Margaret M. McGuinness
President
The American Catholic Historical Association
2013
Photograph courtesy of University Marketing and Communication,
La Salle University
vi

THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 100

SPRING, 2014

NO. 2

Why Relationships Matter:
Sisters, Bishops, and the History of Catholicism
in the United States
MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS*
Histories of women religious in the United States no longer follow a
pattern that extols Superior Generals and presidents while ignoring
the collective work of the congregation. In her presidential address to
the American Catholic Historical Association, the author offers a
reminder that despite this shift in historical research, we still have
much to learn about the most well-known American sisters. Focusing
on Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, Theodore Guérin, and Katharine
Drexel—all of whom have been canonized—she examines their relationships with bishops, both collegial and adversarial, as a way to further understanding about the place of women religious in U.S. Catholic
history.
Keywords: Drexel, Katharine, Saint; Guérin, Theodore, Saint;
Seton, Elizabeth Ann, Saint; women religious

T

wo years ago, I was listening to Tom Noble introduce Larissa Taylor
before her presidential address at the ACHA luncheon. Drs. Taylor
and Noble have both written books titled Soldiers of Christ; and my challenge, Noble told me, was to publish a book with that same title by the
time of my introduction at the annual luncheon. That did not happen, but
this address could have been titled “Soldiers of Christ”—after all, women
religious and bishops have often been on the front lines in the history of
the Catholic Church in the United States—but in the end, I just could not
do it. I also decided—albeit reluctantly—not to use the title suggested by
*Dr. McGuinness is vice president for mission and a professor in the Religion Department at La Salle University, email: mcguinness@lasalle.edu.

219

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

an unnamed friend and colleague: “Sisters and Bishops: Frienenemies.” So
what follows is not about generals and foot soldiers, nor about a history of
conflicts. Rather, it is a preliminary examination of three women and their
interactions with several bishops, positive and negative. The women—Ss.
Elizabeth Seton (1774–1821), Theodore Guérin (1798–1856), and
Katharine Drexel (1858–1955)—do not represent the norm among women
religious in the United States. A very small number of sisters founded religious congregations; only a handful has been canonized. Although I am
not advocating a return to the great man—or in this case, great woman or
great sister—method of writing history, the fact that so little scholarship
has been produced on these very important women means that there are
gaps in the history of women religious and of U.S. Catholicism. More critical work on these women (and others) will help us gain a more comprehensive understanding of how the Church in America developed into an
institution that today includes ministries devoted to education, health care,
and social services.
It is no secret that the writing of the history of women religious has
undergone a transformation over the past thirty years or so. The days of
boilerplate congregational histories extolling bishops and Superior Generals—great men and great women—have been replaced by scholarly critical
and analytical studies of individual communities, as well as works that
focus on the place of sisters in societal movements. Today’s historians of
sisters and nuns attempt to “build bridges, make connections, and integrate
the history of women religious into the larger contexts of Catholic history,
religious history, women’s history, and American social history.”1 Carol
Coburn and Martha Smith’s study of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, for example, helps us to understand the importance of placing women
religious within the context of U.S. history and culture. Amy Koehlinger’s
The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s situates
Catholic sisters within the context of the social movements of the 1960s.
More recently Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West,
1850–1920, by Anne Butler focuses on the role played by women religious
in the growth of Catholicism in the western United States.2
1. Carol Coburn, “An Overview of the Historiography of Women Religious: A
Twenty-Five Year Retrospective,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 22, no. 1 (2004), 1–26, here 2–3.
2. See, for example, Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns
Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999); Amy L.
Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge, MA,
2007); and Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–
1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2012).

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221

Beginning in 1727, when a small group of Ursulines arrived in New
Orleans, and lasting until the last three decades of the twentieth century,
sisters in the United States were often the visible face of the Catholic
Church. Women religious administered and staffed schools and hospitals,
cared for children whose parents were either deceased or unable to care for
them, and ministered in a variety of additional ways to American Catholics
in need of material and spiritual sustenance. In order for sisters to maintain
a successful apostolate, however, they had to be able to work at least somewhat collaboratively with the local Ordinary; this was sometimes easier said
than done and depended on the personalities involved as much as the needs
of a particular area.3
However, time only allows for three examples from three different eras
in the history of Catholicism and the United States to be examined here:
(1) the genuine friendship that developed between Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore and Seton in the early national period; (2) the very difficult and adversarial relationship between Guérin and Bishop Célestin de la
Hailandière of Vincennes, Indiana, during an era when Americans were
moving further and further west; and (3) Drexel’s relationship with Bishop
James O’Connor of Omaha and Archbishop Patrick Ryan of Philadelphia
that began in the latter half of the nineteenth century and continued until
their deaths in 1890 and 1911 respectively.
Sisters and Bishops—Mentors and Friends
There are certainly many documented instances of friendships and
collaborations between U.S. bishops and women religious, but the friendship between Carroll and Seton is an important part of the history of the
Church in the early-nineteenth century. Seton, canonized in 1975 and
considered the first American-born saint, is credited with founding the
first congregation of U.S. women religious (see figure 1). Yet, as historian
Catherine O’Donnell writes, “[D]espite her fame and despite the careful
archival and publishing work to make her papers accessible, [Seton] has

3. An excellent example of this is found in Kathleen Sprows Cummings, New Women
of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, NC,
2009), especially chapter 3. Cummings’s discussion of the friendship and working relationship that developed between Sister Assisium McEvoy, S.S.J., and Philip McDevitt (superintendent of schools and later bishop of Harrisburg, PA) demonstrates the ways in which sisters
and clerics often worked together to build the American Church. In this case, McEvoy and
McDevitt were partners in developing ways to strengthen and grow the parochial school
system in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

FIGURE 1. Filicci portrait of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Photograph courtesy of
Daughters of Charity Province of St. Louise Archives, Emmitsburg, MD.

received little attention from historians of American women or the early
republic.”4 With the exception of works published by Annabelle Melville
(who authored a biography of Seton in 1951), Ellin Kelly (who published
in the 1970s and 1980s), and the contemporary scholarship of Sisters of
Charity Regina Bechtle and Judith Metz, as well as O’Donnell herself, the
same could be said for many historians of U.S. Catholicism, who ensure
that Seton is mentioned in their work, but seldom give her the attention
she deserves.5
4. Catherine O’Donnell, “Elizabeth Seton: Transatlantic Cooperation, Spiritual Struggle, and the Early Republican Church,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 24, no. 1 (2011), 1–17, here 1.
5. See, for example, Annabelle Melville, Elizabeth Bayley Seton. 1774–1821 (New York,
1951); Ellin M. Kelly and Annabelle Melville, Elizabeth Seton: Selected Writings (New York,
1987); and Elizabeth Bayley Seton: Collected Writings, ed. Regina Bechtle and Judith Metz, 3
vols. (Hyde Park, NY, 2000). In American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York, 1981), James Hennesey barely mentions Seton. Jay P.
Dolan refers to Seton three times. Although Dolan’s discussion is brief, he does attempt to
place her within the larger context of women religious and parochial education. Jay P. Dolan,
The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City,
NY, 1985).

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223

Raised in the Protestant Episcopal church, Elizabeth Ann Bayley
married William Seton at age nineteen. Shortly after her husband’s business failed in 1801, he developed tuberculosis, and Elizabeth took him to
Italy in the hope that the climate of that country would help to restore his
health. William died shortly after their arrival, but his widow remained in
that country. Seton’s friendship with the Filicchi family that developed
during this time, coupled with her experience of Italian Catholic culture,
led her on a journey that culminated in her entrance into the Catholic
Church in 1805.6
During the months in which she weighed the benefits of Catholicism
versus the church in which she was raised, Carroll learned about Seton’s situation from Filippo and Antonio Filicchi. The bishop and Filippo Filicchi
shared common concerns about the place of Catholicism in the United
States; both believed, for example, that it was possible and desirable to create
“a viable Church in America.” One way for this goal to be accomplished,
they further agreed, was to persuade a congregation of teaching sisters to
serve as educators of the nascent Catholic community.7 Seton, it turns out,
would play a role in helping to accomplish this aspect of their plan.
Seton apparently first wrote to Carroll in 1804 at the suggestion of
Antonio Filicchi, informing him that she had decided to stay within the
Episcopal church but would “defer every further step” until he responded.8
Although Filippo Filicchi encouraged Carroll to write to Seton and support her in her movement toward the Catholic Church, the bishop was
reluctant to involve himself in the lives and struggles of potential converts.9
Writing to Antonio Filicchi in 1805, he did express his firm belief that the
young widow—despite her doubts—would soon enter the Catholic
Church. Carroll wrote Filicchi:
Her great business now should be, to beseech our divine Redeemer to
revive in her heart the grace of her baptism; and to fortify her soul in the
resolution of following unreservedly the voice of God, speaking to her
heart: however difficult & painful the sacrifices may be, which it requires.10

6. See Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with
Catholicism (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 290–99.
7. O’Donnell, “Elizabeth Seton,” p. 6.
8. Elizabeth Seton to Bishop John Carroll, [July 26, 1804], in Bechtle and Metz, eds.,
Elizabeth Bayley Seton I:315–17.
9. O’Donnell, “Elizabeth Seton,” p. 15.
10. Carroll to Antonio Filicchi, January 12, 1805, in The John Carroll Papers, Vol. 2:
1792–1806, ed. Thomas O’Brien Hanly, 3 vols. (Notre Dame, 1976), p. 470.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

Carroll later wrote directly to Seton, and in 1806 the two met in person for
the first time when he administered the sacrament of confirmation to the
recent convert.11
A friendship developed between Seton and Carroll, and—luckily for
historians—at least a portion of the letters documenting their mutual
respect for each other remains extant. Seton clearly treasured their friendship and looked forward to his letters. “I have Just [sic] now a letter from
Bishop Carroll,” she wrote in 1807, “such as a tender parent would address
to his child . . . everybody is so good to me—everybody whose love is in the
right channel.”12 Carroll took a personal interest in Seton’s five young children and kept an eye on her sons, who were studying at Georgetown.
“[Y]our boys at G. Town were left quite well on last Monday [sic], the
30th of Nov.,” he informed his friend. “One of them had for some time
suffered from a sore head . . . but he is said to be quite recovered.”13 Seton
appreciated his concern for her children, writing Filippo Filicchi that Carroll “writes the most favorable account of my Boys.”14 At times, Carroll
recounted humorous incidents from a day in the life of the first bishop in
the United States. One letter was written, he informed her,
amidst continual interruptions, one of which arose from a drunken
woman, who found access to my study; and another from a drunken
sailor, who was informed by inspiration or revelation that all his excesses
of a very criminal life have been forgiven without any penitential works
on his side, or amendment preceding or following his conversion.15

When Seton and three of her children moved to Maryland in 1808,
Carroll welcomed the family to their new home and ensured that they were
introduced to Baltimore and Annapolis residents willing to assist Seton in
the establishment of her school on Paca Street.16 Melville wrote that “[i]t
was evident to the Bishop of Baltimore that the Paca Street school was
only a stepping stone for his young protégée. Elizabeth Seton had a vocation. . . .”17 As Seton began the task of finding other women willing to

11. Annabelle M. Melville, John Carroll of Baltimore: Founder of the American Catholic
Hierarchy (New York, 1955), p. 180.
12. Quoted in O’Donnell, “Elizabeth Seton,” p. 17.
13. Carroll to Seton, December 2, 1807, in Hanly, ed., Carroll Papers, 3:31.
14. Seton to Filippo Filicchi, November 2, 1807, in Bechtle and Metz, eds., Elizabeth
Bayley Seton, I:481.
15. Carroll to Seton, May 23, 1807, in Hanly, ed., Carroll Papers, 3:22.
16. Melville, John Carroll of Baltimore, p. 182.
17. Ibid.

MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS

225

serve God in the way she envisioned, Carroll served as a source of emotional support.
The bishop was pleased that Seton chose to establish a congregation of
women religious in the United States. Although he had welcomed the
Carmelites to Port Tobacco, Maryland, in 1790, he was not terribly happy
about Jesuit priest Charles Neale’s plan to transplant a contemplative religious
community from Europe to southern Maryland. “Mr. Charles Neale of
Antwerp is eager to introduce Teresians (Carmelites),” he wrote rather plaintively to his friend Charles Plowden in 1788. “I rather wish for Ursulines.”18
Carroll continued to encourage and support her vocation after Seton
decided to follow the advice of Louis William Dubourg, Sulpician president
of St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, and move the community to Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1809.19 The move to a rural environ, Carroll explained,
would expedite the formation of a religious community dedicated to
the purpose of training piously disposed females to the duties of a perfect
life, particularly with a view of enabling them to aid the poor by their
work and industry, to nurse the sick and perform for them all kinds of
necessary attention and care.20

Carroll, who had been named archbishop of Baltimore in 1808, was not
unwilling to offer advice from a distance. “Appoint a sacristan of your
choice,” he advised, “whenever a vacancy happens, or sickness prevents the
regular attendance of the Lady, who was constituted.”21
Seton’s letters did not always paint a positive picture of her situation.
Shortly after arriving in Emmitsburg, she informed Carroll that
[i]t was my intention to have written to you on my first arrival at the [St.
Mary’s] mountain but so many things occurred to disappoint and distress me that it was impossible to say any thing that would not give you
more pain than pleasure—since then our situation is fixed (at least for
the present). . . .22
18. Carroll to Charles Plowden, May 26, 1788, in Hanley, ed., Carroll Papers, 1:313. Ursulines had been teaching and nursing in New Orleans since 1722, but Carroll had no way of working with them until the Louisiana Purchase brought that community under his jurisdiction.
19. Dubourg left Georgetown College in 1799 and established St. Mary’s College that
same year. During the thirteen years that he served as president of the school, he came to
know Seton and encouraged her to leave New York City for Baltimore.
20. Carroll to “His Sisters,” April 20, 1809, in Hanley, ed., Carroll Papers, 3:84.
21. Carroll to Seton, July 18, 1809, in Hanley, ed., Carroll Papers, 3:119.
22. Seton to Carroll, [August 6, 1810], in Bechtle and Metzeds., Elizabeth Bayley
Seton, II:76.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

The same letter indicates that it would be a mistake to say that Seton
and Carroll looked upon each other as equals, either in the Church or in
the world of the early-nineteenth century. Women were believed to be
inferior to men, and as a result Seton was not included in any of the discussions among Carroll, Dubourg—who had been appointed Superior of
the community—and other Sulpicians on the subject of who would determine the final version of the rule of the American Sisters of Charity of St.
Joseph.23 Seton, however, did not hesitate to initiate discussions related to
congregational issues. Within a week after settling in Emmitsburg, she
informed Carroll that she, along with most of the other women in the
community, was “greatly chagrined” that Dubourg would not allow any of
them to correspond with Pierre Babade, a popular Sulpician confessor and
spiritual director. She claimed the Superior had forced her
. . . not only . . . to give up a correspondence with the person in whom I
have most confidence, and to whom I am indebted for my greatest spiritual
advantage, but also [wanted] to eradicate as far as possible from the minds
of the Sisters that confidence and attachment they all have for [Babade].24

The Superior, she informed the archbishop of Baltimore, was “acting like
a tyrant.”25 The problem was cleared up later that same day, she reported,
when Dubourg informed the sisters that they could write to the spiritual
director of their choice once every other month.26
Questions about Babade’s role in the spiritual life of the new community continued, and in September 1809, Seton found herself asking Carroll
to allow the favored spiritual director to hear the sisters’ Confessions.
Although the archbishop had already refused to grant permission for this,
Seton decided to try again. “. . . [M]y dear girls are continually begging me
‘O dear Mother do write to the Bishop [John Carroll] he is a Father to us
and will not deny your request.’” “The needs of her sisters,” explain two
contemporary Seton scholars, “drove [her] to risk incurring his displeasure
by asking him again.”27 When Dubourg resigned as the community’s
Superior because of the controversy surrounding Babade, Seton was grateful to Carroll for his assistance. “[T]he truth is,” she wrote,

23. See Regina Bechtle and Judith Metz, “Elizabeth Bayley Seton Writings: Current
State and Future Plans,” Vincentian Heritage Journal, 29, no. 1 (2009), 24–33, here 28.
Retrieved from http://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol29/iss1/3
24. Seton to Carroll, [August 6, 1810], p. 77.
25. Bechtle and Metz, “Elizabeth Bayley Seton Writings,” p. 26.
26. Ibid., pp. 26–27.
27. Ibid., p. 28.

MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS

227

I have been made a Mother before being initiated—and that must excuse
all—to you I attempt no justification—you know all—being a convert,
and very much left to my own devotion, how gratefully attached must I
be to the one who has shewn an unceasing care for my Soul and done
everything to enlighten it. . . .28

When Dubourg left Emmitsburg, Seton found herself in disagreement with the views of his appointed successor—John Baptist David, S.S.
Carroll informed her that since the sisters had chosen to live under the
authority of the Sulpicians, he had no authority to intervene in the situation.29 Seton complained about David, who held strong opinions on how
both the school and congregation should be shaped, writing to Carroll in
January 1810,
I have endeavored to do everything in my power to bend myself to meet
the last appointed Superior [David] in every way but after continual
reflection on the necessity of absolute conformity with him, and constant
prayer to our Lord to help me, yet the heart is closed. . . .30

Fortunately for Seton, David served as the congregation’s Superior for a
very short time; he left Emmitsburg later that year to join Benedict Flaget
on the Kentucky frontier.31
The close relationship that developed between Seton and Carroll
allowed her to express even her deepest sorrows to her friend and mentor.
An 1810 missive to the archbishop described Seton’s distress over a
number of deaths and illnesses among family and friends. At least two of
the sisters had finally begun to recover, but she confessed that she “really
began to think we were all going.”32 Toward the end of that same year,
Seton addressed Carroll’s apparent concern for her own health. She was
not so sick “as imagined being always well enough to be Mother about the
house and in the school—which is all indeed I am able to do. . . .” He
would be happy to know, she assured him, that “Boarders [for the school]
come so fast that no one of Us has time to be sick.”33

28. Seton to Carroll, November 2, 1809, in Bechtle and Metz, eds., Elizabeth Bayley
Seton, II:88.
29. Bechtle and Metz, “Elizabeth Bayley Seton Writings,” pp. 29–31.
30. Quoted in Ibid., p. 32.
31. Benedict Flaget served as bishop of Bardstown from 1808 until 1839.
32. Seton to My dear and Honoured Father [Carroll], January 19, 1810, in Bechtle and
Metz, eds., Elizabeth Bayley Seton, II:102.
33. Seton to Most Reverend and dear Father [Carroll], November 29, 1810, in Ibid.,
pp. 164–65. Emphasis in original.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

Writing to Catherine Dupleix in 1811, Seton provided some detail on
Carroll’s role in the formation of the Sisters of Charity. She was “Mother
of the Community,” she explained, which consisted of “15 Sisters and 30
boarders in the school.” The women were not, however, to be referred to
as nuns; they were simply “living in community under such regulations as
we have chosen ourselves, and without which so large a family could never
be well governed.”34 She had professed vows of chastity and obedience
before Carroll for one year, Seton continued, but found it “very easy to
obey him who considers my welfare more than I do myself.”35
By the time she was explaining her community’s situation to Dupleix,
Seton knew that Carroll and a few of his Sulpician advisers—including
John Dubois, founder of St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg and later
bishop of New York—had modified the formal rule and constitution of the
Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris to reflect the culture
of and conditions in the United States. Although she was somewhat worried about certain aspects of the rule, such as how it might affect her ability
to fulfill her parental responsibilities, Seton assured Carroll that “surely an
Individual is not to be considered where a public good is in question.”36
In a letter written a few days later—that may or may not have been a
response to the aforementioned communication—Carroll reported that
he was
deeply humbled at being called on to give a final sanction to a rule of conduct and plan of religious government, by which it is intended to promote and preserve amongst many beloved spouses of Jesus Christ, a spirit
of solid and sublime religious perfection.”

He had approved the constitutions, Carroll informed Seton, but explained
that she and Dubois, who was now serving as the congregation’s Superior,
were expected to work out the “rules of detail and particular duties of the Sisters,” because “yourselves and your Rev. Superior, will be the best judges.”37

34. Although the terms sisters and nuns are often used interchangeably, the two words
do not have the same meaning. Nuns refer to solemnly professed members of the second
orders of monastic and mendicant orders, whereas sisters are either members of their third
orders or of congregations.
35. Seton to My souls dear dear friend [Catherine Dupleix], [February 4, 1811], in
Bechtle and Metz, eds., Elizabeth Bayley Seton, II:172.
36. Seton to Most Reverend and Dear Father [Carroll], September 5, 1811, in Ibid.,
p. 196.
37. Carroll to Hon[ore]d and dear Madam [Seton], September 11, 1811, in Ibid., p. 745.

MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS

229

Carroll was clearly happy that the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph were
not formally connected with the Sulpicians. “I mean,” he wrote,
that their interests, administration and government are not to be the
same. . . . No one of that body [Sulpicians] but your immediate Superior
residing near you will have any share in the government or concerns of
the Sisters, except (on very rare and uncommon occasions) the Superior
of the Seminary of Balt[imore], but not his society.

He also reminded her that the archbishop retained some control over every
religious community within his jurisdiction.38
Carroll’s death on December 3, 1815, ended the correspondence
between Seton and her friend and mentor. Reporting on Carroll’s declining health to Antonio Filicchi, Seton wrote that
we are all every part of the Church as well as individuals, in a most anxious moment over the situation of our Blessed Archbishop Carroll—his
life seems in eminent danger—for my part was it not for the long habit
. . . to look direct at our God in every event, I would tell you that it is a
great affliction to me, but all must take the course of the Adorable Will—
yet we beg more with tears than words if he [will] be yet spared.39

One week later, only a few days before Carroll’s death, she asked Babade
to ask the last blessing of our blessed Archbishop for us all—oh could I
be by his bedside to get it before he goes—goes, indeed to receive his
great reward may we not fully hope, my Father. [T]he hand of God is all
I can see in an event so severe both privately and publickly—.40

Examining the correspondence between an American saint and
America’s first bishop reveals that their interactions often transcended the
formal relationship of an ecclesiastical Superior and a Superior General.
Carroll kept a watchful eye over Seton’s children, offered advice and
encouragement, and helped to negotiate the final version of the community’s rule and constitutions. Seton and her sisters certainly allowed Carroll
to begin to achieve his goal of ensuring that there were enough women
religious in the United States to handle the education of Catholic children,
but at the same time, his willingness to mentor the widow turned congregation leader clearly assisted the Sisters of Charity through some early dif-

38. Ibid., p. 746.
39. Seton to My ever dear Antonio [Filicchi], November 20, 1815, in Ibid., p. 357.
40. [Seton] to My dearest Pere [Pierre Babade, S.S.], November 27, 1815, in Ibid., p. 360.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

ficulties. More critical, scholarly work on Seton—and on Carroll, for that
matter—will lead to further untangling of the complicated relationship
between women religious and church leaders.
Sisters and Bishops—Issues of Power and Authority
The relationship between Célestin de la Hailandière and Mother
Theodore Guérin is a very different model from that exemplified by Elizabeth Seton and John Carroll. Anne-Therese Guérin entered the Sisters of
Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir in 1823 at age twenty-five (see figure 2). She
first met Hailandière when Vincennes bishop Simon Bruté sent the priest
to France in 1839 and charged him with two tasks: to raise funds and to
persuade religious communities to send at least a few members to the Indiana frontier.41 When Hailandière asked the Sisters of Providence for assistance, he was told by the Superior, Mother Marie Lecor, and their ecclesiastical Superior, Bishop Jean Baptist Bouvier, that they were willing to
send sisters to minister in the diocese. Lecor told Hailandière that Guérin
was the best candidate to lead this group of sisters as they began a ministry
in the United States. “We have only one Sister capable of making the foundation,” the Superior explained. “If she consents, we shall send you Sisters
next summer.”42
After traveling by train, stagecoach, steamboat, and canal boat,
Guérin and her five companions arrived in Vincennes in 1840, where they
rested before moving to St. Mary-of-the-Woods, the spot chosen by Hailandière, who was now bishop, for their novitiate and an academy.
Located about five miles northwest of Terre Haute, it was “well off the
beaten path.”43 Guérin was not convinced this was the most suitable place
in which to begin a ministry of education, but Hailandière was not interested in opening the issue for discussion. “When the Bishop came home,”
Guérin wrote, “he explained in full all the reasons he had for locating our
house in the country. Although they did not coincide with our view of the
matter, after making our representations we consented to start for Terre
41. Joseph M. White, “Path to Sainthood and Episcopal Leadership: Mother
Theodore Guérin and Bishop Célestin Hailandière in History and Memory,” U.S. Catholic
Historian, 29, no. 1 (2011), 73–94, here 77. While Hailandière was in France in May 1830,
he was appointed coadjutor bishop of the diocese. When Bruté died on June 26 of that year,
Hailandière became bishop.
42. Sister Mary Theodosia Mug, ed., Journals and Letters of Mother Theodore Guerin
Foundress of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods Indiana (St. Mary-of-theWoods, IN, 1942), p. xx.
43. White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 81.

MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS

231

FIGURE 2. St. Theodore Guérin, from Diorama-Memorial to Mother Theodore
Guerin, Foundress (St. Mary-of-the-Woods, IN, 1940), n.p.

Haute. . . .” 44 Although Guérin decided to accept the opinions of those
who had chosen the location, she recorded her discomfort with the decision, writing, “It is astonishing that this remote solitude has been chosen
for a novitiate and especially an academy. All appearances are against it.”45
In addition, the women were sharing a house with a family while their
convent was being built, and she suggested that the family be relocated,
allowing the sisters to retain the house for their convent. The convent
under construction could then be used for the academy.46 Hailandière
agreed, and the sisters began to prepare to open their boarding academy
and train the young women who joined them as postulants and novices.47
The bishop of Vincennes visited the site for the first time on November 12, 1840. “The bishop,” a member of the community wrote about this
event, “hearing the Sisters speak of Sister Theodore as La Superiéure, inter-

44. Quoted in Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, p. 56.
45. Quoted in Ibid., p. 65.
46. See Margaret M. McGuinness, Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America (New
York, 2013), p. 42; White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 82.
47. White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 82.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

rupted them, saying: ‘Call her Mother.’” Members of the congregation
were delighted that Hailandière had seen fit to bestow this title on
Guérin.48 Within six months of the visit, however, Guérin had discovered
that working with the bishop of Vincennes might be more difficult than
she originally imagined and was asking for advice on the best way to work
with him. “I have followed exactly your recommendations in regard to the
Bishop,” she told Reverend Augustin Martin, a friend of the congregation,
“and I have found them good—indeed, very good. . . . One thing that
deeply grieves my heart is the pain we give to him. So far there is nothing
but complaints about us.” She hoped that the situation would work itself
out—with a little patience—but realized that it might take some time.49
In July 1841, the boarding academy opened, and seven months later
the sisters began a ministry of parish education when they established a
school in Jasper, Indiana.50 Guérin and her community were grateful for
Hailandière’s support, she told Bouvier in 1842. “He is having considerable
work done to our house, too much in fact for his resources.” She remained
worried about their disagreements, however, explaining that “I am not
always of his opinion; for instance, as to the reception of subjects, the
admission to the habit, and even to the vows, and the acceptance of establishments.” Although Hailandière had told her that “in this country nothing is done slowly,” he was, perhaps reluctantly, allowing her—at the
moment—to make most of the necessary decisions.51
With Hailandière’s approval, Guérin returned to France in April 1843
and remained there for almost a year. Although her primary purpose was
to raise funds to support the community’s endeavors in Indiana, she took
the time to share her concerns about Hailandière with both Lecor and
Bouvier. The sisters, however, were no longer formally connected with
either the motherhouse or the community’s ecclesiastical Superior, and her
confidantes could do little to help resolve her dilemma. The bishop of Vincennes had replaced Bouvier as ecclesiastical Superior, but had neither
approved the congregation’s rule nor given it the deed to the property on
which its school was located.52
48. A Member of the Congregation, Life and Life-Work of Mother Theodore Guérin,
Foundress of the Sisters of Providence at St.-Mary-of-the-Woods, Vigo County, Indiana (New
York, 1904), p. 143.
49. Quoted in Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, p. 74.
50. White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 82.
51. See Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, pp. 81–82.
52. White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 83.

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233

While Guérin was explaining the difficult situation in which she found
herself to her former French Superiors, Hailandière was becoming more and
more involved in the congregation’s day-to-day operations. He replaced the
sister designated as temporary Superior in Guérin’s absence with another,
insisted the community accept postulants even if members of the congregation believed they were “unsuited for religious life,” selected the sisters to
staff a new school opening in Vincennes, and actually ordered several others
to staff an additional school “where the primitive log cabin serving as a convent exposed them to the elements.”53 Hailandière’s most important action,
however, was to hold a community election to determine if Guérin would
remain as Superior. She had been elected for three years, he informed her,
but until she returned, another sister was appointed in her place.54
When Guérin finally returned to Indiana in 1844, Hailandière spent
two hours expressing his dissatisfaction with her behavior. By October of
that same year, Guérin noted in her diary that she was no longer allowed
to visit the houses established by the bishop during her absence. Sisters
placed in these ministries were to answer only to Hailandière; as a result,
they refused to accept their assignments.55 Guerin began to think about
relocating the community to a friendlier diocese.56
The rule of the Sisters of Providence in the United States did not
include a provision for an ecclesiastical Superior, but the sisters agreed
when Hailandière decided to appoint Reverend John Corbe to the position, hoping he would be able to help the two sides develop a better relationship.57 Unfortunately, the situation continued to deteriorate. Hailandière complained that the sisters “never cease harassing, tiring, and even
injuring me, threatening each day to leave [the diocese].”58 Refusing to
accept any responsibility for his poor relationship with Guérin and her sisters, he called for an “act of reparation” that would retract any negative
remarks made about him by any Sisters of Providence.59 With the assistance of an intermediary, the sisters signed a statement of apology but did
not withdraw any objections to the way the bishop had treated them. Hai-

53. Ibid.
54. See A Member of the Congregation, Life and Life-Work, p. 275.
55. See Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, p. 181.
56. See White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 84.
57. For comments on the sisters’ willingness to work with Corbe to come to some sort
of an agreement with Hailandière, see Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, p. 182.
58. Quoted in White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 85.
59. See Ibid., p. 86.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

landière still would not approve the congregation’s rule—despite his promise—but he did give them the deed to the property in St. Mary-of-theWoods.60 Writing to Martin, now the vicar general of the Diocese of Vincennes, in 1845, Guérin reflected that “[i]f ever this poor little Community
becomes settled, it will be established on the cross; and that is what gives
me confidence and makes me hope, sometimes even against hope.” The
news, she explained, was not all bad:
In the midst of all our storms, however, we have the consolation of seeing
the religious spirit become solid amongst the Sisters, and that is not a
little thing. If we are good Religious, God will protect us; and if he be
with us, who shall be against us?61

With the situation between the bishop and the sisters still unresolved
in 1846, Guérin began to seek out Ordinaries who might welcome the
congregation into their dioceses. “[T]he nature of our relations [with Hailandière],” she told Bishop Peter Lefevere of Detroit, “leaves scarcely any
doubt but that we shall leave Terre Haute shortly. . . . We come, then, to
ask whether your Lordship is still disposed to bestow upon us shelter and
protection, and on what conditions.”62 Lefevere apparently responded to
Corbe, who wrote that the letter from the “Bishop of the North” was “quite
satisfactory to me and to the Community.” Recognizing that as the sisters’
ecclesiastical Superior he held a fair amount of power over the community,
Corbe reflected: “I can prevail on [Guérin and the sisters] to remain if, as
I think, [Hailandière] is obliged to grant them what they are asking for; or
I can decide for them to leave even though he would yield everything.”63
In a letter to her congregation on March 8, 1846, Guérin tried to shed
additional light on the situation. Lefevere, she explained, “offered . . . to
approve our Rules and Constitutions for his diocese. . . . But this is all he
can do for us at the moment.” She had, on the other hand, received a tenpage letter from Hailandière that was “full of accusations and reproaches
which are personal, three-fourths of which are palpably untrue.” It was
going to be difficult to abandon the people of the Diocese of Vincennes, but
if they left the community “shall have peace.”64 In July of that same year,
Guérin updated Martin on the continuing breakdown of the relationship
60. Ibid., pp. 86–87.
61. Quoted in Mug, ed., Journals and Letters, p. 183.
62. Quoted in Ibid., pp. 187–88.
63. Quoted in Ibid., p. 189.
64. Quoted in Ibid., pp. 191–92.

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235

between the Sisters of Providence and Hailandière. The bishop wanted
Guérin removed as Superior; if he prevailed, she would leave Indiana.65
In early 1847, Guérin met with Hailandière before embarking on a
trip to visit the community’s missions. According to Sister St. Francis
Xavier, a member of the congregation, Guérin was accused of defying him
because she refused to step down as Superior and suggested that an election be held. If the sisters agreed, she would resign. Hailandière, however,
told Guérin that she would have to fulfill a number of additional requirements in order to remain in office. When she refused, he locked her in the
reception room and “went to his dinner.” Several hours later, the sisters
who had set out to look for her arrived at the episcopal residence. Hailandière unlocked the door and “silently motioned her out.” That evening,
“The Bishop declared . . . that not only was [Guérin] no longer the Superior but that she was not now even a Sister of Providence; for he released
her from her vows.” She was to leave the diocese immediately.66
The American bishops found themselves unable to negotiate a settlement. When Archbishop Samuel Eccleston of Baltimore heard the news,
for instance, he confessed that he was rather confused by the situation, but
was unable to intervene. The sisters, however, decided to leave Indiana
with their Superior. Postulants were given the option of returning to their
homes, but they all decided to remain with the congregation. Everything
was packed and the congregation’s departure was imminent when the sisters learned that a new bishop had been appointed to succeed Hailandière.67 Bishop John Bazin “brought peace and happiness and a feeling
of security hitherto unknown at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods,” until his
untimely death only seven months later.68
Unlike Seton and Carroll, Hailandière and Guérin did not develop a
friendship or even a working relationship. More scholarly research and
writing on these two figures, however, remains to be done.69 Hailandière’s
personality was clearly problematic. Ernest Audran, the bishop’s nephew,
offered a frank assessment of his uncle in the eulogy preached at his
funeral: “Although he [Hailandière] had a Vicar-General near him, a supe-

65. Ibid., p. 201.
66. See Ibid., p. 212.
67. Ibid., pp. 213–14.
68. Ibid., p. 222.
69. White’s “Path to Sainthood,” cited throughout the section, examines the conflict
from the perspectives of Hailandière’s “background, personality, and leadership” (p. 74).

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

rior of his seminary, a superior over the community of Sisters [of Providence], a rector for his cathedral, he hardly would allow them to do anything.”70 If his nephew is to be believed, Hailandière was truly the nineteenth-century version of a micromanager. In defense of the bishop, surely
it was no easy task to be charged with administering a diocese that did not
yet conform to the patterns and rules found in more established locales.
Guérin, on the other hand, was leading a congregation in relatively
uncharted territory. As she and the other Sisters of Providence developed
relationships with their students and those who lived in the communities
surrounding their schools, they began to understand the needs of the Indiana Catholics that they had agreed to serve. This leads to further questions,
such as: Whose opinion is more important—the bishop’s or the sisters’?
And how is the answer to this question determined?
Further examination of the complexities of the relationship between
Guérin and Hailandière will shed additional light on the place of episcopal
leadership on the U.S. frontier; the ways in which other bishops, both in
the United States and Europe, either intervened when communication
between two leaders broke down or distanced themselves from the controversy; and how women religious attempted to circumvent decisions made
by clerics who they believed were not acting in the best interests of either
their congregation or lay Catholics.
Sisters and Bishops—Issues of Control
Drexel’s relationship with bishops is more complex than those of either
Seton or Guérin (see figure 3). By the time her father’s death in 1885 left
Drexel and her two sisters heirs to an estate worth somewhere between $14
and $20 million, the U.S. Church was well established.71 Drexel’s considerable fortune, along with her desire to use her money to help those in need,
meant that she collaborated with a number of bishops, but limitations of
time and space allow a discussion of her interactions with only two of them.
A life of privilege combined with a staunch commitment to the
Catholic Church gave the laywoman Drexel an opportunity to communicate with bishops that was enjoyed by very few American Catholic women.

70. Quoted in White, “Path to Sainthood,” p. 77.
71. One year earlier, for instance, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore recognized
the growing Catholic population’s need for education by mandating that each parish build
and maintain a parochial school. For some parishes, of course, this decision presented a rather
significant challenge.

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237

FIGURE 3. St. Katharine Drexel, c. 1941. Photograph courtesy of the Archives of
the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, Bensalem, PA.

In 1887, Drexel and her two sisters set out on a journey that would allow
them to decide how they might fund missions to Native Americans and
African Americans. Accompanying them were Joseph Stephan, director of
the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, and Omaha bishop James
O’Connor (1823–90), who had been a priest in Philadelphia prior to his
move to Nebraska.72 When church leaders learned of Drexel’s interest in
Native Americans, they pleaded for funds to support their missionary
endeavors. Returning from this first trip to the West, Drexel began to
implement a plan to improve the education of Native Americans. Her
monetary contributions assisted Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines,
72. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers, p. 194. Butler’s work, especially chapter 6, is perhaps
the best scholarly work on Drexel’s western missions to date. As a result, much of the information contained in this discussion is drawn from this one source. Suellen Hoy offers an
excellent discussion of the work of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament among African Americans in Chicago; see Hoy, “Missionary Sisters in Black Belt Neighborhoods,” in Good Hearts:
Catholic Sisters in Chicago’s Past (Urbana, IL, 2006), pp. 86–102. Hoy, however, does not discuss Drexel’s interactions with Chicago’s bishops and so is not included in this discussion.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

Ursulines, Jesuits, Sisters of Charity of Montreal, and Daughters of Charity in their western apostolates.73
O’Connor may well have understood the financial implications of any
decisions made by Drexel about religious life. First, if she entered an established congregation, her money would be taken out of her hands and
placed under the control of community leaders. Second, upon entering
religious life, Drexel would have to relinquish the money bequeathed to
her by her father. Either of these two scenarios would affect the missionary
efforts taking place in the western United States.74
O’Connor found himself faced with a dilemma. Should he encourage
Drexel to remain in the world—and possibly marry and have children—or
should he advise her to leave the world behind but end up answering to a
Mother Superior and her council? O’Connor chose to recommend the
former option, because he believed it would best meet the needs of the
western bishops. Drexel, he determined, should remain in secular society
but take a vow of celibacy, a secret vow no less, that would be renewed each
year. Why a secret vow? Butler describes the plan as a “creative way to
assure that Drexel’s money remained accessible to the missions, assuage her
interest in religious life, and block objections from any other priestly confidante.”75 The old adage, “Follow the money,” works as well for historians
as it does for reporters.
Drexel’s response inadvertently mirrored that of Guérin when she
found herself locked in conflict with Hailandière about fifty years earlier.
She stood firm, writing to O’Connor:
It appears to me, Reverend Father, that I am not obligated to submit my
judgment to yours, as I have been doing for two years, for I feel so sad in
doing it, because the world cannot give me peace.76

She decided to leave her share of the money to the management of her two
sisters and enter religious life. O’Connor, this time acting as a spiritual
adviser rather than a financial planner, accepted the decision; at least the
money could remain within the confines of the Catholic Church in the
United States.

73. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers, pp. 198–201.
74. For a full discussion of Drexel’s fortune, see Butler, Across God’s Frontiers, pp.
204–05.
75. Ibid., p. 205.
76. Quoted in Ibid., p. 206. Emphasis in original.

MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS

239

After completing her novitiate with the Pittsburgh Sisters of Mercy,
Drexel formally established a congregation dedicated to ministering to
Native Americans and African Americans. (Founded as the Sisters of the
Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, the congregation is
known today as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.) Patrick Ryan, archbishop of Philadelphia (1831–1911), replaced O’Connor (who had died a
year earlier) as Drexel’s financial and spiritual adviser. As Drexel began the
additional and time-consuming task of leading the Sisters of the Blessed
Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, she continued to allocate
money to various Native American missions. Ryan, however, flatly refused
to allow the community to staff the missions that were operating thanks to
Drexel’s generosity: “Mother Katharine failed to perceive that more-senior
church leaders looked on the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament as something of an experiment, a collection of unseasoned recruits lacking maturing in their religious vocations.”77 By the end of the nineteenth century,
women religious were found throughout the U.S. Catholic community;
American bishops could afford to look suspiciously at a new congregation—dedicated to ministering to African Americans and Native Americans, no less—until they were convinced its members would behave in an
appropriate manner.
Ryan understood the importance of the Drexel fortune for the work of
the Catholic Church as much as O’Connor. Recognizing that bishops
throughout the country, particularly those responsible for western dioceses,
might enjoy reaping the benefits of a financial windfall, he insisted that the
motherhouse of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament not only be located in
Philadelphia but also that it be readily accessible to the archbishop’s residence.78 “Mother Katharine needs me,” Ryan proclaimed, “she needs my
supervision and counsel in the most minute details, for she is now planning
for the future, and that future must rest on very secure foundations.”79
Drexel bowed to the wishes of the archbishop and focused her attention on creating the necessary structures that would ensure the stability of
her congregation as it worked to gain approval from Rome. In addition,
she and her sisters remained firmly ensconced in Philadelphia; none were
assigned to western missions. If Drexel had not enforced these policies, she
would have lost Ryan’s support for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament,
77. Ibid., p. 211.
78. Ibid., p. 212. Ryan resisted any suggestion that Drexel move the congregation’s
motherhouse to other parts of the country, including Nebraska and California.
79. Ibid.

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WHY RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

which would have possibly resulted in the suppression of the rule and the
dispersal of the sisters.
Drexel, however, did not cease funding those missions to Native
Americans that were being administered and staffed by other congregations.80 In 1890, for instance, she agreed to assist Benedictine sisters ministering on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Her donation
allowed the sisters to construct a three-story school for 150 children. Not
all church leaders were enthusiastic about the ways in which Drexel chose
to spend her inheritance. Writing to a friend in 1894, Paulist priest Walter
Elliott complained that Drexel had refused his request for $500. “[S]he
said in effect,” Elliott claimed, “no poor white trash need apply. Only black
and red are the team they [Drexel and her sisters] will back.”81 Most
church leaders, however, supported her desire to help two groups that had
been marginalized within the Catholic Church; “the missions of the
‘Indian and the Colored’ could be left to Katharine Drexel.”82
In 1893, Ryan permitted the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to minister on missions in the western United States, and nine sisters were sent
to St. Catherine’s School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The arrival of Sisters
of the Blessed Sacrament in the West opened a new phase in the congregation’s history and in its relationship with bishops—one that is beyond
the scope here. Although Ryan’s decision meant that Drexel was no longer
restricted to the greater Philadelphia area, she continued to work closely
with the archbishop. Indeed, his death in 1911 “. . . sank her into a paroxysm of grief.”83 Drexel outlived Ryan by forty-six years. During that time,
she continued to collaborate and cooperate with bishops throughout the
United States, as well as her local Ordinary.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of Drexel’s relationships
with bishops, but as we examine this facet of the life of the wealthy heiress
turned congregational founder, we will become more informed about the
myriad ways in which various Catholics, including those who had money
to give and those who hoped to be on the receiving end of those funds,
worked together to create and finance an American Church that provided

80. Ibid., pp. 212–13.
81. Quoted in McGuinness, Called to Serve, p. 130.
82. Anne M. Butler, “Mother Katharine Drexel: Spiritual Visionary for the West,” in
By Grit and Grace: Eleven Women Who Shaped the American West, ed. Glenda Riley and
Richard W. Etulain (Golden, CO, 1977), pp. 198–220, here p. 215.
83. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers, p. 223.

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241

a dazzling array of schools, hospitals, universities, and various social service
agencies to meet the needs of Catholics—and non-Catholics as well—
from all walks of life.
Concluding Comments
While writing this address, I found myself—as so often happens—
running into other stories related to sisters and bishops. Did I know, a
Sister of St. Joseph of Philadelphia asked, that her order’s foundress,
Mother St. John Fournier, developed a close relationship with St. John
Neumann, Redemptorist bishop of Philadelphia? Both of them, she
explained, bonded over their shared difficulties in obtaining permission to
take final vows. Another sister—a member of the Sisters, Servants of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary—remarked that her community had believed
until very recently that they were the only congregation whose history
involved conflict with a local Ordinary. These two stories deepen my conviction that there is much work remaining to be done on this subject, and
there are a few ways that scholars may wish to consider when approaching
this topic in the future.
First, it would be a mistake to discount the role of personalities when
studying the interactions between sisters and bishops. Carroll is a likable
figure, as is Seton. Hailandière cannot claim the same distinction; even his
own nephew could not pass up the chance to criticize the Indiana bishop’s
personality. We know less about other women religious and bishops. Much
more work remains to be done on O’Connor, Ryan, and even Drexel
before historians can truly begin to judge how personalities came into play
in the stories of their interactions with each other.
Second, the relationships between women religious and bishops
should be placed within the context of the history of U.S. Catholicism.
Although founders of religious congregations shared some similar experiences, there is not one story that fits all. Issues of authority appear more
often than not, however, and they often are in the form of a question:
who was the best judge of what American Catholics truly needed? Bishops claimed ultimate authority on the basis of church teachings and law.
Women religious did not necessarily dispute the prelates’ contention, but
thought they deserved a voice in the conversation. They were the ones,
after all, who spent time with Catholic men, women, and children; they
saw firsthand what the needs of the community were; and they were
often the ones who had to pick up the pieces when a planned scenario did
not succeed.

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Third, the issue of gender and gender roles needs to be seriously examined. Were Catholic sisters more consciously aware of societal and church
limitations based on gender than we have previously thought? Despite the
fact that women religious were not considered equal to men and certainly
not equal to men who had been named bishop, women religious have
proven time and time again that they were quite capable of establishing
ministries, leading organizations, and assuming responsibility for a multitude of rather complex organizations. Some of this work was accomplished
in collaboration with ecclesiastical leaders; some happened despite the
opposition of the local Ordinary.
Finally, a comment from the beginning of this presentation is appropriate here. Let us encourage an examination of the relationships between
sisters and bishops—saints or not—that moves beyond the traditional
views of either a cast of characters composed solely of holy men and
women, or a scenario that involves clearly defined heroes and villains. Yes,
Seton, Guérin, and Drexel are saints, but they—along with other leaders
and founders of religious congregations of women—and their bishops
ought to receive a critical scholarly examination that places them in their
proper place in the history of American Catholicism.

The Origins of the Guadalupe Tradition
in Mexico
TIMOTHY MATOVINA*
Historical writings on Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most revered
sacred figure indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, focus largely on
her cult’s origins. Scholars disagree on whether reports of Guadalupe’s
1531 appearances to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego initiated
devotion to her or whether the apparition tradition is a later invention
that provided a mythical origin for an already existing image and
devotion. This essay critiques the standard argument against a foundational apparition tradition as exemplified in the work of Stafford
Poole. The reevaluation sheds light on the scope of early indigenous
devotion and the genesis of belief in the apparitions.
Keywords: apparition narrative; de Zumárraga, Juan, Bishop; Juan
Diego; Our Lady of Guadalupe

D

evotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe has evolved for nearly five centuries
into a deeply rooted, multifaceted tradition. The Guadalupe basilica in
Mexico City is the most visited pilgrimage site on the American continent.
After Jesus of Nazareth, her image is the most reproduced sacred icon in the
Western Hemisphere. Today Guadalupe appears among an increasingly
diverse array of peoples, places, and religious groups. The growing Protestant
engagement of Guadalupe encompasses a number of congregations that celebrate her December 12 feast, as well as theological investigations that span
various denominational perspectives.1 Catholic basilicas and shrines dedicated to Guadalupe are as far south as Santa Fe in Argentina and as far north
as Johnstown on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
Historically the rising prominence of Guadalupe prompted debates
about the origins of such a significant religious phenomenon. These dis*Dr. Matovina is professor of theology and executive director of the Institute for Latino
Studies at the University of Notre Dame, email: Timothy.Matovina.1@nd.edu.
1. Maxwell Johnson, The Virgin of Guadalupe: Theological Reflections of an AngloLutheran Liturgist (Lanham, MD, 2002); Johnson, ed., American Magnificat: Protestants on
Mary of Guadalupe (Collegeville, MN, 2010).

243

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THE ORIGINS OF THE GUADALUPE TRADITION IN MEXICO

putes have recurred for more than two centuries. No one doubts that a
chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe on the hill of Tepeyac in present-day Mexico City has been active since at least the mid-sixteenth century. But disagreement exists on whether the chapel or belief in Guadalupe’s
reported apparitions to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego came first. In
other words, did reports of Juan Diego’s encounters with Guadalupe and
her miraculous appearance on his tilma (cloak) initiate the chapel and its
devotion, or is the apparition narrative a later invention that provided a
mythical origin for an already existing image and pious tradition?
Those who hold the latter position note the lapse of more than a century between the standard 1531 date given for the apparitions and the first
published accounts on the apparitions. They also point out the lack of documentation about the apparitions and about claims of the miraculous origins of the Guadalupe image among prominent Catholic leaders in sixteenth-century New Spain, including the complete absence of Guadalupe
references in the known writings of Juan de Zumárraga, the bishop to
whom Juan Diego reportedly transmitted Guadalupe’s messages. Conversely, those who uphold the foundational status of the apparition tradition argue that the Spaniards’ disdain for the allegedly inferior native
people accounts for the lengthy delay before an official inquiry recorded
indigenous testimony about Guadalupe and Juan Diego. They further contend there is early written documentation for the apparitions such as a
recently discovered codex that Jesuit priest Xavier Escalada argues is Juan
Diego’s 1548 death certificate depicting his encounter with Guadalupe.
The most important document is the Nahuatl-language Nican mopohua (a
title derived from the document’s first words, “here is recounted”) apparition account. First published in 1649, the document poses questions for
scholars regarding the date when it was composed and thus has implications for the origins of the Guadalupe tradition. The heart of the debate,
therefore, is disagreement about the validity of recorded oral testimony; the
viability of historical arguments from silence; and especially the authenticity, authorship, determination of proper dates, and significance of critical
primary sources, particularly the Nican mopohua itself.2
2. Xavier Noguez, Documentos guadalupanos: Un estudio sobre las fuentes de información
tempranas en torno a las mariofanías en el Tepeyac (Mexico City, 1993); Stafford Poole, Our
Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797 (Tucson,
1995); Xavier Escalada, Enciclopedia guadalupana. Apéndice códice 1548. Estudio científico de su
autenticidad (México, 1997); Fidel González Fernández, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, and José
Luis Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego (1999; 4th ed.,
Mexico City, 2001).

TIMOTHY MATOVINA

245

Major publications of recent decades have collectively extended
Guadalupan historical studies beyond the origin debates to analyses of the
evolution and influence of the Guadalupe tradition in the centuries since
its inception. Jacques Lafaye, an acclaimed Latin American historian at the
Sorbonne, authored one of the most renowned twentieth-century books on
Guadalupe: Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican
National Consciousness, 1531–1813. Examining a broad range of historical
actors and forces, Lafaye sought to uncover the role of myth and symbol in
the rise of Mexican national consciousness. David Brading’s Mexican
Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image and Tradition across Five Centuries
presents the first intellectual history that spans the breadth of the
Guadalupe tradition. Scholars such as William B. Taylor have examined
the evolution of devotion to Guadalupe during Mexico’s colonial period
and beyond. Other historical and ethnographic studies have examined the
development and significance of Guadalupan devotion in the United
States. These works of Taylor and his colleagues provide important
insights for addressing a historical question that has been largely ignored
in Guadalupan studies: given the plentiful miraculous images of Christ,
Mary, and the saints that dotted the sacred landscape of New Spain, how
did the Guadalupe cult arise above all others and grow from a local devotion into a regional, national, and international phenomenon?3
Yet by no means has this groundbreaking research supplanted debates
about the origins of the Guadalupe tradition, which were most recently
revisited among scholars and in numerous media reports during the years
leading up to the 2002 canonization of Juan Diego. Indeed, whereas Spanish-language treatises have long engaged in the controversy, Stafford Poole
expanded knowledge of these debates through his Our Lady of Guadalupe:
The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797, the first

3. Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1813, trans. Benjamin Keen (Chicago, 1976); D. A. Brading, Mexican
Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge, UK,
2001); William B. Taylor, “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the
Social History of Marian Devotion,” American Ethnologist, 14 (1987), 9–33; Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (Stanford, 1996), pp.
277–300; Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico before the Reforma
(Albuquerque, 2010); Deidre Sklar, Dancing with the Virgin: Body and Faith in the Fiesta of
Tortugas, New Mexico (Berkeley, 2001); Timothy Matovina, Guadalupe and Her Faithful:
Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present (Baltimore, 2005); Alyshia
Gálvez, Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants (New York, 2010); Elaine A. Peña, Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with
the Virgin of Guadalupe (Berkeley, 2011).

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book-length work published in English focused on this topic. Subsequently Poole published another volume, The Guadalupan Controversies in
Mexico, which examines the history of the apparition debate from the
Spanish colonial era to Juan Diego’s canonization. Poole meticulously
assesses the documentary evidence—more accurately, what he deems the
lack of documentary evidence—and concludes there is no “objective historical basis” for the tradition of Guadalupe’s appearances to Juan Diego,
which he posits was invented more than a century after their alleged occurrence. In his initial study he opined, “it is possible that an Indian named
Juan Diego actually existed and somehow became the protagonist of the
[apparition] legend,” whereas in the latter work he even contends that
“Juan Diego is a pious fiction, a figure out of literature who has no more
historic reality than Captain Ahab or Sherlock Holmes.”4
Thanks to Poole’s work, these historicity debates are well known to
English-language readers. Consistent with the arguments of his Spanishlanguage counterparts, his work is largely a critique of the claim that there
is early documentation for the apparition tradition. He systematically contests the evidence presented by opponents; they, in turn, contend that the
evidence discounted by Poole and others is well founded. Given the longstanding stalemate between these two camps, this essay addresses the question in an alternative manner. Presupposing as a point of departure Poole’s
conclusions about the dating and authorship of primary sources, what does
a critical reexamination of his sources reveal? Thus this essay presents a critique of Poole as an exemplar of those who have proposed the line of argument he explicates, but based solely on a reassessment of the documents
accepted as valid by Poole himself. Such an approach reveals weaknesses in
the position of those who argue against early belief in an apparition associated with the Guadalupe cult. More important, it helps clarify at least
three important components of the first century of the Guadalupe tradition: the way that the early history of the devotion affects arguments from
silence, the participation of indigenous devotees, and the significance of
the first published account of the apparitions. Collectively, the reevaluation
of these three components sheds light both on the early evolution of
Guadalupan devotion and on the origins of the tradition about
Guadalupe’s appearances to Juan Diego.

4. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 224–25; Poole, The Guadalupan Controversies in
Mexico (Stanford, 2006), p. 202.

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Arguments from Silence and a Century of Local Devotion
Poole states that his work accomplishes a “fine-tuning of the idea of
an argument from silence” that dates back to Juan Bautista Muñoz, the
Spanish monarch’s official historian of the Indies. As Poole notes,
Muñoz’s 1794 address to the Royal Academy of History in Madrid was
“the first known public attack on the historicity of the apparitions” and
established “a line of argumentation that would endure to the present
day.”5 Like his predecessors, Poole documents sixteenth-century sources
that have no reference to the Guadalupe apparition tradition such as the
decrees of the 1555 First Mexican Provincial Council, the writings of the
famous Dominican defender of the Indians Bartolomé de las Casas and
those of renowned Franciscan missioner Pedro de Gante, and the works of
Franciscan chronicler of Nahuatl history and culture Bernardino de
Sahagún. The most unexpected of these documentary silences is in the
extant primary sources of Zumárraga. Poole acknowledges that “the
absence of references [to Guadalupe] in his [Zumárraga’s] correspondence
may be attributable, as is often asserted, to the fact that not all of it has survived.” But Poole adds that, given Zumárraga’s supposed foundational role
in the Guadalupe event and devotion, the inattention to Guadalupe in primary sources such as his will is puzzling, particularly since various Spanish
Catholic wills from the sixteenth century include bequests for Masses dedicated to a special celestial patron.6
A further element of this argument involves assessing documents
indisputably from sixteenth-century sources that proponents of an early
apparition tradition have proposed as evidence, such as various indigenous
chronicles that retrospectively mention a Guadalupan appearance at
Tepeyac during the mid-1550s.Typical of these brief references, annalist
Juan Bautista notes, “In the year 1555: at that time Saint Mary of
Guadalupe appeared there on Tepeyacac.” Similarly, Domingo Francisco
de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin wrote, “12 Flint
the year 1556. And likewise in this year was when our precious mother
Saint Mary of Guadalupe appeared at Tepeyacac.” Poole argues that such
references are “fraught with difficulties” in that they cite a date twenty-five
years after the traditional date for the apparitions, do not describe any par-

5. Ibid., pp. 16, 172–73; Juan Bautista Muñoz, “Memoria sobre las apariciones y el
culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,” Memorias de la Academia de la Historia, 5.10–12
(1817), repr. in Testimonios históricos Guadalupanos, ed. Ernesto de la Torre Villar and Ramiro
Navarro de Anda (Mexico City, 1982), pp. 689–701.
6. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 35–36, 59, 64–65, 77–81, 83.

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ticularities of an apparition story, and conceivably could refer to the placement of the Guadalupe image in the shrine at Tepeyac rather than an
apparition. He concludes that collectively these sources “seem to agree in
assigning some sort of apparition, or positioning of the image in the
chapel, to the years 1555 to 1556,” but they are too inconclusive—in short,
too “silent” in their narrative detail—to establish an early apparition tradition akin to the account related in the Nican mopohua.7
Yet another element of the argument from silence is the sparse sixteenth-century references to the Guadalupe image itself. In a controversial
1556 sermon (which is treated more fully below) Franciscan provincial
Francisco de Bustamante reportedly attributed the Guadalupe image at
Tepeyac to an indigenous painter, although Poole avers that “his assertion
is weakened by the failure of any other sources to substantiate it.” Subsequent sources allude to a silver and copper Marian statue that Alonso de
Villaseca donated to the Guadalupe ermita (literally “hermitage” or chapel)
in 1566, which devotees apparently venerated there for more than a century until it was used to make candlesticks. In 1606 Spanish-born Baltasar
de Echave Orio, who was widely regarded as the most prestigious artist in
New Spain at the time, created the first known dated painting that copies
the revered Guadalupe image.8
Poole logically concludes that by the time Echave Orio made his painting, devotees had enshrined at Tepeyac the Guadalupe image as it is now
known. However, he fails to mention that the Echave Orio painting also
depicts the cloth on which the revered image appears, a detail that has led
other historians to infer that, for the artist and the (now unknown) person
who commissioned his painting, “the cloth were as much the object of veneration as the image.” Poole notes that the lack of previous painted copies
or documentary allusions to a canvas Guadalupe image—save for the Bustamante reference—“has led to speculation that the original image in the
ermita was a statue, not a painting.” Consistent with this hypothesis, he surmises that the later melting down of the statue donated by Villaseca “is

7. Ibid., pp. 50–58, here pp. 51–52, 58. Drawing on sources similar to those Poole cites,
Edmundo O’Gorman proffers the most comprehensive argument for a mid-1550s genesis of
the Guadalupe tradition at Tepeyac, although, like Poole, he does not contend that a series of
reported apparitions initiated the tradition. Instead, O’Gorman asserts that Alonso de Montúfar, the second archbishop of Mexico City, played a leading role in the creation and placement of the Guadalupe image at Tepeyac. Edmundo O’Gorman, Destierro de sombras: Luz en
el origen de la imagen y culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Tepeyac (Mexico City, 1986).
8. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 51–52, 58–64, 215–16.

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249

credible only if it had come to be considered a rival to the present image.”
However, it is equally plausible to infer that, like many other shrines, the
Guadalupe sanctuary had multiple sacred images and eventually the statue
became so secondary that it could be eliminated with seemingly little resistance. In any event, Poole avows there is a lack of evidence for the traditional
claim that the Guadalupe image on Juan Diego’s tilma was the primary
object of veneration from the outset of Guadalupan devotion at Tepeyac.9
Intentionally or not, Poole offers some counterevidence to the argument from silence he expounds. He notes, for example, that the diary of
canon Gregorio Martín de Guijo encompassing Mexico City events from
1648 to 1664 contains “no mention of the apparitions.” Yet Poole also
observes that the diary fails to mention the first published apparition
accounts, those of priests Miguel Sánchez and Luis Laso de la Vega in
their respective books of 1648 and 1649. Given that these volumes were
published in Mexico City and circulated an apparition narrative within the
ecclesiastical circles in which Guijo moved, the fact that his diary alludes
to neither is clearly not a documentary silence that indicates the books or
their apparition narratives did not exist. In other instances Poole’s logic
seems inconsistent, as when he explicates the documentary silence of the
Franciscan missionary Toribio de Benavente, also known as Motolinía (the
poor one). Poole hypothesizes that the absence of references to Guadalupe
in Motolinía’s writings could stem intentionally from a “positive hostility
to the shrine and devotion at Guadalupe” among the early Franciscans in
New Spain, as is evident in the records of Bustamante and Sahagún, two
friars who spoke of Guadalupan devotion in a negative light. But Poole
does not consider how such hostility may have influenced other Franciscans such as Pedro de Gante, whose writings do not refer to Guadalupe.
Nor does he explicate how he can generalize about sixteenth-century Franciscan response to Guadalupan devotion based solely on the negative reactions of two friars, given that Franciscan attitudes toward the devotion
easily could have varied among members of different community houses or
even according to the training and inclinations of individual missioners.10
The greatest weakness in the Guadalupan argument from silence is
the failure to acknowledge the implications of an assertion about the
9. Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images, p. 111; Jeanette Favrot Peterson, “Canonizing a Cult: A Wonder-Working Guadalupe in the Seventeenth Century,” in Religion in New
Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole (Albuquerque, 2007), pp. 125–56, here pp.
129–31; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 52.
10. Ibid., pp. 40, 127.

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Guadalupe tradition that does have considerable documentary evidence.
During its first century, Guadalupan devotion was still largely a local affair.
Poole contends that “an argument from silence is not usually persuasive in
itself, but it is very strong when the sources would logically be expected to
say something.” Consequently, arguments from silence are weakened to
the degree that an event or tradition is less prominent during a particular
source’s lifetime and therefore less likely to be mentioned in their written
records. The Nican mopohua, which for devotees has the status of a foundational text, states that news of Guadalupe’s apparitions attracted people
from “everywhere” who came “to see and marvel at her precious image.”
Presumably such an immediate and widespread response would have merited comment in the writings of Zumárraga and his sixteenth-century contemporaries. But in fact, scholarship on the historical evolution of
Guadalupan devotion, particularly the influential work of Taylor, demonstrates a more measured growth. These studies document the gradual
spread of Guadalupe paintings, medals, sermons, cofradías (confraternities
or pious societies), and feast-day celebrations, as well as the incremental
increase of Guadalupe as a chosen name for places, children, shrines, and
churches. The construction of the first church edifice dedicated to
Guadalupe beyond the vicinity of Tepeyac, for example, did not occur until
1654 in San Luis Potosí (approximately 250 miles north of Mexico City).
Over the previous century Guadalupan devotion was largely confined to
the immediate vicinity of Mexico City, and even there it was but one
among many pious invocations and practices.11
The initially limited geographic range of Guadalupan devotion is by no
means surprising. Religious traditions that emerged in the Spanish colonial
period tended to be locally focused, a pattern that enhanced the probability
their origins would be somewhat shrouded in mystery. For example, Jennifer Hughes’s recent study of the Cristo Aparecido (Christ Appeared), a
graphic carved image of the crucified Christ enshrined in the Mexican village of Totolapan, narrates the emergence of a local devotion to the Cristo
after its initial “appearance” in 1543 when a mysterious Indian visitor presented it to Augustinian friar Antonio de Roa. Similarly, María Elena Díaz

11. Ibid., p. 219; Lisa Sousa, Stafford Poole, and James Lockhart, ed. and trans., The
Story of Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649 (Stanford, 1998), p. 89;
Taylor, “Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain”; Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, pp. 277–300;
Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images, esp. part II, “Our Lady of Guadalupe: Toward a History of Devotion”; Jorge E. Traslosheros H., “The Construction of the First Shrine and Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in San Luis Potosí, 1654–1664,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino
Theology, 5, no. 1 (1997), 7–19.

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recounts the early genesis of devotion to Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s
national patroness, among seventeenth-century slaves in the mining settlement of El Cobre. Juan Moreno was reportedly one of three residents who
found the image with the inscription “I am the Virgin of Charity” in the
Bay of Nipe around 1612, a childhood experience to which he gave documented testimony some seventy-five years later when ecclesiastical officials
sought further information on this communal tradition in El Cobre. The
local character of such traditions in the New World reflected established
patterns of religious life on the Iberian Peninsula, as William A. Christian
has shown in his widely cited studies of religion in late-medieval and Renaissance Spain. Christian summarizes one mid-seventeenth-century inventory that described 182 Marian shrines in Catalonia alone. Apparition narratives tended to be transmitted through local oral traditions such as one
reported apparition “in a Segovian village around 1490 [that] was quite
fresh when recounted to an ecclesiastical investigator over 120 years later.”
Christian’s conclusion that such apparitions were “predominantly rural
events” with a circumscribed sphere of influence is consistent with analyses
of religious phenomena in the Spanish colonies of the New World.12
Poole agrees that Guadalupan devotion evolved gradually. Contrary to
the common presupposition signaled in the Nican mopohua, Poole concludes that “there is no evidence of mass conversions of the Indians after
1531, only that some missionaries, especially Franciscans, baptized in large
numbers after rudimentary instruction.” He further notes that Nuestra
Señora de los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies), the Spanish Virgin
whose image reportedly assisted Hernán Cortés and his men in the conquest of Mexico and who then had her own sanctuary outside Mexico City,
enjoyed precedence over Guadalupe, at least in the city. Civil and ecclesiastical records pertaining to a deadly 1576 matlazahuatl (typhus or typhoid
fever) epidemic state that the devout in Mexico City and the environs
called on Remedios for protection, but those same sources provide “no evidence of a recourse to Guadalupe during that epidemic.” Remedios “was
given credit for stopping the epidemic” as well as for ending a drought two
decades later—an occasion when, once again, the Mexico City populace
apparently did not collectively invoke Guadalupe in its hour of need.13

12. Jennifer Scheper Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local
Faith from the Conquest to the Present (New York, 2010); María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King,
and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780 (Stanford,
2000); William A. Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton,
1981), pp. 4, 15–16; Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981).
13. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 68, 89, 98, 216–17.

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Devotees propagated the Guadalupe cult through their patronage of
new facilities at Tepeyac. Their efforts reached a high point with the completion and 1622 dedication of a more imposing Guadalupe shrine built in
proximity to the original chapel constructed on the site. Yet even as the
new shrine was under construction, the history of the image of Our Lady
of los Remedios in Mexico by Mercedarian friar Luis de Cisneros was
published posthumously in Mexico City. Although Cisneros stated that
Guadalupe was the oldest Marian sanctuary in New Spain, he also enumerated the various Marian images that received significant veneration.
Moreover, given his primary focus on Remedios, his work recounted her
many favors to her devotees such as a heavy rain in 1616 that occurred in
Mexico City following a citywide invocation of her intercession to end a
drought. Cisneros’s book reflected the ongoing development of multiple
pious traditions among New Spain devotees and what some analysts have
exaggeratingly deemed a pitched rivalry between the Spanish Remedios
and the Mexican Guadalupe. The relatively inconsistent flow of financial
contributions to the Guadalupe shrine throughout the remaining decades
of the seventeenth century further reveals that Guadalupe’s ascent to
prominence was still not complete.14
Even when the Guadalupe image was brought from Tepeyac to the
Mexico City cathedral to combat the devastating floods of 1629 to 1634—
an occasion that scholars like Lafaye assert was pivotal in Guadalupe’s rise
to eminence over other celestial patrons of the city—Guadalupe’s “triumph” over other holy images invoked during this disaster was by no
means absolute. Poole observes that the novena to Guadalupe at the cathedral did not bring immediate relief from the flood. He further states that
“not all were in agreement that the Virgin of Guadalupe deserved credit for
ending the flood,” citing sources that at least partially attributed the celestial aid received to a Marian invocation other than Guadalupe or to saints
like St. Dominic or St. Catherine. Poole concludes that, for at least a century after the traditional 1531 date for the Guadalupe apparitions, “Remedios was more frequently invoked” by local devotees than Guadalupe, as
they typically called on Remedios for help with droughts and associated
Guadalupe with help against the less frequent occurrence of floods.15
14. Luis de Cisneros, Historia del principio y origen, progresos venidas a México y milagros
de la santa imagen de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Mexico, 1621); Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images, pp. 103–10, 139–60.” For an overview of the contents of Cisneros’s book, see
Brading, Mexican Phoenix, pp. 47–53.
15. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 97–98, 163, 218; Lafaye, Quetzalcoatl and
Guadalupe, p. 254.

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253

Yet throughout his analysis, Poole never makes an explicit connection
between the still developing and decidedly local character of the Guadalupe
tradition during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries and his
premise that arguments from silence are “very strong when the sources
would logically be expected to say something.” On the contrary, despite his
recognition that Guadalupe was still one among a number of evolving
devotions in the Mexico City vicinity, Poole consistently presumes that
historians should expect to find ample documentary evidence about
Guadalupe from the sixteenth century onward if it is indeed “the foremost
religious event of Mexican history.”16 Since Poole and other scholars argue
persuasively that the significance of Guadalupe for Mexican history was
still in its genesis during the first century of devotion to her, it is inconsistent to expect that chroniclers and noted figures of the period would necessarily have written about her. In short, although Poole disagrees with the
claim that Guadalupe had a notable impact throughout New Spain immediately after 1531, he—in presenting his argument about the silence of
those he states inexplicably left no documentary mention of Guadalupe—
effectively accepts this claim about her impact at face value. Although this
inconsistency does not completely invalidate Poole’s argument, the extent
to which he is correct about the gradual increase of a local devotion undermines his argument from silence among those he asserts historians should
reasonably expect to have spoken.
Indigenous Devotion
Poole presents a second argument from silence—albeit implicitly—in
his assessment of the early development of Guadalupan devotion among
the native peoples. He contends they participated sparingly in what was
largely a faith expression among Spaniards. According to Poole, “it was not
until the eighteenth century that the Indians began to seek refuge under
the shadow of the Virgin of Tepeyac.”17 This claim is consistent with
Poole’s primary purpose of contesting the foundational role of the apparitions to Juan Diego for the Guadalupe tradition, since presumably a religious event involving an indigenous protagonist would have incited devotion among his fellow natives.
Yet in his analysis Poole fails to consider that, since elite societal members typically produce the vast majority of available documents, the activities

16. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 75, 219.
17. Ibid., p. 126.

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and significance of marginalized groups tend to receive comparatively less
attention. Therefore the relatively scarcer mention of early indigenous devotion conceivably says as much about the perspective of those who produced
the sources as it does about the actual scope of the devotion. Moreover, in
assessing written records the potential biases of their authors must be taken
into account, particularly in cases like that of New Spain in which observations about the native peoples largely come from members of the conquering group. Of course, as in arguments from silence caution is needed in
ascertaining what an historian can reasonably infer from a critical analysis of
primary documents, the context in which they were constructed, and the
persons who produced them. A reexamination of Poole’s sources from this
perspective leads to a different conclusion about early indigenous involvement in the devotion than the one he expounds.
Depositions from a 1556 investigation into a controversial oration are
the first uncontested primary sources that illuminate devotion to Guadalupe.
Fray Francisco de Bustamante’s sermon on the feast of the Nativity of the
Virgin Mary sharply criticized Mexico City archbishop Alonso de Montúfar
for promoting Guadalupan devotion. No natives were included among the
nine witnesses who testified in the subsequent inquiry that Archbishop
Montúfar ordered, since Bustamante preached his sermon to the viceroy and
other dignitaries in the chapel of a Franciscan cloister. Nonetheless, Bustamante reportedly avowed that “one of the most pernicious things that anyone
could sustain against the proper Christianity of the natives was the devotion
to Our Lady of Guadalupe” and called on the viceroy and other royal officials
present in the congregation to “remedy this great evil.” He accused the archbishop of being “very deceived” in thinking that the indigenous were not particularly devoted to “Our Lady,” warning of the danger that natives would
abandon or waver in the Christian faith if their pleas to her for miracles went
unanswered. A lawyer related that he had seen both Spaniards and native
peoples enter the Guadalupe chapel “with great devotion, many of them
[proceeding] on their knees from the door to the altar where the blessed
image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is located.” The final witness commented
that “all kinds of people, noble citizens and Indians” frequented the
Guadalupe chapel, although some natives had grown lukewarm in their
devotion at the command of the Franciscans. He added, however, that Bustamante’s sermon “had not stopped the devotion, but rather it had increased
even more” in the weeks following his oration.18
18. Ibid., pp. 58–64. Cited quotations are from “Información por el sermón de 1556,”
repr. in de la Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda, eds., Testimonios históricos, pp. 36–72, here
pp. 44, 58, 71.

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Bustamante’s reticence about Guadalupan devotion was echoed in the
observations of his fellow Franciscan, Bernardino de Sahagún. He decried
Guadalupan veneration, stating it disguised the “idolatry” of indigenous
devotees who in precolumbian times “had a temple dedicated to the
mother of the gods, whom they called Tonantzin” on the hill of Tepeyac,
the same site as the Guadalupe chapel. Thus he alleged that the natives
continued to worship Tonantzin in the image of Guadalupe. Poole contests the claim that there was a shrine and cult to a mother goddess at
Tepeyac in the precolumbian era, citing Louise Burkhart’s argument that
Tonantzin was not a proper name but a common noun denoting “our
mother” used to address the Virgin Mary under various titles beginning in
the sixteenth century. Whether Poole is correct or not, the protestations of
Sahagún and Bustamante reveal that at least some missionaries feared
Guadalupan devotion was sufficiently prevalent among the native peoples
to endanger Christian missionary endeavors. Conversely, like Montúfar,
other Catholic leaders extolled the good influence of Guadalupan devotion
among the natives, as in 1576 when Mexico City archbishop Pedro Moya
de Contreras and Jesuit Superior General Everard Mercurian requested
that Pope Gregory XIII extend a plenary indulgence to those who visited
and prayed at the Guadalupe chapel. The official decree for the indulgence
noted that the indigenous people’s “eminent devotion” to Guadalupe had
induced the conversion of numerous natives “to faith in Christ.”19
Like primary documents that provide glimpses of early Spanish devotion to Guadalupe, various sources reveal indigenous veneration. Sahagún’s
protestation of the Guadalupe cult included his testimony about substantial indigenous devotion, although his claims are probably exaggerated
given his intent to thwart what he perceived as dangerous native enthusiasm. The 1563 will of Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin, a Nahuatl
lord from Teotihuacan (about thirty miles from Mexico City), bequeathed
four pesos so the priest assigned to the Guadalupe chapel would offer
Masses on his behalf after his death. His will also stated that “to Our Lady
the Blessed Virgin Mary, queen of heaven, I ask that she be my advocate

19. Bernardino de Sahagún, “Sobre supersticiones,” appendix to Historia general de las
cosas de Nueva España, book XI (1576), repr. in de la Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda, eds.,
Testimonios históricos, pp. 142–44; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 76–79, 92–93; Louise M.
Burkhart, “The Cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico,” in South and Meso-American Native
Spirituality: From the Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation, ed. Gary H.
Gossen in collaboration with Miguel León-Portilla (New York, 1993), pp. 207–09; Gregory
XIII, Ut deiparae semper virginis, March 2, 1576, repr. in González Fernández, Chávez Sánchez,
and Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, pp. 557–60.

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before her precious son, the redeemer of the world.” An entry in Indian
official Juan Bautista’s chronicle of events described a 1566 procession to
Tepeyac in which Spanish dignitaries “and all of us Indians” participated.
An anonymous author’s 1634 poem recounted the return of the Guadalupe
image from Mexico City where she was brought to intercede during the
floods of 1629–34. The poet attested that the general populace processed
Guadalupe part of the way back to Tepeyac, whereas the following day
indigenous devotees held a separate procession to escort her image the rest
of the way. Other sources reveal that by the early-seventeenth century,
native peoples and Spaniards each conducted their own fiesta seasons at
Tepeyac.20
As is typically the case with sacred sites and images, the growth of
Guadalupe’s fame among both indigenous and Spanish devotees is linked
to testimonies of miracles and favors granted through her intercession.
Three primary sources present the earliest composite records of
Guadalupe’s reported interventions on behalf of her faithful, most of them
involving cures from various afflictions. Samuel Stradanus, a Flemish artist
and New Spain resident, made an engraving (c. 1613) that depicts the
Guadalupe image surrounded by eight scenes of miracles devotees attributed to her, apparently drawn from ex-votos enshrined by these supplicants
at the Guadalupe chapel. These eight scenes and six other miracles are presented in narrative form in the Nican motecpana (“here is an ordered
account”), first published in Laso de la Vega’s 1649 Nahuatl-language
work Huei tlamahuiçoltica (“By a Great Miracle”). Sánchez’s book published the previous year, Imagen de la Virgen María, recounts seven miracles
attributed to Guadalupe; six of these are also narrated in the Nican motecpana, and three are depicted in the Stradanus engraving.21

20. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 51, 78, 87; Sahagún, “Sobre supersticiones”;
Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin, Testamento (Will), April 2, 1563, repr. in González
Fernández, Chávez Sánchez, and Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y
Juan Diego, pp. 363–64; Juan Bautista, Anales, repr. in ibid., pp. 325–26; Martinus Cawley,
Anthology of Early Guadalupan Literature (Lafayette, OR, 1984), pp. 79–80; Taylor, Shrines
and Miraculous Images, p. 125.
21. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 118–24; Sousa, Poole, and Lockhart, ed. and
trans., Story of Guadalupe, pp. 92–115; Miguel Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María . . .
(Mexico City, 1648), repr. in de la Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda, eds., Testimonios
históricos, pp. 152–267, Guadalupan miracles recounted on pp. 245–55. The Stradanus
engraving is reprinted in Jaime Cuadriello, Carmen de Monserrat Robledo Galván, and Beatriz Berndt León Mariscal, La Reina de las Américas: Works of Art from the Museum of the Basílica
de Guadalupe (Chicago, 1996), p. 106. The most detailed treatment of the Stradanus engraving is Peterson, “Canonizing a Cult,” pp. 125–56.

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Poole points out that, in the Stradanus engraving, “all the persons
involved were Spaniards; no miracle benefits an Indian.” However,
although he also mentions that Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna of
Mexico City commissioned the Stradanus engraving and its prints to
solicit donations for a new church edifice at Tepeyac, he draws no connection between the fund-raising purpose of the engraving and its focus on
miraculous occurrences among Spanish devotees. It is at least as plausible
to conclude that the exclusive depiction of Spaniards reflects a desire to
attract potential donors as it is to deduce that these depictions indicate the
ethnic composition of Guadalupan devotees. Similarly, although Poole
notes that “Laso de la Vega’s few commentaries [on the miracle narratives]
tended to stress the Virgin Mary’s love and concern for the Indians,” he
also observes that “the majority of the miracles narrated by Sánchez and
Laso de la Vega involve Spaniards, not Indians.” But he does not point out
that, of the four incidents narrated by Sánchez that Stradanus did not
depict, three exclusively involve native peoples as beneficiaries of
Guadalupe’s care, and the fourth concerns the 1629–34 flood in Mexico
City, when Guadalupe aided residents of all social backgrounds. In Laso
de la Vega’s work, four of the six incidents not depicted in Stradanus
involve indigenous devotees, as might be expected from a book that is
functionally a manual for clergy working among native communities. One
“miracle” even recounted Guadalupe’s defense of natives against the
decrees of the Spanish viceroy—she reportedly convinced the official to
rescind his mandate to remove the Franciscans from their community at
Teotihuacan and to desist from punishing the natives there who had
opposed his order. Seen in this light, the two earliest narrative collections
of Guadalupe miracles actually counteract the Spanish exclusivity of the
Stradanus engraving, which their authors apparently used as a source.22
The first official initiative to gather indigenous testimony about the
Guadalupe tradition provides yet further evidence of indigenous devotion.
When the cathedral chapter of Mexico City sought papal promulgation of
a Guadalupe feast day and proper office for all of New Spain, they con-

22. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 108, 119, 122, 124; Sousa, Poole, and Lockhart,
ed. and trans., The Story of Guadalupe, p. 111. Poole states that only three of the fourteen incidents recounted in the Nican motecpana benefit Indians, but in his own summary he actually
presents four, and that number is consistent with the original document. Peterson contends that
the Stradanus engraving depicts one miracle that benefits a native—the cure of sacristan Juan
Pavón’s son. Although none of the cited primary sources categorize Pavón’s ethnic background,
Peterson’s identification of Pavón as a “token” native in an engraving predominantly intended
to entice elite patrons is plausible. Peterson, “Canonizing a Cult,” pp. 139, 150, 155n26.

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ducted an inquiry into the Guadalupe tradition to bolster their case. The
1665–66 investigation encompassed testimonies from twenty witnesses—
twelve Spaniards or criollos (the designation in the Spanish caste system for
persons of Spanish blood born in the New World) interviewed in Mexico
City and eight residents of Cuauhtitlan, the place traditionally considered
Juan Diego’s hometown. Seven of the Cuauhtitlan interviewees were
indigenous and gave their testimony through a Nahuatl-Spanish interpreter. The other was a mestizo (a person of mixed European and Native
American ancestry). Although the Sánchez and Laso de la Vega volumes
were published before the inquiry and clearly shaped its findings, the witnesses encompassed a number of elderly informants who had a much
longer lived experience of Guadalupan devotion than these two clergy
authors. Nonetheless, caution must be exercised in assessing the value of
the testimonies. As Poole observes, “those who spearheaded the inquiry
were enthusiastic advocates of the devotion” and “the questions asked were
very leading and contained a synopsis of the entire apparition account,
which the witnesses were asked to verify.” Moreover, interviewees’
“responses generally followed the interrogatory closely, almost verbatim,
though with variations in detail, more so among the Indians than among
the Spaniards [and criollos].” Hence, witnesses were influenced both by the
information provided in the questions and by what they thought the officials interviewing them wanted to hear.23
Consequently, the most useful information from the inquiry is contained in statements that go beyond what the interviewers specified or
implied in their questions. In this regard, the fifth of the nine questions is
particularly important. It addressed Juan Diego’s life and virtues, a crucial
consideration since the holiness of someone who had allegedly experienced
an apparition is one sign—or countersign—of the apparition’s validity. All
the witnesses affirmed Juan Diego’s integrity; in the words of the question
posed, they stated he was indeed a “good Christian.” But the responses of
the Mexico City witnesses tended to affirm merely a general tradition of
Juan Diego’s virtuous reputation, whereas those of the Cuauhtitlan witnesses offered various further details about Juan Diego not expounded in
the questions. Multiple witnesses attest, for example, that an aged picture
in a room at the local Cuauhtitlan parish church depicted Juan Diego; his

23. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 128–43, here pp. 138–39. A facsimile and transcription of the official inquiry are in Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan
Diego en las informaciones jurídicas de 1666 (2nd ed., Mexico City, 2002). For the questions
asked in the inquiry, see pp. 149–54.

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259

uncle, Juan Bernardino; and the Franciscan missioner Pedro de Gante.
Another distinguishing feature of the Cuauhtitlan respondents, who
reportedly ranged in age from seventy-eight to over 100 and were nearly all
older than the Mexico City interviewees, was that most of them recounted
parents, grandparents, aunts, or neighbors who knew Juan Diego personally and told them about him. Marcos Pacheco recalled his aunt’s frequent
plea that “God would do to you [and your brothers] what he did to Juan
Diego.” Echoing an incidence conveyed in the books of Sánchez and Laso
de la Vega and mentioned in various interviews from the official inquiry,
Gabriel Suárez stated that his parents told him Juan Diego resided and
served at the Guadalupe ermita after the apparitions. But he also added a
further observation: local natives often visited Juan Diego there “to ask that
he intercede for them with the Most Holy Virgin to give them good seasons [harvests] in their maize fields.”24
Although Poole does not specify a time frame, he concludes that
the Indian witnesses at the 1665 to 1666 inquiry gave evidence of an
incipient cultus: how the Indians sought Juan Diego’s intercession for
good harvests and how they regarded him as a holy and upright man who
led a retired and penitential life at Tepeyac.

Yet arguably the greatest oversight in Poole’s assessment of early indigenous ties to Guadalupe is his lack of attention to those who lived near—
and presumably cared for—the Guadalupe shrine. Evaluating the observations of Englishman Miles Philips when he passed by Tepeyac in 1573,
Poole concludes that “Philips’s account described the devotion as being a
Spanish rather than an Indian one.” But his long quotation from Philips
encompasses the remark that “about this Church [the Guadalupe chapel]
there is not any town of Spaniards that is inhabited, but certain Indians do
dwell there in houses of their own country building.” Poole draws a comparable conclusion about comments in an official visitation report of Franciscan houses in New Spain, which was conducted by Alonso Ponce, the
order’s Commissary General. In Poole’s words, the report “emphasized
that the devotion at Guadalupe was a Spanish, not an Indian, one.” The
report itself states that in July 1585, the party passed near Guadalupe, “a
small town of Mexican [Nahua] Indians and in it, situated on a hill, an
ermita or church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where the Spaniards of
Mexico [City] go to keep vigil and to have novenas.” Although this passage

24. Ibid., pp. 152, 166, 178–79.

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THE ORIGINS OF THE GUADALUPE TRADITION IN MEXICO

highlights the devotion of Spaniards who visited the shrine, it equally
relates that native peoples were the only ones who actually lived around it.
A 1570 report of the chaplain of the shrine, Antonio Freire, stated that
about 100 unmarried and 150 married adult Indians lived there, and in the
surrounding area there were about thirty or forty slaves and six sheep
ranches owned by Spainards.25
Poole cites these three independent sources, but does not allude to the
indigenous population living at Tepeyac, nor inquire as to their significance for developments at the Guadalupe shrine. Moreover, he draws no
connection between this indigenous community and the claim of Cuauhtitlan witnesses in the 1665–66 inquiry that a native named Juan Diego lived
and prayed with his fellow devotees at Tepeyac. The lack of more detailed
sixteenth-century records about the native residents around the Guadalupe
shrine is not surprising, since Tepeyac was three miles outside the colonial
city where ecclesiastical and civil authorities resided, and activities conducted apart from the watchful eye of authorities are less likely to be
noticed or commented upon, particularly everyday occurrences among
lower status residents. Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that the residents
of Tepeyac did not participate in whatever processions and festivities they
were allowed to attend. It is even less likely that they neglected to seek
celestial aid from Guadalupe amidst growing reports that she affected “a
number of miracles.”26 The fact that, save for the resident chaplain, everyone living near the Guadalupe shrine was of Nahuatl background—according to indigenous testimony that included, for some span of time, the venerable Juan Diego—is yet another element of the evidence for early native
involvement in the evolution of the Guadalupe tradition.
Poole’s repeated statements that the Guadalupe cult was “more a
Spanish than an Indian devotion in 1556 [the year of the Bustamante
sermon and inquiry]” and that there is “no clear evidence of a strong Indian
devotion, at least not after 1556”27 fail to account for the indicators of
indigenous devotion discernible through analysis of the documentary evidence. His conclusion is based on the more numerous and relatively more
elaborate descriptions of Spanish devotion in predominantly Spanishauthored sources. Given the relative scarcity of indigenous-authored
sources, however, documents like those of natives Verdugo Quetzalmamal25. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 67, 70–71, 88, 224–25.
26. Miles Philips, description of 1573 visit to the Guadalupe shrine at Tepeyac, as cited
in ibid., p. 70.
27. Ibid., pp. 64, 99.

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261

itzin and Bautista and the subsequent recorded testimony of the Cuauhtitlan interviewees suggest the more extensive remarks about Spanish devotion reflect the perceptions of the Spaniards who primarily recorded those
observations. Moreover, even the sources produced by Spaniards and other
Europeans provide evidence of indigenous devotion, sometimes directly
and in other instances only through a critical reading of their contents.
Although the magnitude of early indigenous devotion remains an open
question, it cannot be answered conclusively through a quantitative assessment of comments in sources largely produced by Spaniards. Poole is correct that indigenous devotion was not widespread. But the same was true
of Spanish devotion during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries,
which also was largely confined to the immediate environs of Tepeyac and
Mexico City. Even in that vicinity, it was not yet the most influential
among a wide array of pious traditions. Accordingly, in examining the origins of the Guadalupe tradition, it is important to bear in mind that
indigenous devotion evolved simultaneously with that of Spaniards. As
Taylor concludes, “it was not primarily an Indian devotion” in the early
period, yet in the vicinity of Tepeyac and Mexico City, “clearly there were
many Indian devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”28
Sánchez and the Search for Origins
Poole’s conclusions regarding the limited extent of early indigenous
devotion and the lack of early documentation for an apparition tradition
support his “suspicion that the apparition story, as it is now known, was
largely the work of Miguel Sánchez,” who wrote the first published
account of the apparitions (Imagen de la Virgen María, 1648). Sánchez
studied at the Royal and Pontifical University in Mexico City and was
respected for his learning and preaching. His assignments as a priest
included service as chaplain at the Our Lady of los Remedios sanctuary
near Mexico City, but he lived out the last phase of his life at the
Guadalupe shrine until his death and burial there in 1674. Poole allows
that Sánchez’s “primary source . . . seems to have been some form of oral
tradition among the natives.” He even hypothesizes that “the interrogatory
of 1665 to 1666 [reveals] the possibility of an unwritten native tradition of
an apparition,” and “in all probability the works of Sánchez and Laso de la
Vega popularized one version of the native tradition.”29 But Poole contends that, whatever the precise content of this oral tradition (or tradi-

28. Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images, p. 125.
29. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 150, 223.

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THE ORIGINS OF THE GUADALUPE TRADITION IN MEXICO

tions), Sánchez liberally modified it in his written version. Thus, contrary
to the position that the substance of the apparition tradition originated
among indigenous converts and Spanish church officials—particularly Juan
Diego and Zumárraga—Poole asserts that Sánchez was not only the first
published author but also the primary architect of the apparition narrative
and of the claim for its foundational status in Guadalupan devotion.
Sánchez had an undeniably pivotal influence on the Guadalupe tradition;
however, Poole’s assessment of his contribution and its relation to the origins of the tradition require critical scrutiny.
Readings of Imagen de la Virgen María have encompassed positivist
condemnations for Sánchez’s lack of historical documentation and laudatory praise for his defense of pious tradition. The ambiguous statement
about historical sources in the opening pages of Sánchez’s book only serves
to exacerbate debate about the significance of his work for the Guadalupe
apparition tradition:
With determination, eagerness, and diligence I looked for documents
and writings that dealt with the holy image and its miracle. I did not find
them, although I went through the archives where they could have been
kept. I learned that through the accident of time and events those that
there were had been lost. I appealed to the providential curiosity of the
elderly, in which I found some sufficient for the truth. Not content I
examined them in all their circumstances, now confronting the chronicles
of the conquest, now gathering information from the oldest and most
trustworthy persons of the city, now looking for those who were said to
have been the original owners of these papers. And I admit that even if
everything would have been lacking to me, I would not have desisted
from my purpose, when I had on my side the common, grave, and venerated law of tradition, ancient, uniform, and general about the miracle.

Various Guadalupan writers have bemoaned Sánchez’s failure to cite
clearly sources such as José Patricio Fernández de Uribe, who stated in an
eighteenth-century book on Guadalupe that “this respectable author
[Sánchez] would have done a great service to posterity had he left us with
a precise record of the documents used in his volume.” Poole echoes such
laments in his statement that “Sánchez is maddeningly vague when referring to his sources.”30

30. Ibid., p. 102; Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, p. 158; José Patricio Fernández
de Uribe, Disertación histórica . . . (Mexico City, 1801), p. 71, as cited in de la Torre Villar and
Navarro de Anda, eds., Testimonios históricos, p. 1158.

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Art historian Francisco de la Maza opened a new chapter in the interpretation of Sánchez’s work, if not in the understanding of the Guadalupe
tradition itself, with the publication of his El guadalupanismo mexicano
(1953). His fascination with New Spain’s baroque period and his sympathetic reading of Sánchez and subsequent Guadalupan writers fashioned
his bold new thesis—the energetic promotion of Guadalupan devotion was
rooted in the intrinsic association of patriotism and religious piety, particularly among clergy like Sánchez who were criollo natives of New Spain.
Lafaye expanded on de la Maza’s thesis, positing that a central theme in
Sánchez’s work is his criollo claim of New Spain’s divine election. He concludes that Sánchez is
the true founder of the Mexican patria, for on the exegetic bases which
he constructed in the mid-seventeenth century that patria would flower
until she won her political independence under the banner of Guadalupe.
From the day the Mexicans began to regard themselves as a chosen
people, they were potentially liberated from Spanish tutelage.31

Poole only briefly cites de la Maza’s work, disagrees with some of
Lafaye’s findings, and contends in general that the “weakness [of Lafaye’s
study] lies precisely in his flawed analysis of the growth and development
of the apparition/devotion” that, in Poole’s view, exaggerates native
people’s involvement in that growth and development. Yet overall, Poole
concurs with the criollo interpretation developed by de la Maza and Lafaye.
Poole categorizes Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María as “a florid, complex
celebration of criollismo” and concludes that “criollismo is the central theme
of the book.” He argues that Sánchez is significant both for providing the
first published apparition account and for “bonding it [the apparition narrative] to criollo identity.” According to Poole, “the story of the apparitions
is little more than a framework on which Sánchez can build his criollo
interpretations” of the providential election of New Spain’s native sons and
daughters revealed through the singular blessing of nothing less than the
Virgin Mary’s “second birth” in their homeland. Hence, if Sánchez is
indeed largely the creator of the apparition narrative, Poole posits his
motive—the story served the cause of Sánchez’s criollo patriotism.32
Such conclusions overstate the criollo emphasis that Lafaye and de la
Maza unveiled in Sánchez’s writing. Indeed, although Sánchez professed

31. Francisco de la Maza, El guadalupanismo mexicano (Mexico City, 1953); Lafaye,
Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, p. 250.
32. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 2, 6, 100, 106.

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THE ORIGINS OF THE GUADALUPE TRADITION IN MEXICO

Guadalupe as “a native of this land and its first creole woman,” he also presumed that the Spanish conquest of Mexico was an act of divine providence, deeming Guadalupe as Spain’s “assistant conqueror” and attesting
that the “heathenism of the New World” was “conquered with her aid.”
Overall, Sánchez addressed the Spanish conquest and indigenous conversion far more extensively than he did the divine election of criollos. The
general tone of his book is an explicit validation of Spanish conquest and
evangelization alongside an implicit criollo native pride. Moreover, Sánchez
asserted that, among Marian images, the criolla Guadalupe complements
the Spanish Our Lady of los Remedios in a manner that parallels the biblical figures of Naomi and Ruth. Like Naomi, the native of Bethlehem,
Guadalupe was a native of Mexico; like Ruth, Remedios was a foreigner
who migrated to provide her love and assistance in a new land. According
to Sánchez, both virgins were equally deserving of veneration. Although
the seeds of criollo patriotism planted in Sánchez’s text would in time bear
fruit among his fellow American-born priests and their compatriots, reading Imagen de la Virgen María merely as a criollo patriotic oration by no
means exhausts the meaning of this crucial work in the development of the
Guadalupe tradition.33
Poole’s analysis is based on the premise that Sánchez wrote “as a
hagiographer, not a historian.” In fact, Sánchez was, first and foremost, a
theologian and pastor. Even a cursory reading of Sánchez’s work reveals his
admiration and extensive study of St. Augustine and other Fathers of the
early Church. Although he cites a wide range of thinkers from Aristotle
and St. Thomas Aquinas to his own theological contemporaries, Sánchez
refers to Augustine more than two dozen times and also liberally quotes
from other leading theologians of the early Church such as St. Ambrose,
St. Jerome, Tertullian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyprian, St. Basil the
Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Clement of Alexandria, among
others. Imagen de la Virgen María encompasses five major sections:
Guadalupe’s providential role in the conquest of Mexico; the apparition
account; a theological reflection on the image itself; a summary of postapparition developments in the Guadalupe site and tradition; and a narration and analysis of seven miracles attributed to Guadalupe. Throughout
his treatise, Sánchez liberally interjects theological references and scriptural
images, as in his analogy of Moses, Mount Sinai, and the Ark of the
Covenant with Juan Diego, Tepeyac, and the Guadalupe image. Collectively, the five sections of Sánchez’s book are intended to incite the reader
33. Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, pp. 179, 191, 247–48, 257.

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toward a deeper contemplation of Guadalupe: in Mexican history, in the
apparitions, in her image, in the providential site of her sanctuary, and in
the favors she bestows on those who turn to her. Whatever his criollo biases
and historical sources (or lack thereof) for the apparition narrative,
Sánchez’s primary focus was to expound a series of biblical and theological
reflections on what he presented as an established pious tradition.34
Recognizing the core intention and contents of Sánchez’s work helps
address what Poole deems the “strange” juxtaposition in Imagen de la
Virgen María of an apparition story “directed toward the Indians” with
Sánchez’s “unrestrained criollo interpretations.” Poole concludes that
“Sánchez took a cult story that should have been exclusively Indian and
appropriated it for the criollos.”35 But he does not offer a convincing
rationale for Sánchez’s choice of Juan Diego as protagonist in the apparition narrative, if indeed Sánchez himself largely invented the apparition
account to foment criollo patriotism. Neither does Poole present a logical
justification for Sánchez adding three miracles that solely benefited natives
to the three miracle accounts benefiting Spaniards that he apparently borrowed from Stradanus, while failing to recount a single miracle with identified criollo beneficiaries. Clearly the criollo emphasis in Sánchez is a subtext to his primary contribution to the Guadalupe tradition: his is the first
and arguably the most influential theological attempt to examine that tradition in light of Christian scriptures and teachings, particularly as filtered
through the interpretive lens of the church Fathers.36
Origins of the Guadalupe Tradition
Extant documentation reveals that Guadalupan devotion was still
largely concentrated in the Mexico City area at the time Sánchez wrote his
volume. It also shows that Sánchez’s book marks a transition point
between a tradition that initially evolved among both indigenous and
Spanish devotees, and one that grew among criollos as they became more
demographically and socially prominent in New Spain. No available
records from Sánchez’s contemporaries recount any accusations claiming
he contrived the apparition account. No debate about his statements is
known to have occurred during Sánchez’s lifetime that parallels the
34. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 106; Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, esp.
p. 257.
35. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 107.
36. Timothy Matovina, “Guadalupe at Calvary: Patristic Theology in Miguel Sánchez’s
Imagen de la Virgen María (1648),” Theological Studies, 64 (2003), 795–811.

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Guadalupan Bustamante-Montúfar controversy a century earlier. The
growth of New Spain’s criollos and their increasing enthusiasm about
Guadalupe’s election of their homeland—as evidenced in numerous passages from the nearly 100 Guadalupan sermons published in the 150 years
after Sánchez’s book was released—comprise one plausible explanation for
this lack of criticism. Moreover, it was a Spaniard who first publicly contested the historicity of the apparitions, doing so in a 1794 address to the
Royal Academy of History in Madrid amidst rising criollo patriotism that
finally sparked the war for Mexican independence from Spain less than two
decades later. Yet the extensive—and no doubt largely unforeseen—effects
that Sánchez’s ideas ignited among his fellow criollos do not constitute evidence regarding his intentions when he actually composed his volume.
Furthermore, as Cornelius Conover has convincingly argued, the spread of
Guadalupan devotion over a century after the publication of Sánchez’s
volume was “less determined by the triumphant rise of creole consciousness
than by such factors as her reputation for miraculous power, changes in the
cult of saints in Mexico City, the support of high-ranking men, and excellent [fortuitous] timing” in the history of the devotion’s evolution.37
Thus one insight about the origins of the Guadalupe tradition is conventional but nonetheless important: Imagen de la Virgen María and its first
published account of the Guadalupe apparitions are best interpreted in
light of the Guadalupan devotion that preceded them and shaped Sánchez
at the time of their composition, not the posterior influence of his publication on criollo consciousness. Sánchez was not a historian—and certainly
not one according to the modern standards of the discipline. Attempts to
read his work as a source for the origins of the Guadalupe tradition pose
questions that his writings were never intended to answer. In the end, the
only clue offered by Sánchez regarding the genesis of the apparition narrative is that he presumed it was a local pious tradition, which he sought to
make known and interpret theologically.
The most important insight is that, from the first stages of the
Guadalupe tradition, indigenous devotion and understandings of
Guadalupe grew simultaneously alongside those of their Spanish counterparts, albeit in the local context of the Mexico City area. Available evidence
shows Nahuatl approaches to Guadalupe’s celestial aid were consistent with
37. Francisco Raymond Schulte, Mexican Spirituality: Its Sources and Mission in the Earliest Guadalupan Sermons (Lanham, MD, 2002); Cornelius Conover, “Reassessing the Rise of
Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe, 1650s–1780s,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 27 (2011),
251–79, here 255.

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267

the Spanish Catholic tendency to view God as stern and distant, inciting
appeals to Guadalupe and other Marian figures as compassionate mothers
and intercessors. As Louise Burkhart concludes, the Nahuas learned well
the Spanish practice of approaching Mary in her various representations as
a “protector and advocate.” Yet to some extent natives also adapted Spanish
Catholic practices and the symbolic world they mediated to suit their own
life situations. Thus, as Burkhart also concludes, the Guadalupe cult “developed over time in answer to the spiritual and practical needs of a wide variety of worshipers.”38 Separate indigenous processions, seasons of feasts, and
accounts of miraculous assistance are consistent with this observation, as is
some natives’ everyday contact with Guadalupe through their residence near
Tepeyac. According to the Cuauhtitlan witnesses in the 1665–66 Guadalupan inquiry, indigenous veneration of Juan Diego was yet another distinct
strand of Nahuatl devotion. The absence of references to existing Juan
Diego devotion in other sources—including Sánchez, Laso de la Vega, and
the Mexico City witnesses in the official inquiry—lends further credence to
the conclusion that these native witnesses spoke of a devotion to Juan Diego
generated among their own communities, not one borrowed from Spanish
or criollo informants.
Evidence for early indigenous Guadalupan devotion is particularly
important for examining the origins of belief in Juan Diego’s encounters
with Guadalupe, since the existence of natives’ devotion necessitates considering their possible influences on the apparition tradition. It is not surprising, of course, that indigenous devotees would be the first to honor the
unanticipated hero Juan Diego, both because he was one of their own and
because most Spaniards and criollos did not tend to regard the natives
highly. As a number of contemporary commentators have observed, the
apparition story at its core is neither about criollo election nor about Spanish election, but rather about Guadalupe’s providential choosing of an
indigenous neophyte as her emissary. These commentators point out, for
example, the dramatic reversals effected in the course of the apparition narrative such as Juan Diego’s transformation from rejected native to messenger of Guadalupe, the bishop’s changing attitude toward Juan Diego from
initial suspicion to confidence, and the shifting geographic focus from the
38. Burkhart, “Cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” pp. 198, 211; Burkhart, Before
Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature (Albany, NY, 2001), esp. pp.
115–48. For a similar argument about Guadalupe’s multivalent appeal to diverse groups and
classes, see Peterson’s analysis of artistic representations of the Guadalupe image from the
seventeenth to the twentieth centuries in her “The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest
or Liberation?,” Art Journal, 51 (1992), 39–47.

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bishop’s residence in the capital city to the outlying indigenous settlement
of Tepeyac, where in the end the bishop and his entourage accompany Juan
Diego to build the temple that Guadalupe requested.39
Poole notes that such interpretations were not articulated in written
form until recent decades and avers that they are largely fanciful projections, contending that without documented historical evidence about the
apparitions “the symbolism [of Guadalupe] loses any objectivity it may
have had and is at the mercy of propagandists and special interests.” He
further notes that Sánchez and the vast majority of criollo preachers who
published sermons after him did not treat the indigenous focus in the
apparition story, their occasional references to Juan Diego and the native
peoples vastly overshadowed by the themes of “criollismo and the sense of
[criollo] special election.”40 But the failure of these Guadalupan writers to
consider the election of the native Juan Diego does not negate the obvious
elevation of a native in the apparition narrative itself—a certainly surprising occurrence given the criollo authors of the earliest published versions. If
Sánchez planted seeds of criollo patriotism that subsequently gave rise to
the struggle for Mexican independence, the story that he and his fellow
criollo Laso de la Vega recounted also planted seeds of native dignity and
celestial election that reaped a harvest among indigenous devotees and
eventually among Guadalupan writers as well.
None of this is surprising, since influential sacred stories and texts
inevitably have a history of interpretation. Indeed, typically the meaning of
powerful religious traditions like Guadalupe is not debated because their
origins are disputed; their meaning is debated precisely because the tradition has such a potent sway over devotees and, in Guadalupe’s case, even
over entire populations. In the search for the genesis of the Guadalupe
apparition story, the heart of the matter is not whether or how criollo patriots or any subsequent group interpreted it to suit their own purposes.
Rather, what matters are the people and the circumstances that initially
gave rise to the apparition tradition. The history of indigenous devotion, a
critical analysis of Sánchez’s publication, and the contents of the apparition
narrative itself point to a greater native influence in the formation of that
tradition than Poole posits.

39. For an overview of contemporary theological interpretations of Guadalupe, see
Timothy Matovina, “Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Spanish Colonial Era to Pope John
Paul II,” Theological Studies, 70 (2009), 78–88.
40. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 14, 187.

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269

Poole employs a decidedly all-or-nothing approach—either there are
documents verifying to his satisfaction that the standard apparition story
and the current Guadalupe image existed at the very outset of the devotion,
or these traditions are later inventions and therefore lack credibility. He
discounts any potential evidence that does not closely coincide with the
narrative details in the accounts of Sánchez and Laso de la Vega (which,
between them, do not agree in every detail), even to the point of contending that sixteenth-century documents mentioning a Guadalupan appearance at Tepeyac in 1555 or 1556 are dubious because they do not cite the
1531 date given in the consensus account. More generally, Poole fails to
consider how the decidedly local character of the devotion during its first
century of development affects arguments from silence. Consequently, he
fails to address adequately how this local character decreases the likelihood
that extant sources will answer all the questions asked retrospectively by
scholars, devotees, and the curious about a tradition that later came to have
such a pervasive impact on Mexican history and Catholicism.
Ultimately, Poole’s intent is not to ascertain what a historian can reasonably infer from the primary sources he himself accepts as valid, but to
disprove the claim that reports of an apparition initiated the Guadalupe
cult. His argument from silence presumes a tradition about the experiences
of an ordinary devotee that evolved simultaneously with other—even competing—local traditions loses all credibility if only later it gains foundational status through its codification in a written text. This presumption is
inconsistent with the developmental trajectory of various religious movements, holy places, and the sacred texts associated with them, from the
multiple accounts of the Exodus written down centuries after the fact in
the Hebrew scriptures to origin stories associated with miraculous crosses
and apparition sites throughout the Americas.
Poole’s conclusions rest on at least three shaky foundations: an argument from silence weakened by the local character of Guadalupan devotion
in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, a refutable claim that the
devotion began and evolved among Spaniards with little or no native
involvement, and the hypothesis that Sánchez largely constructed the
apparition narrative to bolster criollo patriotism. Moreover, Poole offers no
explicit evidence for his inference that Sánchez either exercised extensive
poetic license or outright lied in his writing and that other sources like the
interviewees in the 1665–66 inquiry were then complicit in his fabrication.
Given the available evidence that Poole and nearly all historians of the origins debate accept as valid, a more plausible conclusion is that natives participated in the development of a local devotion—one that encompassed an

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THE ORIGINS OF THE GUADALUPE TRADITION IN MEXICO

oral tradition about a saintly indigenous neophyte whose experiences of
Guadalupe eventually were codified and elevated to foundational status
through the publications of Sánchez and Laso de la Vega. Admittedly this
conclusion leaves various questions unanswered, not the least of which is a
precise timeline for the origin and development of the apparition tradition.
Nor will this conclusion satisfy many devotees who understand the apparition account first published in Sánchez more as eyewitness testimony than
as a theological reflection on an oral tradition about a mystical experience.
Nonetheless, the reassessment of Poole’s sources presented in this essay
reveals that exploring the early history of Guadalupan devotion sheds significant light on the search for its origins and on the apparition tradition
that has so powerfully shaped its development.

A Response to Timothy Matovina
STAFFORD POOLE, C.M.*
According to a widely accepted tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared in
December 1531 to an indigenous neophyte named Juan Diego on a hill
outside of Mexico City. The devotion to the Virgin under the title of
Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of history’s outstanding examples of the
union of religious devotion and nationalism. Beginning in the lateeighteenth century, however, there has been a controversy over the historical truth of the tradition. In an article in this issue, Timothy
Matovina critiques the author’s works on this subject. What follows is
a response to his criticisms.
Keywords: apparition narrative, Juan Diego, Our Lady of
Guadalupe

O

n April 18, 1794, a Spanish priest-historian named Juan Bautista
Muñoz (1745–99) delivered the lecture “A Report on the Apparitions and Devotion of Our Lady of Guadalupe” before the Royal Academy
of History in Madrid. The reference was not to the Spanish devotion in
Extremadura but to the one centered at the hill of Tepeyac just north of
Mexico City, the scene of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego in 1531. Because of the prolonged silence surrounding the Mexican cultus, Muñoz concluded that it had no historical
validity. His was the first major critique of the tradition of the apparitions
of the Dark Virgin.1 During a large part of the nineteenth century, historical writings on Guadalupe centered on refutations of Muñoz.
The next major stage in the controversy was a private letter to the
archbishop of Mexico by the person who was Mexico’s most widely

*Father Poole is former professor of history and president of St. John’s Seminary College, email: Spoole541@aol.com.
1. Testimonios históricos guadalupanos, ed. Ernesto de la Torre Villar and Ramiro
Navarro de Anda (Mexico City, 1982), pp. 689–701 (hereafter cited as THG). See also Poole,
Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797
(Tucson, 1995), pp. 206–07; idem, The Guadalupan Controversies in Mexico (Stanford, 2006),
pp. 15–16. The author thanks Louise Burkhart; Susan Schroeder; and James Heft, S.M., for
their comments and suggestions about this response.

271

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respected historian. Joaquín García Icazbalceta (1825–94) had a long and
distinguished career as a pioneer in Mexican historical studies. In 1881 he
published a classic biography of Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop and
archbishop of Mexico City.2 Although he was a devout Catholic and Mexican patriot, his work was criticized because it contained no mention of
Guadalupe. His response, of course, was that no mention of it could be
found in any of the records of the archbishop’s life.
In 1883 the archbishop of Mexico, Antonio Pelagio Labastida y Dávalos, asked García Icazbalceta for his opinion of the devotion. The result was
the famous letter of October of that year. Following the path first marked
out by Muñoz, García Icazbalceta gave a detailed account of the difficulties
with the tradition.3 In general, defenders of the tradition have accused critics of simply repeating the arguments of Muñoz and García Icazbalceta.
In recent years the controversy was renewed by the campaign, led by two
archbishops of Mexico and other members of the hierarchy, to have Juan
Diego canonized. Those opposed to this step pointed to the doubts about his
very existence. The conflict was often vicious and personal, with fierce public
attacks on the integrity of Guillermo Schulenburg Prado, the last abbot (that
is, dean of a collegiate chapter) of Guadalupe.4 The canonization took place
on July 30, 2002, but at a serious cost involving tawdry ecclesiastical politics,
a flawed process, and the credibility of the Roman Curia.
Now Professor Timothy Matovina has joined the fray with an article on
the origins of the Guadalupe devotion. He concentrates more on the history
of the devotion than on the controversy over the authenticity of the apparitions. One of his theses is that there is evidence for the existence of the devotion prior to 1648, the year in which account of the apparitions was first
made known and that the so-called “argument from silence” is not as silent
as some, including me, have claimed. He states, “[Poole’s] work is largely a
critique of the claim that there is early documentation for the apparition tra-

2. Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer Obispo y arzobispo de México, ed. Rafael Aguayo
Spencer and Antonio Castro Leal, 4 vols. (Mexico City, 1947).
3. Although widely known in Mexican intellectual circles, the letter was not published
until after García Icazbalceta’s death. The Spanish version can be found in THG, pp. 1092–
1226, and an English translation in Poole, The Guadalupan Controversies, pp. 205–38. The
Spanish versions contain anti-apparitionist aditamentos by the Mexican priest Vicente de Paúl
Andrade.
4. For a more detailed study of the canonization process, see Poole, The Guadalupan
Controversies, pp. 138–204, and idem, “History vs. Juan Diego,” The Americas, 62, no. 1
(2005), 1–16.

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273

dition” (p. 246). In actual fact, his article is a lengthy critique of all my writings on Guadalupe. I wish to express my appreciation to the editors of The
Catholic Historical Review for this opportunity to respond. This response will
be an examination of his arguments and my evaluation of them.
In examining these questions, it is important to make some basic distinctions. The primary one is between the shrine at Tepeyac and the story
of the Virgin Mary’s appearances to Juan Diego. Existing sources make it
clear that the shrine, or ermita (chapel of ease), was founded around the year
1555 or 1556, not 1531.5 Any reference to the chapel prior to 1648 is not
evidence for an apparition or even a devotion. Failing to observe this distinction, Professor Matovina cites as evidence of native devotion the efforts
of Archbishop Moya de Contreras and the Jesuit Superior General Everard
Mercurian to secure a plenary indulgence for pilgrims to Tepeyac (1576).
Yet it should be noted that neither one mentioned anything about miracles,
apparitions, or special devotion by Spaniards or Indians at that location.6
The issue. What is the fundamental issue in the history of the
Guadalupan devotion and the apparition tradition that became attached to
it? To answer this question, it is necessary to go back to the beginnings of
the missionary enterprise in New Spain (modern Mexico). It is widely
accepted that this began in 1524 with the arrival of “The Twelve,” the first
Franciscan missionaries. Their initial decision was crucial and eventually
became church policy prior to the eighteenth century—that is, that evangelization would be carried on in the native languages, not Spanish. They
were aided in this by the fact that Nahuatl, the Aztec language, served as
a lingua franca, especially in commerce and diplomacy, throughout the central plateau and as far south as Guatemala. The Franciscans (and later the
Jesuits) produced grammars (artes), dictionaries, sermonaries, catechisms,
miracle stories, and even religious drama in Nahuatl.7 The adaptation of

5. On January 10, 1570, Antonio Freire, the chaplain at the shrine at Tepeyac, wrote
to Juan de Ovando that the chapel had been built about 1555 by Alonso de Montúfar, the
second archbishop of Mexico. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 66–68. He made no mention
of apparitions or miracles at the site. In 1575 Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almansa wrote to
King Philip II that the chapel had been built about 1555–56 because a herdsman had claimed
to have experienced a miraculous healing there. See THG, pp. 148–49; Poole, Our Lady of
Guadalupe, pp. 73–74.
6. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 75–77.
7. A major contribution to this field is Nahuatl Theater, ed. Louise M. Burkhart and Barry
D. Sell, 4 vols. (Norman, OK, 2004–09). This series contains transcriptions and translations of
almost all known Nahuatl religious dramas. One interesting aspect of the dramas about
Guadalupe was the freedom that dramatists felt in changing and adding to the original tradition.

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Nahuatl to the Latin alphabet was enthusiastically received by the native
peoples who left us chronicles, town council records, censuses (with valuable information on baptisms and polygamy), lawsuits, and other documentation. All this has opened a new window on colonial life.
So what, then, is the issue? In that plethora of documentation between
1531 and 1648 there is not one single mention of Juan Diego nor an
unequivocal reference to the apparitions. The silence is total and absolute.
The evidence for the devotion’s popularity among natives and Spaniards is
inconsistent, sketchy, and often of dubious value.
My interpretation. The documentary evidence permits me to make the
following generalizations about the Guadalupe devotion. The chapel at
Tepeyac was founded in 1555 or 1556 by Alonso de Montúfar, the second
archbishop of Mexico, and not in 1531 by Archbishop Zumárraga. It was
dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, whose feast was celebrated
on September 8. Because the image in the shrine resembled a statue at
Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain, it was given the popular name of
Guadalupe.8 The image was the same one that is in the basilica at the present time, except for restorations and retouchings.9 It was considered to be
miraculous in the sense that it worked miracles, not that it was miraculous
in origin. The story of the Virgin’s appearances to Juan Diego and Juan
Bernardino, his uncle, came only with the publication of Miguel Sánchez’s
Imagen de la Virgen Maria in 1648 and Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei
tlamahuiçoltica in the following year.10 Afterward, the strongest appeal of
the devotion was to the criollos (persons of European lineage born in the
New World) rather than the natives. The whole Guadalupe story falls
easily within the context of the European apparition tradition.11 Professor

8. On this, see Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 74, 77.
9. Philip Serna Callahan, The Tilma under Infra-Red Radiation, [CARA Studies on
Popular Devotion, 2. Guadalupan Studies, 3], (Washington, DC, 1981).
10. Miguel Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe. Milagrosamente aparecida en la ciudad de Mexico. Celebrada en su historia, con la profecia del capitulo doce
del Apocalipsis (Mexico City, 1648); THG, pp. 152–81; Luis Laso de la Vega, Huey
tlamahuiçoltica omonexiti in ilhuicac tlatocacihuapilli Santa Maria totlaçonantzin Guadalupe in
nican huey altepenahuac Mexico itoyatocan Tepeyacac (Mexico City, 1649); THG, pp. 282–308.
A transcription of the original Nahuatl and a translation into English is The Story of
Guadalupe: Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica of 1649, trans. Lisa Sousa, Stafford
Poole, and James Lockhart (Stanford, 1998).
11. There are two classic works on this, both by the same author: William Christian,
Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, 1981) and Local Religion in
Sixteenth Century Spain (Princeton, 1981). For the history of Marian devotion in New Spain

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275

Louise Burkhart, in her authoritative account of pre-Guadalupan Marian
devotion in colonial Mexico, found no evidence for an apparition tradition
or a native response to it.12
The arguments from silence. Like García Icazbalceta before me, I listed
in my book Our Lady of Guadalupe the persons who would have been
expected to refer to Juan Diego or the apparition tradition: Zumárraga,
Bishop Julián Garcés of Tlaxcala, Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía), Bartolomé de las Casas, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Francisco de Cervantes
Salazar, Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almansa, Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
Pedro de Gante, Miles Philips, Diego de Valadés, Diego Durán, Juan
Suárez de Peralta, Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, Agustín Dávila Padilla,
Fernando de Alva Ixlilxochitl, Chimalpahin (Domingo de San Antón
Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin), and others. None of them
made any reference to Juan Diego or the apparition story.
Professor Matovina deals at length with this argument from silence.
He starts with Muñoz and then cites all the people who I argue would have
said something, especially Zumárraga in his will—something of paramount importance. Any Spaniard of the sixteenth century who had
founded a church or chapel, whether lay or clerical, would have made provision in his will for its financial support and the process for appointing a
pastor/vicar (usually a family member). The fact that Zumárraga made no
such provisions for Guadalupe is prima facie evidence that he knew nothing
about it.13 As is apparent, this silence is a crucial argument against the
authenticity of the apparition tradition and one that Professor Matovina
does not succeed in weakening.
He refers to sixteenth-century chronicles that seem to bolster the tradition, including those of Juan Bautista and Chimalpahin. Both mention
an “appearance” of the Virgin Mary at Tepeyac during the mid-1550s.
Annalist Juan Bautista says, “In the year 1555: at that time Saint Mary of
Guadalupe appeared there on Tepeyacac.” Professor Matovina, however,

prior to Guadalupe, see the excellent study by Louise Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin
Mary in Early Nahuatl Literature [Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Monograph 13],
(Albany, NY, 2001).
12. Before Guadalupe, passim.
13. Professor Matovina does not give this latter the importance it deserves. The archbishop made such arrangements in his Basque homeland. Zumárraga and His Family: Letters
to Vizcaya 1536–1548, ed. Richard Greenleaf., trans. Neal Kaveny [Documentary Series, Vol.
11], (Washington, DC, 1979).

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does not cite the full passage from Juan Bautista. Referring to a procession
on September 15, 1556,
on which day, the octave of the Nativity of Mary, Our Mother, everyone
went to Tepeyac to celebrate the feast of Saint Mary of Guadalupe.
[Alonso de] Villaseca donated a statue of pure silver that he made; and
he built some dwellings where the sick slept. There was a procession, in
which all the oidores [civil judges] and the archbishop went, together
with us Indians. Villaseca fed the gentlemen in order to make it known
that he looked on the church of Tepeyac as his own.14

Similarly, Chimalpahin wrote, “12 Flint the year 1556. And likewise in
this year was when our precious mother Saint Mary of Guadalupe appeared
at Tepeyacac.” It should be noted that the use of the verb monextitino (“to
appear,” literally “to show oneself”) was a standard way of describing the
placing of a new image in a shrine. There are other examples in Chimalpahin’s works.15 Again, there is no mention of Juan Diego or the apparitions.
It also should be noted that, in Chimalpahin’s comment, both Spaniards and
natives shared in the celebration, apparently without distinction.
Professor Matovina says that I am inconsistent in my argument from
silence: “It is inconsistent to expect that chroniclers and noted figures of
the period would necessarily have written about her” (p. 253). On the contrary, Gerónimo de Mendieta dedicated five chapters in his classic Historia
eclesiástica Indiana to the visions, revelations, and special heavenly favors
granted to the natives.16 The same was true of Toribio de Motolinía, Juan
Bautista, Juan de Torquemada, and others already mentioned. None, however, referred to the apparitions or Juan Diego.
We must use the documents that exist, and we should be cautious
about attributing attitudes, prejudices, and such to their authors. Professor
Matovina states, “[O]bservations about the native peoples largely come
from members of the conquering group” (p. 254). In the light of current
scholarship, especially research into native language sources, such a statement must be viewed with caution. The accounts of Motolinía and Mendi-

14. ¿Cómo te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista, ed. and
trans. Luis Reyes García (Mexico City, 2001), pp. 150–51; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp.
51–52. Little is known about Villaseca, who was a wealthy Spaniard.
15. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 50–52.
16. Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica Indiana: obra escrita a fines del siglo XVI
(3rd ed., Mexico City, 1971), bk. 5, pt. 1, chaps. 27–29; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp.
88–90.

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277

eta clearly demonstrate that there were myriad stories of miracles, visions,
apparitions, and divine favors to Indians in circulation in the later sixteenth
and early-seventeenth centuries. Recent authoritative research by James
Lockhart, citing the annals of Chimalpahin, indicates that there was no
distinction between Spaniards and natives in regard to their devotion to
saints, images, and miracles.17 They were shared. It was not unusual for
Nahuas to come to a shrine patronized by criollos.
The question persists: how could there have been “a devotion to Juan
Diego” when there is no mention of him for 117 years? According to Professor Matovina:
In the search for the genesis of the Guadalupe apparition story, the heart
of the matter is not whether or how criollo patriots or any subsequent
group interpreted it to suit their own purposes. Rather, what matters are
the people and the circumstances that initially gave rise to the apparition
tradition. (p. 268)

Here, perhaps, is the fundamental difference in our two approaches to the
issue. Professor Matovina’s seems less historically oriented than my own.
How does one really know “the people and the circumstances”? How does
one know of the existence of an oral tradition except through documentation? And how does one assess the validity of an oral tradition except
through reliable sources?
The Bustamante-Montúfar Inquiry. This is an important, if controversial, part of the argument from silence. On September 6, 1556, Alonso de
Montúfar, Zumárraga’s successor as archbishop of Mexico and a devotee
of the Mexican Guadalupe, gave a sermon in which he praised the devotion and mentioned miracles that had been worked at the shrine. It evoked
an impassioned response from Francisco de Bustamante, the Franciscan
Provincial, who on September 8 gave a sermon attended by several civic
officials. It was a choleric denunciation of the entire devotion that he
claimed was harmful to the Indians’ religion. Neither of the two sermons
has survived but can be partially reconstructed from the Información or
inquiry that Montúfar ordered on September 9.18
The important thing, of course, is that none of the witnesses mentioned Juan Diego or the apparitions. Four witnesses testified that Bustamante had claimed that the image at the shrine had been painted by an
17. James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest (Stanford, 1992), p. 245.
18. On this incident, see Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 58–64; THG, pp. 36–141.

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Indian artist, identified by one witness as one Marcos. Professor Matovina
mentions the Información several times, yet he omits the troubled nature of
the document’s history. There is no mention of the sermons or the Información in any contemporary document or history, not even in mendicant
biographies of Bustamante or in Montúfar’s reports to Rome. Its very existence was unknown until 1846 when it suddenly appeared in the archives
of the Archdiocese of Mexico, and it was not published until 1888, and
that in Spain.19 It then disappeared and was rediscovered in 1955 among
the papers of José Antonio Plancarte y Labastida. It has since disappeared
again, and its present location is unknown.20 If the Información is a forgery,
it is a skillful one by a person who had a deep knowledge of Spanish legal
documents of the sixteenth century. Whatever the case, it should be
approached with a certain caution.
The role of Miguel Sánchez. As previously mentioned, the story of Juan
Diego and the apparitions was first attached to the Guadalupe tradition by
the criollo priest Miguel Sánchez in 1648. Professor Matovina says, “Poole
asserts that Sánchez was not only the first published author but also the primary architect of the apparition narrative and of the claim for its foundational status in Guadalupan devotion” (p. 262). I still hold to that position.
He says that I do not offer a convincing rationale “for Sánchez’s choice of
Juan Diego as protagonist in the apparition narrative, if indeed Sánchez
himself largely invented the apparition account to foment criollo patriotism”
(p. 265). The fact is that, in light of the lack of information about where
Sánchez obtained his account, nobody knows or will know this side of the
grave why he downplayed the indigenous role in what was essentially an

19. Información que el arzobispo de México D. Fray Alonso de Montúfar mandó practicar con
motivo de un sermon que en la fiesta de la Natividad de Nuestra Señora (8 de septiembre de 1556)
predicó en la capilla de San José de Naturales del Convento de San Francisco de México su Provincial
Fray Francisco de Bustamante, acerca de la devoción y culto de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
(Madrid, 1888; repr. Mexico City, 1891).
20. For a detailed description of the story of the Información, see Magnus Lundberg,
Unification and Conflict: The Church Politics of Alonso de Montúfar, O. P, Archbishop of Mexico,
1554–1572 (Uppsala, 2002), pp. 204–05, 210; Poole, The Guadalupan Controversies, pp. 40–
42; José Miguel Romero Salinas, Eclipse guadalupano: La verdad sobre el antiaparicionismo
(Mexico City, 1992), pp. 219–61; Francisco Miranda Godínez, Dos cultos fundantes: Los
Remedios y Guadalupe (1521–1649) (Zamora, Mexico, 2001), pp. 421–38; José María Agreda
y Sánchez, “Carta a los editores,” in Investigación histórica y documental sobre la aparición de la
Virgen de Guadalupe de México (Mexico City, n.d.), pp. 83–84. On the document’s reappearance in 1955, see Jesús García Gutiérrez, “Un documento guadalupano del siglo XVI: la
información contra el padre Bustamante,” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia, 14
(1955), 313–30.

STAFFORD POOLE, C.M.

279

Indian miracle tale. His book is a glorification of criollismo and Mexico City.
In his introduction, Sánchez admits that he could find no documentation in
various archives and is distressingly vague about where or how he learned
the story, something for which he was criticized even by proapparitionists.21 Professor Matovina asserts “the only clue [Miguel] Sánchez
offers regarding the genesis of the apparition narrative is that he presumed
it was a local pious tradition, which he sought to make known and interpret
theologically.” Where is the clear and unequivocal proof for the existence of
a local pious tradition? Some references, such as those of Juan Bautista or
Juan de Correa,22 are too vague and ambiguous to be of help.
It is beyond doubt that the story of the apparitions as it is now
accepted was unknown in Mexico City and its environs before 1648—that
is, prior to Sánchez’s book. It clearly came as a surprise to his contemporaries. Writing Sanchez’s obituary in 1674, Antonio de Robles asserted
that the account and devotion
had been forgotten, even by the citizens of Mexico [City], until this venerable priest made it known, since there was in all Mexico [City] only one
image of this sovereign lady, in the convent of Santo Domingo, and
today there is not a convent or church where it it is not venerated.23

Luis Laso de la Vega, the vicar of Guadalupe, wrote in an introductory
letter to Sánchez’s book that they had all been “sleeping Adams” (a reference to Genesis 2: 21–24), who had had that miracle, like Eve, sleeping
next to them without recognizing it.24 In 1674 Antonio de Lara
Mogrovejo wrote of Sánchez’s “having brought to light the rare and mysterious apparition.”25 At that same time Francisco de Siles spoke of the
apparition as having been “forgotten in more than a century” and “I do not
know if before he gave it to the press this miracle was well known, even in
our America.”26 It defies belief that such a pivotal event, if it had occurred,
could have been totally forgotten for more than a century.

21. In 1746 the Milanese historian Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, a devotee, testified to
the lack of any documentary evidence for Guadalupe: “I found their history based on tradition
alone, without its being known where or in what hands the documents of such a precious
wonder had ended.” Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, Idea de una nueva historia general de la
América Septentrional (Madrid, 1746), n.pag.
22. See Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 128.
23. Ibid., p. 108.
24. Ibid., p. 105.
25. Ibid., p. 109.
26. Ibid., p. 109.

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A RESPONSE TO TIMOTHY MATOVINA

It should also be kept in mind that the baroque attitude toward history
was far different from that of later ages. The primary purpose of saints’
lives and miracle stories was to edify, to encourage devotion, and to
enhance the piety of the reader. Authors felt free to utilize dubious sources,
to accept stories without proof, and even to make up nonexistent events. It
was common for them to attribute these to “trustworthy witnesses” who
were not named. Examples abound from that era, such as Felix of Valois
and Blessed Andrew of Rinn.27 One of the prime examples from eighteenth-century New Spain was that of Milanese nobleman and historian
Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci.28 He cites Alva Ixtlilxochitl in support of the
fact that the Toltecs were at the Tower of Babel and helped with its construction and after the confusion of tongues wandered throughout Asia
before coming to the New World. There they built pyramids resembling
Babel. In this country one should not forget Parson Weems’s charming
story about George Washington and his hatchet.
The capitular investigation of 1665–66. This was commissioned by the
cathedral chapter of Mexico, sede vacante, as part of an effort to persuade the
pope to grant a feast day for all of New Spain and to have a proper Mass and
office for Guadalupe. It was not an objective investigation into the authenticity of the apparitions and devotion, which was presupposed. The investigative team eventually took testimony from twenty witnesses: one mestizo,
seven Indians (through interpreters), ten Spanish clerics or religious, and two
laypersons. The questionnaire was quite detailed and leading.29
Professor Matovina does not deal with the fact that the testimonies by
native witnesses do not reflect a Nahuatl substratum and the few references
to Nahuatl terms are rather garbled (guey teopizque, a plural form, for the
singular huey teopixqui, macuilpulai xiguil, for macuilpohualli xihuitl). All
the testimonies were smoothed out into standard legal language. He does
not deal with the concept of invented tradition—the tendency to give an
27. The origins and development of the devotion to “Little Andrew” has many similarities to that of Guadalupe. It was finally suppressed because of its venomous antisemitism.
28. On him, see Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 192–200. Also, Lorenzo Boturini
Benaduci, Idea de una nueva historia general de of America Septentrional (Mexico City, 1999);
Historia de la América Septentrional por el caballero Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, señor de la Torre
y de Hono, cronista real en las Indias, edición, prólogo y notas por Manuel Ballesteros Gabrois
(Madrid, 1948).
29. The inquiry has been published twice in recent years: Las informaciones jurídicas de
1666 y el beato indio Juan Diego, ed. Ana María Sada Lambretón (Mexico City, 1991); La
Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las informaciones jurídícas de 1666, con facsímil del original,
ed. Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, 2nd ed. (Mexico City, 2002).

STAFFORD POOLE, C.M.

281

aura of antiquity and authenticity to a tradition. Also, civic pride must be
taken into account and the tendency to tell the interrogators what they
wanted to hear. Nor does Professor Matovina deal with the contradiction
between the testimonies of the aged Indians about the antiquity of the tradition and the surprise caused by Sánchez’s account in 1648. Quite simply,
the two cannot be reconciled.
Professor Matovina cites evidence from several sources for the existence of an Indian village near Tepeyac: “Yet arguably the greatest oversight in Poole’s assessment of early indigenous ties to Guadalupe is his lack
of attention to those who lived near—and presumably [sic] cared for—the
Guadalupe shrine” (p. 259). Professor Matovina is presuming that because
people lived nearby, they were therefore devotees and custodians. This is a
considerable leap in judgment, and there is no evidence for it. The simple
fact is that the shrine happened to be in Nahua territory.
The hostility of the Franciscans. The hostility to the devotion of two
noted Franciscans, the Provincial Francisco de Bustamante and the pioneer ethnographer Benardino de Sahagún, is well known. Bustamante’s
attack on the devotion already has been described. About the year 1576
Sahagún made a similar attack, identifying Guadalupe as a revenant of the
Aztec goddess Tonantzin and calling the devotion idolatrous.30
Professor Matovina criticizes me for generalizing from the negative
attitudes of the two Franciscan friars to that of the whole order. Yet there
is other evidence from the Información of 1556 that he does not address.
The witness Juan de Salazar testified that the religious of Mexico City were
opposed to the devotion.31 Alonso Sánchez de Cisneros testified that the
other Franciscans agreed with Bustamante.32 Juan de Maseguer quoted an
unnamed Franciscan as discouraging him from going to Guadalupe to seek
a cure for his sick daughter, saying, “Give up this drunkenness because this
is a devotion that none of us likes.”33 Whatever can be said about the Información, it certainly bears witness to a Franciscan hostility to the shrine and
devotion at Tepeyac.
Professor Matovina’s conclusions. Says Professor Matovina:

30. THG, pp. 142–44.
31. THG, p. 51; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 61.
32. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 61.
33. THG, p. 69; Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 61–62.

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A RESPONSE TO TIMOTHY MATOVINA
Poole’s conclusions rest on at least three shaky foundations: an argument
from silence weakened by the local character of Guadalupan devotion in
the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, a refutable claim that the
devotion began and evolved among Spaniards with little or no native
involvement, and the hypothesis that Sánchez largely constructed the
apparition narrative to bolster criollo patriotism. (p. 269)

My response is that the local character does not explain the silences of persons who logically would have been expected to comment on it. The evidence for the nature of the local character of the devotion is inconsistent.
In its origins, was the Guadalupan devotion mainly a criollo phenomenon?
Perhaps, in response, the reader should read Sánchez’s book and make his
or her own decision. As for Sánchez’s “construction,” I point to the total
surprise caused by his book in Mexico City itself. Is it really credible that
this “local” devotion had been forgotten in the course of 117 years?
Further considerations. Professor Matovina does not discuss the question
of why a devotion, supposedly intended for natives, had a Spanish name. It
was difficult for the natives to pronounce because there was no g or d sound
in Nahuatl—one variation I have found was Hualalope. Efforts to find a
Nahuatl original have proved futile.34 Similarly, he does not relate the Mexican Guadalupe with that of Extremadura. In 1574 the Hieronymite friars
who administered the peninsular shrine attempted to take control of the
Mexican shrine (and its revenues). Diego de Santa María, the friars’ representative, claimed that the devotion originated with a confidence man who
brought forged papers with him from Spain. The friar even suggested that
the location of the shrine should be moved from Tepeyac.35
Professor Matovina does not address the contradictions and inconsistencies found in the accounts of the life of Juan Diego. The fact that Juan
Diego, his wife (María Lucía), and his uncle (Juan Bernardino) all had
double Spanish names reflects a later period. According to Laso de la Vega,
María Lucía died two years before the apparitions. The couple had lived in
marital chastity after hearing a sermon by Toribio de Motolinía, but Laso
de la Vega also asserts that Juan Diego was a lifelong virgin—“aic quiximà
çihuatl” (he never knew a woman). In this account, he was an elderly man
of fifty-seven at the time of the apparitions.36 Another version, found in

34. On this, see Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 31–32, 149, 173.
35. On this rather bizarre incident, see ibid., pp. 71–77.
36. Sousa, Poole, and Lockhart, trans., The Story of Guadalupe, pp. 112–13; Poole, Our
Lady of Guadalupe, pp. 29, 125.

STAFFORD POOLE, C.M.

283

the so-called will of Gregoria María, says that his wife was named Malintzin and that she died soon after their wedding. In this account, Juan
Diego was a young man at the time of the apparitions, which took place
just a few days after his wife’s death.37 A third version given by Luis
Becerra Tanco was that Juan Diego’s wife was alive at the time of the
apparitions and died two years after them, not before.38 Was he a humble
peasant (macehualtzintli) or a noble who had fought against the Spaniards,
as some partisans have claimed in recent times?39 There are people in present-day Mexico who claim direct descent from Juan Diego.40 This is
impossible to reconcile with the accounts given in the previous paragraph.
Conclusion. Although Professor Matovina has added some useful
insights into the complex development of the Guadalupe devotion, he has
not resolved the many basic problems raised by its inconsistent and contradictory history. The question is still open.

37. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 29. On the wills of Cuauhtitlan, see ibid., pp.
195–200.
38. Ibid., pp. 29–30.
39. An idea that seems to have originated on the Internet is that Juan Diego was not a
peasant; rather, in this version, he was a noble, even royal; a leader (principal) of his village; a
warrior who had fought against the Spaniards; and a philosopher and poet. There is not a
scintilla of evidence for any of these assertions prior to the year 2000. They fly in the face of
the European apparition tradition and contradict everything said about Juan Diego in the earliest biographies or histories. See Poole, The Guadalupan Controversies, pp. 167–69.
40. In 2000 an announcement appeared on the Vatican Web site that the Centro de
Estudios Guadalupanos in Mexico had presented the pope with a book called The Virgin’s
Messenger. It supposedly showed that Juan Diego’s family tree extended as far back as 100
years before Christ and included 900 relatives. It was also asserted that he came from royalty
and was a grandson of Nezahualcoyotl, king of Texcoco. See ibid., p. 169. Such blatant fabrications do not merit rebuttal.

A Response to Stafford Poole
TIMOTHY MATOVINA

I

am grateful to the editors of The Catholic Historical Review and to
Stafford Poole, C.M., for his willingness to engage in this exchange.
Space does not permit me to comment on every item explicated by Father
Poole. So I will attempt to delineate our major point of agreement, three
major points on which I think Father Poole and I need to “agree to disagree,” and some concluding remarks on what I contend are important
considerations for ongoing research on the origins and early development
of the Guadalupe tradition.
Father Poole and I concur on an important distinction that needs to
be kept in mind in this debate—namely the difference between the practice
of Guadalupan devotion and the belief in an apparitions narrative. The fact
that Spaniards and natives venerated Guadalupe does not demonstrate that
they had knowledge of an apparition story. Father Poole actually claims
that I do not concur with him on this point:
Failing to observe this distinction, Professor Matovina cites as evidence
of native devotion the efforts of Archbishop Moya de Contreras and the
Jesuit Superior General Everard Mercurian to secure a plenary indulgence for pilgrims to Tepeyac (1576). Yet it should be noted that neither
one mentioned anything about miracles, apparitions, or special devotion
by Spaniards or Indians at that location. (p. 273)

However, I do make the distinction between devotional practice and belief
in the apparitions at the outset of my essay:
[D]id reports of Juan Diego’s encounters with Guadalupe and her miraculous appearance on his tilma (cloak) initiate the chapel and its devotion,
or is the apparition narrative a later invention that provided a mythical
origin for an already existing image and pious tradition? (p. 244)

Moreover, I present the documentation concerning the 1576 plenary
indulgence as a primary source about indigenous devotion, and I make no
claim that the source provides evidence for belief in apparitions or other
miracles. As I wrote in my essay, the source states “the indigenous people’s
‘eminent devotion’ to Guadalupe had induced the conversion of numerous
284

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285

natives ‘to faith in Christ’” (p. 255). Thus Father Poole and I agree that
Guadalupan devotion and belief in the Guadalupe apparitions are separate
elements of the Guadalupe tradition; the existence of one does not necessarily imply the existence of the other.
One point of disagreement is the weight of arguments from silence.
The disagreement is not that I claim to have nullified all significance of
this argument. Rather, my contention is that “arguments from silence are
weakened to the degree that an event or tradition is less prominent during
a particular source’s lifetime and therefore less likely to be mentioned in
their written records” (p. 250). Thus the fact that Guadalupan devotion
was decidedly local during its first century of development is an important
consideration in assessing the relative weight of arguments from silence
about it. Father Poole demonstrates in Our Lady of Guadalupe that
Guadalupan devotion had a relatively limited sphere of influence during its
first century of development, but nonetheless contends that sixteenth-century sources should be expected to mention it. My point is that, since
Guadalupe’s rise to national fame was gradual—claims that her reported
apparitions were a prodigious event in Mexican history began only in the
seventeenth century—it is not surprising that earlier sources are less likely
to take note of the tradition.
I conclude that
[a]lthough this inconsistency does not completely invalidate Poole’s
argument, the extent to which he is correct about the gradual increase of
a local devotion undermines his argument from silence among those he
asserts historians should reasonably expect to have spoken. (p. 253)

Father Poole responds that “the local character does not explain the silences
of persons who would logically have been expected to comment on it” (p.
282). I agree that the local character does not explain away the historical
silences, but I think it is logical to contend that the degree of anonymity of
any devotion increases the possibility that historical figures will neglect to
mention it. Father Poole goes on to state that “the evidence for the nature
of the local character of the devotion is inconsistent” (p. 282). If by “nature”
he means we are not certain of all the devotional and ritual practices and
their meaning, I agree. But whatever the “nature” of the devotion, all known
sources reveal it was still confined to Mexico City and the environs, as
Father Poole himself seemed to confirm in Our Lady of Guadalupe. Thus it
was indeed a localized devotion over the first century of its development.
Moreover, the fact that various sources report other miraculous events
among indigenous peoples, which Father Poole notes in his response, does

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not invalidate the issue I posed. After all, there are relatively few primary
sources that talk about Guadalupan devotion in the sixteenth century
(which we know existed), including documents from various informants
who might logically have been expected to speak of the Guadalupe shrine
and its devotion. In sum, the argument from silence is a cornerstone of
Father Poole’s contention that the genesis of the apparitions tradition is
Miguel Sánchez’s 1648 book Imagen de la Virgen María, whereas I am more
cautious about giving that much weight to an argument from silence about
a devotion that was merely one locally circumscribed tradition amidst a
multitude of religious traditions in the sacred landscape of New Spain.
A second point of disagreement is our different readings of Sánchez’s
volume. Father Poole states that he still “hold[s] to th[e] position” that the
“book is a glorification of criollismo” and recommends that “the reader
should read Sánchez’s book and make his or her own decision” (pp. 279,
282). I invite those who take up his recommendation to note the numerous
passages that reveal Sánchez’s presumption that divine providence blessed
the colonial enterprise of the criollos’ nemesis, the peninsular Spaniards.
Sánchez’s claims about Guadalupe’s alleged support of the Spanish conquest were cited in my original essay. He also states the angel who
descends from heaven to deliver a scroll as described in Revelations 10 is
none other than “the king of Spain.” Sánchez further attests that “God had
chosen this monarch as the universal sun of the planet and put in his hand
the book of God’s law so he could diligently promulgate it all over the
world, as he has done.” Thus God’s design was that “in the light and
warmth of the Catholic sun of Spain, this land of Mexico might have a
great number of children gloriously called children of the sun Felipe [King
Philip].” Furthermore, the conqueror of Mexico, Fernando [Hernán]
Cortés, and his “miraculous warrior army” were nothing less than “an army
of angels for the conversion of this New World and the foundation of the
Church, who like angels destroyed the dragon” that had led the native peoples into idolatry and sinfulness.1
Although these are among the most audacious claims made by
Sánchez about Spain and the purported biblical validation of its imperial
project in the New World, similar quotations could be multiplied. It is not
surprising that Sánchez presented such a favorable view of the Spanish

1. Miguel Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María . . . (Mexico City, 1648), repr. in Testimonios históricos Guadalupanos, ed. Ernesto de la Torre Villar and Ramiro Navarro de Anda
(Mexico City, 1982), pp. 166, 170.

TIMOTHY MATOVINA

287

crown and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, since no doubt he would have
been censored (or worse) had he criticized either. Yet given Father Poole’s
insistence on documentary evidence for making historical interpretations,
I am surprised that he infers Sánchez’s motive from a comparatively small
number of passages in which he mentions criollismo, but seemingly overlooks Sánchez’s numerous explicit statements of support—indeed, adulation—of the Spanish conquest and king as divinely ordained in their shaping of Mexican history. Although there is an undercurrent of criollo
patriotism in Sánchez’s book, the explicit focus of his work is clearly not a
criollo contestation of peninsular Spanish dominance in New Spain.
Father Poole and I concur that, in the final analysis, it is difficult to
determine what to make of Sánchez’s ambiguous statement (quoted in my
essay) about his source(s) for the apparitions story. But we disagree on how
to assess critically that ambiguity. He notes that several of Sánchez’s contemporaries affirmed the apparitions account had been forgotten and was
therefore unknown among Mexico City inhabitants before Sánchez published his book. He concludes that “it defies belief that such a pivotal event,
if it had occurred, could have been totally forgotten for more than a century” (p. 279). However, as noted above, the Guadalupe apparitions were
not acclaimed as “a pivotal event” until Sánchez’s publication and its aftermath. If belief in an apparitions tradition was part of local lore regarding a
still-evolving Guadalupan devotion, it is possible that Sánchez spoke
truthfully when he stated that is how he learned of an apparitions account.
Indeed, as I point out in my essay, none of Sánchez’s contemporaries—
despite their expressions of surprise upon learning of the apparitions tradition—disavowed Sánchez’s claim that the apparitions account was an
existing pious tradition learned from some unidentified informant(s).
Moreover, as I also point out, Father Poole, in his major work on the
apparition controversy,
allows that Sánchez’s “primary source . . . seems to have been some form
of oral tradition among the natives.” He even hypothesizes that “the
interrogatory of 1665 to 1666 [reveals] the possibility of an unwritten
native tradition of an apparition” and “in all probability the works of
Sánchez and Laso de la Vega popularized one version of the native tradition.” (p. 261)

The important consideration here is that demonstrating Guadalupe
did not have an immediate and vast impact in New Spain does not eliminate the possibility that a tradition of an apparitions experience developed
alongside the gradually evolving practice of Guadalupan devotion. After
all, there are a number of examples in the Spanish Catholic world (and

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beyond) of religious traditions with reportedly miraculous origins that
never received more than local acclaim. The still nascent recognition of the
Guadalupe apparitions tradition as a pivotal event in Mexican history is
consistent with Sánchez’s claim that a relatively obscure, local pious tradition about the apparitions predated his published account of it. Moreover,
as I noted in my essay, Father Poole “does not offer a convincing rationale
for Sánchez’s choice of Juan Diego as protagonist in the apparitions narrative, if indeed Sánchez himself largely invented the apparitions account to
foment criollo patriotism” (p. 265). Father Poole responds that “nobody
knows or will know this side of the grave why he downplayed the indigenous role in what was essentially an Indian miracle tale” (p. 278–79). But
if we do not know why Sánchez invented an indigenous protagonist, what
evidence is there that he did so? In fact, it is more plausible to conclude
that Sánchez adopted a local account that already had an indigenous protagonist than to conclude he invented the account and for some inexplicable reason contrived an indigenous protagonist. Given all these considerations, along with the lack of a single piece of documentary evidence that
claims Sánchez exaggerated or outright lied about his source(s), I see no
reason to disavow his statement that he had informant(s), however maddeningly ambiguous that statement might be.
A third major divergence between Father Poole and me concerns the
extent of sixteenth-century indigenous devotion. Whereas I argue for an
early participation of native peoples in the devotion, he has consistently
avowed that indigenous participation was minimal at best for at least the
first century of the Guadalupe tradition. He notes in his response that
“Professor Matovina does not discuss the question of why a devotion, supposedly intended for natives, had a Spanish name” (p. 282). My claim is
not that the devotion was intended solely for natives, but that both
Spaniards and natives participated in it from its early stages. Father Poole
also states that sources like the annals of Juan Bautista and the investigation of the controversial 1556 Bustamante sermon do not make explicit
references to the apparitions tradition, a contention I never made as I cited
such sources as evidence for early indigenous devotion, not belief in the
Guadalupe apparitions. Indeed, our disagreement is not about sources, as
my original essay is “based solely on a reassessment of the documents
accepted as valid by Poole himself” (p. 246). Rather, in this instance our
disagreement is largely based on historical method in reading sources. My
contention is that, for marginal peoples like the conquered natives of New
Spain, a social history approach guides the historian to draw conclusions
from the constellation of primary sources that mention native devotion.
Father Poole tends to read the sources more literally.

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289

Space limitations permit just two examples of our divergent
approaches. Although I agree with Father Poole that the recorded testimonies from the 1665–66 investigation were clearly biased in the ways he
expounds, I contend that more useful information can be gleaned from
these interviews than Father Poole seems to indicate. Evaluating the
sources against the grain of the interviewers’ biases, I contend that “the
most useful information from the inquiry is contained in statements that
go beyond what the interviewers specified or implied in their questions” (p.
258). I do not see in Father Poole’s reply how he would respond to this
specific recommendation for seeking out the unscripted passages in which
indigenous respondents offered particular observations that are absent
from the testimonies of the Spanish and criollo informants. These
unscripted passages provide a helpful window into indigenous testimonies
on the evolving Guadalupe tradition.
The advantage of a social history approach is also evident in the divergent readings Father Poole and I have of the three earliest known collections of miracles attributed to Guadalupe. Father Poole concludes that
these sources reveal Guadalupan devotion was largely a Spanish practice
with relatively little indigenous participation, whereas I contend that
taking into account the perspectives of the sources’ authors reveals a more
ample indigenous involvement. As I point out in my essay, Father Poole
draws no connection between the fund-raising purpose of the
[Stradanus] engraving and its focus on miraculous occurrences among
Spanish devotees. It is at least as plausible to conclude that the exclusive
depiction of Spaniards reflects a desire to attract potential donors as it is
to deduce that these depictions indicate the ethnic composition of
Guadalupan devotees. (p. 257)

Father Poole also fails to note that, in the first two known narrative collections of Guadalupe miracle accounts, eight of the ten miracle stories not
found in the Stradanus source involved indigenous beneficiaries. Thus I
conclude these additions effectively “counteract the Spanish exclusivity of
the Stradanus engraving” (p. 257). Although Father Poole does not reply
to these specific critiques, an analysis of these sources that considers the
social dynamics of their production reveals they say more about indigenous
participation than what first meets the eye.
Father Poole contends that caution must be exercised in critically
assessing the biases in documents that elite or conquering persons produced. I agree. Nonetheless, balanced employment of a social history
approach has made significant contributions to the history profession for

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A RESPONSE TO STAFFORD POOLE

more than half a century. Admittedly, our understanding of native involvement in the early stages of the Guadalupe tradition is relatively limited.
But I contend that we can glean more from existing sources than Father
Poole concludes. My essay cites more than a dozen primary sources that
attest to native participation in the devotion during its first century of existence. Given that Guadalupe’s appeal was still within the local environs of
Mexico City, as well as the comparatively modest evidence for Spanish
practice of Guadalupan devotion during this same time period, I conclude
the evidence for indigenous devotion is sufficient to demonstrate their participation in tandem with their Spanish counterparts.
The extent of indigenous people’s devotion is an important piece to the
puzzle of the origins of the Guadalupe tradition and even to the search for
the origins of belief in the Guadalupe apparitions. If natives participated in
the devotion sparingly or not at all in the first century of its development, it
is unlikely that they would have influenced even a sketchy version of an
apparition narrative. Conversely, the fact that natives did participate in the
devotion raises questions about the shape of their devotion and its influence
on the overall Guadalupe tradition. Thus, whereas Father Poole maintains
the apparitions narrative was the criollo invention of Sánchez, I conclude
that natives had greater involvement in the origins and development of that
narrative. My investigation results in the following conclusions:
The history of indigenous devotion, a critical analysis of Sánchez’s publication, and the contents of the apparition narrative itself point to a
greater native influence in the formation of that tradition than Poole
posits . . . a more plausible conclusion [than Father Poole’s] is that
natives participated in the development of a local devotion—one that
encompassed an oral tradition about a saintly indigenous neophyte whose
experiences of Guadalupe eventually were codified and elevated to foundational status through the publications of Sánchez and Laso de la Vega.
(pp. 268–70)

I also note that these conclusions leave “various questions unanswered,
not the least of which is a precise timeline for the origin and development
of the apparition tradition” (p. 270). Yet I contend my essay contributes
the following conclusions to ongoing research about the origins and development of the Guadalupe tradition:
(1) Evidence that Guadalupe did not have a widespread influence until
after the 1648 publication of Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María does
not prove that belief in a miraculous story on apparitions only begins
with Sánchez.

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291

(2) Textual evidence does not sustain the claim that Sánchez’s book
focuses primarily on criollo patriotism. Sánchez’s allegiance to the
Spanish crown and colonial enterprise and his stated intention to
examine the Guadalupe tradition in light of scripture and Christian
theology overshadow the criollo subtext in his book.
(3) There is no known documentary evidence from one of Sánchez’s contemporaries claiming that he invented the narrative on the Guadalupe
apparitions. Nor does his ambiguity about his sources prove that he
contrived that narrative.
(4) Natives participated in venerating Guadalupe with their Spanish
counterparts from the first stages of the devotion’s development. The
natives’ separate processions, feast-day celebrations, and miracle testimonies reveal that their devotional expressions were at times distinct
from those of Spaniards.
(5) Early native testimonies point to a cult of Juan Diego among indigenous devotees, but no such documentation notes similar devotion
among Spaniards and criollos. Although our knowledge about it is limited, when coupled with Juan Diego’s leading role in the apparitions
narrative, this native devotion intimates their involvement with propagating belief in Juan Diego and in his prominence in the Guadalupe
tradition.
(6) Most important, my essay reveals the advantage of exploring the
development of Guadalupan devotion in conjunction with the search
for the genesis of belief in the apparitions. The polarization that has
come to dominate the apparitions debate—the opposing views that
either the apparitions occurred as a singular transformative event in
1531 or Miguel Sánchez invented them 117 years later—results in an
all-or-nothing stalemate that largely ignores significant evidence
about the gradual evolution of the Guadalupe tradition. Although our
questions about the early development of that tradition will never be
fully answered, seeking to map out the contours of an evolving tradition would provide a more promising way forward for future research.

French Women and the
Global Fight for Faith:
Catholic International Religious Outreach
in Turn-of-the-Century France
EMILY MACHEN*
In the years before World War I, French Catholic women played a critical role in facilitating cooperation among Catholic women globally to
solve problems such as poverty, class conflict, and religious disaffection.
French Catholic women created international religious organizations
and developed correspondence networks among Catholic women
throughout the world. French Catholic women’s international programs allowed the French Catholic community to demonstrate its
vitality at a time when religion seemed threatened by secularism.
International faith-based engagement also opened up leadership
opportunities for Catholic women, and it promoted women’s equality
in the political and religious realms.
Keywords: Catholic women, France, internationalism, women’s
leadership

I

n October 1910, Fanny Faustin gave a presentation in Lourdes at the
annual convention of the Ligue Patriotique des Françaises (LPDF), the
largest Catholic women’s organization in France. Faustin described a
recent trip to Montreal where she had represented the LPDF and
addressed 7000 attendees of a Catholic convention. Faustin met with
high-ranking members of the clergy in attendance, and she expressed her
gratitude toward Archbishop Louis Joseph Napoléon Paul Bruchési of
Montreal for allowing her to promote the LPDF at the Canadian convention. She proudly announced to fellow LPDF members that her talk in
Montreal had been very well received. Faustin also gratefully acknowledged her warm welcome from the Fédération Saint-Jean-Baptiste, a

*Dr. Machen is assistant professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa, email:
emily.machen@uni.edu. The author thanks the university for its financial assistance for this
project. Unless otherwise noted, the translations in this article have been provided by the
author.

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Canadian Catholic women’s organization similar to the LPDF.1 This trip
to Canada allowed Faustin to serve as an international ambassador for the
LPDF, raising its profile and prestige, creating contacts with similar
women’s organizations, and gaining support from important members of
the Catholic clergy.
Faustin’s trip to Canada reveals a striking trend in the public engagement of French Catholic women in the early part of the twentieth century.
By 1900, Catholic women in France had begun organizing very large,
influential women’s associations designed to strengthen Catholicism in
France and remedy social problems such as poverty, class conflict, rural
depopulation, and church-state divisions. However, very quickly after the
formation of national organizations such as the Action Sociale de la
Femme (ASF, founded 1900) and the LPDF (founded 1902), women
leaders began extending their influence beyond France’s borders. These
two organizations quickly developed significant information-sharing systems with Catholic women throughout the world. By 1910, the LPDF had
built an international federation of Catholic women who gathered at conferences each year to discuss international problems facing Catholic communities. This article seeks to explain why French Catholic women
became so determined to create international Catholic women’s networks
in the early-twentieth century. Considerable religious and social conflicts
in France during this same period could have easily kept French women
occupied in their home country. It is argued here that international cooperation among women helped prove the vitality of Catholicism in France
at a time when France’s commitment to Catholicism was in question. It
affirmed France’s traditional position as the “eldest daughter” of the
Catholic Church, despite church-state conflicts and growing concerns
about religious indifference in France.2 International cooperation also
increased women’s confidence in their ability to implement both national
and international reform programs. It allowed them to create an international structure that focused specifically on women’s issues and that paral-

1. “Rapport du Comité de Lourdes presénté par Mme Crétu,” Congrès de la Ligue Patriotique des Françaises à Lourdes, 6–10 October 1910 (Paris, 1911), pp. 33–36.
2. In AD 496 Clovis, king of the Franks, was baptized into the Catholic Church.
During his reign, he created close ties with Catholic bishops in Gaul and helped increase the
power of the Catholic Church over the territory he controlled, which included all of Gaul. In
510, the Church gave him the title “Eldest Son of the Church, which his successors on the
throne of France ever after retained.” In 510, Clovis was the only Catholic king in Western
Europe. See Edward Cutts (rev. William C. Piercy), Turning Points of General Church History
(New York, 1929), p. 157.

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leled the male-dominated church hierarchy. Finally, engagement with
women and ideas globally allowed French women’s organizations to promote feminist goals that seemed too radical for France and that challenged
the Vatican’s position on women’s political activism.
This study draws primarily on documents published by the ASF and
the LPDF, more specifically the magazines they produced and reports
from their meetings and congresses. The image presented by these sources
of Catholic women as entirely unified in their common struggle against
vice and secularism did not always match reality. Like members of all
organizations, Catholic women were sometimes divided by political differences and petty power struggles. Published sources indicate the way in
which women wanted to be perceived, the public image they wished to
promote, and the goals they crafted for themselves and their organizations.
These sources also reveal how women tried to shape people’s thoughts and
actions both inside and outside the Catholic community. Women’s magazines and conference reports document a certain tension between women’s
proclamation of submission to the male Catholic hierarchy and their desire
to make the Church more woman-friendly and open to women’s religious
and political leadership. Women promoted Catholicism, but it was a new
kind of Catholicism that increasingly recognized women’s centrality in
public affairs. Women’s publications indicate the modernizing role played
by women within Catholicism at the same time as anticlericals throughout
Europe presented them as backward and reactionary.
Catholic women were far from alone in their turn toward international
cooperation. The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century saw the
development of scores of international associations. Historians such as
Leila Rupp, Anne Summers, and Molly McGregor Watson have documented women’s involvement in nondenominational international groups
aimed at improving the condition of women. In 1875, Josephine Butler
created the British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition
of State Regulation of Vice, which opposed state-regulated prostitution.3
The first international conference against the traffic in women was hosted
by the National Vigilance Association in 1899.4 Other women devoted
their time to issues such as suffrage and peace activism.

3. Anne Summers, “Work in Progress: Which Women? What Europe? Josephine
Butler and the International Abolitionist Federation,” History Workshop Journal, no. 62
(2006), 214–31, here 216.
4. Molly McGregor Watson, “The Trade in Women: ‘White Slavery’ and the French
Nation, 1899–1939” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1999), p. 14.

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Despite the plethora of international leagues, neither French Catholic
women’s organizations nor the International Union of Catholic Women’s
Leagues, founded by French women in 1910, allied with nondenominational women’s movements. Although one goal of Catholic women was to
oppose the spread of secularism, an ecumenical spirit of cooperation was
not common among them. This made working with Protestant or Jewish
women difficult, and cooperation with socialist or communist women was
unthinkable. When the International Union of Catholic Women’s
Leagues did engage with secular movements, that interaction was not necessarily positive. Leila Rupp notes that the International Union of Catholic
Women’s Leagues “declined an invitation” to join “the Joint Standing
Committee of the Women’s International Organizations to push for the
appointment of women to the League of Nations.” These Catholic women
refused to join an “‘undenominational international body,’ and demanded
separate representation at the League of Nations.”5 Likewise, Catholic
women attacked the International Alliance of Women “for positions on
divorce, unmarried motherhood, sex education, and other issues contrary
to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”6
Unhappiness with the positions of secular women’s organizations on
issues such as divorce and birth control were factors that prevented French
Catholic women from joining those groups, but they were not the only reasons. French Catholic women were determined to promote a Catholic
agenda. They wished to see people convert to Catholicism and to see
Catholicism play a stronger role in political and social institutions through
Europe. Nondenominational groups would not have allowed them to promote this Catholic agenda. Likewise, Catholic women leaders hoped to see
the Catholic Church itself become more woman-friendly with respect to
women’s participation in politics and religious leadership. Catholic women
could advocate for internal changes more easily through Catholic organizations than secular ones. They also could help shape the attitudes of
Catholic women who joined their organizations.

5. Minutes, Joint Standing Committee of the Women’s International Organizations,
April 27, 1926; March 18, 1927; May 9, 1927; and June 4, 1927; LC papers, no. 1, IISG,
cited in Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement
(Princeton, 1997), p. 37.
6. Rupp, Worlds of Women, p. 153.

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Catholic Women’s Organizations in France
Jeanne Chenu, mother of three and the wife of a prominent Parisian
lawyer, founded the ASF in 1900.7 The ASF became one of France’s first
leagues of Catholic women that organized women on a national scale to
defend Christian values and educate women about France’s social and religious problems. Catholic women had been involved in charitable organizations for generations. However, the nineteenth-century organizations
that women had formed, such as Lyon’s Society for Maternal Charity,
tended to be smaller, more localized, and devoted to providing immediate
material assistance to poor women. As Christine Adams notes, the goal of
the Society for Maternal Charity was to “provide financial assistance and
moral guidance to women in childbirth and through the first two years of
that child’s life, in hopes that the mother would bond with, rather than
abandon the child.”8 By the early-twentieth century, French women—
Catholic and those of other faiths—began shifting their attention away
from charity and toward social action. Rather than providing temporary
material aid to the poor, women began developing long-term solutions to
poverty. Programs ranged from job training for girls to syndicates that
allowed women workers to demand better wages and working conditions.
As women’s organizations expanded on national and international scales,
women also became much more political. They saw that many problems
faced by women and children would only be solved by new laws protecting
vulnerable groups and by the engagement of women in politics.
In May 1902, another group of devoted French Catholic women created the LPDF, which quickly became the largest women’s organization
in France. The ASF and the LPDF had very similar aims. Both organizations wished to ameliorate France’s social problems, to protect the
Catholic Church from what women saw as attacks from the secular state,
and to remake France into a solidly Christian nation. However, the
LPDF’s scope of action was far greater than that of the ASF. The ASF
rarely engaged in direct philanthropy. Chenu identified her primary purpose as educating women so they would know their actions could shape
families, education, working environments, and communities.9 In con-

7. Sylvie Fayet-Scribe, Associations Féminines et Catholicisme XIX e–XX e siècle (Paris,
1990), p. 93.
8. Christine Adams, Poverty, Charity and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in NineteenthCentury France (Urbana, IL, 2010), p. 4.
9. Paris, Archives privées de Mariel Brunhes-Delamarre, undated letter from Jeanne
Chenu to Henriette Brunhes cited in Anne Cova, Au Service de l’Eglise, de la Patrie et de la

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trast, the LPDF created social programs for the poor, raised money for
Catholic politicians, held religious retreats to strengthen women’s faith,
and proselytized actively. By 1914, it had 500,000 members across France
and brought thousands of women together each year for pilgrimages to
holy sites and religious conferences.10
The ASF and the LPDF were two of a number of Catholic women’s
organizations that developed in France after 1900. The timing of their creation was no coincidence. The period of the early Third Republic (1880–
1914) was one of intense church-state conflict in France. As Jean Baubérot
notes, the nineteenth century was characterized by a battle between the
“two Frances”: those who wanted France to reaffirm its position as the
“eldest daughter of the Catholic Church” and those who presented modern
France as the “daughter of the Revolution.”11 Catholics felt persecuted by
France’s republican-dominated government and the anticlerical measures
it enacted in the years leading up to World War I.12 In the 1880s, the Ministry of Education, headed by Jules Ferry, put in place a system of free,
obligatory, and secular education in France.13 Many republicans feared that
if voting citizens were not enlightened by free, secular, and republican education, they would be more likely to vote for authoritarian regimes.14
Although the new secular school system did not destroy Catholic educa-

Famille: Femmes catholiques et maternité sous la III e République (Paris, 2000), p. 69: “La femme
doit être éduquée afin de remplir le rôle qui lui incombe notamment au sein de la famille, et
pour ‘lui faire comprendre comment son action peut s’exercer dans la famille, dans l’éducation,
dans les professions, dans la cité.’”
10. For more information about the LPDF, see Odile Sarti, The Ligue Patriotique des
Françaises, 1902–1933: A Feminine Response to the Secularization of French Society (New York,
1992).
11. Jean Baubérot, Histoire de la Laïcité en France (Paris, 2000), p. 29: “Ensuite, il
s’agit d’une opposition entre deux visions de la France; certains veulent que la France
redevienne la ‘fille aînée de l’Église (catholique)’; d’autres pensent que la France moderne
doit être fille de la Révolution.” Baubérot is careful to note that the French population
was not divided into two sides, one religious and one secular. Rather, minorities in each
camp fueled the conflict between religion and secularism that dominated the nineteenth
century.
12. Gérard Cholvy and Yves-Marie Hilaire provide a list of laws passed between 1880
and 1906 that Catholics saw as undermining the importance of Catholicism in France. These
included secularizing cemeteries and public schools, legalizing divorce and abolishing public
prayers, and separating church and state in 1905. See Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire Religieuse
de la France Contemporaine, 1880/1930 (Toulouse, 1986), p. 22.
13. Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society (New York,
2001), pp. 36–38.
14. Baubérot, Histoire de la Laïcité, p. 43.

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FRENCH WOMEN AND THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR FAITH

tion, it did contribute to growing hostility between Catholics and the
republican-led government.15
Fallout from the Dreyfus affair (1894–99) contributed to the passage
of a series of anticlerical laws aimed at further reducing the influence of the
Catholic Church in France. In 1894, Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus
was wrongly convicted of spying for the Germans. Leaders in the French
Catholic community, such as the editors of the Catholic newspaper La
Croix, tended to support Dreyfus’s conviction even after evidence clearly
exonerated him. Such a position made the Church appear backward and
reactionary, again raising republicans’ fears that the Catholic Church was
incompatible with the egalitarian values of the Third Republic.16
Between 1902 and 1904, most Catholic religious congregations,
including teaching congregations, were expelled from France. Ten thousand religious schools were closed, and 30,000 monks and nuns were
forced into exile.17 The culmination of the anticlerical legislation came in
1905 when France officially separated church and state. This separation
ended Napoleon’s 1801 agreement with French Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish communities. It also eliminated payment of priests by the state. In
addition, the state expropriated much church property and placed the
burden of church repairs on parishes.18 The expulsion of congregations in
France and the separation of church and state embittered the Catholic
community, creating a serious rift between Catholics and the French state
that was not repaired until after World War I.19
In addition to concerns about official “persecution” by the state,
Catholics also worried about growing religious indifference in some
regions of France as fewer people attended Mass or baptized their
children.20 Many historians have pointed out that it is too simplistic to
present French history as heading in a direct line toward secularization.

15. Sarah Curtis has provided an excellent study of Catholic education in the nineteenth century and the response of Catholic schools to the anticlerical legislation passed
between 1880 and 1905. See Sarah Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling, and
Society in Nineteenth-Century France (DeKalb, IL, 2000).
16. Sowerwine, France since 1870, p. 70.
17. Baubérot, Histoire de la Laïcité, pp. 70–73.
18. Maurice Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair (London, 1974), pp. 151–54.
19. John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (New York, 1972), pp.
167–68.
20. Jean-Marie Mayeur and Madeleine Réberioux, The Third Republic from Its Origins
to the Great War, 1871–1914 (New York, 1984), pp. 101–07.

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Spirituality in general, and adherence to Catholicism in particular, ebbed
and flowed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but
did not disappear. Women generally remained more attached to the
Church than men, although religious adherence among women varied
according to class and region.21 Nonetheless, many Catholics feared that
France was on a path toward religious disaffection that would imperil not
only individual souls but also the very identity of the French nation.22
It was this context of state “persecution” and growing religious indifference that encouraged French Catholic women to develop large women’s
organizations designed to fortify France’s Catholic identity. By the earlytwentieth century, French Catholic women had come to see themselves as
vital to the struggle for the protection of Christian civilization, a fact that
was upheld by prominent men in the French Catholic community. In
1903, the ASF published a brief article by Émile Ollivier, a moderate
republican politician and a frequent contributor to the ASF’s magazine (see
figure 1). Women, Ollivier asserted, had an vital role to play in religious
struggles. Women brought more passion, tenacity, and conviction to religious struggles than men. However, this passion could be directed in positive ways so that women could moderate religious extremism and promote
justice for everyone.23
International Cooperation
Despite the plethora of problems that Catholic women saw in France,
they were not content to limit their vision of social and religious reform to
their home country. Rather, both the ASF and the LPDF became leaders
in the mobilization of women internationally to tackle problems important
to Catholics and women. By 1906, the ASF had created an international
secretariat headed by Mme. Gautier-Lacaze (first name unknown). Gautier-Lacaze, a talented linguist competent in thirteen European languages,
created a network of Catholic women throughout Europe and the Ameri21. For more information, see Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in a Secular Age
(London, 1999); Thomas Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth Century France (New
Brunswick, NJ, 1983); Gérard Cholvy and Yves-Marie Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France,
1880–1914 (Toulouse, 2000).
22. Odile Sarti, The Ligue Patriotique, p. 45. The feeling that religion was becoming
obsolete or was at least in decline was not particular to France. Commentators all over Europe
noted what seemed to be a trend toward secularization. See Hugh McLeod, Secularization in
Western Europe, 1848–1914 (New York, 2000), pp. 1–3.
23. Émile Ollivier, “Conférence: La Femme dans les Luttes Religieuses,” Bulletin de
l’ASF, 2, no. 10 (1903), 615–22.

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F RENCH W OMEN AND THE G LOBAL F IGHT FOR F AITH

FIGURE 1. Politician Émile Ollivier, c. 1870. Photograph by Pierre-Louis Pierson. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

cas who corresponded and shared ideas about social and religious reform
programs.24 In 1907, ASF member G. Le Roy Liberge, reporting from
Portugal, affirmed that the moment had come to create an international
Catholic women’s union, especially among Latin countries, to “save Christian civilization” from the “growing influence of Freemasonry.”25

24. “L’Action Sociale de la Femme,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 12, no. 2 (1913), 59.
25. G. Le Roy Liberge, “Lettre de Portugal,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 6, no. 7 (1907), 292–
94: “notre secrétaire générale avait deviné l’heure providentielle pour créer ici l’Union internationale des femmes catholiques qui doit, surtout dans les pays latins, s’efforcer de contrebalancer l’influence grandissante de la franc-maçonnerie pour sauver la civilisation
chrétienne.” Over the course of the nineteenth century, Masonic lodges had become the
“strongholds of the anti-clerical middle class” in France. They opposed what they saw as the
“superstition and authoritarianism” of the Catholic Church. Hugh McLeod argues that
“throughout the period of the Third Republic in France the influence of the Masonic lodges
was quite disproportionate to their small membership. From Gambetta to Léon Blum probably a majority of the leading figures on the Left were masons.” See McLeod, Secularization,
p. 95; McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe 1789–1989 (Oxford, 1997), p. 44.

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Each year, the ASF expanded its international outreach by increasing
its international contacts and international reporting in its journal. In
1909, Gautier-Lacaze declared that there was no “dead-season” for the
International Secretariat of the ASF. International dialogue had to be constantly and carefully maintained. She emphasized the centrality of the ASF
to the “world movement” of Catholic women and affirmed that the journal
of the ASF was already recognized for the information it provided and its
bibliography of books. The ASF and its journal, she declared, would show
that France was still “a leader in thought and action” throughout Europe.26
By 1910, the ASF had eighty correspondents around the world, most of
them in Europe and the Americas.27 That same year, the ASF was joined in
its international outreach by the LPDF with its 450,000 members in
France.28 The international goals of the LPDF were considerably more ambitious that those of the ASF. The LPDF orchestrated the creation of the
International Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues that brought Catholic
women from all over the world together at an annual conference to share
information and discuss social and religious problems. In 1911, the International Union had fifteen member leagues and six affiliated leagues in Europe,
Canada, the United States, and Latin America.29 By 1912, several other

26. Gautier-Lacaze, “Etranger,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 8, no. 8 (1909), 385: “Il y a peu de
morte-saison pour le Secrétariat International qui doit être toujours en mouvement pour
entretenir ses précieuses relations… Je crois que, quelquefois dans l’année, un article plus
étendu sur telle ou telle œuvre, dont j’ai des documents de première main, intéresserait notre
public et montrerait combien l’A.S.F. est mêlée au mouvement mondial. Notre Bibliographie, aurait ainsi une physionomie très particulière, nous exciterions l’émulation parmi les
femmes sociales étrangères qui aimerait voir leurs œuves de valeur étudiées par nous, et nous
montrerions que la France est toujours le véhicule de grandes pensées et des grandes oeuvres.”
27. “Rapport sur le Secrétariat International de l’Action sociale de la Femme,” Bulletin
de l’ASF, 9, no. 6 (1910), 256.
28. Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire Religieuse, p. 155.
29. “Rapport Général de la Fédération International des Ligues Catholiques
Féminines,” Fédération Internationale des Ligues Catholiques Féminines: 2e Conseil International,
24–26 Juin 1911 (Paris, 1911), p. 16. The International Federation tended to list federated
leagues. The author has not found any documents that provide the exact number of women
associated with the International Union. However, in 1911, the International Federation
called on its member and affiliated leagues to have their members show support for the pope
by participating in a special sacramental Communion. The International Federation reported
in 1912 that it had collected nearly 10 million communion promises and presented them to
the pope the previous spring. The International Federation had been blessed by the pope for
its work. Pius X thanked the federation and noted that almost every country in the world had
been represented among participants. See “Rapport du Service Central International,” Fédération Internationale des Ligues Catholiques Féminines: 3e Conseil International, 8–10 September
1912 (Paris, 1912), p. 17.

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organizations had applied to join. The archives of the LPDF contain hundreds of letters sent from Marie Frossard, the general secretary for both the
LPDF and the International Union, to Catholic leaders abroad. These letters
indicate a high level of cooperation between French women and their international counterparts. Through her correspondence, Frossard did everything
from coordinate international demonstrations showing support for the pope
to ensuring accurate translations of documents into different languages.30
Even growing national political rivalries such as that between France
and Germany did not impede cooperation between Catholic women. In
November 1911, Frossard sent a letter to Amalia Schalscha Erenfeld in
Berlin regarding Schalscha Erenfeld’s upcoming presentation at an international Catholic conference. Frossard’s letter was friendly and polite,
giving no indication that she felt differently about German women than
women of any other nation.31 Other similar letters indicate that Frossard
actively tried to engage German women’s organizations in the International Union.32 Representatives from these various leagues discussed ways
to “work for the maintenance of the faith, the defense of religious liberties,
and the organization of Catholic social action.”33 Each member association
was encouraged to create social programs for the poor, to struggle against
Freemasonry, and to improve the condition of working women.34 These
broader goals helped overcome growing international tensions.
The LPDF’s international engagement quickly caught the attention of
the French police who were already suspicious of Catholic women’s organ30. For examples, see Paris, Archives of the Action catholique générale féminine (hereafter ACGF), letter from Marie Frossard to Countess Melanie von Metternich-Zichy
(Vienna), March 22, 1911, and letter from Marie Frossard to the Marquise Léoner de
Vélasco (Madrid), Box H 510—Copie de Lettres: Ligue étrangéres #2 du 23 mars 1911–21
juillet 1911, pp. 5–6, 10–11.
31. Letter from Marie Frossard to Amalia V. Schalscha Erenfeld (Berlin), November
27, 1911, ACGF, Box H 510–Copie de Lettres Ligue étrangéres #2 du 24 juillet 1911–mai
1912, pp. 274–76.
32. Letter from Marie Frossard to Mme. Hamel (Munich), April 4, 1911, ACGF, Box
H 510—Copie de Lettres Ligue étrangéres #2 du 23 mars 1911–21 juillet 1911, pp. 64–65.
33. Paris, Archives Nationales de France (hereafter ANF), “Fédération internationale
des Ligues Catholiques féminines,” La Croix, 31, no. 8417 (1910), p. 1. F7 13215—Folder:
Fédération internationales des Ligues Catholiques féminines (1910–1918): “Dans son discours d’ouverture, la présidente démontre l’utilité d’une entente internationale entre les Ligues
catholiques féminines pour travailler au maintien de la foi, à la défense des libertés religieuses
et à l’organisation de l’action sociale catholique.”
34. “Allocution de la Vicomtesse de Vélard,” Fédération Internationale 1911 (Paris,
1911), p. 9.

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izations. In November 1910, a police reporter tasked with monitoring the
LPDF compiled a summary of the LPDF’s international work. The officer
reported that in addition to its extensive propaganda and educational programs in France, the LPDF worked “secretly and actively” with an international federation of women’s leagues. There was, in fact, nothing secret
about the LPDF’s involvement in the International Union, but this statement reveals suspicion and hostility on the part of the republican police.
The reporter concluded that the LPDF was a “formidable organization”
that had spread to all departments in France with increasing financial capabilities that would allow it to intensify its activities.35 The interest of the
police points to the visibility and effectiveness of the LPDF’s national and
international presence.
Through their international contacts, French Catholic women hoped
to create relationships among Catholic women globally that would facilitate
their common struggle for the “defense and extension of Catholic civilization.”36 Many of the problems identified by Catholic women in France,
such as Freemasonry, had international roots or, in the case of the exploitation of women workers, were similarly experienced throughout Europe and
the Americas. The “enemies” of Catholics seemed to be developing international networks to undermine morality, to attack Catholicism, and to
exploit women. ASF member G. Le Roy Liberge urged Catholic women to
cooperate, in particular, against the Freemasons, an “eminently international cult” working to “undermine the foundations of religion and morality
and sew . . . calamity” throughout Europe.37 Catholic women had to
35. Letter from “Un correspondant,” Paris, November 21, 1910, ANF, F7 13215–
Folder: Fédération internationale des ligues catholiques féminines (1910–1918): “La Ligue
Patriotique des Françaises travaille secrètement et activement à la Fédération Internationale
des Ligues Féminines. Son action, au point de vue propagande intérieure est aussi très forte
. . . Cette formidable organisation s’étend à tous les départements, et l’année prochaine la
Ligue aura des capitaux importants qui lui permettront d’intensifier sa propagande.”
36. “L’Action Sociale de la Femme: Neuvième Année,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 7, no. 10
(1908), n.pag.: “Ouverture du Secrétariat central international de l’Action sociale de la
Femme, qui met en rapport les oeuvres sociales des différents pays, désireuses de lutter pour
la défense et l’extension de la civilisation catholique…” The December 1908 journal of the
ASF includes a timeline of important events in the organization’s history between its formation in 1900 and 1908–09. The pages of the chronology are not numbered, but it follows the
“Chronique de l’Action Sociale de la Femme” on pages 481–82.
37. “Rapport sur la ‘Féderation Internationale’ Présenté par Mme Le Roy Liberge,”
Congrès de la Ligue Patriotique des Françaises tenu les 7, 8, 9, 10, et 11 Juin 1912 à Lourdes
(Paris, 1912), p. 197: “En premier lieu fut mise bien en lumière l’urgente nécessité, surtout
pour les pays latins, de se renseigner mutuellement sur les menées ténébreuses au moyen
desquelles la Franc-Maçonnerie, la secte éminemment internationale, cherche à saper les

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respond in kind to the international movement against Catholicism and
defend Christian civilization, warned M. René Doumic, a speaker at an
ASF conference. Doumic affirmed that in all questions of religion, women
had to play a leading role, regardless of their nation of origin.38
International action signified women’s growing access to unofficial
religious leadership positions and women’s desire to guide Catholics
toward a more unified, more influential position in Europe and the Americas. Alicie, the viscountess de Vélard (president of the LPDF and a
founder of the International Union), addressed the International Union in
1911. Although she referred to women members as “obedient daughters of
the Church,” she did not present women as passive beings led by men.
Women guarded “the words of eternal life” and were “instructed by the lessons and examples of the Saints.” They were dedicated to “the work of
regeneration” that could only be “accomplished by faith.” “Faith is our
force,” Vélard proclaimed, “it is what permits union.” Although Vélard
carefully presented women as obedient daughters of the Church, she also
implied that it was not the pope or the male Catholic hierarchy who would
reestablish Christianity as a global force for good. Rather, it was the faith
and dedication of women that would produce the unity needed to counter
the Church’s enemies and produce a more Christian world.39
The interaction of ASF and especially LPDF leaders with the Catholic
hierarchy reveals much about the turn-of–the-century Catholic Church.
Christopher Clark has noted that the nineteenth-century Church underwent considerable changes. Papal authorities sought to strengthen the control of Rome over clergy and laypeople alike but were pressured to accommodate the needs of a popular revival of Catholicism from below. Clark’s
emphasis on the interplay between the centralizing tendencies of Rome and
the religious mobilization of laypeople in popular forms of piety and
activism is particularly relevant to the study of French Catholic women.40
bases de la religion et de la morale et sème, à cet effet, la calomnie d’un pays dans l’autre, car,
dévoiler ces machinations, c’est presque les déjouer.”
38. “Chronique: M. Doumic,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 6, no. 6 (1907), 255–56.
39. “Allocution de la Vicomtesse de Vélard,” Fédération Internationale 1911 (Paris,
1911), pp. 9–12: “Filles obéissantes de l’Église qui garde les paroles de la vie éternelle, instruites par les leçons et les exemples des Saints, nous savons que le travail de régénération que
nous entreprenons ne peut se faire que par la foi . . . Cette foi est notre force; c’est elle qui
permet l’union.”
40. Christopher Clark, “The New Catholicism and the European Culture Wars,” in
Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark
and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge, UK, 2003), pp. 11–23.

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Bruno Dumons, who has done significant work on Catholic women’s
leagues, argues that the priest who served as the spiritual counselor of the
LPDF, as well as some women leaders, pushed that organization toward a
closer relationship to Rome. Women leaders in the ASF and the LPDF
craved support and legitimacy from the Vatican and other members of the
hierarchy. These organizations periodically sent delegations to Rome to
receive the pope’s blessing and to express their fidelity to the Holy See.41 In
1908, after one such meeting, the magazine of the LPDF noted that it had
continually received encouragement from the Vatican. The author
expressed deep gratitude for this support and promised the devotion of
LPDF members in return.42 The hierarchy also ensured that the LPDF and
other similar organizations remained under the careful eye of male clergymen.43 However, the rhetoric of submission concealed women leaders’
efforts to reshape the orientation of the Church to make it more womanfriendly and to provide women with more influence. Although Catholic
women never achieved the same level of equality attained by women in
many Protestant and Jewish denominations, they were not simply passive
recipients of orders from above. The numbers and strength of their organizations forced the hierarchy to accord a certain degree of respect to these
women and to recognize that they had a vital role in shaping the direction
of the Church.
French women believed in the importance of their international
engagement and presented it as an example that all Catholics should emulate. French women, working with women in other nations, were forging
a path for the rest of the Church to follow. Women’s international cooperation proved that Catholics could work together across borders, despite
political disagreements that might exist between their nations. At the
International Union’s 1910 conference, LPDF member Hélène Déglin
gave a report about the International Catholic Association of Programs for
the Protection of Young Women (ACI). The ACI, an organization
against the “white slave” trade established by Swiss women in 1897,
brought women together to protect young women as they traveled and

41. Bruno Dumons, Les Dames de la Ligue des Femmes Françaises (1901–1914) (Paris,
2006), pp. 268, 397.
42. “Allons à Rome,” Echo de la LPDF, 63, no. 6 (1908), 2.
43. Dumons, Les Dames de la Ligue des Femmes Françaises, pp. 173–76, 398–402.
Dumons provides an excellent discussion concerning the role of the clergy and the pope in
internal conflicts within the LPDF as well as in conflicts between the LPDF and the Ligue
des Femmes Françaises, a competing Catholic women’s organization. High-ranking members of the clergy also helped shape the political orientation of the LPDF.

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looked for work.44 France had joined the ACI in 1898, and Déglin was the
ACI’s representative to the International Union’s 1910 congress. From
Déglin’s perspective, the ACI proved the facility with which Catholics
cooperated across international lines. She declared “our hearts and our
souls vibrate in unison when we defend the sacred interests of faith and
charity.” Like many Catholic women’s organizations, the ACI had been
blessed and encouraged by the pope.45 For the viscountess de Vélard, the
vibrancy of the International Union countered the pessimism of those who
believed that faith was dying in Europe.46
International cooperation increased women’s sense of power and
strengthened their confidence that they could effectively change the world
for the better. This was especially important to French Catholic women
who increasingly felt persecuted and marginalized in French society.47
“Enemies” within France might have been trying to undermine the
Catholic faith, but unity among Catholic women internationally could
effectively combat the sources of evil both in France and elsewhere.
French Exceptionalism
Global re-Christianization and the advancement of women were both
important motivations for women’s international connections. However,
for French Catholic women, another factor was central to their decision to
undertake leadership in creating international networks. Despite the
church-state conflicts that occurred in France in the years before World
War I, Catholics continued to believe that France was and could be nothing other than a Catholic nation. France was the “eldest daughter” of the
44. White slavery was the phrase used in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
century to describe the traffic in women for sexual services.
45. “Rapport sur l’Association Catholique Internationale des Oeuvres pour la Protection de la jeune fille,” Fédération Internationale 1910 (Paris, 1910), p. 73: “Nos coeurs et nos
âmes vibrent à l’unisson dés qu’il s’agit de prendre en main la défense des intérèts sacrés de la
foi et de la charité.” For more information, see Emily Machen, “Traveling with Faith: The
Creation of Women’s Immigrant Aid Associations in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century
France,” Journal of Women’s History, 23, no. 3 (2011), 89–112.
46. “Allocution de la Vicomtesse de Vélard,” pp. 9–12.
47. Although Catholic women felt persecuted and marginalized, the size and vibrancy
of their organizations—which far outnumbered Protestant, Jewish, and secular women’s
organizations—gave Catholic women more influence in France than other women’s groups.
It was the conservatism (or, at least, the perceived conservatism) of Catholic women that
prompted the French Senate to reject women’s suffrage over and over in the first half of the
twentieth century. Senators feared that Catholic women would vote for Catholic or conservative candidates and destroy the secular Republic.

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Catholic Church called by Pope Leo XIII “a Catholic nation . . . by virtue
of the faith of the great majority of her sons today.”48 Catholic women saw
Catholicism as the heart of French national identity and worked hard to
strengthen that identity. French Catholics also believed that they held a
unique position as leaders of world Catholicism and that they had a special
relationship with the pope. To some extent, they were correct. France did
have a special relationship with the Vatican. Even under the anticlerical
Third Republic, as Maurice Larkin notes, “the Vatican still received an
outward show of formal deference from the French government. There
was still a full-blown French embassy to the Holy See, which periodically
presented the pope with the nation’s respects and ‘filial devotion.’”49
French Catholics affirmed this political and religious exceptionalism
whenever they had the chance. The ASF invited Denys Cochin, a member
of the French parliament, to speak at its annual conference in 1906. His
talk primarily described a recent European political conference held in
Algesiras, Spain. However, embedded within his talk was a clear notion of
French political and religious exceptionalism. Cochin affirmed that “the
old superiority of France, recognized since ancient times, is still today
respected and consecrated.” This was true in the realm of politics, but it
was especially true in matters of religion. France continued to be both a
symbol of Catholicism and a protector of Catholics around the world.
Cochin suggested that the Turks of the Ottoman Empire tended to
assume that Catholic convents and schools were French in origin even
when they actually belonged to other European nations. When problems
arose in areas controlled by the Ottoman Empire, French agents frequently
stepped in to resolve disagreements between Catholics and Ottoman officials. Cochin proclaimed that France had a special ability and an obligation
to see that justice was accorded to Catholics living abroad.50
In fact, French Catholic missionaries did have a special position
abroad that in many ways conflicted with the experience of their coreligionists at home. Unlike in the metropole where anticlericalism was the
order of the day for many politicians, the French government encouraged
Catholic missionaries in their work in the colonies. J. P. Daughton sug-

48. Leo XIII, Au milieu des sollicitudes, February 16, 1892, in Maurice Larkin, Church
and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The Separation Issue in France (London, 1974), p. 6.
49. Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair, p. 35.
50. Denys Cochin, “Une Actualité: La Conférence d’Algésiras,” Bulletin de L’ASF, 5,
no. 6, (1906), 221–22: “Cependant la vieille supériorité de la France reconnu depuis des temps
anciens, est aujourd’hui même encore respectée et consacrée par l’usage.”

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gests that missionaries played the primary role in France’s civilizing mission. The French Republic could not afford to send teachers, doctors, and
nurses in sufficient numbers to its colonial possessions, but Catholic priests
and nuns filled these positions and cost the Republic almost nothing. By
the early-twentieth century, there were about 58,000 French priests, nuns,
and monks working in overseas missions. As Daughton explains, “Catholic
missions engaged in one of the single largest private French endeavors outside of Europe.”51
French Catholic missionaries might have fared well abroad, but that
did not alter the fact that church-state difficulties in France had severely
undermined the supposedly special relationship between France and the
Catholic Church. The conflict between church and state highlighted
growing secularism in France, and it also provoked a rift between France
and the Vatican. The anticlerical laws passed in France in the early-twentieth century were especially onerous for the Vatican, which, as Larkin suggests, had lost much political power in the previous decades. In this context, the Vatican was looking for ways to “increase the respect it enjoyed
internationally.”52 The Vatican may have been increasing its influence over
Catholics, but this was not true of its relationship with many European
governments and secular leaders.
Relations between France and the Vatican deteriorated considerably
under Pope Pius X (r. 1903–14), who believed that previous popes had
been too easy on French anticlericals. Hostility between Paris and Rome
grew especially intense after the 1905 separation of church and state. Pius
X refused to allow French Catholics to cooperate with the new law—particularly the provision that required them to create religious associations of
laypeople to direct parish churches. The Church’s refusal to cooperate with
the new law resulted in considerable loss of wealth. It also produced confusion about who controlled church buildings and other property because,
without lay associations, congregations had no legal control over the buildings they frequented. Overall, Catholic communities were left in a precarious legal position in the wake of the 1905 separation law.53
For French Catholic women, international engagement, and especially
leadership in the creation of international organizations, helped reclaim
51. J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of
French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 6–15.
52. Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair, p. 35.
53. Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair, pp. 123, 170.

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France’s Catholic exceptionalism. In the minds of French women, reclaiming this exceptionalism benefited France as a nation, the French Catholic
Church, and French Catholic women. It helped prove that France could
still be a leader in the Catholic world, forging a religious and political path
that other nations could follow. It assisted in the revival of prestige for the
French Catholic Church abroad, and it helped renew French Catholic
women’s special relationship with the Vatican even in the midst of serious
antagonism between the Vatican and the French state.
Catholic women worked hard to promote an image of France and
themselves as leaders in the Catholic world. Catholic France was increasingly represented around the world not by laymen or male priests but by
women. Women recognized and frequently publicized this new image. A
writer for the ASF in 1909 declared that “people everywhere are struck by
the multiplicity of congresses, such as those in France, that produce positive
results and where women hold a greater and greater place.”54 That same
year, the international secretary of the ASF applauded the ASF’s role in the
development of an international Catholic social movement. Catholic
women all over Europe were corresponding with ASF leaders and gaining
valuable knowledge in the process. Even Germans, who were sometimes
presented as France’s enemies in Catholic women’s journals, had written
about how happy they were to see the Catholic social movement spread
from one country to another, presumably because of the ASF’s leadership.55
French Catholic women carefully cited their successes and the praise
they received from Catholics beyond their borders. This international
praise for French Catholic women’s leadership affirmed both France’s special position as a Catholic leader and French women’s special role as
Catholic world leaders. The LPDF received many accolades from Catholic
organizations around the world. Other nations willingly recognized the
LPDF’s special leadership position within the International Union. In
1911, women members of the International Union unanimously chose the
LPDF to head the federation and direct its secretariat, the position responsible for communications between different leagues.56 At the subsequent
54. “Réunion des Dames patronesses du 12 novembre,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 8, no. 10
(1909), 484: “partout on est frappé de la multiplicité des congrès qui donnent, comme en
France, d’heureux résultats, et où les femmes prennent de plus en plus place.”
55. “Etranger,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 8, no. 9 (1909), 443. The point of this article is to
demonstrate the positive effects of the information provided by the ASF. It is not entirely
clear that the Germans are praising the ASF, but that is the impression given by the article.
56. “Rapport Général de la Fédération Internationale des Ligues Catholiques
Féminines par Mme Le Roy Liberge,” Fédération Internationale 1911 (Paris, 1911), p. 15.

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1912 conference, Austrian Countess Melanie von Metternich-Zichy, who
was president of the International Council that year, once again praised the
LPDF for its world leadership. She applauded the LPDF and its members
for spending “their time, their devotion, their intelligence, and their
resources in the service of great religious and social questions that interest
women around the world.” She further proclaimed that the “infatigable
zeal of these women (LPDF leaders) is beyond all praise and merits our
admiration and all our gratitude. We pray that God will especially bless
them in all their charitable and social works.” Metternich-Zichy’s speech
is especially noteworthy, because it praised the LPDF both for its religious
leadership and for promoting the “interests of women” around the world.57
Although the primary purpose of the International Union was to
spread and protect Catholicism, it also created a very important forum for
women to raise concerns specific to women. It gave women a voice, leadership positions, and a means of action in a religious and secular world that
was dominated by men. For French women, the International Union and
international outreach allowed them to affirm France’s privileged place as
a leader in world Catholicism. Also revealed were French women’s emerging position as leaders in French and international Catholic action and
their increasing pride and confidence from their new leadership roles.
International Engagement and French Women’s
Political Advancement
Demonstrating France’s Catholic exceptionalism held primary importance for French Catholic women. However, for the ASF and to a lesser
extent the LPDF, international engagement helped promote a form of feminism that supported controversial women’s rights. In the years leading up
to World War I, many French Catholics and the Vatican remained highly
suspicious of feminists who demanded equal political rights for men and
women. French Catholics tended to be more comfortable with “Christian
feminism” that valorized women’s maternal and domestic responsibilities

57. “Allocution par la Comtesse Zichy-Metternich,” Fédération Internationale 1912,
(Paris, 1912), pp. 10–11: “Je remercie, au nom de toutes les Ligues représentées ici, les dames
de la Ligue Patriotique des Françaises, qui ont pris à charge le Service-Central et qui ont mis
leur temps, leur dévouement, leur intelligence et leur bourse au service des grandes questions
religieuses et sociales, qui intéressent les femmes du monde entier. Les sacrifices pécuniers,
qui ont été si généreusement portés par le Service-Central, et le zèle infatigable de ces dames,
son au delà de toutes louanges et méritent notre admiration et toute notre reconnaissance.
Nous prions Dieu de les bénir tout spécialement dans leurs oeuvres charitables et sociales.”

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while expanding their public engagement through various forms of philanthropy.58 The very conservative Pius X had explicitly condemned feminism
aimed at making men and women equal or engaging women in politics.59
Both the ASF and the LPDF claimed to avoid politics, keeping women
safely in the realms of social work and education. However, both organizations defined politics very narrowly. When the ASF and the LPDF claimed
to avoid politics, they meant refusing to advocate for women’s suffrage or
women’s election to political office. Encouraging husbands to vote for certain candidates or opposing state policies were perfectly acceptable forms of
civic engagement that fell within women’s purview. Despite Pius X’s condemnation of political feminism, the ASF began to include articles favorable to women’s suffrage very soon after its creation. The ASF would not
officially begin promoting women’s suffrage until 1918, but it had indicated
its preference for women’s suffrage well before this date. The LPDF was
slower to promote women’s suffrage, but it actively engaged in politics,
despite its rhetoric to the contrary.60 Moreover, the efforts of LPDF leaders
to create broad-based national and international movements led by Catholic
women suggests a much greater willingness to rethink women’s social and
religious roles than its conservative rhetoric implied.
For the ASF, international contacts and international reporting
allowed it to promote women’s suffrage without explicitly challenging the
Vatican or demanding suffrage in France. The ASF carefully reported to
its readers any extension of rights that women received in other countries,
and its reporting often included positive commentary. This strategy
allowed women readers to consider women’s suffrage without the need for
the ASF leadership to demand rights rejected by the Church. The ASF’s
tradition of international information-sharing helped justify its reporting
about women’s rights in other countries by placing this reporting within
the context of international engagement more generally.
In 1908, the ASF printed a letter sent by a female colleague in Lisbon,
Portugal. She complained that the “domination by men of women”—
58. For more on Christian feminism, see Steven C. Hause and Anne R. Kenney, “The
Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Movement in France, 1896–1922,” The
Catholic Historical Review, 67 (1981), 11–30, here 11–12, esp. footnote 2.
59. Hause and Kenney, “Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Movement
in France,” p. 23.
60. Hause and Kenney, “Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Movement
in France,” pp. 11–30.

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whether by a father, husband, or brother—was “absolute.” This situation
had arisen because men had been given “excessive authority,” and women
had shown a “lack of initiative” to take control of their lives. She was especially discouraged that people of other faiths, not Catholics, had come to
understand the problems faced by women and were actively seeking solutions to those problems. The feminism that these other faith communities
espoused had been rejected by many Portuguese even though, in her opinion, it incorporated “just demands” that needed to be considered by
Catholics.61
The following year, the ASF’s magazine included a short segment
about Danish women’s recent participation in municipal elections for the
first time. Not only had women been allowed to vote, but seven women
had also been elected to various municipal positions. The author of the
ASF article noted that Danish women had shown real enthusiasm in
accomplishing their civic duty as voters. The French ASF observer on the
scene saw husbands and wives coming together to vote and reported one
woman’s affirmation that “it was a great day for Danish women.”62
In 1910 the ASF made one of its most important pitches for women’s
suffrage, once again drawing on the experience of another European nation.
That year, the ASF began a series of three long articles chronicling the
extension of suffrage to Norwegian women. The author, Paul Parsy—a clear
advocate of women’s suffrage and a correspondent for periodicals such as Le
Figaro, Le Temps, and La Croix—declared from the start that the Norwegian
situation proved that women’s suffrage could be an “element in social pacification,” one of the primary goals of French Catholic organizations.63
Norwegian women already had a tradition of voting. They had been
given the right to vote in local elections in 1901. However, they voted in

61. “Chronique de l’Action Sociale de la Femme,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 7, no. 2 (1908), 95:
“La domination de l’homme sur la femme est absolue, qu’il soit père, mari ou frère; il y a excès
d’authorité d’un côté, manque d’initiative de l’autre. Ce qui est désolant, c’est que l’autres, qui
n’ont pas nos croyances, aient compris plus vite que nous ce qu’il y a à faire, et que ce soit par
le féminisme décrié et ridiculisé, ici plus qu’ailleurs, que de justes revendications se fassent
entendre.”
62. “Danemark,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 8, no. 5 (1909), 248: “On sentait que, selon l’expression de l’une d’entre elles, ‘c’était un grand jour pour la femme danoise.’”
63. P[aul]. Parsy, “Le Vote Politique des Femmes en Norvège,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 9,
nos. 8–10 (1910), 323: “Je voudrais (y réussirai-je?) par cette conférence, vous persuader que
le vote des femmes est un élément de pacification sociale, tout au moins dans certains milieux,
sous certain cieux, dans certaines conditions, en Norvège, par example.”

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national political elections for the first time in October 1909.64 Parsy, who
had traveled to Christiania (present-day Oslo) to observe these elections,
admitted that he had expected to see some extraordinary response from the
Norwegians. He had expected at least a “triumphant expression” on the
faces of the women voters and maybe an expression of concern, or surprise,
or regret on the faces of the male supervisors of the election. He saw nothing of the sort. No one seemed shocked, surprised, or in any way disturbed
by women at the ballot boxes. Instead, the elections took place in an
atmosphere of absolute calm, a fact partly attributed by Parsy to the less
passionate character of the Norwegians in comparison to the French. The
Norwegians were more surprised to see a French observer who had traveled
forty-eight hours to watch women vote in their elections. They were flattered by his presence, which was noted in some newspapers. He was even
interviewed by one newspaper about how the French, and especially a
Catholic Frenchman, thought about women voting. He responded that he
thought that a Catholic “could be a feminist” and “should be” a feminist.65
In this first article, Parsy made no direct connection between women’s
suffrage in France and Norway, although his preference for women’s right
to vote was clear. However, his next two articles were much bolder in this
respect, which also required a greater degree of boldness on the part of
ASF leaders who printed his analysis. In the second installment of his
reporting, Parsy acknowledged that French Catholic women, whether they
admitted it or not, were already on a path toward greater political participation. He declared that French Catholic women already practiced “true
feminism,” by which he meant women’s political engagement. He cited the
LPDF as his primary example. He recognized that the LPDF had entered
the political realm for the sake of religious defense. He suggested that

64. See Ida Blom, “The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage in Norway, 1885–1913, Scandinavian Journal of History, 5, no. 1 (1980), 3–22. Women achieved limited suffrage in
national elections in 1907 and universal suffrage in 1913.
65. P[aul]. Parsy, “Le Vote Politique des Femmes en Norvège,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 9,
nos. 8–10 (1910), 323–27: “Je m’attendais à voir une chose extraordinaire, à voir quelque
mouvement, quelque soulèvement même dans les masses électorales; or, je dois vous avouer
tout net que je n’ai rien vu de semblable. Tout s’est passé dans le plus grand calme; les réunions
et les opérations électorales. . . . J’aurai voulu voir, sur la physionomie des femmes qui venaient
déposer dans les urnes un bulletin de vote, une expression quelconque; j’aurais au moins voulu
voir sur leur physionomie un petit air de triomphe . . . mais ni les hommes ni les femmes ne
manifestaient le moindre étonnement. . . . On vient même me demander ce qu’un Français
pouvait penser du vote des femmes. . . . Or, vous me permettre de vous dire ce que j’ai
répondu: j’ai répondu très carrement que je croyais qu’un catholique pouvait être féministe et
que je pensais même qu’il devait l’être.”

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French Catholic women were gradually leading their members “on the
path where a woman renders herself worthy to have political rights.” He
declared that if France granted women the right to vote, LPDF women
would already be well prepared to fulfill that civic duty.66
Turning back to Norway, he argued that women’s suffrage had contributed to social pacification in that country, and women had helped bring
conservatives back into power. This would have greatly appealed to French
Catholics who hoped to achieve the same results.67 In his final installment
concerning Norwegian women, Parsy encouraged ASF women not to fear
women’s suffrage. Rather, they should see women’s suffrage as a “way to correct the errors of universal suffrage” that had given men with “dangerous”
political opinions (such as communists and socialists) the right to vote. He
concluded that he believed that women’s suffrage would be good for France.68
The ASF used international reporting as a pretext to broach issues
that were highly controversial in France in both Catholic and secular circles. Marie Maugeret, one of the earliest French Catholic supporters of
women’s suffrage, had raised the issue of women’s suffrage at Catholic
women’s conferences between 1900 and 1906 but had failed to gain many
supporters.69 ASF leaders did not want to contradict the Catholic hierarchy directly, nor did they wish to alienate their members. So, they found
clever ways to introduce the idea of women’s suffrage without aligning too
closely with more militant, secular suffrage supporters. Once the Vatican
expressed support for women’s suffrage at the end of World War I, the
ASF dropped all pretense of neutrality toward women’s right to vote.70

66. P[aul]. Parsy, “Le Vote Politique des Femmes en Norvège (suite),” Bulletin de
l’ASF, 9, no. 11 (1910), 359: “Mesdames, passant de la question de principe à la question de
fait, j’ajoute que en ce qui concerne la France, je crois que le vrai féminisme (si, par féminisme,
il faut entendre l’introduction des femmes dans la vie politique, ou du moins l’orientation de
la mentalité féminine vers des préoccupations politiques) est pratiqué chez nous par les
femmes catholiques. . . . Et voilà comment, disais-je, les femmes catholiques de France, sans
le savoir et sans le vouloir, mettent peu à peu les adhérentes de leur groupement sur le chemin
où la femme se rend digne d’avoir des droits politiques.”
67. Parsy, “Le Vote Politique,” pp. 359–60.
68. P[aul]. Parsy, “Le Vote Politique des Femmes en Norvège (suite),” Bulletin de
l’ASF, 9, no. 12 (1910), 403–06: “Nous devons même vois, dans ce vote des femmes, un
moyen de corriger les erreurs du suffrage universel.”
69. Hause and Kenney, “Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Movement
in France,” pp. 14–23.
70. By 1919, the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Benedict XV had endorsed
women’s suffrage. See Hause and Kenney, “Development of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage
Movement in France,” p. 27.

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Thereafter, ASF leaders made calling for women’s suffrage a central part
of their program.
The 1920s also saw a more explicit policy by the ASF to report about
women’s international political advancement as a way of moving France
toward acceptance of women’s suffrage. In November 1922, the ASF
reported in its column “Letters from Abroad” that women were already
exercising considerable political influence throughout the world. Women
voted equally with men in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and British
imperial parts of Africa and Asia. Moreover, women served as members of
parliament in Australia, Canada, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Sweden,
Norway, Estonia, and Finland.71 Also in November 1922, the French
senate voted to deny women the right to vote.72 In its sharply critical
response, the ASF noted that it had previously spoken of women’s suffrage
abroad hoping that information would convince reluctant senators voting
on women’s suffrage in France. The writer expressed disappointment that
there were still senators “who did not understand that they inflicted on
French women (who had already proven themselves during the war) a
humiliation that [women] would not passively accept.” Women were especially bitter that they remained “a little while longer inferior to German
women” who had already been granted suffrage. The writer promised that
this undeserved denial of rights would be vehemently and rapidly
protested. She further proclaimed that it was important to “show to our
senators that we are not unreasonable dupes.”73
Promoting women’s suffrage helped solidify the idea of France’s
Catholic exceptionalism. French women wanted to affirm France’s position as a leader in Catholicism, and they were prepared to hold leadership
positions themselves. Catholic women gradually came to believe that
women’s suffrage would allow them to restore Catholicism in France and
strengthen its special Catholic position. Marguerite Billat, a writer
involved with Catholic workers’ unions, warned Catholics not to be
“wrecks of the past submerged and rejected by waves of rising generations.”
71. “Courrier de l’Étranger,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 11 (1922), 211.
72. Steven C. Hause and Anne R. Kenney, Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the
French Third Republic (Princeton, 1984), p. 241.
73. “Le vote des femmes,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 12 (1922), 231: “Hélas! Il s’en est trouvé
encore vingt-deux pour ne pas comprendre qu’il infligeaient à la femme françaises (qui a pourtant fait ses preuves pendant la guerre) une humiliation qu’elle supportera mal en songeant
qu’elle reste un peu de temps encore inférieur en apparence à la femme allemande. . . . Il
import, en effet de montrer à nos sénateurs que nous ne sommes pas dupes de raison qu’ils
ont invoquées contre nous.”

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Instead, she encouraged Catholics to draw from the “living sources of true
Christianity” the forces that they needed without imposing limits on the
strength that Christianity would afford to them. She recognized that there
were those who wanted to “surround themselves in a tight circle of their
own opinions,” but she warned Catholics not to imitate them. “The horizons are infinite,” Billat declared, and guided and surrounded by faith,
women “had the right to always aspire higher and farther” toward great
accomplishments.74 Reporting about the benefits of women’s suffrage
allowed French Catholic women to push the church and individual
Catholics in a direction they believed would be beneficial for Catholicism,
for France, and for women. ASF women also saw suffrage as a right
women deserved as rational beings who already contributed to the nation
in important, if often unrecognized, ways.
Conclusion
World War I dramatically curtailed Catholic women’s international
cooperation. The ASF ended its international correspondence during the
war, and the International Union of Catholic Women’s Leagues ceased
meeting for the duration of the conflict. However, these women’s efforts
produced surprisingly durable results, despite the crises provoked by the
global conflict. Both organizations had set an important precedent for international cooperation, and both organizations reestablished their international contacts after the end of World War I. By February 1922, the ASF
had not only reestablished its network of foreign correspondents but also created a study circle that brought foreign correspondents together in Paris to
discuss social questions. ASF leaders indicated that their goal was to foster
international cooperation among countries facing similar social problems.75
Also in 1922, the International Union held its fifth international congress in Rome after a nine-year hiatus. The ASF delegate at this conference
remarked that she was “struck by the great supernatural spirit that reigned,
74. Paris, Archives: Paris Archevêché, Marguerite Billat, “La Nouvelle Année 1910–
1911,” Courrier des Syndicats, 2, no. 20 (1910), 2–3. Box 3K1, 1d–Syndicats CFTC–Folder:
Syndicats féminins de l’Impasse Gomboust: “Ne soyons pas, nous catholiques, les épaves du
passé, que le flot des générations montantes submerge et rejette sans cesse. Puisons aux sources
vives du Christianisme vrai les forces dont nous avons besoin, mais ne lui imposons pas nos
frontières. Il en est que voudraient l’enserrer dans le cercle étroit de leur opinions personnelles,
ne les imiton pas, car s’il doit éclairer notre marche, il ne doit jamais arrêter notre course. Dans
l’ordre physique comme dans l’ordre moral, les horizons sont infinis; guidés par notre foi et
soutenues par elle nous avons le droit de viser toujours plus loin et toujours plus haute.”
75. “Cercle de la Section Étrangère de Paris,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 2 (1922), 29.

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317

especially after the inaugural mass” at Saint-Peters Basilica in Rome.76 The
International Union’s work was once again disrupted by World War II, but
members reunited after this war ended as well. The International Union
(now called the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations or
WUCWO), still exists and today engages in a broad spectrum of social and
religious work. The WUCWO’s current stated mission is to “foster awareness and respect of cultural diversity”; “promote the formation of women to
meet contemporary challenges”; “network with other international organizations and faith communities for the respect of human rights, especially for
women”; and “encourage ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.” The
WUCWO has consultative status with the United Nations and “is present
at the Council of Europe.”77 Its membership now extends into Africa and
Asia as well as Europe and the Americas, and its scope of action has transformed to meet the changing needs of the modern world.
The international alliances of French Catholic women in the earlytwentieth century were an especially important and innovative aspect of
women’s overall programs. The creation of international organizations
allowed Catholic women to gain ideas and information about social and
religious projects in other countries and in some cases to create joint programs. International work increased women’s participation in discussions
about the kinds of social activities in which the Catholic Church should
engage. It also revealed women’s critical, if unofficial, role in Catholic leadership and in the continued vitality of the Church. Women could not be
priests, so international women’s organizations provided an important
female alternative to the male-dominated hierarchy. French women’s leadership in international outreach also allowed them to reaffirm France’s special relationship with the Vatican while feminizing that relationship.
Despite women’s exclusion from official religious leadership posts,
ASF International Secretary Gautier-Lacaze affirmed that greatest reward
for her efforts was to have been one of God’s instruments uniting Catholic
women and extending the ASF’s “social apostleship abroad.”78 Women
76. “Congrès de l’Union internationale des Ligues catholiques féminines,” Bulletin de
l’ASF, 7–8 (1922), 164–65: “Notre déléguée, la marquise de Moustiers, a été frappée du très
grand esprit surnaturel qui a régné aussitôt après la messe d’inauguration à Saint-Pierre.
77. World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations, “Principal Areas of Activity,”
retrieved on September 28, 2012, from http://www.wucwo.org/en/Main/Section1033/Home/.
78. “Le Secrétariat International de l’ASF,” Bulletin de l’ASF, 12, no. 4 (1913), 171–72:
“Sous cette ferme et intelligente direction, la section internationale a pris son essor, et réalisé,
en partie, la rêve entrevu par l’Action sociale de la Femme, d’apostolat social à l’étranger.”

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presented themselves as saviors of Christian civilization who would forge a
new path of unity for the universal Church. They advocated a new kind of
Catholicism that could accept women’s public engagement and promote
their political rights. French Catholic women frequently pointed to St.
Joan of Arc as a model of a militant, independent, Christian woman they
wished to emulate. As Joan had saved France from its English foes, so
French women in the early-twentieth century hoped to save the Church in
France and around the world from the new enemies that besieged it.

Book Reviews
G ENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino: metamorfosi di una leggenda. By
Andrea Nicolotti. [Bibliotheca Erik Peterson. Collana di Studi del Centro di
Scienze Religiose, 3.] (Alessandria, Italy: Edizioni dell’Orso. 2011. Pp. viii,
236. €20,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-6274-307-5.)
I Templari e la Sindone: storia di un falso. By Andrea Nicolotti. [Aculei, 3.] (Rome:
Salerno editrice. 2011. Pp. 188. €12,50 paperback. ISBN 978-88-8402-7207.)
The Shroud of Turin, a unique icon presenting itself as Christ’s burial-sheet,
is now probably, thanks to the publicity so successfully sought by Ian Wilson, the
best-known object of Christian devotion in the West; the icon of the Mandylion
of Edessa, Christ’s “image not made by hand,” enjoys comparable fame among the
Orthodox and has been identified with other towel-icons venerated in Genoa and
Rome; the icon of Veronica’s Veil, a western mutation of the Mandylion, has
become one of the Stations of the Cross. Carbon 14 tests have dated the Shroud to
the fourteenth century. This is confirmed by the evolution of the loom and by the
fact that the Shroud cannot be traced back beyond the second half of that century,
when it is first signaled in the church of Lirey in Champagne. Yet the rumor persists that science and scholarship have conspired to discredit a genuine relic that
may even be evidence of the Resurrection. Those who make this claim support it
with pseudo-science and pseudo-scholarship. Andrea Nicolotti deplores the irresponsibility of the media and the gullibility of the literate public. He argues that
serious historians ought not to ignore pseudo-history, but should take the pains to
refute it; that they ought to disseminate more widely an understanding of the differences between hypothesis and certainty as well as between evidence, interpretation, conjecture, and speculation. If his books reach the public outside the “ivory
tower” of university discourse, they will certainly supply arguments to those who
have all along been unconvinced by the self-styled “sindonologists,” without feeling
able to refute their supposed proofs. In this way the genre of these two books is
somewhat similar to that of the catechisms that flourished among Christian communities in the Islamic Middle East, which taught Christians what to say in reply
to the classic Muslim arguments against Christianity. Nicolotti does not, of course,
simplify things as much as these question-and-answer tracts do. After all, he is not
trying to reach the man in the medieval street, but the modern reader who borrows
Wilson’s Shroud of Turin (Garden City, NY, 1978) from the public library and is
all the more impressed by this book because it has all the trappings of scholarship.
Confronted with the thirteen centuries in which no relic resembling the Shroud
was known anywhere in the Christian world, Wilson suggests that it was there all
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along but incognito. According to him, the Shroud was folded, leaving only the
face visible. The rest, for some reason, was carefully concealed, so that the cloth
appeared to be about the size of a towel. This gave rise to the legend that it was in
fact a towel used by Jesus to dry his face, leaving the imprint of his features there—
the Mandylion of Edessa, as described in the Greek Acts of Thaddaeus. This icon
was translated from Edessa to Constantinople in 944 and probably taken in 1204
to Western Europe, where, according to Wilson, it was unfolded and so “emerged”
as the Shroud in fourteenth-century France. Wilson’s book, simultaneously published in the United States and France, enjoyed a success and inspired several other
sindonologists. A popular refinement of his theory—to which Nicolotti devotes the
second book—identifies it with an “idol” allegedly venerated in secret by the
Knights Templar in the thirteenth century. The hypothesis that the Shroud was
folded rests on the use of the Greek word tetrádiplon to describe the towel on which
Jesus dried his face. A nineteenth-century English translation rendered this word
as “doubled in four” (this reviewer translates this as “a length of folded cloth with
four layers”). In his Mandylion (which boasts sixty-one illustrations, many of them
in color) Nicolotti points out that Byzantine Greeks, who knew this text and probably understood this rare word better than we do, never suspected that it meant a
single folded cloth eight layers thick; they always depicted it as a towel. Besides,
Wilson’s theory requires the Shroud to have been folded three times, not four.
Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen

ANDREW N. PALMER

Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425–1650: From Late
Medieval Classic to Early Modern Bestseller. By Maximilian von Habsburg. [St.
Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2011. Pp. x, 355. $134.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6765-0.)
This is a historico-theological-bibliographic study of the reception by selected
Protestants and Catholics of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (composed
1420–27). It begins (chapter 2) by concisely laying out the main themes of the work
(deep awareness of human sin and frailty, contrition, grace, dangers of vain intellectualism, the Mass, invocation of saints), avoiding the temptation to reduce the
work to interiorized piety. The Imitation is then situated within the devotio moderna
(chapter 3), which von Habsburg rightly portrays as both monastic and lay in character. A survey of the initial, largely monastic dissemination of the work from 1470
to 1530 (chapter 4) is complemented by a study of pre-Reformation Catholic translations into French and English (chapter 5). Here the author notes how translators
modified technical monastic terminology to make the work more useful for lay
readership while explaining and elaborating as necessary.
Chapters 6 through 8 study Protestant translators Caspar Schwenckfeld, Leo
Jud, Sebastian Castellio, Edward Hake, and Thomas Rogers up to the 1580s,
noting a number of others as late as 1650. The five mentioned here by name all
eliminated book IV on the Mass, removed all references to purgatory or the intercession of saints, and turned even implicit references to merit into “attainment” or

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321

“virtue.” In von Habsburg’s view, these Protestantizing modifications were thorough but not “overt” (p. 144).
None of these translators came from mainstream Lutheran or Calvinist circles;
rather, three of them represent the more spiritualist-irenic (Schwenckfeld, Castellio) or at least Zwinglian (Jud) circles. The two English translators were polemically
anti-Catholic Anglicans. Thus, it would be incorrect, the author concludes, to
think that Protestant interest in the Imitation arose from hope for ProtestantCatholic reconciliation.
Chapters 9 to 11 study the Jesuit reception of the work. St. Ignatius of Loyola
recommended it in his Spiritual Exercises, as he had been influenced by it during his
conversion. Jesuits contributed enormously to the diffusion of the work in its complete four books. They were very active in the debate over authorship. Those who see
a contradiction between the work’s supposed interiority and the Jesuit active apostolate are mistaken—the most active-in-the-world apostolate needs to be grounded in
a rich interior spirituality. The book concludes: “The translators of the Imitatio firmly
believed that no reformation was of any value without spiritual renewal. Spirituality
was not a peripheral, insignificant dimension of religion; it remained at the very
centre of Protestant and Catholic self-perception and identity” (p. 248).
An appendix lists hundreds of Latin, German, Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Croatian, Greek, Czech, and Japanese editions.
This is a fine study that well repays careful reading. This reviewer would have
liked to see at certain points an even stronger debunking of the deeply embedded
assumption that the Imitation of Christ is an interiorizing work. “Externals” are part
of its wallpaper, taken for granted, and its original readers knew that in a way that
modern people fail to grasp. For instance, in chapter 2, von Habsburg notes that
the Imitatio contains almost no mention of the sacrament of confession, focusing
instead on contrition. Yet precisely contrition makes the external sacrament more
fruitful in advancing holiness (as distinct from forgiving sin). See, as one example
among hundreds, the manual on frequent confession for lay people by Alfred
Wilson, Pardon and Peace (London, 1946).
Loyola University Chicago

DENNIS D. MARTIN

English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553–1829. By Francis Young. [Catholic
Christendom, 1300–1700.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2013. Pp.
xii, 308. $134.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-5565-3.)
The author has a very valid premise for this volume, which is that it is odd
how little is written on Catholic attitudes to witchcraft and related phenomena in
the period of the long post-Reformation. The question, then, is this: once one has
reassembled all the evidence as to how far Catholics in England were implicated in
contemporary beliefs about the supernatural, what does that tell us about them?
There is no formal conclusion to this volume. But what we might take as its prin-

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cipal finding is that there is embedded in the modern historiography of the topic
an assumption that the style of Catholic religion in post-Reformation England was
essentially a popular one. Also, it was likely that it would diverge from the rest of
the national Church after the power of the Tudor State had been used to reform
religion. In other words, these sensibilities would express themselves through popular forms, and those forms would resist the attempts of Protestant Reformers and
of Catholic Counter-Reformers to change them. The claim has been that the
new/Counter-Reformation clergy, imbued with the ideals of the Council of Trent,
met with resistance to their way of understanding the Church and the world and
were forced in the end to compromise with popular sensibilities and beliefs. This is
compatible, of course, with the line in Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of
Magic (New York, 1971)—that is, that the Reformation purported to take away the
means that the Church provided to deal with unwelcome and apparently supernatural phenomena and contributed temporarily to the rise of magical forms.
The point that comes across here quite strongly is that there is a rather wide
spectrum of Catholic opinions on these questions, as much skepticism and simple
endorsement of, for example, how far demonic possession is actually possible. The
author brings out well enough how the politics of debate about these issues generated
skepticism as well as assent. The other line pursued here is that Catholic attitudes to
these issues were not all that important in wider society and also Catholics’ opinions
about these things were essentially the same as everyone else’s (pp. 121, 162).
Historiographically this is of some significance and is demonstrably true as far
as, for example, witchcraft beliefs are concerned. It is true also that Catholic
attempts at spiritual healing were undertaken partly in competition with Protestant— or rather, Puritan—exorcists. On the other hand, from time to time, it was
precisely these questions about supernatural power and how far the Church could
exercise authority over the supernatural that led to overtly confessional disputes,
something that came out into the open with the conduct of exorcisms, as the book’s
sixth chapter shows very clearly.
The signs are here, as John Bossy argued as long ago as 1975, that all this was
somewhere near the center of post-Reformation Catholicism and certainly figures
in the ministry of Catholic seminary clergy. This comes out in, for example, cases
such as the “Boy of Bilson” in 1620. Here we have evidence of how a Catholic
attempt to seize the moment created by (as it turned out) a fraudulent demoniac
caused a series of ruptures in local society in which the presence of separatist
Catholicism was very much an issue. In instances such as these—so seldom
recorded but, one suspects, actually rather frequent—we have real evidence of how
the continuities of Catholicism in and after the Protestant Reformation could have
an impact despite the claims made by so many historians of the period that
Counter-Reformation Catholicism retreated to the safety and relative invisibility of
the interiors of gentry households.
Queen Mary, University of London

MICHAEL C. QUESTIER

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323

ANCIENT
Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography. By Miles Hollingworth. (New
York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xx, 312. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-19986159-0. Also available as an ebook and in Oxford Scholarship Online.)
This new book on St. Augustine has to compete with some seriously good predecessors. Biographies of Augustine are of necessity also “intellectual biographies,”
engaging with the development of his thought and the controversies in which he was
involved. In English alone there are Peter Brown’s classic Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley, 1967, rev. 2000), which inaugurates the modern attempt to understand Augustine the individual in his life and times, and Henry Chadwick’s two short masterly
studies (Augustine: A Very Short Introduction, new ed., New York, 2001; Augustine of
Hippo: A Life, New York, 2009), crammed with discerning detail on his culture and
theological development. In addition, Garry Wills’s Saint Augustine (New York,
1999) does eloquent justice to the man and the thinker in under 150 pages—an ideal
introduction—whereas James O’Donnell’s Augustine: A New Biography (New York,
2005) is refreshingly iconoclastic and irreverent, a critical study that is firmly rooted
in profound knowledge of Augustine’s writings and environment. Serge Lancel (St.
Augustine, London, 2002) combines expertise in North African archaeology and history of the fourth and fifth centuries with deep knowledge of the texts, in what is perhaps now the most rounded biography of the great man.
What does Hollingworth offer us? His preface provides a foretaste. He writes of
the danger that Augustine puts you into as a reader … he will always
begin in some ground that you share with him and thought was safe—
then he’ll start pointing out the booby-traps, one by one, until the fear
you taste is real, adrenal, metallic. (p. xi)
But even if those of us who have failed to have goosebumps while reading
Augustine are willing to let Hollingworth argue his case, the book does not deliver.
Hollingworth is at his best in discussing those parts of the Confessions where
Augustine deals with the themes of friendship, death, loss, and agonized conversion. In general, he is keener on anguish than on argument. This is a pity, for one
of the fascinating aspects of Augustine’s writing is the way in which he can switch
from narration of emotional processes to acute analysis. Hollingworth has it in for
the philosophers who have, or may have, influenced Augustine, not least because
he accepts at face value Augustine’s polemic against them. But Augustine’s attitude
to his pagan cultural heritage is ambiguous and complex. While distancing himself
from pagan thinkers and hence from his own past, he can at the same time borrow
and build on their arguments—consider, for instance, his development of the
theme of the self-thinking human intellect in On The Trinity. Why are some
Christian theologians so nervous about labeling as Platonic those elements in
Augustine’s thought that are evidently Platonic? Failure to engage with Augustine’s
cultural background and development, to appreciate the generic codes of his writ-

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ings, or to recognize their apologetic or polemical nature leads Hollingworth to
read Augustine too literally. Yet he has a good ear for the appropriate quotation, of
which there are many in the book, privileging Augustine’s preaching voice.
The book’s principal theme is central to Augustine’s theology: the human
search for the divine and for some form of communion with God. Hollingworth
writes eloquently and passionately about this, and it provides the real drama of his
vivid account—it makes some sense of his assertion that Augustine often writes like
a novelist. But he spoils his narrative by over-earnest appeals to the reader to accept
the Christianity that he finds in Augustine as the one ideology that can satisfy all
human psychological needs. Nor does it help that he engages in a persistent quasipostmodernist polemic against the rational elements in historical scholarship. Here
is a revealing statement: “The creeping, careful accuracy of scholarship has a sideeffect on Augustine which a book like this can to some extent overcome as it takes
in everything in one gulp” (p. 226). Of course, we need broad surveys of seminal
figures like Augustine, but the “one-gulp” method, especially when accompanied
by the unfounded confidence that Hollingworth has in his own account, does not
produce satisfying results, at least not for readers who might wish for historical perspective (almost entirely missing here) and some critical analysis. Those painstakingly accurate scholars previously mentioned—whose genuine insights are the fruit
of long, slow reflection on Augustine’s ideas and career—are better guides.
University College London (Emeritus)

GERARD O’DALY

Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, Vol. 2: Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 C.E. By
Jason David BeDuhn. [Divinations: Re-Reading Late Ancient Religion.]
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp. x, 538. $79.95.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4494-6.)
This volume, the second in Jason David BeDuhn’s projected trilogy, surpasses
the excellence of the first volume, which was enlightening and fascinating. In the
past century scholars such as Paul Henry and Robert O’Connell rightly emphasized
the influence of Plotinus on the thought of St. Augustine, especially in his earlier
works. Manichaeism, on the other hand, was often regarded simply as a very odd
form of Christianity that had little or no positive influence on the thought of
Augustine. Although in many works he vigorously opposed the dualistic metaphysics of the followers of Mani, it has baffled students of Augustine how he could
have remained a Hearer among the Manichees for at least nine years. More recent
discoveries and scholarship have deepened our awareness of the Manichaean religion and have allowed us to see ways in which it positively influenced Augustine.
In the present volume BeDuhn clearly shows that Manichaean Christianity
had a profound influence upon Augustine’s thinking, especially on the human will
and the need for grace, during the years from his conversion up to 401 and the writing of the Confessions. In speaking about the “making of a ‘Catholic’ self,” BeDuhn
clearly holds that Augustine’s thought and Augustine himself developed from the

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325

time of his baptism through the first years of his episcopacy. In On the True Religion
Augustine held an almost complete compatibility between Platonic philosophy and
Christianity so that the Platonists would have had to change only a few words and
ideas to become Christians. The debate with the Manichaean Fortunatus in 392
“changed Augustine forever, although at the time he scarcely recognized it” (p. 122),
as BeDuhn argues persuasively. Fortunatus appealed to texts from St. Paul’s Letters
to the Galatians and to the Romans on which Augustine was “outdone exegetically
in the debate” (p. 146), although Augustine, in becoming a Catholic Christian, had
committed himself to accept the truth of the both the Old and the New Testament
scriptures. BeDuhn argues that “Augustine’s sudden and intense interest in Paul
after 392” (p. 192) is most plausibly explained as a result of Fortunatus’s use of Paul
in support of Manichaean doctrine. BeDuhn guides his readers through Augustine’s
anti-Manichaean works, showing how in response to his reading of Paul he came in
the final book of On Free Choice to a quite different understanding of human freedom than he had in the first book that was written almost a decade earlier.
When Augustine’s bishop, Valerius, wanted him consecrated bishop in 394–
95, Megalius, bishop of Calama, protested and accused Augustine of still being a
Manichaean so that some among the African bishops objected to Augustine’s elevation to the episcopacy, and Augustine had to defend his Catholicity. Augustine
was known in Africa mainly as a convert from the Manichaeism he embraced for
many years in Africa. BeDuhn suggests that a draft of books 5 to 9 of the Confessions was originally Augustine’s confession of faith in his own defense before the
bishops. He goes on to argue persuasively that the final edition of the work was in
a large part directed to the Manichees and especially to those whom he had converted to the Manichaean religion.
BeDuhn’s second volume definitely challenges views of Augustine as a saintly
Father of the Church from the moment of his baptism, but presents very strong
and convincing evidence for the positive influence of Manichaeism on his theological development and in his becoming a Catholic in a sense previously unknown in
the Church.
ROLAND J. TESKE, S.J.

Marquette University

MEDIEVAL
Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land: Wealth, Personnel, and Buildings of a Mediterranean Church between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Critical edition and
translation of the original text by Michael McCormick. [Dumbarton Oaks
Medieval Humanities.] (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection. Distrib. Harvard University Press. 2011. Pp. xxii, 287.
$39.95. ISBN 978-0-88-402363-0.)
If Michael McCormick’s monumental Origins of the European Economy (New
York, 2001) decisively extended the traditionally short-sighted horizons of histori-

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ans of the early-medieval West to hazy new distances, his new book sharpens our
focus with brilliant precision onto the trans-Mediterranean ambition of a single
regime—the most important of the period—at the court of Charlemagne. The
Basel roll is a parchment rescued from a book-binding and preserving three documents that, as McCormick demonstrates with forensic skill, constitute the greatest
addition in decades to our source base for Charlemagne’s rule. The Breve text (as
McCormick christens it) enumerates the personnel of the religious houses of
Jerusalem and its immediate environs; the “Memorial” document surveys religious
houses in the rest of the Holy Land and gives architectural statistics for many of
them; and the “Expenditures” document, of which the roll preserves just the first
three lines, lists the annual spending of the patriarch of Jerusalem. In an exemplary
piece of historical scholarship, McCormick vindicates these texts from the doubts
that have surrounded them until now—doubts that, along with a woefully inadequate standard edition, have led generations of historians to overlook their significance. He shows that the roll is an authentic—although, as it survives, partial—
copy of documents resulting from Charlemagne’s desire to estimate precisely the
funds required to repair the Holy Land’s churches and monasteries. It was drawn
up in the period 801–10, very possibly in 808 following the return of an embassy to
the east and before meetings at Aachen in 809—the council that debated the Filioque controversy—and 810—at which the dispatch of funds for the restoration of
churches at Jerusalem was discussed.
The first part of the book presents and analyzes the texts’ evidence for the condition of the linguistically and ethnically diverse Christian community in the Holy
Land at this time. Successive chapters outline the finances and staffing of the
churches in the Holy Land. Judicious comparisons then reveal similarities between
East and West (for instance, in the proportion of women religious), but more significant differences: a greater emphasis on monasticism in both Palestine and
Byzantium, but, conversely, the much greater size of the major monasteries in
Francia relative to both other places. The “demographic and cultural élan” (p. 75)
of the Frankish world that is thus revealed found expression in the presence of
western monks and nuns in the Holy Land, expertly studied in the fourth chapter.
Despite these, the Church in Palestine had evidently declined in size and wealth
from its late-antique peak, perhaps prompting an appeal for funds from the West
and certainly giving rise to the careful survey by Frankish envoys (preserved in the
“Memorial” document) of the dimensions of major Holy Land churches.
McCormick’s ingenious identification of a quirk in their measurements reveals
their accuracy and validates the text as a source for some of the now-vanished
Christian monuments of Jerusalem, including Justinian’s massive Nea church.
The second part of the book examines the Basel roll itself and the documents
it transmits. The roll was probably produced in the second quarter of the ninth century in an Upper Rhine atelier. It is therefore a slightly later copy of the three texts,
which on internal criteria must have been drawn up at, or in association with, the
royal court. These therefore belong to the spate of capitularies and inventories produced in Charlemagne’s last years, which attest undimmed enthusiasm on the part

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of the emperor and his close advisers for the business of government. The book’s
third part—along with a poster inserted in a pocket at the end—generously provides a text, translation, commentary, and facsimile of the Basel roll: the essential
tools for further research.
Read alongside other evidence for the disbursement of funds by Charlemagne
to Christians in the Mediterranean—whether in Rome, North Africa, or Palestine—this book decisively resets our estimation of both the scope and the capabilities of the Carolingian regime in its heyday. It raises important questions, for
instance, about the sources of the wealth transferred and the extent to which this
financial support was sustained by later generations; questions that only demonstrate the value of this thought-provoking addition to our knowledge of the Carolingian world.
University of Liverpool

MARIOS COSTAMBEYS

A Sense of the Sacred: Roman Catholic Worship in the Middle Ages. By James Monti.
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2012.Pp. xxiv, 684. $34.95 paperback. ISBN
978-1-586-17283-1.)
James Monti takes the reader on a tour de force of medieval liturgical rites,
mostly between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. Without simply reproducing entire manuscripts, he provides large sections of rubrics and prayers to give the
reader a more direct experience of the rites. Amazingly, Monti translates every text
entirely into English—a somewhat literal translation, which succeeds to take readers out of the contemporary world and into an earlier realm with different customs
and culture. A Sense of the Sacred provides numerous manuscript witnesses for every
sacrament, as well as several feasts and sacramentals, including extensive footnote
citations explaining and questioning the sources he examines. The only textual
commentaries are quotations from authors such as Pope Innocent IV, William
Durandus, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The book works best when taken as an experiential collage of primary sources, mostly from Spain and England, but also
France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy. The author’s intent is not a scientific treatment or evaluation of these sources. He strives, rather, to overawe the reader with
the ritual splendor of courtly and monastic liturgy for the sake of inspiring a
“reform of the reform,” the phrase used by critics of the liturgy reformed under
Pope Paul VI (p. xxii). His bias for the “reform of the reform” comes out explicitly
only in the introduction, chapter 1 overview, and the conclusion. The rest of the
chapters—which treats the seven sacraments in part 1, aspects of the liturgical year
in part 2, and select other rites (sacramentals) in part 3—are focused simply on presenting the texts for consideration.
If readers approach this massive volume with the expectation of historical,
critical, or cultural contextualization, then disappointment will follow. Monti
simply translates texts from pontificals, missals, liturgical commentaries, and papal
documents, laying them out for readers to inhale. With little distinction, he places

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texts from the great monasteries alongside those from the great cathedrals,
although these rites would have been celebrated differently according to the particular community that used them, and the smaller monasteries and parishes would
undoubtedly have diverged even more. One wonders whether less breadth, more
depth, and a more narrative approach would have been more helpful for understanding a world rather different from our own. The allegorical commentaries
throughout the book do contribute to a situational understanding, but Monti presents them more as a literal interpretation. Allegory serves an appropriate catechetical purpose, but as the sole commentary given, it falls short in a work of scholarship. Granted that one cannot be an expert on every subject, Monti’s bibliography
is dated regarding the Apostolic Tradition sometimes attributed to Hippolytus (no
mention of Paul Bradshaw and company’s essential volume on that work’s text,
dating, and authorship), the liturgical year (Thomas Talley’s essential work, The
Origins of the Liturgical Year [New York, 1986], is missing), and confirmation (no
mention of Paul Turner). Throughout the book, Monti cites many church documents all favorable toward the medieval liturgy, but in his criticisms of the twentieth-century reform, he gives only anecdotes. Anecdotally, one could find much
abuse in the medieval period as well.
In the end, A Sense of the Sacred is a tremendous compendium of translated
sources of certain liturgical rites from select medieval places and persons. This is
admirable scholarship as far as it goes. The author has pulled together many witnesses, translated them, included some contemporary medieval commentaries—
also translated—but provides little critical analysis or contextualization. As it
stands, A Sense of the Sacred is a tremendous sourcebook in need of an equally
massive companion volume, which would provide the narrative to make “sense”
of the Sense.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

DANIEL MERZ

Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages. Edited by P. H. Cullum
and Katherine J. Lewis. [Gender in the Middle Ages, Vol. 9.] (Rochester,
NY: The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. x, 214.
$99.00. ISBN 978-1-84383-863-0.)
This work is the result of the conference on “Religious Men in the Middle
Ages,” which took place at the University of Huddersfield in July 2012. The editors, P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, are to be commended for so quickly
producing a fine set of essays and bringing them to publication. The various chapters of the work seek to advance our understanding of the Herrenfrage, or the idea
that the concept of masculinity was undergoing rapid changes during and after the
period of the Gregorian reforms, especially in relation to more stringent insistence
on clerical celibacy. This book is particularly good in demonstrating the vitality of
male clerical and monastic forms of life into the Middle Ages and helps to redress
what perhaps had been an overemphasis of medieval female religiosity over the last
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Cullum and Lewis provide an exceptionally helpful introduction wherein they
situate the current state of scholarship regarding male religiosity as it relates to
gender. This is a very useful tool, which will enable students and scholars to understand the emphases and directions of contemporary study. Indeed, nearly all the
contributors include useful historiographical discussions at the beginnings of their
papers—something of broad usefulness to the reader, especially when the research
becomes very specialized.
Although this is fundamentally a book about Christian Europe and the various experiences of maleness within the context of clerical and religious life, the first
chapter by Michael Satlow discusses gender as it relates to Torah study among
European rabbis. This provides a foil for the rest of the work, with its interesting
description of how values relating to masculine aggression became transposed into
academic study of the Torah and religious argumentation. Rachel Stone follows
with an exposition of Hincmar of Rheims and his understanding of masculinity.
She usefully explores both his ideal theory and the reality he confronted, closing
with the interesting notion that clerical masculinity was defined in relation to other
men, rather than in opposition to femininity. Jennifer Thibodeaux provides a fascinating glimpse into anticelibacy critics in the period following the Gregorians.
She carefully details how much of the struggle was focused on control of the male
body. Each group claimed that their position guaranteed true manliness in terms of
bodily self-control. Defenders of clerical marriage also argued that celibacy encouraged effeminacy and sodomy and that, as celibacy was a gift of God, uniform
enforcement unduly burdened those not so gifted. Kristen Fenton works subtly to
undermine claims that the medieval clergy represented a “Third Gender” by being
unable to participate in gender-defining activities like sex and war. She details how
religious men and male saints were depicted using active and “manly” language.
The tone begins to shift as the book starts to take note of lay masculinities.
Joanna Huntington traces the history of Hereward, a post-Norman knight and
adventurer. She skillfully unpacks the clerical authorship and demonstrates how the
clergy understood lay masculinity. Episcopal masculinity is measured against that of
the laity in Matthew Mesley’s contribution on the First Crusade. He uses descriptions of Bishop Adhemar’s leadership to demonstrate the dialogic interpenetration
of clerical and lay ideals of manhood. Marita von Weissenberg contributes an interesting comparison of two lay saints: one a combmaker from Siena, Peter Pettinaio,
and one a nobleman from Provence, Elzéar of Sabran. She shows how lay religiosity
resulted in no diminution of masculinity, but rather an elevation and purification of
manliness onto the spiritual plane. Katherine Lewis discusses manliness in the context of the life of Henry VI, demonstrating how royal and male exemplarity played
a role in the depiction of Henry’s own male qualities. Catherine Sanok gives an
interesting contribution on St. John of Bridlington, particularly dwelling on the
maleness of monks. This reviewer would have liked to see a much more extended
meditation on these, since their celibacy and understanding of their maleness long
predated that of the secular clergy. James Clark offers an analysis of monasticism in
pre-Reformation England, demonstrating its resiliency. Finally, Cullum concludes

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with an intriguing chapter on men’s fasting and Eucharistic devotion, partly in
response to an emphasis on female religious activity in those areas.
This is an interesting and useful work, somewhat overfocused on England, but
not exclusively. The contributions are well written and argued, and their brief historiographical introductions are very useful. It should provide a springboard for
more in-depth study of medieval masculinities.
Jacksonville State University

DONALD S. PRUDLO

Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture. Edited by Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, and Mary Franklin-Brown. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
2013. Pp. xvii, 354. $129.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-2393-5.)
The sixteen essays in this volume originated in a 2007 symposium on medieval
memory held at the International Medieval Society in Paris, but reach beyond
France in their relevance to Western European medieval studies and the growing
scholarly discourse on memory. The volume has a cohesive unity not always found
in collections from conference origins, and together the essays present an understanding of memory that is both multivalent and wide reaching.
Although individual contributors range in approach, they nearly all address
“high” medieval culture in their examination of how memory and history are constructed. The elite focus is inevitable, given the surviving sources (which are drawn
from a wide expanse of media and embrace both text and image), and in this case
is far from a drawback; instead, the shared nature of the material provides a unifying note drawing these approaches together. The editors have organized the essays
into five themes that emphasize specific aspects of memory and also highlight key
concepts that weave through multiple sections.
The sections are titled, respectively, “Memory and Images”; “Commemoration and Oblivion”; “Memory, Reading and Performance”; “Royal and Aristocratic
Memory and Commemoration”; and “Remembering Medieval France.” Although
the essays grouped under these headings work together to present aspects of each
section topic, each of the section concepts also applies throughout the volume. The
threat of oblivion (section 2), for example, is a note that sounds ominously, if softly,
in nearly every essay, despite the paradoxical impossibility of deliberate forgetting.
The dynamic interplay between individual and collective memory is one that also
echoes through many of the contributions, as well as the crafting of specific memories for different target audiences, whether through liturgy, manuscripts, mosaics,
or postmedieval community festivals. The creation of identity through memory is
also a common motif, whether for individuals or communities, as constructions
that also embrace gender, political boundaries, and social status. Contributing
authors apply and expand on the foundational work of scholars such as Pierre
Nora’s culturally potent lieux de mémoire, Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers on
the concept of mnemonic tools, and Maurice Halbwachs’s concept of collective

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memory, to note a few of the most prominent. The cross-disciplinary combination
of topics ranging from aural, visual, and textual examples makes the volume useful
as a whole, rather than a compilation of parts. Although readers will no doubt gravitate toward specific chapter topics, the essays are well complemented by the application of differing disciplinary insights. Visual historians, for example, will find
language imagery in saints’ liturgy and poetic acrostics, whereas textual scholars will
be reminded of the power of marginalia, illuminations, and imaginative
postmedieval reconstruction.
The editors’ introduction provides a helpful sketch of recent scholarship for
orientation. There is no summative bibliography, but the index includes references
to major scholars, and Ashgate’s practice of including on-page footnotes assists the
interested reader to pursue sources cited and parallel lines of inquiry. In conclusion,
this is a well-organized volume with thoughtful essays that will prove of interest for
scholars of medieval memory, both seasoned and new.
Brigham Young University

CHARLOTTE A. STANFORD

Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu: New Editions and Studies. Edited by
John Flood, James R. Ginther, and Joseph W. Goering. [Papers in Mediaeval
Studies, Vol. 24.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. 2013.
Pp. xiv, 430. $90.00. ISBN 978-0-88844-824-8.)
This volume, edited by scholars from institutions in the Netherlands, the
United States, and Canada, represents a welcome and timely addition to both
medieval studies in general and Robert Grosseteste studies in particular. It sprang
from a 2003 conference at then-Bishop Grosseteste College in Lincoln to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the philosopher’s death. Publication of proceedings experienced some unforeseen delays. Readers frustrated by the wait will find
themselves duly rewarded for their patience by the content of this excellent volume.
Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253) was not only bishop of the largest diocese in England but also a great scholar. A polymath in the true medieval sense, he was equally
comfortable in the worlds of science, philosophy, and theology; he even authored a
work on the art of horticulture. He also managed to acquire a knowledge of Greek
(a rare skill in thirteenth-century Western Europe), and his work as a translator wins
contemporary admirers. Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu has done a
splendid job of representing the preternatural range of this great scholar’s abilities.
Perhaps the primary testament to this range comes in the section on texts and
translations. It is a welcome contribution to Grosseteste studies in itself, where
much work remains to be done in this area. Here we have both a critical edition
and an English translation of De luce, Grosseteste’s fascinating and highly original
account of Creation. We have an edition, and a translation of a translation, of
Grosseteste’s rendering of John of Damascus’s The Dialogue of the Christian and
Saracen. Finally we have Sermon 86, “The Ten Commandments of the Lord.”

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Two sections of essays are offered. The first explores theology and philosophy,
which includes Neil Lewis’s explanation and critical examination of the Libertas
arbitrii in the work De libero arbitrio. Here Lewis explains that the bishop had a
unique understanding of freedom of choice. In addition, Joseph Goering has contributed a highly important analysis of the Dicta, as well as a state-of-play account
of the project to edit this neglected work. A second section sets out to set the
philosopher in an intellectual context. Here Grosseteste is placed alongside contemporaries. R. James Long compares his natural philosophy with that of Richard
Fishacre, Richard Rufus, and Robert Kilwardby. Celcia Panti adds to her critical
edition of De luce with another fine contribution that argues persuasively that certain scientific works that have been dubiously attributed to Grosseteste should
instead be regarded as the work of a Franciscan, Adam Marsh.
The volume concludes with a magisterial survey of the reputation of Robert
Grosseteste in the early-modern period by John Flood and the late James McEvoy.
This serves as a corrective to Sir Richard Southern’s assertion that Grosseteste
slipped out of the consciousness of historians for more than 300 years after the sixteenth century. As McEvoy died in 2010, it is poignant to consider that this chapter might represent his last academic offering. At his funeral a garland of flowers
was offered by his friends from the world of Grosseteste. Perhaps ultimately this
first-rate collection will be regarded as an even more fitting garland tribute to a
great Grossetestian from his academic companions.
Bishop Grosseteste University
Lincoln, United Kingdom

JACK P. CUNNINGHAM

Warrior Neighbours: Crusader Valencia in Its International Context. Collected Essays of
Father Robert I. Burns, SJ. Edited by Mary Elizabeth Perry with an Introduction by Paul Freedman. [Brepols Collected Essays in European Culture, Vol.
2.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers. 2013. Pp. viii, 387. €90,00.
ISBN 978-2-503-53215-8.)
Collected studies are a notoriously difficult genre. Frequently, as in this case,
the author is deceased and unable to make those changes that one always hopes to
do before a reprinting. Moreover, a healthy academic field is always a moving
target, and the earliest of these thirteen articles was published in 1971—more than
four decades ago. Left to Robert I. Burns himself, we may be sure that it would
have been another four decades before he would have had them in shape to satisfy
his very exacting standards. As it is, he is fortunate to have found an editor, Mary
Elizabeth Perry, almost as careful as he himself. Paul Freedman’s foreword does
justice to the man, the researcher, and the creator of the modern study of the
medieval kingdom of Valencia among American historians.
That said, one needs to recall that Burns was always, inveterately, and primarily the researcher. Those who approach these studies wisely will do so primarily to
find the shortest and most informed route to the particularities of their own inter-

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ests. It is typical of the man and his method that of the thirteen studies, some seven
have a combined 109 documents in their appendices (excluding notes), including
two documents for chapter 10 that itself has just two pages of text.
In contrast, the opening chapter to the book is a reprint of another opening
chapter to a book published in 1985, edited by Burns, that compared Alfonso X of
Castile and Jaume I of Aragón-Barcelona-Valencia. It sets the tone for the volume
here considered, but it contributes little to the present state of that question. Chapter 4 consists of a seventeen-page article that he published in Military Affairs in
1971, which details the intricacies, the niceties, the legalities, and the subtleties of
designing peace treaties that may or may not long outlive their signing. It does provide a case study that could inform both historians and diplomats of the present.
Quite different is chapter 12 that recounts a major episode in Jaume’s loss in
1245 of the County of Provence to Charles of Anjou and eventually to the dynasty of
France. This event is assessed with Burns’s usual careful attention to such things as a
review and correction of the historiography of the event and is bolstered by his publication from the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón in Barcelona of twenty unpublished bulls of Pope Innocent IV relevant to it. At the very least Burns’s study suggests
to this reviewer the necessity of another that would reconsider the deeper roots of the
Sicilian Vespers of 1282, the history of the Angevin Empire in Italy, and the rise of
that lesser remarked and understood Aragonese empire in the Mediterranean.
Fresh materials again are assembled in chapters 5, 6, and 7 that open further
perspectives on the details of post-Reconquista relationships between Christian
and Muslim in the Corona de Aragón, the necessities of power in that process, and
the frequently central position of matrimony and of women therein. In these
eighty-five pages treating the career of Abū Zayd, last Muslim ruler of Valencia,
and the subsequent fortunes of himself and his progeny as Christian notables,
Burns has left an entire book to be written.
Villanova University (Emeritus)

BERNARD F. REILLY

The Nobility and Ecclesiastical Patronage in Thirteenth-Century England. By Elizabeth Gemmill. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. XL.]
(Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 240. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-84383812-8.)
Elizabeth Gemmill’s highly detailed and skillful work deals with a narrow but
revealing area of study: the way the great aristocrats of England filled ecclesiastical
offices in their gift. Although the thirteenth century is the period cited in the title,
in fact the nature of the principal sources employed—episcopal registers, plea rolls,
and lay cartularies—means that it is the second half of the century that monopolizes the argument. This does not mean there is any shortage of evidence on which
Gemmill can found her conclusions. Indeed, to fulfill her aim she has to narrow the
focus to particular great nobles, notably William de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick;

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Edmund, earl of Lancaster; William de Valence, earl of Pembroke; John de
Warenne, earl of Surrey; John of Brittany, earl of Richmond; Robert de Vere, earl
of Oxford; and Isabel de Forz, countess of Aumale and Devon—all magnates active
in the last part of Henry III’s reign and the reign of his son, Edward I. At this date
aristocrats had in their gift few of the appointments to collegiate free chantries that
would begin to multiply in the next century. The argument mostly deals with
appointments to the rectories under their patronage. The right to appoint to
benefices (advocatio, Anglicized as “advowson”) was a point where the laity
intruded into the clerical world, and indeed it was a matter for lay courts where it
was contested. It then might well give us some ideas of what the aristocracy wanted
from its clerks and what it valued in them. Gemmill maps for us the concern of the
nobility to further clerical relatives, sometimes excessively. Benefices also rewarded
their domestic clerks and could be deployed as favors to make political connections
with other aristocrats. She uses the phrase “clerical affinity” for this interest group
of clergy that surrounded a magnate, seeking favor and offering support and skills
to him or her. She conjures up this delicate world of gift exchange and shifting
political alliance with some dry skill; the alertness of patrons to the state of health
of incumbents of churches in their gift is a case in point. During the period of the
study there was change; the king was particularly aggressive in acquiring and
exploiting benefices, often at his subjects’ cost, and concerned also to diminish the
role of bishops in admitting the clerks he presented. The right to present became
increasingly detached from the ownership of estates that the church of the benefice
served. Gemmill makes the link here with the next century, and the emerging
source of lay patronage of clergy represented by the foundation of endowed chantry
altars and the transformation of large parish churches into collegiate foundations,
already beginning in the reign of Edward I. She makes the point that the concern
of aristocrats, detached in their devotions from lesser folk, was not with the pastoral
needs of the churches to which they appointed. The pluralists they promoted were
also not men calculated to further the work of the local church. The resources aristocrats were beginning to employ in their new foundations it seems reinforced their
spiritual detachment. When taken with the corrosive effect of papal provisions on
the English church, this accomplished study does not encourage a belief that this
transactional and careerist world of lay patronage was good for the English.
University of Hull

DAVID CROUCH

William of Ockham. Dialogus. Part 2. Part 3, Tract 1. Edited by John Kilcullen, John
Scott, Jan Ballweg, and Volker Leppin. [William of Ockham Opera Politica
VIII; Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 20.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press
for the British Academy. 2011. Pp. xxvi, 371. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-19726480-5.)
The Dialogus is William of Ockham’s magnum opus of political theory. A massive three-part work begun around 1332, only its first section reached its intended
form at Ockham’s death in 1347. Sections of the Dialogus are scattered amid roughly
forty manuscripts; the full work seems to have been collected together shortly before

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the first of its three printings (1476, 1494, and 1614). Now the Dialogus is receiving
a critical edition in the final volumes of the William of Ockham Opera Politica
series, which had previously published Ockham’s shorter political works in four volumes under the editorship of H. S. Offler between 1940 and 1997. The present
volume edited by John Kilcullen, John Scott, Jan Ballweg, and Volker Leppin presents the middle sections of the Dialogus. Part 2 comprises twin embryonic tracts in
which Ockham contends that the Avignonese pope, John XXII (1316–-34), was a
heretic for his statements about the incomplete Beatific Vision of God by the
Blessed in Heaven before the Resurrection of the Body and the Last Judgment. This
material was meant to be part of a comprehensive treatment of John XXII’s errors,
including those found in his bulls on apostolic poverty. Ockham never expanded
these two tracts, nor did he rework them into the conversation between master and
student that gives the Dialogus its distinct appeal. About the Beatific Vision itself,
Ockham is too busy showing that John XXII had misinterpreted biblical and patristic authorities to say anything original. More interesting is his definition of heresy
employed to condemn the pope: a Catholic must believe any doctrine considered
orthodox by the faithful, even if that teaching has never been defined by the Church
(as was the case with the Beatific Vision before Pope Benedict XII’s Benedictus Deus
of 1336). The power of the papacy is the subject of the first section of the third part
of the Dialogus contained in this volume. Here Ockham’s sparring partner is not
John XXII or a papal apologist like Dondinus of Pavia, but rather his fellow critic
Marsilius of Padua. One particular Marsilian thesis to which Ockham takes exception is that a Catholic must merely believe the Bible and any interpretation of it
adopted by a General Council—a position that would absolve John XXII of any
heresy. Kilcullen, who provides introductions to the texts and four substantial endnotes, concludes that the third part of the Dialogus is the only unambiguous addressing of Marsilius and the Defensor Pacis in the works of Ockham. The clash between
these two heavyweights of medieval political theory is really what makes this volume
important historically. Surveying the critical apparatus and the supplementary material found on a website (https://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html), one
cannot but be impressed by the tremendous amount of thought and care that has
gone into producing this readable critical edition of the Latin text. The only complaint against the volume is that the secondary literature cited is somewhat limited
and not current: so, for example, the opinion of Geraldus Odonis on the Beatific
Vision is mentioned (p. 5) without reference to Christian Trottmann’s 2001 edition
of the text.
State University of New York at Albany

PATRICK NOLD

Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, Culture, and the Signs of Others. By Jane
Tylus. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 323. $45.00.
ISBN 978-0-226-82128-3.)
In this provocative and stimulating study, Jane Tylus seeks to “reclaim” St.
Catherine of Siena from the margins of Italian literary history, to which she has
been consigned as an “illiterate” representative of an oral rather than textual culture.

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In her first chapter, Tylus aligns her project intriguingly with that of the eighteenth-century playwright, antiquarian, and Sienese patriot Girolamo Gigli. Gigli
published Catherine’s writings and in his Vocabolario cateriniano championed
Catherine in resistance to Florentine cultural hegemony. Tylus emphasizes how,
for Gigli, Catherine’s use of the Sienese vernacular—a living language rather than
“‘dead words’ found only in books” (p. 7)—made Catherine more than a match for
the Florentine tre corone of Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch, and Giovanni
Boccaccio.
Gigli “was out to make Catherine someone we identify with texts” (p. 7). This
is Tylus’s mission, too, and for both Gigli and Tylus, Catherine was a writer in the
literal sense. Whereas Raymond of Capua’s authoritative account of Catherine’s life
emphasizes her illiteracy and how she dictated her letters and her book, Il Dialogo
(to which she referred simply as her Libro), to scribes, Gigli “discovered” the alternative hagiographical tradition of the Sienese Dominican Tommaso Caffarini, who
asserted that Catherine could both read and write. Tylus (reasonably) accepts as
genuine Catherine’s letter 272 from 1377, in which she announces to Raymond of
Capua that in her sleep God has taught her to write. But her real interest is not so
much in whether Catherine could write, as in what writing meant for Catherine.
This is a theme that Tylus explores in three chapters that focus on Catherine’s
writings, linked to important moments in her career: her mission to Pisa in 1375;
her 1377 sojourn in the Sienese contado with the Salimbeni family, during which
she wrote letter 272 and evidently began work on her book; and her final trip to
Rome, where she died in 1380. In each chapter, Tylus emphasizes a particular word
or image and the constellation of associations and textual references that it might
have evoked for Catherine and her readers. For example, Tylus discusses Catherine’s self-identification as an outspoken donna (modeled on Mary, but evoking
echoes also of Dante’s Beatrice), and her meditations on bodies: her own, marked
by (invisible) stigmata; Christ’s wounded body; and the textual body of a rubricated
manuscript page. Tylus demonstrates in compelling fashion how, for Catherine,
writing was a way to unite speech with deeds.
Tylus is sometimes on less sure ground when she evokes scene-setting details.
The book includes a number of small historical inaccuracies and imprecisions, most
of which are not important to her argument. But it should be noted that there is no
evidence that Catherine was summoned to Florence in 1374 “because so many of
her actions violated decorum and church policy” (p. 198) or that in Florence she
underwent an “interrogation” (p. 89). (She was probably called there because the
Dominicans intended to enlist her and her gifts on behalf of the papacy—as indeed
they immediately did—and not because they suspected her of heresy.) Tylus sometimes exaggerates Catherine’s literary persona, as when she claims—without any
source—that Catherine “insisted to her scribes” (p. 123) that her works circulate in
the volgare rather than be translated into Latin. It is not necessary to attribute to
Catherine such a Dantean preoccupation with the status of the volgare to show, as
Tylus has done conclusively, that Catherine was fully a writer—one who used lan-

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guage self-consciously to explore theological ideas, move her readers, and “construct an identity in and through writing.” (p. 44).
Tulane University

F. THOMAS LUONGO

Rotuli Parisienses: Supplications to the Pope from the University of Paris, Vol. III:
1378–1394. Edited by William J. Courtenay and Eric D. Goddard. 2 vols.
[Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vols. 44/1 and
44/2.] (Boston: Brill. 2013. Pp. xiv, 502 (vol. 44/1); 503–1152 (vol. 44/2).
$346.00. ISBN 978-90-04-23378-2.)
William Courtenay is one of the finest scholars who specialize in the prosopography of the Parisian academics in the Middle Ages. In 2002 and 2004 he
edited the first two volumes of the rotuli that the University of Paris sent to the
Avignon papacy between 1316 and 1378. The third volume, published in two parts
and coedited by Eric Goddard, is completely devoted to the pontificate of
Clement VII (1378–94), the first antipope of the Great Schism. The rotuli were
made up of collective supplications to the Curia from princes, prelates, and certain
institutions requesting papal benefices or promises thereof for their dependants or
their staff. We are already familiar with a number of rotuli emanating from the
University of Paris, which have been preserved in the Vatican Archives. These lists
of supplicants were drawn up by the entire university, one faculty, one nation, one
college, or a group of graduates. Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain edited
more than fifty examples from between 1342 and 1403 in volumes II to IV of their
Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1891–97). However, apart from the
fact that these two scholars saw fit to publish mainly extracts, their research was
limited by the very nature of their sources as the archive series of supplications
begins only in 1342. For the earlier period we only have the registers of papal letters, which recorded the papal favors accorded in response to supplications received
by the Curia. Courtenay’s important contribution has been to show that the earliest
Parisian rotuli do not date from 1342 but go back as far as the pontificate of the
Avignonese pope, John XXII (1316–34). From a close examination of the papal
letters, he was able to identify groups of apostolic favors with exactly the same date
that were dispensed to members of the University of Paris and that were probably
from the same rotulus, a rotulus that was not registered, as there was no specific register for that purpose. Pushing his research beyond 1342, Courtenay has been able
not only to reconstitute these lost rotuli but also to fill in the gaps in the supplications from the period when they were in fact preserved. Indeed, the papal letters
contain more biographical details than the registered supplications. The third
volume of the Rotuli Parisienses thus contains thirty-nine rotuli, sixteen more than
those published by Denifle and Chatelain for the same period. Furthermore,
Courtenay and Goddard have edited the complete content of the supplications in
an abbreviated form and have analyzed the papal letters written in reply to them,
when these could be found. This is a considerable advance on the previous incomplete versions of the Chartularium. There is also an appendix containing a large

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number of individual supplications from the Parisian academics. This work is more
than a work of pure scholarship—it is also one of great historical interest because
of the specific context of the pontificate of Clement VII. The crisis of the Great
Schism was responsible for an increase in the number and size of the rotuli, and the
Avignonese pope, who wished to remain in the good graces of the powerful University of Paris, was eager to grant its requests whenever possible. This is why the
third volume of Rotuli Parisienses is almost as long as the first two volumes combined and contains the supplications of almost 3000 scholars who provide us with
information on their origins, their studies, and their ecclesiastical careers and benefits. It is easy to see that this publication, which is further enriched with a detailed
index, constitutes an essential contribution to the prosopography of the University
of Paris at the end of the fourteenth century. We can only hope that Courtenay and
Goddard will continue this important research as far as the pontificate of Benedict XIII (1394–1417) when the sending of the great Parisian rotuli came to an end.
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

THIERRY KOUAMÉ

The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr. By Thomas A.
Fudge. [Europa Sacra, Vol. 11.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers.
2013. Pp. xiii, 291. €80,00. ISBN 978-2-503-54442-7.)
Arriving in plenty of time for the sexcentenary of Jan Hus’s immolation, The
Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus poses an interpretation of Hus’s and his theology’s significance for medieval Christian history. It is a biography of Hus, but,
because so few self-reflective sources exist, it is a hermeneutical biography that
draws on a variety of texts and is set firmly in the historical context of the fifteenth
century. Besides opening Czech and other continental scholarship to English readers by including references to and explanations of Czech historiography, it shows
that Hus is best understood in his European setting. It is the second monograph in
a trilogy by Thomas A. Fudge, the other two being Jan Hus: Religious Reform and
Social Revolution in Bohemia (London, 2010) and The Trial of Jan Hus (New York,
2013). This second monograph may be the best book to read first as it covers the
Czech reformer-preacher in the most accessible and broadest terms of the three;
indeed, the inclusion of references in one book to the other two books indicates
that all three were intended to support one another. Fudge’s focus on writings by
Hus and others allows him to utilize deceptively simple and admirably straightforward questions—such as “what did Hus think he was doing?”—which are asked
throughout as effective rhetorical devices to keep attention on the themes of motivation and memory. Through a consistently source- and historiographically
grounded and careful analysis of language used by Hus and others, the author offers
an even-handed explanation of Hus’s role and place in late-medieval church
reform, including in relevance to such ideas as conciliarism, imitatio Christi, devotio
moderna, and those of Peter Lombard and John Wyclif—topics likely more familiar
to medievalists than the nuances of Hus’s motivations and theology, and so Fudge’s
contribution to medieval and Hussite studies is noteworthy. The unconventional
biography that emerges is of Hus’s tranformation from a practicing preacher who

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above all wants moral reform of the Church to a heretic unable to avoid a probably
desired Christlike martyrdom and then to a popular saint as an ideal Hus in
memory was created over the course of decades and centuries. Analyzing memory
helps Fudge define the “spirit of Hussitism” as Hus’s continued postmortem influence via his guiding theological principles. Even-handedness is evident is Fudge’s
balanced interpretation of Hus’s positive and negative characteristics, concluded
from weighed consideration of Hus’s own writings and those of others who both
opposed and supported him. Similar treatment is accorded Hus’s main legal adversary, Michael de Causis, about whom is also asked, “what did he think he was
doing?” In the end, motivation is compellingly used to analyze both the story of
Hus’s martyrdom/heresy and the subsequent memory of Hus. The results of this
monograph’s approach are (1) a detailed picture of a cautious theologian who
became a preacher of reform unable to do anything but accept the heretic’s mantle
because of his belief that his ethics (read theology) was congruent with the law of
God and (2) a sophisticated evaluation of the created memory of Hus.
If one were to have the ambition to assign a history of Hus to advanced undergraduates, this would be it, although all or any of the trilogy would be suitable for
graduate students. Fudge’s trilogy joins a few other volumes (one example is
Howard Kaminsky’s A History of the Hussite Revolution [Berkeley, 1967]) as the
standard work to which English readers should turn first.
Metropolitan State University
St. Paul, MN

JEANNE E. GRANT

EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN
Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence. By Sally J. Cornelison.
[Visual Culture in Early Modernity.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
2012. Pp. xv, 358. $119.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6714-8.)
A notary’s son and follower of Giovanni Dominici, St. Antoninus (Antonino
Pierozzi, 1389–1459) rose rapidly among the Observant Dominicans to become
prior of the convent of San Marco (1439–44), archbishop of Florence (1446–59),
and one of Renaissance Italy’s leading church reformers. His legacy was complex.
The author of a Summa Theologica and numerous devotional writings, Antoninus
was renowned as a moralist who championed the poor, ecclesiastical liberty, and
Florence’s republican traditions while maintaining cordial relations with Cosimo
de’ Medici. Savonarola cited him to justify his own political activism, and the
Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII sought to appropriate his memory (and
expunge Savonarola’s) by sponsoring his canonization process in 1516–23.
In this finely produced, eloquent, and meticulously researched volume Sally J.
Cornelison draws together a wealth of archival and rare materials to trace the development of Antoninus’s relic cult from his death to the completion of the St.
Antoninus chapel in San Marco in 1591, designed by Giambologna and financed

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by the Salviati family, clients of the Medici. Without losing sight of the competition between Savonarolans and Mediceans to shape Antoninus’s legacy (pp. 5, 89),
Cornelison seeks to trace the “longue durée” (p. 1) of his cult, to pull him out of
Savonarola’s shadow, and to highlight Giambologna’s religious œuvre by identifying the continuities between Antoninus’s early cult and that defined by the St.
Antoninus chapel.
Cornelison challenges the notion that Antoninus’s cult was moribund until his
canonization. Highlighting features of his life that were celebrated posthumously,
concern for women and the poor, she emphasizes the lavish obsequies bestowed
upon him by Pope Pius II and the Florentines, and cites tantalizing evidence of
Laurentian projects to have him canonized as early as the 1480s. The “combined
efforts” of the Savonarolans and Mediceans that came later were “mostly collaborative” (p. 26), although “myriad discrepancies” in early versions of the saint’s vita
may reflect “changing political and ecclesiastical realities and agendas” (pp. 33).
These might have deserved fuller discussion. Antoninus’s modest first tomb at San
Marco attracted numerous ex votos (many destroyed in 1498), particularly from the
poor and from women anxious to conceive (p. 53). His personal effects and writings
acquired the status of secondary relics. Images of Antoninus adoring the crucifix
collectively “present an emphatically Dominican, if not Savonarolan, vision of holiness” (p. 65). An early post-Savonarolan project to rebuild San Marco, possibly to
frame Antoninus as a republican saint, came to naught (p. 89). But even after his
canonization Medici plans to honor Antoninus with a rich new relic chapel consistently fell short. Instead, the 1579 commission by their Salviati cousins, although
“a far cry from Savonarola’s dream,” was “fully in keeping with late sixteenth-century courtly and Counter-Reformation tastes” (p. 101).
The survival of an accounts ledger (quaderno della fabbrica) and a sharp and
appreciative eye enable Cornelison to emphasize Giambologna’s creative control of
the chapel building project, supervised by Benedetto Gondi under the watchful eye
of Archbishop Alessandro de’ Medici, who kept it free of Savonarolan traces (pp.
125, 127). A chapter touring the chapel and crypt emphasizes “the dynamic relationship between painting, sculpture, and architecture” (p. 185) and is followed by
another devoted to Giambologna’s sculpture. Cornelison’s analysis of Alessandro
Allori’s clerestory frescos of Antoninus’s life underscores the desire to invoke the
miraculous and to appeal to women (pp. 169–81); her critique of Giambologna’s
bronze reliefs (especially pp. 225–37) shows a sharp eye for efforts “to promote, and
at times manipulate” Antoninus’s saintly persona (p. 201). Cornelison concludes
with a detailed analysis of the “carefully scripted” display of Medici family power
(p. 284) in the 1589 translation of the (incorrupt) body of Antoninus, honored now
as an episcopal authority rather than a modest Dominican friar, and identifies many
of the figures in Domenico Passignano’s vestibule frescoes of this sumptuous event.
Washington and Lee University

DAVID S. PETERSON

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341

Des montagnards endiablés: Chasse aux sorciers dans la vallée de Chamonix (1458–
1462). By Carine Dunand. [Cahiers lausannois d’histoire medieval, 50.] (Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, Section d’histoire, Faculté des Lettres. 2009.
Pp. iii, 208. €24,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-940110-63-8.)
De cognitionibus quas habent Daemones liber unus. By Federico Borromeo. Edited by
Francesco di Caccia. [Accademia Ambrosiana: Classe di studi Borromaici:
Fonti e studi, Vol. 9.] (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana; Rome: Bulzoni Editore. 2009. Pp. 282. €20,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7870-436-7.)
These two recent studies testify to the significant vitality of our contemporary
interest in medieval and early-modern Christian witchcraft and demonology.
These volumes represent the two most frequent approaches to this complex thematic. On the one hand, Dunand presents a historical examination of a specific
case of witch craze in late-fifteenth-century France through a detailed analysis of
the social and cultural foundations that led to the execution of at least thirteen citizens of the valley of Chamonix. Dunand also transcribes some of the most fascinating documents related to these disturbing events. Di Caccia, on the other hand,
publishes an accurate edition of De cognitionibus quas habent daemones liber unus
(1624), one of Federico Borromeo’s treatises on demonology, which represents a
sophisticated reinterpretation of some of the key concepts of Renaissance views of
demonic knowledge. Borromeo’s book is a late representative of a philosophical
and theological genre that dominated fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe.
Borromeo’s daring and fascinating conclusions about the limits of demonic knowledge can be understood only if read as a reaction to a set of received ideas that had
remained unchallenged for several decades.
As Dunand points out in the introduction to her volume dedicated to a
series of executions between 1458 and 1462 in the valley of Chamonix, it is rare
to find documents related to a “crisis of witchcraft in the diocese of Geneva,” and
this is why she was led to investigate the archives in High-Savoy and other closeby locations, with a unquestionably interesting results (p. 3). Dunand underscores
that an understanding of this historical event requires consideration of the contemporary political tensions in that region. In the first chapter the author offers
a historical survey of the historical conditions and geographical isolation that led
to the transformation of the valley of Chamonix into an independent community
at the end of the thirteenth century. Although the valley fell under the jurisdiction of a priory, its inhabitants resisted this political arrangement. In Dunand’s
words, the “wave of witchcraft” between 1458 and 1462 reflected a deep fracture
between the citizens of the valley of Chamonix and their rulers (p. 25), who tried
to limit political rights—first, in criminal justice, which often had unclear jurisdiction (p. 30). The prior, Guillaume de Ravoire, who displayed morally questionable conduct, tried to transfer all political decisions to members of his family,
triggering anger in the valley (p. 38). Particularly interesting is the second part of
the volume, which reproduces a series of legal documents connected to the witch
hunt of those years, such as the death sentences of the victims of the inquisition’s
persecution.

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Francesco di Caccia’s volume is first and foremost a critical edition and Italian
translation of Borromeo’s little-known Latin treatise. In his brief introduction, di
Caccia makes it clear that he primarily intends to highlight the genesis and the
main points of interest of this seventeenth-century volume. According to di Caccia,
Borromeo decided to compose a treatise on the complex topic of demonic knowledge while writing a text on ecstatic and delusional women (De ecstaticis mulieribus
et illusis, 1616). Considering how easily he had uncovered the demons’ deceptions
against feeble-minded women, Borromeo came to the conclusion that demons’
intelligence was limited in actuality (p. 15). Although demons have all the ontological characteristics of any angelic being, in Borromeo’s view God must have somehow blurred their rational cognition to thwart their attacks against human beings.
In his edition, di Caccia faithfully transcribes Borromeo’s corrections and additional remarks to the printed text. Borromeo constructs his texts according to the
rhetorical format of a Thomist tract. Particularly fascinating is, for example, chapter XIII, in which Borromeo tries to define the concrete strategies that God may
use to obfuscate the demons’ knowledge. What makes this section fascinating is
that Borromeo mentions the same techniques that are usually attributed to demons
in their manipulation of human senses (pp. 81–82, 198–99). In Borromeo’s view,
God does not blind demons but rather blurs or confuses their sight by placing misleading objects before their eyes or by suspending their cognitive faculties for a certain period of time. A tenet of Renaissance demonology is indeed the belief that
demons are capable of blinding human beings’ sight at least partially by shifting
particles of their memory (the so-called phantasmata) in front of their eyes. A
unique aspect of Borromeo’s treatise is that he not only alludes to the usual sources
(Church Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and so forth) but also attacks Girolamo Cardano’s view of demonic knowledge (see, for instance, chapter XIV), although Borromeo recognizes that Cardano speaks as a scientist (a natural philosopher) and not
a Christian theologian. Unlike most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises
on demonology, Borromeo’s work stands out for its sobriety and emphasis on the
“objective” limits of the demons’ powers, primarily due to their sinfulness and
God’s active intervention. Even the witches’ night gatherings with their demons are
depicted in Borromeo’s book as disappointing parties in which, for example, the
food offered to the witches looks delicious but has an unpleasant taste, because God
does not allow the fallen angels to accomplish their malevolent intents (chapter
XXVIII). Borromeo’s relatively short treatise is of great relevance for a better
understanding of the late phase of early-modern demonology.
The University of Chicago

ARMANDO MAGGI

Purgatory and Piety in Brittany 1480–1720. By Elizabeth C. Tingle. [Catholic
Christendom, 1300–1700.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp.
xvi, 308. $134.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-3823-6.)
Nowadays it is hard to remember the excitement provoked in their time by the
pioneering researches of French historians like Philippe Ariès, Michel Vovelle,
François Lebrun, and Pierre Chaunu on attitudes—and the practices to which they

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gave rise—toward death and the afterlife during the 1960s and 1970s. Their methods and vocabulary have given way to different questions and approaches, but as so
often, such historiographical turns leave many loose ends when the newest fashion
takes over. Elizabeth C. Tingle’s new book on purgatory and piety in early-modern
Brittany reconsiders those early works with fairness and economy, and incorporates
their findings within the framework of a study that is much more wide-ranging and
interesting than its title alone would suggest.
Her book focuses on three dioceses (Nantes, Vannes, and Saint-Pol-de-Léon)
in western Brittany, rather than on the eastern or central parts of the province,
which Bruno Restif studied a few years ago. A key point here is the reputation of
west Brittany in particular as a haven for highly distinctive and barely Christianized
Celtic customs concerning death and the dead, complete with their accompanying
rituals and—lurking in the background—the strange skeletal figure of Ankou. Such
an obsession with the dead as a threatening presence among the living helped to
produce distinctive images in churches and burial practices. Tingle sets out to question such accepted views by a systematic study of the place of purgatory within the
religious culture—as well as the wider social and ecclesiastical structure—of Breton
society through the upheavals of the Reformation and Catholic Reformation. Her
book is based primarily on the printed and especially archival materials that were
often destroyed over the centuries and survive only in uneven quantities.
The subject of the place of purgatory in late-medieval and early-modern
Christianity is itself a problematic one, given its outright rejection by Protestantism
and its qualified defense by Catholicism, as needing to be defined and regulated.
Tingle provides a succinct analysis of how the doctrine and its practical implications were reworked over the centuries and, above all, how new spiritualities arose
that emphasized living a good, virtuous life rather than relying on a good death
and/or the accumulated treasure of “merit” of the Church to attain salvation.
Understanding of purgatory and its function had direct consequences for the
behavior of “ordinary” Christians when settling their accounts with God, as is so
evident in the postmortem Masses and other provisions commonly found in their
wills and other key documents. For the great majority, perpetual foundations were
too expensive, but they could fall back on confraternities and indulgences. But attitudes gradually shifted, and by the eighteenth century the mostly town-based élites
were less likely to rely on or found intercessory Masses for themselves or for the
departed as they had in the past, whereas rural parishes moved more slowly. Along
the way, the role of purgatory in the economy of salvation produced a veritable
superstructure, with its own financial base, within Catholicism. Entire categories of
lesser secular clergy made a living from saying Masses and attending funerals; they
founded endowments for Masses themselves, which sustained the next generation
of clergy. But this superstructure was hard hit by King Louis XIV’s taxes and virtually ruined by the crash of John Law’s financial policies in 1720.
It is also to Tingle’s credit that she makes a systematic effort to examine
Breton religious history and its supposed peculiarities in the context of the wider

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French and European patterns of the period she studies. This is not merely historiographical road-mapping, but is a key thread in this book—namely, that even
west Brittany was far more receptive to outside influences than usually imagined. It
was not a remote island, and over the two centuries or so considered here its saints
were not exclusively Celtic or Breton, as often imagined, but increasingly those of
the universal Church, including several of recent vintage. New religious orders
brought new saints and forms of piety with them, so that their attraction to local
populations was itself a diffusion mechanism for new ideas and practices. The
movement of clergy had similar effects, especially in towns, as did missions and new
confraternities. Founders of intercessory Masses often linked their performance to
new prayers and devotions.
This is, in sum, a balanced and thoughtful study that will interest a wide range
of early-modern historians.
University of Manchester

JOSEPH BERGIN

Reading the Scriptures with the Reformers. By Timothy George. (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press Academic. 2011. Pp. 160. $16.00 paperback. ISBN
978-0-8308-2949-1.)
In 1996, Mark Noll (whom author Timothy George counts as a friend, p.
257) published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, in which he argued that the
problem with the evangelical mind was that not many evangelicals used it. George’s
book is in some ways a corollary or echo to that 1996 book. The evangelical problem that George seeks to overcome is twofold. On the one hand there is the scandal
of the modern—the superiority of contemporary life to premodern life. In evangelical circles this can be seen in a rejection of much of “traditional” church services in
favor of “contemporary” or “praise services,” and in a rejection of Tradition more
generally. On the other hand, there is a thread of evangelicalism that asserts that
all one needs to interpret properly scripture is the text itself.
This book is thus somewhat of an apology, written by an evangelical to evangelicals, for the value—indeed, the necessity—of reading scripture with the Reformers. It was, according to George, in the Reformation that scripture was returned to
its proper place at the center of Christian life—“The Protestant Reformation was a
revolution in the original scientific sense of that: the return of a body in orbit to its
original position” (p. 17f). Following an introductory chapter on the difference
between the ways in which the Reformers read the bible and the modern historicalcritical method are seven chapters that retell the history of the Reformation from the
perspective of the centrality of the Word of God to the Reformers. George begins
with the dawn of Renaissance humanism and the important work of Lorenzo Valla
in critiquing, then criticizing, and finally improving upon the Vulgate of the fifteenth century. In the next chapter, George turns to Desiderius Erasmus’s discovery
of Valla’s Collatio novi testamenti in 1504 that eventually set him on the path to the
creation of his own revision of the Vulgate together with a Greek text published in

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1516 as the Novum Instrumentum. This leads into a chapter on sixteenth-century
bibles, the debates over revising the Vulgate, and the publication of vernacular
bibles. Next, George considers the work of Martin Luther, the immediate followers
of Luther, and then Zwingli and the emergence of the Reformed and Anabaptist
voices of the Reformation. In each of these chapters the centrality and importance
of scripture to the life and work of the reformers is lifted up.
The final chapter turns to the question raised by the book’s title. This book is
not a standalone work, but rather the first volume in a planned twenty-eight
volume Reformation Commentary on Scripture set. For each book of the (Protestant)
Bible, comments, exegesis, and insights from a wide variety of Protestant (and the
occasional Roman Catholic) sixteenth-century writers will be compiled and presented. The aim, as explained in the final chapter, is to aid preaching. Fides ex
auditu (faith comes through hearing), and thus the call of the Church is to proclaim
God’s Word. George’s apology to evangelicals ends by asserting, “Our task is to
point men and women both to the written Word in Scripture and the living Word
in Jesus Christ” (p. 258). He believes that the Reformers still have much to offer
those given this task.
Baylor University

DAVID M. WHITFORD

A Real Presence: Religious and Social Dynamics of the Eucharistic Conflicts in Early
Modern Augsburg, 1520–1530. By Joel Van Amberg. [Studies in the History of
Christian Traditions, Vol. 158.] (Leiden: Brill. 2012. Pp. x, 270. $143.00.
ISBN 978-90-04-21698-3.)
The Eucharistic Controversy was perhaps the most significant crisis to afflict
early Protestantism, leading to the division between Lutherans and the reformed
Protestants. In this study of the controversy in Augsburg, Joel Van Amberg presents the laity as critical arbiters in the struggle over doctrine. Opposition to the
Catholic and Lutheran views on the sacrament—what the author deems “anti-corporealism”—represented a rejection of the “series of overlapping, mutually reinforcing hierarchies” (p. 4), religious and political, that came to dominate social,
economic, and political life in late-medieval Augsburg. The revolutionary implications of anti-corporealism ensured, however, that it could never become the dominant faith within the city. Rather, by 1530, the author maintains, sectarian groups
had already begun the move toward Anabaptism, redefining themselves around the
rejection of infant baptism rather than the real presence.
There is much about the thesis that is attractive, but serious problems emerge
on close examination of the three case studies that form the core of the book. A key
figure is Hans Schilling, a radical preacher who “encouraged revolution ideas in the
minds of some of his congregants” by providing them with the “religious vocabulary
through which to express their discontent” (pp. 56–57). The problem is, we do not
know what Schilling actually said. None of his sermons survived, and the comments preserved in chronicles and other sources—themselves very few in number—

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refer to Schilling’s behavior rather than his words. Consequently, the author can
only speculate on the content of the sermons. We are told that “the first three chapters of Luke provide some irresistible passages for a fiery populist preacher” (p. 59).
These are enumerated, but there is no evidence that Schilling actually preached on
these “irresistible” passages. Indeed, the author discusses the revolutionary content
of Luke 6 all the while admitting that Schilling “would never get the chance to
preach beyond chapter three” (p. 59). A report that Schilling “engaged in insulting
talk” (p. 63) about reserving the host in the ciborium is used as evidence of his anticorporealist theology even though the details of this “talk” are lacking. Schilling
was supposed to have cut up a radish and distributed it to a group of people at a
dinner in mockery of the sacrament. This act is provided as evidence of Schilling’s
views on the Eucharist, although the author admits that this story only appears in
a seventeenth-century text and is not corroborated by any contemporary source.
Similar difficulties emerge in the discussion of the career of Michael Keller. It
is implied that, although it is “highly unlikely” (p. 87) that Keller and Andreas
Bodenstein von Karlstadt ever met, Keller’s views on the Eucharist were influenced
by Karlstadt during this studies in Wittenberg. Urbanus Rhegius’s brief response to
a pamphlet by Karlstadt is taken as attesting to “an early sacramentarian community” (p. 95). Additional evidence is taken from a remark in a Strasbourg pamphlet
about that author’s “brethren” in Augsburg. Caspar Huberinus’s note that there
were many secret enthusiasts (schwermer) in Augsburg who had “schwermerische”
books in their houses is taken as further proof; here the author translates “schwermer” as “sacramentarian” without giving any reason for choosing to identify these
particular religious enthusiasts—the standard translation of Schwärmer—as followers of a particular Eucharistic doctrine.
We are on firmer ground when the author discusses the careers of Ludwig
Hätzer and the proto-Anabaptist Eitelhans Langenmantel. Even here, it is uncertain whether either author is describing the sort of church community they wish to
see established or an already existing sectarian church. In Hätzer’s case at least, the
former seems more likely from the cited passages. In a pamphlet from 1527 Langenmantel clearly presents an anti-corporeal view of the Eucharist, but to see this
work as “the last attempt of the sectarian movement to express its core values
through its position on the Eucharist” (p. 197) strikes this reviewer as unfounded
given the paucity of evidence. Although it is possible, if not likely, that sectarian
subgroups existed in Augsburg before the arrival of Hans Denck and Hans Hut,
the evidence provided to show that these groups were organized primarily around
a particular view of the Eucharist and linked to disgruntled artisans is neither clear
nor convincing.
Despite its weaknesses, the argument is attractive and worth pursuing. One
possible direction for future research is suggested in the final chapter. Of all groups
in early-sixteenth-century Augsburg described by the author, confraternities best
seem to correspond to the model of small, exclusionary groups organized around the
Eucharist. From that perspective, perhaps the sacramentarian sects posited by Van

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Amberg could be seen as a radical Protestant reflex of traditional confraternal piety.
As the final chapter suggests, there is a range of options for further research; it is
hoped that the author will uncover further archival material to shed light on the
social origins of sacramentarianism and the trajectory of early Protestant radicalism.
Oglethorpe University

WILLIAM BRADFORD SMITH

Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c. 1700. By
Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke. (New York: Oxford University Press.
2007. Pp. xviii, 396. $180.00. ISBN 978-0-19-820700-9.)
This study brings a very useful chronological range to an area that has primarily been confined to the historiography of the Caroline reign. The title is slightly
misleading in that it is not a “one-trick pony” on altars so much as their being the
center of attention in a broader treatment of religious material culture, space and
devotional priorities, and their relations with such issues. It is extraordinarily rich
in terms of sources and geographically, bringing a sensitivity to reading the material
(and manuscript sources relating to the material) that has often been lacking in the
historiography. In addition to the fruits of new evidence, this work brings together
fields of study too often kept apart. The reader is drawn into an engagement with
illuminating instances and maintaining a tension between the particular and the
general with neither getting lost in the other. This is especially the case with the
attention paid to the appearance of building and refurbishment under James VI and
I, separating the too-often-assumed connection between structural maintenance
and an appetite for ceremonial worship.
The heart and soul of the book lies in the period between 1625 and 1640,
which is no surprise given the authors and the historiographical earth from which
it grows. However, this should not be taken to suggest that the first three chapters
be regarded merely as a preface to what follows. Indeed, this section provides interesting new assessments of the comparative failure of Elizabeth I. The space on
avant-garde ceremonialism adds profitable flesh to earlier bones. It is very strong
on muddying the waters and helping readers to make distinctions between “tables”
and “altars,” becoming appreciative of different styles, the variety of options for spatial arrangement, mobility of the furniture as well as raising a sensitivity to railing,
on how rails appear, different forms of enclosure, the relationship between rails and
table, different manners and intensities of enforcement. This is not, it should be
stressed, achieved at the expense of an understanding of the stronger impositions
of Laudianism or the varieties therein.
The later section is the weaker, perhaps partly because although it is a profitable effort to cross the historiographical rubicon of 1660, it loses the finely tuned
temporal shifts of the rest. It is excellent on the maintenance of Laudianism in exile
and on a new generation of Laudianesque divines contributing to the Restoration
settlement, not in a recycling of Bosher’s thesis and rather more convincing as a
result. It could perhaps have been aided by bringing out more on the competing his-

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tories of the Anglican Church in the late 1650s, not least as this helps to shape the
denominational histories recurring through the following centuries. This is a somewhat surprising absence, considering the sensitivity shown by the authors to this
elsewhere. It would be wrong to conclude on a negative note as this would be to
diminish the laudatory aspects of this study. It is to be acclaimed for the strengths
of the well-grounded conclusions and particularly for the newly opened questions
that are addressed without succumbing to the temptation of unjustifiably firm conclusions. This reviewer certainly agrees with the suggestion that more work could
and should be done on parish practices and further efforts made to identify lay
enthusiasm for “beautiful” churches and to locate such enthusiasms within the spectrum of pieties. This is a work that should generate further study to fine-tune such
suggestions and will prove formative in the historiography across the period covered.
University of Edinburgh

TOM WEBSTER

Catholic Gentry in English Society: The Throckmortons of Coughton from Reformation
to Emancipation. Edited by Peter Marshall and Geoffrey Scott. [Catholic
Christendom, 1300–1700.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp.
xvii, 282. $134.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6432-1.)
This work is an extended case study of a Catholic family that remained politically active and socially influential throughout this period—lay Catholic elites in a
changing world. A solid but not aristocratic family based in Worcestershire and
Warwickshire, the Throckmortons are distinguished especially by the fine archives
that have permitted eight authors to range widely and deeply through four centuries of family life and place the family in its wider social, religious, and political
context. The editors’ introduction is an accomplished survey of recent work on
Catholicism in the “political classes,” alluding to the long importance of “occasional
conformity” (aka church popery, p. 2) and the phenomenon of ideologically divided
families, both illustrated by the Throckmortons.
John Bossy, in his magisterial work The English Catholic Community (London,
1975), launched the modern study of post-Reformation Catholicism, although his
chosen chronology had the community beginning with the Jesuit mission and the
abandonment, as he saw it, of pre-Reformation forms so as to enable the emergence of Catholicism as one of the “varieties of nonconformity.” There are only two
references in Bossy’s index to the Throckmorton family. Bossy was largely uninterested in “church popery” and pays no attention to the “Cisalpine” views of Joseph
Berington. Nor does he devote much place in that work to the international dimension of English Catholicism.
The emphases of this book are very different. John Courtenay Throckmorton,
5th baronet, would assert in 1806 “we are not sectaries” (p. 24), and the family’s
sustained contacts with the Continent (especially Paris) shaped its political as well
as religious outlook. A devout family before the Reformation, the family maintained throughout its history a close relationship with Benedictines as chaplains

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and tutors, reminding readers of the sometimes neglected influence of monks as
“missionary priests” in post-Reformation England. A number of women in the
family became Benedictine nuns on the Continent; indeed, one theme this book
shares with Bossy’s is its emphasis on the role of women in sustaining the faith.
All the scrupulously researched essays cannot be examined in this space, but
particular mention may be made of Geoffrey Scott’s essay on the eighteenth century. The family’s position was secured through tenacious marriage strategies that
preserved Catholicism, enlarged the family wealth, and extended its social capital
within the English elite. At the same time, the Throckmortons’ very Catholicism
pulled them into the wider European world, where they viewed sympathetically the
modernizing movements of the Enlightenment era.
Thus, by the eighteenth century, the Throckmortons were patrons of Berington and members of a Cisalpine family marked more by political loyalism than by
separatism. A sort of Catholic Whiggery emerged that assisted the family in its
work for Catholic political emancipation; and Robert George Throckmorton, 8th
baronet, would become in 1831 the first English Catholic MP after Emancipation.
Ironically the next decades would see the restoration of the hierarchy, which ended
the long lay hegemony over the English Catholic Church. This triumph of clericalism, part of what John O’Malley has called the “long nineteenth century” of
Catholicism, was epitomized on its most negative side by Bishop William Bernard
Ullathorne of Birmingham’s famous retort to Blessed John Henry Newman, “Who
are the laity?”
As the Church moves toward reconsidering some of the issues of clericalism,
the lay role in the Church, and the relation of center to periphery, the story of the
Throckmortons acquires a relevance that would not have been visible when Bossy
wrote in 1975. That this is happening under the aegis of the first Jesuit pope
reminds us that the path to renewal sometimes “works in mysterious ways,” to
borrow the words of the Throckmortons’ friend, poet William Cowper.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

CAROLINE HIBBARD

L’Organisation et l’action des églises réformées de France (1557–1563). Synodes provinciaux et autres documents. Edited by Philip Benedict and Nicolas Fornerod.
[Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, N° DIV; Archives des Églises Réformées de France, N° III.] (Geneva: Librairie Droz. 2012. Pp. cxxx, 362.
€106,00. ISBN 978-2-600-01603-2.)
Studying the spread of the Reformation in sixteenth-century France has
always been difficult due to the fragmented documentary record and muted historical memory of French Protestantism. The persecution, forced conversion, and
expulsions of French Calvinists during the religious wars, the dragonnades, and the
Revocation led to the dispersal and destruction of their temples and their documents during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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L’Organisation et l’action des églises réformées de France (1557–1563) assembles
a remarkable group of documents from the Reformed church in France at its
apogee. Protestant worship had been illegal in France since the 1530s, forcing religious dissidents to flee or go underground. By the 1550s, however, communities of
believers began to abandon their clandestine prayer meetings and openly worship
in cleansed local churches or newly founded Reformed temples under the protection of convinced nobles. Jean Calvin published French-language texts and sent
Reformed ministers into France from Geneva to further the evangelical movement.
The number of Reformed congregations grew from a mere six in 1555 to an
astounding 816 by 1562—only seven years later. This rapid growth excited curious
religious seekers, alarmed Catholic observers, and contributed to the outbreak of
religious warfare in 1562.
Edited by Philip Benedict and Nicolas Fornerod, the collection publishes
transcriptions of four main types of documents from this formative period of the
Reformed churches in France: acts of provincial synods, records of Reformed
churches, registers of local consistories, and related documents. Some of these documents have been published previously, but in disparate volumes and specialized
journals. Collectively, these documents offer a fascinating institutional history of
the early French Reformed churches.
This critical edition provides a lengthy introduction and ample footnotes to
contextualize the sources. Benedict and Fornerod emphasize the organization of a
network of Reformed churches and provincial synods across France, which spread
Calvinist doctrine and practice. The introduction analyzes the rapid formation of
the complex system of national synods, provincial synods, colloques, churches, and
consistories, extending the analysis of Benedict’s Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed:
A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, 2002). The editors also examine the
liturgy and discipline employed by the French Reformed churches. Finally, the
introduction provides an analytic narrative of Reformed political activism from the
political crisis in 1560 to the outbreak of the religious wars in 1562, as the deputies
of Reformed churches and synods sought permission to worship publicly, to build
temples, and to present their confession to the king.
The documents offer a collective portrait of the early Reformed church institutions in France—revealing an often divided and contentious community of ministers and lay leaders. The records of the national and provincial synods are filled
with doctrinal debates, disciplinary disputes, and moral anxieties. This evidence
reminds historians that Calvinist churches and congregations were not simply subject to the moral policing of their local consistories but also immersed in broader
regional and national communities of Reformed believers.
As humanities digitization projects proceed rapidly, many of the documents
published here will undoubtedly soon be available online—and several of them
already are. The main contribution of this volume is to collate and present a coherent
group of interrelated documents on the organization of the French Reformed
churches in a copiously sourced critical edition that will be useful for specialized

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researchers working on the spread of Calvinism. The Reformed synodal system
organized in France in the mid-sixteenth century would soon become the model for
Reformed communities in Scotland, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. The editors’
valuable work should thus facilitate future historical research on the French Reformation, the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion, and the Calvinist Reformation.
Northern Illinois University

BRIAN SANDBERG

Dentro e fuori le aule: la Compagnia di Gesù a Gorizia e nell’Austria interna (secoli
XVI–XVII). By Claudio Ferlan. [Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico
in Trento, Monografie, 61.] (Bologna: Società editrice Il Mulino. 2012. Pp.
390. €29,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-15-24190-0.)
This well-researched and -structured book tells a story of the Jesuit mission in
Gorizia (today’s northeastern Italy) and in the interior of Austria (so-called
Innerösterreich) in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. The first part of the title indicates immediately that the focus of this
study is twofold: not just the Jesuit educational enterprise but also the Jesuit
broader activities that included the ordinary ministry, Marian congregations, theater, and pacification efforts. The study fills a gap in scholarship on the presence of
the Society of Jesus in the Habsburg empire, and it places itself critically within the
older historiographical panorama, characterized by an excessive highlighting the
Counter-Reformation spirit of every single activity of the Jesuits in a Protestantthreatened area.
The historical period discussed is divided in two distinct parts: 1558–1618
(long negotiations for the foundation of the college in Gorizia that began with the
arrival of the first Jesuits in Vienna in the year of the election of Diego Laínez as
superior general until the establishment of the college in 1615 and the subsequent
Uskok War) and 1619–50 (the development of the college and the presence of the
Jesuits in the city’s affairs up to the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War).
The study is characterized by a comparative approach (Gorizia vis-à-vis other
Austrian cities: consider, for example, the foundation of the Jesuit college in Graz
already in 1573) and by a critical consideration of various elements that impacted
the presence of the Society in the region: secular powers of the Austrian Empire,
the larger Catholic Church, the General Curia of the Jesuits and the local superiors,
and the Republic of Venice. It is based on a critical reading of a vast number of primary sources, most of which come from the central archives of the Jesuits in Rome,
such as chronicles of other Jesuit colleges (Ljubljana and Klagenfurt), the Litterae
Annuae, and various catalogs of the Jesuit Austrian province.
Ferlan’s book is a welcome monograph in the field of Jesuit studies. Wishfully,
this micro-history is only a prelude to a broader history of the impact of the Society
of Jesus in the Austrian Empire before it was suppressed in the eighteenth century.
Boston College

ROBERT A. MARYKS

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Dieu à nostre commerce et société. Montaigne et la théologie. Edited by Philippe Desan.
[Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 444.] (Geneva: Librairie Droz. 2008.
Pp. 312. $86.00. ISBN 978-2-600-01245-4.)
Although avowedly not a professional theologian, Michel de Montaigne
(1533–92) remained closely engaged with theological questions throughout his
writing career. He could hardly have avoided such engagement, since he was also—
his occasional protestations to the contrary notwithstanding—an active participant
in public life in the midst of the French Wars of Religion. Montaigne’s contemporaries, beginning with the papal censors, certainly took an interest in what he had
to say about theological issues, and the last century or so has seen no slackening of
interest; there has been a steady stream of quality work on Montaigne and religion,
ranging from the venerable studies of Maturin Dreano (Paris, 1936) and Henri
Busson (Paris, 1962) to Malcolm Smith’s more recent work (Geneva, 1981, 1991)
and the special issue of the Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne (1993) titled
“La question de Dieu.”
The present volume, the proceedings of a conference held in Paris in 2007, is
a worthy contribution to this conversation. It re-examines Montaigne’s relationship
to theology and religious practice in the context of his life and works, the latter
including not only the Essais but also the Journal de voyage and his translation of the
Theologia Naturalis of Raymond Sebond. It comprises nineteen essays by a range of
distinguished montaignistes, including literary scholars, philosophers, and intellectual historians, and is divided into three sections: “Théologie et théologiens,”
“Sebond et la Théologie naturelle,” and “Pratiques religieuses et pratique des textes.”
The somewhat arbitrary divisions notwithstanding, the essays are, for the most
part, in fruitful dialogue with one another. Following the editor’s general introduction, the first group of essays deals with the various ways in which Montaigne
explores theological questions while simultaneously denying the adequacy of theological discourse as such to its subject. André Tournon, Jan Miernowski, Frédéric
Brahami, and Bernard Sève variously address the latter issue, whereas Vincent Carraud and Emmanuel Faye discuss the essay “Des prières,” in which Montaigne
seems to stake out a rigorist position on prayer and penitence at odds with the Tridentine position defended by the papal censors. Along with Sève and Tournon,
Alain Legros shows how Montaigne gradually separates theological from
human(ist) discourse so as to liberate his own writing.
The second section focuses on Montaigne’s translation of Sebond and its
complex relationship to the Apologie de Raymond Sebond. The Apologie in fact
refutes the rationalist position of the Theologia Naturalis, and the essays in this section show how Montaigne negotiates the tensions among Sebond, the doctrines of
the post-Tridentine Church, and his own potentially heterodox positions. Jean
Balsamo, Philip Hendrick, and Thierry Gontier discuss Montaigne’s prudence in
translating and then distancing himself from Sebond, whereas Olivier Millet looks
at linguistic issues in the translation, showing how Montaigne moves beyond both

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Scholastic Latin and the literary language of the Vulgate toward a new humanist
literary ideal. Philippe Desan explores Montaigne’s interactions with the Congregatio pro indice librorum prohibitorum and usefully reproduces the Congregation’s censures of the Essais in an appendix.
The essays in the third section are more diverse, while still having many points
of contact with those of the first two sections. John O’Brien returns to the question
of prayer, whereas Jesús Navarro-Reyes approaches the issue of confession via the
late work of Michel Foucault. Amy Graves explores the social and geographical
dimensions of religion in Montaigne’s Journal de voyage. Jean Céard’s characteristically lively contribution looks at Montaigne reading St. Augustine via Vivès and
shows us Montaigne reveling in the digression that characterizes all three texts.
Jean-Robert Armogathe, in a brief but pithy essay, situates Montaigne’s praise of
Julian the Apostate in the larger context of a Renaissance rehabilitation of Julian,
suggesting that he serves as (among other things) a paradigm for the Gallican
model of a Church loyal to a secular ruler. Paul Mathias wonders whether Montaigne is a kind of fideist and, with other authors in the volume, concludes that
Montaigne is at the very least suspicious of the validity of rationalist theological
discourse; likewise, André Pessel sees Montaigne as a kind of theological empiricist
à la Pascal, relying on grace for access to the absolute and transcendent other.
The overall quality of the essays in this volume is very high indeed; moreover,
the collection is a model of the kind of informed, civil, and open-ended conversation so dear to Montaigne himself. Any montaigniste—provided that he read
French—will find in it something intriguing, useful, or startling, and it can be recommended not just to scholars of Montaigne but to all those interested in sixteenth-century theological debates and literary culture.
Loyola University Chicago

DAVID M. POSNER

The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: The Mysteries of a Crime of State (24 August
1572). By Arlette Jouanna. Translated from the French by Joseph Bergin.
(New York: Manchester University Press. Distrib. Palgrave, an imprint of
Macmillan. 2013. Pp. xiv, 271. $100.00. ISBN 978-0-7190-8831-5.)
This is the first book of the prolific French historian Arlette Jouanna to be
translated into English. That it and none of her other books on sixteenth-century
France is now in English demonstrates the continuing fascination with its topic—
the August 1572 massacre of Protestants in Paris. The topic seemingly had been
exhausted in myriad works, including several major studies in the past two decades,
but Jouanna was convinced that a comprehensive review of the primary sources
would provide a better explanation for the massacre and demonstrate its significance for French history.
The key issue for Jouanna is explaining how the court of Charles IX moved
from celebrating the marriage on August 18 between Prince Henry of Navarre, tit-

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ular head of the Protestant party in France, and Catholic Princess Marguerite, the
king’s sister, to sanctioning the brutal murders of six days later: “No greater contrast
could be imagined between these rejoicings and the bloody fury unleashed a few
days later” (p. 4). Any answer to that question also requires accounting for the
attempt on Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the actual leader of the Huguenots, on
August 22 and how it led to the general massacre two days later.
The author begins her study with the Edict of St-Germain of 1570, which
provided limited toleration for the Huguenots and royal offices for several of their
leaders. Although Charles and Catherine de Medici, his mother, were convinced
that the treaty would secure peace in the kingdom and worked to ensure its efficacy,
most Catholics, including many nobles led by the Guises, seethed with rage against
those who “wounded them in their most intimate religious selves” (p. 22). That was
especially true in Paris, where radical preachers denounced the treaty and urged
action against the heretics. Jouanna also shows the Huguenots’ deep discontent
with the edict’s limitations and their anxiety that the king might be persuaded to
break it.
Thus the situation was highly volatile when many Huguenot nobles arrived at
Paris in early August 1572 for the royal wedding. For the militant Catholics, the
marriage demonstrated that the king was willing to go further in placating the
heretics, perhaps even going to war with Spain in support of the Protestant rebels
in the Netherlands. Jouanna’s detailed account of the attack on Coligny mines the
sources for every nuance on those responsible and their motivation. She concludes
that it is impossible now to determine who arranged the attack, but the would-be
assassin (a Guise client) had to have received the go-ahead from someone well
placed at court, not necessarily the duke of Guise. She is far surer about the motive:
It would break the fragile peace, which certainly turned out to be true, likely beyond
the conspirators’ wildest dreams. Jouanna uses the term Surgical Strike as the title
for her chapter on the royal executions of Coligny and other Huguenot leaders in
Paris. Convinced that a massive Huguenot military reprisal would quickly follow
the attack on Coligny, Charles ordered the deaths of those who would lead it.
Given the heightened state of fear among Catholic Parisians toward the polluters
in their midst, it was all but inevitable that the surgical strike would become “a
murderous orgy of pacification” (p. 123).
The author then examines the vast outpouring of writings in response to the
event. She reaches two major conclusions: The massacre ensured that the Protestants would not become the religious majority of France; it shattered their confidence that God had determined that they would. Second, the need for royal apologists to justify the extrajudicial executions of Coligny and his captains led to a
“super-sacralisation” of the king, who was above human law and answered only to
God, contributing to the divine-right absolutism of the Ancien Régime.
This excellent book offers both a thorough re-evaluation of the primary
sources for the Massacre and a careful assessment of the secondary works. That

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such a fine study fails to determine who was ultimately responsible for the first
attack on Coligny, a point that Jouanna might have emphasized more than she
does, reveals the task’s extreme difficulty, but it prevents one from calling it the
final word on the subject. One quibble lies in her identifying the assassin of Henry
III (1589) as a monk; he was a Dominican friar—a small yet significant difference.
Adding to the value of the book is Joseph Bergin’s highly readable translation.
This should become the first book that anyone with a scholarly interest in St.
Bartholomew’s Massacre will read.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

The Prodigious Muse. Women’s Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. By Virginia
Cox. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press., 2011. Pp. xxvi, 440. $60.00.
ISBN 978-1-4214-0032-7.)
After the acclaimed Women’s Writing in Italy 1450–1650 (Baltimore, 2008), in
which Virginia Cox offered a crucial critical overview of the phenomenon of Renaissance women writers, she now develops the most critically innovative section of
her previous work with this important, intriguing, impressive, beautifully written,
and comprehensive new book. The work under review concerns the way in which
the Counter-Reformation, traditionally considered repressive for women, affected
the literary production of post-Tridentine women. Cox notices an incredible proliferation, originality, and variety of women’s writings produced between 1580 and
1635 and convincingly argues that this occurred thanks to—and not in spite of—
Counter-Reformation politics. According to Cox, by promoting women-friendly
religious and decorous literature, Counter-Reformation politics encouraged
women’s literary activity. Thus, within the general post-Tridentine tendency to
convert secular literature into sacred or at least into decorous and acceptable literature, both laywomen and nuns with literary ambition—the principal addressees of
this kind of “safe” literature—had more possibilities to publish their works and to
experiment with different acceptable literary genres, approaching both sacred and
secular subject matter often in very original ways.
In the first chapter, Cox defines the chronological boundaries of her study,
analyzes the cultural context, and offers a general survey of women’s writings of the
period. She then considers and discusses the works written by women in the period,
both printed and in manuscript, dividing them by literary genres and themes
treated but taking into account the specificities of individual works and the possible
contamination between genres. Cox examines women’s lyric production, which,
after the Council of Trent, tended to become mostly sacred, but she offers some
interesting secular examples (chapter 2). Drama, formerly a genre almost unexplored by women, became particularly popular in the period among female authors,
especially in its pastoral form (chapter 3). Sacred narrative—mainly represented by
hagiographies in ottava rima, one of the most popular and underinvestigated genres
of the period—offered to several women (such as Lucrezia Marinella) the opportu-

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nity to write a number of works and to convert the previous epic-chivalric tradition
into something more suitable to the time (chapter 4). Secular narrative (including
epic, chivalric romance; pastoral romance; and mythological-allegorical poetry)
gave women the opportunity to use and transform traditional genres (chapter 5).
Discursive prose (including sacred and secular treatises, dialogues, letters, meditations, discursive religious works, and polemical tracts) is characterized by the intention to instruct the reader (chapter 6).
Through the analysis and the comparison of these variegated texts, the book
offers a very interesting picture of female literary production and its reception in the
period, and considers the religious and cultural contexts in which they were written
and published. The most famous and studied texts such as the pro-feminist works
of Moderata Fonte and Marinella are brought together with the understudied religious writings of Marinella and Chiara Matraini as well as the works of little-studied authors such as Maddalena Campiglia, Francesca Turina Bufalina, Margherita
Serrocchi, and Valeria Miani. Moreover, an appendix includes a very useful alphabetical list of women writers active in the period, with biographical data, works, and
bibliography (if available).
The Prodigious Muse—which implies in its title the variety, ambition, originality, and exceptionality of women’s creativity of the period—is the result of a huge
amount of research that opens the way to a new perspective on late-sixteenth- and
early-seventeenth-century literature and culture, not only contributing to studies of
women but also offering a new view of the history of Counter-Reformation politics
and culture.
The book is fascinating reading for those who want to learn more on the subject. It proposes a stimulating and well-documented new approach, offering important sources of information to those who work on Counter-Reformation literature
and history, as well as on women’s writing. It also is an invitation to undertake further research on individual authors and works within a larger and broader frame.
Moreover, it promotes critical interest in and attention to traditionally underestimated sacred literature.
Cambridge, United Kingdom

ELEONORA CARINCI

The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630. By Paul F.
Grendler. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009. Pp. xxiv, 287.
$62.00. ISBN 978-0-8018-9171-7.)
For many years, Paul F. Grendler has provided illuminating studies of education and culture in Italy during the Renaissance and the Reformation. Grendler now
examines one of the more unique examples of Italian university life, the “Peaceful
University of Mantua” (p. 149). He recounts the complex interests of the Gonzaga
rulers of Mantua; the Jesuits; and the Italian professors of humanities, law, and medicine who collaborated in the establishment of this short-lived institution.

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The decision of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587–1626) to establish this
joint Jesuit-civic university grew out of his family’s close connection with the
Jesuits, his own academic training, and his love of learning. The Gonzaga drew
close to the Jesuits when Luigi Gonzaga (1568–91) entered the Society, died a
heroic death, and was eventually canonized (he is better known in the Englishspeaking world as St. Aloysius Gonzaga). No other Italian ruling family had such
a close connection to the Jesuits. A Jesuit college opened in Mantua in 1584 that
offered a curriculum in the humanities typical of other early Jesuit colleges. Ferdinando came to know the Jesuits both in Mantua and in Rome and was influenced
by their teaching and spirituality. He had initially begun a career in the Church,
becoming a cardinal in 1607. His earliest studies were under the “cautious baroque
polymath,” Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555–1617) who introduced him to mathematics, astrology, and alchemy (p. 60). Subsequently he studied at both the University of Ingolstadt and the University of Pisa. Grendler describes Ferdinando as
“the most intellectually gifted Italian ruler since Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–94)” (p.
59). Only with the death of his older brother, Duke Francesco III, did he resign his
ecclesiastical posts and assume the role of duke of Mantua in 1612. Apart from the
customary political interest of the Gonzaga, Ferdinando sought to build his own
university largely out of his own love of learning.
This Mantuan enterprise illustrates the professional interests and ambitions
of Italian university professors of the early-seventeenth century. Giacomo Antonio
Marta (c. 1557/8–1629), a law professor of enormous ego who had been virtually
raised by the Jesuits in his native Naples, held a post at the University of Pavia
prior to his arrival in Mantua, and functioned as a spy for King James I, became
the new university’s star. The duke and his advisers saw him as a means to make
a statement about their new institution. After careful negotiations that concerned
reputation as much as salary, Marta became the new university’s leading figure. He
was soon joined by professors in medicine and the sciences who explored the
boundaries of accepted method in seventeenth-century Italy. The university was
home to the first professorship of chemistry in any Italian university. The thought
of Paracelsus was included alongside the orthodoxy of Galen. The university’s
hybrid constitution led to an unusual set of tensions between the Jesuits and the
faculty of law and medicine.
This experiment did not last long. The university opened in November 1625
and grew to an enrollment of nearly 300. It exhibited some of the intellectual developments of seventeenth-century Europe but, before it could make much of a contribution, the university closed as a result of the War of the Mantuan Succession
(1627–31). As alien as such an institution might seem today, at least some of the
issues concerning the politics, financing, and professorial egos of that long-ago university may seem painfully—or perhaps comically—familiar to those with experience of a modern university. Grendler has provided a microcosm of life in a university that was simultaneously unique and representative of broader cultural issues.
John Carroll University

PAUL V. MURPHY

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The Letters of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza. Edited by Glyn Redworth with contributions by Christopher J. Henstock. Translated by David McGrath and Glyn
Redworth. 2 vols. (Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto. Distrib. Ashgate
Publishing, Willston, VT. 2012. Pp. xlix, 308 (vol. 1); vi, 358 (vol. 2). $335.00
the set. ISBN 978-1-84893-218-0.)
Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1566–1614), Spanish religious woman and
Catholic missionary to Anglican England, is a well-known figure to Hispanists.
Her remarkable life and writings are still becoming available to English-speaking
readers, however. This translation of her correspondence, almost 200 letters, will
enhance those readers’ familiarity with her tumultuous later life, revealing an
unquiet, aristocratic soul who willingly abandoned all comfort she knew to risk
everything for her faith.
The multitude of other texts written by and about Carvajal provide an unusually full backdrop on which to read her letters, and the editors supply a generous
account of that information. Born into the heights of privilege, Carvajal—or Luisa,
as the editors call her—was orphaned at age six and raised with the royal children
in Madrid. When her guardian aunt suddenly died, she was taken in by a perverse,
politically powerful uncle, who engaged his young niece in abusive “spiritual” practices throughout her adolescence.
In young adulthood, Carvajal determined not to marry or take the veil and
launched her career as a professional religious by convincing her uncle and aunt to
allow her to live with a few female companions, all her social inferiors, in the upper
chambers of their Madrid palace. There she practiced private and public acts of
humiliation as well as the exaggerated asceticism typical of the model early-modern
holy woman. She became, and remained, chronically ill. When her guardians died,
she began her lifelong, intense relationship with the Jesuits, to whom she donated
her substantial fortune after a long court battle with her brother for it.
Carvajal’s first known letter dates from 1598, when she was intentionally
living in poverty in Madrid. During this period, she took several vows: poverty,
chastity, obedience, and the pursuit of perfection and any opportunity for martyrdom. In 1605 she left for London, and the vast majority of her letters were written
there. She arrived a few months before the Gunpowder Plot obliged her to seek
safety in the Spanish embassy. Once she moved out, her dwellings served as safe
houses for the Catholic underground. For reasons of political prudence, her letters
hint at, but do not fully reveal, her activities in England, which included, for example, providing religious instruction, preaching to jailed Catholics, supporting those
awaiting execution, taking in and attempting to reform prostitutes, distributing
contraband literature, and organizing and directing a small, secret community of
Catholic women. Throughout, she relied on donations from wealthy and powerful
Spaniards around Europe to support her mission.
Carvajal was arrested and jailed in 1608, after disturbing some locals in a
debate about religion, and again in 1613, on order of George Abbot, archbishop of

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Canterbury. Her nationality, class, sex, and connections made her a difficult person
to persecute, however, and she was released in both cases after brief incarcerations.
Her letters about these incidents reveal the veneer of her humility as well as the
intensity of her religious and political convictions. Her second arrest compromised
her health, and she died in her bed shortly thereafter.
These letters make for compelling reading and reveal not only the writer but
also the dramatic circumstances into which she aggressively inserted herself. Her
complaints about the English and life in London are embedded in cross-cultural
details, about daily life in particular, and her awareness of what were theoretically
state secrets is striking. She normalizes religious espionage and is likewise frank
about the physical consequences of martyrdom, relaying abundant, gory details
about executions. Carvajal’s correspondence extant today was likely selected from a
larger corpus of letters, the rest of which was either destroyed or secreted away
upon her death, perhaps by her confessor: chronologically limited, they are somewhat redundant if intensely articulated. Their silence about the Jesuits’ activities in
England, in which she was clearly involved, is very loud, suggesting that further
research in Jesuit and other archives will produce rich results.
This edition/translation is informed by all pertinent scholarship as well as
new research. All but the first thirty-two letters were written from England and
provide a fine complement to Redworth’s biography of Carvajal (New York,
2008), the first to fill in previously scant information about her life in London. A
helpful biographical index of important individuals follows the informative introduction, in which women’s names are a bit hard to find: Inés de la Cruz, for example, is under “Cruz,” but Inés de la Asunción is under “Inés.” The editors chose to
supply information about each letter in a tight paragraph of data that precedes
each one, making it more difficult to sort out the details than footnotes would
have been. The translation is exceptional for its fluidity and accuracy, making the
numerous typographical errors particularly regrettable. Regardless, congratulations are due to the erudite team whose members have provided us with this
important resource.
Boston College

ELIZABETH RHODES

María of Ágreda: Mystical Lady in Blue. By Marilyn H. Fedewa. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2009. Pp. xviii, 337. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-82634643-8.)
María of Ágreda (1602–65) has been a figure of interest since the early-seventeenth century. If one takes into account her three greatest claims to fame—her
reported bilocations to what is now the American Southwest, her controversial
biography of the Virgin Mary, and her decades as friend and adviser to King Philip
IV of Spain—it is surprising she is not better known. Although this Spanish nun
lived during a period of intense religious fervor, her growing notoriety was mired
in suspicion and controversy due to the debate over the immaculate conception of

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Mary that divided theologians until it became accepted doctrine in the nineteenth
century. María of Ágreda’s biography of the Virgin was periodically prohibited in
the interceding period. At the same time, her spiritual journeys to the New World
and close relationship to the pivotal reign of Philip IV make her an important
figure in Spanish history, women’s studies, and Catholicism in the Americas.
Marilyn H. Fedewa has written a new biography of the famous Conceptionist abbess. Since both scholarly and popular writings on her in English are few,
Fedewa incorporates all the nun’s numerous roles as nun, abbess, mystic, missionary, writer, and adviser in a “life and times” narrative that seeks to bridge the gap
between the cloistered mystic of baroque Spain and a twenty-first-century reading
public. The book’s seven parts focus on different periods of the nun’s life, beginning with her family and childhood and then covering her early religious vocation
and mystical experiences, her missionary yearnings and spiritual journeys, the
inspiration for and composition of the Mystical City of God, her brushes with the
Inquisition, and finally her epistolary relationship with the Spanish king. Numerous photos, maps, and other visuals provide a sense of the concrete for what has
often described in esoteric terms. The intention is not to offer a scholarly analysis
(theological or otherwise) of María’s many writings. Instead, Fedewa uses María’s
texts and many other supporting materials to flesh out a nuanced portrait of María
of Ágreda.
María’s harsh asceticism and frequent trances challenged the credulity even of
her contemporaries who were witnesses to a flowering of both ecstatic experiences
and militant religiosity in the midst of a global colonial expansion. Fedewa does not
negate these phenomena by attempting to “diagnose” the nun or her witnesses. The
author re-examines the nun’s own explanations to diffuse some of the more outlandish interpretations, while preserving mystical experiences within the realm of
the possible. The question of “is it real?” is frequently posed and often left to the
reader to decide according to his or her spiritual leanings. Although this strategy
may not satisfy the academic, it is engaging for a broader reading public.
Fedewa does not linger overly long on the more spectacular and notorious
experiences of María’s youth. The author’s interest is quickly drawn to events that
more clearly showcased María’s abilities to navigate what had by that time become
a rather perilous religious landscape. María claimed to be merely the scribe and the
Virgin herself the true author of Mystical City of God, since the work is entirely the
product of her many mystical conversations with the Queen of Heaven. Her ability
to balance the imperatives of her visions and the misgivings of her inquisitors
served her well in her dealings with the Spanish monarch. Fedewa spends ample
time on María’s role as adviser to the king in spiritual as well as earthly matters.
Philip IV did not always rise to the many challenges that plagued his reign.
Fedewa, through the hundreds of letters exchanged between the king and the nun
from Ágreda, illustrates how María transformed her inferior position and humility
into a discourse of moral and spiritual authority in an effort to mitigate both the
monarch’s shortcomings and the nation’s decline.

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Fedewa’s book does much to humanize a historical figure whose reputation
and writings challenged and inspired her contemporaries.
Kalamazoo College

KATIE MACLEAN

Encountering Anew the Familiar: Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life
at 400 Years. Edited by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S. (Rome: International Commission for Salesian Studies. Distrib. De Sales Resources, 4421
Lower River Road, Stella Niagara, NY 14144. 2012. Pp. viii, 117. $29.95.
ISBN 978-0-9800371-3-5.)
The Introduction to the Devout Life is one of France’s most important literary
works of the early-modern period and a spiritual classic. Leading Salesian scholars
mine its historical trajectory and enduring value in this collection. The Introduction
was published forty-two times during the lifetime of St. Francis de Sales; editions
dropped about 70 percent of the text during the Enlightenment in France but less
in Italy. Adaptations in succeeding decades to make the work more “modern”
changed or deleted 50–60 percent of the original text to appeal to both Protestant
readers and to the rationalism of the age for a public that no longer considered its
many examples from nature as normative. Its popularity rebounded during the
Catholic Restoration of the mid-nineteenth century in another adapted version,
which was watered down to appeal to a wider audience. It was not until the critical
edition of de Sales’s Œuvres in 1895 and an easily affordable 1935 printing of the
original 1619 edition, that the saint’s own voice could once again be known without
filters. The Introduction’s success fed an intense spiritual hunger of the laity as a
practical and flexible guide to the Catholic reform theology of cooperation with
grace. It was again vital to a popular spiritual resistance to nineteenth-century
European secularism, inspiring the Salesian Pentecost that gave birth of St. John
Bosco’s family of religious orders, the missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, and lay
associations that numbered more than 1 million members.
The Introduction meets the criteria of a spiritual classic as described by Phillip
Sheldrake, Rowan Williams, and David Tracey for its “excess of meaning” that
continues across the ages to engage its readers to “be who you are and be that well.”
Central to the Salesian ideal for lay spirituality is to live Jesus in the world in friendship with others that speaks heart to heart, which is a model for modern spiritual
direction. That Salesian ideal of devotion in all walks of life, equal to the cleric or
religious, anticipated the universal call to holiness of Lumen gentium. The Introduction counsels resolutions, constant prayer, direction, and “holy liberty of spirit” as a
means to “do all deeds in God and for God,” with a pragmatic realism that envisions virtue as suitable to the individual and his or her particular temperament, station, and abilities. Salesian optimistic and flexible spirituality accentuates humility
and gentleness, but at the same time rigorously seeks to be stripped of every selfish
desire in “holy indifference.” The Introduction’s early-modern version of Christianity becomes all the more striking when set against its backdrop of Jansenist France
in the aftermath of civil war and militant Catholicism that prevailed during the

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saint’s lifetime. His rich use of natural images is built upon a theology born of the
response to the Protestant iconoclasm that furthers the Patristic tradition of God
the painter and the person as the image restored to God’s likeness through Christ.
The literary style of the Introduction reflects the Renaissance priority on
rhetorical form over substance that these images portray, and yet it uses that
imagery to elucidate some of the thorniest theological concepts of the day. For
example, a pregnant mother tenderly preparing her baby’s crib for the day the child
will arrive is used to depict the attractions of grace that prepare the soul for spiritual
birth (V.8) to teach the Tridentine Church’s theology of grace and cooperation.
The lacuna in this small volume such as the Introduction’s reception in other
European countries and the Americas, its influence upon the pure love-of-God
heresies of the same period, its part in the subsequent élan of women’s religious
orders that ensued shortly after its publication, and its psychology require further
study and emphasize this volume’s purpose—the Introduction’s excessive meaning
endures anew 400 years later.
Providence College

TERENCE MCGOLDRICK

Der Erzkanzler im Religionskrieg: Kurfürst Anselm Casimir von Mainz, die geistlichen
Fürsten und das Reich, 1629 bis 1647. By Franz Brendle. [Reformationsgeschichtliiche Studien und Texte, Band 156.] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag.
2011. Pp. xiv, 578. €59,00. ISBN 978-3-402-12802-2.)
The career of Anselm Casimir Wambold von Umstadt, archbishop of Mainz
from 1629 to 1647, has attracted little historical attention. Yet as highest-ranking
of the prince-electors and as Imperial chancellor for a large part of the Thirty Years’
War, he played a distinct role in a key series of political and military events within
the Holy Roman Empire. Brendle’s substantial and scholarly biography thus fills a
large gap in our knowledge of an important but neglected figure; but the book is
no less a significant re-evaluation of the character and stance of the “Catholic
Party” within the Empire, which has been all too easily conflated with Bavarian
political and military concerns. As Imperial chancellor, Anselm Casimir directed a
large part of the Imperial constitutional and legal machinery, was a key figure in
coordinating Catholic policy in the Empire, and enjoyed a high degree of influence
with the emperor. The new archbishop was elected in the midst of the debate over
the forcible re-catholicization of all ecclesiastical territory that had been acquired
by Protestant princes since the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. Anselm Casimir led the
Catholic princes in supporting the initial imposition of the 1629 Edict of Restitution, but soon distinguished himself as a moderate, anxious to compromise over its
enforcement and prepared to negotiate with the Protestant Electors (above all, with
John George of Saxony) in the hope of achieving a peace settlement in the Empire.
This overriding concern to achieve a settlement led Anselm Casimir to join the
Electors’ fatal call to dismiss the Imperial generalissimo Wallenstein, and he personally coordinated the pressure on the emperor at the Diet of Regensburg to achieve

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this objective. His leading role at the Diet gave him a considerable reputation and
allowed him to press for an Imperial settlement, but the Swedish invasion of North
Germany radically transformed the situation. Following the victory at Breitenfeld
in September 1631, the troops of Gustavus Adolphus spilled out into the
Rhineland; Mainz was occupied and became the center of Swedish military operations for the next four years. While his territory was garrisoned and subjected to
massive war taxes, the archbishop was driven into exile. From Cologne, Anselm
Casimir conducted extended but fruitless negotiations with France in the hope that
diplomatic pressure might persuade the Swedes to accept the French “protection”
of his bishopric. Following this failure, the archbishop made a final and definitive
shift of alliance over to the emperor, bringing both his territorial resources and his
constitutional standing with the other Catholic states directly into the emperor’s
service. This overt alliance with the Habsburgs weakened his influence as Imperial
chancellor in the negotiations for a peace settlement in the Empire at Pirna, then
at Prague. The Swedish pulled out of Mainz in 1635, but when France declared
war on the Habsburgs, Mainz was again threatened. It was not until January 1636
that Anselm Casimir finally re-entered his episcopal city. The new phase of the war
opened by French intervention and the resurgence of Swedish military pressure
ensured that the Imperial chancellor remained at the center of political maneuvers
within the Empire, but as a virtual client of the emperor. The final, shorter section
of Brendle’s study concerns this later period, which Anselm Casimir began as
cheerleader for the pre-election of the future Ferdinand III as Holy Roman
Emperor in 1636. Although once the Westphalia negotiations opened, he again
demonstrated tenacity in arguing against Catholic intransigence and for compromise with both German Protestants and external powers. This did not prevent
Mainz being occupied again by the French in 1645, leading to the second exile of
the archbishop, who died in Frankfurt in October 1647. This is an excellent and
comprehensive study, which has much to offer to both political and church historians of early-modern Europe.
New College, University of Oxford

DAVID PARROTT

Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity. By Daniel Stolzenberg. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2013. Pp. xi, 307. $50.00. ISBN
978-0-226-92414-4 [clothbound], 978-0-226-92415-1 [ebook].)
After long neglect, Athanasius Kircher (1602–81) is now firmly on the map of
intellectual history. Since 2000, more books exclusively about him have appeared
than in the whole preceding era. Perhaps it comes of a less progress-oriented attitude, which can see the virtues of what John Glassie calls “a man of misconceptions.” There is also no denying that studying Kircher is fun. His prose may be
turgid—no one enjoys translating it—but his universal curiosity is infectious, and
his books bear out the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.
There are probably enough general treatments of Kircher by now (one of
them, The Great Art of Knowing. The Baroque Encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher

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[Stanford, 2001], is edited by Stolzenberg) so that the need is for topical studies of
more than an article’s scope. This “microhistory of the making and meaning of
Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies” (p. 32) sets a high standard. Most obviously, it is
about how Kircher came to his mistaken translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs,
but it ramifies into many other areas. These include the “Republic of Letters,” the
international network of scholars and antiquarians of the 1630s that Kircher first
entered under dubious pretenses, claiming to own an Arabic-hieroglyphic manuscript that no one was allowed to see. As the book proceeds, the perspective on
Kircher changes from that of the Republic of Letters, avid for his erudition, to that
of the scientific academies, which reluctantly gave up on him as a reliable source.
One important argument concerns the occult philosophy that Kircher read
into the hieroglyphic inscriptions and the question of his own commitment to it,
especially since Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652–54) contains whole treatises on
magic and Kabbalah. Stolzenberg writes:
Egyptian Oedipus may seem like an encyclopedia of occult philosophy, comparable to the sixteenth-century projects of Cornelius Agrippa or Francesco
Patrizi. But Kircher used those building blocks to construct something different . . . [he] repurposed occult philosophy into a historical and theoretical
framework for explaining antiquities. (p. 132)

A most interesting chapter tells of the Jesuit censors’ opposition to publishing
the magical material. With his international status and his papal and imperial
patronage, Kircher could afford to evade and finally ignore it.
As regards Kircher’s character, Stolzenberg argues that the quest for fame
drove all his studies and that deciphering the hieroglyphs was his first and best
chance. Since Kircher was already certain that they contained metaphysical and
cosmological statements of a Hermetic-Neoplatonic cast, it just remained to prove
it, by fair means or foul. Even judged by the looser standards of his time, Kircher
was a plagiarist, his great work “to a large extent cobbled together from the texts of
unacknowledged early modern authors” (p. 153). His fall from grace was not due
to the rejection of occult philosophy but to “his attempt to practice state-of-the-art
antiquarian research without a critical approach to his sources” (p. 176).
On the positive side, Stolzenberg sees Kircher as part of a movement of scholarship away from the Greco-Roman world, both in time (Egypt being more
ancient) and in space (for example, with Kircher’s China Illustrata [Amsterdam,
1667]). For all that his conclusions were wrong, his encyclopedic works were full of
information found nowhere else and as such were ransacked by other scholars well
into the Enlightenment era. This much any Kircherian already knows. What distinguishes Stolzenberg’s work is the author’s discontent with such assumptions
unless he has tested them from the foundations. For instance, he looks at the
authenticity of Kircher’s claimed Kabbalistic and Arabic sources (the latter with the
help of Arabic scholars). He reconstructs Kircher’s troubles with censorship from
the Roman archives. At the same time he writes a text that is a pleasure to read,

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especially for its evocative chapters on Kircher’s Avignon patrons and his later
Roman circle. For anyone who already knows something of Kircher, this book is
recommended as the next place to go.
Colgate University

JOSCELYN GODWIN

The Art of Religion: Sforza Pallavicino and Art Theory in Bernini’s Rome. By Maarten
Delbeke. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp. xvi, 241. $124.95.
ISBN 978-0-7546-3485-0.)
For all that he is well known, Gianlorenzo Bernini, the greatest artist of seventeenth-century Rome and one of the very greatest who has ever lived, has always
been at something of a critical and historiographic disadvantage. He was deliberately left out of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s Lives (Rome, 1672), a collection of the
biographies of leading artists active in Rome. The official excuse was that he was
still alive, but no one was fooled: Bellori did not approve of Bernini’s art; he preferred the rigorous classicism of Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, and Nicolas
Poussin—the so-called Roman classicists. Bellori’s distaste was shared by the members of the French Academy, thus exerting a powerful influence on European opinion, and in the subsequent century, Bernini was held in contempt by the neo-classicists. To a surprising degree, modern art-historical scholarship has followed
along: whereas Caravaggio has managed to overcome the censure that Bellori
heaped on him so that we recognize him almost as one of us, Bernini still seems
remote to many of our contemporaries—partly due, no doubt, to his lifelong dedication to the Church and the deep, sincere, and absolutely confident religious faith
that animates all his work.
Bernini was the subject of two early biographies, one written by the Florentine
Filippo Baldinucci for Queen Christina of Sweden, who was a patron and admirer
of Bernini; the other written by Bernini’s son, Domenico, and published a generation after the great artist’s death. Tomaso Montanari has shown that these two
texts drew upon the same source material, originally assembled as part of an effort
to see that Bernini received something like equal exposure in the press. The starting
point of Maarten Delbeke’s superb book is the hypothesis that this effort was
greatly indebted to the artist’s friend, Cardinal Pietro Sforza Pallavicino (1607–
67)—Jesuit theologian, ethical philosopher, and literary theorist. Delbeke presents
a learned, penetrating, and judicious account of Pallavicino’s thought and its many
points of contact with Bernini’s artistic aims, creating a compelling case that
Pallavicino’s writings offer the most insightful contemporary gloss on the master’s
work. In so doing, he has rescued Bernini from the undervaluation of his contemporaries and ours, and provided an excellent basis for understanding Bernini’s
achievement in relation to the intellectual and spiritual life of his time.
Delbeke’s study is also the first extensive discussion of this major seventeenthcentury writer in English; it takes the reader through the principal texts in a
manner that is lucid and comprehensive, and that does justice to their complexity

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and subtlety. In demonstrating the relation of Pallavicino’s thought to Bernini’s
work, it reconstructs a system of art-theoretical values, steeped in theological reflection, that never really received the full articulation it deserved, being swept aside,
as it was, by the rationalism of the French Academy. The book is a refreshing antidote to the fetishization of Caravaggio, on the one hand, and the Roman classicists,
on the other. It is a masterful demonstration of the ways in which the sources and
techniques of intellectual history can be used to illuminate the history of art.
University of California, Santa Barbara

ROBERT WILLIAMS

Le smanie per l’educazione: Gli scolopi a Venezia tra Sei e Settecento. By Maurizio Sangalli. [I libri di Viella, 137.] (Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice. 2012. Pp. 425.
€38,00. ISBN 978-88-8334-910-2.)
This book traces the history of the Piarist order inside the Venetian Republic
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In five extended chapters, Sangalli offers an overview of the order (chapter 1), a detailed look at the Piarist
schools in Murano and Capodistria (chapters 2–3), an analysis of those schools’
finances (chapter 4), and a consideration of the Piarist attempts to expand west into
the Venetian mainland empire and east to Ragusa and nearby towns (chapter 5).
The book includes four appendices, listing the dates/locations of attempted foundations, faculty members serving from 1677 to 1805 and their areas of expertise,
students resident in the Venetian schools in 1754 and 1765, and sample budgets of
1756 and 1805. The bibliography is very thorough; it consists overwhelmingly of
Italian-language scholarship. Four maps and three graphs help to break up the
dense but very informative text. Sangalli acknowledges previous scholarship on the
Piarists in Naples, Poland, and elsewhere but argues that Venice constitutes a special case where introducing a new religious order, especially one with a Spanish
founder, was particularly “delicate.”
The Piarists—also known as the Scolopians or Scuole Pie and formally as the
Poor Regular Clerics of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools—were founded
by the Aragonese Josè Calasanz in 1597. Similar to the Jesuits, the Somaschans, the
Barnabites, and the Theatines, the Piarists were inspired by the Catholic reform in
the second half of the sixteenth century. Calasanz’s order shared with its brethren
a desire to provide education to those who otherwise would not have been able to
receive it. Initially Calasanz focused on primary education—especially religious
education. Like the Jesuits, however, the content of classes shifted over time to
include more scientific and mathematical instruction, even when such instruction
sometimes disagreed with orthodox views from Rome. Sangalli asserts that the
Piarists (unlike the Jesuits) were willing to break with directives from Rome and to
ally themselves with the Venetian state, when the occasion demanded it. It is difficult to avoid frequent comparisons between the Jesuits and the Piarists, owing to
the important similarities, but also differences, between the two orders; fortunately,
Sangalli has worked quite a bit on Jesuit history and thus makes a number of
enlightening comparisons.

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Sangalli is intimately familiar with the requisite archives for this type of project, including the order’s archives near Piazza Navona, the State and Patriarchal
Archives in Venice, and the Vatican Archives. He has written extensively about the
history of education in the early-modern Venetian world, including several monographs and dozens of articles since the late 1990s. Unlike many who have penned
earlier accounts of the Piarists (and of other religious orders), Sangalli is a professionally trained, lay historian; nevertheless, it is clear that he is sympathetic to the
Piarists. He skips lightly over the multiple accusations of child abuse that plagued
the order in the seventeenth century and ultimately led to the pope’s suspension of
the Piarists (see Karen Liebreich’s excellent Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Caravaggio and Galileo [New York, 2004]).
The strength of this work is its careful reconstruction of the Piarist attempts,
both successful and not, at penetrating the Venetian Empire during these two centuries. Sangalli explains how a botched attempt in the early 1630s, when Venice was
devastated by plague, set back the order’s attempts by half a century. Drawing upon
the voluminous archival records, Sangalli documents the details of the seminarium
nobilium at Capodistria on the Adriatic coast, and the later college on the island of
Murano near Venice, the only two of twenty attempts that successfully endured.
University of Massachusetts Lowell

CHRISTOPHER CARLSMITH

Fathers and Godfathers: Spiritual Kinship in Early-Modern Italy. By Guido Alfani.
Translated by Christine Calvert. [Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700.]
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2009. Pp. xiv, 273. $99.95. ISBN 9780-7546-6737-7.)
Although the introduction of this book sets out a sweeping plan to survey
developments in godparenthood from ancient to modern times and from Europe
to the Americas, the crux of Guido Alfani’s work addresses the previously understudied developments in Catholic ideas and practices related to godparenthood in
the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, Alfani is interested in
tracing the impact of Tridentine decrees on northern Italian parishes in the late
1600s and early 1700s. In this specific endeavor, he makes a valuable contribution
to discussions about early modern godparenthood and the transmission of the
Catholic Reformation.
Alfani, an economic historian, has produced a largely quantitative study based
on data from northern Italian diocesan and parish baptismal registries, including
those of Ivrea, Vicenza, Voghera, and Turin. His initial overview of pre-Reformation practices emphasizes the fact that before the conclusion of the Council of
Trent (1563), Catholic practices varied greatly from including one or two godfathers in a baptismal ceremony to including a crowd of godparents. Alfani then
moves to the heart of his discussion when he delves into the Tridentine debates
about limiting the number of godparents to be allowed at a baptismal ceremony.
Initially these debates included, for example, concerns about ensuring that godparents were suitably prepared to serve as Christian educators for their godchildren.

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Ultimately, however, the Tridentine decree regarding godparents addressed only
numbers—reducing the acceptable number to one or possibly to one godfather and
one godmother—so as to minimize the complications that had previously resulted
from establishing too many relationships of spiritual kinship (and thus too many
marriage restrictions). Alfani’s data show clearly that, in his northern Italian localities, this Tridentine decree was in fact put into practice—sometimes abruptly,
sometimes over several decades—as reflected in the decreasing number of godparents recorded in the baptismal registries.
One crucial contribution is Alfani’s discussion of this process, in which he uses
pastoral visitation records to demonstrate the gradual and limited nature of the
process. As he shows, the parish visitors initially just wanted to ensure that local
priests knew the correct process; only later did they tend to ask specific questions
about whether the practice of including fewer godparents had actually been
adopted. Alfani notes that priests’ answers sometimes were vague and, putting
these examples together with his registry data, argues that this indicates local resistance to the full implementation of Tridentine reforms.
Alfani’s most significant conclusion is that, although Trent succeeded in
reducing the number of godparents in northern Italy, such an effort had the unintended consequence of increasing parents’ focus on using that godparental relationship to establish “vertical” social relationships with socioeconomic superiors. He
finds, for example, that before Trent, it was not uncommon to ask clergy to serve
as godparents; with the limit of one godparent, however, clergy were no longer
desirable godparents, presumably because they did not offer the promise of significant socioeconomic assistance or benefit. Also, although the book title focuses on
godfathers, Alfani emphasizes in his discussion that another result of Trent was an
increase in the presence of godmothers as the only officially acceptable way to give
a child more than one godparent.
Ultimately, Alfani’s work presents a concrete, deeply researched set of data
and conclusions about a particular region that will allow for fruitful comparative
work in the future.
KAREN E. SPIERLING

Denison University
Granville, OH

LATE MODERN EUROPEAN
English Catholics and the Education of the Poor, 1847–1902. By Eric G. Tenbus.
[Perspectives in Economic and Social History, No. 5.] (Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto. 2010. Pp. viii, 209. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-848-93038-4.)
Historian Eric Tenbus illustrates the dawning of Catholic social consciousness and its coming to fruition in the English political arena over the course of the
nineteenth century by casting the struggle to maintain and strengthen the integral
place of religion in education as a battle. Major efforts were expended on behalf

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of the Catholic poor, especially in view of their parents’ right to exercise freedom
of conscience in their children’s education. Early chapters sketch the complex context of English Catholicism, Catholic attitudes, and main obstacles toward
Catholic education for the poor. The Catholic Poor School Committee, with its
grants and inspections, became the vehicle through which education for the poor
was realized. Tenbus illustrates harmful consequences of the 1870 Education Act
and attempts of Catholics to bring about change; he notes the particular role
played by Archbishop Henry Manning of Westminster. In later years Cardinal
Herbert Vaughan founded the Voluntary School Association; energized the
Catholic voice to an unprecedented level; and designed a suitable compromise
with Anglicans, the Irish Party, and Catholic politicians. Vaughn’s efforts led to
the Education Act of 1902 and restored the strengths of Catholic and Nonconformist education for the poor.
This carefully crafted research describes the three groups of Catholics and
notes the diversity of the Oxford converts and those associated with them. Thus,
the old Catholics, the Oxford converts, and the Irish Catholics composed a variety
of socioeconomic classes, with religious perspectives from the ultramontane to a
less Roman view. However, despite diverse viewpoints, Catholics shared a common
passion: education for the poor. The early chapters show careful scholarship, drawing upon images of battle (for religion in education) and a growing Catholic social
consciousness (as illustrated in increased political involvement) to demonstrate that
Catholics could be a feisty lot capable of applying hard-won assertiveness in the
political realm and exercising political muscle on behalf of education for the poor.
The analysis of needs enables the reader to understand why legislation was
necessary. Examples, beyond the necessity of adequate funds and qualified teachers,
include irregular school attendance due to the “call of the factories” and the need
for adequate boys’ education in view of the superior education provided to girls by
teaching congregations of well-prepared sisters. The Catholic “philosophy” of education at the time is also articulated.
Tenbus is to be commended for the detailed presentation of research in chapter 5 on Catholics’ response to the Education Act of 1870 and in chapter 7 on subsequent Catholic involvement that brought about the Education Act of 1902. This
documentary history draws upon a plethora of sources; it displays an imaginative,
constructive view in developing a new interpretation, demonstrating how Catholics
built their political coalition over the course of the century.
The author is kind to his subjects. The gentle approach leads this reader to
wonder how the backgrounds of the Education Committee’s Home Secretaries
James Kay-Shuttleworth (served 1839–49), who had firsthand experience in working with the poor, and Ralph Lingen (served 1849–69), who had a proclivity for
economics, influenced the turn of events. Might education of the poor for Nonconformists have taken a different turn if Kay-Shuttleworth’s health condition had not
led to his premature resignation?

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This book draws attention to the interaction and collaboration that took place
over the century among laity, the clergy (led by the bishops), and religious congregations of sisters and brothers; it also documents the importance of the three
Catholic teacher training colleges and their advocacy against the Revised Code.
Although Catholic education for the poor was the issue, a stronger, more
aware, more united, and more vocal Catholic citizenry was the outcome. English
Catholics and the Education of the Poor, 1847–1902 makes a significant contribution
to Catholic intellectual history. It well deserves a place on the reading list in graduate
schools of history, education, and religious education on both sides of the pond.
Archives, Society of the Holy Child Jesus
La Salle University

ROSEANNE MCDOUGALL, S.H.C.J.

Le Saint-Siège et l’organisation politiques des catholiques français aux lendemains du
Ralliement, 1890–1902. By Martin Dumont. [Bibliothèque d’Etudes des
Mondes Chrétiens, No. 1.] (Paris: Champion. 2012. Pp. 555. €50,00. ISBN
978-2-7453-2378-1.)
With the “toast of Algiers” at a banquet for the French navy in 1890, Cardinal
Charles Lavigerie set in motion a process that was intended to reconcile the
Catholic Church with the French Third Republic. Although historians such as
Xavier de Montclos and Adam Sedgwick have studied the origin and disappointing
results of this “ralliement,” no scholar has probed as deeply as Martin Dumont into
the political maneuvers involving French Catholics and the Vatican as they struggled to break the bonds linking the Church to monarchy.
Dumont draws on an enormous variety of archival sources to tell his story, but
pays particular attention to the correspondence between Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro (Pope Leo XIII’s secretary of state) and Domenico Ferrata,
Eugenio Clari, and Benedetto Lorinzelli (papal nuncios in Paris between 1890 and
1902). From this dossier we learn of the constant and close involvement of the Vatican with French politics and of the limited power that Rome had to shape events
in the face of competing interpretations of papal directives. Leo XIII and Rampolla
urged Catholics to accept the Republic and to create institutions that would lead to
success for Catholic candidates; they were willing to chastise those who held back
such as the monarchist Pierre Chesnelong, whose Union de la France Chrétienne
tried to define a policy of “neutrality” rather than fully accept republican institutions. But what kind of Republic did Rome envision? Should Catholics work
toward the creation of a “Catholic Republic” in which the Church would play a
leading role? Or should they defend themselves on the basis of common rights held
by everyone? Etienne Lamy emerged as the most prominent defender of Catholic
participation on the basis of “droit commun,” but others consistently challenged
him—such as the ex-monarchists whose positions were defended in La Croix, the
leading Catholic newspaper of the day that was published by the Assumptionists.
Dumont traces this internal conflict as it played out in the press, in religious con-

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371

gregations, and in elections. In one fascinating case treated in depth, a committed
monarchist was defeated by the “abbé démocrate” Hippolyte Gayraud, whose candidacy was pushed by the Vatican and openly supported by the local clergy.
Dumont’s analysis of this election in Brittany illuminates the complexity of the
“ralliement,” for although Gayraud was clearly a “rallié,” his support from the
clergy, who threatened to withhold the sacraments from those who would not vote
for the “candidate of the Pope” (p. 373), raised the issue of clerical interference in
politics and thus contributed to the resurgence of anticlericalism that marked the
closing years of the century. Dumont notes as well the importance of the Dreyfus
affair, in which La Croix and many French Catholics aligned themselves with the
antisemitic movement, as another source of the republican resistance to the “ralliement.” But Dumont’s explanation for its failure focuses much more on internal
Catholic conflicts than on republican hesitancy.
Dumont’s study puts Catholic politics in the 1890s under a microscope, producing a work that is full of detail about the events and personalities of an important
decade in French history. He does not, however, place the “ralliement” in a broader
perspective, leaving the reader to wonder how this story might relate to the development of Church-state relations over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How
should the Catholic Church respond to liberal political regimes and to modern social
conditions more generally? Dumont’s study shows us how deep divisions within the
Church in answering this question were a crucial element in the failure of Leo XIII’s
attempt at reconciliation. Reading Dumont’s book brought to mind the challenges
faced by Pope Francis as he seeks to guide a Church whose members deeply respect
papal authority, but who often disagree on how it should be interpreted.
University of Notre Dame

THOMAS KSELMAN

Bodies Like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia. By Robert H. Greene.
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 299. $42.00. ISBN
978-0-87580-409-5.)
Until recently, the role of religion in Russian history has received inadequate
attention from scholars, and all sorts of hoary and dubious generalizations (including the persistent idea that paganism or atheism lurked under the Christianity of
the pre-revolutionary Russian peasantry) could flourish in the secondary literature
because of the dearth of reliable information. The situation has been much remedied over the past twenty years, and with this book Robert Greene makes a major
contribution to the ongoing effort at filling the many gaps in our understanding of
religion in the Russian past. Greene is the first Western scholar to attempt a comprehensive treatment of one of the most important aspects of Russian Orthodox
piety—the veneration of the saints and of their relics—from the late Imperial
period through the Revolution and into the early years of Bolshevik rule. He begins
by giving a psychologically insightful description of the cult of the saints, showing
how it functioned as a crucial part of a vibrant popular piety that was being
enhanced rather than weakened by modernizing change (improved communica-

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tions, for example, facilitated pilgrimage and the dissemination of reports of miracles). Greene then turns to issues of policy and investigates the question of how the
Imperial and then the Bolshevik regimes attempted to act upon this important element of the culture of the people whom they governed. Greene shows how the last
emperor, Nicholas II, presided over a veritable flurry of canonizations (seven, as
opposed to the four that had been done in the preceding two centuries), in part for
the purpose of buttressing the sacral foundation of the monarchy (without adducing much by way of argumentation Greene judges the policy to have been a failure
in that regard), but also in response to the wishes of great numbers of ordinary
believers. The most interesting and original part of the book examines the campaign of “exhumation” that the Bolsheviks conducted in their first years in power.
If the Church taught, and the faithful believed that the bodies of saints were preserved incorruptible as a visible sign of God’s favor, then, militant atheists reasoned, the exposure of relics as decayed or fraudulent would shatter popular religiosity. In telling the dramatic story of how that idea was tested and found wanting,
Greene produces a narrative of high analytical and literary merit.
One substantive criticism that can be made of the book is that it focuses so much
on relics as to neglect other important issues and that its chronological parameters,
although admirably broad, are too strong. In particular, the epilogue and conclusion
(“The Passing of the Saints?”) might leave the nonspecialist reader with a somewhat
false impression. Green ends by contrasting the crude debunking strategies of the
exhumation campaign with the more sophisticated ways in which the museums of
atheism of the 1930s inculcated the materialistic/scientific worldview. The Soviets
did succeed in creating a secular society, although they achieved that end not so much
by displays of Foucault’s Pendulum (which Greene uses as a concluding symbol for
effective atheistic education) as by brutal persecution that rendered the practice of
religion impossible for most people. Even so, the Bolshevik triumph was not complete or final—in today’s Russia, the major sanctuaries built around relics draw a constant stream of pilgrims. Greene gives no indication of that fact, although his book
would certainly equip readers to understand how such a thing is possible.
Bridgewater State University
Bridgewater, MA

LEONID HERETZ

La validez de las ordenaciones Anglicanas. Los documentos de la comisión preparatoria
de la bula ‹‹Apostolicæ Curæ››. Tomo II: Los documentos de 1896. Introduction,
transcription, and notes by Alejandro Cifres. [Fontes Archivi Sancti Officii
Romani: Series documentorum archivi Congregationis pro Doctrina Fidei, 2.]
(Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2012. Pp. xii, 487. €60,00. ISBN 978-88209-8959-0.)
At long last, scholars now have available all of the pertinent documents that
went into the making of Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 bull Apostolicae curae declaring
Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void.” Among the first fruits of the
1998 opening of the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

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(currently accessible through 1903), the present volume rounds out the collection
begun by Andre-François von Gunten, O.P., and published in 1997 as the first
book in the series Fontes Archivi Sancti Officii Romani. Expertly edited (in Spanish) by Monsignor Alejandro Cifres (archivist of the Holy Office since 1994), this
second volume offers for the first time fully annotated versions of the original texts
(in Latin and Italian) of the twelve sessions of the preparatory commission that met
in 1896 to study the question of Anglican orders, together with the summary report
composed by Raffaele Pierotti, whose synthesis played a crucial role in shaping
Leo’s conclusion of definitive nullity.
As scholars have long known, the members of the preparatory commission
were divided and could reach no consensus on the possible recognition of Anglican
orders. Pierotti’s report, however, failed to convey the impasse and instead reflected
his own views in favor of a negative judgment, as well as the considerable influence
of the English Catholic bishops against any acknowledgment of the validity of
Anglican sacraments. The result, of course, was Pope Leo’s unequivocal rejection
of Anglican orders, a judgment that has proved ecumenically vexing, even as the
tangled argumentation of Apostolicae curae has occasioned no end of academic controversy and much ecclesial defensiveness.
On one hand, the documents collected in this volume could give credence to
the view that the investigative process of the preparatory commission was deeply
flawed and that the concluding, advisory report was certainly manipulated. But, on
the other hand and perhaps more important, these texts and the fissures they reveal
also help us to understand how the arguments issuing in and issuing from Apostolicae curae provoked—for Catholics and Anglicans alike albeit in different ways—
some searching inquiry into more developed criteria for sacramental validity, a
deeper theology of holy orders, and a wider appreciation of the ecclesiology of
Christian unity. Debates about the subtleties of sacramental form and intention can
be otiose apart from the informing experience of ecclesial koinonia and a shared
sense of the Church herself as the sacrament of unity. Leo XIII seems to have intuited as much in making a decision that hindsight suggests he could not have made
differently; he grasped, in other words, that the simple recognition of Anglican
orders would not have healed the wounds of schism or done more than paper over
deeper sources of division.
This critical compendium offers a significant contribution to the context for
understanding Apostolicae curae while supplementing the pioneering work of John
Jay Hughes and Giuseppe Rambaldi, among others. But illuminating as it is, this
archival collection will not augur any official reopening of the question of Anglican
orders. Given the complexly shifting horizons of historical and theological interpretation that have challenged readings of Apostolicae curae, not to mention the
frustrations of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission and the
ongoing disintegration of the Anglican Communion, Pope Leo’s judgment has
been vindicated, if not in the particular details of his argument then in his manifest
foresight over the century since its declaration. In 1998 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

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as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an instruction
accompanying Ad tuendam fidem, Pope John Paul II’s motu proprio, and mentioning
Apostolicae curae as an instance of the ordinary magisterium which commands
definitive “religious assent.” But then, in 2009, this same Joseph Ratzinger (as Pope
Benedict XVI) promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus,
offering erstwhile Anglicans a path to unity in the fullness of Catholic communion—a daring initiative not without its challenges but perhaps more auspicious
than any positive judgment on Anglican orders that Leo XIII could have made in
1896. Perhaps history will show that the door slammed shut in 1896 rattled down
the corridors of the Holy Office only to push open another door in 2009, a portal
more apt to realize the Church’s constant desire ut omnes unum sint.
University of St. Thomas

CLINTON A. BRAND

Sacred Dread: Raïssa Maritain, the Allure of Suffering, and the French Catholic Revival
(1905–1944). By Brenna Moore. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press. 2013. Pp. xiii, 293. $30.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-03529-7.)
Raïssa Maritain (1883–1960) was a gifted poet, influential writer on aesthetics, and celebrated memoirist. Today, she is mainly known to a small number of
academics and a few Catholics outside of the academy as the wife of a renowned
Thomistic philosopher and human rights advocate. The scant recent attention she
has received has depicted her as an archetype of suffering Catholic femininity or as
a prospective candidate for sainthood along with her husband, Jacques. This new
book by Brenna Moore situates her as a key figure in the early-twentieth-century
French Catholic Revival. The renouveau catholique was marked by celebrated conversions and myriad contributions to arts and letters. It also embodied culture clash
in advancing a “suffering-centered imaginaire” (p. 3) that reinforced “an association
of Catholicism with femininity that was derogatory from the republican perspective” (p. 68). This stigma—the alleged fetishizing of souffrance—still influences
scholarly interpretations that, according to Moore, exile women like St. Thérèse of
Lisieux, Raïssa Maritain, and Simone Weil “to the ranks of the pathetic and the
bizarre” (p. 7), particularly in Richard Burton’s study Holy Tears, Holy Blood
(Ithaca, NY, 2004).
Moore uses the œuvre of Raïssa Maritain to answer a “central question . . .
why the fascination with suffering?” (p. 3). She traces Maritain’s life (rarely does
one read a book in which Raïssa is the default Maritain) from the eve of her and
her husband’s conversion in Belle Époque Paris to the end of their World War II
exile in the United States. Born a Russian Jew, Raïssa Oumançoff was raised in an
assimilationist immigrant family that encouraged her intellectual growth, and it
was while pursuing scientific studies that she met her future husband. Repelled by
the arid positivism of the Sorbonne and the laicizing French Third Republic, she
and Jacques sought to find meaning in defiance of a modern bourgeois culture that
denied the reality of suffering and death. They turned to a series of mentors,
including philosopher Henri Bergson, poet Charles Péguy, and novelist Léon Bloy.

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The last of these luminaries served as godfather when the couple sought Catholic
baptism in 1906 along with Raïssa’s sister, Véra. Bloy’s focus on female and Jewish
abjection greatly influenced Raïssa, and both Maritains embraced his
philosemitism, tainted as it was with supersessionism. Moore offers a nuanced
interpretation of the renouveau catholique philosemitism that vied with antisemitism
for the allegiance of French Catholics, drawing on recent work by Samuel Moyn
and others in identifying even ostensibly pro-Jewish writings as “trafficking in
essentialism and stereotype” (p. 13).
The Maritains’ remarkable openness to Judaism, Russian Orthodoxy, and the
artistic, literary, and musical avant-garde—all richly portrayed in Stephen
Schloesser’s book Jazz Age Catholicism (Buffalo, NY, 2005)—made their home in
the Paris suburb of Meudon both a retreat center and a vibrant salon. Her own
poetic gift was encouraged by Jean Cocteau and nurtured by friendships with,
among others, Marc Chagall. But sickness also permeated her art, the poet describing herself as one who “has only her breath and moan,” and who “suffers with
sacred dread” (p. 191). Maritain’s many serious illnesses and accompanying visions
inspired a certain reverence in her husband and others, making her “frail and powerful” (p. 93) body, as Moore puts it, “the site where the divine entered and acted,
a power that could be felt and appreciated by those around her” (p. 74). Moore, in
contrast to other scholars, resists relegating Maritain’s bodily and psychic torture to
the category of vicarious suffering, rightly identifying this experience as one Raïssa
and others understood as more mystical than redemptive of others.
Perhaps the most penetrating part of this book is Moore’s detailed exposition
of Maritain’s harrowing Holocaust poetry, written in wartime New York, and displaying an unprecedented anger at God. Gone was the philosemitic hope for Christian-Jewish rapprochement of her Meudon days, typified by her 1935 essay Histoire
d’Abraham, which upheld the unity of the Old and New Testaments and extolled
Judaism as a religion of living faith. Maritain responded to the genocide by exclaiming, “You, Yourself, our God, You have forsaken us” (p. 176). Moore draws a telling
contrast between these heart-rending poems and Maritain’s bestselling memoirs
from the time—We Have Been Friends Together (New York, 1942) and Adventures
in Grace (New York, 1945)—which established her reputation in America and outsold anything written by her husband. These volumes welcomed American
Catholics into the lost world of the French Catholic Revival and allowed Raïssa to
reimagine her Jewish childhood in a way that helped Catholics to “relate easily to
these stories of ascetic sainthood and a rich liturgical sensorium” (p. 161). As Moore
continually demonstrates throughout her study, Maritain came to anything more
than a superficial understanding of Judaism only through her Catholic faith.
Sacred Dread is a rewarding, indispensable study. It offers readers a historically
informed account of Maritain’s life and works; situates her as someone other than
a mere spectator in the cultural flowering of the Catholic Revival; and re-establishes her reputation as more than the contemplative, withdrawn, ever-ailing partner of one of the twentieth century’s greatest Catholic public intellectuals. It also

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provides a theologically rich examination of her mysticism and a gendered analysis
of her suffering that deftly disarms elements of distortion and caricature seen in
other monographs. If there is one omission in the book, it is that Raïssa’s relationship with her husband receives less attention in some instances than it should. For
example, some discussion of the Maritains’ mariage blanc—they took a vow of permanent chastity in 1912—might provide a fuller explanation of why Jacques saw
“similarities between the holiness of Mary and that of his sick wife” (p. 79). That
said, this excellent book will lead other scholars to explore in greater depth the life
and writings of one of the less appreciated lights of the renouveau catholique.
Benedictine College
Atchison, KS

RICHARD FRANCIS CRANE

Padre Pio under Investigation: The Secret Vatican Files. By Francesco Castelli. Translated by Lee and Giulietta Bockhorn. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2011.
Pp. xxviii, 311. $17.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-58617-405-7.)
The publication of the first investigation ordered by the Holy Office—now
the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith—of Padre Pio da Pietrelcina is
undoubtedly the greatest contribution of this volume edited by Francesco Castelli.
It is, in fact, the report of the apostolic visit made in June 1921 by Raffaello Carlo
Rossi (the bishop of Volterra and future cardinal). The discovery of this valuable
documentary material, made in the archives of the same pontifical department, was
made possible after Pope Benedict XVI decided, in 2006, to make available the
material from the years 1922 to 1939.
The story of the investigation made by the prelate is contained in the first part
of the work. The documentation itself occupies the second part of the volume. It
consists of the following papers: the visitor’s Votum (January 1922); the testimony
of some witnesses collected by Bishop Rossi during his stay at the Capuchin
monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo; a few letters sent to the spiritual daughter of
the friar, Giovanna Longo; and finally some letters written by Father Benedetto
Nardella of San Marco in Lamis for Padre Pio himself, in his role as Padre Pio’s
spiritual director. The third part of the book presents some texts in appendices.
These consist of a brief profile of Rossi, some documents requested of the papal
visitor by the Holy Office such as the Chronicle of Nardella; the narrative event of
the stigma; and a chronology of the friar’s life.
Rossi questioned nine witnesses; seven were members of the same monastic
community as Padre Pio, and two were diocesan priests. During the inquiry, the
visitor first became interested in the rumors swirling around the Capuchin stigmatic, intent on clarifying the doubts raised by some discontented voices concerning expressions of fanaticism, contact with women, and other issues. He went on
to consider the moral and spiritual dimensions of Padre Pio. The bishop, despite
initial prejudice against the Capuchin, came to a substantially positive judgment
and even an appreciation for Padre Pio’s qualities:

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Padre Pio is a good religious, exemplary, accomplished in the practice of the
virtues, given to piety and probably elevated to a higher degree of prayer than
it seems from the outside; he shines especially because of his sincere humility
and his remarkable simplicity, which did not fail even in the gravest
moments, when these virtues were put to the test, a test truly serious and dangerous for him. (p. 27)

The visitor only later decided to assess the extraordinary phenomena exhibited
by the candidate, such as clairvoyance and bilocation:
To think that so many idle words had cast such an unfavorable light on this
poor Capuchin! Then I’ll take the liberty to call to the attention of the Most
Eminent [Fathers] his genuine and honest depositions, since they reveal him
to be not at all like an unscrupulous miracle worker or an enthusiastic instigator of mobs. (p. 20)

Regarding Padre Pio’s stigmata, two eminent scholars—Friar Minor Agostino
Gemelli, the rector of the Catholic University of Sacred Heart, and the Dominican
Joseph Lemius—had serious doubts. Both recommended to the Holy Office the
need for a thorough investigation. Rossi decided to inspect the stigmata:
The “stigmata” on the hands are very visible, and caused, I think by a bloody
exudation: There is absolutely no opening or breaking up of the tissues at
least on his palms. It might be said there is on the back of the hands, even
though I do not think there is, but then it must be agreed that the hypothetical opening doesn’t penetrate through the hand cavity and doesn’t come out
on the palm. (p. 21, emphasis in original)

The visitor’s report, in effect, clarified previous doubts about the stigmata.
The greatest difficulty seemed to be the judgment that it was autosuggestion resulting from the influence of Nardella. Gemelli, in particular, advanced this hypothesis. Rossi, through a series of subtle considerations, decided to express the conviction that the phenomenon was of supernatural origin.
In the first part of the book, Castelli’s emphasis on the stigmata overshadows
the moral and spiritual life of the saint. The literature on Padre Pio, even after
Sergio Luzzatto’s Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age (New York, 2010),
evidenced an almost morbid attention to the phenomenon of stigmata, the assessment of which figures very marginally in the account of his holiness. Yet, as evidenced by Rossi, the investigation of the stigmata led to great suffering for Padre
Pio. His report makes clear how Padre Pio had been stripped naked—not just
physically—during that inspection. It can be argued that the operation of stripping
continues via the publication of this book. Rossi’s duties included investigating
allegations against the friar made by two external witnesses: the Canon Giuseppe
Prencipe and Don Domenico Palladino (Palladino later retracted most of his deposition). Another dark figure is surely Nardella, as Rossi found him unfit to carry
out the ministry of spiritual director.

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The publication is not free from inaccuracies in its methodology; the list of
sources seems rather like a table of abbreviations. The introductory note has annoying repetitions that betray a lack of organic development of the material. On several
occasions, the author’s style resembles that of a novel (e.g., p. 23).
The final impression suggests that this publication and others, although animated by a genuine passion for the story of Padre Pio, often fails to point out its
importance and true value for spirituality and the religious and cultural history of
the entire Christian West. The figure of this saint, which was and is a hallmark not
only for the peoples of southern Italy but also of Europe and other continents,
deserves a more serious effort of historical analysis to achieve a full contextualization of the saint, his life, and his times.
Pontifical University Antonianum
Rome

GIUSEPPE BUFFON, O.F.M.

L’interesse superiore: Il Vaticano e l’Italia di Mussolini. By Lucia Ceci. [Storia e Società.] (Rome-Bari: Editori Laterza. 2013. Pp. xii, 338. €22,00 paperback.
ISBN 978-88-581-0779-9.)
Access to previously closed archives over the past few years has added
immensely to our knowledge and understanding of the pontificate of Pius XI.
Among the most rewarding new investigations must be Lucia Ceci’s study of relations between the Holy See and Fascist Italy. A professor of contemporary history
at the University of Rome Tor Vergata campus, Ceci presents a balanced and richly
documented work.
The start of L’interesse superiore serves as a corrective, reminding us of Benito
Mussolini’s fundamental anticlericalism and contempt for Catholicism. Inspired by
the pagan works of Giosue Carducci and his relationship with Giacinto Menotti
Serrati, Mussolini, the budding socialist, produced page after page of anti-Catholic
invective (most famously his pornographic novel, The Cardinal’s Mistress [Forli,
1910]). Despite his World War I journey into rightist politics, Mussolini still displayed no interest in the Church, at least until he began to consider alliances with
Don Luigi Sturzo’s Popular Party. Stung by Sturzo’s rebuke, Mussolini wrote in
July 1922 that the Popular Party was an entity simultaneously sacred and profane,
one that “begins with God and ends with the devil.” But Italy was anxious to
resolve the Roman Question, and the ever-crafty Duce responded as prime minister
with overtures to the Vatican. Through Minister of Education Giovanni Gentile,
Mussolini’s government placed the crucifix in schoolrooms and made religious
study obligatory in elementary classes (extended to middle schools in 1930). The
pre-Fascist liberal divorce laws ended, and—in a particularly magnanimous act—
Mussolini stopped negotiations for the sale of the Chigi collection of manuscripts
to the Vatican Library and opted instead to present it as a gift to the pontifical
former librarian. This and the destruction of the Popular Party all led to the Lateran Pacts in 1929 and Pius’s celebrated statement that Mussolini had given God

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back to Italy and Italy back to God. But the era of good feeling was short-lived.
Fascism’s latent contempt resurfaced as did Papa Ratti’s suspicions of Fascism,
expressed in his 1931 encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno. Ceci points out, however,
that, anxious to mollify the dictator, Italy’s episcopate and the Curia secondguessed their pope and even undercut him. She is particularly good on discussions
concerning the so-called “Lessona” decree (named for the colonial minister), which
condemned interracial marriages after Italy’s 1936 conquest of Ethiopia. Pius’s
desire to challenge the measure was muffled by the “patriotic” Italian clergy, which,
despite the pontiff, acquiesced to the regime’s policies.
Ceci’s decision not to include a discussion of Pius XII and the Holocaust may
perplex some readers. Of course, many other books and articles have addressed that
debate, and we may be at a point where the next step will be the release of Papa
Pacelli’s archives. Ceci, rather, uses the archives that we do have and devotes her
book to the Holy See and Mussolini, not Hitler. That said, she enlightens us with
an account of Ratti and the Duce’s own racial issues, primarily the aforementioned
repercussions of the Ethiopian war and the 1938 antisemitic measures. The “consensus” of 1936 had evaporated, and despite his physical decline Pius found new
strength with which to make existence miserable for the Duce. The last year of
Pius’s life became a second low point in Church-state relations—almost as bad,
Ceci notes, as the one that followed 1929. Pius XII faced a quite different situation
in which Germany more and more determined what happened in Italy. When the
Nazi-ordered roundups of the Jews began in fall 1943, the deposed Mussolini was
establishing his collaborationist Salò Republic, a regime without diplomatic ties to
the Holy See and one that suffered its icy silence. By then, the doomed Italian anticleric hardly entered Pacelli’s thinking.
University of Scranton

ROY DOMENICO

Bishop George Bell: House of Lords Speeches and Correspondence with Rudolf Hess.
Edited by Peter Raina. (New York: Peter Lang. 2009. Pp. xvi, 225. $49.95
paperback. ISBN 978-3-03911-895-3.)
George Bell served as bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958. His extensive
writings bear testimony to his commitment to ecumenism, promotion of the creative arts, and firm belief that the Church must engage responsibly with the problems of the modern world. Bell was introduced in the House of Lords on December 8, 1937, and continued to serve in the Lords until January 30, 1958. This
volume provides the complete text of Bell’s speeches in the Lords and serves as a
special remembrance of the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
The moral courage for which Bell has long been admired comes through very
clearly in these interventions in Parliament. The positions taken by Bell were sometimes controversial and, in the view of many, cost him further preferment in the
Church. Each speech was carefully researched and unequivocal in its argument. In
one of his earliest speeches, he spoke about the refugee problem in Europe. He

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argued that Britain must stand ready to help non-Aryans fleeing Germany and
Austria by welcoming them in Britain and in colonial holdings. In 1943, he urged
the government to make a distinction between Germany and the Hitlerite state in
its formulation of war aims. He felt that it would be unjust to threaten all of Germany with destruction when the criminals were Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Bell’s most controversial position and the one for which he is most remembered was his criticism of the indiscriminate bombing of heavily populated German
cities toward the end of the war. The terrorizing and killing of innocent civilians
and obliteration of buildings of historic and cultural importance were, in his view,
acts of barbarism. The utilization of such means in the effort to remove Hitler was
a violation of the very standards of civility that the British claimed they sought to
restore to Europe.
In the postwar period, Bell spoke of the need to re-establish the moral values
of Europe by building upon the shared aspects of European culture. He sought the
strengthening of international organizations for peace and the protection of human
rights. His concern for human rights was reflected in addressing the problem of displaced persons as well as his criticism of the treatment of German prisoners of war
by the Soviets. He found the concept of “total war” in which all moral restraints are
cast aside reprehensible. Similarly, Bell regarded the use of the atomic bomb as an
“immeasurable sacrilege against nature and against the human personality” (p. 145).
Although international issues might have seemed most pressing given the
times, Bell also spoke on important domestic issues of the day—the plight of the
unemployed, the importance of building new houses in Britain, university education, and reform of the constitution.
As an addendum to Bell’s speeches, editor Peter Raina also includes Bell’s correspondence with Rudolf Hess. Bell believed it was essential to maintain contact
with important figures in Germany to express strong disagreement with Nazi policies. As is the case with Bell’s speeches, Raina’s introduction to the letters is rather
slight. Deeper analysis and contextualization, especially of the letters, would have
been desirable. However, the volume is a welcome addition, and many scholars will
benefit from the ready access to the primary sources that Raina provides.
State University of New York at Fredonia

EILEEN GROTH LYON

AMERICAN
Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America. By Margaret M. McGuinness. (New
York: New York University Press. 2013. Pp. ix, 266. $35.00. ISBN 978-08147-9556-9.)
The last three decades have witnessed a blossoming of scholarship on the history of women religious in the United States that has moved the experience of nuns
from the margins closer to the mainstream of American church and women’s his-

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tory. Lacking until now, however, has been a brief, readable synthesis of this growing literature that is accessible both to the scholar and general reader. With publication of Called to Serve, Margaret McGuinness fills this gap admirably. McGuinness, professor of religion at La Salle University, former coeditor of American
Catholic Studies, and author of books and articles about women religious, is well
suited to handle this daunting task. The author demonstrates a sure command of
both the older and recent literature, smoothly integrates its findings, draws cogent
conclusions, and—by implication—points to new research directions.
McGuinness deftly compresses more than two centuries of convent life and
work in the United States into just 200 pages of narrative. In this “collective history” of vowed women, the author convincingly backs up her claim that “with the
exception of celebrating Mass or administering the sacraments, sisters were more
actively involved in the everyday lives of Catholics than priests,” making them in
the past and present “the face of the U. S. Catholic Church” for many Americans,
Catholic and non-Catholic (p. 8). Although clearly admiring Catholic sisters for
their labors on behalf of their Church and others, McGuinness avoids hagiography
of her subjects. She recognizes, for example, that nuns have often shared the cultural attitudes and assumptions about race, ethnicity, class, and gender of the larger
American society, sometimes to the detriment of the very people they served.
As the title implies, the focus of this book is on nuns’ “work, or ministry” (p.
9). In eight well-crafted chapters, McGuinness constructs a representative rather
than a comprehensive portrait of women religious in America. After chapter 1
introduces the first eight permanent foundations established by 1830, chapter 2
explores how convents of both native and foreign origin coped with the first great
waves of immigration from Ireland and Germany in the three decades before the
American Civil War. Chapters 3 through 5 cover the decades from the Civil War
to end of World War II by focusing on the active ministries of education, health
care, and social services respectively that nuns provided both to immigrants, mostly
from southern and eastern Europe, and to Native, African, and Mexican Americans. The next chapter traces the first century and a half of contemplative orders in
America, whose ministry is prayer. Chapter 7 examines the lasting challenges and
changes to religious life stemming from internal developments like the Second
Vatican Council and external ones like the civil rights, antiwar, and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s. The final chapter finds that, despite decreasing
numbers and an aging population, nuns, as they faced the new century, could still
be found not only in traditional apostolates but also in new, sometimes controversial, social justice ministries providing a preferential “option for the poor” (p. 183).
Whether protesting against American foreign policy, nuclear weapons, or capital
punishment, or advocating for immigration reform and the environment, some
nuns now seek to address structural problems in American society and the world.
This book will make an excellent supplement to reading lists for courses in
either Catholic or women’s studies. The more than fifty pages of notes and bibliography alone provide an essential resource for anyone researching and writing on

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the subject. That New York University Press published this volume is itself a sign
that the history of women religious is now gaining deserved attention from a
broader academic audience.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania

JOSEPH G. MANNARD

Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920. By Anne M.
Butler. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2012. Pp. xxi, 424.
$45.00. ISBN 978-0-8078-3565-4.)
In a 1990 essay, Ferenc M. Szasz explored why, in narratives of the American
West, religious figures failed to achieve the status of classic western characters,
remaining at best regional heroes and heroines, and more often, being entirely
absent.1 Anne Butler’s accomplishment is to have removed the cloak of invisibility
from Roman Catholic female religious who, in her words, “vanished from collective
memory and printed records of western life” (p. 19). Butler establishes these women
as significant historical actors alongside the Indians, immigrants, settlers, soldiers,
pioneers, cowboys, and entrepreneurs who populate narratives of the American
West. In so doing, she raises important questions about the interaction of Catholics
with the physical and cultural geography of the region, and the ways in which that
interaction contributed to the emergence of an “American” Catholic people.
Butler tells the story of the more than 10,000 sisters and nuns who traveled,
lived, and worked in the trans-Mississippi West during the seventy years of most
aggressive Euro-American settlement. Employing records from several religious
communities, she sketches the lives of women, mostly young, who were attracted
to ministry in the West for many reasons—the prospects for travel, educational
opportunity, the potential for significant and meaningful work, and (with their sisters) a degree of self-determination less conceivable in Europe and the eastern
United States. Butler shows how these women shared, succumbed to, and transcended the fears, deprivation, and disappointments common to other immigrants
to the region. She details the difficulties endured by the women in travel, communication across vast distances, grinding poverty, conflicts with local ecclesiastical
and public officials, and the region’s fluctuating economy and migrating populations that had consequences for their ministries. Butler displays the sisters’ determination, ingenuity, and courage in erecting schools, hospitals, orphanages, and
social services of many kinds.
If women religious began by viewing themselves and their work through conventional race, class, and gender assumptions of their time, long service in western
ministries, especially among Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African
Americans, undercut these assumptions for many. Butler’s chapter on ethnic inter-

1. Ferenc M. Szasz, “The Clergy and the Myth of the American West,” Church History,
59 (1990), 497–506.

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sections stands out for its nuanced analysis of the sisters’ negotiations of unequal cultural, ethnic, and power relations. This chapter and the one on St. Katharine Drexel,
an heiress to the Drexel banking fortune and founder of the Sisters of the Blessed
Sacrament, whose work focused on Native American education, also show the sisters’ growing awareness of social injustice, a reality with which many grappled daily.
Butler’s volume provides initial answers to questions about how sisters’
encounters with peoples in the West—and their experiences of and in the region—
shaped their consciousness, religiosity, and self-understanding. Begging for further
development is the question of how the sisters’ “outsider status” functioned: to
inform their insights into western issues, to garner them access to people and situations from which otherwise they would have been excluded, and to fuel their own
theological reflection. Comparison of the experiences of sisters from other regions
with those of sisters in the West would contribute to understanding how much of
the story told by Butler is distinctively “western” and how much is broadly American. Also intriguing would be lifespan studies of a select group of the women religious for whom the West provided a stage for exercise of significant leadership, if
it did not, through circumstances, call out those latent gifts. The questions that
remain unanswered in Butler’s volume and the avenues for further research that
they suggest evidence the success of this ambitious and important work.
Gonzaga University

PATRICIA O’CONNELL KILLEN

At the Border of Empires: The Tohono O’odham, Gender, and Assimilation, 1880–1934.
By Andrae M. Marak and Laura Tuennerman. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 2013. Pp. xvi, 211. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-8165-2115-9.)
The history of the Tohono O’odham peoples of southern Arizona and northern Sonora present a unique opportunity for comparative study. They are one of a
handful of indigenous peoples directly bisected by international borders—in this
case, the U.S.-Mexican border. As their lives unfolded adjacent to—and often
straddling—the border, Tohono O’odhams faced two very different sets of federal
policy, assimilation efforts, and economic development. Their history is a rich
ground for extensive transnational and comparative scholarship. In At the Border of
Empires, Andrae Marak and Laura Tuennerman carve out a focused analysis of
how Tohono O’odham gender norms and their social roles in relation to American
and Mexican assimilation and reform efforts amongst their peoples.
As late-nineteenth-century America began to shift its Indian policy away from
warfare and toward forced assimilation, the Tohono O’odham were, quite literally,
nearly off the map of American interest and jurisdiction. They would not, however,
escape efforts by white reformers to impose various aspects of the majority American culture upon them. Marak and Tuennerman use gender as a lens to investigate
how reformers approached this undertaking and how it affected Tohono O’odham
individuals, families, and communities. After a useful introduction to Tohono
O’odham history, the authors present four topical chapters, followed by a compar-

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ative look at the experiences of individuals on the Mexican side of the line. Chapters consider the regulation of “vice” (as determined by white reformers), the imposition of majority-culture marriage and moral systems, gendered education efforts
among tribal youth, and gendered vocational training amongst adults. In all four of
these chapters, the text’s focus is narrow but insightful. By delimiting the scope of
their project, Marak and Tuennerman are able to filter out complicating factors
that could otherwise muddy the waters of already murky histories. Throughout,
they convincingly position gendered contexts as central to the complex interplay
between the goals and efforts of Anglo reformer goals to “Americanize” their wards
and the traditional Tohono O’odham culture and its proponents being stressed
thereby. Just as other authors have done in colonial and postcolonial studies of
Euro-indigenous relations, gender analysis provides intimate accounts at the micro
level, as opposed to the macro level. Whereas policy histories are often impersonal
and lack a clear sense of humanity, the gendered approach opens scenes of the conflict between Tohono O’odhams and assimilation reformers at their most personal
and vulnerable levels. Often, available accounts only get us to the door, behind
which these scenes fully unfold, but Marak and Tuennerman are able to give a fair
picture of what is happening. Perhaps, access to more indigenous voices would
more fully get us into the room to view the introduction of assimilation policy and
indigenous resistance with greater clarity.
The narrow focus of the text is both a strength and weakness. Throughout,
additional questions outside of the gender analysis beg consideration and, at times,
would provide useful contexts for the study of gender. The volume is slim, totaling
only 147 pages of text. Although expansion could distract from what is otherwise
a carefully constructed scope, occasional pauses to offer broader contexts may bring
the picture into clearer focus. This is most apparent in the final chapter, which considers Mexican comparisons. The counterpoint is fascinating and should be
explored further. Scholars of indigenous studies, borderlands history, and transnational history will welcome this text as a small but powerful example of what can
be accomplished in a field overflowing with similar research topics to be explored
and stories to be told.
Joseph Smith Papers
Salt Lake City, UT

BRENDEN W. RENSINK

The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline. By Elesha J. Coffman. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 271. $27.95. ISBN
978-0-19-993859-9.)
Mainline Protestantism, no matter how it is defined, is at the heart of American religious history and experience. Although that definition (and thus who is in
and who is outside of the group) does have implications for that story, the composition throughout most of the twentieth century was made up of the Seven Sisters
of American Protestantism: the Episcopal Church, the Congregational Church,
the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church, the Evangelical

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Lutheran Church, Presbyterian Church, and the Disciples of Christ. Of course,
given so many theological, doctrinal, organizational, and historic differences, it can
be difficult to get a grasp on what actually defined the Mainline. To start answering
that question, Elesha J. Coffman offers readers The Christian Century and the Rise
of the Protestant Mainline, an excellent look at those who crafted the intellectual
heart of this incarnation of the Mainline.
At the center of Coffman’s tome is Charles Clayton Morrison, the editor of
the Christian Century from 1908 to 1947. Hailing from Iowa and a member of the
Disciples of Christ, Morrison was not only devoted to the Social Gospel but also
to the tenets of liberal Protestantism, including higher criticism. Under Morrison’s
long tenure, the paper turned magazine sought to forge an intellectual consensus
that washed away denominationalism and replaced it with at least a united American Protestantism as defined by the Christian Century, if not a single denomination. Although Morrison ultimately was unsuccessful in his larger goals—indeed,
neither liberal Protestantism nor the Christian Century ever became as dominant a
voice as to speak truly for all American Protestants, let alone all the nation’s Christians—the editor and his cohort were able to define what it meant to be a part of
the Mainline for several generations.
The usual critiques simply do not apply to Coffman’s book. Does the reader
want photographs of the principal actors? They are included. Does the reader need
graphs to chart various topics? They appear as well. There are minor quibbles, of
course. Some readers might wonder what Morrison or the readership of the Christian Century thought of eugenics or the Ku Klux Klan, as well as what influences
these movements did or did not have on the Mainline. If there is one area for further expansion, it would be that although (true to her title) Coffman charts the rise
of the Protestant Mainline quite well, she does not spend enough time on its
decline and the implications it might have for the old Mainline, the new Mainline,
or other organized religious bodies either in the United States or around the globe
in the twenty-first century. There is some discussion of these areas, but some readers will want more.
In the end, Coffman has given readers a wonderful look at the Christian Century and its influence on the course of Mainline Protestantism. Her writing is
straightforward, insightful, and fair to her subject (and their detractors). Indeed, it
is one of those books that other authors (including this reviewer) will wish they had
had handy when they were doing work on the topic of the Mainline. It is sure as
well to find a home on the bookshelves, or electronic readers, of anyone who is
interested in the topic of the Mainline, as well as those who want to learn more
about American religious history in the first half of the twentieth century.
Butler University

JASON S. LANTZER

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Pius XI and America: Proceedings of the Brown University Conference (Providence,
October 2010). Edited by Charles R. Gallagher, David I. Kertzer, and Alberto
Melloni. [Christianity and History: Series of the John XXIII Foundation for
Religious Studies in Bologna, Vol. 11.] (Berlin: LIT Verlag. Distrib. ISBS,
Portland, OR. 2012. Pp. 449. €39,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-643-90146-0).
This collection provides a unique lens for readers who wish to examine the
papers of Pope Pius XI’s pontificate housed in the Vatican Secret Archives. Such
a volume was possible only after Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI took steps
to release Pius XI’s papers for scholarly use, partially in 2002–03 and fully in 2006.
As the essays reveal, such a historic decision will impact the way that scholars
interpret modern church history for years to come. Yet, as coeditor Charles Gallagher, S.J., reminds us in his introduction, the opening will also allow scholars “to
uncover a history which is not only papal, but political, cultural, economic, and
global” (p. 17).
Originally presented at a 2010 international and bilingual (English and Italian) conference held at Brown University, the sixteen essays and two discussants’
comments are now published entirely in English with the exception of select primary source documents and quotations in Italian, French, and German. The topics
of the essays, divided into four sections, are much broader than the conference’s
designated theme, making for a rich and diverse collection.
The first section, “Pius XI, the United States and the Vatican,” centers on
interactions between the Holy See and the United States in relation to issues of
mutual concern. Marisa Patulli Trythall’s lengthy but informative essay on “Pius XI
and American Pragmatism” begins the collection by examining the political
maneuvering of U.S. bishops to gain support within Vatican walls after Cardinal
William Henry O’Connell, archbishop of Boston, led an attempt to have the
National Catholic Welfare Council suppressed by the Vatican. Pius XI appeared
ready to cede to O’Connell’s wishes, but Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland and
Bishop John T. McNicholas of Duluth, who represented the wishes of a majority
of the U.S. episcopacy, convinced him of the necessity of the NCWC, especially in
the pluralistic American society. Amid this story, Trythall interjects her extensive
research on the Jesuit priest Edmund Walsh, whose work for the Papal Relief Mission in communist Russia was supported by the NCWC. Although the story is presented rather disjointedly, the reader does learn that the Vatican was capable of
conciliation with communists, even after Soviet Russia had executed a member of
the Russian church hierarchy. In her essay on the “Vatican and the US in the ItaloEthiopian War,” Lucia Ceci shows that although Pius XI was personally opposed
to the invasion, the Vatican would become the second nation (after Germany) to
recognize the conquest. By contrast, the U.S. government refused such recognition,
despite support for the war, especially among many Italian Americans. One
churchman who publicly supported the invasion of Ethiopia was Father Charles
Coughlin, about whom Gerald Fogarty, S.J., provides insightful new information.
Tensions arose significantly among U.S. prelates as they attempted to deal with this

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problematic and antisemitic priest. Initially, Coughlin had two important means of
support: popularity among the U.S. Catholic population and the protection of his
ordinary (Michael Gallagher, bishop of Detroit). Amid a strong anti-Catholic climate in the nation, the U.S. bishops feared accusations that they were denying
Coughlin his freedom of speech. The situation changed slightly, however, after the
radio priest began publicly criticizing President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to
change the underpinning for U.S. currency. Monsignor Joseph Hurley, the first
American to serve in the Vatican Secretariat of State, relayed Pius XI’s warning to
Coughlin not to say “anything which might diminish respect for constituted
authority” (pp. 114–15). This warning was followed in September 1936 by a
L’Osservatore Romano article critical of Coughlin. However, the Vatican did not
continue to press Coughlin, nor did the U.S. bishops exhort the Vatican to do so.
The concerns about U.S. Catholic public opinion were still too great. The situation
altered a bit after the death of Coughlin’s protector, Bishop Gallagher. Yet it was
not until 1942 that Coughlin’s new ordinary, Archbishop Edward Mooney
(Detroit had been elevated to an archdiocese in May 1937), ordered the radio priest
to end his political activities and devote himself full time to pastoral duties. Prior
to this action, Mooney was not complacent. While Coughlin was spouting antisemitism, Mooney joined Protestant leaders in the aftermath of Kristallnacht and
signed a December 1938 statement that condemned the Nazi persecution of Jews
and the Christian churches. Giulia D’Alessio’s essay on “The US and the Vatican”
offers an overview of the 1936–39 interaction of the United States and the Holy
See and reveals the openness of the Vatican secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, to
working with a democratic government. Concluding this section, Robert Trisco’s
essay offers us great insight into the Vatican’s response to Chicago’s Cardinal
George Mundelein’s denigration of Hitler, calling him an “Austrian paperhanger,
and a poor one at that,” among other things (p. 156). After broad consultation of
Vatican officials, only one, Cardinal Francesco Marchetti-Selvaggiani, recommended that Mundelein should apologize. All the others supported Mundelein,
even though it is unclear whether he was ever informed of this fact.
John F. Pollard’s study of American Catholics and Vatican financing is the
first of two essays in the volume’s second section, “American Catholicism, Culture,
and the Pontificate of Pius XI.” Pollard shows that Americans had a great affection
for Pius XI and, despite the financial trials of the Great Depression, contributed
generously to the Holy See. This financial support did not go unnoticed and contributed to a greater prestige of the U.S. Church among Vatican officials. Unrelated, but equally engaging, is Lucia Pozzi’s study of “The Problem of Birth Control in the US under the Papacy of Pius XI.” Pozzi documents how scientific
findings on natural contraception in the late 1920s brought on a discussion about
the legitimacy of the rhythm method in the U.S. Catholic Church. Although popularized in 1934 by a Catholic publication that received the imprimatur of Bishop
John Francis Noll of Fort Wayne, its promotion was soon challenged by other
members of the hierarchy and eventually the Holy Office. Only in 1951 did Pope
Pius XII declare the rhythm method as “suitable for all Catholic married couples”
(p. 229).

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The third section, “Vatican Transnationalism,” illustrates how the Holy See
involved itself in the politics of Malta and Germany. In “The Holy See, Britain,
and the Question of Malta,” Aappo Liatinen examines the tensions between the
Holy See and the government of Lord Gerald Strickland, especially with regard to
the undesired involvement of local clergy in politics. Neither the British government nor the Holy See wished to become deeply entangled in the situation, though
the Vatican did secretly send Alfonso Orlich, a Franciscan priest, to gather information. Although Liatinen offers an informative portrait of the intrigue in Malta,
the essay ends abruptly with no conclusions drawn. In her essay on “Pius XI, Eugenio Pacelli, and the German Catholic Hierarchy (1933–1938),” Suzanne BrownFleming, accessing the Vatican documents in microfilm form at the archive of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, discusses the documents pertaining
specifically to Germany’s Jews. Her findings are not surprising in light of previous
publications on this topic, primarily that the Holy See had a consistent record of
showing almost no concern for Germany’s Jews. Following Kristallnacht, it was
only after the urging by Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, archbishop of Westminster, that
Pacelli issued a very general statement that Pius XI sanctioned, advocating Christian charity be given to “all those who are innocent victims in these sad times of
distress” (p. 276). Still, Jews were never specifically mentioned. This section concludes with discussant comments by John A. Davis, which help to tie the diverse
essays together while also alluding to papers that were delivered but not included
in this volume.
The final section, “Pius XI and the Racial Laws,” offers a rich and often contradicting portrayal of Pius XI and Pius XII within the context of Italian antisemitism. Robert Ventresca, a biographer of Pius XII, brings his wealth of knowledge on the Holy See to examine the interaction of Pius XI, Eugenio Pacelli, and
Italian fascism, and concludes that the Church had to mute its public moral voice
and confine its protests to secret diplomatic channels so that it could gain concessions from Mussolini’s government. Pacelli regularly moved Pius XI from “open
confrontation or overt diplomatic rupture” (p. 301). Still, Pacelli ensured that such
diplomatic engagement with fascism was conducted as a “means to precise ends” (p.
302). Consulting the underutilized papers of the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, liaison between Pius XI and Mussolini, Robert Maryks challenges the characterization
of Tacchi Venturi as an ardent antisemite. Maryks first discussed this claim in his
study, Pouring Jewish Water into Fascist Wine: Untold Stories of (Catholic) Jews from
the Archive of Mussolini’s Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi (Boston, 2011). As evidence,
Maryks cites a March 1940 lecture delivered by Tacchi Venturi in which the Jesuit
emphasized the philosemitism of St. Ignatius of Loyola—a point originally made
in the first official biography of Ignatius by Pedro de Ribadeneyra. While acknowledging Tacchi Venturi’s anti-Judaism, Maryks insists that his intercession for
Catholics of Jewish heritage requires a re-examination of the Jesuit priest’s choices
in fascist Italy. In their co-written essay, David Kertzer and Alessandro Visani
show that the Vatican’s response to the Italian racial laws, especially the Holy See’s
sole focus on the measures that affected Catholics of Jewish heritage, thoroughly
dissatisfied the U.S. government and compelled it to disregard the Holy See as a

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reliable source of information on Italy. At the same time, the U.S. hierarchy,
already at odds with Germany over the persecution of the Church there, viewed the
racial laws negatively precisely because of their tie to the anti-Catholicism of Nazi
Germany. Neither the Holy See nor the U.S. episcopacy seemed to express overt
concern for Italy’s Jews. By contrast, in his essay, “The ‘Crusade’ of Pius XI against
Anti-Semitism and the ‘Silence’ of Pius XII,” Frank Coppa reiterates his frequently
made comparison of the two popes by portraying Pius XI as staunchly outspoken
against antisemitism, fascism, and National Socialism and Pius XII as publicly
nonconfrontational but diplomatically challenging. In his contribution, “Pope Pius
XI: Facing Racism and Atrocities,” Jacques Kornberg takes a step further, observing that neither Pius XI nor Pius XII concerned themselves specifically with the
welfare of Jews. Rather, any statements or acts of intervention for those affected by
Italian or German racial decrees must be attributed to the popes’ understanding of
their office’s role. For Kornberg, both popes chose diplomacy over concrete action.
While acknowledging that Pius XI became antifascist, Kornberg argues that “his
campaign against racism was not directed to the persecution of the Jews, but to
other threats: a pagan ideology undermining Catholic doctrine, and the danger of
Italy falling into the German orbit, which would lure Mussolini into anticlerical
combat against the Church, and into war” (p. 374). The one exception to this—the
pope’s objection to the decree preventing Jews and Aryans from marrying—Kornberg reasons merely reflected a point that came into direct conflict with a Church
sacrament. In “The Repudiation of Totalitarianisms by the Late Pius XI,” Emma
Fattorini returns to themes addressed in her work, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Vatican
(Malden, MA, 2011). Most interestingly, Fattorini writes:
Ratti [Pius XI] would probably never have let himself launch his harsh attacks
if had he not know [sic] the faithful and diligent Pacelli would be there to
smooth over the edges off [sic] and patch up diplomatic wounds, and vice
versa. (p. 394)

Mara Dissegna’s essay on “Anti-Semitism in Universities and Schools in Romania and Hungary (1920–1938)” appears quite unrelated to the other essays in this section. Yet, within this informative essay, Dissenga includes significant passages of correspondence from papal nuncios in Bucharest and Budapest reporting on the “Jewish
Question.” Among these are reports by Cesare Orsenigo, papal nuncio to Hungary
(1925–30) and Germany (1930–45), which include antisemitic statements.
Concluding the fourth section, Michael Marrus offers an observation in his
discussant’s comments, which many might find insightful:
To be blunt: Achille Ratti and Eugenio Pacelli are not candidates for a B’nai
B’rith human rights award, and should not be measured or understood by
that standard. Rather, they need to be seen as part of a pre-Vatican II
Catholic Church that cleaved to a highly supersessionist theology and a preference for authoritarianism and a reverence for its own institutional structures
that were part and parcel of their age, their culture, and their religious heritage. (p. 429)

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Whereas many of the essays in this collection illustrate this point, others will
also challenge us to see that the popes worked well not only with authoritarian
regimes but also with democracies. In essence, the Vatican endeavored to walk a fine
line of impartiality while working to ensure the protection of its sacramental mission.
KEVIN P. SPICER, C.S.C.

Stonehill College
Easton, MA

LATIN AMERICAN
Angels, Demons and the New World. Edited by Fernando Cervantes and Andrew
Redden. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 318. $95.00.
ISBN 978-0-521-76458-2.)
The rediscovery of the baroque culture of seventeenth-century Spanish America has been one of the most exciting developments in Latin American historiography in the past fifteen years. No longer viewed as merely a period of stagnation
caught between the Spanish Conquest of the Indies and the Wars of Independence, the seventeenth century is now recognized as a time of cultural ferment when
the foundations of rural life for modern Latin America were laid. Angels, Demons
and the New World is a significant new addition to this burgeoning body of work on
seventeenth-century Spanish America.
The articles in this collection explore how European concepts of angels and
demons were transformed in seventeenth-century Latin America. As the editors
and contributors demonstrate, angels and demons came to form part of the cosmologies that affected the daily lives of people in the cities and the countryside
throughout Spanish America. Special attention is paid to how missionary networks
circulated these beliefs about celestial and demonic spirits among Spanish, creole,
indigenous, and mestizo populations. The editors, Fernando Cervantes and
Andrew Redden, are both highly experienced researchers on this topic, having
authored The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New
Haven, 1994) and Diabolism in Colonial Peru, 1650–1750 (London, 2005) respectively. Angels, Demons and the New World is the result of a major Leverhulme
Research Project directed by Cervantes on angels and demons in the Hispanic
world. In its breadth, balance, and willingness to explore a hitherto overlooked
aspect of daily life in seventeenth-century Spanish America, this volume is a highly
welcome addition.
After a substantive introduction by the editors, the essays are divided into
three sections. The first section, “Old World to New,” presents three chapters on
angelic and demonic beliefs in early-modern Spain. These three excellent articles
include one on antisuperstition literature by Andrew Keit; an article on
Hieronymites and the devil by Kenneth Mills, and a piece on mendicants and
angels by Cervantes. The next section, “Indigenous Responses,” is composed of
Louise Burkhart’s analysis of demons and angels in Nahua theater; Caterina

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Pizzigoni’s study of Nahua cosmology; and Redden’s study of “disguised” angels
and demons in New Granada. The final section, “The World of the Baroque,”
rounds off the discussion with a consideration of angels and demons in baroque art
and culture in Peru and New Spain. Ramón Mujica Pinilla presents a brilliant
analysis of representations of demons and angels in the Spanish conquest of Peru,
Jaime Cuadriello examines pictorial images of winged and imagined Indians in
New Spain, and David Brading concludes the collection with an eloquent meditation on angels in colonial Puebla and in the hagiography of Caterina de San Juan.
Although witchcraft in the colonial Americas has been well studied, angelology has
escaped sustained consideration until now. These well-written essays break new
ground in Latin American studies; Angels, Demons and the New World will be of
interest to scholars and students of Latin American colonial history, religious studies, anthropology of religion, and church history.
University of St. Andrews

SABINE HYLAND

Twilight of the Mission Frontier: Shifting Interethnic Alliances and Social Organization
in Sonora, 1768–1855. By José Refugio de la Torre Curiel. (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press; Berkeley, CA: The Academy of American Franciscan History. 2012. Pp. xxx, 323. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-8047-8504-4.)
Mission history is at the center of the dynamic reshaping of borderlands history
in the Americas. Concurrent with the challenges raised in The New Latin American
Mission History edited by Erick Langer and Robert Jackson (Lincoln, NE, 1995), a
series of monographs published in the ensuing two decades that focus on different
mission fields in both North and South America have explored a wide variety of
regional archives and articulated new sets of questions relating to the indigenous
peoples and the religious orders that built and sustained the missions as colonial
communities. Informed by new conceptual frameworks developed through ethnohistory, environmental history, art history, and sociolinguistics, the study of colonial
societies through the Iberian institution of the mission has opened new perspectives
for historical research on Latin America. Twilight of the Mission Frontier provides a
sterling example of this creative path for borderlands history. Thoroughly researched
in multiple archives found in Spain, Mexico, and the United States, it is supported
by an ample bibliography of published primary sources and secondary works in both
English and Spanish. This case study set in Sonora, a province of northwestern New
Spain, is thus integrated into the principal historiographical currents of Mexican
history with selective comparative references to the frontier regions of South America. The author structured this history to bridge the colonial and national periods,
recognizing that historical processes evince temporal arcs that span the conventional
divisions between the political sequences of colony and nation.
To be sure, José Refugio de la Torre Curiel has deepened the furrows
ploughed by historians who have previously been drawn to the richly documented
missions of Sonora and Sinaloa in both the Jesuit and Franciscan administrations
of northwestern New Spain. He readily acknowledges the historians who have gone

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before him in the formulation of his arguments and in the carefully crafted footnotes that support each chapter. The institutional framework for his study derives
from the forced exodus of the Jesuits and the arrival of two different cohorts of
Franciscans from the Province of Xalisco and the Colegio de Propaganda Fide de
la Santa Cruz de Querétaro (1767–68) and extends to the leave-taking of the last
of the Franciscan missionaries to serve in Sonora at mid-nineteenth century. De la
Torre argues that this period became the “twilight” of the Sonoran mission frontier
largely because of social and economic changes in the province at large that altered
the social, material, and cultural bases of the missions. These changes are documented in the well-known processes of population decline within communities
putatively identified as “indigenous,” the growth of market economies outside the
trade networks that once had centered on the missions, and political innovations
that elevated citizenship above communal participation in the missions. De la
Torre’s innovative use of local commercial records extends previous studies of mission economy into the secular trade circuits of early-nineteenth-century Sonora. In
his conclusions, De la Torre characterizes early-nineteenth-century Sonoran economy as “captive” (p. 145), characterized by a chronic lack of currency and marked
inequalities. At the same time he argues for increasing degrees of interdependency
and cultural brokerage between the indigenous and Hispanic sectors of Sonora’s
population. These processes had different subregional profiles, advancing earlier in
areas like Pimería Baja and Opatería, in proximity to Hispanic settlements, than in
the northern frontier of Pimería Alta, an observation that confirms previous studies
of this mission frontier.
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

CYNTHIA RADDING

In Defence of the Faith: Joaquim Marques de Araújo: A Comissário in the Age of Inquisitional Decline. By James E. Wadsworth. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2013. Pp. xxii, 202. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-7735-4117-7.)
The Portuguese Inquisition, established in 1536 and abolished in 1821, never
created a tribunal in Brazil. Resident Inquisition officials known as comissários and
familiares investigated cases in Brazil and when necessary sent individuals to Portugal to be tried. James E. Wadsworth makes expert use of little-known archival
documents in Portugal and Brazil to bring to life the comissário Joaquim Marques
de Araújo (1742–1820), whose career “offers us a unique opportunity to examine
the belief systems that animated inquisitional officials, the career path they followed, and the social, political, and religious niches they inhabited” (p. 6).
This is the first book-length study of an official of any of the early-modern
inquisitions. Wadsworth builds here on his first book, Agents of Orthodoxy
(Lanham, MD, 2007), a prosopographical study of the familiares in Brazil. He
builds, too, on the work of Daniela Buono Calainho, Aldair Carlos Rodrigues, and
David Higgs on the Inquisition in late-colonial Brazil (which reflects previous
work by Anita Novinsky, Maria Luisa Tucci Carneiro, and other historians focused
on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).

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With a few notable exceptions, Wadsworth’s portrait of Marques is an admiring one. By the late-eighteenth century, the Inquisition in Recife, where Marques
was born and where he lived throughout his life, no longer focused on the heretical
acts committed by New Christians (people of Jewish descent). Instead, it focused
on crimes such as bigamy and blasphemy.
Through painstaking examination of Inquisition documents, Wadsworth is
able to piece together the complex series of cases that Marques investigated. Wadsworth argues that Marques generally showed compassion for the men and women
whom he was called upon to examine, and that his judicious style belies the image
of fanaticism with which the Inquisition is generally associated. Reporting in 1806
to the Mesa da Consciência e Ordens about prisoners in Pernambuco who were
waiting to be sent to Lisbon for trial, Marques wrote, “I pity them, because they are
dying of hunger. . . . I call them to your attention so that you can practise the piety
and justice which is your custom for these wretches.” Four years later he wrote on
behalf of two men in Recife who were being held for blasphemy and bigamy and
had endured “great calamities and miseries and needed to be sentenced” (p. 65).
The growing influence of Enlightenment thought in late-colonial Brazil challenged traditional institutions and changed Marques’s conduct of his inquisitional
duties. He placed himself at the forefront of the Inquisition’s struggle against the
so-called libertines (libertinos), whom Antônio de Moraes e Silva defined as men
“who [shake] off the yoke of revelation and [presume] that reason alone can guide
with certainty with respect to God, life, etc.” In the 1790s Marques “began to
handle a growing number of cases dealing with blasphemy, libertinage, failure to
respect the sacraments, and heretical propositions. Many of these cases represented
the intellectual and social elite of Pernambucan society” (p. 73).
It was in this context that Wadsworth offers some judicious criticism of Marques’s conduct, especially in his sustained conflict with Father Bernardo Luís Ferreira Portugal and his patron, Bishop José Joaquim da Cunha de Azeredo Coutinho, who later served as Inquisitor General. Even those who are familiar with
Azeredo Coutinho’s well-known economic treatises will discover new dimensions
of his work in Wadsworth’s account of his service in Olinda (1798–1802).
Azeredo Coutinho was an instrumental proponent of Enlightenment ideas in
Brazil and established a seminary that trained many of the priests (including Bernardo Luís) who participated in the 1817 rebellion in Recife. In summing up the
attempt of Bernardo Luís and Azeredo Coutinho to deprive Marques of his
canonship in the cathedral chapter of Olinda, Wadsworth finds fault on both sides.
Marques’s defense of his canonship and pursuit of an investigation of Bernardo
Luís were driven by greed and personal animus, but Azeredo Coutinho and Bernardo Luís “exploited the cathedral chapter in pursuing their personal vendettas
against Joaquim Marques” (p. 128).
Marques received new honors and appears to have made substantial contributions to the royal treasury after the transfer of the royal court to Rio de Janeiro

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in 1808. But the crown and its allies were ultimately unable to prevent the emergence of what Wadsworth calls “a distinctly Brazilian sense of economic and political nativism that eventually led to the creation of an independent liberal monarchy” (p. 138). In Defence of the Faith provides an eloquent account of one man’s
experience of this transformation and of the larger forces in Pernambuco that
suppported it.
The Catholic University of America

THOMAS M. COHEN

Religion and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico. By Ben Fallaw. (Durham:
Duke University Press. 2013. Pp. xx, 330. $94.95 clothbound, ISBN 978-08223-5322-5; $25.95 paperback, ISBN 978-0-8223-5337-9.)
For those whose careers have been informed by efforts to understand the
worlds of the Latin American poor, the “everyday forms of state formation”
approach has proved useful. Indeed, for scholars whose multiarchival, physically
dangerous work led to previously unknown worlds populated by communities
inhabited by women, indigenous people, and the poor—populations that previously
had gone unseen in much of the scholarly literature—this approach proved crucial.
It enabled “ordinary” people and their complex material cultural perspectives, rather
than simply those of Mexican elites, to emerge historiographically. Clearly, it has
been an approach based on the scholarly recognition of the material natures of perspectives, of the intimate connections between ideas and the resulting political and
economic activities, the sort of comprehensive approach long employed by
thoughtful scholars elsewhere. In fact, in his new monograph, Religion and State
Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico, Ben Fallaw both builds on his understanding of that approach and contests it.
In his assessment of numerous Catholic responses to the governmental efforts
of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas to transform Mexican society for the better,
Fallaw maintains that he will not attempt to assess the metaphysical belief systems
informing Catholic behavior. Instead, he focuses on multiple Catholic legal and
illegal acts that in many ways threatened the postrevolutionary governmental
efforts to transform rural Mexico. Although the monograph lacks maps, Fallaw
compares and contrasts Catholic responses to the postrevolutionary government in
the diverse states of Campeche, Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Guanajuato, where he discovered multiple antigovernmental Catholic-based acts. These acts ranged from
legal use of the Mexican government’s electoral structure and boycotts of governmental schools to refusals to participate in (and efforts to undermine or transform)
the land reform and the murder of teachers. Although previous scholarship has
demonstrated similar antigovernmental resistance prompted by relationships
between the Catholic hierarchy and ordinary Catholics, Fallaw’s focus on what he
calls a “radial strategy” (p. 6) as well as his emphasis on Catholic associations, the
press, and business is original and useful. One of the results is that earlier assessments of the fashions in which postrevolutionary governments were unable to live
up to their promises are confirmed here.

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Fallaw demonstrates crucial intellectual sensitivity to the material cultural
conditions confronted by many of the Cardenista teachers. For instance, he
reminds us, as other scholars previously pointed out, that many of the revolutionary
teachers were poorly educated, were quite poorly paid, and did not have the sorts
of physical protection that they (especially the female teachers) required in such
misogynistic and hostile environments. Moreover, as previous scholarship demonstrated, many of the teachers were almost entirely ignorant of the material cultural
worlds of their students, an ignorance that in some cases prompted internal civil
wars and in others proved fatal.
Fallaw’s monograph does not attempt to research or assess the historical metaphysical and/or religious underpinnings of the Catholic belief systems informing his
historical actors’ behavior. Readers, then, are left to wonder what compelled or persuaded many Catholics to turn against key elements of the postrevolutionary governmental programs. Because of Mexico’s deep diversity, there may well have been
numerous rationales behind Catholic antigovernmental activities. Without such a
material cultural inquiry, readers are left to ponder, for instance, how seductive power
itself may have appeared within the Mexican postrevolutionary contest devoid of governmental or clerical institutional commitment to ensure human well-being.
Nonetheless, Fallaw’s study proves utterly striking, as his study details in multiple ways clerical and governmental failures to serve the basic needs of an impoverished and poorly educated public. His study reveals some of the ways that widespread cultural ignorance of the complex material cultural needs of the Mexican
population persisted during the postrevolutionary period.
MARJORIE BECKER

University of Southern California

FAR EASTERN
Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827–1852. By
Jessie Gregory Lutz. [Studies in the History of Christian Missions.] (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2008. Pp. xx, 364. $45.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-3180-4.)
Eerdmans’s series Studies in the History of Christian Missions continues to
reaffirm the historical value and unique resources embedded in archives of missions
worldwide. Inspired by her Harvard teachers John F. Fairbank and Suzanne W.
Barnett—early advocates of integrating missions history into the mainstream of
historical and later cultural or anthropological studies—the fine monograph by
Jessie Gregory Lutz (professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University) on the
eccentric pioneer German missionary to China Karl Gützlaff (1803–51) must
surely finally allay suspicion of missions history as necessarily superficial, biased, or
bland. Here is a subtle, thorough, balanced, and scholarly assessment of an unusually energetic, gifted, and controversial China missionary. Renowned (often
through his own inflated narratives) for daring missionary forays along the China

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coast, Gützlaff (when fulfilling his dual role as interpreter and physician on opium
vessels) managed “to take part in almost every major event on the China coast
during the second quarter of the nineteenth century” (p. 66). In later life, he
inspired generations of scholarly and missionary heirs from Hong Xuiquan and
heterodox Taiping Christians to James Hudson Taylor and the rigorously faithful
China Inland Mission. The early chapters of Lutz’s work trace Gützlaff’s spiritual,
social, and intellectual evolution from a pietistic Prussian artisan to a highly
trained, multilingual sinologist and skillful missionary entrepreneur. As Lutz points
out, early royal patronage through the nascent Berlin Mission Institute battled with
soaring personal ambition and a profound sense of spiritual unworthiness in “a fascinating conflicted man” (p. xv). Following in the footsteps of Robert Morrison
(1782–1834), the pioneer Protestant missionary and Chinese Bible translator, Gützlaff—although motivated by evangelical missionary zeal—controversially took
secular employment and a much-needed salary as interpreter for the leading
exporter of opium to China, the Jardine-Matheson Company, and then for sixteen
years (until his death) as China secretary for the British government in Hong
Kong. In him, as Lutz rightly claims, we see “the epitome of evangelical contradictions” (p. 16); his strong, independent personality struggling to submit to the strictures of his humble, Moravian pietism; his biblical other-worldliness lived out on
the frontline of the gruesome Opium War (1839–42) as well as the daily business
of British bureaucracy and international intrigue. Lutz gives us a careful exposition
of Gützlaff’s complex personality, missionary motivation, daily work, and tortured
married life. She also gives us major chapters on the “multiple roles” of nineteenthcentury missionaries (chapter 4), on Gützlaff’s extensive publications to enhance
Sino-Western mutual understanding (chapters 5, 6), and on the intellectual and
social “New Horizons” opened up by Gützlaff and his missionary peers on the
world and on cultural distinctives (chapter 7). Most important, Lutz probes for the
role played by women in the early missionary movement and Chinese church and
tracks Gützlaff’s use of Chinese assistants, his encouragement of indigenous evangelism through the “Chinese Union” (chapter 8), and his role in creating the split
in contemporary Chinese Protestantism between the rigid institutional confessionalism of early mission societies and the fragmentary centrifugalism—if not heterodoxy—of Gützlaff’s own charismatic individualism. The specialist and the generally interested will find much here to fascinate and provoke. British imperialist
attitudes to China and the opium trade deserve critical re-examination and a new
apology. The intellectual contribution of missionary scholars warrants wider
acclaim. The odd character and unlikely vocation of a Gützlaff should cause
wonder in believer and skeptic alike.
Wolfson College
Oxford, England

CHRISTOPHER HANCOCK

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Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947. By Chad M.
Bauman. [Studies in the History of Christian Missions.] (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2008. Pp. xvi, 276. $40.00 paperback.
ISBN 978-0-8028-6276-1.)
As a part of the “Studies in the History of Christian Missions” series, this
volume brings fresh insights into the interaction between missionaries and indigenous in their process of accepting Christianity. This study focuses on the Satnamis
in the state of Chhattisgarh in India during eighty years of cultural and religious
encounters as well as the formation of Satnami-Christian identity. The author
argues that in the transformation of their society, Satnami structures of thought,
beliefs, and behaviors played a significant role; so this process could be said to be
the Chhattisgarhization of Christianity as well as Christianization of Chhattisgarh.
Chad M. Bauman carefully examines the sociopolitical, economic, and religious
contexts of the people in the conversion process as he constantly asks the questions
why and how the people responded to introduction of Christianity in the complex
situation of the colonial period and rightly points out that conversion of the Satnamis is not simply a religious matter.
The author has presented a clear methodology in this well-argued volume: an
interdisciplinary approach that employs methods of history, religious studies, and
anthropology; an emphasis on practice rather than belief in his examination of the
process of conversion and Christianization; and an examination of the sources from
the perspective of the Satnamis themselves. The monograph first discusses the
sociopolitical and religious structures of Chhattisgarhi society. Bauman then examines some economic, social, and religious factors involved in the process of becoming
Christians (or rejecting Christianity), the effect of medical mission and its implications, the impact of Christianization on women and social traditions, and the
ethnography of five Christians. In addition to this, he discusses the development of
Chhattisgarhi Christian-identity in the post-independence era, especially in the contexts of the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry and the destruction of the Gass
Memorial Centre. The author concludes with three key arguments. First, he rejects
the idea that conversion was orchestrated by force, fraud, or inducement, but rather
sees it as the result of the pursuit of self-interest, both of material and ideal, and as
initiated by the people themselves. Second, he insists that all identities are forged
and not discovered, and he counters the Hindu accusation of the denationalization
of the Christian community by pointing out Hindu attempts to form a pan-national
identity within Hindu ideology. Third, he argues for the acknowledgment of the
complex nature of assimilation, indigeneity, and the meaning of being a Hindu and
an Indian for Christian converts, both as individuals and as a community.
The volume is a very thorough and insightful examination of the formation of
the self-identity of Christian converts in the rapidly changing context of the British
Raj and post-independence India. In particular, the in-depth examination of the
various mixed motivations for conversion and the conversion narratives of five
Christian converts are well articulated. Although it focuses on a particular commu-

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nity in a particular geographical context, the implications of this study are applicable to wider contexts. It provides much needed insights into the complex motivations of any conversion and into the struggle of Indian Christians to affirm their
self-identity as a Christian community and at the same time their common identity
with fellow Indians in the wider society. This volume is important reading for those
who are interested in the topics of communal identity, Christian mission, Christianity in India, and processes of religious conversion.
York St John University, England
The International Journal of Public Theology

SEBASTIAN KIM

Présences occidentales au Japon. Du «siècle chrétien» à la réouverture du XIXe siècle. By
Henri Bernard-Maître, Pierre Humbertclaude, and Maurice Prunier. Edition
compiled and presented by Christophe Marquet. [Histoire.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2011. Pp. 432. €35,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-204-08525-0.)
This useful collection consolidates the works (mostly long articles) of Henri
Bernard-Maître, S.J., and the Marianist Pierre Humbertclaude (with some comments on art by Maurice Prunier) on early Christianity in Japan. They were written
and published at a very difficult time—the early years of the Sino-Japanese war,
many in publications now hard to access. Some were later republished, but all are
now reproduced here with striking illustrations in a single volume. Together, they
provide a valuable history of the introduction, growth, and virtual extermination of
Christianity in Japan and of early Western intellectual influences on Japan.
Almost all the items included are works of synthesis, often in the form of lectures, rather than based on original archival research, which was to be the case in
the postwar years, especially in the work of Charles Boxer. The later work of
Bernard-Maître (or Henri Bernard as he styled himself at this time) when expulsion from China enabled him to do serious archival research in Europe was deeper
but less extensive and mostly on China. This reviewer remembers as a graduate student encountering him frequently in the Jesuit Archives in Rome making copious
notes on tiny sheets of rice paper—as assiduous then as in his prime. The bibliographies alone of these articles will still reveal many treasures to the researcher.
However, both Bernard and Humbertclaude brought special insights to their
work on Japan: extensive missionary experience and hence empathetic exploration of
the motivation and mind-sets of their missionary predecessors; and constant interaction with Japanese scholars (and, in the case of Bernard, also Chinese scholars).
In many respects, their historical judgments still stand up to scrutiny.
Bernard’s nuanced account of the multifaceted collapse of Christianity in Japan is
still valuable, except perhaps for his obsession, which he brought from his studies
of Chinese thought, with the influence of Zhuxi-style Confucianism—“the cause
of the closure of Japan,” as he titles one of his 1941 lectures. This branch of neoConfucianism he thought irretrievably materialistic, atheistic, irreconcilable with

B OOK REVIEWS

399

Christian transcendence and spirituality, and responsible more than Buddhism for
the hostility of Japan’s rulers to Christianity. Right or wrong, however, he challenges head on the superficial “dispute des moines” interpretation of many modern
scholars. Real and substantial differences were at stake.
The work is divided into three sections on “the Christian Century” (not a term
used by either of the main authors), “Jesuit Publications in Japan,” and “the French
Presence before the Reopening of the Nineteenth Century.” As the main title suggests, the emphasis throughout is on Western influences—religious, scientific, and
artistic—on Japan. Particularly important are the contributions by Bernard on the
influence of Chinese translations and Jesuit treatises in Chinese in Japan after as
well as before the closure of Japan and Humbertclaude’s on the influence of French
ideas before 1854. Both should have put paid to notions of absolute intellectual isolation that persisted long after this period, or the version that admitted the influence of “Dutch learning” but no others.
It should be clear, then, that the republication of these works after seventy
years will draw attention again to neglected problems and insights as well as
reminding scholars of the twenty-first century of their debt to their predecessors.
The only drawback is that they remain in their original French, but inevitable no
doubt in a publication with financial assistance from the Maison franco-japonaise
de Tokyo. An English translation, however, would have been more accessible to
Japanese and Chinese scholars and to Western ones who, exhausted by their struggle with Asian languages, increasingly lack literacy in major European languages.
La Trobe University, Australia
Macau Ricci Institute, China

PAUL RULE

Report of the Editor
Volume 99 of the journal consisted of 836 pages of articles, essays, book
reviews, and brief notices, as well as the quarterly sections Notes and Comments,
Periodical Literature, and Other Books Received, with an additional twenty-four
pages of preliminary material and an eighteen-page index, for a total of 878 pages.
Subsidies from authors and contributions from others made directly to the journal
allowed for the addition of pages above those budgeted. Paul F. Grendler of Chapel
Hill, North Carolina (emeritus of the University of Toronto), generously made such
a contribution last year.
Of the fifteen articles published, three treated medieval topics, three early
modern, two late modern European, four American, one Latin American, one
Canadian, and one African. Their authors came mostly from American institutions, but Canadian, Israeli, Nigerian, and Spanish universities were also represented. The essays consisted of one autobiography in the series Journeys in Church
History; one Forum Essay in which five scholars from the United States, Belgium,
and Italy critiqued one book; and a Review Essay dealing with five books.
There were 195 book reviews and three brief notices. The book reviews can be
subdivided into the following categories: general and miscellaneous (13), ancient
(15), medieval (60), early modern (45), late modern (28), American (20), Latin
American (8), Asian (4), Canadian (1), and African (1). Their authors came mostly
from institutions in the United States (117 or 60%), but those in other countries
were also represented: in England (27 or 14%); Scotland (9); Canada (7); Italy (5);
Austria (4); Germany and Mexico (3); two each for Denmark, France, Republic of
Ireland, and Switzerland; and one each for Australia, Belgium, China, Finland,
Israel, Malta, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Spain, and Taiwan. Of
the brief notices, two were from authors at institutions in the United States, one
from the United Kingdom. Please see Table 1.
Msgr. Robert Trisco reports that the journal could have published many more
book reviews if all those who accepted to review books had submitted their reviews
punctually. At the end of 2013, 265 reviewers were delinquent, and two died before
their reviews could be submitted. It is the journal’s practice to send tardy reviewers
three reminders before abandoning the effort and listing the title in the section
Other Books Received. Authors who have been disappointed not to find reviews of
their books within the journal’s pages may inquire of Msgr. Trisco at
trisco@cua.edu whether a review copy was received in the editorial office and sent
out for review.
The editors received thirty-seven new submissions of articles in 2013. They
came primarily from the United States, but also from Belgium, Canada, Chile,
400

R EPORT OF THE EDITOR

401

TABLE 1.
Book Reviews and Brief Notices Published in 2013
Area

January

April

July

October

TOTAL

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

4
6
20
15
7
4
2
1
0
0
59

4
3
17
14
10
5
4
0
1
0
58

2
3
12
9
6
6
2
0
2
0
42

3
3
11
7
5
5
0
0
1
1
36

13
15
60
45
28
20
8
1
4
1
195

Brief Notices

1

0

2

0

3

England, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Russia,
South Korea, and Spain. Table 2 shows the current disposition of these submissions. During the year 2013, fourteen articles earlier accepted were published.
At the end of August 2012, Nelson H. Minnich returned from his year’s sabbatical leave and resumed the editorship. He was deeply grateful to Msgr. Trisco
for having so ably guided the journal as acting editor during his absence. Ms. Katya
Mouris continued as the devoted assistant to Msgr. Trisco, who resumed his primary role as the skillful book editor, while continuing to compile the sections Periodical Literature and Other Books Received. During her absence over the summer
to work on the German language in Munich, Mr. Paul Wesley Bush ably substituted for her. Ms. Elizabeth Foxwell has continued as the dedicated staff editor.
Dr. Jennifer Paxton, a medievalist who teaches at The Catholic University of
America and is associate director of its Honors Program, has kindly joined the editorial staff as associate editor. To round out the board of advisory editors with an
expert in the ancient Church, Dr. Robin Darling Young of the same university has
graciously agreed to provide her expert advice.
One of the issues on which the editors have spent a good amount of time is
the revision of the journal’s format. A new cover design using varying size illustrations and more color and a new internal layout and font (Caslon) were discussed
and adopted with the winter issue of volume 100. Plans go forward for two special
centennial issues—one evaluating the contribution of the journal to the study of
church history over the previous century and the other featuring studies in the latest
historiographical trend, applying the study of material culture to the history of
Catholicism.

REPORT OF THE EDITOR

402

TABLE 2.
Manuscripts Submitted in 2013

Area
General
Ancient
Medieval
Early Modern
Late Modern
American
Latin American
Canadian
Far Eastern
Middle Eastern
African
TOTAL

Rejected or
Published
Conditionally Withdrawn
in
Accepted Accepted
(W)
Pending 2013 TOTAL

1
2

1
1

3

1

3
1

2
3
3
5
3
1

1

18

1

3
2
1–W

3

2

13

4
0
6
5
5
10
5
1
1
0
0
37

After years of discussion and negotiations, the journal’s relationship to the
American Catholic Historical Association was clarified and put on a new footing
under the presidency of Dr. Margaret M. McGuinness (La Salle University). Dr.
Trevor Lipscombe, director of The Catholic University of America Press, which
owns the journal, has generously agreed to give electronic access to the journal
without cost to all Association members and provide them with print copies at near
cost. The current president of the Association is invited ex officio to join the journal’s advisory editorial board. The journal will no longer publish the reports of the
Association’s meetings, but will continue to print the names of its award winners
and the obituary notices of its distinguished members.
NELSON H. MINNICH
Editor

Notes and Comments
ASSOCIATION NEWS
At the 94th Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association
held in Washington, DC, on January 2–5, 2014, the following awards and prizes
were presented. In the area of scholarship, teaching, and service, the ACHA was
proud to confer the Distinguished Scholarship Award upon James T. Fisher (Fordham University); the Distinguished Teaching Award upon Roy P. Domenico
(University of Scranton); and the Distinguished Service to Catholic Studies Award
upon Karen M. Kennelly, C.S.J. (Conference on the History of Women Religious). The 2013 John Gilmary Shea Book Prize was presented to Charles Keith
(Michigan State University) for Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation
(Berkeley, 2012). The 2013 Howard R. Marraro Book Prize was presented to Areli
Marina (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) for The Italian Piazza
Transformed: Parma in the Communal Age (University Park, PA, 2012). The Peter
Guilday Award, for best first journal article, was presented to independent scholar
Sean Fabun for “Catholic Chaplains in the Civil War,” and the John Tracy Ellis
Outstanding Dissertation Award was conferred on Amanda Scott (Washington
University in St. Louis) for her work “The Basque Seroras: Local Religion, Gender,
and Power, 1550–1800.”

CAUSES OF SAINTS
On April 3, 2014, Pope Francis extended to the universal Church the liturgical cult for three missionaries who worked in the New World: François de Laval
(1623–1708), bishop of Quebec; Marie de l’Incarnation, O.S.U. (neé Marie
Guyart, 1599–1672), foundress of the Ursulines in Canada; and José de Anchieta,
S.J. (1534–97), known as the apostle of Brazil.

RESEARCH TOOLS
Brepols Publishers Online has announced Indexreligious, a new reference bibliography covering academic publications in theology, religious studies, and church
history, including 565,000 bibliographic records and 123,000 review references. It
was launched in January 2014. For more information, visit http://www.brepolis.
net/IR or brepolis@brepols.net.
The biannual journal Vincentian Heritage, published by DePaul University’s
Vincentian Studies Institute, switched to a digital format beginning with volume
32 on March 6. It will become an open source that can be downloaded at
http://depaule.ws/VH. For more information on the journal, visit http://bit.ly/
403

404

N OTES AND C OMMENTS

1oNnOUc. Historic photographs can be downloaded at http://depaulne.ws/
VHimages.

HISTORIC RESTORATION
The History Fund of Ohio has given a $15,000 grant toward the restoration of
the White Water Shaker Village near Harrison, Ohio (west of Cincinnati). Founded
by the Shakers in 1822, the village is one of twenty-four such communal villages in
the United States. The White Water Village has more than twenty original buildings
and is Ohio’s most intact Shaker site. Restoration is beginning with the 1827 meeting
house. For more information, visit http://www.whitewatervillage.org.

CONFERENCES
On May 8–10, 2014, the XLII Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana will
hold a conference at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome on the
theme “Povertà e ricchezza nel Cristianesimo Antico (I–V sec.).” Section A on May 8
(devoted to “Wealth and Poverty in the Jewish World and in Pre-Nicaean Christianity”) will feature the following papers: “Poverty and Wealth in the LXX Version of Job
and Some Examples of Christian Interpretation” by Mario Cimosa and Gillian
Bonney; “Nel segno dell’ambivalenza: i concetti di povertà-ricchezza nella riflessione
rabbinica: il caso del Pirqe Avot” by Massimo Gargiulo; “Divitiae vestrae putrefactae
sunt (Gc 5,2). Tra rivendicazioni sociali e letteratura apocalittica. Il contrasto tra
πτωχοί e πλούσιοι nella Lettera di Giacomo” by Alberto d’Incà; “Elemosina redentiva
nel secondo e terzo secolo” by Robert Tonsati; “The Redemptive Almsgiving in the
Didachè” by Fernando Rivas Rebaque; “Povertà e ricchezza secondo la dottrina della
creazione di Marcione” by Maurizio Girolami; “La giustizia bilanciata. Il concetto teologico e antropologico di giustizia nell’insegnamento di Clemente di Alessandria” by
Miklós Gyurkovics; “Povertà e ricchezza negli Atti di Tommaso. Suggestioni e ipotesi
interpretative” by Caterina Schiariti; and “Mc10, 17–31: dal Quis dives salvetur? al
Codice neotestamentario Alessandrino” by Matteo Monfrinotti.
Section B (devoted to “Post-Nicene Authors”) will feature the following
papers: “Il Concilio di Nicea non ha fonato xenodochi. Carità e politica nella Tarda
Anticità” by Federico Fatti; “Voluptas ac deliciae virtutis studio repugnant. L’omelia
di Asterio di Amasea sulla parabola di Lazzaro e del ricco epulone” by Roberto
Spartaro; “La riccheza e la povertà nella polemica eresiologia di Epifanio di Salamina” by Domenico Ciarlo; “Il retto giudizio su ricchezza e povertà come strumento
di prevenzione e cura delle passioni nelle Homiliae morales X e XI di Basilio di
Cesarea” by Marco Quircio; “Basilio di Cesarea; le coordinate scritturistiche della
‘Basiliade’ in favore di poveri ed indigenti” by Mario Girardi; “‘Queste fredde
parole: il tuo e il mio’: Ricchezza e povertà nel pensiero di Giovanni Crisostomo”
by Sergio Zincone; “Semantica della ricchezza e della povertà in Sinesio di Cirene”
by Carlotta Amande and Paola Graffigna; and “Teófilo de Alejandría, lithomaneis
kai chrysolatris: la mala gestión por los obispos de las donaciones a la Iglesia para
fines benéficos” by Ramón Teja.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

405

Section A on May 9 (devoted to “Latin Fathers I”) will feature the following
papers: “Eleemosyna a morte liberat et ipsa purgat peccata. Quoting Deuterocanonical Books in St. Cyprian’s De operere et eleemosynis” by László Perendy; “Le facce
della misericordia nel De operere et eleemosynis di Cipriano,” by Mirosław
Mejzner; “Ambrose on the Limits of Liberality (De officiis, II, 79–85),” by Peter
van Egmond; “Il valore della riccezza nella Chiesa damasiana: Ambrosiaster e
Girolamo a confronto” by Emanuele Di Santo; “‘The Goods of His Throne’
(Contra Adimantum 18): The Debate about Wealth in Augustine’s Exegesis
against Manichaeism” by Nicholas J. Baker-Brian; “Aliud namque sunt diuitiae,
aliud pecunia: A Brief Reflection on the Intertwined Themes of Wealth and
Hope in Augustine’s City of God” by Veronica Roberts; “La critica pelagiana
della ricchezza: il De divitiis” by Roberto Alciati; and “Ricos y pobres en la disputa entre donatistas y católicos por la preeminencia religiosa en África” by
Carles Buenacasa Pérez.
Section B (devoted to “Antioch and Syria: Hagiography and Monasticism”)
will feature the following papers: “Der Arme an der Tür ein Sinnbild für den
Erlöser?—Zur Deutung der Lazarusperikope in der syrischen Literatur” by Peter
Bruns; “Tra ricchezza e povertà, libertà e responsabilità: note alla Terapeutica di
Teodoreto di Cirro” by Mariangela Monaca; “Povertà e ricchezza nelle opera
esegetiche di Teodoreto” by Pierpaolo Perretti; and “Episkopos philoptochos versus
episkopos tyrannos en la Edesa del s. V: el papel de la philantropia en la contraposición entre Rábula e Ibas según las fuentes contemporáneas” by Silvia Acerbi; “The
Poverty and Wealth of Holy Bishops” by Marianne Sághy; “Ideologie e pratiche
della povertà nel monachesimo tardoantico” by Alba Maria Orselli; “La Riqueza, el
avaro y el Demonio de la avaricia en el monacato antiguo: el testimonio de Evagrio
Póntico” by Francisco Javier Fuertes; “Aktēmosynē, povertà specifica del monaco” by
Miran Špelič.
Session A (devoted to “Latin Fathers II”) will feature the following papers:
“La pobreza como vehículo para la limosna salvífica en la exégesis de Máximo de
Turin” by Maria Elena Conde Guerri; “‘A chi lasci il tuo denaro?’ (Hier., Ep. 54,4).
Donne tra ricchezza e povertà nei testi cristiani di IV–V secolo” by Roberta
Franchi; “Povertà e ricchezza in Cromazio d’Aquileia” by Grazia Rapisarda; “La
moneta, Cesare e Cristo in Cromazio d’Aquileia e Leone Magno” by Calogero
Cerami; “Ergo malitiose deus dedit divitias (Gaudent, praef. 21). Gaudentius von
Brescia und die besitzende Oberschicht seiner Stadt” by Josef Rist; “Schiavitù e
usura: diritto di proprietà e ricchezza illecita (Leone papa, ep. 4, cann. 1 e 3) by
Teresa Sardella; “Providencia divina, desigualdad social y patronazgo aristocrático
de la Iglesia en la Roma de León Magno (440–461)” by Raúl Villegas Marín; “Ricchezza che danna, ricchezza che salva. Il percorso di Salviano dal De gubernatione
Dei al De avaritia” by Rossana Barcellona; and “La periscope del giovane ricco nel
Centone di Proba (vv. 505–530)” by Antonia Badini.
Section B (devoted to “Rights, Christianity, and Material Goods”) will feature
the following papers: “Poverty and Wealth in St. Ambrose’s Spiritual and Social

406

N OTES AND C OMMENTS

Teaching” by György Heidl; “Emperor Julian on Poverty and the Social Sensitivity
of Jews and Christians” by Gábor Buzási; “Una chiesa ricca, un clero povero (CTh
16,2,3; 16,2,6)” by Angelo Di Berardino; “Poverty and Heresy in Codex Theodosianus XVI” by María Victoria Escribano Paño; “Indigenza della megále ecclesía e
politica del consenso: riflessioni su CI. 1,2,18” by Elio Dovere; “Assistenzialismo
Cristiano e normazione a metà del V secolo” by Pasqualina Mezzacapo; “El
enriquecimiento indebido en las causas judiciales eclesiásticas” by Esteban Moreno
Resano; “Evoluzione giuridico-canonica delle proprietà della Chiesa nel Cristianesimo antico” by Stefano Testa Bappenheim; and “Ricchezza e povertà nelle
deliberazioni conciliari dei primi secoli” by Paola Marone.
Section A on May 10 (devoted to “Vocabulary and Rhetoric of Poverty”) will
feature the following papers: “Πένητες e πτωχοί in Gregorio di Nazianzo: il lessico
della povertà tra eredità classica e modelli scritturistici” by Antonella Conte; “Dives
aut iniquus aut haeres iniqui est. La ‘colpa originale’ della ricchezza come stereotipo
classico reinterpretato da Girolamo” by Sincero Mantelli; and “Ambrogio e i τόποι
de divitiis; dalla Satira ai Disticha Catonis” by Roberta Ricci.
Section B (devoted to “Christian Armenia: Archaeology and Society in the
Ancient Mediterranean”) will feature the following papers: “Povertà e ricchezza
nell’Armenia del IV e V secolo” by Alessandro Orengo; “Pobreza y riqueza en las
primeras necrópolis cristianas hispanas (ss. IV–V): paradojas e indicadores arqueológicos” by Jordina Sales Carbonell; and “Banca e cultura nel Mediterraneo antico”
by Anna Multari.
The plenary session will feature the following papers: “Divitias alius…
(Tibullo, C. I 1,1). Il mondo classico tra povertà e ricchezza” by Giulia Piccaluga;
and “Povertà e ricchezza dei cristiani nel giudizio dei pagani” by Giancarlo Rinaldi.
On May 8–11, 2014, the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, will feature three panels involving issues of canon law: “Rethinking Reform II: Councils as Context, Catalyst, and Communicator of Reform”;
“Crime or Sin? Rethinking Ideas of Wrongdoing in Medieval Europe”; and “Crusade and Inquisition: In Honor of James Brundage.”
On June 16–18, 2014, the Saint Louis University Second Annual Symposium
on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will host a panel on “Dispensing Mercy” that
will feature papers by Bruce C. Brasington, “The Problem of ‘Unjust Mercy’ in
Medieval Canon Law”; by Robert Somerville, “Urban II and the Collectio Britannica, Again”; and by Atria A. Larson, “Innocent III Dispensing Mercy on the Notso-Innocent?”
In preparation for the joint meeting with the American Historical Association
in January 2015, the Society for Italian Historical Studies is organizing a panel on
Italy and World War I that involves cross-disciplinary collaboration. For more
information, contact Ernest Ialongo at eialongo@hostos.cuny.edu.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

407

On June 8–12, 2015, the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston
College will sponsor the First World Congress on Jesuit Studies on the theme
“Exploring Jesuit Identity and Distinctiveness in the History of the Modern
World.” The congress will explore how various historical, geographical, social,
and cultural circumstances in which Jesuits operated shaped their self-identity
and distinctive way of proceeding. To what extent did this change over the centuries depend on one’s social and cultural background or on the environment in
which the Jesuit exercised his ministries? How did Jesuit identity influence the
ministries of the Society of Jesus and the institution it ran? Proposals for individual papers and panels (maximum 250 words), together with a curriculum
vitae, should be sent to Robert A. Maryks at maryks@bc.edu before May 31,
2014.
On July 7–11, 2014, the XVth Latin American Conference on Religion and
Ethnicity will be held at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico’s Metropolitan Campus with the theme “Memory, Identity, and Religious Diversity.” To participate in the symposium, please contact its coordinator before April 30 and
submit an abstract of 200 words (including name, academic institution, and country) by email to coordinacionacademicaaler@gmail.com. Finished papers should be
sent by May 15. The cost is $350, which includes lodgings in the university residences for the four days. For information, please contact director Livia Pastrana at
lpastrana@sagrado.edu. The registration fee depends on whether one is a speaker,
member of ALER, or a member of the general public. Among the themes treated
by the panelists are the following: Dimensions of Religion; New Methodological
Approaches in the Social Sciences of Religion; Strengths and Weaknesses of Religious Architecture in Latin America: Worship Spaces for Contemporary Religious
Diversity; Cultural Heritage and Religious Minorities in Latin America and the
Spanish Caribbean; Memory Identity and the Religious Diversity of Latin American Migrants; Education, Religion, and Secularism in Latin America; New Religious Expressions in Latin America: The Reevaluation of Ethnicity in the Contemporary Emergence of Alternative Religious Cults; Holiness in Latin America
and the Caribbean; Marian Devotion in Latin America and the Caribbean; Franciscans in America; Labor and Religion in the Societies of Latin America and the
Caribbean; Religiosity, Myth, and Other Manifestations of Popular Culture in the
Sugarcane-Growing Areas of Latin America and the Caribbean; Cultural Reproduction and Ritual: Identity Constructions; Religious Music and Churches in
Latin America; Evangelization and Inculturation in the Complex of Latin American Modernity; Theology, Identity, and Liberation; Religion, Violence, and
Resistance: Between War and Peace; Religion, Gender, and Violence: The Intricacies of Religious Fundamentalisms; The Strengthening of Secularism in Elections: A Latin American and Caribbean Panorama; The Influence of the Catholic
Church in the Founding of Political Parties in Latin American Countries and
Their Results; Nationalism and Lay Catholics in Latin America: Ideology, Religion, and Politics in the Twentieth Century; and The Evangelical Complex World:
New Themes and Approaches to Pentecostalism in Latin American Modernity
and Globalization.

408

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PUBLICATIONS
An article on “Devotion and Intellectual Labor” by Joanna Piccotto introduces
a series on that theme in the issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies for winter 2014 (vol. 44). Some of the articles are “‘Shameless’: Augustine, After
Augustine, and Way After Augustine” by Steven Justice (pp. 17–43); “Labors Lost:
The Work of Devotion in Tudor Literature” by Joshua Phillips (pp. 45–68); “The
Early Modern Idea of Scientific Doctrine and its Early Christian Origins” by
Stephen Gaukroger (pp. 95–112); “Sentiments of Devotion and Experimental Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century England” by Peter Harrison (pp. 113–33); “Easy
Attention: Ignatius of Loyola and Robert Boyle” by David Mamo (pp. 135–61);
and “Putting Faith to the Test: Anne de Gonzague and the Incombustible Relic”
by Jennifer Hillman (pp. 163–85).
A different way of looking at the Middle Ages is presented in the annual supplement to the Cahiers de civilisation médiéval: X e–XII e siècles for 2012 (vol. 55, no.
220 bis). Martin Aurell and Blaise Royer have written the avant-propos: “Les cinq
sens: un certain regard sur le Moyen Âge” (p. 449). The articles are “L’odorat failil sens? Quelques réflexions autour de l’encens de l’Antiquité tardive au haut Moyen
Âge” by Lawrence Nees (pp. 451–71); “Les cloches: construction, sens, perception
d’un son. Quelques réflexions à partir des témoignages archéologiques des «fours à
cloches»” by Elisabetta Neri (pp. 473–96); “Les implications sensorielles de l’architecture et de la liturgie au Moyen Âge” by Carolyn Marino Malone (pp. 497–520);
“La Haggadah multi-sensorielle” by Adam S. Cohen (pp. 521–39); “Le toucher de
l’évêque. Les actes de dévotion dans les Évangiles de Sainte-Croix de Poitiers” by
Lynley Anne Herbert (pp. 541–57); “L’œil efficace. Voir, regarder et être vu dans
le haut Moyen Âge occidental” by Geneviève Bührer-Thierry (pp. 559–70); and
“Les cinq sens et la connaissance de Dieu. Marie Madeleine et Thomas dans les
Ivoires de Salerne” by Francesca Dell’Acqua (pp. 571–98).
The issue of Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest for September 2013 (vol.
120, no. 3) is devoted entirely to “Les Cisterciens dans le Maine et dans l’Ouest au
Moyen Âge.” It consists of papers presented at a study day on the same subject that
was held at Le Mans on June 12, 2012. An introduction (pp. 9–26) is provided by
the editors of this issue (Emmanuel Johans, Vincent Corriol, Ghislain Baury, and
Laurent Maillet). There are three parts, each containing three papers. In the first
part, “Institutions,” are found “Heurts et malheurs d’une abbaye: l’abbaye de l’Épau
à la fin du Moyen Âge (v. 1350–v.1450)” by Vincent Carriol (pp. 29–47); “Les
moniales cisterciennes dans le Maine médiéval” by Ghislain Baury (pp. 49–64); and
“L’abbaye de Perseigne: évolution et gestion d’un patarimoine cistercien dans le
Haut-Maine” by Bertrand Doux (pp. 65–84). In the second part, “Figures,” are
“Les cercles de l’amitié dans la correspondance d’Adam de Perseigne (1188–1221)”
by Aurélie Reinbold (pp. 87–98); “Les missions d’Adam de Perseigne, émissaire de
Rome et de Cîteaux (1190–1221)” by Laurent Maillet (pp. 99–115); and “Le Commentaire du Cantique des Cantiques de Thomas de Perseigne revisité” by David N.
Bell (pp. 117–30). In the third part, “Le Maine cistercien en perspective,” are

NOTES AND COMMENTS

409

“Clairmont et sa fille, Fontaine-Daniel: deux fondations claravalliennes dans le Bas
Maine (1150–1204)” by Jean-René Ladurée (pp. 135–51); “La place des abbayes
cisterciennes dans l’histoire de l’Anjou” by Noël-Yves Tonnerre (pp. 153–69); and
“Au-delà des catalogues: pour une étude à frais nouveau de l’expansion cistercienne
dans la France de l’Ouest” by Alexis Grélois (pp. 171–86). Véronique Gazeau has
supplied “Conclusions” (pp. 189–95).
A collection of essays on the Devotio Moderna can be found in the fourth issue
for 2013 (vol. 93) of Church History & Religious Culture: “In the Eyes of Others:
The Modern Devotion in Germany and the Netherlands: Influencing and Appropriating” by Charles Caspers, Daniela Müller, and Judith Keßler (pp. 489–503);
“The Early Reception of the Devotio Moderna among the Crutched Friars” by
Rijcklof Hofman (pp. 505–34); “In omnibus essent conformes? Windesheimer
Reform und liturgische Erneuerung in niedersächischen Frauenkonventen im 15.
Jahrhundert” by Ulrike Hascher-Burger (pp. 535–47); “‘Disce aliquid! –‘Lerne
etwas!’ Die Gebrauchsspuren in der De imitatione Christi als Spiegel der Interaktion zwischen Lesern” by Judith Keßler (pp. 549–77); and “The Devotio Moderna
and the Printing Press (ca. 1475–1540)” by Koen Goudriaan (pp. 579–606).
The first volume of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, edited by Robert A. Maryks
and published by Brill, contains the following articles that appear after an “Editors’
Preface” by Maryks and book review editor Jonathan Wright on “Current Trends
in Jesuit Historiography” (pp. 1–5): “Jesuit Schools in Europe: A Historiographical
Essay” by Paul F. Grendler (pp. 7–25); “The Vineyard of Verse: The State of
Scholarship on Latin Poetry of the Old Society of Jesus” by Yasmin Haskell (pp.
26–46); “Jesuit Foreign Missions: A Historiographical Essay” by Ronnie Po-chia
Hsia (pp. 47–65); “Early Modern Jesuit Arts and Jesuit Visual Culture: A View
from the Twenty-First Century” by Evonne Levy (pp. 66–87); “Early Modern
Jesuit Science: A Historiographical Essay” by Sheila J. Rabin (pp. 88–104); and
“Recent Works in Jesuit Philosophy: Vicissitudes of Rhetorical Accommodation”
by Stephen Schloesser (pp. 105–26). There are also thirteen book reviews.
Pascal is studied by eight authors in the issue of XVII e Siècle for October 2013
(vol. 65, no. 4). Laurent Susini has provided the introduction (pp. 569–72). The
contributors and their articles are the following: “L’ordre dans les Pensées” by Jean
Mesnard (pp. 573–600); “Le Mémorial à la lumière de la rhétorique biblique” by
Roland Meynet, S.J. (pp. 601–19); “Espace physique, espace conceptual dans les
Pensées” by John D. Lyons (pp. 621–35); “Amour et justice: de l’observation moraliste à l’exhortation spirituelle” by Tetsuya Shiokawa (pp. 637–44); “L’énormité de
la miséricorde selon Pascal” by Jean-Louis Chrétien (pp. 645–61); “Conclusions”
by Gérard Ferreyrolles (pp. 663–67); “La machine arithmétique et les ordres pascaliens” by Haruo Nagase (pp. 669–83); and “La profession de raison” by Laurent
Thiroulin (pp. 685–97).
Five authors have studied “Aspects de la religion dans la littérature américaine” in the Mélanges de Science Religieuse. Volume I, “De la Nouvelle Angleterre

410

N OTES AND COMMENTS

au Sud,” appears in the fourth issue for 2013 (vol. 70), as follows: “‘Le nouvel Adam
et la nouvelle Ève’, ou l’Eden américain de Nathaniel Hawthorne” by Stéphanie
Carrez (pp. 5–16); “Flannery O’Connor: portrait de l’artiste catholique en écrivaine
du Sud américain” by Marie Liénard-Yeterian (pp. 17–29); “De la fascination à la
révélation, ou la religion vue par les enfants dans trois nouvelles du Sud Gérard
Préher” (pp. 31–44); “Ferveur religieuse et approche cognitive de la proposition
réduite” by Ineke Bockting (pp. 45–56); and “L’Impuissance des figures religieueses
dans la fiction brève de Joyce Carol Oates” by Tanya Tromble (pp. 57–68).
“West Coast Catholicism” is the theme of the issue of U.S. Catholic Historian
for spring 2013 (vol. 31, no. 2). Five articles are presented: “Catholicism on the
Pacific: Building a Regional Scaffolding” by Steven M. Avella (pp. 1–24); “‘To the
Ends of the Earth’: Catholic Women Religious in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco” by Jamila Jamison Sinlao (pp. 25–49); “The Daughters of Charity as Cultural
Intermediaries: Women, Religion, and Race in Early Twentieth-Century Los
Angeles” by Kristine Ashton Gunnell (pp. 51–74); “‘Japanese Trimmings on Our
American Catholicity’: Contested Ministry to Japanese Immigrants in Los Angeles, 1912–1925” by Michael E. Engh, S.J. (pp. 75–93); and “E. Charles Fortune:
Precursor to the Renaissance of Religious Art in the San Francisco Bay Area” by
Rebecca M. Berru-Davis (pp. 95–118).

OBITUARY
Richard F. Costigan, S.J.
(1931–2013)

Photo reproduced by permission of the Midwest Jesuit Archives.

Father Richard F. Costigan, S.J.—for many years a professor of theology at
Loyola University Chicago and a long-time member of the American Catholic
Historical Association—died on August 29, 2013, in the infirmary of the Jesuit

NOTES AND COMMENTS

411

community in St. Louis. Born in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1931, he entered the Society
of Jesus on August 8, 1952, after two years at Rockhurst College in Kansas City.
Following his seminary studies principally in St. Louis and his ordination to the
priesthood, he obtained a master’s degree in political science from Yale University
in 1969 and a doctorate in theology from the University of Ottawa in 1972. Father
Costigan taught political science at Regis University in Denver from 1972 to 1975,
when he moved to the Theology Department at Loyola University Chicago. There
he served until his retirement and return to St. Louis in 2009.
As a scholar of historical theology, Father Costigan focused his research on
ecclesio-political developments and the papacy as reflected in his two books,
Rohrbacher and the Ecclesiology of Ultramontanism (Rome, 1980) and The Consensus
of the Church: A Study in the Background of Vatican I (Washington, DC, 2005). In
addition, he published a number of articles and book reviews.
Father Costigan was a popular and effective teacher. His principal offering in
the classroom was the History of Christian Thought, a course that he taught frequently in two segments: from the beginnings to the Reformation and then from
the Reformation to the present day. Students responded with much affection to his
concern and care for them individually. This was especially true of the students at
Loyola’s Rome Center, where he taught regularly in his later years.
Regularity, a wry sense of humor, and care and concern for others characterized Father Costigan. One could set one’s watch by his daily order and one’s calendar by his summer attendance at the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological
Society of America; his retreat; and his visits to his two sisters, his brother, and
their families in Kansas, with whom he had close ties. He nurtured his personal
relationships. For many years he celebrated Mass every first Friday for a small
group at the home of a former Loyola security guard and Chicago policeman. He
was an active member of a company of theology colleagues who dined out each
month to explore different Chicago restaurants. He helped out regularly with
Sunday Mass at nearby parishes, usually St. Jerome’s or St. Margaret Mary’s, as
well as celebrated Mass for students on campus.
After Father Costigan moved back to St. Louis, he continued to maintain his
interest in and involvement with the study of history. Although not formally a
member of the Institute for Jesuit Sources, he undertook translation work for its
publications and was a faithful participant in its morning coffee breaks. A Christmas 2012 fall on the campus of Saint Louis University initiated his decline, and he
died eight months later. His funeral took place at the College Church of St. Louis
University, attended by a large congregation of Jesuits, relatives, and colleagues
from Kansas, Chicago, and St. Louis.
Loyola University Chicago

ROBERT BIRELEY, S.J.

Periodical Literature
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
La vida de la Iglesia en la historia de la Iglesia. Aniano Ávarez-Suárez. Teresianum,
LXIV (1, 2013), 145–80.
The Cost of Orthodoxy. Averil Cameron. Church History & Religious Culture, 93
(3, 2013), 339–61.
“Une brève Histoire” des Assyro-Chaldéens. Des origines aux massacres du 11 août
1933. Joseph Alichoran. Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique, CXIV (Oct.–
Dec., 2013), 357–74.
Neues zum Satorquadrat. Manfred Hühn. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 95 (2, 2013),
437–85.
La Disparition de la fête liturgique de la Circoncision du Seigneur: une question
historico-théologique complexe. Arnaud Join-Lambert. Ephemerides Liturgicae, CXXVII (July–Sept., 2013), 307–27.
Le Culte liturgique des papes: Les béatifications et les canonisations de pape 1951–
2011. Philippe Beitia. Ephemerides Liturgicae, CXXVII (July–Sept., 2013),
257–82.
Il Card. Montini e il Concilio. Cronologia del primo periodo (II). Giselda Adornato. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n. 66 (Dec., 2013), 49–84.
Acuerdos de la Santa Sede con los Estados. Pontificado de Benedicto XVI (2005–
2013). José Luis Santos Díez. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 88 (Dec., 2013), 833–47.
Benoît XVI: quels modèles pour une renonciation? Jean-Philippe Goudot. Nouvelle
Revue Théologique, 136 (Jan.– Mar., 2014), 48–64.
Il Fondo Corali della Biblioteca Provinciale dell’Aquila. Storia e nuova catalogazione. Claudia Benvestito. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 106 (Jan.–
June, 2013), 345–424.
Nuovi documenti sul monastero del Santo Sepolcro di Venezia. Mauro Papalini.
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 425–56.
Le origini intellettuali dell’antischiavismo. Percorsi storiografici tra cristianesimo e
Lumi. Patrizia Delpiano. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (3, 2013), 773–98.
La querelle sur l’âme des femmes aux XVIe–XVIIIe s. Sources et retombées historiographiques d’une mystification (VIe–XXIe s.). Adeline Gargam and
Bertrand Lançon. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013),
626–56.
412

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

413

Presenting the “Poor Miserable Savage” to French Urban Elites: Commentary on
North American Living Conditions in Early Jesuit Relations. Bronwen
Catherine McShea. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLIV (Fall, 2013), 683–711.
Between Eden and Empire: Huguenot Refugees and the Promise of New Worlds.
Owen Stanwood. American Historical Review, 118 (Dec., 2013), 1319–44.
Beyond Tocqueville: A Plea to Stop “Taking Religion Seriously.” James Chappel.
Modern Intellectual History, 10 (Nov., 2013), 697–708.
Hercules at the Crossroads: Confirmation as a Rite of Passage in the NineteenthCentury Netherlands Reformed Church. Ardjan Logmans and Herman Paul.
Church History & Religious Culture, 93 (3, 2013), 385–408.

ANCIENT
Barnabé et les processus de construction de la légitimité apostolique. Régis Burnet.
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 595–624.
Uno sguardo su alcune comunità cristiane nel II secolo. Manlio Simonetti. Vetera
Christianorum, 49 (2, 2012), 189–201.
Anthropologies of Continuity: The Body and Soul in Tertullian, Perpetua, and
Early Christianity. Eliezer Gonzalez. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21
(Winter, 2013), 479–502.
Eine Sache der Familie? Zur Transformation häuslicher bzw. familiarer Religiosität im antiken Christentum. Katharina Greschat. Zeitschrift für Antikes
Christentum, 17 (2, 2013), 248–67.
From Gwatkin Onwards: A Guide through a Century and a Quarter of Studies on
Arianism. Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J. Augustinian Studies, 44 (2, 2013), 265–85.
The “Christianisation” of Hermanubis. Danijela Stefanović. Historia, 62 (4, 2013),
506–14.
Warum wirken Wunder? Die Sprache der Ärzte im Traum. Dorothea Zeppezauer.
Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 17 (1, 2013), 143–59.
Volksfrömmigkeit in der spätantiken Hagiographie. Potential und Grenzen eines
umstrittenen Konzepts. Peter Gemeinhardt. Zeitschrift für Theologie und
Kirche, 110 (Dec., 2013), 410–38.
Apollinaris, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. Alessandro Capone. Zeitschrift für Antikes
Christentum, 17 (2, 2013), 315–31.
Helena: The Subversive Persona of an Ideal Christian Empress in Early Byzantium. Andriani Georgiou. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21 (Winter,
2013), 597–624.
Nilus von Ankyra und Johannes Chrysostomus über das monastiche Leben. Leon
Nieścior, OMI. Erbe und Auftrag, 89 (3, 2013), 264–74.

414

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

El bautismo de la retórica. Aportaciones de san Agustín a la configuración de la
educación cristiana. José M. García González. Augustinus, LVIII (July–Dec.,
2013), 271–85.
In a Corporeal Flame: The Materiality of Hellfire before the Resurrection in Six
Latin Authors. Michael D. Barbezat. Viator, 44 (3, 2013), 1–20.
“…erwachte und war geheilt”: Inkubationsdarstellungen in byzantinischen Heiligenviten. Thomas Pratsch. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 17 (1, 2013),
68–86.
New Ethiopic Documents for the History of Christian Egypt. Alessandro Bausi and
Alberto Camplani. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 17 (2, 2013), 215–47.
Die Wundererzählungen in Palladius’ Historica Lausiaca. Eine medizinhistorische
Betrachtung. Christian Schulze. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 17 (1,
2013), 87–101.
Arnobius the Younger against the “Predestined One”: Was Prosper of Aquitaine
the Predestinarian Opponent of Arnobius the Younger? Francis X. Gumerlock. Augustinian Studies, 44 (2, 2013), 249–63.
Die Suche nach der kirchlichen Ordnung. Gedanken zu grundlegenden Funktionsweisung der spätantiken Reichskirche. Jan-Marcus Kötter. Historische
Zeitschrift, 298 (Feb., 2014), 1–28.
I confini delle città e delle diocesi in età tardoantica: l’esempio di Aecae (Apulia et
Calabria). Mariagrazia De Fino. Vetera Christianorum, 49 (2, 2012), 203–35.
Ruricii gemini flores: l’epitaffio di Ruricio I e Ruricio II (Ven. Fort. Carm. 4,5). Mariano Neri. Vetera Christianorum, 49 (2, 2012), 273–95.
Negotiating episcopal support in the Merovingian kingdom of Reims (AD 561–
75). Gregory Halfond. Early Medieval Europe, 22 (Feb., 2014), 1–25.

MEDIEVAL
Éloi, haut dignitaire, aumônier, monétaire. Les représentations d’une politique
sociale à la cour mérovingienne. Martin Heinzelmann. Revue d’histoire de
l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec., 2013), 221–33.
Saint Aldegund, first mystic of the Low Countries. The bride and the bridegroom
in the Merovingian era. Tim Opgenhaffen. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108
(July–Dec., 2013), 659–91.
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian northern Italy. Giorgia Vocino. Early Medieval Europe, 22 (Feb., 2014), 26–52.
The Veneration of St Michael at Tallaght: The Evidence of ‘Archangelum mirum
magnum’. Westley Follett. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 66 (Winter,
2013), 37–56.
Holy Ground? The Plundering and Burning of Churches by Vikings and Franks
in the Ninth Century. Simon Coupland. Viator, 45 (1, 2014), 73–97.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

415

An Insular Fragment of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. Nicholas A. Sparks. AngloSaxon England, 42 (Dec., 2013), 27–50.
Les domaines sambriens de l’abbaye de Lobbes au IXe siècle: structure et organisation interne de villae fonctionnant sans corvée. Jérôme Verdoot. Revue Belge
de Philologie et d’Histoire, 91 (2, 2013), 187–212.
The Consolation of Community: Innovation and Ideas of History in Ratpert’s
Casus Sancti Galli. Christina Pössel. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (Jan.,
2014), 1–24.
Aristocratic and Monastic Conflict in Tenth-Century Italy: the Case of Bobbio
and the Miracula Sancti Columbani. Alexander O’Hara and Faye Taylor.
Viator, 44 (3, 2013), 43–61.
Arabic Singing Girls, the Pope, and the Astrolabe: Arabic Science in Tenth-Century
Latin Europe. Marco Zuccato. Viator, 45 (1, 2014), 99–120.
The reception of the Latin Life of St Giles in Anglo-Saxon England. Carmela Vircillo Franklin. Anglo-Saxon England, 42 (Dec., 2013), 63–145.
Il corpo nella tradizione camaldolese medievale: dalla mortificazione ascetica al
superamento mistico. Pierluigi Licciardello. Revue Bénédictine, 123 (Dec.,
2013), 291–318.
Robert of Jumièges, archbishop in exile (1052–55). Tom Licence. Anglo-Saxon
England, 42 (Dec., 2013), 311–29.
Pora la enfermeria del monesterio. La enfermería de las Huelgas de Burgos en contexto. Pablo Abella Villar. Viator, 44 (3, 2013), 85–124.
The Remarkable Life of Ansger, a Breton Monk and Poet from the Loire Valley
Who Became Bishop of Catania in Sicily 1091–1124. George T. Beech.
Viator, 45 (1, 2014), 149–74.
Christian Resurrection and Jewish Immortality during the First Crusade. Shmuel
Skepkaru. Speculum, 69 (Jan., 2014), 1–34.
The Coptic Patriarch and the apostate scribe: An incident from the career of Pope
Gabriel II ibn Turayk (no. 70, 1131–1145). Mark Swanson. Parole de l’Orient,
37 (2012), 479–92.
Inscribing Spiritual Authority: the Temptation of St. Benedict Capital in the
Narthex at Vézelay. Kristine Tanton. Viator, 44 (3, 2013), 125–55.
Il sogno del re: Amalrico di Gerusalemme, Bernardo di Clairvaux e la reliquia della
Vera Croce. Miriam Rita Tessera. Aevum, LXXXVII (May–Aug., 2013),
343–70.
At Once Limit and Threshold: How the Early Christian Touch of a Hem (Luke
8:44, Matthew 9:20) Constituted the Medieval Veronica. Emma Sidgwick.
Viator, 45 (1, 2014), 1–24.
Documenti e antichi archivi degli Umiliati a Milano. Lucia Dell’Asta. Aevum,
LXXXVII (May–Aug., 2013), 441–514.

416

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Von Bischof Rufins Traktat “De bono pacis” zu Assisis Pakt “pro bono pacis.”
Friedensvisionen und Friedenswege in der Stadt des jungen Franziskus
(1181–1210). Niklaus Kuster, OFMCap. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 76 (2,
2013), 163–96.
St. Clare of Assisi: Charity and Miracles in Early Modern Italy. Nirit Ben-Aryeh
Debby. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 237–62.
“Propheta magnus surrexit in nobis”: Francesco d’Assisi in alcuni sermoni
medievali. Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea franciscana, 83 (3–4, 2013), 369–
432.
A contribution to the Episcopal list of the Coptic Church. Youhanna Nessim
Youssef. Parole de l’Orient, 37 (2012), 493–519.
Les lieux des images historiées dans les galeries du cloître de la cathédrale de Tarragone. Une approche de la périodicité de l’espace et de la topographie du
temps. Gerardo Boto and Esther Lozano. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 56
(Oct.–Dec. 2013), 337–64.
Les règles canoniques relatives à la profession d’avocat en France au XIIIe siècle.
Franck Roumy. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec., 2013),
235–58.
Interrogating Anger in the New Penitential Literature of the Thirteenth Century.
Marc B. Cels. Viator, 45 (1, 2014), 203–19.
L’implantation des antonins à Albi (1250). Jean-Louis Biget. Annales du Midi, 125
(Apr.–June, 2013), 209–15.
Food and Meaning: Christian Understandings of Muslim Food and Food Ways in
Spain, 1250–1550. Olivia Remie Constable. Viator, 44 (3, 2013), 199–235.
L’Église, les Capétiens et le Languedoc au temps d’Alphonse de Poitiers: autour
des enquêtes pontificales sur les crimes imputés à Vézian (OFM), évêque de
Rodez (1261–1267). Julien Théry. Annales du Midi, 125 (Apr.–June, 2013),
217–38.
Temps, lieux et supplices: les mémoires paysannes à l’épreuve de l’enquête (Vendres, fin du XIIIe siècle). Monique Bourin and Vincent Challet. Annales du
Midi, 125 (Apr.–June, 2013), 239–62.
Le pape au bord du Rhône. Enjeux et impacts régionaux de la présence pontificale
à Avignon. Paul Payan. Annales du Midi, 125 (Apr.–June, 2013), 263–69.
False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis as a Tool against Heretics
in Jacques Fournier’s Postilla on Matthew. Irene Bueno. Speculum, 69 (Jan.,
2014), 39–65.
Dangerous Women: Observations on the Feast of Herod in the Florentine Art of
the Early Renaissance. Jane C. Long. Renaissance Quarterly, 66 (Winter,
2013), 1153–1205.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

417

Conoscenza e scienza in Landolfo Caracciolo. Francesco Fiorentino. Franciscan
Studies, 71 (2013), 375–409.
The Self-Coronation of Peter the Ceremonious (1336): Historical, Liturgical, and
Iconographical Representations. Jaume Aurell and Marta Serrano-Coll.
Speculum, 69 (Jan., 2014), 66–95.
Lost and Found in Translation: The Heart of Vernacular Theology in Late
Medieval Italy. Eliana Corbari. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 263–79.
“She is the Second St. Clare”: The Exemplum of Jehanne de Neuville, Abbess of
Longchamp, in a Fourteenth-Century Defense of Women by Jehan Le Fèvre.
Linda Barney Burke. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 325–60.
The History as a Pendulum: The Actus and the Fioretti. Antonio Montefusco.
Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 361–73.
A Law of War? English Protection and Destruction of Ecclesiastical Property
during the Fourteenth Century. Rory Cox. English Historical Review,
CXXVIII (Dec., 2013), 1381–1417.
Les chartreux et la résolution du Grand Schisme d’Occident (1392–1409). Hélène
Millet. Annales du Midi, 125 (Apr.–June, 2013), 271–90.
Jean Gerson, Marguerite Porete and Romana Guarnieri. The Evidence Reconsidered. Elizabeth A. R. Brown. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec.,
2013), 693–734.
Patronage and brokerage in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands. The case of
the chapter of Saint-Gudule and Saint-Michael in Brussels (1430–1555).
Bram Van Hofstraeten. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013),
735–58.
Dévotions à Toulouse au XVe siècle autour du saint suaire de Cadouin-Toulouse.
Michelle Fournié. Annales du Midi, 125 (Apr.–June, 2013), 291–308.
Legature antiche con frammenti liturgici in incunaboli della Newberry Library di
Chicago: il caso Italia. Gionata Brusa and Timoty Leonardi. Aevum,
LXXXVII (May–Aug., 2013), 555–77.
De viris illustribus ordinis praedicatorum. A “Classical” Genre in Dominican Hands.
Anne Huijbers. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 297–324.
Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform: Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg
and Strasbourg. Rita Voltmer. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 71–88.
Des hôpitaux de métiers à Bruxelles? Nouvelles perspectives sur la charité et la
bienfaisance en milieu urbain à la fin du Moyen Âge. Thibault Jacobs. Revue
Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 91 (2, 2013), 215–55.
The Vitae of Leading Italian Preachers of the Franciscan Observance: Fifteenth
and Sixteenth-Century Hagiographical Constructions. Ippolita Checcoli.
Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 281–95.

418

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Raphael’s Transfiguration and an Outline of a Head in the Louvre Drapery Study.
Eun-Sung Juliana Kang. Master Drawings, 51 (Winter, 2013), 435–44.
Riforma della Chiesa e riforma della predicazione: la precettistica ecclesiastica sul
predicare nel XVI secolo. Samuele Giombi. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 89–
112.
Between Pulpit and Reformation: The “Confessions” of François Lambert. Pietro
Delcorno. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 113–33.
From Lateran V to Trent: Reformations of the Religious Orders, Power and Society in a French Diocese: Clermont (1512–1560). Grégory Goudot. Franciscan
Studies, 71 (2013), 135–46.
La lotta alle superstizioni: Obiettivi e discussioni dal Libellus al Concilio di Trento.
Vincenzo Lavenia. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 163–81.
Reformation, Renaissance und Hermetismus: Kontexte und Schnittstellen der
frühen reformatorischen Bewegung. Friedemann Stengel. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct., 2013), 35–81.
High clergy and printers: anti-Reformation polemic in the kingdom of Poland,
1520–36. Natalia Nowakowska. Historical Research, 87 (Feb., 2014), 43–64.
Institutionalization of Disorder: The Franciscan Third Order and Canonical
Change in the Sixteenth Century. Alison More. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013),
147–62.
Bishop John Fisher’s Response to Martin Luther and Defense of Scholasticism.
Thomas P. Scheck. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 463–509.
Erasmus against Augustine and Wittenberg: The Ecclesiastes and the De doctrina
christiana. Christopher Boyd Brown. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104
(Oct., 2013), 9–34.
Thomas More and Charles V (Part II/III)—A good servant of the Queen. Eugenio
Olivares Merino. Moreana, 50 (Dec., 2013), 187–228.
“And your daughters shall prophesy!” Luther, Reforming Women and the Construction of Authority. Charlotte Methuen. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,
104 (Oct., 2013), 82–109.
“To Sweeten the Bitter Dance”: The Virgin Martyrs in the Lutheran Reformation.
Margaret Arnold. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct., 2013), 110–33.
Erinnerungstrategien in Zeiten des Wandels: Zur Bedeutung der Reformation als
Generationserfahrung im Spiegel sächsischer Leichenpredigten für adlige
Beamte. Ulrike Ludwig. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct., 2013),
158–84.
I superstiti di Otranto e l’ombra dell’Islam. Giovanni Ricci. Franciscan Studies, 71
(2013), 183–96.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

419

I libertini di Giovanni Calvino: Ricezione e utilizzo polemico di un termine neotestamentario. Federico Zuliani. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct.,
2013), 211–44.
“True Faith, Christian Living, and a Blessed Death.” Sixteenth-Century Funeral
Sermons as Evangelical Proclamation. Irene Dingel. Lutheran Quarterly,
XXVII (Winter, 2013), 399–420.
Vasari on the Jews: Christian Canon, Conversion, and the Moses of Michelangelo.
Gerd Blum. Art Bulletin, XCV (Dec., 2013), 557–77.
Le Catéchisme de Heidelberg. Sa naissance, son profil théologique et l’histoire de
sa recherche. Christophe Strohm. Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses,
93 (Oct.–Dec., 2013), 499–517.
A ‘Foreign’ Elite? The Territorial Origins of the Canons and Prelates of the Cathedral Chapter of Vilna in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century. Wioletta
Pawlikowska-Butterwick. Slavonic and East European Review, 92 (Jan., 2014),
44–80.
Reimagining Religious Identity: The Moor in Dutch and English Pamphlets,
1550–1620. Gary K. Waite. Renaissance Quarterly, 66 (Winter, 2013), 1250–
95.
‘Semipelagianism’: The Origins of the Term and its Passage into the History of
Heresy. Irena Backus and Aza Goudriaan. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65
(Jan., 2014), 25–46.
Juan de la Peña y Mancio de Corpus Christi sobre Martín Lutero. La respuesta
escolástico-salmantina al problema del poder normativo de las autoridades
humanas. Sebastián Contreras. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec.,
2013), 760–78.
The Birth of a Maxim: “A Bishop Has No Territory.” Tyler Lange. Speculum, 69
(Jan., 2014), 128–47.
Changing Cosmology, Changing Perspectives on History and Politics: Christianity
and Yang Tingyun’s (1562–1627) Reflections on China. Yu-Yin Cheng. Journal of World History, 24 (Sept., 2013), 499–537.
“Zum Andenken und zur Ehre Gottes”: Kunst und Frömmigkeit im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum. Bridget Heal. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104
(Oct., 2013), 185–210.
Papal Power and University Control in Early Modern Italy: Bologna and Gregory
XIII. David A. Lines. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLIV (Fall, 2013), 663–82.
A Short Reformation? A Case for Recalculating the Chronology of Religious
Change in Sixteenth-Century England. Ben Lowe. Anglican and Episcopal
History, 82 (Dec., 2013), 409–47.
Recusancy and the Rising Generation. Lucy Underwood. Recusant History, 31
(Oct., 2013), 511–33.

420

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Lion, the Witch, and the King: Thomas Stapleton’s Apologia pro Rege
Catholico Philippo II (1592). Jan Machielsen. English Historical Review,
CXXIX (Feb., 2014), 19–46.
Saint François de Sales et la robe annécienne. Quelques aspects de la religion des
officiers du Genevois (XVIe–XVIIe siècles). Laurent Perrillat. Revue d’histoire
de l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec., 2013), 277–91.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
Matériaux pour servir à l’histoire du Tiers-Ordre séculier à l’époque moderne.
Répertoire des congrégations, France, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles. Pierre Moracchini. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 106 (Jan.–June, 2013), 483–567.
The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory. JohnPaul A. Ghobrial. Past & Present, No. 222 (Feb., 2014), 51–93.
Coexistence pédagogique et antagonismes confessionnels. Les collèges “mi-parti”
dans le Sud-Est de la France au XVIIe siècle (1604–1664). Boris Noguès.
Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec., 2013), 259–76.
The English Merchant and the Moroccan Sufi: Messianism and Mahdism in the
Early Seventeenth Century. Nabil Matar. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65
(Jan., 2014), 47–65.
Geistlicher und weltlicher Spiegel. Zur Geschichte des ersten Klarissenklosters St.
Trinitatis, Beatae Mariae et S. Clarae in Münster (1613–1811). Ancilla
Röttger, OSC. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 106 (Jan.–June, 2013),
457–81.
Tramandare una memoria scelta: le cronache dei Collegi gesuitici. Il caso goriziano
nel contesto austriaco (secoli XVII–XVIII). Claudio Ferlan. Rivista di Storia
e Letteratura Religiosa, XLIX (2, 2013), 315–48.
[Uno] Miracolo da far stupire: Transformation and Il Guercino’s “St. Francis in
Ecstasy with St. Benedict.” Steven E. Plank. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013),
445–61.
Dévots et fondations de couvents en Auvergne au XVIIe siècle. Grégory Goudot.
Revue historique, 136 (Oct., 2013), 833–74.
Notre Dame du Bon Succès or Our Lady of Aberdeen—a Pre-Reformation statue
from Scotland? Ray McAleese. Records of the Scottish Church History Society,
XLII (2013), 74–103.
“A known holy body, with an inscription and a name”: Bishop Sancho Dávila y
Toledo and the Creation of St. Vitalis. Katie A. Harris. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct., 2013), 245–71.
The Religious Marketplace: Public Disputations in Civil War and Interregnum
England. Bernard Capp. English Historical Review, CXXIX (Feb., 2014), 47–
78.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

421

I servizi dei cappuccini nel santuario di Loreto: il ms. AB 14 dell’Archivio Generale
dell’Ordine. Giuseppe Avarucci. Collectanea franciscana, 83 (3–4, 2013), 451–
89.
Notizie Historiche (continuazione). Giancarlo Caputi. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, 74 (2013), 3–62.
English Roots and French Connections: The English Benedictine Nuns in Paris.
J.T. Rhodes. Recusant History, 31 (Oct., 2013), 535–47.
“Diligence in his ministrie”: Languages of Clerical Sufficiency in Mid-Seventeenth
Century Scotland. Chris R. Langley. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104
(Oct., 2013), 272–96.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation and the idea of hunger. A close reading of two
appeals for alms from the Paris area in the year 1662. Eivind Engebretsen.
Social History, 38 (Nov., 2013), 477–96.
God’s Terrible Voice: Liturgical Response to the Great Fire of London. Jack
Gilpin. Anglican and Episcopal History, 82 (Sept., 2013), 318–34.
Frontière, identité, parenté. Le cas des chanoines “allemands” du grand chapitre de
la cathédrale de Strasbourg après l’annexion française de 1681. Éric Hassler.
Francia, 40 (2013), 95–112.
La saisie d’une bibliothèque pastorale à Baugé en octobre 1685. Margreet Dieleman. Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 159 (Oct.–
Dec., 2013), 623–56.
Conceptualizing the Priest: Lay and Episcopal Expectations of Clerical Reform in
Late Seventeenth-Century Padua. Celeste McNamara. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 104 (Oct., 2013), 297–320.
Die Hugenottenaufnahme als Katalysator der Idee des Populationismus. Justus
Nipperdey. Francia, 40 (2013), 113–38.
Martinus Steyaert and His 235 Rules for Reading Scripture in Seventeenth-Century Louvain. Els Agten. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013),
780–807.
‘Shared Protestantism’ and British identity: contrasting church governance practices in eighteenth-century Scotland and England. Alistair Mutch. Social History, 38 (Nov., 2013), 456–76.
The Occasional Conformity Controversy, Moderation, and the Anglican Critique
of Modernity, 1700–1714. Brent S. Sirota. Historical Journal, 57 (Mar., 2014),
81–105.
Du Pin in England. Dennis R. Di Mauro. Anglican and Episcopal History, 82 (June,
2013), 180–208.
Religion and Enlightenment (Review Essay). Simon Grote. Journal of the History of
Ideas, 75 (Jan., 2014), 137–60.

422

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Il Castelvetro di Muratori. Storia, religione e diritto tra le carte dell’Estense.
Manuela Bragagnolo. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, XLIX (2, 2013),
351–86.
Un puzzle multiséculaire. Jalons pour reconstituer la bibliothèque clermontoise de
Saint-Allyre. II. La Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum de Montfaucon et ses sources.
Monique Peyrafort-Huin. Scriptorium, LXVII (1, 2013), 87–118.
Converting Mrs. Crouch: Women, Wonders and the Formation of English
Methodism, 1738–1741. Brian Curtis Clark and Joanna Cruickshank. Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (Jan., 2014), 66–83.
Documents inédits sur le voyage de dom Calmet en Suisse (1748). Gilles Banderier. Revue Bénédictine, 123 (Dec., 2013), 370–81.
Sur la construction des identités confessionnelles dans l’Allemagne du XVIIIe
siècle. Dominique Julia. Annales, 68 (Oct.–Dec., 2013), 1141–51.
The Library of Bryant Barrett, Laceman and Country Squire. Frans Korsten, Jos
Blom and Frans Blom. Recusant History, 31 (Oct., 2013), 549–72.
The Standing of New Subjects: Grenada and the Protestant Constitution after the
Treaty of Paris (1763). Aaron Willis. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History, 42 (Feb., 2014), 1–21.
Elizabeth Inchbald’s ‘Catholic Novel’ and Its Local Background. Francis Young.
Recusant History, 31 (Oct., 2013), 573–92.
Gabriel (Simon Joseph) Schmitt. Ein Franziskaner angesichts der Herausforderung von Aufklärung und Revolution am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts.
Johannes Schlageter, OFM. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 76 (2, 2013), 214–52.

NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Presbyterian governance in practice: Monymusk 1790–1825. Alistair Mutch.
Records of the Scottish Church History Society, XLII (2013), 1–34.
Chateaubriand y el Reencuentro con el Cristianismo. Arsenio Ginzo Fernández.
La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXVI (Sept.–Dec., 2013), 593–633.
Les évêques concordataires membres de l’ordre de la Légion d’honneur. Une nouvelle approche de l’histoire des relations entre l’Église et l’État au XIXe siècle.
Jacques-Olivier Boudon. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec.,
2013), 293–315.
Reconciliation and Revival: Bishop Daniel Sandford of Edinburgh, 1766–1830.
Eleanor Harris. Records of the Scottish Church History Society, XLII (2013), 35–
73
Las dos supresiones de la Inquisición durante la Guerra de la Independencia. Manuel
Revuelta González. Miscelánea Comillas, 71 (July–Dec., 2013), 221–63.
Marie Madeleine d’Houët and the Jesuits: A Complex Relationship. Brian
O’Leary. Milltown Studies, 71 (Summer, 2013), 1–44.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

423

Anti-Catholicism in Bath from 1820 to 1870. Brian Griffin. Recusant History, 31
(Oct., 2013), 593–611.
La mission d’humanisation de l’Église dans une société désacralisée: actualité de
l’intuition d’Eugène de Mazenod. Franco Salvatore, O.M.I. Revue des Sciences
Religieuses, 88 (Jan., 2014), 95–122.
P. Giovanni Battista Rosani di S. Girolamo, XXVI Prepósito General de la Orden
de las Escuelas Pías (1836–1844) (continuación). Adolfo García-Durán.
Archivum Scholarum Piarum, 74 (2013), 103–96.
Peel, De Grey and Irish Policy, 1841–1844. Charles Read. History, 99 (Jan., 2014),
1–18.
La restauración de la Librería de Coro del Monasterio del Escorial realizada en
1854. José Sierra Pérez. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXVI (Sept.–Dec., 2013),
703–25.
Civil War of 1860 in Lebanon: A local Christian narrative. Naila Takieddine Kaidbey. Parole de l’Orient, 37 (2012), 333–61.
Il potere temporale e la Chiesa delle origini nella pubblicistica di Sicilia (1860). Salvatore Vacca. Laurentianum, 54 (3, 2013), 379–97.
An Ecclesiastical Descent: Religion and History in the Work of William Stubbs.
J. E. Kirby. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (Jan., 2014), 84–110.
The Protestant Influence on the Origins of Irish Home Rule, 1861–1871. J. J.
Golden. English Historical Review, CXXVIII (Dec., 2013), 1483–1516.
Don Bosco, promotore della pubblicazione degli scritti inediti del p. Canata (1811–
1867). Goffredo Cianfrocca. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, 74 (2013), 63–77.
Il carteggio di Onofrio Trippodo (1876–1932) con Blondel e Gentile. Salvatore
Corso. Laurentianum, 54 (3, 2013), 417–535.
Lyon, 1879–1906. Le long conflit de la chapelle expiatoire des Brotteaux construite
à la mémoire des victimes de la répression du siège de 1793. Joseph-Michel
Charlas. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 99 (July–Dec., 2013), 317–40.
Religion Meets Politics: The Korean Royal Family and American Protestant Missionaries in Late Joseon Korea. Dae Young Ryu. Journal of Church and State,
55 (Winter, 2013), 113–33.
The Circumstances Relating to the Arrival of the Divine Word Missionaries in the
Philippines at the Dawn of the 20th Century. Michael Layugan. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 809–38.
Église et État en Éthiopie pendant le règne du dernier Négus Haïle Sélassié (1916–
1974). Paolo Borruso. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013),
908–28.
La gerarchia cattolica italiana e la questione linguistica in diocesi plurinazionali. Il
caso della Chiesa di Rijeka (Fiume) durante il fascismo. Marko Medved.
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 931–52.

424

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

La foi psychiatrique. Catholicisme et médecine de l’âme au Portugal (c. 1925–c.
1967). Tiago Pires Marques. Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 58 (July–
Sept., 2013), 103–21.
Establishment of Capuchin Order in India III: Transplantation into homely soil
(1927–1948). Benedict Vadakkekara. Collectanea franciscana, 83 (3–4, 2013),
491–530.
La Casti connubii, il magistero e la legge naturale: note sulla storia della genesi del
documento pontificio. Lucia Pozzi. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (3, 2013),
799–822.
Le due esposizioni della SS. Sindone (1931–1933) e la ‘sacralizzazione della politica’ nel Ventennio. Giovanni Graglia. Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi,
XLVI (2012), 333–59.
Collateralismo e disimpegno. Chiesa e cattolici in Austria tra autoritarismo e
democrazia (1932–1952). Luca Lecis. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–
Dec., 2013), 876–905.
Alan Coates Bouquet (1884–1976): Twentieth-Century Foundations for an Anglican Theology of Religion. Kenneth Cracknell. Anglican Theological Review, 96
(Winter, 2014), 91–108.
El Cardenal Pacelli ante el comienzo de la guerra de España en 1936. Vicente
Cárcel Ortí. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 954–89.
La compleja cuestión de la violencia anticlerical durante la guerra civil española.
Manuel Álvarez Tardío. Razón y Fe, 268 (Oct., 2013), 277–87.
Offended Christians, Anti-Mission Churches and Colonial Politics: One Man’s
Story of the Messy Birth of the African Orthodox Church in Kenya. Joseph
William Black. Journal of Religion in Africa, 43 (3, 2013), 261–96.
La psychanalyse entre médiatisation et censure. La morale sexuelle de Marc Oraison en procès (1955–1966). Agnès Desmazières. Archives de sciences sociales des
religions, 58 (July–Sept., 2013), 123–40.
Les relations entre le Cardinal Montini/Pape Paul VI et Monseigneur/Cardinal J.
Willebrands. Mathijs Lamberigts and Leo Declerck. Istituto Paolo VI,
notiziario n. 66 (Dec., 2013), 29–48.
Geschichtliches Denken und Reform der Kirche. Peter Hünermann. Cristianesimo
nella storia, 34 (3, 2013), 741–53.
La biografia di Giuseppe Dossetti e la biografia di una generazione. Renato Moro.
Cristianesimo nella storia, 34 (3, 2013), 755–71.
David Maria Turoldo. Ricognizione bibliografica su un protagonista della chiesa
italiana del Novecento. Mariangela Maraviglia. Cristianesimo nella storia, 34
(3, 2013), 879–926.
Tres teólogos perseguidos y diferentemente rehabilitados: Y.-M. Congar, B.
Häring y K. Rahner. Jesús Martínez Gordo. Scriptorium Victoriense, LX (Jan.–
June, 2013), 89–132.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

425

A Sacred Duty to Resist Tyranny? Rethinking the Role of the Catholic Church in
Nigeria’s Struggle for Democracy. Ebenezer Obadare. Journal of Church and
State, 55 (Winter, 2013), 92–112.
Los gobiernos de Arias Navarro y la Iglesia (1974–1975). Pablo Martín de Santa
Olalla Saludes. Miscelánea Comillas, 71 (July–Dec., 2013), 293–326.
Religious Revival and the Political Activity of Religious Communities in Estonia
During the Process of Liberation and the Collapse of the Soviet Union 1985–
1991. Priit Rohtmets and Ringo Ringvee. Religion, State and Society, 41 (4,
2013), 355–93.

AMERICAN
“Therefore Ye Are No More Strangers and Foreigners”: Indians, Christianity and
Political Engagement in Colonial Plymouth and on Martha’s Vineyard. Jason
Eden. American Indian Quarterly, 38 (Winter, 2014), 36–59.
“An Entire Affection and Attachment to our Excellent Constitution”: The Anglican Political Culture of British Virginia. Taylor Stoerman. Anglican and Episcopal History, 82 (Sept., 2013), 253–88.
“Engaged in the Same Glorious Cause”: Anglo-American Connections in the
American Missionary Entrance into India, 1790–1815. Emily L. ConroyKrutz. Journal of the Early Republic, 34 (Spring, 2014), 21–44.
Free and Freed Shakers and Affiliates of African Descent at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Vickie Cimprich. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 111
(Autumn, 2013), 489–523.
The Case for Sunday Mails: Sabbath Laws and the Separation of Church and State
in Jacksonian America. Tim Verhoeven. Journal of Church and State, 55
(Winter, 2013), 71–91.
Piety and Profession: Simon Greenleaf and the Case of the Stillborn Bowdoin Law
School, 1850–1861. Alfred S. Konefsky. New England Quarterly, LXXXV (4,
2012), 695–734.
Walther’s View on Slavery. Thomas Manteufel. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 86 (Winter, 2013), 12–23.
The Furnace of Dreams: An Account of Soldiers, Pastors, and Chaplains During
the American Civil War (1861–1865). Jack D. Ferguson. Concordia Historical
Institute Quarterly, 86 (Winter, 2013), 24–64.
Sanctified Manhood: Theology and Identity in the Southern Holiness Movement.
Colin B. Chapell. Journal of the Historical Society, 13 (Dec., 2013), 465–90.
The Moral and Religious Ideals of Students at Vassar College and Wellesley College, 1865–1900. Ángel de Jesús Cortes. History of Intellectual Culture, 9 (1,
2010/11), 1–14.

426

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

“I Call You Cousins”: Kinship, Religion, and Black-Indian Relations in Nineteenth-Century Michigan. Christina Dickerson-Cousin. Ethnohistory, 61
(Winter, 2014), 79–98.
Danish Lutheran Pietists and the Cherokee. Maria Erling. Lutheran Quarterly,
XXVII (Winter, 2013), 421–38.
“To Make All Your People Saints:” Mother Katharine’s Schools in Rural
Louisiana. Amanda Bresie. Catholic Southwest, 24 (2013), 30–47.
“Every Day is a New Beginning”: Lela Gordon Mouton and Saint Katharine
Drexel’s Rural School at Prairie Basse, Louisiana. Richard Fossey and Nancy
Autin. Catholic Southwest, 24 (2013), 48–59.
“A Missionary from the East to the Western Pagans”: Kagawa Toyohiko’s 1936
U.S. Tour. Robert Shaffer. Journal of World History, 24 (Sept., 2013), 577–
621.
The Prophetic Conflict: Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and World War II.
William C. Inboden. Diplomatic History, 38 (Jan., 2014), 49–82.
The Virgin of San Juan del Valle: Shifting Perceptions in the Borderlands. Robert
E. Wright, O.M.I. Catholic Southwest, 24 (2013), 3–29.
The Tragedy of Prince Edward: The Religious Turn and the Destabilization of
One Parish’s Resistance to Integration, 1963–1965. J. Michael Utzinger.
Anglican and Episcopal History, 82 (June, 2013), 129–65.
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
Early Mendicant Mission in the New World: Discourses, Experiments, Realities.
Bert Roest. Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 197–217.
Further Thoughts on the history of the unconscious: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Malcolm K. Read. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 19 (Aug.,
2013), 159–84.
Vitoria’s Ideas of Supernatural and Natural Sovereignty: Adam and Eve’s Marriage, the Uncivil Amerindians, and the Global Christian Nation. Toy-Fung
Tung. Journal of the History of Ideas, 75 (Jan., 2014), 45–68.
The Presence and Memory of Islam During the “Spiritual Conquest” of the New
World (Sixteenth Century): A Brazilian Case Study. Alessandro Vanoli.
Franciscan Studies, 71 (2013), 219–36.
La orden de San Agustín del Alto Perú en el Archivo General de Indias y en el
Histórico Nacional de Madrid (I). Emiliano Sánchez Pérez, OSA. Revista
Agustiniana, LIV (Jan.–Apr., 2013), 161–97.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

427

Painting Andean Liminalities at the Church of Andahuaylillas, Cuzco, Peru.
Amanda Cohen Suarez. Colonial Latin American Review, 22 (Dec., 2013),
369–99.
El padre jerónimo Diego Cisneros, un monje sin monasterio. Su vida en Lima
(1772–1812). Francisco Javier Campos y Fernández de Sevilla. La Ciudad de
Dios, CCXXVI (Sept.–Dec., 2013), 663–702.
Amores perritos: Puppies, Laughter and Popular Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico
City. Frank ‘Trey’ Proctor III. Journal of Latin American Studies, 46 (Feb.,
2014), 1–28.
The Diocese of Durango and the Rise of the Mexican Church: The Last Decade
of Spanish El Paso, 1811–1821. Rick Hendricks. Catholic Southwest, 24
(2013), 60–76.
La Santa Sede e la Cristiada (1926–1929). Paolo Valvo. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 840–74.
Riccardo Lombardi e il Sudamerica. Il sogno di “Un Mondo Migliore.” Gianni La
Bella. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 108 (July–Dec., 2013), 992–1015.
Catholic Action, the Second Vatican Council, and the Emergence of the New Left
in El Salvador (1950–1975). Joaquín M. Chávez. The Americas, 70 (Jan.,
2014), 459–87.
Le rôle des évêques latino-américains dans le groupe “Jésus, l’Église et les pauvres”
durant le Concile Vatican II. Pierre Sauvage. Revue théologique de Louvain, 44
(Oct.–Dec., 2013), 560–79.

Other Books Received
Beckett, Sister Wendy. Sister Wendy on the Art of Christmas. (Cincinnati: Franciscan
Media. 2013. Pp. vii, 56. $14.99 paperback.)
———. Sister Wendy on the Art of Mary. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media. 2013. Pp.
viii, 56. $14.99 paperback.)
———. Sister Wendy on the Art of Saints. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media. 2013. Pp.
viii, 56. $14.99 paperback.) Each of fourteen saints from John the Baptist to
Thérèse of Lisieux is accorded a full page, full-color illustration and three
pages of text, except the last, who is shown in a photograph.
Black, Robert. Machiavelli. (New York: Routledge. 2013. Pp. xxviii, 376. $39.95
paperback.)
Caster, Gary. Joseph: The Man Who Raised Jesus. (Cincinnati: Servant Books, an
imprint of Franciscan Media. 2013. Pp. xiv, 129. $14.99 paperback.)
*Chatenet, Monique, and Claude Mignot (Eds.). L’architecture religieuse européenne
au temps des Réformes: Héritage de la Renaissance et nouvelles problématiques. [De
Architectura.] (Paris: Éditions A et J Picard. 2009. Pp. 294. €52,00 paperback.)
*Clarke, Peter, and Tony Claydon (Eds.). The Church, the Afterlife, and the Fate of
the Soul: Papers Read at the 2007 Summer Meeting and the 2008 Winter Meeting
of the Ecclesiastical History Society. [Studies in Church History, Vol. 45.]
(Rochester, NY: Ecclesiastical History Society in association with Boydell
Press. 2009. Pp. xxiv, 429. $90.00 clothbound.)
*Duffin, Jacalyn. Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World.
(New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. Pp. xviii, 285. $29.95 clothbound.)
*Elliott, Marianne. When God Took Sides; Religion and Identity in Ireland—Unfinished History. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 330. $34.95
clothbound.)
Foley, Leonard, O.F.M. (Ed.). Saint of the Day: Updated and Expanded. Revised by
Pat McCloskey, O.F.M. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media. 2013. Pp. xxiv, 371.
$19.99 paperback.)
*Gilli, Patrick, Jacques Verger, and Daniel Le Blévec (Eds.). Les universités et la
ville au Moyen Âge: Cohabitation et tension. [Education and Society in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vol. 30.] (Leiden: Brill. 2007. Pp. viii, 371.
$129.00 clothbound.)
*Books that were sent out for review but of which no review has ever been received
despite several reminders are indicated by an asterisk.

428

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

429

Girzone, Joseph F. Stories of Jesus: 40 Days of Prayer and Reflection. (Cincinnati:
Franciscan Media. 2014. Pp. x, 148. $14.99 paperback.)
*Gootjes, Nicolaas H. The Belgic Confession: Its History and Sources. [Texts and
Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought.] (Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic. 2007. Pp. 229. $29.99 paperback.)
*Gresko, Jacqueline. Traditions of Faith and Service: Archdiocese of Vancouver 1908–
2008. (Vancouver: Archdiocese of Vancouver. 2008. Pp. 285. C$39.00 paperback.)
*Hägermann, Dieter. Das Papsttum am Vorabend des Investiturstreits: Stephan IX.
(1057–1058), Benedikt X. (1058) und Nikolaus II. (1058–1061). [Päpste und
Papsttum, Vol. 36.] (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag. 2008. Pp. xii, 247.
€138,00 clothbound.)
Haye, Thomas. Päpste und Poeten. Die mittelalterliche Kurie als Objekt und Förderer panegyrischer Dichtung. (New York: Walter de Gruyter. 2009. Pp. 326. $196.00.)
Heidegger, Martin. The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus.
Trans. Ted Sadler. (New York: Bloomsbury. 2013. Pp. xviii, 283. $19.95
paperback.)
*Helfferich, Tryntje (Ed. and Trans.). The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History.
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. 2009. Pp. xxii, 332. $16.95 paperback.)
*Hildebrand, Stephen M. The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis
of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2007. Pp. xvi, 254. $59.96 clothbound.)
Irwin, Kevin W. Serving the Body of Christ: The Magisterium on Eucharist and
Ordained Priesthood. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 2013. Pp. viii, 148. $18.95
paperback.)
*Johnson, William Bruce. Miracles and Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, the Church, and
Film Censorship in Hollywood. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2008.
Pp. vii, 516. $35.00 paperback.)
Kratz, Reinhard G., and Bernhard Neuschäfer. Die Göttinger Septuaginta. Ein editorisches Jahrhundertprojekt. [Abhandlungen der Akadamie der Wissenschaften
zu Göttingen. Neue Folge, Band 22; Mitteilungen des SeptuagintaUnternehmens (MSU), XXX.] (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 2013. Pp. viii,
430. $168.00 clothbound.)
*Lionarons, Joyce Tally. The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan: A Critical
Study. [Anglo-Saxon Studies, Vol. 14.] (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, an
imprint of Boydell & Brewer. 2010. Pp. viii, 194. $99.00 clothbound.)
Luther, Martin. On the Freedom of a Christian, with Related Texts. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Tryntje Helfferich. (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing. Pp. xxviii, 132. 2013. $10.00 paperback.)
Markulin, Joseph. Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books. 2013. Pp. 720 $21.95 paperback.)

430

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

*Massa, Mark, with Catherine Osborne (Eds.). American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader. (New York: New York University Press. 2008. Pp. 287.
$25.00 paperback.)
McAvera, Brian. Patrick Pye: Life and Work. A Counter-Cultural Story. (Dublin:
Four Courts Press. Distrib. ISBS, Portland, OR. 2013. Pp. x, 126. $55.00
clothbound.)
*Michael, Robert. Holy Hatred: Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust. (New
York: Palgrave, an imprint of Macmillan. 2006. Pp. x, 254. $24.95 clothbound.)
*Prodi, Paolo. Il paradigma tridentino. Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa. (Brescia:
Editrice Morcelliana. 2010. Pp. 232. €18,00 paperback.)
Reid, Jennifer. Finding Kluskap: A Journey into Mi’kmaw Myth. [Signifying (on)
Scriptures.] (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2013.
Pp. vi, 122. $64.95 clothbound.)
Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Ed.). Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World. Second edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press. 2013. Pp. xxviii, 524. $57.95 paperback.)
———. A Short History of the Middle Ages. Fourth edition. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 368. $52.95 paperback.)
Schmitt, Bill. Words of Life: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Hesburgh Library’s Message,
Mural, and Meaning. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2013.
Pp. xvi, 160. $35.00 paperback.) Large format with numerous illustrations.
Semeraro, Cosimo (Ed.). La Sollecitudine Ecclesiale di Pio XI. Alla luce delle nuove
fonti archivistiche. [Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche. Atti e Documenti, 31.] (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2010. Pp. 487. €40,00
clothbound.)
*Skarsaune, Oskar, and Reidar Hvalvik (Eds.). Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early
Centuries. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers. 2007. Pp. xxx, 930.
$49.95 clothbound.)
Taylor, Patrick. Fingal O’Reilly, Irish Doctor. (New York: Forge Books. 2013. Pp.
431. $24.99 clothbound.) A novel.
———. The Wily O’Reilly: Irish Country Stories. (New York: Forge Books. 2014.
Pp. 335. $25.99 clothbound.) Fiction.
Walters, Kerry. John Paul II: A Short Biography. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media.
2014. Pp. x, 53. $4.99 paperback.)
———. John XXIII: A Short Biography. (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media. 2014. Pp.
x, 52. $4.99 paperback.)
*Weakland, Rembert G., O.S.B. A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a
Catholic Archbishop. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
2009. Pp. xiv, 429. $35.00 clothbound.)