throughout his account of
second- and third-century Christian thought, Vermes consistently emphasizes
that, although thinkers elevated the figure of Jesus prior to Nicaea, all of them were
thoroughly subordinationist in their Christologies. But Christian thought definitively changed with the Council of Nicaea, at which, according to Vermes, Constantine effectively forced the bishops to accept that the Son is homoousios with the
Father, despite the fact that the majority of bishops did not support the change and
despite the fact that Arius’s Christology more thoroughly approximated preNicene thought. The most detrimental consequence of Nicaea was that adherence
to dogma thereafter gained precedence over spiritual transformation, thus further
distancing Christian religion away from the charismatic religion of Jesus by elevating the person rather than his message.
Vermes is at his strongest in this book when dealing with the first century and
particularly when recounting the charismatic religion of Jesus; his work on the historical Jesus throughout his scholarly career continues to be important and influential even if it is not wholly convincing. Vermes is less helpful when he expands the
scope of his exploration to include Christian theological development in the second
through fourth centuries—what he terms the “Gentile phase” (p. 237). For at the
heart of Vermes’s thesis is the idea that Nicaea was an aberration that brought
about a revolutionary way of thinking about Jesus that had antecedents neither in
the religion of Jesus’s earliest Jewish followers nor in the teachings of the great theologians prior to Nicaea. But to maintain this argument, Vermes provides a reading
of the New Testament and of second to fourth-century Christological development
that, unfortunately, lacks nuance or careful theological engagement. Moreover, by
characterizing Nicaea solely as a political event, Vermes fails adequately to engage
the very real theological and soteriological concerns at play in the fourth century,
concerns that have earlier precedent and that cannot be so summarily dismissed.
Bellarmine University

GREGORY K. HILLIS

104

BOOK REVIEWS

Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity
in the West, 350–550 AD. By Peter Brown. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 2012. Pp. xxx, 759. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-691-15290-5.)
At a recent conference, Peter Brown suggested that we accept the word convulsion as a productive way of describing what happened to the Roman West in the
fifth century—a word that would allow us to escape the polar dichotomy of transformation versus decline and fall, while also acknowledging that the disappearance
of a Roman state both did happen and did matter, regardless of how much future
decades preserved of its scraps. That seems a very fine insight, and it is one great
achievement of this magnum opus to show us a hitherto underappreciated aspect of
that convulsion: the new and psychologically fraught relationship to money and
other wealth that conversion to Christianity meant for the Roman world. The
many long reviews this book has already attracted have not been able to do its rich
complexity full justice, and so a short one stands no chance of doing so. What
seems most interesting to this reader is the way that Brown, returning to a detailed
consideration of the late-antique West, should have found so much new to say,
much of it in the form of small aperçus on such well-trodden topics as the elder
Symmachus and the “vile plebs” of Rome. The several chapters on Augustine
between them offer a retractatio of Brown’s classic biography of the saint. And it is
in the treatment of Pelagius, his appeal and his challenge, that the book makes its
greatest impact. Placing the Pelagian critique of wealth in the wider social context,
comparing the explicitly sober but implicitly radical writings of Pelagius himself
with the anonymous Pelagian tract De diuitiis, he draws out the extent to which the
theological challenge of the Pelagian doctrine of free will was matched to a social
challenge: the great wealth of the Roman rich was neither natural nor inevitable,
but a product of human custom, and the force of free will could supervene over
human custom. In an era during which civil war, military uprising, and occasional
foreign invasion posed an ongoing material threat to senatorial fortunes built up
over centuries, the existence of a theological justification for radical renunciation
threatened stable social assumptions far more than the extremist thinkers themselves could have realized.
The last third of the book takes us through the years of convulsion at the start
of the fifth century, when within a generation the administrative structures of imperial government either collapsed or were hollowed out to the point that they barely
mattered. Developments in Gaul and Italy are usefully contrasted, while Brown
charts the end of an imperial Christianity and the creation of a new and very different early-medieval form, a process that he regards as a “simplification” (p. 517). That
argument is convincing in itself, but it touches on the book’s main unconscious
omission: the years of “simplification” were also years in which the world of western
Christendom ceased definitively to be coterminous with territory formerly ruled by
the emperors. But those once foreign lands were, to a greater extent than Brown
allows, intimately linked to the economic and political life of the fourth- and fifthcentury empire, as contributors to its wealth (settlers, soldiers, importers of raw
commodities) and consumers of it (shoppers, tributaries, mercenaries, and raiders).

BOOK REVIEWS

105

The wealth with which Brown deals seems to stop dead at the borders of the empire,
at least until those borders no longer exist, and an already rich exposition would be
rendered richer still by noticing how far north and northeast the Roman West’s
struggle with its wealth made an impact—a reminder of how much this book, like
Brown’s many others, has done to illuminate the late-ancient world, and how many
avenues he has opened for others to continue exploring.
Pennsylvania State University

MICHAEL KULIKOWSKI

The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the Pre-Augustinian Sources. By Pier Franco
Beatrice. Translated by Adam Kamesar. [AAR Religions in Translation.]
(New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 299. $74.00. ISBN 9780-19-975141-9.).
This book is a translation of Tradux Peccati: Alle fonti della dottrina agostiniana
del peccato originale (Milan, 1978). The author collaborated significantly in the
translation, making minor revisions and a few bibliographical additions to the English edition. Since the reception of the Italian edition was quite mixed, it would
have been helpful to have a new state of the question from the author, who says that
he remains convinced of the main theses but does not provide an explanation for
that conviction.
The book is divided into three sections, seeking to discover the source of St.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. Pier Franco Beatrice agrees that Augustine was
defending a widely-held doctrine, but he locates the Augustinian expression of that
doctrine in relation to the popular piety of North Africa, which retained elements
of Encratism. Thus the first section of the book describes Augustine’s doctrine of
original sin, and the second section discusses the biblical and patristic texts on
which, it is said, that doctrine is based. In the third section, the author explores the
thesis that the real basis for Augustine’s doctrine can be traced back to JudeoChristian Encratism—as if it could be seen as a definable movement in the West.
The question of the transmission of original sin is certainly circumscribed by
the polemical atmosphere within which it developed. That means that some effort
is needed to see beyond the terms of the debate between Julian of Eclanum and
Augustine on marriage and concupiscence. In fact, the sharp distinctions that are
drawn in this book may be the clearest signs of how it was necessary to simplify the
issues. Augustine, for example, was never able to decide on a theory for the origin
of the soul, a fact that has to be part of any understanding of the transmission of
original sin. Hence, the fact that this book does not deal with what Augustine says
that he does not know makes its thesis less helpful than it might first appear.
There is also a methodological issue that needs to be noted. The author
defines Augustine’s understanding of the doctrine of original sin at the beginning
and then asks whether St. Paul’s writings did, in fact, affirm that doctrine. That
way of proceeding seems to make the answer a foregone conclusion.

106

BOOK REVIEWS

Also, an extended discussion of Romans 5:12—the text that was used to typify
his thinking by other authorities after his death—seems to pay more attention to
how Augustine’s doctrine was received than it does with the fullness of his thought
on this matter. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, in fact, was based more on
chapters 7 and 9 of the letter to the Romans and on 1 Corinthians 15 than on
Romans 5:12. A 1963 study by Stanislas Lyonnet—cited in the bibliography—
makes that very point; it should have been more fully represented in the discussion
of Paul’s thought. In that context, it may not be all that surprising that the scriptures are not given the primary role in the formation of Augustine’s idea of transmission of original sin (chapter 6).
When first published, this book stimulated the conversation about the transmission of original sin in a good way. But it would have been very helpful to see
how the conversation about the transmission of original sin and infant baptism has
developed in the thirty-five intervening years—a task to which this book has unfortunately not contributed.
The Augustinian Institute
Villanova University

ALLAN FITZGERALD, O.S.A.

Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae. Edited
with an introduction and translated by Andrew Cain. [Oxford Early Christian
Texts, Vol. 17.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xxx, 569.
$275.00. ISBN 978-0-19-967260-8.)
Over the past decade, Andrew Cain has deservedly become the recognized
authority on the works of St. Jerome, especially his letters. This translation and
commentary is Cain’s third study on works of Jerome after Commentary on Galatians (Washington, DC, 2010) and Letter 52 to Nepotian (Leiden, 2012). In addition, he has published a book-length study of Jerome’s letters (Oxford, 2009).
These volumes, as well as numerous articles, have given Cain ample material to
draw upon for this lengthy commentary on Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula. The commentary on twenty-seven pages of Latin text runs to 390 pages. Cain’s translation,
a welcome advance on the English version in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
series, is both accurate and accessible—a rare accomplishment.
The subject of Jerome’s epitaph, the aristocrat-turned-ascetic Paula, is certainly a fascinating figure. Not only was she Jerome’s spiritual protégée and companion in the Bethlehem monastery that she founded, but she also was the patron
of Jerome’s greatest literary achievement: his translation of the Old Testament
from Hebrew into Latin. It is all but certain that without Paula, there would have
been no Vulgate. Paula, who died in 404 and was buried under the Church of the
Nativity itself, was later canonized by the Latin Church—a signal honor for a nonmartyr, in no small part due to Jerome’s efforts. This epitaph was the first of those
efforts, and it is a fitting tribute to a woman who is portrayed as having gladly sacrificed for Christ everything she had—even her eldest daughter, Blesilla, who died

BOOK REVIEWS

107

from over-enthusiastic fasting. Twenty years earlier, Jerome had written an epistolary epitaph on the unfortunate young woman. Indeed, Cain (p. 119) points out
that many elements of that epitaph (Epistola 39) were recycled in Paula’s
encomium. Obviously, Paula was in no position to complain about lack of originality. Cain is careful to mind the gap between the real woman and the idealized saintin-the-making.
Cain’s commentary is a thesaurus of such literary allusions from Jerome’s
corpus, other patristic writers, and classical writers such as Virgil, Juvenal, and
Cicero, with a focus on literary and semantic aspects of the text. The Latin text is
Hilberg’s edition with twenty-five minor emendations, listed in the introduction
(p. 39). Of these, some are merely stylistic; for example, in 5.2, where Cain has
restored sustentatus to sustentatus est, on the basis of “several manuscripts,” meaning
the three latest of the six used by Hilberg. It seems likely that Hilberg preferred the
more elegant omission in the earlier manuscripts of the auxiliary verb, which is both
clunky and unnecessary to the sense. Other changes are semantically driven and
justified in the commentary by reference to other occurrences in Jerome’s oeuvre
such as in 3.4, from potentias to potentiam (potentia on p. 148 probably is meant to
read potentiam). Another semantically-driven change is the rejection of Hilberg’s
supplying of <non> before paucis in 17.1. The litotes “not a few” makes better sense
of the text than Cain’s reversion to the five manuscripts that read paucis (“a few”),
especially since the sixth and latest manuscript witness reads multis (the equivalent
of non paucis). These are mere quibbles, however; minor criticisms of a work of
major importance.
The depth, range, and currency of Cain’s scholarship are breathtaking. A bibliography of all secondary sources would have been ridiculously long; these are
embedded within the commentary. This work is a monumental achievement and a
testament to the quality of the series Oxford Early Christian Texts. The author and
series editors are to be congratulated upon bringing this ancient work to light in
such rich detail, which more than justifies its relative costliness. Like any well-written commentary, it is no easy read, but the reader’s efforts are more than repaid, as
this is a work to which one can return again and again, uncovering some new treasure each time.
Australian Catholic University, Brisbane

BRONWEN NEIL

Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa. By Leslie Dossey. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, XLVII.]. (Berkeley: University of California
Press. 2010. Pp. xx, 352. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-520-25439-8.)
With this book, Dossey provides a highly innovative approach to the changes
that occurred within rural society in Roman North Africa during the fourth, fifth,
and sixth centuries AD, including such phenomena as Donatism and the so-called
Circumcelliones. She places these in a much wider perspective—that of the condition of the rural population of the African provinces of the Roman Empire: the

108

BOOK REVIEWS

“peasants” and their emergence as a self-confident consumer group within the
African economy—based on an impressive variety and wide spectrum of archaeological, literary, and patristic evidence.
The book consists of three sections. After a historical overview (chapter 1),
“The Making of the Peasant Consumer” (chapters 2 and 3) offers a reassessment of
the archaeological material, specifically of rural settlements, arguing that recent field
surveys “primarily reflect an increase in the availability of the commodities used to
locate and date settlement—fineware, amphoras, cut stone, and so on—to populations that had been previously excluded from their consumption” (p. 69). In other
words: these surveys do not bring to light the emergence of new settlements, but
make existing ones increasingly visible. Dossey believes that, initially, peasants’
access to these commodities was low, “because the new Roman order had limited
their ability to consume anything beyond the most basic necessities” (p. 62). Rather
than a rapid “Romanization,” social constraints reduced their participation in the
market. An increased use of fineware (African Redslip—ARS), as well as of other
goods, was the result of a consumer revolution and not of a demographic change.
This, in turn, was a consequence of the third-century crisis. Regional industries, as
well as the circulation of coinage, were stimulated by the disruption of the relationship between center and periphery. A breakaway from the centers of imperial power
boosted regional development. The power of the local decuriones diminished; they
were replaced by absentee senatorial landlords. This shift, supposedly, allowed for
the development of rural workshops and markets, causing an increase in peasant
consumption. The new lords of the manors cared less for such a rise of the rural
peasantry and their increased quality of life. Dossey seems to turn away from existing
views of the continuity of municipal life in the African provinces in late antiquity.
In “The Struggle for Community” (chapters 4 and 5), Dossey deals with the
cessation of municipal administration from the reign of Diocletian onwards, and
the struggle of the North African villages and estates for the establishment and/or
maintenance of their local community as a res publica. Emperors no longer promoted rural communities to a municipal status, and yet these communities continued to desire a communal recognition. According to Dossey the proliferation of
bishoprics (more than 700 in western North Africa, p. 125), particularly rural ones,
in the fourth and fifth centuries ought to be regarded as a direct consequence of the
desire of rural populations to seek self-government. Their unusually large number,
helped by the issue of Donatism, was another expression of the vibrant political
activity of the African peasantry.
“Preaching and Rebellion” (chapters 6 and 7) deals with the African Church,
in relation to the developments in the countryside. Rural unrest during the fourth
and fifth centuries was a direct result of the entry of Christian clerics into the rural
communities: “Christianity allowed rural populations … to participate in the wider
cultural trends of their time, although in regionally specific ways” (p. 201). The socalled Circumcelliones should be regarded as an exponent of the spread of Roman
and Christian values amongst the rural peasantry of the African provinces.

BOOK REVIEWS

109

Dossey presents a wealth of both existing and new evidence, challenging traditional views in placing different accents—a marvelous and most valuable book.
ALEXANDER EVERS

John Felice Rome Center
Loyola University Chicago

MEDIEVAL
The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law. By Wolfgang P. Müller. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2012. Pp. xiv, 263.
$55.00. ISBN 978-0-8014-5089-1.)
This book is likely to mislead the casual reader and could even mislead more
serious students of abortion law. Müller sets about to discover how abortion (which
he defines as the voluntary termination of a pregnancy, p. 10) came to be considered, across Europe from Ireland and England to Poland and Hungary as a crime
after 1140, when between the fall of Rome (476) and the twelfth century it was not
so seen (pp. 1, 4–5). Put in this fashion, it suggests that, before the twelfth century,
abortion was not considered a serious wrong and not any of the state’s business.
Müller insists that historians must attempt to understand ancient legal terms
in the context of their times and not according to their modern understanding (p.
8), but fails to follow this premise. He begins his introduction by conceding that
abortion before the twelfth century was considered a tort or a sin (pp. 5–6). He does
not dwell on the point, contrary to his emphasis on the idea that abortion became
a crime after the twelfth century. Yet before the twelfth century, a great many
modern crimes (offenses against society or against the state) were then considered
torts (offenses only against an individual person) or sins (offenses against God, pp.
34–44). Modern crimes that were then considered torts or sins (or both) included
murder and rape. They were not prosecuted in the king’s name but in the name of
an injured individual. These came to be seen as crimes at about the same time that
abortion came to be considered a crime. In each case, what happened was a transformation of the methodology of enforcement and not a change in the perception
of the activity as wrong.
This reviewer is not in a position to evaluate the quality of Müller’s research
on countries such as France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, or Poland, but has done
research on the early common law of abortion and finds that Müller gets the case
of England seriously wrong. This tends to raise the question of reliability regarding
the author’s reading of the other materials. He concedes at the beginning that English law in the thirteenth century treated abortion as homicide (pp. 11–12, 66–75),
but then claims that the English courts abandoned this view after 1327 based on
the incomplete report of one case (R. v. de Bourton, “the Twinslayer’s case”) and a
very brief report of another case (“Anonymous’ case,” pp. 134–48). Although
Müller cites (pp. 138–39, nn. 24, 25, 26) Phil Rafferty’s PhD dissertation and this
reviewer’s Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History (Durham, NC, 2006), he chooses

110

BOOK REVIEWS

to rely only on the one Yearbook Version of de Bourton’s case that ambiguously
supports the noncriminality of abortion while ignoring more recently discovered
reports of the decision that decisively do reject such a reading, as Rafferty and this
reviewer report. Similarly, Müller gives weight to “Anonymous’ case,” although he
comes close to admitting that this case derives from a source that has been widely
described as fraudulent (p. 135). Müller never engages at all with any of the arguments made by Rafferty and this reviewer on any points.
Even when Müller concedes that abortion was, at least in theory, a homicide,
he fixates on the relative rarity of actual prosecutions (p. 2). He makes the rarity
more pronounced by ignoring any prosecution involving a serious injury to the
mother (pp. 3, 18–19). (He also ignores all ecclesiastical prosecutions, p. 6.) He
concludes, as others have, that this relative lack of prosecution must mean a lack of
public support for prosecutions. The root of Müller’s problem, as with so many
others, is a refusal to come to grips with just how abortion was done in the past.
Although he says that is an impossible task (p. 4), he devotes an entire chapter to
this question (chapter 6). He relies rather heavily on the work of John Riddle, without mentioning that Riddle was not only thoroughly discredited in the first chapter
of this reviewer’s book or that Riddle was repudiated by his scientific consultants
(who publicly announced that Riddle disregarded their advice that various abortifacients were ineffective). If the reader is to believe Riddle (and Müller), women
should avoid fennel and celery (p. 165), and many other purported abortifacients.
If the reader concludes that abortions were readily available without undue
pain or risk for the mother before the eighteenth century, the relative absence of
prosecutions for abortions without serious injury to the mother demands an explanation. Once one realizes that such voluntary abortions were exceedingly rare
because such abortions then were tantamount to suicide (Dispelling the Myths of
Abortion History, chapter 1), it becomes obvious why the majority of prosecutions
during this period were for abortions that caused serious injuries to the mother (p.
8) or for attempted abortions rather than completed abortions (pp. 189–97). In his
effort to find examples of prosecutions for voluntary abortions during this period,
Müller has to rely on prosecutions for infanticide on the grounds that, to the
medieval mind, abortion and infanticide were the same crime (pp. 168–69). He
never seems to consider the significance of this conclusion regarding either crime.
One could go on, but the point is clear. Müller distorts the evidence and argues for
a view of abortion in the formative period of modern Western law that gives the
activity a degree of public acceptance that is simply wrong. Given the comfort
Müller’s work will provide for supporters of abortion rights, his book doubtlessly
will be widely cited (if not carefully read), whereas books on the history of abortion
law written by strong opponents of abortion rights (like Rafferty) or by persons
whose stand on abortion rights is more complex (like this reviewer’s book) will continued to be ignored by mainstream historians and the popular press.
Villanova University School of Law

JOSEPH W. DELLAPENNA

BOOK REVIEWS

111

Saintly Bishops and Bishops’ Saints. Edited by John S. Ott and Trpimir Vedriš. [Bibliotheca Hagiotheca, Series Colloquia, Vol. 2.] (Zagreb: Hagiotheca Humaniora. 2012. Pp. xvi, 279. €25,00. ISBN 978-953-56205-1-8.)
In medieval Christianity bishops were powerful and saints’ cults were ubiquitous. Looking forward from the apostolic age, this would have been a startling outcome. In the early Church there had been no dominant episcopal hierarchy, and
churchmen scrambled to find biblical justification for the veneration of saints and
relics. In late antiquity the parallel rise of bishops and saints had often led to conflicts, because bishops promoted order within institutions while holy men seemed
to challenge the authority of formal hierarchies.
This book derives from a conference precisely about this dialectic between
episcopal order and the challenge of saints. Even though the chapters are aimed at
other specialists in particular regions and periods, they add up to a substantial contribution to interpreting bishops and saints.
Several of the chapters extend the discussion of saints’ cults in late antiquity
that has been so productive and rewarding. Bishops often struggled to deal with the
memory of martyrs. Co-opting their spiritual functions was one strategy. Bishop
Liberius of Rome classified exiled bishops such as himself as the equivalent of martyrs; his successor, Damasus, emphasized that living bishops were just as effective
intercessors before God as martyrs (Marianne Sághy). Some bishops included saints
in their theology and their autobiographies. St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, argued
that the famous martyr Perpetua had decided upon martyrdom not from her own
free will, but from the grace of the Holy Spirit (Thomas J. Heffernan). Bishop
Theodoret of Cyrrhus claimed that, as a young man, he had been an apprentice to
the ascetics of the desert (Ville Vuolanto). Other bishops unabashedly rewrote the
history of their patron saints. In the seventh century Bishop Mellitus of London
apparently annotated a chronicle to reconcile competing perspectives on St. Benedict (Luciana Cuppo). In contrast, during the twelfth century Benedictine monks
affirmed their ownership of various estates by claiming Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester as their benefactor (Rachel S. Anderson). As these examples suggest, thinking about bishops and ascetics had become a medium for thinking about the distribution of authority in medieval society. But as demonstrated in the extensive
hagiography about St. Martin of Tours (John Marcus Beard) and the bishops of
late-medieval England (Sherry L. Reames), even the veneration of an ascetic monk
who had also been a bishop or the promotion of bishops as saintly exemplars of
humility did not resolve the tension between episcopal power and an ascetic lifestyle.
Likewise in regions where Christianity arrived comparatively late, the underlying friction between bishops and the cults of saints lingered throughout the medieval
period. In late-medieval Sweden bishops aligned themselves with saints who could
heal demonic possession (Sari Katajala-Peltomaa). In contrast, in Germany and
Poland hagiography became a medium for criticizing contemporary bishops (Victoria Smirnova, Stanislava Kuzmová). The results of a survey of Byzantine saints from

112

BOOK REVIEWS

the eighth to the fifteenth century (Stephanos Efthymiadis) might be applicable to
medieval Europe, too: most saints had been monks or nuns, not bishops. When
popes tried to regulate the process of canonization, parishioners in northern Italy
boldly promoted unofficial cults of their local favorites (Janine Larmon Peterson).
Because the conference was held in Poreč (on the Adriatic coast of Croatia),
several of the chapters highlight developments in Istria and Dalmatia. The rise in
ecclesiastical prominence of the see of Split coincided with the transfer of the body
of a martyr from an earlier metropolitan see (Vadim Prozorov). During the sixth
century Bishop Eufrasius decorated the apse of a new church at Poreč with a
mosaic scene depicting himself with a martyr of the Great Persecution (Marina
Miladinov). In the later medieval period the bishops of Poreč still relied on the apse
mosaics to confirm their authority (Evan A. Gatti).
University of Michigan

RAYMOND VAN DAM

Tasting Heaven on Earth: Worship in Sixth-Century Constantinople. By Walter D.
Ray. [The Church at Worship: Case Studies from Christian History.] (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2012. Pp. xii, 158. $28.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-6663-9.)
Tasting Heaven on Earth offers a carefully orchestrated presentation of the
Byzantine Eucharist liturgy in Justinian’s Great Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The text consists of two main parts: a description and analysis of the
liturgy, architecture, and décor of Hagia Sophia followed by a rich compendium of
primary sources. The latter starts with the early-seventh-century exegesis of the
divine liturgy by Maximus the Confessor, followed by the ekphraseis of Hagia
Sophia by Procopius and Paul the Silentiary. Following these is a section reconstructing the fourth-century elaborate liturgy of St. Basil enriched with St. John
Chrysostom’s version of the anaphora. Next come the sung sermons or kontakia of
Romanus Melodus and the Pentecost sermon of presbyter Leontius. The book
appeals to the broad audience interested in the Eastern Orthodox rite. Its open and
accessible approach will appeal both to novices and to educated readers who would
like to expand their knowledge of the Byzantine liturgy. The harmonious combination of texts with artifacts and architecture (the latter presented through a series
of excellent photographs and reconstructions of the liturgical furnishings of the
interior) will give the reader a much more concrete picture of the architectural
space. The lavish setting of Hagia Sophia is then animated by the primary sources.
The basic premise of this book is that Hagia Sophia and its sixth-century Eucharist
liturgy staged such a rich performance that it led its participants to experience a
transcendence—of dwelling in heaven on earth. Walter D. Ray shows how the
liturgy consistently presents—through the poetry of psalms, hymns, and prayers—
the interweaving of human actions with the angelic worship of God in heaven.
The book is an excellent introduction to Byzantine worship with its good
selection of primary sources, bibliography, timeline of major events, maps, and

BOOK REVIEWS

113

images. Thus the book perfectly fulfills the mandate of the series The Church at
Worship, which is intended to reveal with depth worship practices in a single time
and place.
Stanford University

BISSERA PENTCHEVA

Negotiating the Landscape: Environment and Monastic Identity in the Medieval
Ardennes. By Ellen F. Arnold. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2012. Pp. ix, 320. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-81224463-2.)
The premise of this book is appealing and provocative: “to understand the
relationship that the monks of Stavelot-Malmedy had with their local environment” (p. 3) through a systematic investigation of references to the landscape of the
Ardennes in writings produced by these allied abbeys from their foundation in the
late Merovingian period until the twelfth century. Located in the densely forested
uplands between the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Mosel rivers in what is now southern Belgium, the brethren of Stavelot-Malmedy produced numerous hagiographic
narratives throughout the early Middle Ages. Ellen Arnold argues that the surrounding woodlands played an important role in these works not only as the setting
for the triumphs and tribulations of local saints but also in the formation of the
identity of the monks who called the Ardennes their home. Conducting what she
calls an “environmental exegesis,” Arnold attempts to advance our understanding
of early-medieval conceptions of the natural world through “the deliberate inclusion of the ideas, goals, stories and worldviews of hagiographers into medieval environmental history” (p. 13).
The book unfolds over five chapters. Chapter 1 examines how the monks of
Stavelot-Malmedy employed the literary convention of the forest as a dangerous
wilderness or an isolated desert. There follows an inconclusive discussion of the
ambiguous Latin terminology for woodlands (silva, nemus, saltus, and so forth)
employed in early-medieval sources, which would have been more at home in the
introduction. Chapter 2 illustrates how the monks belied this notion of forest solitude
through the agricultural interventions of their free and unfree dependents, who managed and exploited the natural resources of the forest (like timber, pigs, and bees) for
the abbeys. Here Arnold shows how the abbots actively involved themselves in maintaining and protecting these assets. Chapter 3 looks at the ways in which the monks
of the Ardennes resolved conflicts over their landed assets and property rights with
neighboring religious communities, secular powers, and “unfaithful officials” (p. 128)
who mismanaged monastic holdings. Chapter 4 addresses the use of the forest as
both a setting and an actor in monastic story-telling. This chapter features an
eleventh-century account of the murder of Abbot Agilolfus, an early-eighth-century
associate of Charles Martel, which includes a scene reminiscent of Shakespeare’s
depiction of the Birnam Wood (Macbeth, act 4, scene 1), in which Martel’s soldiers
disguise themselves as trees to ambush their enemies. The final chapter offers a
diachronic evaluation of the hagiographic stories from Stavelot-Malmedy that shows

114

BOOK REVIEWS

how the monks constructed religious landmarks and brought miracle-working relics
out into the surrounding countryside in an attempt to create and control a Christian
landscape in the vicinity of their communities.
Although the application of hagiographic evidence to our understanding of
how early-medieval people imagined the natural world is a worthwhile endeavor,
two features of this book undermine its overall impact. First, the analytical foundation of the study is not very sound. The argument is largely impressionistic, and the
concept of monastic identity is never defined. Moreover, the lack of comparative
material does not allow the reader to evaluate the degree to which the brethren of
Stavelot-Malmedy differed from other early-medieval monks in their literary treatment of their local environment. Second, the book would have benefited from a
much firmer editorial hand. The chapters are needlessly long and often poorly
organized. The author’s arguments are not plainly stated and frequently lost in the
thicket of tangential digressions. Although daring and original, Negotiating the
Landscape is not altogether a persuasive attempt to use the evidence of hagiographic
texts to tether the natural environment to the formation of early monastic identity.
University of Colorado at Boulder

SCOTT G. BRUCE

Leaders of the Anglo-Saxon Church: From Bede and Stigand. Edited by Alexander R.
Rumble. [Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies,
12.] (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2012. Pp. xii, 204. $95.00. ISBN 978-184383-700-8.)
Taken as a whole, this is a book that contains rather more and rather less than
one expects from a study of the “leaders of the Anglo-Saxon church.” More, in that its
ten chapters deal with an unusually diverse collection of sources, from textiles and
stone sculpture to manuals for monastic sign language, thereby illustrating a wide
range of different phenomena, from the involvement of bishops in succession disputes
to the imagery of spiritual motherhood. But one might also hope that a book such as
this—which begins with the early-eighth-century writings of the Northumbrian
monk Bede and proceeds chronologically as far as the deposition of Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1070—would enable the reader to discern more clearly the
role played by particular individuals in the development of the religious life in England
during the pre-Conquest period. The disparate nature of its contents, however, makes
it difficult to draw any such broad conclusions from the collection as a whole. This
inevitably means that although several chapters offer much of value to specific ongoing
debates, the entire volume does not quite fulfil the claim made in its preface: “to illustrate the important and various roles played by individual leading ecclesiastics in England, both within the church and in the wider political sphere” (p. ix).
A number of the contributors do nevertheless succeed in illuminating several
previously obscure corners of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical history, with great effect.
Allan Scott McKinley’s exploration of the early development of the Diocese of
Worcester picks its way through difficult source material to provide a compelling

BOOK REVIEWS

115

reconstruction of the bishopric’s early history, with an eye to its place in a changing
political landscape. New light is offered on texts as well as events, with Martin
Ryan’s treatment of Archbishop Ecgberht’s Dialogus as a source for contemporary
conditions in the mid-eighth-century Northumbrian church; and Joyce Hill’s
investigation of Ælfric of Eynsham’s Pastoral Letter as a source for the ecclesiastical
reforms carried out by its recipient, Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne. Less conclusive
but nevertheless stimulating discussions of episcopal involvement in contested royal
successions, and of the individual(s) by whom Cluny’s system of monastic sign language was adapted for use in England, are provided by Dominik Wassenhoven and
Debby Banham respectively. Other chapters deal less with the achievements and
initiatives of “individual leading ecclesiastics” as with their reputation and treatment at the hands of writers and artists. Alexander Rumble therefore revisits the
contrasting reputations of the late Anglo-Saxon archbishops Ælfheah and Stigand;
Gale Owen-Crocker surveys the handful of surviving artworks that depict AngloSaxon abbots, bishops, and saints; and Cassandra Rhodes ponders the function of
maternal imagery in written descriptions of abbesses and abbots alike. Since such
literary and artistic depictions do retain some ability to influence our impressions
of historical persons, there is undoubtedly a value in understanding the way that
written and visual representations of these kinds came to be created; but only in the
case of Ælfheah and Stigand are posthumous reputations and contemporary
achievements placed alongside each other for direct comparison.
It will be clear from this overview that the “ecclesiastical leaders” singled out
for attention in this volume are mostly bishops, and in that respect Nicholas
Higham’s opening chapter on the Jarrow monk Bede and his ideas about the contemporary “English” church might appear somewhat out of place. As Alexander
Rumble’s introduction states, scholars as influential as Bede “can be seen as leaders
of the church but in a less public and more intellectual mode” (p. 2), but the present
volume does not quite allow us to know whether intellectuals or diocesans ultimately had the more lasting effect on the direction of “the Anglo-Saxon church.”
A variety of ideas, contemporary and modern, are provided here about what constituted “leadership” in an early-medieval ecclesiastical context, but it is ultimately
the reader who is left to pick among them.
Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge

RICHARD SOWERBY

Alcuin: His Life and Legacy. By Douglas Dales. (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke.
2012. Pp. 223. $41.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-227-17346-6.)
Douglas Dales has provided a useful introductory biography of Alcuin, a
scholar trained in York who left England for the Continent toward the end of the
eighth century. The book is divided into two parts: the first focuses on the time
before Alcuin went to Charlemagne’s court and his dealings with major figures in
England; the second (titled “Charlemagne”) describes Alcuin’s life after his departure from England and the major events in the political and religious history of
Charlemagne’s time.

116

BOOK REVIEWS

Alcuin’s letters provide the majority of the surviving information for the
people and events explored in the book, and they are described in considerable
detail throughout the book, often providing the framework for the narrative. Thus
the first part includes chapters on “Letters to England” (chapter 3), focusing on
those to Lindisfarne, Wearmouth-Jarrow, and York; and Alcuin’s relationship with
Offa (chapter 4), most clearly visible in the surviving records of correspondence.
The second part includes chapters on “Alcuin and Charlemagne” (chapter 6),
Alcuin’s role as a statesman (chapter 7), the events surrounding the accusations of
perjury and adultery made against Pope Leo III and the coronation of Charlemagne (chapter 9), and Alcuin’s abbacy of Tours (chapter 10). Chapter 5 (on
Charlemagne) provides a mini-biography and some useful background for understanding the context in which Alcuin was operating. Dales also considers Alcuin’s
role as an emissary and his involvement in the legatine synod of 786 (chapter 2),
his attitudes to monasticism (chapter 11), and his perceptions of York (chapter 1)
and Rome (chapter 8)—chapters that utilize Alcuin’s poetry more than some of the
others. The final chapter (12, “Letters, Friends and Manuscripts”) discusses the
manuscript collections of Alcuin’s letters and the contexts in which these were put
together. This chapter is useful in considering how the surviving evidence can be
contextualized, and it is therefore surprising that this material is really only covered
in the final chapter, rather than offered nearer to the beginning of the book. It is
also rather surprising that so little mention is made of Alcuin’s role as a teacher and
of the major contributions that Alcuin made to Charlemagne’s programs of educational, religious, and liturgical reform.
There is much in this book to be commended: it is a good synthesis of many
of Alcuin’s works (especially his letters and some of his theological works) and of
some recent scholarship. General readers and undergraduate students will find this
an accessible (and very readable) introduction to Alcuin’s life and times, and the
presentation of Alcuin’s own words is particularly helpful here. In places, however,
it would have been useful to see more criticism of the surviving sources and the
accuracy (or otherwise) of the picture they present, as well as more direct engagement with the evidence beyond description of its contents. Dales also has a peculiar
tendency to insert quotations from other scholars as whole sentences (or even whole
paragraphs), which disrupts his narrative somewhat, making it in places rather like
a patchwork of other scholars’ opinions. There are occasional typographical errors
and some oversimplifications (as, for example, the statement on page 27, which
rests on no cited evidence, that the Old English poem Beowulf is probably contemporary with Alcuin; or the comments on page 134 about ancient Greek and earlymedieval thought on the immortality of the soul and the corporeality of the body).
In summary, this book provides a good basic introduction to the life and times of
Alcuin and Charlemagne, but for a more in-depth understanding readers would
need to turn directly to Alcuin’s own letters and other works, and to the scholarly
works on which this book rests.
Durham University

HELEN FOXHALL FORBES

BOOK REVIEWS

117

Die Kardinäle des Mittelalters und der Frühen Renaissance. Edited by Jürgen Dendorfer and Ralf Lützelschwab. [Millenio Medievale 95: Strumenti e Studi,
n.s., Vol. 33.] (Florence: SISMEL. Edizioni del Galluzzo. 2013. Pp. vii, 396.
€69,00. ISBN 978-88-8450-463-0.)
This collection of papers is the fruit of an international collaborative project to
provide a scholarly history of cardinals from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
Its focus is on the cardinals’ role in the networks of diplomacy and patronage linking the Church and the secular powers of Western Europe to the Curia and the
papacy, the means of communication they used, and the image of themselves that
the cardinals presented. About half the papers are in German; the rest are in
French, Italian, or English. The standard of the essays is uniformly high and the
standard of editing exemplary.
The first section deals with the personal networks of cardinals. Andreas Fischer describes their role in the thirteenth century as intermediaries at the papal
court and how their multiple personal loyalties might override their connection to
secular princes. Étienne Anheim argues that powerful Roman and French families
who had generations of cardinals played a significant role in the transmission of
collective memory between the Roman and Avignonese curias. Both he and
Andreas Rehberg, who analyzes the cardinals of Roman origin from 1277 to 1527,
present Roman baronial cardinals in an unusually positive light. To Rehberg, their
multiplicity of social, cultural, and political contacts benefited the Church and was
an element of stability in the College. A case study by Anna Esposito of Guillaume
d’Estouteville, the wealthy French cardinal who tried to found a baronial dynasty
around Rome in the fifteenth century, emphasizes the network of relationships he
built up in Rome and the Curia over forty years.
Two essays discuss the diplomatic activity of cardinals. Claudia Zey questions
whether cardinal-legates in the eleventh and twelfth centuries should be seen as
alter egos of the popes or whether a distinction between the authority of pope and
legate gave both room to maneuver in negotiations. Missions on behalf of the pope
by fourteenth-century cardinals in France, Spain, England, and Italy, analyzed by
Blake Beattie, were mainly efforts at peace-making until the years of the Schism,
when rousing support for one or another pope became the major task.
The third section is the most miscellaneous, ranging from Matthias
Thumser’s essay identifying documents that might have been brought together by
Rainer of Viterbo for use in his propaganda attacks on the Emperor Frederick II,
and Pierre Jugie’s summary of his work on the chanceries of legatine cardinals
during the Avignonese papacy, to Marco Pellegrini’s analysis of the composition of
the College of Cardinals in the sixteenth century that traces the growth in their
numbers and in the proportion of Italians in the College, as well as the changing
criteria for selection—with loyalty to the popes and administrative efficiency
becoming key qualities for advancement. Werner Maleczek studies the iconography of the seals of thirteenth-century cardinals, their funerary monuments, and

118

BOOK REVIEWS

their representation in depictions of the papal entourage. Many of the works he
discusses are illustrated in an appendix of good-quality photographs, together with
works referred to in Claudia Märtl’s analysis of the iconography of cardinals in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with particular attention to how their dress differed from or reflected the color and style of the costume of the popes, and Pio
Francesco Pistilli’s discussion of the little-studied artistic patronage of cardinals in
Rome in the period from Pope Boniface IX to Pope Martin V.
A concluding summary by Ralf Lützelschwab poses questions calling for further elucidation, including questions about the spirituality of medieval cardinals—
one aspect that receives little coverage in this book. But that cannot be called a fault
of this collection, which has such an admirable range of papers, all evidently the
fruit of research and reflection. It will be a point of reference for those studying the
Church as an institution for many years to come.
University of Oxford

CHRISTINE SHAW

Geistliche als Kreuzfahrer. Der Klerus im Konflikt zwischen Orient und Okzident,
1095–1221. By Thomas Haas. [Heidelberg Transcultural Studies, Vol. 3.]
(Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. 2012. Pp. 341. €45,00. ISBN 978-38253-6038-2.)
Starting from the problematic issue of clerical involvement in warfare,
Thomas Haas here attempts to establish a more comprehensive picture of clerical
involvement in crusading than has been offered by the many existing studies of
individual clerics or of activities such as crusade preaching or legatine duties. The
methodology adopted is to examine a range of narratives dealing with crusades to
the Holy Land to reveal diverse activities of named clerics as well as of anonymous
persons described in narrative sources as episcopi, clerici, sacerdotes, monachi, and
related terms (although not of any members of the military-religious orders). The
number of sources consulted for each crusade is uneven, varying from fourteen
devoted to the First Crusade, including the noncontemporaneous and largely derivative chronicle of William of Tyre and (rather bizarrely) the Arabic history of Ibn
al-Athir, to a single account of the Fifth Crusade (Oliver of Paderborn). No crusades after 1221 are investigated, on the grounds that clerical involvement declined
after this date, although no evidence is adduced for this assertion.
The source-by-source examination produces a survey of clerical activity in the
long second section (pp. 29–224), which is heavy on data and documentary quotation, but rather fragmented and often superficial. To some extent this deficit is
redressed in the third section (pp. 225–80), which provides a synthesis of information from the diverse sources to establish a range of functions that are classified as
either “internal” or “external” activities. Thus clerics were involved, as we might
expect, in a wide range of activities relating to the pastoral care of crusaders, such
as holding Mass, giving penance and absolution, and motivating their fellow combatants; yet many of them also took part in more secular activities such as fighting,

BOOK REVIEWS

119

diplomatic activities, and mediation between rival leaders. It would have been profitable to devote more space to such analysis rather than to the extensive summaries
of individual crusades and descriptions of sources that take up so much of the
second section. Haas explicitly rejects a prosopographical approach to his subject,
but this decision means that the reader is given no real sense of the extent of clerical
participation in each crusade, and the information established as to identity and
motivation of the named individuals varies greatly. Haas recognizes that many clerics (such as most of those on the First Crusade) participated of their own volition,
whereas others (such as the many bishops who accompanied Frederick Barbarossa
and Richard the Lionheart in 1189–1190) were essentially acting as royal servants.
Yet although such differences undoubtedly affected the roles that such clerics were
allowed or were willing to undertake, the issues of their motivation and links to crusade leaders are not pursued to any great extent. The concluding section (pp. 281–
93) gives short synthetic accounts of three key (but hardly typical) figures—namely,
Adhemar of Le Puy, legate on the First Crusade; the preacher Peter the Hermit;
and Gottfried, bishop of Würzburg, but at around two pages each these sketches
add little to existing studies by James Brundage, Jean Flori, and others. More illuminating are the pictures established of the historiographical treatment of Arnulf
of Chocques (misspelled as “Choques” throughout), the later patriarch of
Jerusalem, and Martin, abbot of Pairis (thanks to his starring role in the account of
the Fourth Crusade written by a member of his monastic community). Overall, the
study reveals far more about the attitudes of medieval chroniclers than about the
underlying reality of clerical involvement in crusading.
University of Leeds

ALAN V. MURRAY

Moines et religieux dans la ville (XII e–XV e siècle). Edited by Nicole Bériou and
Cécile Caby. [Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 44.] (Toulouse: Editions Privat. 2009. Pp.
639, with 1 CD. €35,00. ISBN 978-2-7089-3447-4.)
This volume of the Cahiers de Fanjeaux is based on the 2008 colloquy, the
theme of which is stated in the title. Religieux here represents those subject to some
rule (as opposed to the secular clergy) but not cloistered (as the moines were) and
who were ordinarily in close contact with the laity.
The first essay, by Nicole Bériou, provides a general overview of the relationship between religious orders and the cities of Europe between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. He emphasizes that, despite the close connection between urbanization and the mendicant orders noted by Jacques Le Goff and others, older orders
found their way into the cities well before the mendicants appeared. Yves Esquieu
then traces a general history of the clergy in southern French cities from the fourth
to the eleventh centuries.
The next section concentrates on religious orders other than the mendicants.
The first of them, by Jörg Oberste, traces the successive appearances of various
monastic communities at Toulouse, emphasizing the roles they played and their

120

BOOK REVIEWS

contests for power, prestige, and income. As he proceeds from Benedictine monasticism through Cluniac reform and its amplification in the hands of a rising papacy,
then through the Cistercians and the new military orders, Oberste furnishes a
miniaturized history of western monasticism from the beginning to the early-thirteenth century as it played out in the rising cities, offering another reminder that,
long before the mendicants appeared, monastic institutions performed an important role in satisfying the spiritual needs of those cities.
Daniel Le Blévec, too, concentrates on a single city (Montpelier), whereas
other articles specialize in other ways. Damien Carraz concentrates on the military
orders and Alexis Grélois on the Cistercians, whereas Henri Gilles discusses monks
at the universities. Yannick Veyrenche examines the canons regular of Saint-Ruf at
Avignon and Valence, whereas Denyse Riche deals with the Cluniacs at Moissac.
The next section turns to the mendicants, who understandably receive a lion’s
share of the attention. The book comes with a CD, but individual historians’
enthusiasm about utilizing it depends on their project. Nelly Pousthomis-Dalle
employs it admirably in her survey of mendicant settlement in southwestern
France, as does François Guyonnet in his tour of mendicant houses in southeastern
France. Both clarify their presentation with a plethora of maps and photographs.
As might be expected, Bernard Gui is often mentioned. Cécile Caby and
Agnès Dubreil-Arcin concentrate on him, although in different ways. Caby asks if,
in Géraud de Frachet and Bernard Gui, we find une topographie légendaire des origines dominicaines. She suggests that Gui in particular, in his De fundatione et prioribus conventuum provinciae Tolosanae ordinis praedicatorum, is carrying out a complex project in which space and time are supercharged with greater significance
than we imagined. Caby’s analysis raises more questions than she can answer in an
article of this length, but allusions to earlier monastic (especially Cistercian) precedent help to suggest where her argument is tending.
Dubreil-Arcin offers a fascinating argument concerning the role of local saints
in Dominican worship. Humbert of Roman launched a liturgical reform aimed at
achieving uniformity in the order. The result was a universalized, despatialized list
of saints closed to the particularities of local cults, the sort of list offered in the
Golden Legend; yet, as individual houses moved into the center of town and
embarked on an active ministry, influence inevitably flowed in both directions and
attention was necessarily paid to local preoccupations.
The result is seen in Gui’s Speculum sanctorale, where Gui covers not only
saints of the Dominican office but many regional saints. Dubreil-Arcin draws
attention to the Limousin and Toulousain saints, suggesting that Gui offers a
geography of sanctuaries that counters the despatialization of the sacred toward
which the previous century moved. Note, too, her comments on Gui’s remarkable
treatment of the seventy-two disciples of Christ and her consequent important distinction between patterns of appropriation in the Midi and Italy.

BOOK REVIEWS

121

Like this reviewer, Louisa Burnham cannot stop thinking about the béguins of
Languedoc. In her article, she supplements what she wrote in her excellent book
(Ithaca, NY, 2008) by chronicling the desperate attempt by consuls of Narbonne and
Béziers to protect “their” spiritual Franciscans in 1316, one year before John XXII
moved against them.
A final section contains two articles by Sylvie Duval and Germain Butaud/ Vincent Challet on the challenges created by transfer of monastic communities into the
city in time of war. As Duval demonstrates, protecting nuns from mercenary companies outside the walls entailed protecting them from the urban life within them.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

DAVID BURR

Separate but Equal: Cistercian Lay Brothers, 1120–1350. By James France. [Cistercian Studies, No. 246.] (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, an imprint
of Liturgical Press. 2012. Pp. xxviii, 372. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-087907-246-9.)
In this study James France has brought together a variety of references to
medieval Cistercian lay brothers. Especially useful is his analysis of the exemplum
literature’s stories about lay brothers and the variation and development of stories
about them in the writings of such authors as Conrad of Eberbach and Caesarius of
Heisterbach, but also in more obscure exemplum collections and in lives of abbots
and saints. In this, it is a guide to the opinions about lay brothers among Cistercian
monks who wrote or read these stories, but it also reveals how much more often it
is lay brothers rather than monks who are the vehicle for the discussion of sin and
salvation. Indeed, although France does not say this outright, it appears that using
lay brothers for such discussion is evidence of their unequal status—that it was
acceptable for monks to describe lay brothers as sinning, because those lay brothers
were lesser beings, powerless to debate or respond to such characterizations.
The volume contains several other very helpful clarifications to our understanding of the distinctions that Cistercians made between monks and lay brothers.
France describes how and where lay brothers’ quarters were added to standard
monastery ground plans in Cistercian abbey architecture. He also discusses lay
brothers in art, suggesting how beards, hairstyle, and clothing distinguish lay
brothers from monks, secular clergy, and the laity. He plausibly suggests that laybrother revolts have been overemphasized by earlier historians in explaining the
decline of the Cistercian granges worked by lay brothers. In his view, much more
of that decline has to do with the unequal status of lay brothers recruited from the
very land that would become Cistercian granges.
France questions very appropriately whether there was real equality among
Cistercian monks and lay brothers even at the outset. The earliest charters provide
some indication of a primitive equality when donations are described as being made
to brothers who are not yet distinguished as monachi and conversi (concesserunt

122

BOOK REVIEWS

eisdem fratribus), but it was soon lost. Unfortunately, in his discussion of the dating
and introduction of lay brothers, France does not take into account the fact that the
Latin term for the lay brother, conversus, was evolving in its connotations over the
course of the twelfth century, perhaps especially among the Cistercians; it was only
gradually used exclusively for laborers as opposed to choir monks. Thus the cited
earliest reference to conversi at Clairvaux, found in a pancarte-like document from
1135, was likely applied to converts to the religious life rather than laborers per se.
University of Iowa

CONSTANCE H. BERMAN

Archbishops Ralph d’Escures, William of Corbeil and Theobald of Bec. Heirs of Anselm
and Ancestors of Becket. By Jean Truax. [The Archbishops of Canterbury
Series.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp. xii, 293. $39.95
paperback. ISBN 978-0-754-668-336.)
This book is one of a series on archbishops of Canterbury aimed at students,
academics, and broader audiences, but the summary on the back cover does Truax
and her subjects a disservice. None, as Truax makes very clear, was a “minor” archbishop nor were they “less noteworthy”’ than others. Truax reminds us that these
were three of the most important men in Anglo-Norman England, contextualizing
their careers within narratives of the ecclesiastical and secular politics of their day,
which, given their complexity, are admirably clear and straightforward. These are
the first extended biographical studies of Ralph d’Escures and William of Corbeil
to be published beyond the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the introduction to English Episcopal Acta 28: Canterbury 1070–1136 (Oxford, 2004); both,
however, have been the subject of unpublished dissertations. Denis Bethell’s
important articles on William are acknowledged, and Truax rightly makes considerable use of Avrom Saltman’s exceptional biography of Theobald (London, 1956).
On the back cover, the archbishops’ terms are presented as a “unified period,”
and a series editor notes that they “have never been considered together as a transition between two of Canterbury’s greatest Medieval archbishops” before. This,
although still too teleological, does better reflect the nature of the book, as Truax
(to bring coherence to three very different archiepiscopal careers) picks out central
themes of Lanfranc and Anselm’s tenures and then traces their development
through the terms of Ralph, William, and Theobald. Most prominent is what is
here defined as a “Gelasian” model of practical cooperation between king and archbishop and in relations with the papacy, to which all three archbishops are considered to have consistently adhered as the relationship among church, state, and
papal authority developed over the first half of the twelfth century. By the time St.
Thomas Becket became archbishop in succession to Theobald, that model had
been replaced by a “Gregorian” one in which bishops found themselves caught
between traditional loyalty to kings and new commitments to a newly powerful
papacy (although Theobald’s relationship with King Henry II is less difficult and
more Gelasian here than other recent research has suggested). For Ralph and
William, the Canterbury-York primacy dispute and its principal chroniclers,

BOOK REVIEWS

123

Eadmer for Canterbury and Hugh the Chanter for York, are the key basis for
analysis. For Theobald, the complex civil-war politics of Stephen’s reign and John
of Salisbury serve the same purpose. Truax’s narrative clarity is commendable.
This combination of models with a narrative approach does, however, sometimes bring coherence and clarity where it may have been limited; and popes, kings,
and bishops can occasionally be one-dimensional. Ralph and William themselves
are perforce studied mainly through the central narrative sources, and so Gelasian
and Canterbury-York themes dominate, but their own documents and those of
other individuals and institutions, although much more limited than for Theobald,
might have been used more to evaluate their multifaceted office. For instance,
Ralph’s treatise on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (even though it predates his
archiepiscopate) and his letter to the sons of Robert, count of Meulan, informing
them of their father’s deathbed confession are noted, but could perhaps have been
explored in more depth. The role of the archbishops’ own priory and its rival in
Canterbury, St. Augustine’s, also could have been explored further. When Truax
does examine another facet of the office—in her analysis of Theobald’s correspondence and acta that shows the extent of the archbishop’s influence in an England
troubled by civil war—it is a very valuable discussion and is one of the strongest sections of the book.
Nevertheless, although many books could be written on Theobald and his
brilliant household, and monographs might be produced on William and Ralph, it
is important to recognize the nature of Truax’s task here. In the context of a series
such as this, especially for the wider audience sought by the series editors, focusing
on the great themes of these three archbishops’ tenures and comparing them to
those of other ecclesiastical leaders makes a great deal of sense and cannot have
been an easy task. Truax succeeds, producing a very well-written and very useful
teaching text, which by its very structure also invites scholars to consider their own
views of the Anglo-Norman church.
University of Glasgow

STEPHEN MARRITT

The Medieval Art, Architecture and History of Bristol Cathedral: An Enigma Explored.
Edited by Jon Cannon and Beth Williamson. [Bristol Studies in Medieval
Cultures.] (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer. 2011. Pp. xviii, 350. $95.00.
ISBN 978-1-84383-680-3.)
The ten essays in this beautifully produced book evolve from a conference held
at Bristol Cathedral (the medieval St. Augustine’s Abbey) in September 2008. The
approach is interdisciplinary and provides important new insights on the topic, not
least in the last essays in the volume that address “The Monastic Community in the
Late Middle Ages”; “The Conversion of St Augustine’s, Bristol, to a Cathedral”;
and “Secreta mea mihi: The Wall Paintings from the Old Deanery of Bristol Cathedral.” Yet not everything is covered; ideally, the book should be read alongside
“Almost the Richest City”: Bristol in the Middle Ages, ed. Laurence Keen (Leeds, 1997).

124

BOOK REVIEWS

Beth Williamson and Jon Cannon articulate the “enigma” in the introduction,
and Williamson returns with some new observations and questions in the epilogue.
Roger Leech examines the early-medieval landscape setting of St. Augustine’s,
whereas John McNeill in “The Romanesque Fabric” provides the most complete
study of the twelfth-century work to date. He presents unequivocal evidence for a
high rib vault in the south transept and concludes that the presbytery must have
been vaulted. He associates aspects of design variety with the work of Roger,
bishop of Salisbury (1102–39), and Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury (1126–
71) and bishop of Winchester (1129–71). Such analogues could have been taken
further. For instance, the Romanesque nave aisle vault responds, with their paired
half shafts to carry the transverse arch flanked by recessed nook shafts for the diagonal ribs, are paralleled in the chancels of the churches of St. John and St. Mary,
Devizes (Wiltshire). Both of these may be products of Bishop Roger’s patronage.
Discussion of the place of the Bristol work in the so-called West Country School
would have been welcome, with reference to such works as Worcester Cathedral
chapter house for the segmental backs to the dado arcades, a feature also recorded
at St. Philip and St. James, Bristol. Ideally, the influence of St. Augustine’s on the
nave doorways at Llandaff Cathedral and aspects of local parish churches should
have been included. In Sarah Jane Foot’s essay, she explores Marian symbolism of
the Elder Lady Chapel and the documentation associated with it.
A large part of the volume is devoted to Christopher Wilson’s examination of
the eastern arm of St. Augustine’s. Wilson’s essay is better read after the contributions by Paul Crossley and Jon Cannon. Crossley’s “Bristol Cathedral and Nikolaus
Pevsner: Sondergotik in the West Country” provides a concise historiography of the
place of the eastern arm of St. Augustine’s, Bristol, in the context of European
architecture. In “Berkeley Patronage and the Fourteenth-Century Choir,” Cannon
presents a carefully researched and even-handed assessment of the documentation
associated with the building. Wilson’s seventy-eight-page essay features sixty-three
illustrations—many from his own excellent photographs—and 120 rich footnotes.
His interpretation of the building challenges Richard Morris’s article in “Almost the
Richest City.” The start of work on the building is documented in 1298, but Morris
argues that most of the construction took place between 1320 and 1340. Morris
attributes the work to three different master masons and considers that sources are
essentially regional. Wilson’s reading is significantly different. He argues for an
integrated design established at the outset and one in which the Bristol Master is
strongly influenced by Michael of Canterbury, master mason of St. Stephen’s
Chapel, Westminster (commenced 1292), and creator of the tomb of Edmund
Crouchback (d. 1296) in Westminster Abbey. Wilson suggests that the Bristol
Master met Michael of Canterbury in London, where he may have examined drawings of French Gothic motifs assembled by Michael—an interesting idea concerning the dissemination of architectural ideas c. 1300. It is also suggested that while
in London, the Bristol Master may have visited the Temple Church, the hall choir
of which possibly influenced the design of the Bristol choir. In addition to the
London connection, Wilson acknowledges regional antecedents for certain aspects
of the Bristol Master’s work such as the late-thirteenth-century tracery at Hereford

BOOK REVIEWS

125

Cathedral, the tracery in the eastern arm of Exeter Cathedral, and the tomb
recesses in Exeter Lady Chapel. Perhaps a regional source in the choir of Pershore
Abbey (after 1288) might be cited for the Bristol Lady Chapel and choir vault in
preference to Wilson’s suggestion of the vault of the undercroft of St. Stephen’s
Chapel Westminster (1292). Be that as it may, Wilson observes that details like the
responds of the Bristol choir aisles owe much to those in the Elder Lady Chapel in
the same church. He further sees the continuous orders of the choir main arcades
in relation to the early Gothic nave of Llanthony Priory.
On the date of the Bristol choir, it is worth recalling Eric Fernie’s principle
that a building is constructed as originally intended, unless there is unequivocal evidence to the contrary. If this is the case, then we should apply a 1298 date to the conception of the building even though the absolute date may be later. Perhaps we
should review some of the dates for moldings proposed by Morris.
Lack of space prevents detailed consideration of Julian Luxford’s excellent
essay on the patronage, buildings, and images of the late-medieval abbey. Suffice
to say that it is a very valuable contribution. Indeed, the book as a whole is to be
highly recommended.
York University

MALCOLM THURLBY

An Introduction to the Glossa Ordinaria as Medieval Hypertext. By David A.
Salomon. [Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages.] (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2012. Pp. x, 188. $40.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-7083-2494-3.)
This little book has the atmosphere of a medieval classroom, throwing out
questions, debating and arguing back and forth, ranging widely over several thousand years of culture (mostly only through the voices of recent authors—a fault, if
it is a fault, common in medieval writing as well). The text discusses the function
and technique of reading the scriptures in the Middle Ages, using the example of
the standard twelfth-century biblical commentary known later as the Glossa Ordinaria (or simply the Gloss). It is thought-provoking and densely packed. It is important to state, however, that this is absolutely not a history of the Glossa Ordinaria
or even an analysis of how its text functioned. The author’s sole primary source is
a modern facsimile edition of a copy of the text printed in Germany in 1480–81,
already 350 years after the Gloss had been compiled and at least two centuries after
it had passed out of common usage. The author explains lengthily (twice) that the
1480–81 edition survives in so many copies, estimated between 180 and 250, that
it must have been important, unlike (as he says each time) the works of Geoffrey
Chaucer, which are rare. Exactly the opposite is true. Copies of the incunabular
Glossa Ordinaria are common now because no one used them (even the printer
admitted that he was unable to sell them, cited here on p. 58); Chaucer, by contrast,
was read to pieces. The great period of the Glossa Ordinaria was between about
1140 and 1250. That is when it was used avidly and read across all of Europe. The

126

BOOK REVIEWS

author has looked at no manuscripts of that period, he sighs (again twice) that this
would require access to “dozens” of libraries (pp. 3, 6). Actually, yes, it would: that
is the nature of historical research. Anyone can ask how a text may have been used,
but answers must depend on recording marks of ownership, signs of reading, marginal notes and corrections, and on following the footprints of manuscripts and
even early printed editions as they travel through history. He does none of this.
David Salomon is wide-ranging and generous in acknowledging and citing modern
authorities, rather as the Gloss itself did in the twelfth century, but this leaves the
uncomfortable feeling that maybe it is all a little too secondhand. The author must
surely be able to read the Glossa Ordinaria, but he modestly conceals his knowledge
of Latin. Where he quotes Latin and then translates the same passage, the renditions are so free that some seem hardly similar to the original. There is no Latin
word “margoinis” (p. 27: he has copied that uncritically from Michael Camille, who
knew no Latin at all), or “qi,” for quia (pp. 18, 83); and “perfectionem creaturae” (p.
89) is not the perfecting of the Creator, which would be creatoris, but of a thing created. There are many other examples like this, and they do undermine credibility a
bit. The colored picture on the front cover shows a page that is not from the Glossa
Ordinaria but from the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas—an equally fascinating but very different text. On balance, however, there is much here that is very like
the original Gloss, a text extracted from multiple authors, some available only in
translation (such as Origen was), tumbling through the pages in a sparkling display
of other people’s ideas. Like the Gloss, it is a book for classroom discussion.
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

CHRISTOPHER DE HAMEL

Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to
the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291. Edited by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and
James M. Powell. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp, xxii, 512. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-8122-4478-6.)
The popularity of the crusades among university and school students has never
been greater, but every teacher of the subject knows the difficulties of finding good
translations of medieval documents. Translations of complete crusade chronicles
and collections of documents relating to specific crusades are invaluable, but teachers and their students need a wide range of materials to gain a broad understanding
of the whole of the crusading movement. For this reason, the wide diversity of crusading activity in the thirteenth century is a particular challenge to teach.
This volume will be a vital tool to all teaching and studying the crusade in the
thirteenth century. It is a revision and considerable expansion of Edward Peters’s
valuable collection of documents in English translation, Christian Society and the
Crusades, 1198–1229 (Philadelphia, 1971). Peters has been assisted in his task by
the greatly respected scholar James M. Powell (who regrettably did not live to see
the work in print; his fellow editors have dedicated the volume to him) and by Jessalynn Bird, whose research on James of Vitry is already well known to crusade
scholars.

BOOK REVIEWS

127

The book begins with a detailed introduction that sets out the background to
crusading in the thirteenth century. This is followed by seventy-three translated
documents, divided into ten sections. Some of these cover the traditional chronological approach to studying the crusades, including sections on the crusades during
the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, the Fifth Crusade (1213–21), the Emperor
Frederick II’s Crusade (1227–29), the Barons’ Crusade (1234–45), and the crusades
of King Louis IX (1248–70). The translated texts are not simply narratives but also
include material that will widen readers’ knowledge of crusading culture such as
intercessory processions at Rome in 1212, crusade recruiters in Marseilles in 1224,
and Rutebuef’s lament on the Holy Land in 1266. These sections also contain
descriptions of crusading activity that is often overlooked in accounts which focus on
the crusades to the eastern Mediterranean: for example, the battle of Las Navas de
Tolosa in 1212, the Children’s Crusade in 1212–13, and the Pastoureaux in 1251.
Other sections of the book contain translated texts on “Crusade and Council, 1213–
15”; crusading activity against the Mongols, 1241–62; the crusades in Italy, 1241–
68; and the experiences of those who went on crusades. The final section of the book
describes “The Road to Acre, 1265–1291,” including contemporary discussion of
why the crusade had failed, crusade plans, and descriptions of the final loss of the
city of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291. There is a detailed index, which will enable
readers to trace many references to (for example) liturgy, the poor, and women on
crusade. Each section opens with an analysis and historical survey of the translated
texts, followed by a short, individual introduction to each document.
Even experts on the period will find material that is both unfamiliar and valuable. Altogether, this is a most impressive collection that will prove an invaluable
resource to teachers and students alike. Regrettably, the price of the hardcover edition will put it beyond the resources of most students, limiting its potential as a
course text. It is hoped that the publishers will produce a softcover version or an ebook edition.
Cardiff University

HELEN J. NICHOLSON

Studies in Early Franciscan Sources. Edited by Michael W. Blastic, O.F.M., Jay M.
Hammond, and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, O.F.M.Conv. Vol. 1: The Writings of
Francis of Assisi: Letters and Prayers; Vol. 2: The Writings of Francis of Assisi:
Rules, Testament and Admonitions; Vol. 3: The Writings of Clare of Assisi: Letters, Form of Life, Testament and Blessing. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute Publications. 2011–2013. Vol. 1: Pp. xix, 335; $29.95; ISBN 978-157659-230-4. Vol. 2: xvi, 330; $29.95; ISBN 978-157659-232-8. Vol. 3: xi,
147. $19.95; ISBN 978-157659-233-5. $79.85 paperback for the set.)
Following the publication of the first volume (The Saint) in the three-volume
series Francis of Assisi: Early Documents (New York, 1999) and the publication of
Regis Armstrong’s Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, The Lady (Hyde Park, NY,
2006), the three volumes under review come as a welcome complement to these
English translations of the writings of the two saints. Each volume comprises chap-

128

BOOK REVIEWS

ters written by internationally respected scholars, the majority of whom are working in the United States: Regis Armstrong, Michael W. Blastic, Michael Cusato,
Laurent Gallant (Canada), Jean François Godet-Calogeras, Jay M. Hammond,
Wayne Hellman, Lezlie Knox, Luigi Pellegrini (Italy), Ingrid Peterson, and
William Short.
As stated in all three introductions:
The essays make available a new resource for further study and interpretation
in two ways. First, the essays define the status quaestionis by informing the
reader about the state of current research on each of the texts considered. The
aim is to help the reader find a point of departure for either interpreting the
texts or for moving the research forward. Second, the essays are intended to
introduce the reader to these texts within the dimensions of their multilayered contextual-historical framework. Hopefully, this will open the door for
solid theological reflection, the only foundation for further development of
Franciscan spirituality.

Each of the essays adopts the same format, providing (a) the historical context of
the writing; (b) an explanation of the way in which the text has been transmitted
and perhaps altered over the centuries; (c) recent scholarship concerning the text;
and (d) a presentation of the way a given text provides insight into the personality
of St. Francis or St. Clare and those they influenced. Each chapter concludes with
a select bibliography. The essays presuppose a certain familiarity with the lives of
the two saints and Franciscan history in general; for that reason, a short general
bibliography for this purpose is also provided in each volume.
The essays in volume 1 examine the letters and prayers of Francis, beginning
with an explanation of the manuscript tradition and the transmission of the saint’s
writings by the noted Capuchin Franciscan scholar, Luigi Pellegrini. A detailed and
informative analysis, Pellegrini’s essay provides important background for those that
follow. Unfortunately, this English translation of the Italian original is so literal as
to impede the uninitiated reader from following the author’s argument with ease. Of
particular contemporary interest is Blastic’s observation that, following his visit to
Egypt, the later prayers of Francis reflect the experience of God as “all powerful,” a
central dimension of the Muslim faith (pp. 110–11). Godet-Calogeras’s discussion
of The Praises of God (pp. 66–71) is especially informative concerning the influence
of Islam on the Poverello. Overall, Francis emerges from these essays as a man of
deep faith and literary genius. All is gift. Praise God (Hammond, p. 240).
Volume 2 is dedicated to the Rules, the Testament, and the Admonitions of
Francis. These essays provide insight into Franciss’ struggle to maintain the essence
of his calling within the brotherhood that developed around him, while remaining
a faithful son of the Church. The authors also take the reader to the heart of the
struggle to interpret the charism of the founder as the brotherhood was transformed, in the wake of Lateran Council IV, into a religious order at the Church’s
service. Given the influence of the Testament on reform and division within the

BOOK REVIEWS

129

Franciscan order over the centuries, Hellmann’s essay (pp. 223–56) on that document is an important complement to Short’s detailed examination (pp. 17–222) of
the Rules of the brotherhood, their genesis and development. The volume concludes with Blastic and Hammond’s examination of the Admonitions: the work of
Francis and the early brotherhood as they worked out the implications of the Early
Rule (Blastic, pp. 253–330). Hammond suggests that the Admonitions could well be
described as possibly the earliest Franciscan attempt at lectio spiritualis (p. 326).
Volume 3 is devoted to the writings of Clare of Assisi: Letters, Form of Life,
Testament and Blessing. Petersen’s examination of Clare’s letters to St. Agnes of
Prague provides an insight into the spirituality of the saint and an appreciation of
the way in which they contributed to the charism of her sisters attempting to live
without property within a Church that found it difficult to accept that this was possible. Knox discusses the development of the saint’s Form [Rule] of Life, the first
written for women by a woman (pp. 59–107). While recognizing that Clare was
helped by collaborators, she indicates that “[m]ost scholars today identify Clare as
author of the Rule, recognizing its inspiration in Francis’s writings as well as her
deliberate invocation of his authority (pp. 78–79). Blastic (pp. 105–33) discusses
the Testament of Clare and various scholarly attempts to decide on its authenticity,
accepting the argument that it is substantially authentic as “the transcribed memory
of Clare’s last instructions and admonitions to her sisters” (p. 120). The volume
concludes with Godet-Calogeras’s discussion (pp. 131–47) of Clare’s Blessing to all
the sisters, arguing for its authenticity and concluding that her words seem to prolong and conclude the Testament (p. 141).
As well as making a timely contribution to international Franciscan scholarship, these three volumes will also be most helpful to anyone interested in Franciscan spirituality or involved in Franciscan formation.
Stoke Nelson, New Zealand

MAURICE CARMODY, O.F.M.

San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice. Edited by Henry Maguire and
Robert S. Nelson. [Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia.]
(Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Distrib. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2010. Pp. viii, 295. $60.00.
ISBN 978-0-88402-360-9.)
This is a complicated book, in which a complex of issues is dealt with in interlocking fashion. On the face of things, it is a set of individual essays by eight scholars consolidating their contributions to a colloquium held in Baltimore under the
auspices of Johns Hopkins University and Dumbarton Oaks, under the title “From
Enrico to Andrea Dandolo: Imitation, Appropriation, and Meaning at San Marco
in Venice” (May 2007). All eight (including Maguire and Nelson) are active specialists, to one extent or another, in Venetian studies.
The Ducal Basilica of San Marco has been one of the most studied of Christian churches for generations. The landmark studies have long been the two grand

130

BOOK REVIEWS

works of the Austrian scholar Otto Demus: The Church of San Marco in Venice: History, Architecture, Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1960), and The Mosaics of San Marco
in Venice (4 vols., Chicago, 1984). It is not an exaggeration to say that this new
book is the single most important one to deal with the great church—its qualities,
its decoration, its surroundings, and its messages—since Demus’s massive volumes.
The key to this collection’s purpose is the word myths. Over the course of the
Serene Republic’s history, many “myths of Venice” were generated, partly to convey
at home and abroad the message of Venice’s supposed stability, internal harmony,
the commitment of its citizens to the interests of the state beyond personal interests, the binding ideal of justice, and majesty of empire. The myths could also be
embodied in traditional stories attached to individual decorations or appurtenances
of the church. And, beyond the myths propagated by Venice’s image-making, there
have been myths developed by observers and scholars of things Venetian.
Indeed, Liz James’s essay on “Mosaic Matters” definitively explodes Demus’s
vague assumption that the glass tesserae that went into the basilica’s staggering
mosaic programs, and the artists who executed them, were Byzantine in origins.
For more than two decades, moreover, it has been known that the so-called Pilastri
Acritani that stand outside the basilica’s south wall are not trophies from a Venetian conquest of the Genoese in Acre but booty from the church of Hagios
Polyeuktos in Constantinople, as Nelson himself explicates. Debate still continues
over just whom the so-called Tetrarch panels, mounted at the corner of the Treasury wall, really represent.
Each of the essays has a particular focus: Fabio Barry’s on the calculated decorative use of spolia; Michael Jacoff’s on the messages incorporated in the exterior
façades; Thomas A. Dale’s on the “cultural hybridity” of art and decoration of
which Venice was a center; Holger A. Klein’s on the deliberate imitations of Constantinople in Venice’s urban configuration; Maguire’s on a sculpture (the Aniketos
Icon) in the south entrance (now the Zen chapel) and the patterns of relic display;
and Debra Pincus’s on the unique design and decoration of the Baptistery.
But, in fact, all these scholars deal with constantly overlapping themes and
materials, each contributing in individual terms to an overall understanding of how
messages were expressed through visual means: messages about what elements
make up a working political order and in what balances; messages about how
Venice related itself to its once-patron, then-victim, Byzantium; messages about
claimed divine authorization of its status, through its accumulation of sacred relics
and prestige as a pilgrimage center, but above all through the symbolic figure of its
patron saint, Mark the Evangelist. It is recognized throughout that there seems to
have been no master plan for all this, no documented grand program set down. Yet,
even if the achievement was cumulative rather than pre-conceived, these studies
join to recognize two phases of decisive initiatives: the ducal regime of Ranieri
Zeno (1253–68) and the service of Andrea Dandolo as procurator (1328–43 and
1343–53).

BOOK REVIEWS

131

The more one reads, the more the fascinating ideas are engulfing. This book
will remain a stimulus to further thinking and study for a long time. The opulent
footnotes, crammed with citation of literature, will alone serve as an important
resource—although this reviewer wishes some major publications, constantly cited
throughout, could have been assembled as a selected bibliography, just as twelve
images constantly referred to by all the authors have been assembled as a preliminary album of plates.
University of Wisconsin–Madison

JOHN W. BARKER

Friars’ Tales: Thirteenth-century exempla from the British Isles. Selected sources
translated and annotated with an introduction by David Jones. [Manchester
Medieval Sources Series] (New York: Manchester University Press. 2011. Pp.
xvi, 201. $95.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-7190-8424-9; $34.95 paperback,
ISBN 978-0-7190-8425-6.)
With his translation of the earliest mendicant exempla collections from the
British Isles dating from around the year 1275, David Jones offers an extremely
useful tool for university teaching. His work will enrich seminars on the history of
the medieval Church and of medieval thought as well as classes in historical anthropology in a broader sense.
At first sight, the translations allow easy access to the practice of medieval
preaching: 213 stories from two sermon books, the Franciscan Liber Exemplorum
(preserved in Durham Cathedral Library MS B.IV.19, ed. A. G. Little, Liber
Exemplorum ad usum praedicantium [Aberdeen 1908], here translated on pp. 27–
153) and fifty-two stories from the so-called Cambridge Dominican Collection
(preserved in London BL Royal MS 7 D.i., not published so far, here translated on
pp. 155–88).
At second glance, the translations facilitate reading and thus help us to understand both the “otherness” and the “likeness” of the Middle Ages. Three aspects are
illustrative, although many more could be added.
First, the stories testify to a tremendous circulation of knowledge (both in
time and space) at the time. The compiler often speaks as a first-person narrator
explaining from where he draws his knowledge. Apart from ancient stories from
the Saints’ Lives, the vitae patrum, and so forth, he frequently refers to firsthand
sources such as “what I heard from Brother Jordan, a good and truthful friar”; “a
clerk named John [. . .] told me this himself”; “a story related to me and Brother
Roger Bacon in Paris”; and “I found this in a sermon by Brother Richard
Fishacre”—thus witnessing to the lively streams of communication within the
mendicant communities.
Second, the tales feature an “international” perspective as a matter of course to
the minds of late-thirteenth-century storytellers. The topographical horizon of the

132

BOOK REVIEWS

stories reaches from local knowledge in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to
German and Italian sources of information. Brethren from Paris and Oxford, testimonials from Spain, Castile, Seville, Cilicia, the Holy Land are regularly cited,
thus documenting a surprising “international” mobility of knowledge, people, and
stories at the time.
Third, a radical concern for the fundamentals of the conditio humana is clear:
the uncertainty of human life, the agonies of death, the fears and hopes of those left
behind, dreams and visions, the promises of magic, the dangers of sexuality and
incest, fears of impurity, depression, guilt, possession, neighborhood conflicts, generational conflicts, and many other issues. No doubt this perspective owes a good
deal to the friars’ activities as confessors. From this, we might also understand
another peculiarity: an almost naive trust in the power of the spoken word. This is
most charmingly expressed in the famous story of the clerk named John who, on
the way to his concubine one night, managed to defeat the devil in disguise by
merely speaking out loudly, “You lie, by the death of Christ.”
In short, this is a wonderful book and is a must-have for those teaching history
with a focus on the history of humanity.
Universität Mannheim

ANNETTE KEHNEL

Kurienuniversität und stadtrömische Universität von ca. 1300 bis 1471. By Brigide
Schwarz. [Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vol.
46.] (Boston: Brill. 2013. Pp. xxii, 923. €226,00. ISBN 978-90-04-23589-2.).
This weighty volume stands in the grand tradition of German scholarship
regarding late-medieval papal institutions. Brigide Schwarz explains in her preface
that she started research in the Vatican Archives in the 1960s, not only for her
thesis but also on behalf of the Repertorium Germanicum, for which she was allocated two years of the pontificate of Eugenius IV. Her Roman researches, drawing
in particular upon the underused registers of supplications, have continued ever
since; and she has many other publications, notably about minor functionaries of
the papal curia (abbreviators and correctors of papal letters, couriers, and so forth).
Over the years, she has collected an enormous amount of data about the development and personnel (professors, students, and others) of the two confusingly parallel bodies named in the title of the present book. The Studium Urbis has received
much attention in recent years, and Schwarz has contributed and clarified a great
deal more about it, but above all she has advanced knowledge about the so-called
Studium of the Roman Curia. She nevertheless claims only to have opened up
pathways and that much more can be discovered. She warmly acknowledges the
help of many scholars—above all, of her mentor, Hermann Diener (whose vast collection of notes she has used), and of a colleague who contributed a prosopographical appendix. This reviewer is grateful for generous citations of his long-superseded article about the Studium Urbis and its funding, written more than forty
years ago, and also for a humorous correction (p. 197).

BOOK REVIEWS

133

The book is divided into two main parts. Following a rather personal foreword, the introduction explains some of the problems involved, the methodology
employed, the principal sources, and the previous literature. What follows is, first,
a historical outline divided into two periods: 1303–1417 and 1417–71. It is not
altogether clear why the survey ends in 1471, coinciding with the death of Paul II,
except that this was a high point for the Studium Urbis, but it would be churlish to
expect an even longer time span; the end of the Great Schism makes a good hiatus,
although one of Schwarz’s revelations is that a University of the Roman Curia still
operated during the Council of Constance (and indeed, most suggestively, in the
1430s during the Councils of Basel, Ferrara, and Florence). A second section analyzes organization: first of the Studium Urbis (statutes, administration, professors,
locations, funding, and so forth), then of the University of the Curia. A third section probes more closely problems about the refounding enactments of Boniface
VIII (1303) and Eugenius IV (1431–34) as well as about the teaching of theology,
in which the studia in Rome of the mendicant orders were also involved. There is
a long summary of all this (pp. 421–50) in English.
Schwarz affirms that these were never wholly two separate institutions. Both
were ultimately under papal authority; formulaic references are found naming the
“Studium almae Urbis sive Romanae Curiae” or the “Romanae Curie et alme Urbis
studium” (significantly in the nominative singular). Apparently Boniface VIII, even
before his surviving decretal of 1303, had wanted to extend teaching beyond the
papal curia itself and to strengthen the cultural prestige of the city of Rome by the
provision for a wider student public of further lectures and disputations, mainly in
theology and canon law but also in civil law. During the “exile” of the papacy to Avignon, the University of the Roman Curia continued to flourish. The law faculties
expanded under John XXII, a lawyer; a room for oriental languages was hired by the
Apostolic Camera; and a large hall in the papal palace was known as the “Studium
Romanae Curiae.” Urban V himself gave lectures, and even some (limited) teaching
of medicine is recorded. There was, moreover, a “symbiotic relationship” with the
University of Avignon (the local “Studium Urbis”). Nevertheless, Schwarz insists,
the Studium of the Curia was sui generis; it did not resemble other universities at all;
it had no proper constitutional statutes, matriculations, graduations, or divisions of
students into nations; and uncertainty exists as to whether it had academic years
divided into terms. Meanwhile, the re-establishment in Rome of the papacy (or of
at least one papacy after 1378) saw renewed vigor of the civic extension of the university. Innocent VII—aided by the humanist and papal secretary Leonardo
Bruni—promulgated a sort of blueprint in 1406, but it was only in the post-Schism
period after 1418 (with papal enactments under Martin V and in the earlier and later
years of Eugenius IV (1431–34, 1444–48]) that the civic “university” became more
visible and more viable with funding from the gabella studii (tax on imported wine)
and a very limited delegation of power from the Camera Apostolica to civic dignitaries. Lecture courses in rhetoric, literature, and other subjects in the arts increased;
and a building was designated as the “Gymnasium Romanum.” But the two institutions still overlapped. For example, they seem to have shared the same rectors and
pedelle (beadles?) and examples are noted of “shared” professors of theology or of

134

BOOK REVIEWS

theology and logic. Although teaching under the aegis of the Studium Urbis was
concentrated within the central area of Rome near the Pantheon and Sant’Eustachio
(a relatively small church that became inexplicably prominent in academic functions), this locality had long been associated with advanced teaching; Piazza Sant’Eustachio was already known as the “place of the school” by 1375, and theology
and canon law (the special province of the Studium Romane Curiae) were regularly
taught nearby in the Dominican studium at the Minerva. In the fifteenth century,
colleges for impecunious students were founded in the same district by several cardinals; so perhaps they were both “curial” and “civic.”
The text is supported by various appendices, incorporating documents and
short biographical entries (“biogrammes”) of teachers and students during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are compiled from many sources (particularly
useful in providing names have been petitions and rolls of “expectatives” concerning
wished-for appointments to benefices). The majority of names seem to be from
Italy, but an appreciable number are from France and the Iberian peninsula (strikingly few English, Scots, or Irish); German and Polish professors and students are
separately listed by Christiane Schuchard (pp. 649–762). All this is very useful,
although it is sometimes difficult to identify the more hermetic abbreviations of
sources cited below individual entries. The final 200 or so pages of the book contain
lists of manuscript and printed sources, an immense bibliography, and comprehensive indices, although some readers may find it frustrating that persons are indexed
only under their first names.
The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study
University of London

DAVID CHAMBERS

Pilgrimage and Pogrom: Violence, Memory and Visual Culture at the Host-Miracle
Shrines of Germany and Austria. By Mitchell B. Merback. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 382. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-226-52019-3.)
In this sumptuously illustrated and densely argued book, Mitchell B. Merback
examines the linkages among anti-Jewish violence, accusations of host desecration,
and religious sites of commemoration and pilgrimage in regions of Bavaria and
Austria in the high Middle Ages. Starting in the thirteenth century, waves of libels
against the Jews for committing ritual murder, using Christian blood for their own
nefarious rituals, and attacking sacred Christian objects resulted in judicial and
extrajudicial violence. Accusations of host desecration were a subset of these antiJewish myths, starting with an incident in Paris in 1290 that Merback regards as
the archetype for his German case studies.
In addition to his detailed discussion of the semiotics of the art and architecture of churches erected on the alleged sites of host desecration, Merback makes an
important contribution to the historiography of anti-Jewish violence. Although virtually everyone has assumed that accusations against the Jews were the proximate
cause of violence against them, Merback argues that, at least in some of his cases,

BOOK REVIEWS

135

the violence preceded the myths of sacrilege. He borrows the Russian word pogrom
to describe paroxysms of mass violence against the Jews whose causes may not have
been specifically religious. Only later were the narratives of host desecration, typically borrowed directly or indirectly from the Paris archetype, imposed on local
events as a way of explaining and justifying mob violence. Merback argues convincingly for this chronology by showing how the erection of cultic sites of commemoration often came significantly later than the events themselves. However, since
not all of his cases are so clear cut and not all of them feature mass violence against
Jews, cause and effect in some instances are hard to disentangle.
Already two decades ago, Israel Yuval showed how ritual murder cases were
almost always linked to the production of a saint and to a cultic site of pilgrimage.
From an economic point of view, ritual murder and host desecration were good
business because they produced religious tourism. Merback builds on this kind of
argument to demonstrate the importance of sites of host desecration for latemedieval pilgrimage. He notes that with the failure of the crusades, pilgrims had to
find destinations within Europe and that the German churches he investigates
served such functions. In addition, Germany was relatively poor in relics so that
there was a need to generate such objects of veneration from local sources. These
conditions laid the groundwork for the linkage between anti-Jewish accusations
and cultic commemoration.
Merback is particularly attentive to the role of blood in these tales. Jews are
said to make the host bleed, which becomes the justification for shedding their
blood. The iconography of the lieux de memoire that he reads very closely repeatedly
features images of the bleeding Christ. This blood iconography was part of a larger
iconography of blood relics in late-medieval Germany described recently by Caroline Walker Bynum.
It is hard after reading Merback’s book and viewing the many images he
brings to ignore the extraordinary violence that attended Jewish-Christian relations
after the crusades in both reality and imagination. He concludes by contending that
the horrific history behind his churches should not obscure their contribution to
culture: “For it is the work of culture to mark the site of sacrilege, the site of miracle, and the site of trauma …” (p. 291). True enough, but what does it say about
a culture that its very origins lie in such bloody violence?
University of California, Davis

DAVID BIALE

Richard FitzRalph: His Life, Times and Thought. Edited by Michael W. Dunne and
Simon Nolan, O.Carm. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distrib. ISBS, Portland,
OR. 2013. Pp. viii, 216. $74.50. ISBN 978-1-84682-369-5.)
The title of this collection of ten essays on the Anglo-Irish Richard FitzRalph
may suggest that we are being offered a new biography of the fourteenth-century
bishop of Armagh. This is not an altogether helpful choice by the two editors. The

136

BOOK REVIEWS

papers derive from a conference in November 2010 to mark the 650th anniversary
of FitzRalph’s death; the organizers, here the editors, are both specialists in
medieval philosophy, and it is primarily to others in similar faculties that this collection has most to offer. It should not be thought that the book in any way supersedes that by Katherine Walsh (Oxford, 1981); indeed, for many points concerning
FitzRalph’s life and work, the reader must go back to that volume, even though
more than thirty years have passed since it was published. A glance at the bibliography in the present work reveals that surprisingly little has been added at least
directly on FitzRalph in that period.
Because the title may suggest to readers more general coverage, it may be
helpful here to indicate the main interests of the contributors. The full chapters are
nine in total, with a tenth short note by the first editor arguing that logical treatises
formerly attributed to Richard FitzRalph should more correctly be recognized as
the work of a later Armachanus, John Foxholes, who died in 1474. The main chapters are divided into three sections, the work of FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon, and
his “Reputation and Aftermath.” With the exception, however, of the first paper in
the second group (by Terence Dolan on rhetoric in the Defensio curatorum), all are
to some extent concerned with FitzRalph’s contribution to the medieval discussion
of philosophic issues. The works primarily under discussion are the Lectura on the
Sentences (chapters 1, 3, 4, and 6; and in part 7), a handful of sermons (chapter 2),
and a small part of the Summa de quaestionibus Armenorum (chapter 7); the
FitzRalph texts likely to be most familiar to many medievalists, the antifraternal
sermons (save some aspects in chapter 8) and De pauperie Salvatoris, are hardly
mentioned. Most of the texts that are here displayed have not been edited—consequently, there are long quotations, most (but regrettably not all) of which are translated; the absence of an index to the coverage of FitzRalph’s writings does not help
in locating incidental references. Stephen Lahey’s chapter, “Untangling Armachanus from the Wycliffites,” is likely to have an interest for a wider range of
medievalists; but even here the issue of dominion is hardly touched. Lahey is concerned to distinguish FitzRalph’s hostility to the friars in the latter part of his career
from that displayed in the writings of John Wyclif and his followers. Certainly
some of Wyclif’s comments, reflecting his reaction to fraternal opposition to his
eucharistic views, express a hostility to all “private religion” (including that of the
friars) beyond that which Armachanus displays. But detailed analysis of both men’s
reasons for wishing for the curtailment of fraternal privileges, numbers, and wealth
would reveal a considerable similarity. Certainly Wyclif had understood FitzRalph
on the friars and on other issues better than the Spanish Dominican Francisco de
Vitorio, subject of the ninth paper here, appears to have done in the early-sixteenth
century. This is an enterprising, indeed in some ways provocative, collection of
papers, but perhaps the moral that emerges most clearly from it is the serious need
of printed modern editions of all of FitzRalph’s works.
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

ANNE HUDSON

BOOK REVIEWS

137

Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria and Albert
Museum. Edited by Paul Williamson, with contributions by Fergus Cannan,
Eamon Duffy, and Stephen Perkinson. (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2010. Pp. 224. $49.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-88397-156-7.)
Many art historians feel ambivalent about alabaster sculpture. On the one
hand, although only a small fraction of what must once have existed has survived,
this is sufficient to give one a representative idea of the original whole. This means
that the aesthetic and iconographic character of the genre can be assessed in a way
that is impossible in the case of sculpture in freestone or (particularly) wood.
Alabaster sculpture is thus historically useful. On the other hand, the artistic quality
of alabaster carving is in most cases relatively low, and this means that art historians,
who have traditionally and understandably been predisposed to privilege quality in
their work, have paid little attention to it. It has undoubtedly been thought that
lower quality objects such as those represented in this catalog cannot absorb as much
critical scrutiny as their richer relations; this attitude pervades all areas of art history,
not simply that of sculpture. As it happens, there is a body of scholarly writing on
medieval alabasters, and what has come down to us is better catalogued than, for
example, surviving medieval panel or manuscript painting. This is the work of
single-minded and perceptive enthusiasts like Walter Leo Hildburgh, Phillip
Nelson, and Francis Cheetham. Otherwise, it has been left to social and religious
historians such as Eamon Duffy (author of the best essay in this catalog), and those
who work on late-medieval and early-modern tomb-sculpture (for example, Arthur
Gardner), to discuss alabaster carving in a way that respects its merits as a medium
of choice in the two centuries between the Black Death and the Reformation.
This state of affairs exerts an influence on Object of Devotion. All of the essays
demonstrate an awareness of it in one way or another. But in fact the academic context is not all that important to the success—and it is a considerable success—of
either the catalog or the accompanying exhibition. The aim is to present the viewing public with an accessible introduction to a division of medieval art particularly
well represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections, rather than to
make the sort of contribution to scholarship represented by Cheetham’s English
Medieval Alabasters (Oxford, 1984; repr. Rochester, NY, 2005), which also surveyed the museum’s collection. This sort of endeavor is entirely laudable: for the
encouragement of a proper respect for England’s patrimony, the public and the
objects need to be re-exposed to one another at least once in a generation. Object of
Devotion very handsomely supports this enterprise. The catalog is beautifully produced, with extremely high-quality reproductions of the best objects in the collection and a readable, informative introduction by Paul Williamson. The three main
prefatory essays are not of uniform quality, but each achieves its aim of contextualizing the genesis and reception of alabaster sculpture according to production
(Fergus Cannan), devotional function (Stephen Perkinson), and iconoclasm
(Eamon Duffy). In particular, Duffy’s impeccably documented essay provides a
thought-provoking lens through which to appreciate the survival of the sixty
objects chosen for this catalog. The division of material within the exhibition and

138

BOOK REVIEWS

catalog has been dictated by the range of the Victoria and Albert’s holdings. Understandably, in view of what has been previously mentioned, it is framed according to
historical rather than aesthetic or stylistic criteria: “The Art of the Alabastermen”;
“Martyrs and Miracles”; “Word Made Flesh: The Life of Christ and the Virgin”;
“The Altarpiece”; “Business and Religion: Making and Selling Holy Images”; and
“The Reformation.” In view of the aims of such exhibitions, this is both logical and
graspable. The catalog entries, by Cannan, are intelligent and informative. As a
whole, Object of Devotion provides a very good introduction to the large division of
alabaster carving that represents devotional subjects and, by extension, to the “popular” art of late-medieval England more broadly.
University of St. Andrews

JULIAN M. LUXFORD

The Insight of Unbelievers. Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in
the Later Middle Ages. By Deeana Copeland Klepper. [Jewish Culture and
Contexts.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007. Pp. 225.
$59.95 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8122-3991-1. 2008. $24.95 paperback,
ISBN 978-0-8122-2021-6.)
A particularly interesting group among twelfth- and thirteenth-century
Christian exegetes were the Hebraists whose interest in the literal or historical
meaning of the Bible led them to consult Hebrew Bibles and Jewish exegesis, often
through the intermediary of Jews of their acquaintance. The school of St. Victor in
Paris was renowned for its Hebraism. Less well known but at least as interesting
was the work of Herbert of Bosham, who served in St. Thomas Becket’s household
and whose commentary on the book of Psalms incorporated a great deal of material
from the French Jewish exegete Rashi (d. 1105). Herbert was English, as were
many other Hebraists of this period such as Andrew of St. Victor, Stephen Langton, Robert Grosseteste, and Roger Bacon. Deeana Copeland Klepper follows
Richard W. Southern in suggesting that English interest in history and science
might have stimulated interest in working with the original languages of the Bible,
which included Greek. Striking is how many of the English Hebraists were Franciscan or had a strong Franciscan connection. Klepper contrasts Franciscan use of
Hebrew material that helped them to explain the literal meaning of the scriptures
with Dominican recourse to Jewish postbiblical texts as part of their concerted conversion program from the latter half of the thirteenth century. But, as Klepper
points out, any kind of usage of Jewish sources for Christian purposes did beg the
question how it could be that Jews had not been convinced by their own material
to embrace Christianity.
This is the issue that Nicholas of Lyra took on in his early work on the Advent
of Christ of 1309. Here he argued vociferously that the literal text of the Hebrew
prophecies proved conclusively that Jesus Christ was God and man; and he stressed
that many Jews, in fact, had accepted Christ as their savior. Postbiblical Jews had
not converted because, in their greed and fear of poverty, they preferred their texts
that promised them material rewards. Also, they had been habituated by their edu-

BOOK REVIEWS

139

cation to despise Christian beliefs and equate them with idolatry, which they
wished to avoid at all costs. Nicholas’s explanations betrayed his familiarity with
contemporary epistemological concerns that tried to explain the processes of knowing and the reasons for ignorance. Using these tools, he explained that most of the
elite among the Jews of Jesus’ day would have known him to be the divine Messiah.
Their response to Jesus, however, became emotionally charged when he started to
challenge them. The result of this was that they became cognitively incapable of
acknowledging him for what they knew him to be. We see in Nicholas’s argument
how Christian thinking on Jews was so often driven by essentially Christian concerns. For, as Klepper points out so convincingly, Nicholas had to demonstrate the
reliability of his Jewish sources before he could embark on his great project, his Postilla litteralis, in which he provided a literary commentary of the whole of the Bible
by using a whole raft of Jewish sources from biblical Hebrew and Talmudic material to Rashi, whom he used most of all. Klepper’s book helps us to understand how
Nicholas’s Postilla can be seen as the high point of medieval Christian Hebraism
and how it served Christians of the following centuries as their primary source for
Jewish exegetical material.
Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge

ANNA SAPIR ABULAFIA

Women from the Golden Legend: Female Authority in a Medieval Castilian Sanctoral.
By Emma Gatland. [Colección Támesis, Serie A: Monografías, 296.]
(Rochester, NY: Tamesis, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2011. Pp. viii,
257. $99.00. ISBN 978-1- 85566-229-2. )
Translation of collections of saints’ lives based upon Iacobus de Voragine’s
Legenda aurea would seem to have begun in late-fourteenth-century Spain and
flourished during the subsequent century. Surviving manuscripts are almost without exception related to noble households—three belonging to none other than
Isabel the Catholic herself. It is one of these—that belonging to the Royal Chapel
in Granada, now San Lorenzo del Escorial, ms. h-I-14—which provides the female
lives transcribed (with modernized orthography, accentuation, and punctuation) in
the appendix, which occupies nearly half the book (pp. 137–235). Despite the
importance, at least in volume, of this appendix, information about the manuscript
has to be gleaned from footnotes; nowhere is it formally described or its position
within the transmission of the various compilations established. The explicit principle for the choice of this manuscript for particular study is that the manuscript
contains the highest number of female saints’ lives of the vernacular compilations,
although it is unclear whether this is due to the predilection of the compiler or just
that it contains more saints’ lives tout court (see p. 13). Discussion is further hampered by reference to Th. Graesse’s 1846 edition of the Legenda aurea (Giovanni
Paolo Maggioni’s edition appeared in 1998) and—although this is by no means the
author’s fault—our almost total ignorance of the wider tradition of Latin compilations of abbreviated vitae in the Iberian peninsula. Nevertheless, providing transcriptions of texts from particular manuscripts (with occasional comparison across
a group of manuscripts deemed to be related) seems to be the settled form in which

140

BOOK REVIEWS

late-medieval Castilian sanctorals are now being progressively consigned to print.
Such a practice, however, leads to a confusion of variance—differences through the
activity of individual translators (or diverse principles of translation) are not clearly
distinguished from scribal variants. Such a distinction would help enormously in
clarifying authorial/translatorial impetus in the presentation of sanctity.
Beyond the transcription of the text, the three chapters of study attempt to
provide a theoretical understanding of the abbreviated lives of the female saints,
delineating the use of “authority” in the texts through the three headings of
“Vision,” “Language,” and “Performativity.” These chapters begin with an introduction, attempting to set these very modern themes within a medieval landscape
of ideas. This is followed by a series of case studies of individual lives, drawn not
solely from Escorial, ms. h-I-14, but (despite the book’s subtitle) from the wider
vernacular sanctoral tradition. It is in the latter that some very good work has
been done, and Gatland shows an intelligent and discerning engagement with
previous criticism on the subjects of female sanctity. The resolute focus, however,
on female saints leaves a curious gap. The reader never learns which male saints
are included in Escorial, ms. h-I-14; and no comparisons are made with their
lives, leaving this reviewer unsure as to the gender-specificity of some of the
female saints’ attributes. Nevertheless, Gatland shows herself a balanced, observant, and entertaining interpreter of this material, which, perhaps more than any
other medieval subject-matter, is still rendered acutely difficult by unresolved
textual indeterminacy.
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

ANTHONY JOHN LAPPIN

The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure. By Thomas A.
Fudge. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xvii, 392. $74.00.
ISBN 978-0-19-998808-2.)
In The Trial of Jan Hus, Thomas Fudge undertakes to narrate the entire history of the legal proceedings against the Bohemian preacher and heretic, from their
inception in Prague to the fiery culmination in Constance. Altogether, these proceedings lasted more than eight years, and the primary venue for their adjudication
passed from Prague to Rome and then to Constance. The signal achievement of
Fudge’s book is that he manages to piece together a coherent narrative of the trial’s
tortuous progression from Hus’s correspondence, legal briefs, curial decrees,
polemical texts, sermons, diaries, and narrative accounts of the Council of Constance. These constitute a bewildering array of viewpoints on Hus’s trial, and Fudge
does well to rein in the discordant voices and transform them into a unified narrative. In short, as a chronicle of Hus’s trial from start to finish this book has no equal
in English. And although its main argument—that the outcome of Hus’s trial was
legitimate by medieval standards of judicial practice—is ultimately consonant with
that of the Czech scholar Jiří Kejř (a fact that Fudge himself acknowledges), The
Trial of Jan Hus attempts to move beyond Kejř’s work by analyzing the development of those standards over the longue durée.

BOOK REVIEWS

141

To do this, Fudge spends the first quarter of the book detailing the accumulation of canon law sources concerning heresy and the development of trial procedures against heretics during the high Middle Ages. He subsequently uses these
collective bodies of precedent in the latter half of the book as a benchmark against
which the proceedings against Hus can be evaluated, which embeds Hus’s trial
within a longer tradition of legal thought and practice. This approach is useful,
although the sheer number of legal sources that Fudge deploys throughout his
account has the curious effect of flattening them out. In other words, because of
Fudge’s exhaustive research, it becomes difficult to judge which canonical precedents were most compelling or foremost in the minds of Hus’s interlocutors as they
pursued his conviction for heresy. As such, the canon law framework that Fudge
provides for the trial does little to help explain its result.
Rather, what seems most clear from Fudge’s account of the trial is the centrality of the various actors’ personalities and motivations in determining its outcome.
This is essentially a character-driven study, with Hus, Jan Jesenice (his lawyer),
Jean Gerson, Cardinal Odo Colonna (later Pope Martin V), and Hus’s Czech
antagonists Michael de Causis and Štěpán Pálěc emerging as the dominant figures
in the trial. On the one hand, the significance of these men’s actions and animosities as an explanatory factor seriously qualifies the argument that the trial was conducted in accordance with medieval norms; on the other hand, however, Fudge’s
emphasis on the choices made by each of these men throughout the proceedings
does much to account for the instances where the trial process deviated from those
norms and the overall dynamics that led to Hus’s condemnation. It is finally worth
noting that Fudge himself becomes one of the central characters in this drama. In
both his introduction and conclusion, he uses his own experiences as a scholarly
disputant and participant in legal proceedings to foreground his account of Hus’s
trial. This strikes me as a dangerous move, as it potentially blurs the boundaries
between historical analysis and personal apologetics. Fudge is candid, though,
about the personal stakes of this project, which only further emphasizes the continued importance of the human element in Hus’s trial and its interpretation.
PHILLIP HABERKERN

Boston University

EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN
Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Edited by Jessica Martin
and Alec Ryrie. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp. xi, 285. $134.95. ISBN 978-1-40943131-2.)
This is an excellent and illuminating collection that not only deepens our
understanding of lived religion in Protestant England and Scotland; it also showcases some of the innovative new directions and methodologies employed by those
studying early-modern religious cultures. The volume explores the myriad ways in
which people prayed when they were not in church and serves as a companion

142

BOOK REVIEWS

volume to Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie’s edited collection Worship and the Parish
Church in Early Modern Britain (Burlington, VT, 2013). Indeed, the relationship
between private devotion in the household and public worship in the parish church
is a persistent refrain in the volume. For instance, in the volume’s opening chapter
Ian Green characterizes domestic devotion as a blend of official or clerical recommendations with personal preferences and priorities. Jane Dawson’s chapter on the
Scottish context similarly demonstrates that the Christian duty to practice private
devotion was closely supervised by the Kirk, whose elders sought to shape the
household into a “domestic seminary.”
Following these overviews are chapters that explore where people prayed and
how they prayed, revealing the sheer variety of opportunities available to contemporaries; the volume’s interdisciplinary approach allows for wide-ranging coverage
of these. Literary scholars Micheline White, Jessica Martin, and Alison Shell
explore the texts that people used to structure and focus their devotions, revealing
strong continuities with earlier pre-Reformation practices whilst also indicating the
strategies adopted by evangelicals to persuade people to adopt new devotional
habits. Prayer as a means to change embedded practices is also an issue with which
Ryrie engages in his admirable chapter on devout activities associated with sleep, a
chapter that is also a reminder of the evangelical principle of strict spiritual discipline during every moment of life, waking or not. Many of the chapters survey the
devotional aids available to the laity to assist and guide their spiritual regime—
advice literature, prayer manuals and handbooks were thick on the ground, and
devotions utilizing the Psalms were evidently extremely widespread, as both Beth
Quitsland and Hannibal Hamlin show. In her innovative chapter focusing on the
place of visual and material artifacts in household devotion, Tara Hamling persuasively argues that domestic practice also continued to rely on visual and material
props, which served as visual emblems of godly identity and agents of comfort as
well as practical aids to memory.
Kate Narveson and Jeremy Schildt tackle the place of scripture in private
devotion, each acknowledging that the evangelical ideal of universal access proved
problematic in practice due to the complexity and opaqueness of the Bible. Schildt
traces the ways in which the laity could traverse scripture and apply its lessons to
their daily lives, whereas Narveson focuses on the clergy’s concerns that the laity
were not equipped to encounter the Word without professional training in exegesis.
The call for scriptural literacy was therefore accompanied by tactics to bolster deference to clerical authority and to ensure that the laity read the Bible in the right
way—not in order to interpret it but to confirm the ground of doctrine that had
been laid down elsewhere.
Narveson’s and Schildt’s chapters highlight that the flexibility of an individual
devotional regime was constrained by official expectations and anxieties. The
volume reveals that Protestant clergy in England were just as keen to script and
oversee domestic worship as their counterparts in the Scottish Kirk. Erica Longfellow demonstrates that, despite the widely proclaimed Protestant duty of private

BOOK REVIEWS

143

prayer, many clergymen remained deeply ambivalent about it and thought public
worship superior. Solitary prayer in particular was thought not only to deprive the
supplicant of congregational support and the sustaining presence of the church; it
was also considered dangerous, an encouragement to melancholy, and a likely
source of religious delusion.
As a whole, the volume vividly evokes the difficult intellectual and theological
balancing act that the evangelicals faced in enacting their reform program. It makes
a significant contribution to the ongoing scholarly process of demarcating religious
cultures in post-Reformation England in greater depth and detail, illuminating
how religion was experienced by early-modern folk. The private devotional practices discussed in this volume contain strong elements of continuity with the
Catholic past; where prayer is rarely individual and solitary but more often communal and outward facing; where the “godly” are the people most likely to exploit the
physical environment to represent, call to mind, and celebrate the Word; and where
clergymen were rather more reticent and anxious about lay access to scripture than
one might expect.
University of Exeter

LAURA SANGHA

Die baltischen Lande im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Teile 1–
4: Livland, Estland, Ösel, Ingermanland, Kurland und Lettgallen. Stadt, Land
und Konfession 1500–1721. Edited by Matthias Asche, Werner Buchholz, and
Anton Schindling. 4 vols. [Katholisches Leben und Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung, Vols. 69, 70, 71, and 72.] (Münster: Aschendorff
Verlag, 2010–13. €103,20 for all four volumes. Teil 1: Pp. 307, ISBN 978-3402-11087-4. Teil 2: Pp. 219, ISBN 978-3-402-11088-1. Teil 3: Pp. 184,
ISBN 978-3-402-11087-8. Teil 4: Pp. 215, ISBN 978-3-402-11090-4.)
These four volumes are devoted to the history of the Protestant Reformation
and confessionalization in the Baltic region. The editors have set an ambitious goal
to present in these collections of essays an alternative interpretation to the traditional approach to the Protestant Reformation—first of all to discuss the concept
coined by Baltic German historians. According to this new treatment, the history
of the Reformation in the Baltic region also should be distinguished by an interdisciplinary approach to the subject. The sources and methods employed by the
authors are varied, as are their backgrounds and scholarly fields—there are historians, art historians, linguists, and musicologists among them. Each volume has its
own focus. The first one consists of contributions on the spreading of the new
Evangelical faith among the native population, whose Christianization in the
Middle Ages had been superficial. The main contribution to the volume by Aleksander Loit (“Reformation und Konfessionalisierung in den ländlichen Gebieten
der baltischen Lande von ca. 1500 bis zum Ende der schwedischen Herrschaft,” pp.
49–217) seems like a small book about the history of medieval Livonia rather than
an essay about the course of the Protestant Reformation in the countryside. The
essays by Raimo Raag (“Die Literatur der Esten im Zeichen von Reformation und

144

BOOK REVIEWS

Konfessionalisierung,” pp. 217–46) and by Pēteris Vanags (“Die Literatur der
Letten im Zeichen von Reformation und Konfessionalisierung,” pp. 263–85) point
to the traditional attitude—that religious publications of the sixteenth century,
especially the Protestant ones, have had a fundamental role in the development of
the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian written languages and the spread of literacy.
The essays presented in the second volume focus on cultural history; the
authors try to make visible and analyze the impulses given by the religious movements of the sixteenth century to the cultural and social developments in the Baltic
region. The central essays by Krista Kodres (“Kirchliche Kunst in den von Esten
bewohnten Gebieten im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung,” pp.
41–67) and Ojārs Spārītis (“Kirchliche Kunst und Architektur in den lettischsprachigen Regionen der baltishen Lande im Zeitalter von Reformation und Konfessionalisierung,” pp. 103–32) are dedicated to the impact of the Protestant Reformation on religious art and architecture in the territory of contemporary Estonia
and Latvia. The second volume is probably the most interesting one and also is distinguished by a well-balanced and clear structure.
The third volume deals with the spread of the Protestant Reformation to the
towns in the Baltic region. One of the most intriguing aspects of the Livonian Reformation is the speed with which it reached Livonia and spread there. By 1524, the
Reformation had already triumphed in the major Livonian towns and in smaller
towns by 1526. The main contribution of the third volume by Enn Tarvel (“Kirche
und Bürgerschaft in den Baltischen Städten im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert,” pp. 17–
100) lies in elaborating on the course of the Reformation in towns and developments of the church organization in the Baltic region from the Middle Ages up to
1710. Tarvel points out that in Livonia (that is, in the territory of contemporary
Estonia and Latvia), Protestants and Catholics lived side by side for a long time,
and the Lutheran Church gained a dominant position only after the Swedish conquests in the 1620s.
The focus of the fourth volume is on the historiography of the Protestant Reformation. The essays by Juhan Kreem (“Die livländische Reformation im Spiegel
der estnischen Geschichtswissenschaft,” pp. 99–122) and Valda Kļava (“Die
livländische Reformation im Spiegel der lettischen Geschichtswissenschaft,” pp.
123–46) give an overview of the most important tendencies and developments in
the research on the history of the Reformation in Estonia and Latvia during the last
century. The contribution by Sergius Michalski (“‘Hölzer wurden zu Menschen.’
Die reformatorischen Bilderstürme in den baltischen Landen zwischen 1524 und
1526,” pp. 147–62) is devoted to the wave of iconoclasm in Livonian towns; Mischalski also reflects on theological attitudes of the first Protestant reformers in
Livonia toward religious statues and images.
Each volume also contains a great number of illustrations, plans, maps, and so
forth; most have exhaustive commentary. The fourth volume especially contains
abundant illustrative material and just three essential essays. It has to be mentioned
that in all volumes, very little attention is paid to the Counter-Reformation in the

BOOK REVIEWS

145

Baltic region, although it also had an important impact on the cultural and social
developments in the region. There is undoubtedly an acute need for a fresh
approach to this subject.
Finally, it is not easy to say whether the picture that emerges from these volumes really points to new perspectives of research on the history of Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the Baltic region. Rather, the main achievement of all contributions in these four volumes is summarizing the results of
previous research rather than offering a new approach or new concepts. Thus it still
remains necessary to work out a contemporary methodological and theoretical
approach to the history of the Protestant Reformation and confessionalization in
the Baltic region.
Institute of History
Tallinn, Estonia

INNA JÜRJO-PÖLTSAM

The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy. By Emily Michelson. [I Tatti Studies
in Italian Renaissance History.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2013. Pp. x, 262. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-674-07297-8.)
Emily Michelson delves into the world of preachers, pulpit literature, and
Catholic clerical book production in “Reformation Italy” from roughly 1530 to
1570—the years preceding, during, and following the Council of Trent (1545–63).
She claims that Italian Catholics remained so because “so much of the Tridentine
reform agenda was entrusted to preachers and … in the end preachers were perhaps
most responsible for the suppression of heresy and the reformation of Catholic
identity in Italy” (p. 181). She reconstructs the growing fear that many Italian
diocesan clergy and mendicant preachers experienced and the urgency they felt to
counter the rising tide of Lutheran ideas flowing into Italy, above all that of sola
scriptura that seemed to lure many Italian laymen and laywomen to want to read
scripture in their own language and—what was to be feared—usher in the same
type of social and political upheaval that northern Europe faced in the wake of the
Reformation. She maintains that Italian clergy (not all to the same degree) awoke
to these pernicious influences and by the end of the Council reasserted their
authority. Through vigorous preaching and the wide publication of sermons, treatises for laypeople, and other types of printed pulpit literature, they got the upper
hand. She cautions readers that Catholic responses to the religious crisis of “Reformation Italy” “could be as diverse as the new concessions they opposed” (p. 8) and
that it is historically inaccurate to picture in these years “black legends and stereotypes about lockstep and unthinking Catholic conformity” (p. 174).
Michelson reviews the activities of now well-known Catholic reformers like
Gian Matteo Giberti, Luigi Lippomano, Cornelio Musso, Gabriele Fiamma,
Girolamo Seripando, Francesco Panigarola along with some other less-studied
mendicant and secular clergy. She sees the laity’s demand for scripture as countered
successfully by the clergy’s maneuvers to keep scripture out of lay hands and reserv-

146

BOOK REVIEWS

ing to itself alone the interpretation of scripture and exposition of doctrine, while
“foster[ing] Catholic piety and constru[ing] devotion as a shield against heresy” (p.
98): “ultimately, the solution they [the clergy] proposed for scripture was primarily
against reading, certainly individual reading” (p. 134, emphasis in original).
Michelson’s conclusions appear sound, but she might go further by raising the
question whether this was a departure from long-standing practice. Her finding
that many bishops and clergy viewed the laity as simple and ignorant seems to confirm what we know of traditional clerical attitudes about the laity’s inability to
understand scripture or doctrine without close clerical instruction and supervision.
She might also look closely at sessions five and twenty four of the Council of Trent,
which addressed Sacred Scripture and preaching, where the Council affirms that
“the preaching of the gospel is … the chief task of the bishops,” “to teach the heavenly treasure of the sacred books,” “to feed with the words of salvation the people
committed to their charge,” “to announce the sacred scripture and the law of God,”
that preachers “teach … according to their own and their hearer’s capacity what it
is necessary for all to know with a view to salvation … the vices they must avoid
and the virtues they must cultivate so as to escape eternal punishment and gain the
glory of heaven.”1 Preachers were not required to teach scripture as such. Sermons,
of course, were to be based on scripture, but preaching the word of God was not
the same as teaching scripture, as it included so much more—divine and church
laws, devotions, counsel and exhortation, lessons of Christ’s life, exempla, catechetical instruction, and God’s providence. One might preach the gospel by interpreting it according to one or more of the four senses of scripture, but one did not have
to teach the laity how to read and understand it. Michelson’s collection of preaching materials certainly suggests this was and would remain the main line in
Catholic piety and culture.
Michelson brings to light a rich cache of documents generated in Italy during
these decades. She catches the palpable sense of fear—the near desperation felt by
many preachers in the face of Protestant teachings and the laity’s desire to read
scripture in the vernacular—and she provides a useful survey of the preachers, their
publications, and their mentalities ardently seeking to counter Lutheranism in Italy.
Mount Holyoke College

FREDERICK MCGINNESS

Michael Helding (1506–1561): Ein Bischof im Dienst von Kirche und Reich. By Peter
M. Seidel. [Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, Band 157.]
(Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2012. Pp. xviii, 429. €59,00. ISBN 978-3402-11581-7.)
Prince-bishop of Merseburg during the critical 1550s, Michael Helding had
been a participant in the colloquies of Worms (1540–41) and Regensburg (1546),
1. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: From Trent to Vatican II,
2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1990), 2:7, 10, 82.

BOOK REVIEWS

147

and one of the theological diplomats in the events leading up to the Council of
Trent, in which he also participated. In this revision of a Freiburg im Breisgau dissertation we have the first comprehensive assessment of Helding’s career since
Erich Feifel’s (Wiesbaden, 1962). New research on episodes in which Helding was
involved, such as the 1548 Interim controversy, has brought the activities of peers
and adversaries alike into focus. Peter Seidel’s thorough and substantial monograph, based on archival sources in Vienna, Würzburg, and Merseburg as well as
the printed record, contextualizes and clarifies the work of an important member
of the hierarchy.
As a member of the cathedral chapter in Mainz, Helding was involved in the
politics of Empire and Church. Seidel adds Helding to the narratives of Hubert
Jedin and Konrad Repgen, revealing him to be a significant partner of Julius Pflug
and Pedro Malvenda at Regensburg (1546) and with these two along with Eberhard Billick and Pedro de Soto at Augsburg in the creation of the Interim. The idea
of a compromise formula for liturgy, controversial on both sides of the confessional
division, had its origin in the 1546 collaboration between Helding and Pflug to
produce a “Vergleichsformel.” Pfllug’s part in the process has been well known, but
the story has been incomplete due to scant knowledge of Helding’s role.
At Merseburg Helding led a Catholic minority in a Protestant landscape.
Merseburg was part of the province of Magdeburg and became Lutheran when
George III von Anhalt converted to Protestantism. Helding’s appointment as
bishop was part of an effort to return Merseburg, along with Pflug’s Naumburg, to
Catholicism. Strong resistance from the cathedral chapter and from George von
Anhalt limited Helding’s efforts to restore religious practice to the Roman norm.
After the Religious Peace of Augsburg, Helding became counselor to King
Ferdinand and a participant, along with Peter Canisius and others, in the 1557
Colloquy of Worms, contending with Philipp Melanchthon, then under attack
from fellow evangelicals. More significant was his service in the imperial chamber
court from 1558 to 1561. Religious issues were within the jurisdiction of this body,
which undertook a revision of the procedure for church visitations.
Long regarded as one of the mediating theologians during a time of division
between moderates and reactionaries, Helding was a constructive theologian attentive to pastoral concerns. The categories of Reform Catholicism and mediating
theology are being refined by recent research. Seidel’s “typological ordering” of
Helding’s work clarifies Helding’s place in the reformist camp and the meaning of
“mediation” that was operative among its leaders. Helding’s opposition to division
is evident in his preaching, in which he advocates a critical self-assessment within
the Church in the interest of unity.
By pursuing systematic points in Helding’s pastoral and exegetical works,
Seidel uncovers a theological creativity that has escaped earlier investigators.
Knowledge of scripture in its original languages, the union of exegesis and philology, doctrine presented rhetorically rather than as dialectic: these are the values

148

BOOK REVIEWS

guiding Helding as pastor and theologian. Helding shares Desiderius Erasmus’s
view of the centrality of faith and the conception of the Church as a spiritual community extending over time. Seidel’s exposition of Helding’s catechetical work
shows us a reformist theologian fully aware of the pastoral needs of the laity during
a time of controversy.
His position as bishop notwithstanding, Helding’s vocation was that of the
preacher, and his important works stem from that activity. In this he stands apart
from better-known contemporaries and offers a case study in episcopal and pastoral
activity. Long a cipher even to specialists, Helding now emerges as a many-sided
figure, not easily categorized but now more clearly understood.
University of Illinois at Chicago

RALPH KEEN

Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious Identity during the English Reformation. By
David J. Davis. [Library of the Written Word, Vol. 25; The Handpress
Word, Vol. 19.] (Boston: Brill. 2013. Pp. xvi, 243 pages. $146.00. ISBN 97890-04-236010-1.)
This study of religious images printed as woodcuts and engravings in English
publications from 1535 to 1603 is based on the author’s doctoral research under the
supervision of Alexandra Walsham at the University of Exeter. Setting the scene in
the first two chapters, David Davis reviews the rapidly expanding literature on the
print trade in sixteenth-century England and on contemporary attitudes toward the
use of images. This literature has already done much to discredit older assumptions
of a sharp divide between Catholic and Protestant positions, and to tease out the relationships between images and text in various contexts, but the author feels these ideas
can be taken further. In the remaining chapters he analyzes the meaning and deployment of a wide range of images and symbols—the Virgin, the Holy Monogram, the
Crucifixion, the Agnus Dei, the Good Shepherd, visions of God, and the tetragrammaton—and concludes that developments in England should not be “graphed along
strict confessional or ideological lines” (p. 7), but seen as producing “religious identities” (p. 9) that, although remaining aware of the differences between Catholic and
Protestant, were able to embrace the common ground between them as well. The
monograph is well written and throws numerous shafts of light on specific cases and
on wider issues such as the debate on “iconophobia.” It is also moderately well illustrated, given the indifferent quality of many surviving images. With caveats, it can be
recommended to scholars and students interested in this subject.
Although the author is adept at identifying occasions when highly educated
and theologically sophisticated Protestant clergy gave limited and conditional
approval for the use of selected images inside the church or outside, there remains
a dearth of solid evidence to show how far these views were known to or shared by
the authors or editors, or more usually the printers and publishers, who opted to
insert a particular woodcut or engraving in a particular place in a particular work.
Time and again, the gap between theory and practice is filled by a presumption that

BOOK REVIEWS

149

the placement was deliberate and enlightened—an act of informed recontextualization, to strengthen the sense of Protestant identity—even if that same image had
been borrowed from a Catholic source, or was subsequently recycled several times
within the same volume or in other works in a variety of genres. Indeed, the more
images were used in early-modern publications, the more they became generic or
decorative rather than helping to support or explain a particular text, so that contemporary readers received mixed signals from the printer’s habit of recycling
images. Furthermore, we know little of English readers’ reactions to the texts, let
alone the accompanying images, of the works they encountered. Many of the works
in which Davis’s images appeared were not at the cheap end of the spectrum, indicating an educated but limited market. However, when these images appeared in a
best-selling title, they could be hard to interpret. Did those who bought—or were
lent—one of the many copies of Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins’s metrical
psalms that had on its title-page a copy of Hans Holbein’s image of Christ triumphing over evil and death use it as a point of reference for meditation or recognize it as a symbol of the divine? Or, if they noticed it at all, did they wonder what
an image of Christ surrounded by four scripture texts with Latin incipits was doing
on a work that did not mention him by name in the psalms they were singing?
University of Edinburgh

IAN GREEN

The Texts and Contexts of Ignatius Loyola’s “Autobiography.” By John M. McManamon, S.J. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2013. Pp. xviii, 230. $80.00
clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8232-4505-5; $25.00 paperback, ISBN 978-08232-4504-8.).
John M. McManamon describes his work as a “somewhat atypical book” (p.
ix). Indeed, the book reads like a collection of articles on different aspects of St.
Ignatius of Loyola’s Acta, his memoirs, which were dictated to Luís Gonçalves
Câmara between 1553 and 1555. Other historians have dealt with the difficulties
presented by this text. McManamon joins them in reminding readers that these recollections were not compiled by Loyola but were recorded by Câmara based on his
own recollections of his sessions with Loyola. Furthermore, the text starts abruptly
in 1521, the year Loyola was wounded in Pamplona, and ends in 1538, with his
arrival in Rome. We know, however, that Loyola told Câmara about his earlier life,
and the latter probably decided not to include these memories in the final version.
McManamon’s first chapter summarizes the Acta’s textual history, pointing
out that the acting agent in the text is not Loyola but God, and the acts recorded
are God’s actions within Loyola’s soul. In chapter 2, McManamon argues that
Loyola’s Acta is a mirror of the saint’s attempt to overcome vainglory and to instruct
other in how to resist this temptation. The author offers a short history of patristic
and medieval attitudes toward vainglory, emphasizing especially Cassian’s writings
on the topic. This is a strange choice. McManamon himself remarks that Loyola
rarely mentions Cassian and that there is little in common between the monastic
life he cultivated and the apostolic life of the Jesuits. The explanation that “vain-

150

BOOK REVIEWS

glory and narcissism provide a big tent” (p. 45) and that both men appreciated the
peculiar spiritual challenge of vainglory, is forced. Similarly, the insertion of Freud’s
discussion of the psychopathology known as narcissism into a theological discussion
of the sin of vainglory obscures rather than clarifies. What is more convincing is the
author’s chronological discussion of Loyola’s life as it is presented in the Acta—an
account of a battle against different forms of vainglory and a journey from the
Spanish warrior to the mystic, pilgrim, and intellectual. Loyola struggled throughout his life with his self-confidence and his charismatic ability to shape and even
transform souls. McManamon suggests, not without justification, that the examination of conscience was a trusted method of resisting this sinful behavior, hence
its centrality in the Spiritual Exercises.
Chapter 3 traces Loyola’s years of tribulations from his arrests in Alcalá and
Salamanca to his investigations in Paris and Venice and the hostility he met in
Rome. Throughout this period, Loyola and his companions resided in hospitals,
established shelters for prostitutes and orphans, preached to the Jews, and “helped
souls.” McManamon highlights the apostolic aspect of both these persecutions and
activities. But should we expect otherwise of a group of spiritually-inclined individuals who consciously modeled themselves on the apostles?
In chapter 4 McManamon develops his most important contribution—
namely, the argument that Loyola’s life and “autobiography” refract the life of St.
Luke. For both, geography and mobility were important and acquired theological
significance: Luke portrayed Jesus’s entire life as a pilgrimage; and, for the Jesuits,
apostolic life means permanent movement and pilgrimage. Both the apostle and
the Jesuits emphasized crossing gender, ethnic, and religious boundaries in their
ministries, and both practiced inclusive faith.
In the final chapter McManamon calls attention to the Jesuits’ world-affirming spirituality, the importance of humanistic education to their enterprise, and the
proliferation of charity establishments in Italian cities of the Renaissance that
might have shaped the Jesuits’ approach to charity. McManamon rightly argues
that the culture that shaped Loyola and the early Jesuits was the Renaissance rather
than the Counter-Reformation.
McManamon’s book is an important addition to the growing field of Jesuit
studies.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

MOSHE SLUHOVSKY

Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome. By Miles Pattenden. [Oxford Historical Monographs.]
(Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. viii,154. $99.00. ISBN 978-019-967062-8.)
This small book, a published Oxford doctoral dissertation, is remarkably conservative in the best sense of the word. The footnotes, a descriptive list of the

BOOK REVIEWS

151

prinicipal manuscript sources, and the bibliography prove outstanding scholarship.
But the author, now a research fellow at University of Bologna, refrains from
demonstrating his historical competence through exhausting textual abundance
and abstract theoretical digressions that unfortunately are considered state of the
art by many historians nowadays. Instead, he tells a straightforward story in
chronological order and explains events in terms of the characters and the strategies of acting individuals. Nevertheless, the book concludes with a thesis that is
verified by this narrative with sufficient plausibility. According to Miles Pattenden, the trial of the Carafa in 1560/61 was not the necessary consequence of the
crimes they had committed during the reign of their uncle, Pope Paul IV (1555–
59), but a carefully planned and implemented strategic operation of Pope Pius IV
(1559–65) to intimidate the College of Cardinals and to strengthen the absolute
monarchy of the pope. It was during the sixteenth century that the College of Cardinals was reduced from a powerful senate claiming co-regency of the Church to
an assembly of Roman top bureaucrats and foreign dignitaries ready to acclaim
almost everything a pope decided to do. The Carafa were the most appropriate
victims not only because of their prominence and their crimes but also because of
their lack of skill in micropolitics. They had neither built up a reliable party of followers among the cardinals and the Curia nor secured the stable support of foreign
princes. Consequently, Pattenden no longer considers the trial of the Carafa as a
turning point in the structural history of papal nepotism. Many scholars believed
that this dramatic event marked the end of the “great” nepotism of princes-to-be
and its replacement by a “bourgeois” nepotism of mere enrichment and promotion
to nonruling noble rank. Pius’s own nepotism shows that the system had not
changed. But the papal families had to learn that it was absolutely necessary to
build up a micropolitical security screen for the time after the death of their
“uncle.” Nevertheless, the Barberini, after the death of Pope Urban VIII, apparently were to have a narrow escape from the fate of the Carafa—or at least were
afraid of it.
The first chapter presents a summary of the pontificate of the fanatic Paul IV,
including his war against Spain and his prosecution of Cardinal Giovanni
Morone. In the end he dissociated himself from two of his nephews when he was
informed about their activities. At the time of the pope’s death, Giovanni Carafa
had his wife killed for adultery with the consent of cardinals Carlo and Alfonso
Carafa. Chapter 2 explains how the obscure Gian Angelo de’ Medici (no relation
to the ruling dynasty of Florence, but a friend of it) was elected, why he needed to
strengthen papal authority, and why the Carafa were the most vulnerable targets.
Chapter 3 follows the careful preparation and execution of the trial, including the
production of collusion in Italy and Spain. Chapter 4 begins with the desperate
attempts of the Carafa to built last-minute alliances, demonstrates the essential
weakness of the defense based upon Paul’s plenitudo potestatis (because that must
lead to the acceptance of Pius’s potestas), and proceeds to the execution of Carlo
and Giovanni Carafa after some pressure on dissenting cardinals. Chapter 5, the
aftermath, includes Pius’s own nepotism and the reversal of the verdicts under
Pius V. In the end, Pius IV, the pope of the successful conclusion of the Council

152

BOOK REVIEWS

of Trent, turns out to be a conservative figure without any spiritual impulse and a
shrewd political opportunist.
Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany)

WOLFGANG REINHARD

Windows into Men’s Souls: Religious Nonconformity in Tudor and Early Stuart England. By Kenneth L. Campbell. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint
of Rowman and Littlefield. 2012. Pp. x, 225. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-73916819-6.)
What is primarily a study of the works of the separatists John Robinson,
Thomas Helwys, and John Smyth seeks to put them in a very broad context, both
temporally and intellectually. This is a work that has proven to be impossible to
review without using the term curate’s egg. It certainly has strengths, and attention will
be drawn to them. However, it also has problems—factual, structural, and conceptual—which cannot be ignored. To begin with the strengths, this is a useful addition
to the historiography. Where attention has concentrated on the common ground
shared within the Church of England between the godly and the conformist and
more recently on the internal tensions among the godly, the more fulsome criticisms,
criticisms that were acted on, on behalf of the Separatists have sneaked under the
radar of attention. This treatment, building on the work of scholars such as Stephen
Brachlow, is a pertinent reminder; and the specific engagements with the Separatists’
writings are insightful and thought-provoking, not least in examining the tensions
within the conditional loyalty of the Puritans to the Church of England.
That much accepted, the reception is spoiled by unfortunate descriptions and
judgments. To describe William Perkins as “an early Puritan” (p. 80), Guy Fawkes
as “a disgruntled Catholic terrorist” (p. 113), and Joseph Hall as “the most antiPuritan among the bishops” (p. 186) is simply inaccurate. To speak of the irony
that “some of the leading Nonconformists” turned out to be Arminians and to press
the case with the sole example of John Goodwin is unconvincing (p. 188), and to
suggest that the reluctance of Puritans to eschew “their own economic interests for
the sake of religious Nonconformity” is the key to why so few became Separatists
before the 1630s serious underestimates the tension between reform from within,
pastoral concerns, and heartfelt misgivings about the state of the church.
Although the breadth of context is to be admired, seeking some sort of Nonconformist culture rooted in the Lollards is an unconvincing echo of A. G. Dickens’s old thesis. A similar failure to take advantage of more recent work perhaps
plays a part in the concentration on soteriology in the religious politics of the
1630s. Greater absences are to be found in the broader conceptual tools employed.
There is a recurrent theme of Catholics and Separatists alike being against a “state”
church without ever addressing what the “state” was (and perceptions of heresy and
an incomplete Reformation would surely be more profitable roads to follow). The
greatest underaddressed term is Nonconformist. Kenneth L. Campbell adopts John
Bossy’s muddying of the waters in the first chapter, which raises hopes, but thereafter the term is employed with an assumption of common ground. Within the

BOOK REVIEWS

153

church, the context-dependency of nonconformity is ignored, either in the sense of
enforcement or accepted silent practice. The willingness of some bishops to turn a
blind eye to nonconformity on condition that it was not accompanied by explicit
denunciation could be a compromise to clear consciences and relative peace. Similarly, the “outing” of some by bishops more stringent in their insistence on conformity works against the idea of an unchanging group of Nonconformists.
Although the return of attention to Separatists is to be applauded and well executed, this would have been enhanced by a greater application of the promised sensitivity to nomenclature.
University of Edinburgh

TOM WEBSTER

The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602–1747). By
John M. Flannery. [Studies in Christian Mission, Vol. 43.] (Boston: Brill.
2013. Pp. xii, 286. $165.00. ISBN 978-90-04-24382-8.)
The role and place of Christianity in Safavid Iran is a rather under-researched
field. This well-written and pioneering study of the activities of the Augustinian
Order in Iran, Basra, and Georgia during the seventeenth century aims partly to
correct this. The study focuses on the role of the Augustinian missionaries as facilitators of contacts among Iran, the Holy See, and the Catholic states of Europe; as
well as the relationship between Catholic Europe and Eastern Christianity, especially concerning ecclesiastical jurisdiction and primacy. Key is the background of
constant interaction between politics and religion.
The author first sets the scene by providing background about Portuguese
royal patronage (Padroado) for missionary activities in its territories, the creation of
the De Propaganda Fide, the rise of the Safavid Shiite state, and the status and treatment of Christians in Iran. The next chapter deals with the founding of the Augustinian order, its activities in Portugal and later in Asia, and its early role in Iran. A
discussion follows of the Augustinians’ activities in Isfahan, their relations with the
Propaganda, their lack of evangelization texts, and their relations with Syrian
Orthodox Christians in Isfahan. From the beginning the Augustinians had acted
as diplomats for Spain/Portugal, a role they lost when Portuguese activities in Iran
were reduced to insignificance after 1640. Chapter 5 deals with this period and
notes that the decline in diplomatic activity coincides with a decline in missionary
zeal, resulting in the apostasy of two priors of the Isfahan convent. The latter wrote
anti-Christian tracts, which even today color Shiite-Christian relations. Chapter 6
discusses Augustinian activities concerning the Armenians and the failed attempt
towards unification, and chapters 7 and 8 explore the order’s relations with the
Mandeans, and the opening of rival Carmelite and Augustinian convents in Basra
and their jurisdictional conflicts. It further examines the ill-advised attempts to
transport Mandeans to Portuguese India. The presence of Augustinians at the martyrdom of Queen Ketevan in 1624 gave the order an opening to establish a mission
in Georgia—the subject of chapter 9, which further analyzes the relationship
among missionaries, Rome, and the Georgian Church. The study ends with chap-

154

BOOK REVIEWS

ter 10 that provides an assessment of the Augustinian experience in Iran and suggests further research topics.
This study greatly enhances our knowledge of the array of missionary activities
in Safavid Iran, in this case by the Augustinians; it would be helpful if this author
or another one would do the same for the other three orders active in Iran. However, there are also some questions to be raised. Given that the Augustinians established themselves first on Hormuz, it is odd that this activity merits only one page,
for it would have been interesting to learn, for example, what missionary lessons
were learned there. Although the author rightly contrasts the Shah Abbas’s respect
for Christianity with the harsh criticism by the Augustinians toward Islam, he misunderstands the reason for the shah’s attitude. Islam recognizes Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism as legitimate religions, something Christianity does not.
The author also seems to read too much into Shah Abbas’s willingness to appoint
a khalifeh with jurisdiction over all Christian denominations in his realm as a nascent attempt to create a Safavid millet system. However, the fact that Abbas did
not consider doing the same for the Jews and Zorostrians negates such a notion. As
the author points out, Abbas wanted an anti-Ottoman league with the Catholic
states in Europe, and he was quite willing to throw them a bone that did not cost
him anything. Finally, the author should have placed the discussion of the attempt
of the creation of a joint anti-Ottoman League in historical context. This was, after
all, a European—even a papal—initiative dating from the mid-1450s.
Bethesda, MD

WILLEM FLOOR

The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo. By
Thomas F. Mayer. (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp.
vi, 385. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-4473-1.)
The opening of the Archives of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith
in 1998 allowed historians to cast new light on the structure and functioning of the
court of the Holy Office. Paths of research intersected, and the outcome was often
prolific, creating an in-depth debate among scholars and a wider—but less accurate—public discussion. Many things have changed since then in historiographical
terms, but with this book Thomas Mayer provides what is probably the most complete in-depth overview of the institutional and bureaucratic workings of the
Roman Congregation. Mayer demonstrates a huge working knowledge of the literature in question, partly thanks to his past studies on Pietro Carnesecchi and in
particular the trial against Galileo Galilei. However, he carves out his own niche by
focusing more attention on procedures and the nature of the Roman Congregation
than on peripheral activities. The author’s privileged source is the Decreta, a series
of registers that record events and discussions in the legal and administrative fields,
thereby providing an overview of an operation that was ramified and multifarious.
In this way, supported by other sources, Mayer has been able to reconstruct the
nature and careers of prelates and functionaries in the Congregation, examining
their role and variations in Inquisition procedure. The registers in the Decreta also

BOOK REVIEWS

155

played a role of primary importance in legal terms as they constituted the historical
memory of the court and were referred to in controversial cases or simply to underline the legitimacy of a decision.
After a summary of the structure of the reorganized Congregation in 1542 and
a few timely observations on the ambiguity of the term Inquisition, Mayer demonstrates its close connection to the pope, who used the Holy Office as a sort of military branch against heresy and dissent. Indeed, although the bureaucratic department was extremely well structured, the pope remained at the head of the
institution and even managed to confront attempts to question his leadership.
The time span covered in the book ranges from the reorganization in the
1540s to the 1640s, with in-depth analysis of the years in which the Galileo trial
took place. The latter is seen as both an especially illuminating moment in the
redistribution of the balance of power within the Roman Curia and a time when
the role of the cardinals was particularly evident. Some of these figures are outlined
in great detail by adopting a prosopographic approach, highlighting their origins,
cultural conformation, and clientelistic networks. The resulting picture is a world
of cardinals with a theological or legal background, many of whom had previously
been involved in curial politics. These leading figures were supported by what
Mayer calls the “backbone” of the Congregation—namely the bureaucratic department, consisting of “commissaries, assessors, fiscals, notaries, and other (at first
glance) more minor officials” (p. 7). It is this careful and detailed reconstruction
that is perhaps the most innovative aspect of the book, which ends by also attempting to account for Inquisition procedures and their role in relation to criminal and
civil law procedures at the time.
In conclusion, this book is an essential point of reference for anyone who is
serious about embarking on a study of the Roman Inquisition during its first century of existence, as it demonstrates its complexities, ongoing evolution, and close
link to the power structures and clientelistic networks of the time.
University of Verona

FEDERICO BARBIERATO

True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England.
By Frances E. Dolan. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013.
Pp. viii, 331. $59.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-4485-4.)
Frances Dolan’s provocative new study tackles the interpretive problems posed
by various kinds of “historical” textual evidence from early-modern England, particularly addressing the question of how to understand such documents in relation
to the culture that produced them and their subsequent uses in later times. The key
term in Dolan’s study is “relation,” and she declares at the outset several aspects of
this topic:
supposedly true textual relations or accounts; the way such texts intervene in,
depend on, supplement, or substitute for social relations; the central role of

156

BOOK REVIEWS
figures of relation, such as simile and metaphor, in the period’s vexed
attempts to relate truth through words; and the sometimes occluded relations
between our methodological debates and debates in the period. (pp. 1–2)

Dolan attends to the ways in which both early-modern readers or spectators as well
as modern scholars are challenged to understand texts in different relational frameworks: of theory and practice, of historical reality and its representation, of plain
statement and figurative language.
Much of the study is an attempt to criticize the various ways literary scholars
and historians have struggled to understand the overtly fictional as well as the supposedly nonfictional texts from the past, as they sometimes mistake prescriptions
for practice and idealizations for realities. Dolan rightly criticizes historians who
want textual evidence to be empirically reliable and who will cite language and situations from, for example, Shakespeare’s plays as accurate images of life as it was
lived in early-modern England. Literary scholars, especially new historicists who
make arresting moments in literary texts representations of the culture as a whole,
are also subject to methodological questioning.
The book uses a variety of case studies to reveal the complexity of both earlymodern and modern reading practices: the official account of the Gunpowder Plot,
True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against . . . Garnet a Jesuit (1606);
three documented witchcraft prosecutions that resulted in acquittal; the leaked
report of the parliamentary committee investigating the 1666 London Fire and the
inscription on Christopher Wren’s commemorative monument that was chiseled
off, then later reinscribed; church court depositions that mediated and transformed
testimony (especially of women); two marital advice manuals, Henry Bullinger’s
The Christen State of Matrimonye (1541) and William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties
(1622); William Shakespeare’s and John Fletcher’s Henry VIII or All Is True (1613)
and the allegedly transformed Shakespearean Cardenio revised by Lewis Theobald
and presented as The Double Falsehood.
In some respects, Dolan returns in this study to some of the concerns of her
earlier book, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print
Culture (Ithaca, NY, 1999), in which she examined some of the anti-Catholic and
misogynistic fantasies in Protestant discourse as well as in English mainstream culture generally. In the first half of this new book, she highlights aspects of English
anti-Catholicism visible in the official account of the trial of Henry Garnet for
complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, in witchcraft narratives, and in the conspiracy
theories expressed in the parliamentary report on the causes of the London Fire and
in the inscription on the official monument blaming the conflagration on the
“popish faction.” She emphasizes “the fiercely partisan nature of what constitutes a
true relation in this period” (p. 99).
Perhaps the most interesting parts of this book are chapters 4 and 5. The former
chapter demonstrates how testimony, particularly women’s testimony, was mediated
and transformed in the records of church court depositions: the “I” of the recorded

BOOK REVIEWS

157

testimony, collaboratively created by the witness and the court clerk, is a problematic
one—a fact that calls into question the use of such documentary material as historical
evidence. The latter chapter illustrates how William Gouge’s method in his marriage
manual was to challenge readers to exercise responsible agency in interpreting the
material presented in the text, relating it to their real-world experience: Gouge’s
sophisticated handling of both prescription and practice calls attention to their problematic relationship, but his rhetorical method is a model for eliciting the kind of
active reading practices authors such as Milton invited. Dolan’s analysis of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s All Is True is a good example of the various kinds of active relational thinking readers and audiences were encouraged to do.
At the end of the fourth chapter, Dolan makes a statement that really applies
to her whole book and to modern scholarly practices: “If there is fiction in the
archives, literary criticism needs to be there as well” (p. 153). This is consistent with
Michel de Certeau’s statement that “the imaginary is part of history.” In Dolan’s
stimulating study, she expands the field of the “literary” into territory historians
have owned and shows them and her fellow literary scholars how to relate in new
ways to the texts they read.
Wayne State University

ARTHUR F. MAROTTI

The Shadow of a Year: The 1641 Rebellion in Irish History and Memory. By John
Gibney. [History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora.] (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 229. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-29928954-6.)
The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. By Eamon Darcy.
[Royal Historical Society, Studies in History, New Series.] (Rochester, NY:
The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. xiii, 212.
$90.00. ISBN 978-0-86193-320-4.)
Initially conceived as a measured protest against the policies of Charles I along
the lines of the recent Scottish resistance to that monarch, the native Irish rebellion
of October 1641 swiftly became a popular uprising that plunged Ireland into a
bloody civil war that lasted almost twenty years and helped drive the king and his
parliament toward armed conflict in England. A key feature of the Irish rebellion,
at least in its initial stages, was the alleged and widely reported indiscriminate massacre of tens of thousands of Protestant settlers, men, women, and children, with
very many perishing in circumstances of the utmost cruelty. The details of these
alleged atrocities were subsequently collected by parliamentary commissioners in
some 8000 depositions—individual witness statements—totaling around 19,000
pages of manuscript testimony. Residing in the library of Trinity College Dublin
for several hundred years, these documents were rarely utilized in scholarly works,
with Michael Perceval-Maxwell’s The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Montreal, 1994) and Nicholas Canny’s Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (New York,
2001) as notable exceptions in this regard. These depositions have now been fully
digitized (available at http://1641.tcd.ie/). The two books under review, both by

158

BOOK REVIEWS

young scholars, make excellent use of this newly available resource and both address
many of the questions raised concerning the depositions since the 1640s.
John Gibney’s book deals almost entirely with the history of the history of the
1641 rebellion, the memory of that event in Protestant consciousness, the uses to
which that memory was put, the bitter disputes as to the reliability of the depositions, and the continuing resonance of 1641 over the next centuries. In particular,
he explores in an illuminating way the continuing controversy between Catholic and
Protestant writers over the meaning of the 1641 rebellion. Was it a pitiless onslaught
on a defenseless Protestant community carried out with unprecedented atrocities
that left hundreds of thousands dead? Or was the rebellion a justified response to
dispossession and repression in which a handful of casualties was magnified into a
wholesale massacre? The stakes in this acrimonious war of words were high, for
Catholic atrocities would be deployed to justify Protestant revenge; Protestant
ascendancy; and, of course, eternal Protestant vigilance. In times of crisis for Protestant Ireland—1688, 1798, 1912—the “black legend” of 1641 would be pressed into
service to show that Protestants could never enjoy security or liberty where Catholics
held power. Central to all of this were the depositions themselves. Revered by
Protestants as a foundational martyrology that revealed for all time the true nature
of Irish Catholics, these same documents were reviled by Catholics as an enormous
heap of hearsay, gossip, rumor, fantasy, and fable. Amidst all of this clamor, few
took the opportunity actually to consult the depositions, preferring instead to rely on
the selection printed in such works as Sir John Temple’s The Irish Rebellion
(London, 1646) or Samuel Clarke’s A Generall Martyrologie (London, 1651).
Gibney has steeped himself in the polemical literature surrounding the ensuing history of the 1641 rebellion, and his analysis of these issues is meticulous and
scrupulous. He duly acknowledges his debt to the American historian Walter D.
Love, who had embarked on a similar project only for it to be terminated by his
untimely death in 1966. Perhaps Gibney could have made more of the sermon literature devoted to the memory of the rebellion. From the 1690s to the 1790s, each
Church of Ireland clergyman by law was mandated to preach an annual sermon
each October dedicated to reminding his flock of the awful reality of popery as
shown by the heinous conduct of Irish Catholics during the rebellion. Many of
these sermons were subsequently published. In this way, the memory of 1641 was
kept fresh in the minds of Irish Protestants.
Eamon Darcy’s book is wider in its scope than that of Gibney, although he,
too, addresses the question of the memory of 1641 and how that memory was fashioned in later decades (chapter 5, “Contesting the 1641 Rebellion”). However, the
major thrust of the work is directed at the depiction of violence in the depositions.
Acknowledging that much, if not most, of the carnage detailed in them was based
on hearsay evidence, he none the less argues that such testimony can be useful in
capturing “cultural constructs of violence and what people believed had occurred,
or expected to occur” (pp. 12–13). Darcy is especially revealing in tracing many of
the more lurid and disturbing images of atrocities to their origins in the Old Tes-

BOOK REVIEWS

159

tament, references with which settlers would have been very familiar. He writes,
“Many of the rumours of alleged atrocities were closely linked to biblical images of
violence. … frightened communities relied upon contemporary constructions of
war and conflict to describe their experiences” (p. 173). He is energetic in uncovering similar atrocity stories in the descriptions by Bartolomé de Las Casas of the
murderous exploits of the Spanish conquistadors in the New World, and he makes
striking comparisons with the 1622 massacre by Native Americans in Virginia.
Curiously, the Pequot War (1638) is not cited here, although the extirpation by
English colonists of the Pequot settlement at Fort Mystic would seemingly fit
easily into his argument.
A key element in Darcy’s work is his description of how the atrocity stories
inseparable from the 1641 Rebellion were used by the English administration in
Dublin and by Charles’s enemies in London—the former to implicate all Catholics
in the Rebellion, the latter to imply that Charles knew of it beforehand, condoned
it, and welcomed it. In this respect, his analysis of the printed material relating to
the Rebellion and produced during the 1640s is exemplary. By carefully tracing the
trajectory of stories from one publication to the next, Darcy is able to show how
print was used to tailor the “message” of the Rebellion to English political audiences. After all, if Ireland was a place filled with bloodthirsty Papists—and who
would or could deny it?— then how on earth could English settlers be lured to that
godforsaken country? Polemic had to be tempered with prudence: “newes” from
Ireland had to be stage-managed to protect investments (p. 175).
The 1641 Rebellion is arguably the single most significant event in Irish history between the English invasion in the twelfth century and the founding of two
Irish states in the early-twentieth century. The Rebellion never passed into history,
because it never passed out of politics. Instead, it remained bitterly contested territory, offering a sectarian-conflict paradigm that has governed the writing of Irish
history to the present. These two books bring fresh perspectives and wider contexts;
and, in doing so, they add appreciably to our understanding of those dreadful days
in October 1641.
University of Aberdeen

THOMAS BARTLETT

John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of English Nonconformity. By Tim
Cooper. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011. Pp. xii, 343. $134.95.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6361-4.)
The study of Puritanism has been a thriving scholarly industry for many years,
but one area that has been comparatively neglected is that of the Puritans during
the Restoration. There are a number of reasons for this: the Clarendon Code
enforced Anglican conformity on England and thus moved the key intellectual and
cultural architects of the 1650s to the margins of society; in so doing, it also ensured
that Puritanism became little more than an embarrassment to later generations of
English scholars and academics.

160

BOOK REVIEWS

Recent years, however, have seen a growth in interest in Puritanism as a theological movement, and this has brought to prominence a number of key figures.
Perhaps the two most important of these—John Owen and Richard Baxter—are
the subjects of this fine exercise in combined intellectual biography by Tim
Cooper. Both were not only important influences on theological discussion in the
1650s; in the world of the Restoration they went on to be the leaders of the English nonconformists. Representing two quite different approaches to Protestant
theology, they thereby also represented two possible paths for English non-Anglican
Protestantism.
Various challenges face any intellectual biographer: the connection of the
public and the private; and the relationship of ideas to the broader cultural, social,
and economic contexts. Both subjects were men of their age who suffered both private and public pain. Cooper draws out neatly the difference in personality between
the two men: Owen the intensely private but also urbane man; Baxter the autodidact who seems never to have had an unpublished thought on anything. He also
touches on the irony that Owen, by far the doctrinally more narrow, was yet apparently a far more easygoing person than the theologically more concessive but personally more combative Baxter. Whereas Owen was an advocate for tolerance in
the matter of church and state, woe betide anyone who did not agree with the latter
on his moderate theological and ecclesiastical plans. Indeed, for all of his ecumenism, Baxter was ultimately less political than Owen and unable to realize that
politics is really all about the art of the possible. His rigid moderation and his
abhorrence of anything hinting at sectarianism meant that his voice was ultimately
less effective than that of Owen, both in the 1650s (when he stood a realistic
chance of being a significant player) and in the rather more marginal world of English nonconformity. That Owen could be welcomed at the court of Charles II,
despite his close connection to Oliver Cromwell, whereas Baxter suffered terribly
under the terms of the Clarendon Code, is both odd and, on further examination,
an eloquent testimony to a basic difference of personality between the two men.
Cooper’s book is excellent. He has done much painstaking research in reconstructing the lives of these two men and, by juxtaposing them, has offered the
reader profound insights into the theological and political dynamics of the time.
What he makes clear, which has perhaps been missed by previous studies, is the fact
that the Restoration shape of nonconformity was profoundly influenced by the personal conflicts between Baxter and Owen that stretched back through the
Cromwellian years even to the late 1640s.
If this reviewer had one criticism, it would be that, at times, the author’s personal sympathies for Baxter show through rather too clearly. For example, in discussing the issue of the atonement, he is too quick to dismiss Owen for lack of
exegetical sensitivity; whatever flaws Owen’s view may have had, willful ignorance
of the biblical text was certainly not one of them. But this is a very minor cavil at
an otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, and arguably groundbreaking monograph that
helps the reader to understand the world of the Restoration from the perspective of

BOOK REVIEWS

161

two leading intellectuals who had the misfortune to witness the dismantling of a
world of which they were so much a part.
Westminster Theological Seminary, PA

CARL R. TRUEMAN

LATE MODERN EUROPEAN
Das Deutsche Johanniter-Hospiz in Jerusalem. By Jakob Eisler. (Cologne: Böhlau
Verlag. 2013. Pp. 232. €30,80. ISBN 978-3-412-20571-3.)
Jakob Eisler documents a place of great importance to generations of German
pilgrims, missionaries, and scholars of the Middle East. The Guesthouse of the
German Order of Saint John (Johanniter) was much more than its name suggests.
The Johanniter are well known in Germany for their hospitals, emergency healthcare services, and charitable work. Resurrected in 1853 by Prussia’s King Frederick
William IV, the Knightly Order of Saint John (of the Balley of Brandenburg)
claimed the crusading Hospitalers as its lineage. The Order continues today as a
Protestant institution, and its Herrenmeisteren (Lord Masters) still come from the
Hohenzollern family: Oscar Prinz von Preussen currently serves as Herrenmeister.
The term guesthouse or Hospiz can also be misleading. The Johanniter Hospiz in
Jerusalem served as a hotel for European dignitaries and scholars, a hostel for
German pilgrims and journeymen, and a hospital for all in times of conflict.
As an institutional history for the Order of Saint John, Eisler’s study details
the religious and charitable impulses that weave through the story of western incursion in the Middle East. Eisler points out that Jerusalem was a focal point of intensive European missionary efforts in the nineteenth century. Combining romanticized nationalism and Christianity with heated competition for global markets and
world power, European enclaves in the city expanded dramatically. Eisler describes
the creation of the original Prussian Guesthouse (1851–58), its transition to the
Johanniter in 1858, its vigorous expansion under the Ottoman Empire (1858–
1914/18), its unfortunate downfall from World War I to 1963, and the re-establishment of the Hospiz since 1964.
By the late-nineteenth century, the Johanniter Hospiz had become a center of
an expanding network of German missionary work. Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wife,
Auguste Victoria, visited Jerusalem in 1898, which heralded greater German influence in local affairs. German groups erected churches, chapels, and several monuments; expanded postal services through the region; and funded charitable projects
through the Auguste Victoria Foundation. With the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire, however, the Hospiz fell on hard times. By the end of World War II, the
German community in Jerusalem was either deported or interned. Part of the guesthouse converted to a polyclinic; the other became a private residence. In 1964, however, the Johanniter were able to return and resume health-care services.
Western missionary imperialism is given its human face in this type of institutional history. As Eisler’s research shows, several generations of German Protes-

162

BOOK REVIEWS

tants particularly became aware of poverty in Jerusalem while learning the city’s history through Johanniter publications. Supporters of the Hospiz helped educate local
children, build and maintain orphanages, and provide community hunger relief.
Thus, the history of the Johanniter Hospiz demonstrates how German nationalism,
imperialism, missionary work, and even Middle Eastern scholarship intersected in
one locale.
University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

ERIC YONKE

“Martyr to the Truth”: The Autobiography of Joseph Turmel. Translated by C. J. T.
Talar and Elizabeth Emery. Edited and introduced by C. J. T. Talar.
(Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock. 2012.
Pp. xxiv, 235. $29.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-61097-837-8.)
French priest and scholar Joseph Turmel (1859–1943) flourished during the
Roman Catholic modernist period and beyond and compared himself to the far
better known Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857–1940). After a prolonged struggle with
the findings of historical criticism of the Bible and the patristic tradition, Turmel
dates the irrevocable loss of his faith to precisely “March 18, 1886, a little after one
o’clock” when he began reading “first vespers of the feast of St. Joseph. The feast
brought up the Infancy narratives with their unresolvable contradictions” (p. 23).
Turmel abruptly closed his breviary with a firm conviction “repeated several times
in an indignant tone: ‘Christian dogmatics is based on nothing; it is over; I will no
longer recite the breviary’” (p. 23). Turmel never rescinded that profession of unbelief, but he continued even beyond his excommunication in 1930 to serve as a priest
“martyr to the truth,” determined to enlighten Catholics to what he believed was a
tissue of fabrication based on a false understanding of the Bible as inerrant revelation capable of supporting dogmas by proof texting.
This artful translation of Turmel’s memoir is expertly introduced and annotated by C. J. T. Talar and capped by a magisterial afterword by Émile Poulat,
arguably the leading scholar of the modernist period. The significance of the
volume for the history of Catholicism in the post-Enlightenment period is hard to
overestimate. But it seems to lie precisely as a window into the heart of the faith
struggle provoked by the Enlightenment’s effect on Christian belief, which had
been based for many centuries on a naive reading of scripture and tradition uninformed by historical consciousness. But Pope Pius X’s condemnation of modernism
(Pascendi dominici gregis, 1907) and the imposition of the Oath against modernism
and the establishment of vigilance committees worldwide (1910) were able to put
a lid on the effects of this crisis. The effectiveness of this program was aided by the
cataclysmic events of two world wars and the Great Depression that focused attention elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Catholics throughout the world continued to believe naively until
the post–World War II/Second Vatican Council period, when the Church
accepted the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s decision to embrace historical criti-

BOOK REVIEWS

163

cism and its legitimate findings. Many Catholics will clearly recognize the difference between reading scripture before they are educated on the historical nature of
the texts and after such education. They will also readily recognize the struggles of
Turmel over what to do with his findings. Convinced that the Church had
defrauded believers, he felt duty-bound to convey that much of Christian doctrine
was a house built on sand, because many beliefs were supported by a false understanding of scripture as a source of proof texts.
A salient feature of Turmel’s memoir is its attention to the author’s subjective
state and feelings. This feature, rare among authors of this period, enables readers to
relate intimately to his struggles and so to appreciate his self-description as “martyr
to the truth.” It also enables readers to sense the costliness of his struggle and know
why he felt obliged to take a specific course of action to salvage his integrity.
This volume is strongly recommended as required reading for graduate and
undergraduate courses in church history. The expert introduction, erudite notes,
and afterword help bring this readable memoir to life without attempting to bias
the reader’s interpretation.
Marquette University

DAVID G. SCHULTENOVER, S.J.

La ville charitable: Les œuvres sociales catholiques en France et en Allemagne au
XIX e siècle. By Catherine Maurer. [Histoire religieuse de la France, vol. 39.]
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2012. Pp. 411. €24,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2204-09823-6.)
This work begins, after a helpful introduction, with a discussion of nineteen
books of the period c. 1890–1905, which describe the charitable organizations (œuvres)
of Catholics at work in eight French cities and eight German cities. The latter category
includes Strasbourg, German in that period but with a past (and future) in France.
Maurer is professor at the University of Strasbourg; she brings a wealth of knowledge
and scholarship to her chosen topic. Her approach is indeed comparative, noting the
similarities and differences of the institutions in France and Germany, but with an
emphasis on urban history and on the public-private relationships of the Catholic
organizations active in those cities (lined up for the reader in two tables and maps, pp.
71–79). An overall finding is that, in this as in other respects, the avowedly antimodern Catholic laity, sisters, and clergy in both countries adopted modern approaches in
the practice and development of Catholic care for the poor.
A first instance of this is the publication of the books (listed pp. 11–12) that
form the central “corpus” and starting point of her research. Why did such publications appear around the same time (the 1890s)? They reflected the use of serious
investigation by enquêtes after the manner of Frédéric Le Play. Despite the hesitance of, say, the St. Vincent de Paul visitors to the poor to boast of the aid they
rendered, such compilations publicized the proliferation of Catholic charities in
order, first, to court public support and draw more volunteers from the better-off

164

BOOK REVIEWS

classes. They also systematized what services were available in the city treated, so
as to serve as handbooks for charitable activists and organizations—all “modern”
traits, provoked in part by the liberalism of the time; for example, by an anticlerical
ascendancy (especially in France) and Protestant anti-Catholicism (more so in
Germany). Still, it may be noted parenthetically that Leopold von Ranke called on
the recently established congregation of the Sisters of St. Elisabeth in Berlin to
look after his sick wife in 1861 (p. 243). Presumably Protestants had not yet organized a comparable service there.
The books in the “corpus” also yield data on the historical origins, context, and
development of these charities, which Maurer elaborates in her text with a plethora
of recent scholarly studies. From the “small sample” (p. 178) of sixteen cities, a picture nevertheless emerges of newly conceived responses to the needs of children in
an industrializing and urbanizing society (the latter more pronounced and rapid in
Germany than in France in this period). She focuses on similar targeted moves to
improve the situation of poor women and youth, especially girls, and to be appropriately up-to-date in the care of the sick, not without conflicts internal and external.
Careful thought seems to have gone into the organization and apparatus of
this work, but the abundant bibliography (pp. 328–87) is distributed under many
topical headings, which does not make it easy to find the complete data of a work
cited in the footnotes. For anyone desirous of well-founded information on the
subject, however, the search is well worth it.
Marquette University

PAUL MISNER

Faith and Fatherland. Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland. By Brian Porter-Szűcs.
(New York: Oxford University Press. 2011. Pp. ix, 484. $55.00. ISBN 978-019-539905-9.)
Perhaps no other modern national identity is so intertwined with Catholicism
as the Polish. During the dark years of statelessness (1795–1918) and of post–
World War II communism, one touchstone for Poles was their Catholic faith and
heritage. At least, so runs the traditional story. Brian Porter-Szűcs aims to complicate this easy equivalency, in particular the facile assumption that Polish nationalists were also fervent Catholic believers. In the end, however, this book does not so
much reject the link between Catholicism and the Polish nation as provide a more
profound, historically informed, and sophisticated understanding of this complicated relationship. For anyone interested in the history of Catholicism in EastCentral Europe or in Polish history, this fine volume is essential reading.
Rather than proceed chronologically, Porter-Szűcs chose to structure his arguments topically. Starting with chapters on the fundamental theological issues of
“The Church and Sin,” he proceeds to the relations between the Church/faithful
and the modern world in chapters on “Modernity,” “The Person and Society,” and
“Politics.” Specifically addressing the interplay between Polish national consciousness and national movements among Poles are chapters titled “The Nation Peni-

BOOK REVIEWS

165

tent” and “Ecclesia Militans” (the latter being an oft-used self-description by PolishCatholic enthusiasts). The final three chapters probe into Polish-Catholic relations
with Jews, relations between nation and faith, and finally the very specific role of
the Virgin Mary in Polish Catholicism. Taken as a whole, the book provides great
insight into the importance of Catholicism for Poles in the later nineteenth and
twentieth century, even to the present day.
The author uses a wide variety of sources, mainly published ones, ranging
from periodicals (in particular, a number of Polish Catholic journals) and books to
the writings of Karol Wojtyła both before and after he became Pope John Paul II
in 1978. Indeed, it may well be that the widely misunderstood pontiff—all too
often simply dismissed as “conservative” in the West—may have sparked PorterSzűcs’s interest in the complicated relationship between modernity and the
Catholic Church in the Polish case. Porter-Szűcs writes as a historian, not as a
believer, but his careful and sympathetic analysis will appeal to a very broad readership. One hopes that this book will soon be published in Polish as well.
To conclude, Brian Porter-Szűcs has written an important book on the interaction among Catholicism, the Polish nation, modernity, and politics in the broadest sense of the word. The issues examined in this book are not just “history” but
remain vital for understanding Poland not just in the past but also in the twentyfirst century. Written in a clear, appealing style, this book may be recommended to
anyone interested in the relationship among belief, the Church, and the modern
world. It is also, of course, required reading for anyone interested in Poland in the
past century or present day.
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

THEODORE R. WEEKS

Bruckberger: L’enfant terrible. By Bernard and Bernadette Chovelon. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2011. Pp. 286. €20,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-09240-1.)
The French Dominican Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger (1907–98) described
himself as an “unworthy priest.” But he also established a transatlantic reputation
as cultural critic, renowned author, cinematic artiste, member of the French Resistance, bon vivant, and—as his successor in the Académie française put it—“enfant terrible of the Church.” Bernard and Bernadette Chovelon have written their biography Bruckberger: L’enfant terrible to convey to readers in the twenty-first century a
sense of this turbulent priest’s “unconditional love for Jesus Christ” that “traversed
the numerous and violent tempests of his life without ever weakening” (p. 11).
Bruckberger’s life began in the southern French town of Murat, the fourth of
five children born to an Austrian industrialist father and the daughter of a local café
owner. The family was left destitute when Franck Bruckberger was arrested in 1914
as an enemy alien. Poverty and shame clouded the remainder of Raymond’s childhood. His mother’s sorrow and bitterness were exacerbated by the fact that her husband never rejoined the family after the war, years passing before it was revealed that

166

BOOK REVIEWS

he had resettled in his native land. The authors emphasize young Bruckberger’s conflicted relationship with his absent father and see in this early trauma the catalyst for
his combative spirit, intense creativity, fervent patriotism, and restless search for
love. His Catholic faith became a sure refuge within an otherwise rootless life.
Entering the Dominican order in 1929, Bruckberger was ordained a priest in
1934. His work editing the Revue thomiste in Paris brought him into collaborative
contact with French Catholic intellectuals such as the philosopher Jacques Maritain, who introduced him to the novelist Georges Bernanos, with whom he forged
a deep and lasting friendship. Increasingly, “Bruck” craved the spotlight and would
be drawn to the world of French letters and cinema. After serving with valor in the
1940 campaign, Bruckberger was taken prisoner by the Germans, escaped captivity,
fled to Marseilles, and eventually joined the Resistance. He was captured and only
saved from a firing squad by the personal intervention of his former commanding
officer and erstwhile friend Joseph Darnand, later the commander of Vichy’s paramilitary Milice. The priest would later try in vain to save the lives of Darnand and
other collaborators condemned to death after the war.
Bruckberger’s cinematic career began when he worked with director Robert
Bresson on realizing Les Anges du Péché (1943) and later directing his own film Le
Dialogue des Carmelites (1960). After the Liberation, Bruckberger—who had
accompanied Charles de Gaulle into Notre Dame on August 26, 1944, even as
Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard was banned from his cathedral—lived the life of an
auteur, celebrity, and contrarian increasingly at odds with the religious order in
which he had taken his vows. A brief stay in the south Algerian desert did not reconcile him to his clerical superiors. After a sojourn in America in the 1950s, he
lived in Greece, by now having begun a romantic liaison with an American woman
named Barbara. He nonetheless insisted on his fidelity both to Jesus Christ and to
his order, and the best-selling author achieved increased fame and notoriety in the
1960s as a critic of modernism within the Catholic Church and what he saw as the
baleful impact of the Second Vatican Council. Moving to Switzerland, he was
elected to the French Academy in 1984 (he won out over Emmanuel Levinas) and
finished his days in a Dominican retirement community in Fribourg.
The Chovelons have fashioned an engaging and informative narrative that
gives evidence of both strong personal admiration and an eye for biographical
detail. Based on a thorough reading of Bruckberger’s published works (he published at least twenty-eight books, for example), as well as the abundant media coverage of his career, the reader is introduced to a remarkable and almost forgotten
French Catholic priest, intellectual, artist, and controversialist. The authors’ evident devotion to the person and to the memory of “Bruck” is such that they would
likely agree with this reviewer’s assessment that at some point in the future, an even
more detailed, scholarly biography of Père Bruckberger would be most welcome.
Benedictine College
Atchison, KS

RICHARD FRANCIS CRANE

BOOK REVIEWS

167

Mission in Thuringia in the Time of Nazism. By Paul Beschet, S.J. Translated by
Theodore P. Fraser. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2012. Pp. 272.
$29.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-87462-095-5.)
This memoir by French Jesuit Paul Beschet (b. 1920) is about the experience
of French priests and seminarians in caring for the spiritual welfare of about
750,000 French citizens slaving in the labor camps of Germany to help produce the
weapons of war. Following the fall of France in 1940, these French citizens, in
accord with the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), were taken to Germany to
replace workers sent to fight the Russians during World War II. Beschet shows
how the Jocists (members of the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne) as well as some Jesuits
spread throughout the region where the war factories were located. In their ministries, these French religious waged an underground war of Resistance against the
Nazis in cities such as Chemnitz, Erfurt, Leipzig, Nordhausen, Saalfeld, Sonderhausen, and Wittenberg, as well as in places in the Province of Thuringia where a
Catholic church was available.
Beschet, at the time a novice in religious life, was arrested in fall 1943 at Sondershausen and imprisoned first at Zwickau and then at Flossenburg (a concentration camp about equidistant from Buchenwald, Dachau, Leitmeritz, and Mauthausen). A Gestapo dragnet, devised by an inspector named Winckler, was
employed against the missionaries’ Resistance activities. Beginning on Pentecost
1944, Beschet and others were taken, interrogated, and sent to prison. Some of
their colleagues were “repatriated” or sent back to France, which weakened their
underground mission in Germany.
After his liberation by the Americans from the Nazi camp at Tachau, Beschet
wrote this memoir, in which he tells what he and his associates had to endure during
their imprisonment—beatings, torture, and a death march (p. 210). The latter began
on April 14, 1945, with 950 prisoners and ended, on April 23, 1945, with only 350
survivors. The others had died on the way either through physical exhaustion or by
execution by the guards in what Beschet has described as a veritable hell.
What is most interesting is Beschet’s emphasis on the mission of these
resisters as articulated by Jules Gérard Saliège (1870–1956), archbishop of
Toulouse, on their departure from France and as encouraged by the writings of the
Jesuit Victor Dillard (pp. 71–76). When Henri Perrin, another Jesuit priest worker,
was arrested, these missionaries took risks that led to the imprisonment of their
companions. Despite the heightened awareness of the Nazis about the missionaries’ activities, some remained to continue the moral and spiritual Resistance as the
D-Day invasion and Allied victories occurred. Taxed by considerable hardship and
danger, the missionaries’ personal faith was deepened by their long imprisonment
(p. 167). These individuals include seven martyrs listed in chapter 11 (those killed
by the Nazis under STO actually numbered at least fifty) and Marcel Callo (1921–
45), who was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987. Credo is the key word (p. 225)
that summarizes Beschet’s experience, which he portrays as a religious one.

168

BOOK REVIEWS

This first English translation of Beschet’s French memoir is done with
remarkable clarity by Theodore P. Fraser, an expert on the French Resistance and
a professor emeritus of French. In addition to a bibliography and an index, the
book has maps (pp. 20, 180, 210) and four appendices (pp. 245–66) with documents related to the Catholic Action of the participants in the Resistance.
College of the Holy Cross

VINCENT A. LAPOMARDA, S.J.

Italian Women and International Cold War Politics, 1944–1968. By Wendy Pojmann. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 234. $35.00. ISBN
978-0-8232-4560-4.)
Wendy Pojmann presents her latest book as a case study of how the history of
Italian women from 1944 to 1968 reflects the country’s ideological and political
divisions during the cold war. She focuses on the activities of two national women’s
organizations, the procommunist Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) and the proCatholic Centro Italiano Femminile (CIF). Both organizations had strong connections to the two major political parties of the era, the Partito Comunista Italiano
(PCI) and the Democrazia Cristiana (DC). The research strategy of the book
makes eminent sense. The UDI and the CIF spoke for millions of Italian women
whose important role in the cold war has received little attention from scholars.
Pojmann’s analysis proceeds along mutually intersecting national and international lines. The Italian context of her story offers few surprises. For most of the
period that concerns her, the UDI followed the lead of the pro-Soviet PCI, while,
with equal predictability, the CIF adhered to the pro-American DC. From its
Catholic perspective, the CIF criticized American consumer society and culture,
but politically it had no practical alternative to the NATO alliance. The UDI, on
the other hand, appears to have viewed Stalin as the way, the truth, and the life
until the dictator’s egregious record could no longer be ignored even by the communists themselves. Pojmann describes the UDI as the more progressive of the two
national groups, but the Stalinist People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe to which
Italian communists reverently looked for inspiration and guidance were forwardlooking mainly in the dystopian way imagined by George Orwell in 1984.
Only during the 1960s did the UDI and CIF develop independent ideas about
gender that began to transcend cold-war ideologies. The UDI then gradually abandoned Marxist-Leninism in favor of a campaign specifically to promote the emancipation of women. For what ends and in the name of which values were they to be
emancipated? In answering this question, Pojmann attaches high historical importance to the dialogue and eventual clash between the UDI and the Soviet-inspired
Women’s International Democratic Federation. The UDI would follow its own
path toward a feminist program de-emphasizing capitalism and replacing it with
male tyranny as the true source of women’s oppression. Her book closes just at the
point where this decisive ideological shift in the UDI takes place. A sequel taking
the story up to the present would be most welcome.

BOOK REVIEWS

169

The Catholic women of the CIF had a much more organically coherent fate.
They, too, had developed an interlocutory relationship with a like-minded international organization, the World Movement of Mothers, without, however, experiencing anything like the ideological conflicts between the UDI and the Women’s
International Democratic Federation. Catholic women’s groups everywhere at this
time continued to focus on family, not on liberation. They recognized the need for
change, particularly regarding work for women outside the home, but the intrinsic
worth of the family never came into question, as it did with the UDI. Moreover,
the defining papal encyclicals of the period from Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul
VI stemmed directly from the Catholic social justice tradition of Pope Leo XIII’s
Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. The CIF stayed true to a
Catholic tradition of social criticism anchored in its concerns about the collective
as a whole, not only about women.
The irony of Pojmann’s book lies in its revelation, in opposition to her stated
position, that the CIF ultimately deserves to be seen as a more progressive women’s
organization than the UDI, if by progressivism we mean to signify the values of
broad social responsibility against the rampant individualism of free market economics. By the late 1960s, the UDI, stripped of its socialist character, aspired first
and foremost in a structurally toothless liberal agenda to make a place for liberated
women in the power structure of the capitalist status quo. The kinetic energy of the
Catholic social justice tradition kept the CIF in opposition to that status quo, to
the same considerable extent made manifest in the later anticonsumer society
indictments of Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus and Pope Benedict XVI’s
Caritas in Veritate.
RICHARD DRAKE

University of Montana

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN
The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England. By Sarah Rivett. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 2011. Pp. xvi, 364. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-80783524-1.)
The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England is an extraordinary account of
the relationship between spiritual and scientific knowledge of the self in the earlymodern transatlantic. With broad range, intellectual depth, and carefully crafted
prose, it outlines an innovative reading of early American writing, which it pursues
with rigor and precision across an extended geographical and chronological range.
Returning to familiar texts, cultures, and contexts, the book offers an entirely new
way of imagining links between the religious and rational cultures of the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Engaging within and across disciplines, The
Science of the Soul in Colonial New England makes a dynamic contribution to theological, literary, and historical discussions, and offers to shift entirely the perspective of a great deal of recent scholarship.

170

BOOK REVIEWS

Rivett’s book returns to the question of the character of life writing in colonial
America. Her discussion of familiar texts edited or written by John Eliot and others
advances upon earlier efforts to contextualize the genre of the conversion narrative.
The innovative aspect of the argument of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New
England is its consideration of the discursive field in which these arguments were
articulated—a discursive field that borrowed the heuristic tools of emerging scientific communities to gather and interpret the data of spiritual experience. Discussing
subjects as varied as praying Indians and Anglo antinomians, Rivett argues that early
American spirituality was advancing on the basis of widespread reflection upon the
noetic effects of the fall and upon awareness of the contingency and fallibility of all
human self-knowledge. Nevertheless, she claims, early-modern preachers and scientists pushed, sometimes together, against the standard arguments of Reformed
Protestantism to place accounts of experience at the center of social and ecclesiological knowledge networks. And, despite the wider contexts of theological discussion,
these accounts of self-knowledge were public, tangible traces of purported experience that could be recorded, edited, publicly or privately circulated, and used as
proof that humanity stood on the brink of an existential great leap forward.
The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England is a beautifully written and
well-considered account of a key moment in the American cultures of knowledge.
Its deft argument draws upon well-established conclusions to reformulate the questions that can be asked of critical sources in early American writing. Its argument
offers broader resources for discussions of the relationship between science and religion in the contexts of early modernity. As a model of interdisciplinary inquiry, it
significantly advances our knowledge and understanding of the literary, imaginative, and spiritual contexts of British and American Protestants in one of their most
crucial theaters of operation.
Queen’s University Belfast

CRAWFORD GRIBBEN

The Sulpicians of Montreal: A History of Power and Discretion 1657–2007. Edited by
Dominique Deslandres, John A. Dickenson, and Ollivier Hubert. Iconographic research by Jacques Des Rochers. Translated by Steven Watt. (Montreal: Wilson & Lafleur. 2013. Pp 705. $59.95. ISBN 978-2-89689-117-7.)
Visitors to Montreal are often surprised to find that its cathedral does not lie
in the city center, the usual location in a traditionally Catholic city. Instead, at the
heart of Old Montreal, stands the much better-known and -loved Notre Dame
Basilica. This anomaly is a concrete example of the Sulpician power and discretion
that are the subject of this book. The members of the society now known as the
Priests of Saint Sulpice were involved with Montreal even before their arrival in the
tiny settlement in 1657; their founder Jean-Jacques Olier had been one of the leading members of the Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal responsible for the
founding of the missionary colony in 1642. The twenty-one chapters of this book
by thirteen historians show something of the extent of their influence on the life
and development of Montreal during the subsequent 350 years.

BOOK REVIEWS

171

The historians responsible for this study were given free access to the
immensely rich store of documents in the Sulpician archives in Montreal, an
unprecedented opportunity because of the recent organization and classification of
those archives. They have also made use of many recently published articles and
unpublished dissertations. The editors begin with an overview of the history of the
Sulpicians, which, they point out, reflects the history of the Catholic Church in the
West over the last three centuries. The study discusses the work of the Sulpicians in
the formation of priests from its origins in seventeenth-century France through its
development in North America, where they founded Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore in 1793, to the engagement of the Canadian province in Japan and Colombia. It casts light on their role in the specifically religious life of Montreal as pastors,
chaplains, and educators and their support for the work of Montreal’s other religious
communities. Their work with nineteenth-century Irish immigrants is the subject of
one chapter. A further feature of nineteenth-century history was the conflict
between the Sulpicians and Montreal’s first two bishops that led to the anomaly
mentioned at the beginning of this review. Later chapters deal with Sulpician influence on Montreal’s cultural and artistic life through books, music, singing, architecture, and the fine arts. The discussion of the financial affairs of the Sulpicians should
dispel the widely held belief that they are “rich.” A wide variety of illustrations,
expertly annotated and including many colored plates, supports the text.
The challenge of translating such a large work by so many different authors
must have been immense, and Steven Watt has met that challenge admirably—
even, at times, clarifying what was obscure in the French. There are some surprising archaisms: “discrete” rather than “discreet” for the French “discrète” and
“almoner” rather than “chaplain” for the French “aumônier.” If, at times, the language sounds like that of sociology rather than theology (pastors “manage” rather
than “serve” parishioners), this is an accurate translation of the French. The editors
of this book make no claim to be exhaustive. They draw attention in conclusion to
all the work still to be done on the Sulpicians’ remarkable history, indicating some
of the directions this might take. Any such work will find an excellent foundation
in this impressive study.
Marguerite Bourgeoys Museum
Montreal

PATRICIA SIMPSON, C.N.D.

Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787–1846. By James S.
Kabala. (Brookfield, VT: Pickering and Chatto. 2013. Pp. ix, 264. $99.00.
ISBN 978-1-848-93314-9.)
Studies of church and state in the early United States have undergone an
important change in recent years. Rather than focusing exclusively on narrow constitutional issues surrounding the First Amendment, historians have started asking
broad questions about the relationship between religion and public life. Moreover,
historians focus these questions on the state-level where Americans held some of
their most significant legal and political debates before the Civil War. James S.

172

BOOK REVIEWS

Kabala’s Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787–1846, is a
useful contribution to this scholarship.
The book centers on the rise and development of a “Protestant non-sectarian
consensus” between the years 1787 to 1846. Kabala explores the political and legal
consequences of ecumenical cooperation, primarily among the nation’s Methodists,
Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. Each of these denominations had
members willing to downplay doctrinal differences in order to advance the moral
principles and doctrines that they shared. Americans who accepted agreements of
this sort could celebrate religious freedom while still adhering to a Christian moral
framework for public life that was decidedly Protestant. This consensus thus
proved challenging to the civic rights of non-Protestants in the early republic such
as Jews and Catholics, as well as Unitarians and freethinkers. Moreover, Kabala
argues, this consensus marginalized Americans who wanted either established religion or an end to religion’s social influence. As a result, Americans well into the
nineteenth century maintained a vibrant place for Protestantism in public life without relying on formal state power or ceding ground to secularism.
According to Kabala, believers forged the “Protestant non-sectarian consensus” in debates over a range of issues, which he explores in five largely thematic
chapters. The issues include controversies surrounding government funding for
religious education to Native Americans, Sunday mail delivery, chaplains in legislatures and the military, government-sanctioned fast and thanksgiving days, and
state laws regarding blasphemy and court participation. Kabala ultimately concludes that the “emergence of this non-sectarian Protestant consensus was the most
important development in church-state relations” in the early American republic
(p. 8).
The concept of a “Protestant non-sectarian consensus” describes a relationship
between early national religion and public life that will seem familiar to readers of
other recent books such as Steven K. Green’s The Second Disestablishment: Church
and State in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 2010), and David Sehat’s The
Myth of American Religious Freedom (New York, 2011). Kabala’s attention to popular debates differentiates his book from similar studies that focus heavily on court
cases and constitutions. Indeed, Kabala follows his subject through an impressive
number of pamphlets; newspapers; and, to a lesser extent, sermons written from
diverse religious positions. This book’s greatest strength comes from Kabala’s identification of this vast popular literature. His effort to synthesize these sources is
commendable.
Kabala’s organizing concept is not without problems, however. The author
has a tendency to use the phrase “Protestant non-sectarian consensus,” or versions
of it, as analytical shorthand. Thus at various places in the book, the consensus
described by Kabala seems already present in American life by the late 1790s, then
again in the 1820s. In other sections of the book, however, the consensus is still in
a process of formation that culminates in the 1840s. As a result, Kabala’s usage of

BOOK REVIEWS

173

his concept seems too static for the complicated and nuanced story that he otherwise tells in clear detail. This criticism aside, Kabala introduces his readers to a cast
of writers and a set of viewpoints that help expand our understanding of churchstate debates as they occurred inside the early republic’s legislative halls and courtrooms but also beyond.
University of Texas at Dallas

ERIC R. SCHLERETH

Faithful Passages: American Catholicism in Literary Culture, 1844–1931. By James
Emmett Ryan. [Studies in American Thought and Culture.] (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2013. Pp. viii, 247. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 9780-299-29064-1.)
In Faithful Passages, James Emmett Ryan offers the most definitive examination yet of Catholic literary culture in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The
story of nineteenth-century Catholic American literature has until recently
emerged through a hodge-podge of articles and book chapters spanning the last
half-century. Charles Fanning’s wide-ranging literary history of Irish-American
fiction is an excellent exception. Few, however, have examined the hundreds of
works produced by other Catholic writers in this formative era. Faithful Passages
seeks to fill this gap in examining the various “catholicisms” at play in the imaginations of significant Catholic authors.
Ryan’s opening chapter, “Orestes Brownson in Young America,” is especially
good. After his conversion to Catholicism in the mid-1840s, Brownson served for
decades as the gatekeeper of Catholic literary and intellectual culture through his
own platform, Brownson’s Quarterly Review. Ryan shows Brownson’s two-fronted
battle against the liberal ideology of the Young America movement on the one
hand—with its wide-eyed eagerness to “refuse the good models,” as Emerson put
it in his Divinity School address—and against the feminization of Catholic culture
on the other. As Brownson put it, “nothing is more uncertain, variable, and fickle,
than sentiment” (p. 41). Insofar as his Review served as imprimatur for Catholic
writers and publishers in this period, Brownson was responsible for the development of Catholic literary culture, for better or worse.
Chapter 2, “Print Evangelism,” explores Father Isaac Hecker’s literary evangelism—his idealistic vision, influenced by his preconversion experiences with
utopian projects like Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands, of expanding Catholic America
through mass print culture. Ryan offers substantive analyses of Hecker’s central
works, Questions of the Soul (New York, 1855) and Aspirations of Nature (New York,
1857), neither of which appealed beyond a small cadre of Catholic intellectuals.
Chapter 3, “Entering the Mainstream,” offers the most substantive examinations to date of works by two prolific and popular Catholic novelists, Jebediah
Huntington and Anna Hanson Dorsey. Like Hecker and Brownson, both were
converts. Unlike those writers, however, these novelists enjoyed larger audiences by
participating in more commercially viable forms such as the sentimental novel.

174

BOOK REVIEWS

In his fourth chapter, “Sentimental Catechism,” Ryan works farthest into the
heart of a text with a careful reading of Bishop James Gibbons’s Faith of Our
Fathers (Baltimore, 1876), a popular catechism that defies generic labeling. Gibbons wrote both to educate the faithful and to evangelize Protestants on their own
terms: with abundant scriptural references and with strong emphasis on domestic
ideals familiar to any reader of popular fiction.
Ryan’s concluding chapters focus on Kate Chopin and Willa Cather, two
canonical writers less interested in the Catholic faith than in appropriating
Catholic settings and scenes. One will find here brief discussions of canonical
works like Chopin’s The Awakening (New York, 1899) and Cather’s Death Comes
for the Archbishop (New York, 1927). He is very interested in tracing a “Catholic
aesthetic” among writers outside Catholicism and opens the way for examinations
of the various “catholicisms” at work among twentieth-century writers ranging
from Ernest Hemingway to Louise Erdrich.
Ryan’s scholarship is impressive. His work references dozens of full-length
works, four decades of Brownson’s Quarterly Review, many letters dug tediously
from archives, and nearly every noteworthy study of nineteenth-century American Catholic culture to date. Further, he adeptly contextualizes these Catholic
works within the wide terrain of canonical American literature, a terrain he
knows quite well. To be sure, this is an important, elegantly written work—necessary reading for any student of American Catholic culture. Yes, he works in
broad strokes, pausing perhaps too seldom to look closely at various works. But
Faithful Passages lays the groundwork for closer readings of these and many other
writers.
Saint Louis University

DAVID CALLON

American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity. Edited by Catherine
A. Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press. 2011. Pp. 534. $75.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8078-3515-9; $34.95
paperback, ISBN 978-0-8078-7213-0.)
When Peter W. Williams asked in America’s Religions: From Their Origins to
the Twenty-First Century (Urbana, IL, 2002) whether it is “still possible to present
a narrative account of the religious life of the people of the United States as a unified whole” (p. 3), he acknowledged the same reality presented by Catherine Brekus
and W. Clark Gilpin (both of the University of Chicago Divinity School) in their
present edited volume American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity. Religion and its predominant American representative, Christianity, have been
and continue to be both “one” and “many.” The principal argument of Brekus and
Gilpin revolves around their statement that “even though Christianity has been the
nation’s largest religion, most Americans are unfamiliar with its internal variety and
tend to define Christianity in narrow terms according to their own upbringing or
what they have seen and heard in the media” (p. 4).

BOOK REVIEWS

175

The twenty-two original essays of the book, arranged in four sections, are the
work of scholars from a variety of historical and religious specialties, representing a
cross-section of religious persuasions. The first section of essays, titled “Christian
Diversity in America,” examines the variety of Christian voices that emerged due
to external influences of arriving immigrants, along with numerous controversies
and tensions that arose within the nation through the antebellum years of the nineteenth century. The ability of American Christianity to adapt to church and
denominational mergers, as well as to draw upon elements of the broader social and
religious environment, is discussed in this first section of the book.
Part 2 of this collection of essays, titled “Practicing Christianity in America,”
looks at the interplay between Christian theory and Christian practice. The essays
in this section illustrate the truth of Jewish scholar Will Herberg’s contention that
Americans make a distinction between professed religion and “operative religion”—that religion by which Americans actually live. Some distinctions made
between professed and operative religion are the result of change over time,
whereas others are the consequence of genuine differences in understandings of
religious symbols, rituals, and authoritative texts.
The third section of essays, “Christianity and American Culture,” plays off
sociology’s functional approach to the study of religion (and of Christianity within
it), which says that religion is not to be considered always as the independent variable that “causes” certain social and cultural developments; nor should religion be
thought of as entirely a dependent variable that reflects its social environment.
Rather, religion should be looked upon historically as both an independent and
dependent variable. The editors note particularly how Alexis de Tocqueville recognized in his book Democracy in America (London, 1835) the interplay, not conflict,
between religion and democracy. Brekus and Gilpin state, “By some symbiosis of
religion, politics, and economics, the ideology of individualism deepened and
extended its influence throughout the developing nation” (p. 276).
In the final section, “Christianity and the American Nation,” the essayists discuss the impact of Christianity on the shaping of an American identity. Although
Christians have often found themselves on both (or more) sides of what an ideal
America should look like (for example, abolitionists versus slaveholders, isolationists versus realists), Christians in America have at times set aside their differences
and come together to argue on behalf of an American exceptionalism. Perhaps only
in America could the legacy of Christianity look like this.
In this volume Brekus and Gilpin have done much to advance the conversation
about the place of Christianity (or Christianities) in America. The essays are certain
to broaden and deepen the understanding of both the specialist and generalist.
Corban University
Salem, OR

ROBERT R. MATHISEN

176

BOOK REVIEWS

All Good Books Are Catholic Books: Print Culture, Censorship, and Modernity in Twentieth-Century America. By Una M. Cadegan. [Cushwa Center Studies of
Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America.] (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 230. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-8014-5112-6.)
Cadegan adds to the body of recent scholarship that seeks to explain the complex relationship between American Catholicism and American intellectual culture
in the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council. Her main theme is that in
the area of literary culture, “Catholics involved in literary work” (p. 17) moved from
an adversarial attitude toward the dominant modernist aesthetic in literature early
in the century to creatively engage, reconcile, and eventually appropriate many
modernist elements within the scope of their own literary framework in the years
that followed.
Cadegan asserts that Catholics managed this accommodation primarily
through the development of a flexible, theologically-driven literary aesthetic that,
while refusing to affirm modernity in its entirety, managed to “remap the divide” (p.
65), imaginatively reconfiguring and reconciling the conflicting “oppositions” that
had delimited modernist-Catholic rapprochement since the 1890s. Attitudes of
U.S. Catholics toward censorship experienced similar reconfiguration, as Catholics
developed rationales that attempted to both reassure the faithful and make censorship more understandably “American” to moderns. Cadegan writes that the larger
importance of this journey is that in working out an intellectually serious response
to modernity in literature, the Catholic literary enterprise became an “important
site” (p. 54) by which U.S. Catholicism as a whole worked its way back to engagement with important existential philosophical and theological questions that,
although off-limits to theologians since the papal condemnation of modernism in
1907, were fair game in any discussion of modernist literary technique and outlook.
“In this way, literary history is perhaps more central to the intellectual history of
twentieth-century U.S. Catholicism than has yet been appreciated” (p. 48).
The book is composed of eight chapters, including several that reprise material
from previously published articles. Three chapters address the problem of censorship. The remainder of Cadegan’s narrative details the developing Catholic aesthetic: the challenges posed by modernity to orthodox belief and traditional
Catholic literary analysis; the means by which Catholic writers, critics, and teachers
reframed and reconciled these oppositions; and, finally, how, through employing
“their own categories and criteria for defining and evaluating literature,” Catholics
reclaimed “their place in the cultural and intellectual landscape” (pp. 2, 19).
The modernist-Catholic oppositions that Cadegan sets up—individualism
over community, iconoclasm over orthodoxy, innovation over repetition, and openness over closure—although imaginative, seem a bit arbitrary, and her juxtapositions
are not always sharply drawn. Nevertheless, Cadegan writes that taken together,
insights springing from Catholic theology and the fundamental mysteries and doctrines of the Catholic faith—the Incarnation, the sacramental nature of creation, the
liturgy—provided the categories and resources instrumental in their rapprochement.

BOOK REVIEWS

177

Cadegan’s thesis works best when she demonstrates how the doctrine of the
Incarnation, and its analogical complement—the belief that “all created reality and
human experience potentially reveal the presence of God” (p. 33)—was an especially important tool in helping Catholics come to terms with the iconoclastic sensibility behind so much of the “realism” in modern literature. By “insisting that all
aspects of human experience”—the sacred and the profane—“were appropriate,
even necessary subjects, for literature” (p. 45), Cadegan illustrates that Catholic
writers and critics by the 1950s no longer merely stood apart from modernity, but
rather had succeeded in broadening it by crafting an imaginative stance that combined both terms of the divide. This new synthesis allowed Catholics to redefine
James Joyce and to come to terms with the ambiguities of Graham Greene, and it
provided Flannery O’Connor a powerful imaginative framework through which to
depict evidence of the divine even in Christ-haunted Misfits.
This is a thought-provoking and inventive book, although in some instances
the enabling role of theology in Cadegan’s story may seem overly nuanced. (How
the oppositions of innovation and repetition found reconciliation in Catholic liturgical ritual, for example, leaves the reader with more questions than answers). At
the same time, the preconciliar theological reforms so important to Cadegan’s
analysis seem to arrive on her pages fully grown. A look back at their interwar
European roots would have provided an important intellectual context for her
study, while at the same time illustrating more fully the impact of the European
Catholic resurgence upon the twentieth-century American Catholic letters and the
reconciliation that followed.
St. Francis College
Brooklyn Heights, NY

ARNOLD SPARR

Strangers & Pilgrims: A Centennial History of the Layman’s Club of the Cathedral
Church of St. John the Divine. By Francis J. Sypher Jr. (New York: The
Layman’s Club. Distrib. Academic Resources Corporation. 2012. Pp. xiv,
169. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-88206-214-3. May be ordered from
sfandr@msn.com, tel. (480) 575-9945.)
The writings of St. Paul testify to the early importance of laypersons in building the Christian community. Where would we be today were it not for the myriad
souls that Paul thanks and asks to be remembered to? And where, indeed, would
the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine be today were it not for the tireless
work of the Layman’s Club?
In celebration of its centennial, Francis J. Sypher Jr. has written an interesting
volume that recounts the history of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
and the important work of the members of the Layman’s Club in creating the
imposing structure that the cathedral is today.
The initial impetus for an Episcopal cathedral in New York came from Bishop
Horatio Potter, who proposed its construction in 1872. It was “brought to realiza-

178

BOOK REVIEWS

tion” by his successor and nephew, Bishop Henry Codman Potter, who envisioned
the cathedral as a “foundation for the outside lay work of members, associations,
clubs, guilds, and brotherhoods.” As part of this vision, he encouraged the creation
of the Layman’s Club in 1908. Over the years, the club has supported the cathedral
through lectures, tours, a gallery exhibition space, ushering at services, generous
contributions, and sponsorships of special projects for the cathedral, along with
outreach and service to the cathedral neighborhood. The beautiful Pilgrim’s Pavement, the Compass Rose at the Crossing, the funds for the stairs into the North
Portal, and countless other adornments to the building are the result of the generosity and fund-raising skills of the club.
There were periods when the Layman’s Club was underutilized, yet its members continued to contribute where and when they could. Even during a hiatus in
construction in 1964, they raised the funds necessary to install the 4.5-ton, fourteen-foot-tall Gable Cross, which witnesses to Christian faith from the very apex
of the central portal. In recent years, following the lead of Bishop Paul Moore and
Dean James Parks Morton, the club has expanded and diversified its membership,
as well as continued its philanthropy and stewardship.
The decision to admit women was made in 1975; since then, three women
have served as president. One might have liked more information about how this
decision came to be made and why the name was never changed to reflect these
additional members. As with so many organizations after the 1970s, the gifts and
ministries of women are now utilized to the full extent.
A word that echoes throughout the book is communication. From its inception,
the Layman’s Club viewed its mission as bridging the communication gap between
the Cathedral, other Episcopalians, and the community at large through its programs. As Dean James Kowalski writes in the foreword, “each generation called
into the Cathedral is asked to enter the ongoing conversation about the Good Society.” The cathedral was “to be more than a meeting place;” It has always sought to
be an important part of the conversations happening in the community at large, a
beacon for justice, peace, diversity, and beauty.
Through depressions, wars, urban decay and urban renewal, and a devastating
fire, the Layman’s Club has helped to keep this conversation alive, and as this
volume so ably recounts, the club has had no small part in the great adventure of
this cathedral. We can be grateful to Sypher for the extensive research that has
enabled him to tell so well the interesting story of the laymen and women who have
come as “strangers and pilgrims and … stayed on to be hosts for a host of strangers
who pass through its portals.”
New York, NY

HELEN FAIRBANK GOODKIN

BOOK REVIEWS

179

An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics. By Sharon M. Leon.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2013. Pp. ix, 226. $45.00. ISBN 9780-226-0388-8.)
When Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, he specifically
addressed “some who are over solicitous for the cause of eugenics” and seek to employ
“medical action” in the form of surgical sterilization. Historians reference the encyclical as the most authoritative Roman Catholic opposition to eugenic sterilization laws
passed in the first third of the twentieth century. But relatively little historical attention has been paid to how American Catholics engaged the eugenics movement
before Rome spoke. Thanks to Sharon Leon’s An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle
with Eugenics, we now have a much more nuanced picture of when Catholic opposition to sterilization took shape, and the motives and arguments that gave it form.
Leon’s book opens three new doors in the history of eugenics. First, she provides a detailed roadmap to politics among the faithful, noting how during the early
years of the American eugenics movement, the pro-natalist thrust of so-called
“positive eugenics” echoed traditional church thinking that Pius would summarize
in Casti Connubii as “salutary counsel for more certainly procuring the strength and
health of the future child.” This feature of the growing eugenics movement provided an attraction to some important American Catholic thinkers. Second, Leon
explains that Catholic critics of eugenic sterilization went beyond doctrinal arguments to focus strategically—and as history would later conclude, accurately—on
the scientific weakness of eugenic theory. Third, both before and after Buck v. Bell,
the watershed Supreme Court case that validated the constitutionality of state laws
mandating eugenic sterilization, Catholic critics of the practice highlighted individual human dignity and the moral significance of bodily integrity as counterweights that trumped statist assertions about the common good.
The strength of Leon’s study lies in the painstaking research she conducted, not
only in the well-known records of the American Eugenics Society and other eugenic
advocacy groups, but also in the records of organizations such as the National
Catholic Welfare Conference and the National Council of Catholic Men (NCCM).
She found evidence that the men’s group first inadvertently overlooked the pending
litigation in Buck v. Bell. Then, aware of the danger of awakening all too common
1920s anti-Catholic sentiments, NCCM quietly orchestrated the filing of a petition
for rehearing after the decision in the case had been announced. Although its efforts
to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision were ultimately unsuccessful, the petition
contained the best and most thorough arguments made against the sterilization law.
Despite decades of research on the Buck case by other scholars, Leon was first to discover the provenance of this final chapter of the litigation.
Leon dedicates a full chapter to address one of the persistent questions in
American sterilization history—although two thirds of the states had sterilization
laws, why did similar legislation fail in the remainder of the states? Leon focuses on
Ohio, telling the story of Catholic opposition to sterilization proposals there in the
early 1930s. Her fine-grained analysis of behind-the-scenes lobbying by a promi-

180

BOOK REVIEWS

nent Catholic bishop, Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland, in opposition to a sterilization bill is a masterful exercise in political and legislative history.
Popular commentary on the history of eugenics in America often operates at
the level of cartoon, with anti-Darwinian religionists of many stripes posed against
the forces of scientific materialism. Leon’s book provides an antidote to that kind
of ahistorical polemic by showing in textured detail how the Catholic hierarchy as
well as the laity struggled with the many-faceted seductions of eugenics.
Georgia State University

PAUL A. LOMBARDO

The Transformation of American Catholicism: The Pittsburgh Laity and the Second
Vatican Council, 1950–1972. By Timothy Kelly. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press. 2009. Pp. xvi, 353. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-268-03319-4.)
Forty years ago three Catholic lay intellectuals (Garry Wills, Michael Novak,
and William F. Buckley Jr.) and a priest/sociologist (Andrew Greeley) dissected the
fallout from the Second Vatican Council. According to Buckley and Novak, Pope
John XXIII’s reforms in the early 1960s and the American Catholic Church’s
embrace of progressive politics resulted in parishioners becoming distrustful of
their leaders. Although Greeley was not as critical as Buckley, he acknowledged
that U.S. Catholic religious authorities had grown distant from the laity—in part,
he argued, because reform-minded clergy had sacrificed religious devotion in favor
of political activism. Wills, while celebrating the Council and Catholic progressive
politics in the 1960s, saw a Church destined for decline as the laity became better
educated, experienced greater social mobility, and appeared less willing to accept
the moral authority of the clergy.
Historian Timothy Kelly has picked up where the 1970s-era Catholic intellectuals left off. Using the Pittsburgh Diocese as a case study, Kelly assesses the
impact of the Council on the laity. Kelly insists that the American Catholic Church
had entered a period of decline in the decade before the Council and the upsurge
of progressive activism. Extrapolating from declining attendance at devotionals
over the course of the 1950s, Kelly argues that the Church was losing its hold on
the laity. To bolster his contention, Kelly notes that larger numbers of Catholic
children began attending public, rather than parochial, schools.
In a provocative chapter, Kelly asserts that the postwar Catholic Church’s
anticommunism fostered lay distrust of political institutions and undermined
American civic culture. Whether or not this was so, Kelly paints a dour picture of
Catholic anticommunism. One of his villains is Allegheny County judge and
devout Catholic Michael Musmanno. To Kelly, Musmanno was a cynical opportunist who red-baited the innocent. The author could have made two observations:
first, Musmanno had been affected by his experience as a judge at the Nuremberg
War Crime trials. He believed that totalitarian ideologies, whether Nazi or communist, threatened democracy; and second, the key figure Musmanno prosecuted

BOOK REVIEWS

181

for sedition was Steve Nelson, who was no mere bystander. Nelson was an agent of
the Comintern who had trained in the Soviet Union. He should not have been
prosecuted by Pennsylvania, as the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled. At the
same time, Musmanno was as sincere as he was overwrought.
Kelly well describes Hugh C. Boyle (1873–50), bishop of Pittsburgh (1921–
50) and a national champion of organized labor in the 1930s. Boyle personified the
values of the working-class laity. John Wright (1909–79, bishop of Pittsburgh
1959–69) could not have been more unlike Boyle. As a product of middle-class
Boston, Wright was alien to the Pittsburgh laity. His civil rights crusade seemed to
many Pittsburghers to be a repudiation of Boyle’s earlier concern for labor rights.
Wright did not possess the skills (or willingness) to reach out to Pittsburgh
Catholics and reassure them that he had not forsaken the faithful. Although Kelly
does not mention it, Wright had the distinction of being the only bishop in the history of the Pittsburgh Diocese to be burned in effigy by irate Catholics.
As Kelly concludes, the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s led thousands of Catholics to flee the Pittsburgh Diocese. Kelly is correct in noting that the
changes in the liturgy inspired by the Council and that civil-rights activism operated independently of a Church-destroying, de-industrializing economy. Even if
college-educated Catholics demanded birth control in contravention of church
teaching and left the pews, and working-class Catholics believed Wright dismissed
them as racists, there would have been no great Pittsburgh Diocese in the first place
without an industrial economy.
KENNETH J. HEINEMAN

Angelo State University
San Angelo, TX

LATIN AMERICAN
The Inquisition in Colonial Latin America: Selected Writings of Richard E. Greenleaf.
Edited and introduced by James D. Riley. (Berkeley: Academy of American
Franciscan History. 2010. Pp. vi, 247. $25.00. ISBN 978-0-88382-066-7.)
The late Richard E. Greenleaf, for nearly thirty years a faculty member and
holder of the France V. Scholes Chair of Colonial Latin American History as well
as director of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University,
was a pioneer in the study of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain and
elsewhere in Latin America. He authored two important books focused on the tribunal in sixteenth-century Mexico (Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536–
1543 [Washington, DC, 1962] and The Mexican Inquisition of the Sixteenth Century
[Albuquerque, 1969]) and subsequently extended the scope of his inquiry into the
Inquisition and its officials and targets to the end of the colonial period and beyond
central Mexico to include the “borderlands” regions of New Mexico and Louisiana.
The scope of his work and its implications for understanding Mexican—and more
broadly colonial Spanish American—society, institutions, and religion are well rep-

182

BOOK REVIEWS

resented in the present volume that is ably edited by James D. Riley, himself a
scholar of religion and society in colonial Mexico and one of Greenleaf’s doctoral
students. The edited work is divided into sections focusing on the Inquisition and
indigenous practices; the Inquisition as a bureaucracy; relations among the Holy
Office, the state, and religion; and the Inquisition in the borderlands. It also includes
eleven previously published articles as well as a list of the archival sources used by
Greenleaf in Spain and Mexico, a bibliography of works he cited, and Greenleaf’s
curriculum vitae and publications. Focusing on the eighteenth and early-nineteenth
centuries, the last five chapters showcase what probably is his lesser-known work.
Given the significance of Greenleaf’s scholarship that emphasized understanding the Holy Office as an institution embedded in the complex bureaucracy,
politics, and society of New Spain, a single volume that brings this material
together is a good addition to the steadily growing scholarship on the Mexican
Inquisition. That literature includes such recent works as John F. Chuchiak IV’s
The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536–1820: A Documentary History (Baltimore, 2012;
Chuchiak was one of Greenleaf’s many doctoral students). Unfortunately, its usefulness to scholars is limited by the perplexing decision to omit most of the footnotes from the original articles. This exclusion inevitably raises the question of the
intentions that informed this project. If the purpose was to make Greenleaf’s work
on the Inquisition more easily available to a generation of younger scholars, they
inevitably will find themselves seeking out the original journal publications (which
in any case are not especially obscure, as many of his articles were published in The
Americas, Hispanic American Historical Review, and New Mexico Historical Review).
Perhaps, then, the hope was to introduce Greenleaf’s scholarship on the Inquisition
to a wider or possibly an undergraduate audience; but in its present format the book
is unlikely to have broad appeal, as none of the apparatus is present that would
enhance its pedagogical effectiveness (such as illustrations, excerpts from primary
sources, or questions to frame discussion). The volume’s real purpose seems to have
been to highlight and honor the work of a remarkably prolific and influential
scholar. In that sense it is commendable and welcome.
University of Florida

IDA ALTMAN

The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943–1989: Transnational Faith and Transformation. By Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens. (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 315. $38.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-02905-0.)
Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, an associate professor of history at California State
University–Northridge, has produced an historical perspective on the work and consequences of the Maryknoll missions in Peru during the years indicated and even
beyond, based on extensive personal research in many of the relevant communities and
archives of Peru and the United States. She is a sympathetic relator of the heroic
Maryknoll missioners (both men and women), who, she interprets, “were at the heart
of liberation theology, progressive Catholicism, and revolution, which placed them in
opposition to U.S. policy in Latin America” (p. 1). Her account provides many layers

BOOK REVIEWS

183

of understanding and helpful information, especially as she explores the many unintended consequences of Maryknoll missionary endeavors in Peru and of the near disappearance of Maryknoll from the scene, both in Peru and in the United States.
Although the book is mostly organized chronologically, there are large sections where no dates are provided, making some forms of analysis and comparison
impossible, if not confusing. More admirably, the author endeavors to explore the
antecedent history and underlying causes of Maryknoll methodology in Peru,
beginning with the recruitment of men and women that was imbued, she argues,
with the immigrant Catholicism of the 1930’s U.S. Church. The first chapter provides an immense amount of information about Maryknoll, the immigrant Church
in America, the Latin American Church, international ecclesial structures, and critiques of the initial Maryknoll efforts from the perspective of the 1960s and later.
An uninformed reader might find it difficult to follow.
In subsequent chapters, the author has focused more on particular local communities, paying close attention to the personalities and approaches of individual
missioners and locals. It is “thick history from below.” Herein, she begins to explore
the results of the insertion of a “foreign” element into local power structures and
the resistance that sometimes occurred among those of the missionaries’ ministry.
The translation of previous mission experience from China and other Oriental
lands to indigenous Catholic cultures in Peru was often met with surprising consequences, which are artfully explored. She also rightly highlights the influences of
the American church experience of the mid-twentieth century, conveyed to their
mission assignments by the unwitting Maryknollers who were often transformed by
their experience of the Latin American Church and helped pave the way for various
strains of liberation theology and more radical movements for social reform. She
also details how the missionaries were often more dependent on the local communities than they might have assumed they would ever be on arrival.
The book includes two helpful maps, as well as extensive endnotes and a
selected bibliography, making it especially helpful for students. The few photos
only highlight the later years under study. There are some factual errors, including
the name of the cofounder of Maryknoll (Thomas F. Price—not Anthony) and the
bibliographical reference to this reviewer’s 2001 article in this journal (not the
Canadian Historical Review). The author ignores the real commencement of the
call for ecclesial missionary assistance in Latin America to other national churches
by Pope Pius XII, not Pope John XXIII, as is so commonly alleged. Unfortunately,
she also does not provide due consideration to other foreign mission groups and
communities in Peru during the years examined, which might have yielded fruitful
comparison, nor to the experience of Maryknoll in neighboring Bolivia, which in
some cases was at some contrast with the Peruvian experience. Her theological
observations are often diminished by the use of dated slogans, never explained, and
other vague generalizations (for example, the reference to “Romanized Catholicism” and the unhappy designation of “Foreign-Controlled and Progressive Dioceses in Peru”). Perhaps given the author’s overarching and favorable perspective of

184

BOOK REVIEWS

“progressive Catholicism,” no thought appears to be given to a more fundamental
question for Maryknoll in Peru and for Catholic missionaries and movement in
general—namely, what does it mean to share by means of personal witness the
Gospel of Jesus Christ in a foreign land?
JAMES F. GARNEAU

Mount Olive, NC

AFRICAN
Cardinal Dominic Ekandem and the Growth of the Catholic Church in Nigeria. By
Cosmas K. O. Nwosuh. (Iperu Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria: Ambassador Publications of the Missionary Society of St. Paul. 2012. Pp. xxx, 541. $25.00
paperback. ISBN 978-978-931-879-7.)
This is a well-researched and well-presented book for anyone who not only
wants to know a great religious leader and statesman, Cardinal Dominic Ekandem,
but also understand his impact on the history of the Nigerian Catholic Church and
the making of the members of its hierarchy in modern times.
The author strives to preserve a balance in his presentation of Ekandem, not
wanting to construct him as superhuman. Thus, at the secular level, we are shown
an Ekandem who has been recognized with several local, national, and international
awards (p. 459). His detachment from the pursuit of personal material possessions
is exemplified by his concern about the lifestyle of his episcopal colleagues (p. 280).
Regarding Ekandem’s weaknesses, the author presents a man who often was
not prepared to forgive his offenders (p. 257), had a penchant for favoritism with
an “apparent high-handed manner of approach” (p. 261), and used “the episcopal
office as bait” to win “over the influential and trenchant critics” among the diocesan
clergy (p. 261). Nowhere, however, is Ekandem’s weakness perhaps better demonstrated than in his role in generating the crisis that affected the Handmaids of the
Holy Child Jesus; he and then-bishop Brian Usanga—fueled by ethnic bias—saw
to the deposition of Mother Gertrude Nwaturuocha, the Superior-General of the
Congregation and to her subsequent exile (pp. 174–96).
The book has a number of weaknesses; three are worth noting. First, there are
obvious gaps and omissions. The book does not address the “virus” of tribalism even
in the ranks of the Nigerian hierarchy for whom Ekandem was “shepherd among
shepherds” and “primus inter pares” for almost two decades (pp. 270–83). For example, the author has devoted little attention to the reasons (possibly ethnically based)
for the choice of the foreign-based Saint Patrick Society, rather than the Nigerianborn members of the Nigerian Province of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, for
the seminary-formation of the new Missionary Society of Saint Paul (pp. 329–45).
Second, there is a lack of clarity regarding the story behind the exile of Bishop
James Moynagh, S.P.S., from Calabar and why Ekandem was silent on this matter
concerning a key figure in his life. This lack of clarity could leave room for unnec-

BOOK REVIEWS

185

essary speculation, especially given Ekandem’s very close, fraternal, and working
relationship with Usanga, Moynagh’s successor (pp. 172–96), who, according to
the author, is “parochial and provincial in outlook and mentality” and “never failed
to grab the limelight whenever the opportunity presented itself” (p. 173).
Third, the book is overly qualitative; a few quantitative details are suggested
but not sustained (pp. 79–87, 97–98). Perhaps that is the nature of the author’s discipline. A history book like this should provide details such as the number of priests
ordained by Ekandem, the number of educational and welfare institutions he established, and the names of members of particular religious organizations who came
to work in the dioceses that he was charged to lead.
In conclusion, the book’s weaknesses do not in any way outweigh its significance. A much-needed and very timely scholarly work, it will undoubtedly benefit
students of religion and politics, especially those studying the role of the Catholic
Church in Nigeria’s politics and beyond. The abundance of relevant information
will shed light on the current status of the church hierarchy’s endeavor to live up to
its claim to be the country’s voice of the voiceless. As Nigeria continues to grope
for good leaders and governance in both the secular and religious realms, the book
provides rich and cautionary insights on how religious leaders can be, in theory and
practice, the voice of the voiceless in and beyond their country.
IHEANYI ENWEREM, O.P.

Saskatoon, Canada

FAR EASTERN
The Riddle of Father Hackett: A Life in Ireland and Australia. By Brenda Niall. (Canberra: National Library of Australia. 2009. Pp. ix, 320. Aus. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-642-27/685-8.)
Brenda Niall has written a splendid account in clear and fluid prose of the life
of William Hackett. He regularly visited her parents’ home in Kew, Melbourne,
during his years in Australia, which encompassed a period at the nearby Xavier
College, where he taught and became rector. Many will profit from her deft and
delicate narrative, including those who know little of Irish and Australian history
in the twentieth century.
Hackett was born at Kilkenny in 1878. His father, a prominent medical
doctor, was a committed Parnellite who brought down ignominy on the Hackett
family by remaining loyal to the Irish leader, despite the Kitty O’Shea affair in
1890. William was a boarder at the Jesuit school, Clongowes, and there had his
first taste of the bitterness involved in loyalty to a lost cause. A nine-year-old child,
whom Hackett judged to be “a very strange boy” (p. 4), also boarded at the school.
He was James Joyce, already a fervent Parnellite.
Having entered the Jesuit novitiate, Hackett was educated in Ireland, France,
and Holland. He returned to Ireland to teach in Jesuit colleges at Clongowes and

186

BOOK REVIEWS

in Limerick. Ordained in 1912, he had already come close to many of those who
were the principal founders of the nationalist movement, which embraced a love for
both the old language and culture of Ireland. They included Padraig Pearse,
Thomas MacDonagh, and Erskine Childers. Another friend, through his own
father, was John Redmond. Hackett, however, had gradually and unreservedly
become a deeply committed Irish nationalist, and he rejected Redmond’s unrewarding policies toward England. The failed Easter Rising, followed by the
reprisals of the British with the execution of its leaders (including Hackett’s friends
Pearse and MacDonagh), deeply grieved him as well as confirmed his determination to help achieve Ireland’s freedom from British rule.
Already known to the authorities, Hackett’s room was raided for incriminating evidence, and he received a death threat. Understandably his Jesuit superiors
became alarmed and gave him the “laughable” position of assistant editor of their
publication, the Messenger, in Dublin (p. 74). Unrepentant, Hackett strongly
opposed the Treaty, but maintained contact with Michael Collins right up until the
day before Collins’s murder on August 22, 1922. Hackett’s own fate had already
been sealed. Exiled to Australia, he was already there when Childers was executed
on November 24, 1922. For years, he maintained loving contact by mail with
Childers’s widow, Molly.
His major contributions in Melbourne were to the intellectual life of Catholics
by his efforts in founding a Catholic Library and by his chaplaincy of the thennascent Catholic Action movements. Critical of the Catholic education system and
remarking, “I am afraid we are educating devout barbarians” (p. 173), he strove to
uplift students from their base in rowing and football. He became a friend and confidant of the English governor of Victoria and of three prime ministers—James
Scullin, Joseph Lyons, and Robert Menzies—and decided that the latter, a nonCatholic, was “the most congenial.” Daniel Mannix, archbishop of Melbourne and
an Irish patriot, was imprudent and sometimes outrageous in his rejection of
Britain. His condemnation of conscription in World War I, nevertheless, won the
admiration of millions of Australians. Perhaps because he wore the mark of greatness, Mannix was friendless among bishops and clergy. Hackett was the exception,
and Mannix demanded his constant company, especially throughout the interminable and boring period of summer holidays.
In 1954 Hackett was run over by a cab as he walked to a nearby convent to
give Benediction on a wet and dismal night in Melbourne. Accustomed to riding a
bicycle, he said on his deathbed, “I never thought I’d have a taxi to take me to
Heaven.” Niall decided that hope was his greatest virtue. In both Ireland and Australia, Hackett needed a great measure of hope.
This is a fine book because the author never attempts the impossible. Hackett
in his early days was an enigma. Later, as priest and Jesuit, he was unfathomable.
Niall has left him an enigma; a characterization she develops with great skill.
Australian National University (Emeritus)

JOHN MOLONY

Notes and Comments
ASSOCIATION NEWS
The 2014 spring meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association will
be held at Xavier University in Cincinnati on March 27–29. Proposals for individual
and panel presentations concerning any aspects of Catholic history should be submitted by February 10 to the ACHA’s online submission system (http://www.acha.org).
The meetings will be held on the campus of Xavier University; the banquet is scheduled for the downtown National Underground Railroad Freedom Center; and a tour
will be given of the antebellum and abolition town of Ripley, Ohio.
The 95th ACHA annual meeting will be held in New York City on January
2–5, 2015. Proposals for papers and panels may be submitted using the association’s Web site beginning February 15.

CAUSE OF SAINTS
On December 8, 2013, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of a decree
assigning the following status to three Servants of God: Miracles for Giovannina
Franchi (1807–72), the Italian foundress of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother of
Como; and Martyrs for the Italian Mario Vergara, professed priest of the Pontifical
Institute for Foreign Missions, and for the Burmese Isidoro Ngei Ko Lat, a layman
and catechist killed in Shadaw, Myanmar, in 1950. Ten Servants of God had their
virtues declared heroic: four priests (the French Compassionist Maurice Garrigou
[1766–1852], the German Augustinian Vinzenz Fuhl [1874–1935], the Hungarian
Discalced Carmelite Marcell Boldizsar Marton [1887–1966], and the Italian Trappist Romano Bottegal [1921–78]); three Italian religious sisters (Maria Oliva
Bonaldo [1893–1976], Orsola Mezzini [1853–1919], and Orsola Maria Rivata
[1897–1987]); the Spanish foundress of the Religious of St. Joseph of Girona,
Maria Rosa Teresa Gay Tibau (1813–84); the Canadian foundress of the Institute
of the Sisters of Misericorde, Rosalie Cardon-Jette (1794–1864); and the Puerto
Rican layman Raffaele Cordero Molina (1790–1868).

FELLOWSHIPS, WORKSHOP, AND SUMMER SEMINAR
The Newberry Library in Chicago invites scholars, individually or as a team
engaged in one project, who live and work outside the Chicago area to apply for
short-term fellowships, usually for a period of one month, to use materials at the
library not easily accessible elsewhere. Most stipends are for $2500 per month for
each individual, whether working alone or as part of a team. The deadline is January 15, 2014. For more information, visit http://www.newberry.org.fellowships.
187

188

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Columbia University in New York City, in conjunction with the École
nationale des chartes/École pratique des hautes études, is sponsoring a tuition-free
workshop in Middle French paleography for three weeks (June 9–27, 2014).
Taught by Professors Pamela H. Smith and Marc H. Smith, the course will include
instruction in French Renaissance paleography, Middle French, and the principles
of transcription and translation. The students will transcribe a French manual written around 1580 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 640) that describes
processes used in the production of such items as paintings, counterfeit gems,
cannon-casting, tree-grafting, land-surveying, taxidermy, papier mâché masks, and
other things. Up to fifteen participants may enroll; preference is given to doctoral
students, who will receive a stipend to help defray the cost of attending the workshop. Advanced skills in the French language are required. Applicants should
submit a curriculum vitae, the names and addresses of two references, a three-page
letter explaining why they wish to participate in the workshop, and transcripts of
successfully completed coursework in the French language or other supporting evidence of competence in French. These documents and any inquiries should be sent
by February 21, 2014, to Claire Sabel, email: ccs2137@columbia.edu. Successful
applicants will be notified by the beginning of April.
The National Endowment for the Humanities is funding a five-week seminar
(June 23 to July 25, 2014) for college and university faculty members at the American Academy in Rome that will encourage research in the city’s libraries and
archives on medieval secular and religious movements for renewal and reform.
Directed by Maureen C. Miller (University of California, Berkeley) and William
L. North (Carlton College), the seminar will study processes of political and religious transformation through readings (dealing with the ninth-century Carolingian
political and intellectual transformations, eleventh- and twelfth-century ecclesiastical reforms, and twelfth- and fourteenth-century efforts to revive the Roman
republic), site visits (such as to the churches of S. Clemente, S. Prassede, and SS.
Quattro Coronati, as well as to the Lateran and Campidoglio complexes), and discussions to encourage individual research and to build an interdisciplinary community of inquiry. The deadline for application is March 4, 2014. For more information, visit https://apps.carleton.edu/neh2014/.
The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is
sponsoring a summer seminar: “Leadership and Christian Formation in the Early
Church” (July 7–11, 2014) directed by David Rylaarsdam of Calvin Theological
Seminary. For more information, visit http://www.calvin.edu/scs and click on
“Summer Seminars.”

CONFERENCES
A detailed report written by Krisztina Tóth on the international workshop
“The Papacy and the Local Churches (16th–20th Centuries)” that was held in
Budapest on May 8–12, 2013, can be found on the Web site http://obeliscus.hu/
hu/aktualis-folyoirat-szam.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

189

On March 12–14, 2014, an international conference will be held at the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome to commemorate the centenary of the
birth of Monsignor Alvaro del Portillo, the university’s first grand chancellor, who
will soon be beatified. The papers to be presented will focus on his relations to
Opus Dei as collaborator with and first successor of St. Josemaría, on his notable
contributions to the Second Vatican Council and to the new codification of canon
law, and on his spirituality. Those wishing to present papers on these themes of a
maximum of ten single-spaced pages or 42,000 characters that can be read in fifteen minutes should submit them to the Segretaria of the conference at
http://eventi.pusc.it/iscrizione. The complete text must be submitted by January
31, 2014. For more information, visit http://www.pusc.it/can/delportillo2014 or
email convegno.delportillo@pusc.it.
On March 28–29, 2014, the History Department of Boston College will
sponsor a conference on “The Problem of Religion: Faith and Agency in History,”
the fifth biennial conference in its series on the History of Religion. This one will
focus on the possibilities and limitations of using religion as a lens for understanding human agency from the Middle Ages to the present in such arenas as churchstate relations, law and public policy, habits and practices, political violence, religious thought, and the challenges of historical method. Titles of proposed papers,
plus 300-word abstracts and curricula vitae, should be sent to the conference committee, email: bchistoryofreligion@gmail.com. For more information, visit
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/history/about/religion_conference.html.
On May 15–17, 2014, the Fourth RefoRC Conference 2014 Bologna, organized by Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, will devote its three
plenary sessions to the theme “Arts, Portraits, and Representation in the Reformation Era.” Despite a strain of iconoclasm in some forms of Protestantism, images
and music continued to play an important theological and devotional role in
Protestant culture and functioned also as expressions of power and status. Comparisons with their role in the Catholic tradition are welcomed. But papers are also
invited that treat all disciplines related to the sixteenth-century reformations such
as arts, philosophy, law, history, and theology. Those wishing to present short
papers (a twenty-minute talk followed by ten-minute discussion) should submit a
proposal before February 15, 2015. The talks should be in English; if in another
language, they must be accompanied by a printed summary in English. Registration for the conference includes a subscription to De Gruyer’s new Journal of Early
Modern Christianity that covers the period ca. 1450–1650 and includes articles on
theology, history, philosophy, cultural history, archeology, visual arts, music, and
literature. Conference papers are published in the Refo500 Academic Studies
Series of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. For questions on short paper submissions,
please contact Federica Meloni, email: meloni@fscire.it; for information on registration, contact Karla Apperloo-Boersma at Refo500. For more information, visit
http://www.Refo500.nl/rc/pages/440/fourth.html.
On May 28–30, 2014, the Canadian Catholic Historical Association will hold
its 81st Annual Meeting at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. The

190

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CCHA invites papers on the theme “Borders without Boundaries” (the theme of
the joint Annual Congress of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and
Social Sciences) and also welcomes papers dealing with any aspect of the history of
the Catholic Church or of Catholicism in Canada. Proposals (a 250-word abstract,
plus a curriculum vitae that includes email and postal addresses) should be sent by
January 20, 2014, to Edward MacDonald (CCHA president and program chair),
email: gemacdonald@upei.ca.
On June 28, 2014, a conference will be held in Sarajevo on the theme “The
First World War” sponsored by the International Commission for the Study of
History. Among the topics to be discussed is the role of military chaplains in the
armies of Austria-Hungary, composed of soldiers from various ethnic and religious
backgrounds. A similar conference on the war will be held in Marseilles in October
(sponsored by the Institut Catholique de la Méditerranée) and another on October
15–17 (sponsored by the Academy of Hungary and other cultural institutions)
dealing with the theme “Catholics and the Holy See in the First World War.” Of
special interest will be the efforts of the Catholic Church and other religious communions to be impartial and work for peace, as well as the impact of the war on
missionary work in the colonies.
On October 14–16, 2015, a conference will be held at the Lateran University
to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).
Among the topics to be treated are the role of Pope Innocent III, the reform of
clergy and laity, preachers, Joachim of Fiore, and the Cathars. The organizing
committee consists of David D’Avray (London), Werner Maleczeck (Vienna),
Gert Melville (Dresden), and Johannes Helmrath (Berlin).
On December 9–11, 2015, an international conference to commemorate the
fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council (December 8,
1965) is being planned by the Pontifical Commission for Historical Sciences in
conjunction with the Center for the Study of the Second Vatican Council of the
Pontifical Lateran University.

PUBLICATIONS
A month after distinguished historian Oskar Halecki, professor in Fordham
University and president of the American Catholic Historical Association in 1956,
died in White Plains, New York, on September 17, 1973, a memorial service was
held in the Kosciuszko Foundation Home in New York. The nine eulogies delivered on that afternoon have now been published in part I of Oskar Halecki, 1891–
1973: Eulogies and Reflections, edited by Thaddeus V. Gromada. In an eight-page
“preface,” Jerzy Wyrozumski gives a biographical sketch of the Polish patriot and
scholar. Found in part II, “Reflections,” are “Oskar Halecki, My Mentor” by Gromada and “My Professor at Fordham” by Taras Hunczak. Part III consists of nine
documents in Polish and English (including letters from Cardinals Karol Wojtyła
and John Krol) and five photographs. The seventy-one-page booklet (ISBN is 978-

NOTES AND COMMENTS

191

0-9849187-1-3) may be ordered for $7.99 from Tatra Eagle Press, 31 Madison
Avenue, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604.
Observing the seventeenth centenary of the Edict of Milan, the editors of the
Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia have published a number of articles on Emperor
Constantine I in their issue for 2013 (vol. 22): “La religion de Constantin” by
Pierre Maraval (pp. 17–36), “Constantino y el arrianismo” by Agustín López
Kindler (pp. 37–64), “Constantine: The Legal Recognition of Christianity and its
Antecedents” by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli (pp. 65–82), “El elogio del emperador Constantino en la literatura Cristiana de su época” by Esteban Moreno Resano (pp. 83–
109), “Nota sobre la semántica de la expresión «Iglesia católica» antes y después del
‘Edicto’ de Constantino del 313” by Vittorino Grossi (pp. 111–33), and “(In)tolerancia y consenso: el legado politicoreligioso de Constantino (335–43)” by Almudena Alba López (pp. 135–56).
The same issue of the Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia (vol. 22 [2013]) contains
several articles inspired by Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic letter for the indiction of
the Year of Faith, Porta Fidei, and focused on doors that have depicted truths of
faith throughout history: “La porta della fede” by Timothy Verdon (pp. 159–73),
“«Porta fidei salutisque»: Der Bildzyklus der romanischen Türflügel in St. Maria
im Kapitol zu Köln” by Ralf Van Bühren (pp. 175–89), “Die romanische Tür von
Plock in Welikij Nowgorod in Russland als Glaubensbekenntnis in der Kunst” by
Ryzard Knapinski (pp. 191–201), “Misterios de la vida de Jesucristo en la puerta de
madera de la cathedral de Split” by Josip Dukic and Slavko Kovacic (pp. 203–17),
“Scriptural images of St. Isaac’s cathedral in St. Petersburg: Porticoes and doors” by
Tatiana Akindinova (pp. 219–34), and “Las puertas de la basílica de la Sagrada
Familia de Barcelona” by Armand Puig i Tàrrech (pp. 235–55).
An international conference on “Crocifissi lignei a Venezia e nei territori della
Serenissima, 1350–1500. Modelli, diffusione, restauro” was held in Venice on May
18, 2012. Ten papers presented on that occasion have now been published in Il
Santo, LIII (1–2, 2013), 5–160, with an “Apparato fotografico” consisting of 103
black-and-white plates.
Issue 5/6 of the Journal of Early Modern History for 2013 (vol. 17) is devoted
to the theme of conversion narratives, which is treated in six articles: “Introduction:
Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World” by Peter Mazur and Abigail
Shinn (pp. 427–36), “Conversion and Autobiography: Telling Tales before the
Roman Inquisition” by Irene Fosi (pp. 437–56), “Converting and Not Converting
‘Strangers’ in Early Modern London” by Matthew Dimmock (pp. 457–78), “A
Muslin Turned Jesuit: Baldassarre Loyola Mandes (1631–1667)” by Emanuele
Colombo (pp. 479–504), “In the Language of the Land: Native Conversion in
Jesuit Public Letters from Brazil and India” by Ananya Chakravarti (pp. 505–24),
and “Picturing Global Conversion: Art and Diplomacy at the Court of Paul V
(1605–1621)” by Opher Mansour (pp. 525–59).

192

NOTES AND COMMENTS

The autumn meeting of Das Römische Institut des Görres-Gesellschaft,
which took place in the Pontificio Collegio Teutonico in Vatican City on October
29–31, 2011, commemorated the sesquicentennial of the founding of the Kingdom
of Italy. Eight papers were presented on the theme “Der Untergang des Kirchenstaates und Solidaritätsaktionen aus dem Rheinland und aus Westfalen (1860–
1870).” Four of the papers have been published in Heft 1–2 of the Römische Quartalschrift for 2013 (vol. 108), following an introduction by Hartmut Benz: “Der
rheinisch-westfälische Adel und der Papst. Zur Vorgeschichte der deutschen Zentrumspartei” by Markus Raasch (pp. 3–21), “Kölner Katholizismus und Papsttreue
pro patrimonio Petri (1859–1868)” by Ernst Heinen (pp. 22–39), “Der preußische
Diplomat und Publizist Alfred von Reumont (1808–1887) und sein Engagement
für Papst und Kirchenstaat” by Felix Schumacher (pp. 40–75), and “EngelbertOtto Freiherr von Brackel-Welda. Ein Westfale in päpstlichen Diensten im
Spiegel seiner Korrespondenz” by Titus Heydenreich (pp. 76–85).
Volume 79 (2013) of Historical Studies, the journal published by the Canadian
Catholic Historical Association, contains the following four articles: “Bishop Macdonnell and the Friends of Ireland: Mixing Politics and Religion in Upper Canada”
by Brandon S. Corcoran and Laura J. Smith (pp. 7–23); “A Catholic Journey: Paul
Martin, Sr., Politics, and Faith” by Greg Donaghy (pp. 25–40); “A Master of Religious Media: The Career of Rev. Matthew Meehan, C.Ss.R., 1947–1998” by M.
C. Havey (pp. 41–55); and “‘To meet more perfectly the wants of our people here’:
The Christian Brothers and the Process of Anglicization in Ontario, 1850–1925”
by Michael Wilcox (pp. 57–78). Abstracts in English and French are given on
pages 81–85. The second half of the same volume is occupied by Études d’histoire
religieuse, published by the Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique. It
also consists of four articles: “L’érémitisme en Nouvelle-France et la vocation singulière de Toussaint Cartier au XVIIIe siècle” by Claude La Charité (pp. 5–19),
“L’Église et la propriété seigneuriale au Québec (1854–1940): continuité ou rupture?” by Benoît Grenier (pp. 21–39), “Le campus de l’Université Laval: Lieu de
modernisation d’une institution universitaire catholique et du Québec” by Richard
Leclerc (pp. 41–54), and “Une migration silencieuse. Paroles de prêtres laïcisés
dans le diocèse de Rimouski” by Bernard Gagnon and Françoise Paradis Simpson
(pp. 55–70).

PERSONALS
On October 22, 2013, in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Father
Steven Avella of Marquette University’s History Department was presented with
the Milwaukee Archbishop’s 2013 Vatican II Award for Distinguished Service to
the Priesthood based on his work as a scholar, media expert, and educator at Marquette University, the diocesan seminar, and area schools.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

193

OBITUARIES
Antonio García y García, O.F.M.
(1928–2013)
Antonio García y García, O.F.M, died on July 8, 2013, after a decade of suffering from an agonizing form of Alzheimer’s disease, in the Franciscan convent of
Chipiona (Cadiz). Born in Bretoña (Lugo, Galicia) on January 7, 1928, he joined
the Order of St. Francis at the age of eighteen and was ordained a priest in 1952.
He received his doctorate in canon law at the Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum
in Rome in 1956 and was appointed professor for History of Canon Law at the
Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in 1959, where he taught until his retirement.
With the death of Professor García, the profession has lost one of the last
founding fathers of modern scholarship in medieval canon law. He belonged to the
group of canonists led by Stephan Kuttner. These canonists were associated by
friendship and pointed the way to a manuscript-based research of canon law. They
were at the same time great scholars and true gentlemen. He was an amazingly prolific writer, with a scholarly output that surprises in quantity as well as in its wide
range of content and interest. His oeuvre includes thirty-two books and almost 300
articles (see his bibliography published in Studia Gratiana 28, 1998). The topics of
his publications, which appeared in a large variety of Spanish, Portuguese, and
international journals, stretch geographically from his own little hometown in
Spain to Latin America and chronologically from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries. He critically investigated texts from the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the Tractatus de legibus of Francisco Suárez (1612); he analyzed problems of legal history from the fidelity oaths in Visigothic councils to the human
rights of the indigenous people of Latin America; and he discussed the history of
the European universities as well as that of the colonial conquests by Spain and
Portugal. Among the innumerable findings of his research, two farsighted endeavors stand out, assuring that the international community of historians will remember Father García forever with respect and gratitude. First is the monumental Synodicon Hispanum, which he conceived, directed, and partly compiled. Progressing at
a steady pace since 1981, it has produced eleven volumes to date and covered a large
number of Spanish and Portuguese dioceses in a systematic fashion, thus placing
the two Iberian countries in a leading position within the international scholarship
in synodal texts. The second invaluable accomplishment of Father García results
from his tireless and most successful efforts to highlight the treasures of medieval
manuscripts in Spain. Fifty years ago, the manuscript holdings of that country were
regarded, even by native scholars, as a kind of wonderland—immensely rich, but
mysterious and practically inaccessible. If this situation has definitely changed by
now, at least as far as medieval legal manuscripts are concerned, this is almost
entirely due to Father García, who acted as a very efficient access manager to Spanish libraries, operating on two different fronts. On one side he promoted an
impressive series of modern manuscript catalogs, compiled by teams of specialists
whom he engaged, inspired, and guided. Thanks to this effort, we have now solid

194

NOTES AND COMMENTS

working tools for the cathedral libraries of Toledo (1970), Cordoba (1976),
Sigüenza (1978), and La Seu d’Urgell (2009), to which García added catalogs of
foreign collections with a Spanish background such as the Hispanic Society of
America in New York (1963) and the Cathedral Library of Messina (1985); furthermore, he contributed to the catalog of the Collegio di Spagna at Bologna
(1992) and created the never to be forgotten Iter Hispanicum for the manuscripts of
Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1973). Besides this harvest of publications, which will
remain as a permanent record of Father García’s farsighted research management,
he provided another, more intimate, and very personal service to innumerable
people—young and old, students and illustrious professors alike. When they
arrived in Spain, he guided them through the wilderness of the library landscape—
opening doors, establishing contacts, providing microfilms. He often checked the
manuscripts personally when he received a request from scholars outside the country. His overwhelming generosity and benevolence toward everyone may have been
inspired by his Franciscan spirituality that otherwise he did not show ostentatiously. I never saw him in the Franciscan habit; normally he donned a somewhat
old-fashioned windbreaker, whereas at official events he appeared in an impeccable
suit with elegant necktie. He liked to travel and to participate in meetings and congresses all over Europe and the Americas, earning him the nickname of “The
Flying Friar.” He was probably the only member of the medieval canon-law fraternity who did not miss a single one of the twelve International Congresses, from
Louvain in 1958 to Washington in 2004; and the Congress of Salamanca in 1976
in all its splendor was his work. Despite his merits and celebrity that have been
acknowledged with honors of all kinds and a two-volume Festschrift (1998), he
displayed a genuine Franciscan simplicity and modesty.
Open-minded and always straightforward, he detested bigotry and fanaticism—both religious and political. Jovial and amiable with everybody, he was a
charming companion, who liked to tell amusing anecdotes and funny jokes. During
intense work with several colleagues on the catalog of the Chapter Library of La
Seu d’Urgell, he rewarded his crew with hilarious dinners at the local restaurant
Casa nostra that served gigantic garlic torradas and delicious pimientos. For those
who had known, admired, and enjoyed him for many years, it was saddening to
witness his lively spirit fading away in the darkness of a cruel disease. We shall
never forget our learned master and dear friend.
MARTIN BERTRAM

Rome
Barbara Misner, S.C.S.C.
(1931–2013)

Sister Barbara Misner, Sister of Mercy of the Holy Cross, died on June 28,
2013, at Bell Tower Residence in Merrill, Wisconsin, at the age of eighty-two. She
was born on April 13, 1931, in Jackson, Michigan; her parents were the late Francis
de Sales Misner and Madge (Mee) Misner. She entered the Holy Cross Convent
in Merrill on August 2, 1948, and celebrated her First Profession on August 24,

NOTES AND COMMENTS

195

1950, taking the name Sister Francis de Sales Misner, S.C.S.C. She attended
Alverno College in Milwaukee and earned an MA degree from Xavier University
in Cincinnati, with a thesis on the economic theories of Friedrich List in earlynineteenth-century Germany (1967). Her dissertation for the PhD degree from
The Catholic University of America (1981) was “A Comparative Social Study of
the Members and Apostolates of the First Eight Permanent Communities of
Women Religious within the Original Boundaries of the United States, 1790–
1850,” published as Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies: Catholic Women
Religious in America, 1790–1850 (New York, 1988).
Her decades of ministry included elementary school teaching in Antigo and
Mercer, Wisconsin; Deer Park, Ohio; and Haymarsh, North Dakota. She also
taught at the Menard Junior College in Merrill. As she recounted in the preface to
the first of two slim volumes on the history of her congregation, The Living Love
of Christ among Us (Merrill, WI, 1998–99), she was attracted by the international
missionary scope of the community. When she accepted the assignment to assist
with the work on a new constitution at the motherhouse in Ingenbohl, Switzerland, in 1969–70, the need of a modern history of the congregation’s work over the
preceding century challenged her. This led to intense research in the Ingenbohl
archives from 1989 to 1991, as well as sojourns to the Sisters’ establishments
abroad, notably in India, to gather data and set up orderly archives.
Indeed, archival work was her basic continuing professional activity. She lent
her talents in this capacity to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati; the Dioceses of La
Crosse and Madison in Wisconsin; the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings in Montana; the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee; and St. Norbert Abbey in De
Pere, Wisconsin. She was the founding archivist of the Holy Cross Sisters, USA
Province, in Merrill. After she completed the first two parts of her history of the
Holy Cross Sisters, she left material for more in the hands of her colleague, Sister
Ann Wittman. Along the way she helped organize the Conference on the History
of Women Religious in 1998.
Sister Barbara retired in 2006; in 2007, due to worsening dementia, she moved
first to St. Joseph’s Convent in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, then to Bell Tower
Residence in Merrill shortly before her death. Father James Baraniak, O. Praem.,
the prior of St. Norbert Abbey, officiated at her memorial Mass on Monday, July
1, 2013, in Holy Cross Chapel, Merrill. Burial took place in St. Francis Cemetery,
Merrill, on July 13. Memorial contributions can be made to the Bell Tower Residence and sent to Holy Cross Sisters, 1400 O’Day Street, Merrill, WI 54452.
Marquette University (Emeritus)

PAUL MISNER

Periodical Literature
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Liberation and Theology: A Pedagogical Challenge. Mee-Ae Kim. History
Teacher, 46 (Aug., 2013), 601–12.
The Tribunal of the Roman Rota and its archives. Enrico Flaiani. Mitteilungen des
Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2, 2013), 379–99.
Du “religieux” à “l’utilité publique”; droit canonique et secularisation du XVIe au
XXe siècle. Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108
(Jan.–Mar., 2013), 144–63.
Le Culte liturgique des papes béatifiés, canonisés ou dont le culte a été confirmé de
1881 à 1903. Philippe Beitia. Ephemerides Liturgicae, CXXVII (Apr.–June,
2013), 169–88.
Eugenio Pacelli—Man and Pope. Paul O’Shea. Harvard Theological Review, 106
(July, 2013), 357–69.
El Concilio Vaticano II y Karol Wojtyła. Gabriel Richi Alberti. Isidorianum, XXII
(2013), 127–68.
Archivo Ibero Americano en su centenario. Miguel Vallecillo Martín. Archivo
Ibero-Americano, LXXIII (Jan.–Apr., 2013), 5–85.
O claustro gótico de Varatojo. Arquitetura e história do Convento de Santo
António de Varatojo (1470–1678). Ana Assis Pacheco. Itinerarium, LIX (Jan.–
Apr., 2013), 103–21.
Die Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Klosters Clarholz. II. Teil: Die Bewirtschaftungsund Ertragsgeschichte. Jochen Ossenbrink. Analecta Praemonstratensia,
LXXXVIII (2012), 96–219.
Etapes i continguts de la formació espiritual i acadèmica dels framenors caputxins
de Catalunya des de la fundació a l’exclaustració (anys 1578–1835). Valentí
Serra de Manresa. Revista Catalana de Teologia, 37 (2, 2012), 581–655.
El monasterio concepcionista franciscano de La Canal de Carriedo (Cantabria):
historia y crónica de una ofrenda (1665–1996). José María Alonso del Val.
Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXXIII (Jan.–Apr., 2013), 113–29.
Teaching the Catholic Novel: What Took Me So Long? Debra Campbell. American Catholic Studies, 124 (Fall, 2013), 61–73.
A matter of diplomacy: the British government and the Mennonite immigration
from Russia to Manitoba, 1872–1875. James Urry. Mennonite Quarterly, a
Review, 87 (Apr., 2013), 225–49.
196

P ERIODICAL L ITERATURE

197

ANCIENT
Reinscribing the Jews: The Story of Aristides’ Apology 2.2–4 and 14.1b–15.2.
William C. Rutherford. Harvard Theological Review, 106 (Jan., 2013), 61–91.
Deaconesses and the Spiritual Equality of Women. Catherine Tkacz. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 5–43.
Eusebio de Cesarea: la actitud versátil de un brillante historiador en el marco de la
controversias arrianas. Nicu Dumitraşcu. Studia Monastica, 55 (1, 2013), 7–25.
Textual Disorder in the Letters of St Antony: An Analysis and Partial Reconstruction. Part II: The Likelihood of Disorder. The Letters in Context. Richard
Shaw. Downside Review, 131 (Apr., 2013), 59–68.
Un decenio de investigación en torno a los cánones pseudoiliberritanos. Nueva
respuesta a la crítica unitaria. Josep Vilella and Pere-Enric Barreda. Revue
d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 300–36.
How a Monk Ought to Relate to His Neighbor. John Wortley. Greek, Roman and
Byzantine Studies, 53 (4, 2013), 726–44.
El ayuno y el alimento en Agustín de Hipona. Consideraciones históricas. Manual
Rodríguez Gervás. Augustinianum, LIII (June, 2013), 117–36.
Was Augustine a Narcissist? Paul Rigby. Augustinian Studies, 44 (1, 2013), 59–91.
La conversión de Jerónimo y de Agustín a la Escritura, a través del pórtico de los
sueños. Bart J. Koet. Augustinus, LVIII (Jan.–June, 2013), 89–118.
Literacy and Memory in Evagrius’ Monasticism. Rebecca Krawiec. Journal of Early
Christian Studies, 21 (Fall, 2013), 363–90.
Straight Reading: Shame and the Normal in Epiphanius’s Polemic against Origen.
Blossom Stafaniw. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21 (Fall, 2013), 413–35.
The Church of Rome as a Court of Appeal in the Early Fifth Century: The Evidence of Innocent I and the Illyrian Churches. Geoffrey D. Dunn. Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 64 (Oct., 2013), 679–99.
Entrusting Western Europe to the Church, 400–750. Ian Wood. Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 23 (Dec., 2013), 37–73.
A New Basilical Church Uncovered at Akyaka in Caria. Hatice Özyurt Özcan.
Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 79 (1, 2013), 113–37.
Les deux baptistères du groupe épiscopal de Sant’Appianu de Sagone à Vico
(Corse-du-Sud). Daniel Istria, with the collaboration of Joël Françoise and
Emmanuel Pellegrino. Gallia, 69 (2, 2012), 195–208.
St. Symeon, Fool for Christ and Exemplar of Humility. Philip LeMasters and
John-Eric Swenson. American Benedictine Review, 64 (Sept., 2013), 267–81.
Papa Gregorio Magno e la Simonaica haeresis. Roberta Rizzo. Augustinianum, LIII
June, 2013), 195–229.

198

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

MEDIEVAL
Columbanus in Europe: the evidence from the Epistulae. Tomasso Leso. Early
Modern Europe, 21 (Nov., 2013), 358–89.
Some Remarks Concerning the Ethiopic Recension of the “Life of Antony.” Rafał
Zarzeczny, S.J. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 79 (1, 2013), 37–60.
Maximus the Confessor’s Letters to Thomas. A Review of the Most Recent Critical Text and English Translation. Adam G. Cooper. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 45–63.
Le martyre, l’exil et la mort de saint Maxime le Confesseur et de ses deux disciples,
Anastase le Moine et Anastase l’Apocrisiaire. Quelques précisions en rapport
avec des découvertes archéologiques récentes. Jean-Claude Larchet. Revue
d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 65–95.
Redating Early England: Explaining the end of Anglo-Saxon pre-Christian funerary traditions. Matthew Symonds. Current Archaeology, No. 285 (Dec., 2013),
12–19.
Rechtsformung vor eschatologischen Hintergrund: Das gerechte Urteil in der Collectio Canonum Hibernensis. Miriam Czock. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung
für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 347–60.
Bede, iconoclasm and the Temple of Solomon. Peter Darby. Early Modern Europe,
21 (Nov., 2013), 390–421.
Die Metropolitanverfassung des karolingischen Regnum Italiae. Daniel Carlo
Pangerl. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische
Abteilung 99 (2013), 72–104.
Aristotle and Byzantine Iconoclasm. Thalia Anagnostopoulos. Greek, Roman and
Byzantine Studies, 53 (4, 2013), 763–90.
New Evidence for the Influence of Gallic Canon Law in Anglo-Saxon England.
Michael D. Elliot. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (Oct., 2013), 700–30.
Psalm 44 and the Pictish king. Julianna Grigg. Innes Review, 64 (Nov., 2013), 87–
99.
Destins d’hommes libres à l’époque carolingienne d’après les chartes de SaintSauveur de Monte Amiata. Alain Sigoillot. Journal des Savants (Jan.–June,
2013), 155–74.
The Interpolated Hispana and the Origins of Pseudo-Isidore. Eric Knibbs.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische
Abteilung 99 (2013), 1–71.
Ein übersehenes karolingisches Briefgutachten zugunsten der Chorbischöfe.
Rudolf Pokorny. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130,
Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 361–81.
The Apostolic Ideal at the Monastery of Saint John in Müstair, Switzerland.
Kirsten Ataoguz. Gesta, 52 (Fall, 2013), 91–112.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

199

The Chronicle of Ireland: then and now. Roy Flechner. Early Medieval Europe, 21
(Nov., 2013), 422–54.
Emperor Otto III and the End of Time. Levi Roach. Transactions of the Royal History Society, 6th ser., 23 (Dec., 2013), 75–102.
Integrar y excluir (comunión y excomunión en el Medievo). Emilio Mitre Fernández. Hispania Sacra, 65 (2013), 519–42.
Voluntary Ascetical Flagellation: From Local to Learned Traditions. John Howe.
Haskins Society Journal, 24 (2012), 41–61.
On the contents and structure of the Panagios Typikon: a contribution to the early
history of ‘extended’ monastic rules. Dirk Kransmüller. Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, 106 (Sept., 2013), 39–64.
Rechtliche Aspekte des Reichenbacher Schenkungsbuchs. Philipp Schmieder.
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische
Abteilung 99 (2013), 162–202.
Die Römische Kirche und das Papsttum des Reformzeitalters in der Wahrnehmung muslimisch-arabischer Quellen. Alexander Beihammer. Mitteilungen des
Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2, 2013), 267–97.
Through Jewish Eyes: Polemical Literature and the Medieval Papacy. Rebecca
Rist. History, 98 (Dec., 2013), 639–62.
Bishops and deans: London and the province of Canterbury in the twelfth century
D. P. Johnson. Historical Research, LXXXVI (Nov., 2013), 551–78.
Über die Schwelle – Mittelalterliche Liturgie am Kirchenportal. Charles Caspers.
Liturgisches Jahrbuch, 63 (2, 2013), 63–80.
Ein mittelalterliches Nekrologfragment aus dem Augustiner-Chorherrenstift St.
Georgen-Herzogenburg. Günter Katzler. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2, 2013), 298–324.
Tanchelm als Antichrist: Die Konstruktion eines Häretikers zwischen Religion
und Politik. Miriam Czock. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 56 (1, 2013), 69–88.
La Pie postulatio voluntatis di Pasquale II in favore dell’ospedale di san Giovanni di
Gerusalemme (1113). Luigi Michele de Palma. Lateranum, LXXIX (2, 2013),
469–83.
Negotiating Kingship in France at the Time of the Early Crusades: Suger and the
Gesta Ludovici Grossi. James Naus. French Historical Studies, 36 (Fall, 2013),
525–44.
Die Wahrheit der Fälscher. Kloster St. Blasiens Gründungsurkunde vor dem
Reichshofgericht 1124–1141 und in der Historiografie. Teil I. Johann Wilhelm Braun. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 132 (2012), 5–24.
Voci e storie di monache del Medio Evo italiano: Umiltà da Faenza (1126–1310).
Il racconto della sua vita nella spiritualità vallombrosana. Lea Montuschi, OSB
Vall. Studia Monastica, 55 (1, 2013), 157–67.

200

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

Where Gratian Slept: The Life and Death of the Father of Canon Law. Anders
Winroth. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 105–28.
“Nero su bianco”: il confronto epistolare tra Bernardo e Pietro intorno alla professione monastica. Ignacy Rogusz, O.Cist. Studia Monastica, 55 (1, 2013), 43–
64.
Sexuelle Askese und die Rolle der Frau in der Geschichte des Templerordens. Janis
Witowski. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 124 (1, 2013), 1–16.
“Sur la terre comme au ciel”. L’évêque de Liège, l’abbé de Stavelot-Malmedy, le
droit, la justice et l’art mosan vers 1170. Philippe George. Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 56 (July–Sept., 2013), 225–53.
“Tails” of Masculinity: Knights, Clerics, and the Mutilation of Horses in Medieval
England. Andrew G. Miller. Speculum, 88 (Oct., 2013), 958–95.
Ein neugefundes Traditionscodexfragment aus Stift Heiligenkreuz. Katharina
Kaska. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2,
2013), 416–27.
Who Went on the Albigensian Crusade? Daniel Power. English Historical Review,
CXXVIII (Oct., 2013), 1047–85.
Egidius (Gillis) van Leeuw, premonstratenzer kruisprediker, kruisvaarder naar
Damietta en abt van Middelburg en Vicoigne (†1236). Jaap van Moolenbroek.
Analecta Praemonstratensia, LXXXVIII (2012), 5–41.
Un office liturgique contre l’angoisse. Instances médiévales pour la guérison de
l’acédie. Rubén Peretó Rivas. Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 56 (July–Sept.,
2013), 295–309.
Il Cardinale Pelagio d’Albano legato papale e predicatore della quinta crociata. Christian Grasso. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 98–141.
The Transformation of Visitation in Thirteenth-Century England. Ian Forrest.
Past & Present, No. 221 (Nov., 2013), 3–38.
Le visite pastorali all’abbazia di Sansepolcro nel Duecento. Pierluigi Licciardello.
Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXI (1, 2013), 35–82.
Quod omnes tangit debet ab omnibus approbari—Eine Rechtsregel im Dialog der
beiden Rechte. Jasmin Hauck. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 398–417.
Die Capitula contra Patarenos Gregors IX. Vasil Bivolarov. Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 203–61.
Formación y evolución del patrimonio del Monasterio de Santa Clara de Alcocer
en la Edad Media. Pablo Martín Prieto. Hispania Sacra, 65 (2013), 563–601.
Canon law and the problem of expulsion: The origins and interpretation of
Usurarum voraginem (VI 5.5.1). Rowan W. Dorin. Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 129–61.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

201

Les dernières volontés de Philippe d’Artois (†1298) et la naissance du culte de Saint
Louis dans la famille capétienne. Xavier Hélary. Le Moyen Âge, CXIX (1,
2013), 27–56.
Contemplating the Trinity: Text, Image, and the Origins of the Rothschild Canticles. Barbara Newman. Gesta, 52 (Fall, 2013), 133–59.
From Augustine to Islam: Translation and History in the Arabic Orosius. Christian C. Sahner. Speculum, 88 (Oct., 2013), 905–31.
“Sacred Food for the Soul”: In Search of the Devotions to Saints of Robert Bruce,
King of Scotland, 1306–1329. Michael Panman. Speculum, 88 (Oct., 2013),
1035–62.
“La regle et la vie des Sereurs meneurs encloses”. Une traduction en langue romane
de la Règle d’Isablle de France (ca. 1315–1325). Fabien Guilloux. Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum, 106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 5–39.
Le voci della Legenda beati fratris Venturini: tra santità e condanna. Frances
Andrews. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (2, 2013), 507–41.
Das älteste Reliquienverzeichnis von St. Stephan in Wien. Patrick Fiska. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2, 2013), 325–51.
Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca.
1400–ca. 1520). Sabrina Corbellini and Margriet Hoogvliet. Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 43 (Fall, 2013), 521–44.
El sermón catalán de San Vicente Ferrer sobre san Martín de Tours. Alberto Ferreiro. Hispania Sacra, 65 (2013), 543–61.
Ley divina y ley terrena: antijudaismo y estrategias de conversión en la campaña
castellana de San Vicente Ferrer (1411–1412). Carolina M. Losada. Hispania
Sacra, 65 (2013), 603–40.
En torno a los libros de don Juan Rodríguez de Villalón, Obispo de León (†1424):
saberes y destinos. Ana Suárez González. Archivo Ibero-Americano, LXXIII
(Jan.–Apr., 2013), 87–111.
Colette de Corbie dans le contexte des réformes franciscaines du XVe siècle.
Ludovic Viallet. Antonianum, LXXXVIII (July–Sept., 2013), 453–69.
Framing the Miraculous: The Devotional Functions of Perspective in Italian Renaissance Tabernacle Design. Paul Davies. Art History, 36 (Nov., 2013), 898–921.
Maestri di spirito e umanisti, ovvero una possibile collaborazione risoltasi in scontro. Remo L. Guidi. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXXV (1, 2013), 7–39.
Le “Istruzioni al discepolo” di suor Battista da Varano. Status quaestionis e ipotesi
attributive. Massimo Reschiglian, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 41–95.
Les dernières volontés de Jean de Bourgogne, évêque de Cambrai (1439–1480).
Monique Maillard-Luypaert and Alain Marchandisse. Le Moyen Âge, CXIX
(1, 2013), 85–129.

202

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Sant Antoni i Santa Clara de Barcelona, 1513: de clarisas a benedictinas, un paso
a esclarecer. Núria Jornet i Benito. Itinerantes, 2 (2012), 171–88.
Stranger Artisans and the London Sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand in the Reign
of Henry VIII. Shannon McSheffrey. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies, 43 (Fall, 2013), 545–71.
Liturgie und Leben auf den Kirchhöfen der Frühen Neuzeit. Jan Brademann.
Liturgisches Jahrbuch, 63 (2, 2013), 81–101.
Un manuale inedito per cacciatori di streghe: il Formularium pro exequendo inquisitionis officio di Modesto Scrofeo (c. 1523). Matteo Duni. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXI (2, 2013), 339–56.
‘Wandelabendmahl’: Lutheran ‘Walking Communion’ and its Expression in Material Culture. Matthias Range. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (Oct., 2013),
731–68.
El maestro Juan de la Peña (1513–1565) y la defensa de las potestades legislativas
de la Iglesia. Sebastián Contreras. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 22 (2013),
275–90.
Vom Ringen mit einer ignatianischen Berufung. Jerónimo Nadals Chronicon. Bernhard Knorn and Ignacio Ramos Riera. Geist und Leben, 86 (July–Sept., 2013),
262–90.
Heresy and Forfeiture in Marian England. P. R. Cavill. Historical Journal, 56
(Dec., 2013), 879–907.
Les députés des Églises réformées à la cour en 1561–1562. Philip Benedict and
Nicolas Fornerod. Revue historique, 666 (Apr., 2013), 289–331.
Glaube, Hoffnung, Herrschaft. Die “imaginaires politiques” Innerösterreichs im
Zeitalter des religiös-politischen Konflikts. Sašo Jerše. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 121 (2, 2013), 352–78.
The Chronicle of 1570: the original version. Dean Sakel. Byzantinische Zeitschrift,
106 (Sept., 2013), 143–52.
Théodore de Bèze et Joseph-Juste Scaliger: critique et admiration réciproque. Jeltine L. R. Ledegang-Keegstra. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 159 (July–Sept., 2013), 441–57.
Matteo Ricci nel Collegio Romano (1572–1577): cronologia, maestri, studi. Ugo
Baldini. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXII (1, 2013), 115–64.
Porteurs, mendiants, gentilshommes. La construction sociale du pouvoir politique
(Rome, XVIe–XVIIe siècle). Eleonora Canepari. Annales, 68 (July–Sept.,
2013), 729–53.
Poteri municipali e religiosi nella Lecce barocca: santi patroni e identità urbana.
Salvatore Barbagallo. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013),
165–96.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

203

Conversazioni di carcerati nel Sant’Ufficio di Padova. Nuovi documenti sulla
carcerazione padovana di Tommaso Campanella (1594). Antonino Poppi. Il
Santo, LIII (1–2, 2013), 179–90.
El guardián de La Hoz patrono de una Obra Pía en Sepúlveda: “Tenue socorro de
huérfanas y encarcelados” (1596). Antonio Linaje Conde. Archivo IberoAmericano, LXXIII (Jan.–Apr., 2013), 131–54.
L’assistenza dei cappuccini ai condannati a morte in alcuni trattati dei secoli XVI–
XVII. Roberto Cuvato. Laurentianum, 54 (1–2, 2013), 21–87.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
Remembering usurpation: The common lawyers, Reformation narratives and the
prerogative, 1578–1616. David Chan Smith. Historical Research, LXXXVI
(Nov., 2013), 619–37.
The Protestants of Loudun: The Fragile Existence of a Religious Minority in Seventeenth-Century France (1598–1685). Edwin Bezzina. Social History, 46
(May, 2013), 1–41.
Pedro de Burgillos—Crónica. Fernando Cid Lucas. Itinerarium, LIX (Jan.–Apr.,
2013), 123–58.
La “censura inavvertita”. Censura romana e opere di storia tra l’Italia e la Francia
nel primo Seicento. Elena Bonora. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXXV (1, 2013),
41–74.
Barockzeitliche Liturgie außerhalb des Kirchenraumes—Gebet und Gottesdienst
in Haus und Hof, in Dorf und Flur. Jürgen Bärsch. Liturgisches Jahrbuch, 63 (2,
2013), 102–25.
Faith and Reason in Stuart England. Christopher J. Walker. History Today, 63
(Aug., 2013), 39–41.
Le carme Tomás de Jesús. Un protagoniste du premier XVIIe siècle romain. Marco
La Loggia. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (2, 2013), 543–72.
Changing Cosmology, Changing Perspectives on History and Politics: Christianity
and Yang Tingyan’s (1562–1627) Reflections on China. Zu-Yin Cheng. Journal of World History, 24 (Sept., 2013), 499–537.
Solidarités supraconfessionnelles. Le refuge dans l’arc jurassien pendant la Guerre
de Trente ans. Bertrand Forclaz. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 62 (3,
2012), 373–89.
The Wadding Library of Saint Isidore’s College Rome, 1622–1700. Joseph
MacMahon, OFM, and John McCafferty. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 97–118.
Die katholische Kirche auf dem osmanischen Balkan im 17. Jahrhundert. Die
Republik Ragusa im Konflikt mit den Missionaren der römischen Kongregation De Propaganda Fide. Antal Molnár. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 262–82.

204

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

L’inquisizione, il duca di Neoburgo e i matrimoni misti in Germana in età moderna. Cecilia Cristellon. Rivista Storica Italiana, CXXV (1, 2013), 76–107.
Le refus de la communion aux nouveaux-chrétiens. La tendance rigoriste de l’Inquisition portugaise sous la présidence du dominicain João Vasconcelos (1640).
Bruno Feitler. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 199–226.
From Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish Capuchins: Scotland as a symbol of
Protestant persecution in seventeenth-century Italian literature. Stefano Villani. Innes Review, 64 (Nov., 2013), 100–19.
Lay Catholicism and Religious Policy in Cromwellian Ireland. John Cunningham.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (Oct., 2013), 769–86.
“In agro Norbertino-Thomistico”. P. Dominicus Aurnhammer OP als Professor in
Marchtal 1652–1653. Ulrich G. Leinsle. Analecta Praemonstratensia,
LXXXVIII (2012), 42–67.
Handmaids of the Lord in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk. Peter Smith. Quaker
History, 102 (Fall, 2013), 12–27.
Le jansénisme des Dames Maltaises. Genre, savoir théologique et publicité
(Toulouse, 1659–1661) [I]. Jean-Pascal Gay. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 23
(July–Sept., 2013), 355–83.
Women Writing Their Faith: Doctrine, Genre, and Gender in This is a Short Relation of Some of the Cruel Sufferings (For the Truths Sake) of Katharine Evans
& Sarah Cheevers (1662). Andrea Fabrizio. Clio, 42 (Summer, 2013), 309–29.
Jacopo Antonio Ponzanelli. La scultura del “Theatrum sacrum” barocco da Padova
all’Europa. Fausta Franchini Guelfi. Il Santo, LIII (1–2, 2013), 191–203.
Isidoro Lucci S.J. (1661–1719) and João Baptista Lima (1659–1733) at the Qing
Court: The Physician, the Barber-surgeon, and the Padroado’s Interests in
China. Beatriz Puente-Ballesteros. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu,
LXXXII (1, 2013), 165–216.
A propósito de un cuadro atribuido a Zurbarán que perteneció al Oratorio de San
Felipe Neri de Sevilla. Jorge A. Jordán Fernández. Isidorianum, XXII, (2013),
231–77.
Documents, Archives, and Proof around 1700. Randolph C. Head. Historical Journal, 56 (Dec., 2013), 909–30.
‘Why don’t those lazy priests answer the book?’ Matthew Tindal, Censorship,
Freedom of the Press and Religious Debate in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Alex Barber. History, 98 (Dec., 2013), 680–707.
The Social Significance of Tithes in Eighteenth-Century England. Daniel Cummins. English Historical Review, CXXVIII (Oct., 2013), 1129–54.
Representations of the ‘State of Popery’ in Scotland in the 1720s and 1730s.
Clotilde Prunier. Innes Review, 64 (Nov., 2013), 120–226.

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

205

An Unlikely Pair: Satire and Jansenism in the Sarcelades, 1731–1764. Mita Choudhury. French Historical Studies, 36 (Fall, 2013), 543–70.
William Robertson and Scientific Theism. Joshua Ehrlich. Modern Intellectual History, 10 (Nov., 2013), 519–42.
Johann Jacob Moser betet für die Obrigkeit. Hans Hattenhauer. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, 130, Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013),
283–308.
Los Frailes Menores en la isla de Samar (Filipinas) en el siglo XVIII. Documentos
para su historia. Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum, 106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 119–93.
Les débuts du christianisme en Corée et la réception du Dieu créateur. Agnès Kim
Mi-Jeung R.S.A. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 135 (Oct.–Dec., 2013), 599–
616.
“Celibacy is a Social Crime”: The Politics of Clerical Marriage, 1793–1797. Claire
Cage. French Historical Studies, 36 (Fall, 2013), 601–28.

NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
El diputado doceañista Antonio José Ruiz de Padrón, abad de Villamartín de Valdeorras. Isidro García Tato. Compostellanum, LVIII (Jan.–June, 2013), 29–67.
Jesuitenkollegien uns Jesuitenpädagogik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Heinz Sproll.
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXII (1, 2013), 241–65.
Zwei zerstrittene Gesandte—Die Gesandtschaft der Freiherren Johann V. von
Türckheim und Philipp Moritz von Schmitz-Grollenburg nach Rom 1819 zur
Errichtung der Oberrheinischen Kirchenprovinz. Joachim Brüser. Freiburger
Diözesan-Archiv, 132 (2012), 25–58.
Liturgie der Heiligen Allianz. Die liturgischen und politischen Hintergründe der
Preußischen Kirchenagende (1821–22). Anselm Schubert. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 110 (Sept., 2013), 291–315.
Deus absconditus and the infinite God of the Romantics: Chateaubriand, Schleiermacher and Hölderlin. Diana Mite Colceriu. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique,
108 (Jan.–Mar., 2013), 228–57.
Celestial letters: morals and magic in nineteenth-century France. Martyn Lyons.
French History, 27 (Dec., 2013), 496–514.
Father Francis Murphy in Bradford and Liverpool. Helen Harrison. Australasian
Catholic Record, 90 (July, 2013), 283–96.
Robert Morrison and his China: A Dialogue (1824): a missionary memento. Limin
Bai. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 13 (3, 2013),
192–207.
The Productions of the Time: Keble, Rossetti, and Victorian Devotional Reading.
Krista Lysack. Victorian Studies, 55 (Spring, 2013), 451–70.

206

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

Radical Orthodoxy: Irish Covenanters and American Slavery, circa 1830–1865.
Daniel Ritchie. Church History, 82 (Dec., 2013), 812–47.
Discours et pratiques unionistes à l’épreuve des temps (1852–1914). Cédric
Boulard. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 159 (July–
Sept., 2013), 459–77.
The Society of Friends in Ireland and the Crimean War, 1854–56. Paul Huddie.
Quaker History, 102 (Fall, 2013), 1–11.
A Relevant Irrelevance: The Impact of the Syllabus of Errors on the Australian
Catholic Church. Alexander Abbey. Australasian Catholic Record, 90 (July,
2013), 272–82.
L’Église d’Irlande du désétablissement au risque de déchirure. Un parcours emblématique au sein de la Communion anglicane. Marie-Claire ConsidèreCharon. Istina, LVIII (Apr.–June, 2013), 143–54.
‘After the God and the Man, the Patient’: Jules Soury’s psychopathology of Jesus
and the boundaries of the science of religions in the early Third Republic.
Robert D. Priest. French History, 27 (Dec., 2013), 535–56.
Las visitas del P. Bernardo de Andermatt a las distintas provincias de la Orden,
según las Ordenaciones de visita, con un apéndice documental sobre sus visitas
apostólicas (Nápoles, España y Roma). José Angel Echeverría. Laurentianum,
54 (1–2, 2013), 89–272.
La crise de l’apologétique catholique (1890–1914). Maurice Blondel aux sources du
concept d’inculturation. Luc Courtois. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 108
(Jan.–Mar., 2013), 259–88.
Un ami protestant de Charles Péguy, Henri Gounelle (1894–1915). Robert Sauzet.
Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 159 (July–Sept.,
2013), 479–92.
A Failed Mission or a “Never-ending Tertianship”? François Marie Gaillard S.J.
(1853–1927) and his contribution to the historiography of the Society of Jesus.
Robert Danieluk, S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXII (1, 2013),
1–113.
La prédication d’Albert Schweitzer, vicaire à la paroisse de Saint-Nicolas (1898–
1912). Matthieu Arnold. Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 93 (July–
Sept., 2013), 377–95.
La “volonté de vie” et la religion historique. Le dernier cours d’Albert Schweitzer à
l’Université de Strasbourg (1912). Karsten Lehmkühler. Revue d’histoire et de
philosophie religieuses, 93 (July–Sept., 2013), 397–412.
Strategien der Religionsverfolgung in der Sowjetunion im Licht vatikanischer
Berichterstattung. Das Beispiel der Katholiken (1917–1939). Katrin Boeckh.
Römische Quartalschrift, 108 (1–2, 2013), 86–108.
Der Heilige Stuhl und die russlanddeutschen katholischen Priester zwischen Revolution und Repression (1918–1939). Emilia Hrabovec. Römische Quartalschrift, 108 (1–2, 2013), 109–44.

P ERIODICAL LITERATURE

207

The Vatican and the Reshaping of the European International Order after the First
World War. Giuliana Chamedes. Historical Journal, 56 (Dec., 2013), 955–76.
Imagining a New Jerusalem: Edmond Fleg and inter-war French ecumenism. Sally
Charnow. French History, 27 (Dec., 2013), 557–78.
Religiöse Form. Das evangelische Kultusproblem und die Liturgische Bewegung
der Zwischenkriegszeit. Benjamin Hasselhorn. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte,
124 (1, 2013), 17–38.
Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1921. Dorothea Wendebourg. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 110 (Sept., 2013), 316–61.
Escaping from Sodom: A Christian Jew Encounters German Antisemitism.
Nicholas Railton. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64 (Oct., 2013), 787–826.
Für Freiburg (zu) großartig? Franz Philipp (1890–1972) als Kirchenmusiker an St.
Martin. Christoph Schmider. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 132 (2012), 59–78.
Conrad Gröber: Mit dem Apostolischen Nuntius durch den Schwarzwald an den
Bodensee. Johannes Werner. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 132 (2012), 79–118.
Defending Catholic Education: Secular Front Organizations during the Second
Republic of Spain, 1931–1936. Kathy Schneider. Church History, 82 (Dec.,
2013), 848–76.
L’École Préparatoire de Théologie Protestante (E.P.T.P.) à Saint-Germain-enLaye et au Chambon-sur-Lignon (1934–1962). François Boulet. Bulletin de la
Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 159 (July–Sept., 2013), 495–525.
El impacto de la violencia anticlerical en la primavera de 1936 y la respuesta de las
autoridades. Manuel Álvares Tardío and Roberto Villa García. Hispania Sacra,
65 (2013), 683–764.
Dutch Mennonites and German Jewish refugee children, 1938–1945. Alle G.
Hoekema. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 87 (Apr., 2013), 133–53.
‘Science in the Hands of Love’: British Evangelical Missionaries and Colonial Development in Africa, c. 1940–60. Rebecca C. Hughes. Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History, 41 (5, 2013), 823–42.
The Protestant Churches in Saxony-Anhalt in the Shadow of the German Christian Movement and National Socialism, 1945–1949. Luke Fenwick. Church
History, 82 (Dec., 2013), 877–903.
The Good, the Bad, or the Godless Society? Danish “Church People” and the
Modern Welfare State. Klaus Petersen and Jørn Henrik Petersen. Church History, 82 (Dec., 2013), 904–40.
Memories of Mission Stories from the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
Judith Lamb. Australasian Catholic Record, 90 (July, 2013), 344–58.
Il patriarca Roncalli e il suo cancelliere don Sergio Sambin. Sandro G. Franchini.
Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (2, 2013), 573–610.

208

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Los benedictinos del País Vasco en las encrucijadas eclesiales, culturales y políticas
de los años 60 y 70 del siglo XX. Borja Vivanco. Studia Monastica, 55 (1, 2013),
169–91.
La chiesa a concilio. Uomini e problemi. L’officina Bolognese e la Rai-Tv (novembre–
dicembre 1962). Federico Ruozzi. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (2, 2013), 611–
70.
Parliament, the Church of England and the Last Gasp of Political Protestantism,
1963–4. John Maiden and Peter Webster. Parliamentary History, 32 (June,
2013), 361–77.
Did You Hear the Sermon? Progressive Priests, Conservative Catholics, and the
Return of Political and Cultural Diversity in Late Francoist Spain. Antonio
Cazorla-Sánchez. Journal of Modern History, 85 (Sept., 2013), 528–57.
Staatskirchenrecht oder Religionsverfassungsrecht? Argumente aus einer Relecture
der evangelischen Stellungnahmen zum FDP-Kirchenpapier 1974. Christian
Albrecht. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 110 (Sept., 2013), 362–81.
A dialogue between the Orthodox Church of Georgia and the ‘Evangelical Christians—Baptists’ of Georgia (1979–1980) with its wider Baptist context. Paul S.
Fiddes and Malkhaz Songulashvili. International Journal for the Study of the
Christian Church, 13 (3, 2013), 222–54.
The Collective Memory of Auschwitz and World War II among Catholics in
Poland: A Qualitative Study of Three Communities. Marek Kucia et al. History
& Memory, 25 (Fall/Winter, 2013), 132–73.
Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes. Chad M. Bauman. Journal of Asian Studies, 72 (Aug.,
2013), 633–53.

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN
Understanding Ritual in Colonial Wabanakia. Christopher J. Bilodeau. French
Colonial History, 14 (2013), 1–31.
The Standing of New Subjects: Grenada and the Protestant Constitution after the
Treaty of Paris (1763). Aaron Willis. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, 41 (6, 2013).
The York Manuscript: John Woolman’s Final Writings. Jon R. Kershner. Quaker
History, 102 (Fall, 2013), 28–51.
The making of a Baptist universalist: the curious case of Elhanan Winchester.
Nathan A. Finn. Baptist History and Heritage, 47 (Fall, 2012), 6–18.
Shaken Spirits: Cherokees, Moravian Missionaries, and the New Madrid Earthquakes. Jonathan Hancock. Journal of the Early Republic, 33 (Winter, 2013),
643–73.
Useful Monks: The Idea of Utility in Early American Benedictine Monasticism.
Paul G. Monson. Downside Review, 131 (Apr., 2013), 69–86.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

209

David Bittle (1811–1876), the Americanist Founder of Roanoke College. Robert
Benne. Lutheran Quarterly, XXVII (Autumn, 2013), 321–42.
Monastic Evangelization? The Sacramental Vision of America’s Early Benedictine
Monks. Paul G. Monson. American Catholic Studies, 124 (Fall, 2013), 45–59.
A Window on Zuni: Taylor F. Ealy and Missionary Labor in New Mexico, 1878–
1881. Ellen Cain. New Mexico Historical Review, 88 (Fall, 2013), 375–411.
Toward a twentieth-century Baptist identity in North America: insights from the
Baptist congresses, 1881–1913. Craig Alan Sherouse. Baptist History and Heritage, 47 (Fall, 2012), 76–90.
John Ireland, St. Eloi Parish and the Dream of an American Catholic Church.
Anita Talsma Gaul. American Catholic Studies, 124 (Fall, 2013), 21–43.
The History of the FELSISA [Free Evangelical Lutheran Synod in South Africa]
and the Missouri Synod. William A. Wangelin. Concordia Historical Institute
Quarterly, 86 (Fall, 2013), 39–60.
Faith Healing, Medical Regulation, and Public religion in Progressive Era
Chicago. Timothy Gloege. Religion and American Culture, 23 (Summer, 2013),
185–231.
Sanctified Manhood: Theology and Identity in the Southern Holiness Movement.
Colin B. Chapell. Journal of the Historical Society, 13 (Dec., 2013), 465–90.
“Where We Can Battle for the Lord and Japan”: The Development of Liberal
Protestant Antiracism before World War II. Sarah Griffith. Journal of American History, 100 (Aug., 2013), 429–53.
Antirevivalism and Its Discontents: Liberal Evangelicalism, the American City,
and the Sunday School, 1900–1929. Matthew Bowman. Religion and American
Culture, 23 (Summer, 2013), 262–80.
A Priest in Papguería: Selections from the Bonaventure Collection of Early to
Mid-20th-Century Mission Photographs. Richard Trible and Bernard L.
Fontana. Journal of the Southwest, 55 (Autumn, 2013), 277–93.
The Reformer, the Monsignor, and the Pueblos of New Mexico: Catholic Missionary Responses to New Directions in Early Twentieth-Century Indian
Policy. Harvey Markowitz. New Mexico Historical Review, 88 (Fall, 2013),
413–36.
Social justice and American exceptionalism in the writings of Southern Baptist
statesman H. Cornell Goerner. Christopher Price. Baptist History and Heritage, 47 (Fall, 2012), 52–64.
Bringing Christ to the Nations: Walter A. Maier, The Lutheran Hour and Global
Christian Broadcasting. Kirk Farney. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly,
86 (Fall, 2013), 6–30.
“Pilgrims of the Night”: The American Catholic Church Responds to the Post–
World War II Displaced Persons Crisis. Todd Scribner. American Catholic
Studies, 124 (Fall, 2013), 1–20.

210

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

“Just a Bunch of Agitators”: Kneel-Ins and the Desegregation of Southern
Churches. Joseph Kip Kosek. Religion and American Culture, 23 (Summer,
2013), 232–61.
Tracking Monastic Renewal Through One Monastic Congregation. Joel Rippinger, O.S.B. American Benedictine Review, 64 (Sept., 2013), 238–51.
Program of Action: The Rev. L. Francis Griffin and the Struggle for Racial Equality in Farmville, 1963. Brian E. Lee and Brian J. Daugherity. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 121 (3, 2013), 250–87.
Tracing the Limits of the Reagan Revolution: The Christian Right and the Fate of
School Prayer in the Age of Fracture, 1982–1984. Aaron L. Haberman. Journal of the Historical Society, 13 (Dec., 2013), 491–528.

LATIN AMERICAN
La Iglesia y el Nuevo Mundo. Constitución jurídica. Manuel Leal Lobón. Isidorianum, XXII (2013), 169–230.
The Epistemological Politics of Vernacular Scripture in Sixteenth-Century
Mexico. Martin Austin Nesvig. The Americas, 70 (Oct., 2013), 165–201.
Nahua Intellectuals, Franciscan Scholars, and the Devotio Moderna in Colonial
Mexico. David Tavárez. The Americas, 70 (Oct., 2013), 203–34.
Bibliotecas académicas coloniales. Recontrucción y puesta en valor. Celina A. Lértora Mendoza. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 22 (2013), 259–73.
Francis Alive and Aloft: Franciscan Apocalypticism in the Colonial Andes. Jaime
Lara. The Americas, 70 (Oct., 2013), 139–63.
America die verkehrte Welt. Eine literaturwissenschaftlich-kulturwissenschaftliche
Lektüre der Paraguay-Berichte des Tiroler Jesuiten Anton Sepp (1655–1733).
Esther Schmid Heer. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXII (1, 2013),
217–40.
The Catholic Church and the Ladies of the Vela Perpetua: Gender and Devotional
Change in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Margaret Chowning. Past & Present,
No. 221 (Nov., 2013), 197–237.
“San José de la Buena Muerte.” Cofradía del Convento de Nuestra Señora del
Rosario de la Orden Dominicana en Tucumán. Sara Graciela Amenta. Itinerantes, 2 (2012), 189–206.
La tradición de la Virgen de la Viña. Construcción colectiva y homogeneización de
los relatos devocionales en Salta, Argentina, a fines del siglo XIX—principios
del XX. Telma Chaile. Hispania Sacra, 65 (2013), 641–81.
O intinerário místico de Ernesto Cardenal. Faustino Teixeira. Revista cclesiástica
Brasileira, 73 (Apr., 2013), 381–408.

Other Books Received
Abecina, Alexander L. Time and Sacramentality in Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra
Eunomium. [Early Christian Studies, Vol. 16.] (Strathfield, Australia: St.
Paul’s Publications. 2013. Pp. viii, 132.)
Amerini, Fabrizio. Translated by Mark Henninger. Aquinas on the Beginning and
End of Human Life. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. Pp.
xxiii, 260. $29.95 clothbound.)
Aram I, Catholicos of Cilicia. Issues and Perspectives. (Antelias, Lebanon: Printing
House of the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia. 2013. Pp. 242. $12.00
clothbound.)
Ayotte, David John, SJ. Globalization and Multicultural Ministry: A Teilhardian
Vision. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 2012. Pp. vi, 200. $29.95 paperback.)
Boitani, Piero. The Gospel According to Shakespeare. Translated by Vittorio Montemaggi and Rachel Jacoff. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
2013. Pp. xiv, 156. $27.00 paperback.) Originally published as Il Vangelo secondo Shakespeare by the Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna, in 2009.
Calderisi, Robert. Earthly Mission: The Catholic Church and World Development.
(New Haven: Yale University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 278. $35.00 clothbound.)
Cavins, Emily. Lily of the Mohawks: The Story of St. Kateri. (Cincinnati: Servant
Books. 2013. Pp. xxiv, 134. $14.99 paperback.) A popular biography.
Cooper O’Boyle, Donna-Marie. The Miraculous Medal: Stories, Prayers, and Devotions. (Cincinnati: Servant Books. 2013. Pp. xii, 131. $14.95 paperback.)
Cornejo Polar, Antonio. Writing in the Air: Heterogeneity and the Persistence of Oral
Tradition in Andean Literatures. Translated by Lynda J. Jentsch. Foreword by
Jean Franco. (Durham: Duke University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 212. $22.95
paperback.)
Cox, Virginia. Lyric Poetry by Women of the Italian Renaissance. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press. 2013. Pp. xvi, 455. $29.95 paperback.) The section
“Religious Verse” contains poems by twenty-four women (pp. 187–266).
Deschner, Karlheinz. God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini,
Franco, Hitler, and Pavelić. Edited by Peter Gorenflos; translated by Richard
Pepper. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2013. Pp. 282. $21.95 paperback.) First published in 1965 by Hans E. Günther Verlag, Stuttgart, as Mit
Gott und den Faschisten.
Ellens, J. Harold (Ed.). Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife. Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Vol. 1: End Times and Afterlife in Judaism; Vol. 2: End Time
211

212

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED
and Afterlife in Christianity; Vol. 3: End Time and Afterlife in Islamic, Buddhist,
and Indigenous Cultures. [Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality.] (Santa Barbara, CA/Denver, CO: Praeger, an imprint of ABC-Clio. 2013. Vol. 1: Pp.
xxii, 248; Vol. 2: Pp. xxii, 367; Vol. 3: Pp. xxii, 243. $194.00 clothbound for
the set.)

Englebert, Omer. St. Francis of Assisi: A Biography. (Cincinnati: Servant Books.
2013. Pp. xii, 322. $12.99 paperback.) Second English edition. Originally
published in 1965.
Guy, John. The Children of Henry VIII. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013.
Pp. xviii, 258. $27.95 clothbound.)
Horkheimer, Max. Eclipse of Reason. (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an
imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. 2013. Pp. viii, 134. $19.95 paperback.)
Originally published in 1947 by Oxford University Press, New York.
Levy, Ian Christopher, Philip D.W. Krey, and Thomas Ryan (Eds. and Trans.).
The Letter to the Romans. [The Bible in Medieval Tradition.] Grand Rapids,
MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2013. Pp. x, 329. $34.00 paperback.)
Marotti, Arthur F., and Chanita Goodblatt (Eds.). Religious Diversity and Early
Modern English Texts. Catholic, Judaic, Feminist, and Secular Dimensions.
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 2013. Pp. vi, 367. $54.95 clothbound.) Part I: “Minority Catholic Culture” contains three essays: (1) “Marian
Verse as Politically Oppositional Poetry in Elizabethan England,” by Arthur
F. Marotti (pp. 25–54); (2) “Religious Identity and the English Landscape:
William Blundell and the Harkirk Coins,” by Phebe Jensen (pp. 55–76); and
(3) “Remembering Lot’s Wife: The Structure of Testimony in the Painted Life
of Mary Ward,” by Lowell Gallagher (pp. 77–104).
Meyers, Carol. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xvii, 295. $24.95 paperback.) Originally
published as Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context in 1988.
Nethercott, Michael. The Séance Society. (New York: Minotaur Books, an imprint
of St. Martin’s Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 292. $24.99 clothbound.)
Newman, Barbara. Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred.
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2013. Pp. xvi, 399. $42.00
paperback.)
Patrick, Anne E. Conscience and Calling: Ethical Reflections on Catholic Women’s
Church Vocations. (New York: T&T Clark, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. 2013. Pp. xvi, 197. $24.95 paperback.)
Rossetto, Luca. Il Commissario distrettuale nel Veneto asburgico. Un funzionario dell’Impero tra mediazione politica e controllo sociale (1819–1848). (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2013. Pp. 532. €38.00 paperback.)
Rouse, Richard H., and Mary A. Rouse. Bound Fast with Letters: Medieval Writers,
Readers, and Texts. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2013. Pp. xvi,
570. $89.00 paperback.) A collection of eighteen previously published essays.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

213

Ryan, Salvador, and Brendan Leahy (Eds.). Treasures of Irish Christianity, Vol. 2: A
People of the Word. (Dublin: Veritas Publications. 2013. Pp. 320. €19.99
paperback.) This second volume contains eighty-two brief essays contributed
by seventy-three writers—historians, theologians, and experts in literature and
other disciplines. Many essays are accompanied by beautiful illustrations.
Sri, Edward. The Advent of Christ: Scripture Reflections to Prepare for Christmas.
(Cincinnati: Servant Books. 2013. Pp. x, 100. $12.99 paperback.)
Teresa, Mother. Thirsting for God: Daily Meditations. Edited by Angelo F.
Scolozzi, M.C.III.O. (Cincinnati: Servant Books. 2013. Pp. xviii, 227. $12.99
clothbound.)