Angelyn Dries, O.S.F.
President
The American Catholic Historical Association
2015
Photo by Daniel Nicholas
vi

THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 102

SPRING, 2016

NO. 2

“Perils of Ocean and Wilderness”:
A Field Guide to North American
Catholic History
ANGELYN DRIES, O.S.F.*
The author examines situations over three centuries that reveal North
American Catholic perspectives toward ocean, wilderness, and the
environment. In the process, connections among the land, water, communities of Catholics, the common good, and the ability to observe these
relationships move the environment from being an object to being a
subject of history. The author suggests a gathering of scholars from a
variety of disciplines to explore more fully a new field of North American Catholic history.
Keywords: environment; maps; missionaries; North American
Catholic history; wilderness

S

ometimes a new problem or a new question provides a pause to consider how we think about what we think about in historical analysis.
This ACHA presidential address is, in some ways, an experiment in an
interpretative framework for North American Catholic history through a
focus on Catholic perspectives toward ocean and wilderness, water and
land over several centuries. The address is also a call for scholars of North
American Catholic history to work together on such an endeavor in a systematized manner.
I have taken the first half of the title of my address, “Perils of Ocean
and Wilderness,” from John Gilmary Shea, acknowledged as the first historian of American Catholic history.1 I will return to him in a moment. My
*Sister Angelyn is professor emerita of American Christianity at Saint Louis University.
1. See Peter Guilday, John Gilmary Shea: Father of American Catholic History, 1824–
1892 (New York, 1926). For analysis of Shea’s historiography, see Henry Warner Bowden,

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topic also reflects the geologic underpinnings of my home state, Wisconsin. Within a half mile of my house, I pass by a large piece of exposed
bedrock, over which flows the Milwaukee River toward Lake Michigan.
We are talking about rock formed 416 to 358 million years ago. Two miles
east of my house is the Niagara escarpment, a 1000-mile ridge that runs
from New York through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, a
structure for the formation of the Great Lakes.
Another influence on my address is my family background. As children, my brothers and I traipsed through farmland with my father during
Wisconsin autumns, looking for arrowheads in the plowed fields.2 The
names of a vast number of cities, towns, and rivers in the state are those
given them by Native Americans. When I was a child, spelling prowess
included “Kinnickinnic” and “Oconomowoc” right up there with being
able to spell “Mississippi.”
In another direction, my home state’s attention to the perils of land
and water can be traced through establishment of Earth Day in 1970 by
Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson (1916–2005);3 through Aldo
Leopold (1887–1948), the land ethic conservationist;4 John Muir (1836–
1914), the naturalist, who spent his boyhood and youth in the state; Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932), famed for his 1893 paper on the frontier in American history;5 and Jesuit Louis Nicolas (1634–82), who
“John Gilmary Shea: A Study of Method and Goals in Historiography,” The Catholic Historical Review, 54 (1968), 235–60; Philip Gleason, “The Historiography of American Catholicism as Reflected in The Catholic Historical Review, 1915–2015,” in Centennial Issue no. 2,
The Catholic Historical Review, 101 (2015), 156–222.
2. Today there are eleven federally recognized tribal reservations in Wisconsin, most in
the mid and northern part of the state. Milwaukee is one of the few cities in the United States
with urban Native Americans, including the Catholic Congregation of the Great Spirit (1989
to the present) that succeeded the Siggenauk Center, the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocesan
urban outreach to Native Americans.
3. Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the
First Green Generation (New York, 2014), demonstrates the large number of diverse groups
that were called upon not only to do “teach-ins” but also sustained the environmental movement thereafter. Catholics initiated and participated in various Earth Day events, including
the Irish American Richard Garrett, head of the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association. He
had firsthand knowledge of the effect on the fish of toxic materials discharged into Croton
and Hudson Rivers over many years. Ibid., pp. 197–202.
4. Leopold is best known for his Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
(New York, 1949; commemorative ed., 1987), in which he wrote about the “Conservation
Esthetic,” pp. 165–76, and “The Land Ethic,” pp. 201–26.
5. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,”
Report of the American Historical Association (Chicago, 1893), pp. 199–227.

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sketched the first natural history of Wisconsin in the 1660s.6 Leopold,
Muir, and Turner all lived within twenty-five miles of Portage, Wisconsin,
the same spot that Jacques Marquette, S.J., and Louis Joliet traveled in
1673 to locate the mouth of the Mississippi River.7
I thus come to my topic literally grounded in the subject of “ocean and
wilderness.” What attraction do these elements have for the Catholic
imagination?8 Theologically, Catholic sacraments reveal something about
entrance into and sustainability of Catholic life through a physical base
often related to nature. The use of water, oil, wheat, and wine in the context of Christian community creates and sustains a profound Catholic
identity. Does this “sacramental mind-set,” so to speak, undergird attitudes
toward the environment?
The geographic space of North America was affected by climatic and
environmental forces and the presence of Native Americans, well before
country, province, and state boundaries were constructed. Mexico and
Canada were and still are part of environment issues in the United States
and are related to labor, immigration, and politics, some of that because of
land and water formations. I will examine briefly a few people, documents,
and situations in different time periods in the four quadrants of North
America (Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest) to suggest
some possibilities for a new field of North American Catholic history.

6. Louis Nicolas, The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas. The Natural
History of the New World = Histoire Naturell de Indes Occidentales, ed. and introd. FrançoisMarc Ganon, trans. Nancy Senior, and modernization Réal Ouellet (Tulsa, 2011). Michael
Edmonds, “Father Louis Nicolas and the Natural History of Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine
of History, Autumn 2015, 28–41. Nicolas was the “first author to attempt to describe and
illustrate all the plants, wildlife and native people that he encountered between Lake Superior
and the Atlantic.” Ibid., p. 33. William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research
Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin,
has been in the forefront of the history of the environment. See, for example, Cronon, “A
Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” Journal of American History, 78 (1992),
1347–76; Cronon, “The Uses of Environmental History,” Environmental History Review, 17
(1993), 1–22.
7. The point is made in William Cronon, “Landscape and Home. Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 74 (1990–91), 82–104, here 92.
8. Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Imagination (Berkeley, 2000).

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The Northeast
1. Perils of the Ocean in the Northeast: Emmanuel Crespel
In 1856 John Gilmary Shea (1824–92) published a small book of missionary letters titled Perils of Ocean and Wilderness: OR, Narratives of Shipwreck and Indian Captivity.9 Two “perils of the ocean” stories compose half
of the Shea volume: the eight letters written by Franciscan Récollect friar
Emmanuel Crespel to his brother, Louis, in France.
Born in Douai, France in c. 1703, Crespel joined the Récollects when
he was sixteen years old, and four years later he was missioned to North
America. Ordained in Quebec in 1726, he spent many years working
among the Huron.10 Although each of his letters has the reader sitting on
the edge of the chair, so to speak, I will focus on the last two letters that
describe the shipwreck after he and fifty-four passengers left Quebec for
France. Crespel’s letters qualify as literature of adventure, survival, or deliverance, yet his writing also reveals how the thirty-three–year-old Franciscan understood his role as chaplain in relation to the peril of the ocean.11
The new ship, the Renommée, was under command of Crespel’s friend,
Captain Joseph Damours de Freneuse, who had forty-six years of sailing
experience. Surprisingly late in the season, the ship left Quebec on November 3, 1736, sailing the St. Lawrence River toward the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and then into the Atlantic Ocean. However, on November 14,
the ship ran aground on the southern tip of Anticosti Island (see figure 1).
With a storm rising, the men struggled to reach the shore in a longboat
and a dinghy.12

9. J. G. Shea, Perils of Ocean and Wilderness: OR, Narratives of Shipwreck and Indian
Captivity (Boston, 1856).
10. Three Récollect Franciscans first arrived in Quebec in 1615, primarily for pastoral
care and mission among indigenous tribes around the Great Lakes. The friars were deported
to France in 1629 when England conquered Quebec. The Récollects returned to Quebec in
1670 for the same ministry they held previously. When the English reconquered Quebec in
1759 (Treaty of Paris, 1763), seventy friars worked in New France. They could not receive
novices, and Bishop Jean François Hubert annulled the vows of any Récollect professed after
1784. The Récollects died out in Canada for the second time.
11. For details on life aboard the sailing vessels of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
see Giles Proulx, Between France and New France: Life Aboard Tall Ships (Toronto, 1984). Amy
Mitchell-Cook, A Sea of Misadventures: Shipwreck and Survival in Early America (Columbia, SC,
2013), analyzes shipwreck experiences of people of Puritan background in comparison with Portuguese shipwreck accounts that occur on voyages between Lisbon and Goa, India.
12. Shea, Perils, p. 160.

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FIGURE 1. 2002 map of Quebec that shows Anticosti Island (where the Renommée
ran aground) at upper right. Map courtesy of Atlas of Canada, Natural Resources
Canada, http://atlas.gc.ca

After setting up a makeshift camp on the island and living there for
two weeks, the captain hatched a plan: he thought the party could make its
way toward Mingan Island, where some Frenchmen had a camp. But the
two boats would hold just half the group. They could “either die in that
place or part for a time.”13 The weather continued to worsen, and Crespel
“hoped our Lord would dispose the hearts of some to let others go in
search of aid.” He offered a Mass “to draw down on us the light of the
Holy Ghost.” Later on November 26, “twenty-four men offered to remain,
if provisions were left them and a promise made on the gospel, that relief
would be sent as soon as the party got to Mingan Island.”14
Although Crespel offered to remain with the twenty-four, the men
“argued that as I knew the language of the country, I must go with the
13. Ibid., p. 163.
14. Ibid. The Mingan Islands are an archipelago of about forty islands.

“PERILS OF OCEAN AND WILDERNESS”

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party, so that if [the Captain] . . . should die, I might act as interpreter, in
case we met any Indians on the island.”15 Crespel counseled with spiritual
and practical advice. He urged the men “not to give way to despair, [but]
to abandon themselves entirely to the care of Providence,” to exercise,
“which would ward off sickness in the cold and help them avoid discouragement”; and to use sparingly the provisions left for them.
The party left on November 27: thirteen aboard the dinghy and seventeen in the longboat with provisions. The dinghy was soon lost to sight,
and the men were presumed dead when, months later, the other group
spotted the splintered remains of the smaller boat. The longboat with Crespel and the captain rounded the western tip of Anticosti Island but could
go no further because of ice. They took shelter on the island, where they
found an Indian cabin and two canoes; they used the latter to bring provisions to the land. They braced for winter. Over the months, bad weather,
illness, and fever took people, one by one.
On February 16, Captain Freneuse died, as Crespel noted, “having
received Extreme Unction.” The Franciscan counseled the others as they
became ill, heard their confessions, and urged them to trust in God. The
passengers all seemed to be Catholic, but there was at least one “Calvinist”
on board: Robert, a boatswain, who was dying. Crespel wrote,
I prepared him to make an abjuration. He was a Calvinist, and I avow
that it was not easy to make him a Catholic. Fortunately, the goodness
of the cause which I maintained supplied the stead of the necessary talents. . . . I was amazed twenty times at Robert’s arguments. . . . I exclaim—
What a pity the Calvinists are not of our communion! With what success
would they not defend the right cause, when they so vigorously sustain a
bad one? At last, Robert understood this, and chose to avoid the danger
of dying in any other creed than ours. He made an abjuration, repeated
his profession of faith, and went to receive in a better life the reward of
the evils he had suffered in this.16

At the end of April, a few Indians arrived at the cabin to retrieve their
items stored over the winter and assisted the men. The Indians and Crespel canoed to the Mingan fort on May 1, and the fort commander and
Crespel returned to the campsite. After the ordeal of seven months, only
two other passengers and the Franciscan survived the perils of the ocean.

15. Ibid., p. 164.
16. Ibid., p. 179.

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257

How had Crespel faced the perils himself? He gleaned practical
knowledge through observation. He knew how to read the wind for sailing,
was able to reef the sails as the storm gained intensity, and applied rudimentary carpentry and survival skills; he had learned some of these skills
from the Huron. His language facility made him a likely person to intercede with Indians who could assist them.
Crespel interpreted the perils as a way to develop one’s Catholic life
together, specifically through trust in God’s Providence, care for one
another in sharing provisions rather than hoarding, exercise to keep
healthy, and work together as a team to create a haven in the midst of havoc.
He was a kind of coach for virtue in perilous times. The reader almost forgets that Crespel is going through the same wilderness experience as the
rest of the party.
2. Gloucester and the Ark of the Church
The second case from the Northeast comes from Catholic life in the fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. In 1829 some Catholic Portuguese
fishermen from the Azores settled along the harbor area of the mainly Congregationalist town.17 Gloucester was the largest fishing port in the country
by 1851. In 1893, with more than 200 Portuguese Catholic families, a church
of Our Lady of Good Voyage was dedicated.18 When the church burned
down in 1914, well-known architect Halfdan Hanson (1884–1952) designed
a church that reflected the profession of many parishioners, as well as the tradition of his father, who had been a ship’s rigger. Amazing public support was
shown by the town to raise funds for the church.19
17. Between 1828 and 1833 Azoreans engaged in a Portuguese revolution against the
absolutist Dom Miguel. By that time, the archipelago had been home to a wide variety of
groups, including Flemish and “Moors.”
18. The first Portuguese arrivals attended St. Ann Parish, Rockport, but soon services
were held in Portuguese at Pew’s Hall, Gloucester. A year later, a parish under the name of
Our Lady of Good Voyage was begun with the encouragement of priest Joseph T. de Serpa,
who served the group for about a year. The first pastor was Boston-born Francisco Viera
DeBern, who arrived in Gloucester from the Azores because his parents had returned there.
In 1970 Humberto Medeiros (1915–83), born in the Azores (Arrifes São Miguel), would be
named archbishop of Boston.
19. In 1890 a “Grand Fair” was opened at City Hall by Mayor William W. French and
showcased Azorean dances as well as Fayal embroideries and laces. Some of the financial contributions for the church came from the philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner and A. Piatt
Andrew, an economist and future congressman from the area. Alice Rose Krueger, “History
of the Parish of Our Lady of Good Voyage,” privately printed, c. 1985, copy courtesy of Jim
Achadinha, pastor.

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The edifice designed in a Spanish Revival style graced the top of a hill
a few blocks from the water’s edge. Mary’s statue, placed between the two
bell towers, acted as a spiritual beacon for sailors. One hand was raised in
blessing, while the other securely held a two-masted fishing schooner.
Some Azorean captains kept a shrine with the statue placed above their
charts table. The church interior was nautical in form with rib-shaped
curved pillars, resembling the hull of a boat. The theme, of course, recalled
both Noah’s Ark and the “Barque of St. Peter,” but for sailors, a ship was
also a living thing that had a spirit.20
Certainly there was need for comfort from the Virgin Mary. An 1876
reporter had written, “The history of the Gloucester fishery has been written in tears.”21 As historian W. Jeffrey Bolster has indicated, “Fishing made
coal mining look safe. No other occupation in America came close to the
deep-sea fisheries for workplace mortality.”22 Between 1716 and 2002, more
than 5380 fishermen who sailed from Gloucester were lost at sea.
Why did fishing become more perilous? Catching a daily fish or two
for one’s family moved from dangling a line from the pier to placing nets
in the river to catch fish swimming upstream, to small boats, then ever
larger boats. Fishing quickly became commercial in Gloucester. Second,
certain fish became more desirable than others and became “fished out.”
New fish were located farther away, which meant a larger boat. The cycle
repeated itself. With more demand for “new” fish, competition increased.23
Third, especially for the fishermen who traveled to the Grand Banks, the
shoals challenged the captain to navigate a safe course through shallow
water and unstable sand bars. There was always the chance that storms
could overwhelm and sink a ship as well.
Another way to face the ocean threat was through the blessing of the
fleet, which combined with a Festa honoring St. Peter. A record number
20. The church was placed on the National Register of Historic Churches in 1990.
21. The unnamed reporter is cited in W. Jeffrey Bolster, The Mortal Sea. Fishing the
Atlantic in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA, 2012), p. 229.
22. Bolster, The Mortal Sea, p. 229. A restored dory fishing schooner from 1926,
Adventure, is berthed in the summer at Gloucester, the schooner’s original home port. See
also John R. Gillis, The Human Shore. Seacoasts in History (Chicago, 2012). Investigating
questions about human interaction in the border regions (littoral area) between land and sea
is Christopher L. Pastore, Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of
New England (Cambridge, MA, 2014).Exploring the historical sense that can be made of various elements in the region’s physical landscape, both real and imagined are Blake Harrison
and Richard W. Judd, eds., A Landscape History of New England (Cambridge, MA, 2011).
23. Bolster, The Mortal Sea, p. 201.

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of Italians, especially those from Sicily, arrived in the United States in
1913. Most were farmers and laborers, but a good number of fishermen
came to Gloucester and brought their seafaring tradition of prayer to St.
Peter the Fisherman.
In 1927, two years after the Gloucester Fisherman Memorial was dedicated and placed overlooking the harbor,24 Captain Savatore Favazza
commissioned a life-size statue of St. Peter to be enshrined in the Italian
district. Shortly thereafter, the Italian community began a procession with
the statue to the wharf, and the group held a Festa. In 1945 the pastor of
Our Lady of Good Voyage, Stephen DeMoura, initiated the first formal
blessing of the fleet at the waterfront.25 Both events involved the community, civic and religious, fisherman or not. The whole town had a stake in
the outcome of the fleet.
Not only did the blessing tap into people’s work, but their prayer at the
wharf or in the church expressed their personal and communal narrative, as
they faced a physically demanding and dangerous task. With boats anchored
in the harbor, the priest’s blessing recalled God’s interaction with water:
Oh God of boundless love, at the beginning of creation your Spirit hovered over the deep. You called forth every creature and the seas teemed
with life. . . . Bless this boat, its equipment and all who will use it. Protect
them from the dangers of wind, rain, and all the perils of the deep. May
Christ, who calmed the storm and filled the nets of his disciples, bring us
all to the harbor of light and peace.26

Quite fittingly, with many miles of coastline edging the Archdiocese of
Boston, the escutcheon for the archdiocese was anchored with a “Barry
wavy.”27

24. The statue, the bronze Gloucester Fisherman Memorial (“Man at the Wheel”), was
cast in 1925 in commemoration of the town’s 300th anniversary and to the memory of those
who sailed from Gloucester and lost their lives. Lines from Psalm 107:23–30 are inscribed on
the sea-green granite base: “They that go down to the Sea in Ships, 1623–1923…”
25. The Fleet Blessing was featured in National Geographic, July, 1953. The national
census of 2000 for Gloucester indicated 22.6 percent were of Italian background, and 8.5 percent were of Portuguese background.
26. Although this rendering of the prayer is from the International Commission on
English in the Liturgy, Book of Blessings (Collegeville, MN, 1989), pp. 323–29, here p. 327,
the prayer has remained substantially the same for decades. The same order of blessing in
English-speaking Canada reflects more a patriotic and government naval emphasis.
27. Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap., has added to his coat of arms a ship
with three masts at sail. Additionally, the three hills of Boston (Beacon Hill in Boston, Copp
Hill in Revere, and Fort Hill in Roxbury) are also displayed on the original escutcheon.

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“PERILS OF OCEAN AND WILDERNESS”

The first two stories of Friar Crespel and the Gloucester fishermen
relate to similar conditions in the ocean. The area was renowned for abundant fish, but the waters were also fickle, a dangerous, littoral space,
wherein one experienced a close association between the physical and spiritual worlds.
3. Canada’s Clean Water: Ecology and Economics
The third case is that of Cry of the Earth, Cry of the People, a document
issued by the Quebec Catholic bishops in May 2001.28 Whereas people
were at the mercy of the ocean in the first two stories, here the water itself
is imperiled. The pastoral was partly a response to an incident in Walkerton, Ontario, a year earlier. The town’s drinking water, obtained through
pumping groundwater from the aquifer, was contaminated with E-coli bacteria. Of the 3000 residents, 2300 of them became ill, and seven people
died after being infected. Investigation of the incident revealed poor management of water utilities, unqualified operators, and personnel who knew
about the problem but failed to alert the public. The experience shocked
the entire region. A government commission quickly held interviews to
diagnose the root of the problem. The bishops, however, viewed the situation as more than a technological challenge or political finger-pointing.
Rain trickles into crevices between sand, gravel, and rocks and is
“stored” in the aquifer. Other things also seep into the system, including
runoff from large farms and an excess of chemicals on the land, a main
cause of the problem. The bishops cited the pressures of international
commerce, the push for intensive farming, and the “rapid development of
production [which] exacts large investments that ruin life for the [small
farmer] and favors monopolies and big property owners” who are not farmers. People forced off the land often moved to cities, “where urbanization
tends to breakdown traditional ways of life.”29 The rhythm of life on small
farms gave way to a rhythm of the stock market.
Then, sounding as if they were revisiting the Gloucester fishing situation of the 1800s, the Quebec bishops spoke of the “fisheries where the
Cardinal Richard Cushing changed the shape of the cross designed by Cardinal William
O’Connell to a French-influenced (fleur-de-lis) cross in memory of the French missionaries
who kept alive Catholic life in the early days of the diocese.
28. Cry of the Earth; Cry of the Poor, Le Comité des affaires sociales de l’Assemblée des
évêques catholiques du Québec, May 1, 2001. Document available at http://www.eveques.qc
.ca/documents/2001/20010501e.html.
29. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, no. 7.

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depletion of stocks has enormously weakened the industry of this
sector.”30 “Distress of the earth, ransacked by excessive consumption,”
they wrote, “creates stress on people and between social groups, including
the relationship between political and economic concerns.”31 The bishops
cited a little-known text from the Book of Job: “If my land cries for
vengeance against me, and its furrows weep in concert, . . . let brambles
grow instead of wheat” (Job 31:38–40). They declared that “even the
earth can bear witness against human beings for the violence to which it
is subjected.”32 This group of men, who would hardly be considered “tree
huggers,” connected organic, economic, religious, and human systems.
Walkerton in the Province of Ontario is more than 600 miles from
Quebec City, but the bishops positioned the “Walkerton event” within a
larger context of the link between social patterns and use of the Earth’s
resources. The quality of groundwater is not relegated to one town, one
province, or one region but is a systemic concern. Urging all Catholics to
informed action, the bishops stated, “The imperative is given to re-establish the connection between the economy and ecology.”33 The same perspective had been that of the Catholic Irish American, Richard Garrett,
a speaker at the 1970 Earth Day in New York City. Garrett’s basic premise was “Healing the environment was the first step in binding the
wounds of society.”34
4. The Northeast in Retrospect
In the three cases of “the perils of ocean and wilderness” over three
centuries of Catholics in Northeast North America, land and water moved
from being objects to being subjects of peril, in so far as humans have interacted with them. The pattern would appear in the other three sections of
North America: the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Northwest.
Southeast North America
1. The Kentucky Frontier
In the 1700s, the southeast section of North America felt the influence
of the British, the French, the Spanish, and many groups of Native Amer30. Ibid., no. 8.
31. Ibid., no. 6.
32. Ibid., no. 3.
33. Ibid., no. 15.
34. Rome, The Genius of Earth Day, p. 200.

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icans. In the mid-1750s, Virginia did not want its territory south of the
Ohio River (Kentucky) to become autonomous, partially because New
Orleans, an outpost of the Spanish Empire at the time, seemed readily
accessible (and therefore a threat) through travel on the Ohio River, which
emptied into the Mississippi and flowed down to the Gulf of Mexico.35
The Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, created a
new country of the United States, consisting mainly of the former northern, middle, and southern British colonies along the Atlantic coast,
although the territory was imagined as far as the Mississippi River, as indicated on maps of the period. Kentucky was the fifteenth state after the
original thirteen colonies to enter the Union on June 1, 1792. Catholics,
mainly from Maryland (chiefly from St. Mary’s, Charles’ and Prince
George’s Counties), had trekked through the Cumberland Gap in the
lower central Appalachian mountains36 and then by boat on the Ohio
River to settle in what became the first inland diocese of the Catholic
Church in the United States. Others from Maryland traveled overland to
Pittsburgh and then down the Ohio River. Individuals migrated first and
after 1785 renowned Marylanders of “the Catholics of Lord Baltimore”
and the “Fenwick families, who incontestably are the most prominent,”37
were among the first to settle. Some of the Maryland families brought with
them their African American slaves.
Reports carried to Virginia and back to Maryland described the Kentucky region with “so glowing a character as to stimulate many others to
emigrate.” Kentucky-born priest Martin J. Spalding (1810–72), the grandson of John Lancaster (d. 1838), the latter a leader of a group of Catholics
from Maryland in 1788 and prominent political figure in Kentucky, wrote:
“The new country was represented as a sort of promised land, with an exuberant and fertile soil; and if not flowing with milk and honey, at least
teeming with all kinds of wild game.” The rich country

35. Clyde F. Crews, An American Holy Land. A History of the Archdiocese of Louisville
(Wilmington, DE, 1987) provides a thoroughly researched account of this key archdiocese in
the history of the Catholic Church in the Southeast.
36. For an overview of the geological development of the Trans-Appalachia area and
the impact of that geography on the formation of groups on both sides of the mountains,
including the interaction of Native American groups among each other, see François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History,” The American Historical Review, 113 (2008), 647–77, here 665.
37. “Father [Stephen] Badin’s Description of the Church on the Kentucky Frontier,
April 11, 1796,” in John Tracy Ellis, Documents of American Catholic History (Milwaukee,
1956), pp. 184–89, here p. 185.

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now lay open to the enterprising activity of the white man; its fertile
lands could be obtained by occupation, or purchased for a mere trifle; and
the emigrants might subsist, like the Indians, by hunting, until the soil
could be prepared for cultivation.38

In actuality, at least for the early settlers, the experience was less than
Edenic, because even though a 1795 Treaty of Greenville had been signed
with the Wyandot Native Americans (and other tribes), settlers were often
at the mercy of the Native Americans who attacked them along the Ohio
River, took them into captivity, burned some at the stake, or took their
provisions. The treaty, in effect, meant less land for Native Americans.
The settlers also expected that Native Americans would curtail their pattern of roaming over vast territories for game, animals, and fruit, and
would cultivate the land for farming. Nevertheless, “nearly half of Virginia
and Maryland was in motion for the west.” Between 1775 and 1792, “Kentucky went “from being a vast unreclaimed wilderness,” to “become a state
of the Union!”39 In 1790, the Kentucky population was 73,000. Just ten
years later it was more than 200,000.40
The Haydens and Lancaster families were in the first Catholic colony
(1784) and settled along Pottinger’s Creek, about twelve miles from Bardstown. The land was of poor quality, yet new arrivals continued to settle in
that location: “They preferred being near their brethren, and enjoying with
them the advantages of their holy religion, to all other mere worldly consideration.”41 Other Catholic groups followed in the 1780s. Among the

38. Martin John Spalding, Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky: From Their
Commencement in 1787 to the Jubilee of 1826–7 (Louisville, 1844). Repr. (New York, 1972),
[Religion in America, Series II], p. 22. Spalding became bishop of Louisville on the death of
Bishop Flaget. When John Lancaster, Spalding’s grandfather, came to Kentucky in 1788, he
was captured by Indians, stripped, tortured, and staked to the ground but managed to escape.
Ibid., pp. 49–54. Although Badin was eager to promote a Catholic for the state legislature in
Kentucky, he thought Lancaster was “not much better than a free-thinker,” probably based
on the fact that Lancaster seemed to have been given legal power with respect to land and the
location of a church in central Kentucky. Spalding’s nephew, John Lancaster Spalding (1840–
1916), was born in Lebanon, Kentucky, in 1840 and was appointed bishop of Peoria, Illinois,
in 1876.
39. Spalding, Sketches, p. 21.
40. Crews, An American Holy Land, p. 31.
41. Spalding, Sketches, p. 25. Crews notes that the first generation of Catholics in Kentucky settled along the “creek and river-fork system” and provides a list of names of the early
Catholics settling along the creeks. Crews, An American Holy Land, p. 36. Badin considered
this point important enough to draw a sketch of the creek system in his letter to Carroll of
February 4, 1800. Ibid., pp. 38–39.

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difficulties they experienced were Indian attacks and finding basic
resources and comestibles. The profusion of growth in the forests, “thickly
interspersed with the cane, and the whole closely interlaced with the wild
pea-vine,” proved more a hindrance than a help for the colony to locate
resources. They looked for the “traces” that buffalo and deer had made to
find their way through the forests.42
The land, glowingly described earlier to entice settlers, was also
termed “the frowning wilderness,” because people had a difficult time
transporting letters due to the hazards of travel and Indian attacks.43
Spalding particularly noted the sentiment in his narrative of another exile
of the French Revolution, a M. Rivet, living in Spain, and the priest
Stephen Badin (1768–1853), missioned in Kentucky. They were not
always able to receive spiritual, intellectual, and psychological support in
their lengthy letters to each other, because letters were lost in the precarious conditions of the frontier.
Badin was appointed by Bishop John Carroll to the Kentucky missions
in 1793, the year of his ordination, and remained an itinerant missionary
among the people of Kentucky for several decades. In his report to Carroll
about the Catholics in Kentucky, Badin wrote that in Scott County, the
early settlers did not “follow the natural law of prudence.” Before his arrival,
land was very cheap; they could have and should have purchased enough
of it to make a good plantation which would have in a few years brought
more than the cost of the purchase and would have enabled them to cover
the expense of a chapel &c. They did quite the contrary.

The result was that the priest would have to travel to the “extreme end of
their plantations” for Mass and other sacraments.44 Badin estimated the
number of Catholic families in Kentucky at around 300 scattered around
the state in 1796 and reported that the land in Scott County would have
fewer Catholics because the land there was six to ten times higher to purchase. The terrain there was “much richer, and more favored as to commerce, manufactures, education &c.”45 But he added that this relative

42. Spalding, Sketches, p. 31.
43. Spalding, Sketches, p. 65.
44. “Badin’s Description of the Church,” p. 186. As historian Thomas Spalding,
C.F.X., noted, “Pioneers had a way of locating where it did not always suit the bishop’s [nor
the priest’s] convenience.” Thomas W. Spalding, “Frontier Catholicism,” The Catholic Historical Review, 77 (1991), 470–84, here 478.
45. “Badin’s Description of the Church,” p. 187.

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affluence created other problems related to church law and “rules of theology.”46 Badin did not fear so much the moral dangers of the frontier as the
moral dangers for those who became affluent by taming the wilderness.47
When land was inexpensive in Kentucky, some Catholics were able to
“tame” the wilderness through construction of manors similar to those of
the earlier John Carroll Catholics of Baltimore. Kentucky Catholics did
provide a plot of land for a future pastor and for a church, although the
practicality of location was not the people’s priority. The assumption about
the land was people could replicate what they had before. They could control the wilderness for more reliable and “closer to home” sources of food
in farming.
Benedict Joseph Flaget (1763–1850), another exile from the French
Revolution, was appointed the first bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky, after
the diocese was created in 1808. After he arrived in 1811, a multitude of
Catholic institutions and personnel arose within the state: two levels of a
seminary, three religious orders of women, schools, two colleges, a cathedral, Jesuit teachers (1832–68),48 and a Trappist monastery, in addition to
the inauguration and growth of many parishes.49 Catholics had a large
presence in the central section of the state dubbed “the Holy Land.” But
the diocese encompassed a huge geographic area: stretching west to the
Mississippi River, reaching north to the Great Lakes, and including most
of the deep South. Other dioceses would be carved from the Diocese of
Louisville, the city to which Flaget moved the headquarters in 1841, when
Catholic German and Irish immigrants arrived in that area. Catholic leadership would put more energy into the towns with immigrants than into
evangelization of people in mountainous areas.
When Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet traveled through Kentucky
on one of his trips across the Atlantic, he described the state’s “material
prosperity, fertile soil, beautiful sites, natural curiosities, [he wrote at
46. Ibid.
47. For comparison with the Protestant experience, see Amy DeRogatis, Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier (New York, 2003); Mark Stoll, “Religion ‘Irradiates’ the
Wilderness,” in American Wilderness: A New History, ed. Michael L. Lewis (New York, 2007),
pp. 35–53. There is a long tradition of interpretation of the wilderness in various Protestant
groups, especially those coming from a Puritan tradition, beginning with Perry Miller, Errand
into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA, 1956).
48. C. Walker Gollar, “Jesuit Education and Slavery in Kentucky, 1832–1868,” The
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 108 (2010), 213–49.
49. Clyde F. Crews terms Flaget’s forty years as bishop of Louisville as a period of
“Manifest Destiny.” Crews, An American Holy Land, p. 72.

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length about the Mammoth Caves], interesting history, [all of which]
make the state one of those most favored by nature.”50
Henry Stanislaus Spalding, S.J. (1865–1934), born in Bardstown, Kentucky, spent much of his early years in the outdoors, an experience that was
reflected later in his life when he wrote fourteen outdoor adventure books
for boys that included Cave of the Beech Fork, In the Wilds of the Canyon, and
Held in the Everglades. The Beech Fork books are set in 1815 Bardstown.
Spalding spent three years in Maryland in research and publication of a history of colonial Catholics there. In his perusal of the archives and in his
visits with Marylanders, he realized that “many of the terms and customs
familiar to my boyhood in Kentucky were brought from Maryland by the
early settlers who found homes in and around Bardstown.”51 He found continuities between Maryland and Kentucky in some customs, ways of speaking, domestic and farming practices, and the implements used at home and
work, as well as a sense of Catholic life at the end of a frontier period.
2. Appalachian Wilderness

Catholics would remain a small portion of the population in Kentucky
and in the Southeast part of the United States over the next decades and into
the twentieth century. On its eastern boundary, Kentucky borders West Virginia, the latter state completely within the Appalachian Mountains. Within
that larger geographic region, Catholics formed about 1 percent of people in
the mountainous rural areas. Francis Clement Kelley’s Catholic Church
Extension Society, which raised money to purchase “chapel trains” and
“chapel cars” for Sunday Mass for Catholics who were few and far between
in the South, and the Glenmary Home Missioners, U.S.A., who worked in
“No Priest Land” beginning in 1939, were two of several Catholic groups
who focused a ministry in parts of Appalachia. Southern Appalachia, which
encompassed parts of thirteen states (including West Virginia), was marked
50. Copy of De Smet’s letter to his nephew, Charles De Smet, advocate at Antwerp,
sent to the editor of Précis Historiques, Brussels, n.d. but probably 1850s. Pierre-Jean De Smet,
Letter XXXIV, “Missions of Kentucky,” Western Missions and Missionaries (New York, 1863),
pp. 398–405, here p. 399. De Smet contrasted the earlier period of the wilderness where
Native Americans plied the waters in their canoes and the present-day steamboats, which
“now dash along, full of passengers, loaded with goods.” He saw on every side of the river
“cultivated fields, farm-houses, and well-stored barns; on every side, herds of cattle and
horses, browsing on the hill-side and the plain, once covered with forests.” Ibid.
51. Henry S. Spalding, Catholic Colonial Maryland. A Sketch (Milwaukee, 1931), p. vi.
Spalding also pointed out how the Chesapeake Bay had shaped the life of tidewater Maryland, just as the hills of Kentucky would shape the life of people there. Ibid., p. 123.

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geographically with mountains, rivers, and “hollows.” For decades, the companies that mined coal, extracted gas, and felled lumber adversely affected
the life of the people who lived and worked there.
With several renewed emphases in the wake of the Second Vatican
Council, including the role of the laity, a consciousness of new areas
wherein to effect social justice, and the Catholic Church’s awareness of
itself as a truly global entity with diverse peoples, a Catholic Committee on
Appalachia (CCA) had formed in 1970 to work together to serve people
in the region. The CCA leadership would work with the bishops of
Appalachia, especially under the guidance of chair Joseph H. Hodges
(bishop of Wheeling, West Virginia), whose diocese lay entirely in
Appalachia. With the assistance of Michael J. Begley (bishop of Charlotte,
North Carolina, and later chair of CCA), Glenmary priest Les Schmidt,
and Sister Beth Davies, C.N.D., the CCA conducted listening sessions
around the region. The group developed a document unlike any other published by American Catholic bishops to that date.52 “This Land Is Home
to Me,” promulgated at Wheeling College in February 1975, was signed
by the twenty-five bishops from the dioceses and archdioceses that lay in
the thirteen Appalachian states.
What is immediately striking is the style of the document, which is
written in a free-verse manner, rather than in paragraph form—the usual
format for ecclesiastical documents. The approach reflected the poetry and
physical beauty of the area and a type of simplicity associated with the
region. The bishops wrote that the pastoral letter “is but one part of an
unfinished conversation with our people, with the truth of Appalachia,
with the Living God.”53 Realizing that most of the people affected with
adverse living conditions, impoverished lives, and a deteriorating land and
water environment were not Catholic and that a number of the mine and
other production owners were Catholic, the bishops and the Catholic
52. The principal writer of the document was Joseph Holland of the Center of Concern
in Washington, DC. For the well-researched background, influences, and history of the formation of “This Land Is Home to Me,” see Alyssa R. Pasternak Post, “‘Dare to Speak’: This
Land Is Home to Me, from Idea to Promulgation (May 1973–February 1975) and Beyond”
(MA thesis, University of Dayton, 2011).
53. Appalachian Catholic Bishops, “This Land Is Home to Me,” (Spencer, WV, 1975),
http://www.ccappal.org/publications/pastoral-letters, p. 10. All quotations from the document are from this source. The bishops’ conversation continued in 1995 with “At Home in
the Web of Life” and in 2015 with the Catholic Committee of Appalachia publication, “Take
Us Home: Take Your Place in the Stories that Shape Us” (2015). Documents available at the
Catholic Community of Appalachia Web site, http://www.ccappal.org.

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Committee of Appalachia met with owners and workers, Protestant communities, and people from diverse cultural backgrounds. The document
was a bold move on the part of the bishops.
Their reflections comprised three parts: the land and its people (what
the situation in Appalachia is like, having “seen” it firsthand); scripture and
the Catholic social teaching tradition since Pope Leo XIII, in light of the
experience of people in Appalachia; and guidelines for action. The last section provided three elements in the search for answers to the problems in
the region: “closeness to the people; careful use of scientific resources (‘scientific models are not value free’);54 and steeping [oneself] in the presence
of the Spirit.”55 The first section of the document grew out of the numerous listening sessions conducted throughout the vast region since 1973.
The visits of bishops to mines, where the consequences of mine disasters
could be observed directly; conversations with people of all classes and occupations; and personal trips through the mountainous landscape made the
bishops aware of issues in a new way. They observed that struggle happened
in all parts of Appalachia: in the mines; at the factories; at the small farms;
and among those “white and black, native and immigrant, speakers of one
and many languages.”56 Appalachia was “not a simple place. . . . All [were]
tied together by the mountain chain and by the coal in its Center, producing
energy within it.”57 Although the land produced more products than coal,
coal is central. There is a saying in the region that coal is king. That’s not
exactly right. The kings are those who control big coal, and the profit and
power which come with it. Many of these kings don’t live in the region.58

The document singled out the “Maximization of Profit” as a principle
that too often converts itself into an idolatrous power.59 In spite of earlier
54. Appalachian Catholic Bishops, “This Land Is Home to Me,” p. 33.
55. Ibid., p. 32.
56. Ibid., p. 11.
57. Ibid., p. 12. In fall 2013 the Washington State Catholic Conference (WSCC) produced a document, “Coal and Caring for Creation. A Catholic Perspective.” The WSCC
held two public hearings relative to a public proposal for the construction and operation of a
coal terminal in Cowlitz County and the impact on the environment, fishing interests, transportation, jobs, and the economy. “We consider the protection of our environment a moral
obligation and, therefore, we support a comprehensive analysis of all the potential risks and
benefits of the Millennium Bulk Terminals—Longview proposal.” Document available at
http://www.thewscc.org.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., p. 17.

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reforms in labor, “a country which took such richness from Appalachia left
so little for the people. Great fortunes were built on the exploitation of
Appalachian workers and resources; yet the land was left without revenues
to care for it social needs, like education, welfare, old age, and illness.”60
The bishops concluded that people need to be “part of the rebirth of
utopias, to recover and defend the struggling dream of Appalachia itself.”
In the “dream of the mountains’ struggle, the dream of simplicity and of
justice, like so many other repressed visions, is, we believe, the voice of
Yahweh among us.”61 The bishops hoped that the Church once again
would be known, among other things, as
a center of the Spirit, a place where poetry dares to speak, where the song
reigns unchallenged, where art flourishes, where nature is welcome, . . .
and where in a wilderness of idolatrous destruction, the great voice of
God still cries out for Life.62

The Southeast wilderness of the pioneers was filled with Native
American interaction, learning to read the land and rivers to farm successfully and in the process to set aside land to form a Catholic church in the
wilderness among many Protestant neighbors, except for Bardstown. The
move of the headquarters of the Bardstown Diocese to Louisville when
immigrants arrived in the mid- to late-nineteenth century also moved the
Catholic Church away from attention to the land and the mountains.
“This Land Is Home to Me,” written more than a century later after that
move, was a path-breaking document in that Catholics identified what had
become of the mountains, had listened to the voices of the diverse groups
who lived or worked there, and along with others, set a direction for the
region, using some of the artistic sensitivities of Appalachia.

60. Ibid., p. 19.
61. Ibid., p. 36.
62. Ibid., p. 37. The bishops acknowledged the key role of women in the struggle for
justice in the region: “The voice and action of women bring a special charism in the struggle
for justice.” Ibid., p. 36. Women’s religious congregations in Kentucky, including the Sisters
of Loretto; Sister Mary Luke Tobin, observer at the Second Vatican Council; and the previously mentioned Davies, were some of those actively engaged in the work, leadership, or support of the process leading to the bishops’ document.

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Southwest
1. “A River [and Mountain] Run Through It”

63

What would become North and South American Catholic history
began as a line drawn on a map of land and water, when the Spanish-born
Pope Alexander VI, in his first year as pope, issued a papal bull, Inter Caetera,
on May 4, 1493. The lands not yet conquered by Spain or Portugal were
given to King Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella, Queen of Castille, for purposes of the evangelization of “very many peoples living in peace, and, as
reported, going unclothed, and not eating flesh.” Those appointed to the
new lands were to be “worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced
men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the
Catholic faith and train them in good morals.”64 An imaginary longitudinal
line was drawn south from the Arctic pole to the Antarctic pole, with lands
west of the line assigned to Spain and east of the line to Portugal.65
Over the centuries, Franciscan, Jesuit, Dominican, and other missionaries worked in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Alta California. During that time,
the map of the Southwest governmental boundaries of Mexico and the
United States changed many times. Some Native groups would be within
what was then Mexico, and at other times the same location would be in the
United States. At least two geographical features significantly impact both
countries. The Rio Grande River, called Rio Bravo del Norte in Mexico,
begins in Colorado and flows 1800 miles into the Gulf of Mexico. Since
1848, the river has formed a border between Mexico and the United States.
The area of the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, which run through the
Mexican state of Chihuahua, but which affect neighboring states in both
countries, is home to the Tarahumara Native people. Although Spanish
Franciscans encountered the group throughout the Chihuahua area in the
1500s and into the nineteenth century, eventually the Tarahumara were
pushed into smaller sections of the Sierra Madre Mountains.66

63. Based on the title of the 1992 film directed by Robert Redford and the 1976 book
of the same title, written by Norman Maclean and set around Missoula, Montana, and trout
fishing in the Blackfoot River.
64. Pope Alexander VI, Inter Caetera, May 4, 1493, retrieved from http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/intercaetera.org.
65. Portugal negotiated with Spain after Inter Caetera to obtain more land than originally noted in the papal document. That took place in the Treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494.
66. For a history of the Tarahumara, see W. Dirk Raat and George R. Janeček, Mexico’s
Sierra Tarahumara: A Photohistory of People of the Edge (Norman, OK, 1996), with an overview
of the Jesuit and Franciscan missions, pp. 67–100.

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Aldo Leopold, whose degree in forestry from Yale University led him
to study systems of biodiversity and conservation, had hiked through the
Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains with his brother in the 1930s.67 He
considered that area the best picture of land health that he had seen in his
travels around the United States and Mexico. He wrote, “The preservation
and study of the Sierra Madre wilderness . . . as a norm for the cure of sick
land on both sides of the border [between Mexico and the United States],
would be a good-neighbor enterprise well worthy of consideration.”68
The mountains were home to the Tarahumara people, but various
groups, including loggers since the 1800s, had pushed them further into
the canyons from the larger Chihuahua lands. By the start of the second
millennium, the effects of massive deforestation in the Sierra Madre were
felt. In March 2000, the Catholic bishops of the Diocese of Tarahumara
addressed the issue and the effects experienced by the Tarahumara, particularly following the ratification of NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade
Agreement, or Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte).69 Angered
by what they saw, the bishops noted that the “avarice and racism . . . [that]
have been part of forest exploitation are destroying God’s creation and
undermining its fraternal destiny.”70 What had been abundant forest was
67. For a description of the wilderness area and its biodiversity as seen in the 1930s
when Leopold and his brother hiked through the region, see Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
and Sketches Here and There pp. 137–53.
68. Ibid., p. 197. For an analysis of what happened to a section of that area since
Leopold’s visit, see William Forbes, “Revisiting Aldo Leopold’s ‘Perfect’ Land Health: Conservation and Development in Mexico’s Rio Gavilan” (PhD diss., University of North Texas,
2004).
69. Catholic Bishops of Northern Mexico, “A Pastoral Letter on the Forests of the
Sierra Tarahumara,” March 29, 2000, http://www.inee.mu.edu/documents. The document
was translated from Spanish by Carlos Agnesi, field representative for the State of Jalisco for
the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation. The New Mexico Catholic Conference of
Bishops had issued a statement on the environment in 1998 “for personal reflection and
public action.” They also referred to the deleterious environmental effects, following NAFTA
and the need to build “the long-term bilateral [meaning both sides of the New Mexico/
Mexico border] infrastructures, which will bring environmental and social justice issues onto
an equal footing with the economics of international trade.” In their interpretation of the
Genesis 1:26 passage, which, in English, uses the word dominion over creation, the bishops
say that, rather than meaning “unrestrained exploitation of creation,” the term “describes a
‘representative’ and how that person is to behave on behalf of the one who sends the representative. . . . We are to treat nature as the Creator would, not for our own selfish consumption
but for the good of all creation.” New Mexico Catholic Conference of Bishops, Introduction,
“Statement on the Environment. Partnership for the Future,” 1998, http://www.archdiocese
santafe.org/ABSheehan/Bishops/BishStatements/98.5.11.Environment.html
70. Introduction, “Pastoral Letter on the Forests.”

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becoming a rocky desert, “the result of irresponsible forest management.”
The wholesale tree cutting in Chihuahua had severed “the fragile ecosystem with a loss of moisture the forests provided in a desert belt of the
world. Not only was this the death of a forest, it was the death of a
people.”71 An “uncontrolled economic system foisted on the region and
multinational market pressures also make international law more ‘flexible’
in favor of the lumber companies.”72 The forest was being devastated “in
the name of a development that has proven itself to be both racist and disenfranchising.”73
The death of the forests is also the death of traditional ethnic-group
cultures. Centuries-long traditions of Native hunting and gathering, as
well as the regeneration of agricultural lands, “have been shattered. The life
that the forest once nourished is virtually destroyed.”74 The bishops drew
out the implications of a “cycle of corruption” encouraged by lumber companies, whose owners did not live in the region or even in the country. In
addition to representatives of the “fly-by-night” sawmills who came and
went as they pleased and who absconded with lumber and money, “bosses”
of local rural cooperatives [ejido] signed ambiguous contracts, whereby
money and lumber left the region and the rural cooperatives received far
less money, because the company sometimes bribed the heads of cooperatives. Lumber companies played off one group against another to the
advantage of owners. Impoverished people who sought to provide for their
families became involved in the drug trade. Although the money thus
gained seemed to be a chance to survive in a deteriorated land, the situation
also reflected the lack of opportunities for people to earn a just wage.75 The
“ecological deterioration to which this oasis between deserts has been subjected affects the inhabitants of an enormous hydrological basin.” Deforestation meant “reduction of the oxygenation process, causing increased
summer temperatures, water rationing in the cities, and other consequences mentioned by experts in the field.”76
The bishops’ denouncement of the unjust social and economic system
clearly connected “creation, which should be for the fraternity of all people”
and a “world to be shared by all peoples, all world-views, and all cultures.

71. Ibid., para. 1.
72. Ibid., para. 21.
73. Ibid., para. 3.
74. Ibid., para. 7.
75. Ibid., para. 10.
76. Ibid., para. 16.

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273

Nobody owns nature, and nobody has more rights than anybody else to her
fruits. We believe that God acknowledges all the efforts a person makes to
preserve the life of our Mother Earth.”77
A “band aid” solution to the problem or tourism was not the answer
to the environment issues of the region.78 The bishops called for a “new
consciousness about forests and the natural environment…. [The world] is
a living being that deserves our respect, care and attention.”79 Creation
“should be for the fraternity of all people.”80
The bishops’ statement aligned, although unknowingly, with
Leopold’s reiteration of J. E. Weaver’s analysis of why a prairie flora
system is “more drought-resistant than the agronomic flora [a single crop,
such as corn], which has supplanted” the prairie. “Prairie species practice
‘team work’ underground by distributing their root-systems to cover all
levels [of the soil], whereas the species comprising the agronomic rotation
overdraw one level and neglect another, thus building up cumulative
deficits.”81 Deforestation was destroying the interaction of the trees with
other fragile but interdependent elements of the Sierra Madre ecological
and human systems, all of which were part of the “fraternity.” Racism, the
destruction of a people, was literally rooted in the destruction of the land.
Pacific Northwest
1. The Columbia River, Pierre-Jean De Smet, and Native Americans

In the modern period of Catholic history, missionaries have drawn
maps or have caused maps to be made of geographic areas new to them.
While maps were created for a variety of purposes, mapmaking was one
way to organize the wilderness, the unknown, so that others might have
guidance in their journeys. Among the Jesuits in North America, Francisco
77. Ibid., para. 32.
78. The bishops criticized the suggestion that tourism was an answer to the problems
of the area. In their view, tourism did not benefit the people of the area, as tour directors from
outside the country earned the money. Tourism generated a demand for drinking water and
generated sewage, both of which exacerbated the problem. Ibid., para. 16.
79. Ibid., para. 23.
80. Ibid., para. 31.
81. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, p. 197. John E.
Weaver, North American Prairie (Lincoln, NE, 1954). Weaver (1884–1956), a faculty member
at the University of Nebraska, was a leading expert on prairie grasses as natural populations
and as crops.

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Bressani’s Novae Franciae Accurata Delineatio (1657), which shows the geographic area of the Italian Jesuit’s work among Native tribes in New
France, and Father Marquette’s 1673 map of the Mississippi (Conception)
River are just two North American examples from the period when cartography was developing as a science.82
Belgian-born Jesuit Pierre-Jean de Smet (1801–73), who might have
been the most traveled missionary of the nineteenth century, was another
mapmaker. He arrived at the Jesuit headquarters in Florissant, Missouri,
near St. Louis, where he eventually received a mission among Native
Americans. In addition to nine voyages across the Atlantic to obtain
recruits and money for the missions to Native Americans, he kept an itinerary mileage record in the United States, as he journeyed on foot, horseback, snowshoes, skiff, birch canoe, and other modes of travel over 180,000
miles. He was an astute observer of people, customs, land, rivers, flora, and
fauna, a trait that is demonstrated in his maps and abundant letters.83
He was actively engaged with many tribes west of the Mississippi over
decades and was loved and trusted by them. He instructed and baptized
people from several tribes and was looked upon as a spiritual guide.
Because De Smet had an extensive knowledge of their situation, he
expressed concern in various government and church quarters about the
loss of their territory. He meticulously calculated lengths of rivers and trib82. Jesuit priest Francis Joseph Bressani’s July 15, 1644, letter describing his capture by
the Iroquois and gruesome torture is reprinted in John Gilmary Shea, Perils of Ocean and
Wilderness, pp. 104–30. The Bressani map is in the National Archives of Canada. For the role
of Catholic missionary maps in the development of the Northeastern part of North America,
see David Yehling Allen, The Mapping of New York State: Study in the History of Cartography
(Stony Brook, NY, 2011). See also J. Delanglez, “Marquette’s Autograph Map of the Mississippi River,” Mid-America, 27 (1945), 30–53.
83. The Jesuit obituary for De Smet, a naturalized citizen of the United States, is
“Father de Smet—His Services to the Society and His Religious Life,” Woodstock Letters, 3
(1874), 59–65. Hiram Martin Chittenden and Alfred T. Richardson, eds., Life, Letters, and
Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., 1801–1873, 4 vols. (New York, 1905). Volume 4
contains a large folded “Map of the Trans-Mississippi Territory of the United States during
the Period of the American Fur Trade as Conducted from St. Louis between 1807 and 1843,
Showing the Location of Indian Tribes, Trading Posts, Routes of Travel and Other Features
of Interest.” De Smet’s travels west of the Mississippi are shown in red ink on the map,
including his Canadian trips. Chittenden was a fur trader and longtime friend of De Smet.
The Jesuit traveled with thirty members of the American Fur Trade Company brigade on his
first trip from St. Louis to the Far West. For background on Chittenden’s life, see Gordon
B. Dodds, “Hiram Martin Chittenden, Historian,” Pacific Historical Review, 30 (1961), 257–
69. For a history of Catholics in the Northwest, see Wilfred P. Schoenberg, A History of the
Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest, 1743–1983 (Washington, DC, 1987).

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275

utaries, and identified characteristic land forms as part of his living among
Native American groups and learning their relationship with animals,
plants, and the land.
De Smet drew maps of the Pacific Northwest rivers, tribal locations,
and mission stations during his visits to many tribes in the Oregon Territory, which at the time, included present-day Oregon, Washington, and
most of British Columbia. His last trip to that area in 1845–46 came at a
politically critical point. In 1843, with more Americans traveling the
Oregon Trail to settle in the West, the border between the Columbia District and the western part of the United States needed to be settled. Britain
wanted the border extended along the forty-ninth parallel to the Columbia
River and then the line was to follow the river’s path to the ocean. De Smet
had an opinion on the subject:
In the Oregon question, John Bull [the personification of Great Britain],
without much talk, attains his end and secures the most important part
of the country; whereas Uncle Sam loses himself in words, inveighs and
storms!84

However, a treaty between the United States and Canada was ratified in
1846 with the forty-ninth parallel as the border all the way to the ocean,
with Vancouver Island as part of British Columbia. But the treaty divided
the tribes whose domain rested above and below that latitude.
In 1845 De Smet and company set out along the 1200-mile-long
Columbia River. “Without a chart or any knowledge of the mouth of the
Columbia [nor of the source], we traversed, as if born on angels’ wings, the
bar of this formidable river.”85 To give the reader an idea of the difficulty
of the travel and the elevation covered, he noted that to navigate the Clark
River, a major tributary of the Columbia, it took twelve days to travel
upstream and only four days to journey downstream.86
De Smet, ever the keen observer, described the plants, roots, and
berries harvested by various tribes and the methods used in food preparation. He named seasonal large and small animals that tribes hunted and the
method they used to catch the abundant salmon of the Columbia River and
its tributaries. “The beautiful falls of the Columbia, called the Kettle Falls,
84. Chittenden, Life, Letters and Travels, 2:485. De Smet wrote this in August 1845.
85. Ibid., p. 481.
86. Ibid., pp. 473–74.

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“PERILS OF OCEAN AND WILDERNESS”

FIGURE 2. “Falls at Colville” by Paul Kane. Reproduced by permission of the Royal
Ontario Museum, Toronto.

in the vicinity of Fort Colville are a distant two days’ journey from our new
residence of St. Ignatius,” where DeSmet had arrived in May 1846 (see
figure 2).87 The catechizing engaged in by De Smet, the Jesuit priest Christian Hoeken (1808–51),88 and the Indians, who accompanied the clergymen as singers and catechists, did not interrupt the work of the 800 to 900
Indians gathered to catch salmon at the falls. De Smet described the scene:
An enormous basket was fastened to a projecting rock, and the finest fish
of the Columbia, as if by fascination, cast themselves by dozens into the
snare. Seven or eight times during the day these baskets were examined,
and each time were found to contain about 250 salmon.89

87. Ibid., p. 481.
88. Hoecken was born in the Netherlands and educated in Belgium. He worked with
the Kickapoo, who called him Father Kickapoo, and with the Osage River Potawatomi Indians in Kansas for most of his mission life. He accompanied De Smet in 1850 and 1851 on a
mission to the Sioux. As the two missionaries traveled to a Great Council of all Native Americans east of the Rocky Mountains, Hoecken contracted cholera and died on the Missouri
River. Hoecken’s papers are located at the Jesuit Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
89. De Smet remarked that there were six kinds of salmon. Chittenden, Life, Letters
and Travels, 2:483.

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277

The Indians “were seen on every projecting rock, piercing the fish [with
spears] with the greatest dexterity.” Lest readers who had not seen the
physical setting might think he was exaggerating, De Smet continued, “[I]t
would be as easy to count the pebbles so profusely scattered on the shores,
as to sum up the number of different kinds of fish which this western river
furnishes for man’s support.”90 The fish provided “abundant nutriment”
during the spawning season, but when the fish were dried, the tribes “pulverize and mix with oil a sufficient quantity for the rest of the year.”91
De Smet’s concern for the rights of the Indians in the vast Northwest
came about not only because of his mission among them but also because
he had observed and benefited from the ways in which Native Americans
used the land and “knew” the earth and water. In 1854 De Smet wrote to
the editor of Précis Historiques in Brussels about the “Indian Question,”
which was “much agitated” that year in the United States. De Smet forecast that the same fate would befall the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as had befallen those to the east:
As the white population advances and penetrates into the interior, the
aborigines will gradually withdraw. Already, even (in 1851), it is perceptible that the whites look with a covetous eye on the fertile lands of the
Delawares, Potawatomies, Shawnees, and others on our frontiers, and
project the organization of a new Territory—Nebraska.

He then indicated that most likely in the near future, negotiations would
be entered to purchase the land and “remove the Indians, who will be
forced to retire west.”92 Although debates and “useless contention”
abounded, there was not “one single practical effort to secure [the Native
American’s] real or pretended rights.” Furthermore,
the poor Indians of Oregon, who alone have a right to the country, are
not consulted. Their future destiny will be, undoubtedly, like that of so
many other unfortunate tribes who, after having lived peaceably by hunting and fishing for centuries, will finally disappear, victims of vice and
malady, under the rapacious influence of modern civilization.93

90. Ibid., p. 483. The artist Paul Kane (1810–71) painted a scene of the Colville Indians
trapping salmon at Kettle Falls, 1849–56 (see figure 2). The Irish-born Kane was known for
his paintings and sketches of Indians engaged in daily activities and for western landscapes.
Several of his works, including the aforementioned Kettle Falls, are displayed in the Royal
Ontario Museum.
91. Chittenden, Life, Letters and Travels, 2: 483.
92. De Smet, Western Missions and Missionaries: A Series of Letters, p. 207.
93. Chittenden, Life, Letters and Travels, 2:485–86.

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2. The Columbia River, A Century and a Half

after De Smet

De Smet, having mapped the Columbia River with its tributaries, was
well aware of the river’s complex ecosystem. When he arrived at the two
lakes in British Columbia that are the source of the Columbia River, he
remarked, “The advantages nature seems to have bestowed on the source
of the Columbia will render its geographical position very important some
future day. The magic hand of civilized man would transform it into a terrestrial paradise.”94 What happened to the river after De Smet’s time? As
had been true for thousands of years, the Columbia River defines the life
and work of the people along its banks. The river, which flows through
seven states and British Columbia, runs north and then south, and ultimately empties into the Pacific Ocean between Astoria, Oregon, and
Ilwaco, Washington.
After the 1850s, settlers, farmers, miners, and industries changed the
river by building dams to harness energy for production or by directing
water through canals into fields for fruit trees and other farming ventures.
By the twentieth century, the Columbia became the most “hydroelectrically
developed river system in the world.”95 Although dams solved problems of
production or farming for some people, others suffered adverse effects
because of droughts and floods. As the river flowed through the dioceses of
the archbishops and bishops in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and
British Columbia, they became “concerned about regional economic and
ecological conditions and the conflicts over them in the watershed.”96 One
bishop or diocese could not singly deal with the complex issues. To tackle
the larger problems would mean not only a tremendous amount of effort
but also cooperation across the dioceses. Once that cooperation was there,
the Catholic Church needed to attend to the varieties of constituencies—all
whose life, livelihood, and health depended upon the health of the river. For
almost three and a half years, the leadership group held listening sessions
with government leaders; farmers of large and small lands; corporate executives in shipping, mining, energy and allied industries; river and ocean

94. Chittenden, Life, Letters and Travels, 2: 498. De Smet wrote a lengthy description
for the possibilities nature could offer “when emigration, accompanied by industry, the arts
and sciences, shall have penetrated into the numberless valleys of the Rocky Mountains.”
Ibid., p. 497.
95. The history of the Columbia River is found at http://www.ccrh.org/river/history.
96. Catholic Bishops of the Northwest Region, “The Columbia River Watershed:
Caring for Creation and the Common Good. An International Pastoral,” January 8, 2001, p.
2, hereafter, “The Columbia River Watershed.” The pastoral is available at http://
www.thewssc.org. A short YouTube video accompanies the pastoral on the site.

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279

fisheries; workers in jobs that depended on the river; people whose land was
affected by droughts or floods that occurred (mainly in Canada) because of
the dams in the United States; parks and recreation personnel; water specialists; and environmentalists.97
The fruit of the listening sessions and reflection upon scripture and
key Catholic social justice documents came in January 2001, when the
twelve bishops issued a regional pastoral letter, “The Columbia River
Watershed: Caring for Creation and the Common Good.” Their hope was
that people “might work together to develop and implement an integrated
spiritual, social and ecological vision for our watershed home, a vision that
promotes justice for people and stewardship of creation.”98
The pastoral, addressed to the “Catholic community and to all people of
good will,” noted that “the magnificent network of rivers—the region’s
lifeblood—is an extensive ecosystem that transcends national, state, and
provincial borders.” The letter recognized the contributions that past generations had made to the region, including Native Americans, ranchers, farmers, fishers, and loggers, who struggled to make a living “in this sometimes
inhospitable land.”99 Damage to the watershed “may have been caused by
financial need and lack of knowledge more than by a lack of appreciation for
the environment.”100 The bishops remarked that “protection of the land is a
common cause promoted more effectively through active cooperation [of
ranchers, farmers, landowners, fisheries, industrialists, and environmentalists] than through contentious wrangling.” The bishops called for a “thorough, humble and introspective evaluation that seeks to eliminate both economic greed that fails to respect the environment, and ecological elitism that
lacks a proper regard for the legitimate rights and property of others.”101
In a framework suggesting four steps of spiritual, social, and ecological transformation, the bishops summarized “The Rivers of Our
97. Archives of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis, WI, Sister Sharon
Park, O.P., executive director, Washington State Conference of Catholic Bishops, telephone
interview by Angelyn Dries, February 4, 2015, interview typescript, Angelyn Dries, O.S.F.,
Papers. Park was in the leadership group who organized, listened, and compiled the feedback
and issues heard from the participants. She noted that the document continues to be used by
several environmental organizations, colleges, and other groups in North America and around
the world.
98. “The Columbia River Watershed,” p. 2.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.

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“PERILS OF OCEAN AND WILDERNESS”

Moment” (what is), “The Rivers through Our Memory” (the history), and
“The Rivers in Our Vision” (what people hope for). They then proposed
“The Rivers as Our Responsibility” (with the goal of creating sustainable
relationships and the value that “persons are created in the image of God
and [are] stewards of creation”102). The pastoral proposed ten “Considerations for Community Caretaking”; the first two were “Consider the
Common Good” and “Conserve the Watershed as a Common Good.”
The Considerations encompassed particular areas for action or change of
heart but also connected ecological concerns with respect for races, cultures, and all life.
As De Smet had been sensitive to the beauty he saw around him, from
the prairie flowers he placed on the outdoor stone used as a Mass altar to
his lyrical description of the Aurora Borealis, so, too, the bishops’ pastoral
ended with a poetic reflection, “Riversong.” The poem moved from “In the
beginning was the Word, who brought forth the cosmos,” to the “first peoples of the region, Che wana, great river, and then called Columbia, the
West’s mighty river.”103
The song continued in the tradition of the River People and expressed
hopes for their mutual future:
the melodies played by their rapids were strong
—at Wapta, Celilo, Shoshone and Kettle,104
and through the Grand Coulee and Hells Canyon rocks—
A symphony soaring through meadows and mountains. . . .105

“Riversong” concluded:
God saw living waters and peoples who cared for them,
sharing the life of the cosmos and commons
—the tree of life gave them its fruits for their food,
its leaves were their medicine, healing for all—
the riversong soared, then, on wind, over waves.
God blessed them, saying to them, “You are all very good.”106

102. Ibid., p. 3.
103. “The Columbia River Watershed,” p. 28.
104. Kettle Falls is one of the places described by De Smet, as noted above.
105. “The Columbia River Watershed,” pp. 29–30.
106. Ibid., p. 32. On October 4, 1998, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Catholic
bishops of Alberta, Canada, issued their letter on ecology, “Celebrate Life: Care for Creation.” They identified in their geographic location some of the same issues as did the western
bishops: “In Alberta, we are having to face the environmental costs of many years of large-

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3. The Northwest in Retrospect

Native Americans collectively had learned over the centuries the patterns of nature’s abundance and scarcity, the ways to cope with both, and
the methods of communicating that knowledge to the next generation.
The settlers who arrived as De Smet was completing his mission to the
tribes of the Oregon Territory and those who arrived in the Columbia
River region much later had a different worldview and did not necessarily
see what the relationship with and use of water and land would be over the
long term. Contemporary perils of ocean and wilderness in the Northwest
were an accumulation of the effects of population growth and the assumption that the water, animals, birds, and products of the land and river
would be available in abundance forever. Although Catholics were a
minority in the region, the Catholic bishops crossed state, province, and
country lines to address issues that were critical to the life and well-being
of diverse groups of people. The bishops, by this time, could draw upon
scripture, social ethics, local history, and Native American traditions of
river ecology to meet contemporary challenges.
Conclusion
At the start of this essay, I proposed an interpretative framework for
North American Catholic history from the perspective of the Catholic use
of and attitudes toward water and land. It was within that wilderness and
around those waters that Catholics made their homes and parishes; crossed
ecclesiastical, political, ethnic, and national boundaries; and geographical
divides. It is clear from this brief excursion to four quadrants of North
America (and I have not even mentioned the “heartland” of North America) that there is a relationship between “soil and soul,” as Michael Woods
has shown in his history of Catholic agrarians,107 and a relationship
between the seas and salvation, as H. A. Reinhold has shown in his

scale logging often without adequate reforestation, inadequately planned resource development, industrial expansion and toxic waste disposal, and non-sustainable agricultural practices. The loss of parks, wilderness areas and other wildlife habitats poses an increasing threat
to endangered species and brings about the loss of biodiversity.” Catholic Bishops of Alberta,
Canada, “Celebrate Life: Care for Creation,” 1998, p. 2, available at http://www.cccb.ca/
site/media-room/archives. In 1991 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued
“Renewing the Earth. An Invitation to Reflection and Action on the Environment in Light
of Catholic Social Teaching.” Document available at http://wwwmigrate.usccb.org/issuesand-action/human-life-and-dignity/environment/
107. Michael J. Woods, Cultivating Soil and Soul. Twentieth-Century Catholic Agrarians
Embrace the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, MN, 2009).

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approach to the Apostolate of the Sea.108 Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato
Si’ (May 24, 2015) actually reflects a relatively long tradition of North
American Catholic experience and writings about the land and water.109
This essay has been characterized as a field guide, albeit an incomplete
one. Field guides provide sketches, photos, and descriptions of objects to
help people identify something not previously noticed. Although naming
something seems to imply a superficial level of knowledge, eventually patterns, structures, and relationships begin to emerge. The environment is
not simply an object but a subject of history, insofar as humans engage with
such primal elements as water and earth. Layering history to examine the
effects of Catholic interaction with their environments might reveal new
perceptions of an earlier understanding of “catholic”—that which is found
throughout the whole, much as an examination of glaciated land uncovers
the story of the stresses, strains, and “achievements,” if you will, of land and
water over millions of years. Such a study might unfold a new connotation
of an “observant Catholic” to include one who pays attention to and
observes, as the Northern Mexico bishops expressed it, the “fraternity” of
creation (including human beings), reflective of a “fraternal” Trinity and an
incarnation.
So, I ask, first, what about collaboration across time periods (a longitudinal study) and across national boundaries (in this case, Canada, the
United States, and Mexico) to explore Catholic relationships with land,
water, and wilderness? Historically, are there vestiges of a sacrament mentalité, a kind of a mind-set that is “etched,” so to speak, in the individual
and the group to reflect a particular relationship between matter and spirit,
the tangible and intangible? Does matter “matter,” or not? The Catholic
sacrament system says, “yes.” The North American Catholic history cited
herein says, “yes.” Second, the focus brings together spiritual, political,
ecclesiastical, and environmental facets of Catholic life while unfolding
their communal and civic dimensions. The approach puts missionary experience in a new context. In tandem with historians of Catholic social teaching, mission, ecclesiastical patterns, liturgical life, agronomy, and coastal
studies, to name but a few combinations of scholars who could gather
108. Boston, John J. Burns Library. Boston College, H. A. Reinhold, “The Sea for
Christ,” The Commonweal March 12, 1937, H. A. Reinhold Papers, MS 2003-60, Box 15/36.
H. A. Reinhold, H.A.R.; The Autobiography of Father Reinhold (New York, 1968); Julia
Upton, In Spirit and Truth: The Life and Legacy of H. A. Reinhold (Collegeville, MN, 2010).
109. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, May 24, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/
en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

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together to explore the issues, Catholic experience has the potential to
uncover new topics and nuances of North American Catholic history more
broadly. Finally, such collaboration is a way for scholars in Catholic studies
and the history of religions110 to engage their subject matter and methodology in relation to the historical dimensions of Catholic thought and
practice, vis á vis the environment.
Human interaction with ocean and wilderness has afforded humanity
beauty and tragedy, livelihood and poetry, production and recreation,
boundaries and boundlessness, death and life. Hopefully, historical navigation through the Perils of Ocean and Wilderness will expand current research
areas and create new fields for North American Catholic history.

110. See Thomas A. Tweed, “Expanding the Study of U.S. Region: Reflections on the
State of a Subfield,” Religion, 40 (2010), 250–58, and his suggested direction in American
religious history through use of concepts of crossing and dwelling, derived from the natural and
social sciences; Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge,
MA, 2006).

Praising God Together: Monastic Reformers and
Laypeople in Tenth-Century Winchester
CHRISTOPHER RIEDEL*
The author examines the Translation and Miracles of St. Swithun
by the tenth-century monk Lantfred as a way of gauging the relationship of the laity to the reformist bishop Æthelwold and the monks of the
Old Minster Cathedral in Winchester during the first generation of the
Benedictine Reform in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England.
Keywords: St. Æthelwold, Anglo-Saxon religion, hagiography,
laity, monastic reform

W

hen the monastic reform movements that developed in the former
Carolingian Empire in the tenth century crossed to England, they
found unique expression in Winchester under Bishop Æthelwold. The
reformers shared the goals of purifying and regularizing monastic life based
on the Rule of St. Benedict and distinguishing themselves from secular
clerks.1 On the continent these reforms overwhelmingly involved the
adoption of strict claustration of monks away from lay society. Æthelwold,
however, went further by expelling all secular clerics from the minsters of
Winchester in 964 and staffing his cathedral exclusively with monks.2 He

*Dr. Riedel is a visiting assistant professor in the History Department at Boston College, email: riedelc@bc.edu. Unless otherwise noted, the author has provided the translations
in this article.
1. Julia Barrow, “The Ideology of the Tenth-Century English Benedictine ‘Reform,’”
in Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, ed. Patricia
Skinner (Turnhout, Belgium, 2010), pp. 141–54; Joachim Wallasch, “Monasticism: The First
Wave of Reform,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. III: c. 900–c. 1024, ed. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge, UK, 1999), pp. 163–85; James Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle
Ages (Woodbridge, UK, 2011), pp. 39–50.
2. Patrick Wormald, “Æthelwold and His Continental Counterparts: Contact, Comparison, Contrast,” in Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke (Woodbridge, UK, 1988), pp. 13–42; Julia Barrow, “English Cathedral Communities and Reform
in the Late Tenth and the Eleventh Centuries,” in Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed.
David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, UK, 1994), pp. 25–
39; the other minsters in Winchester were also completely converted to regular religious life
based on the Benedictine Rule, with monks at New Minster (later Hyde Abbey) and nuns at
Nunnaminster.

284

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285

thus began the centuries-long tradition of monastic cathedrals in England,
where, unlike on the continent or in earlier Anglo-Saxon England, there
were no secular clerics to do the pastoral work of the most important
church in the diocese. This poses a problem: how did Æthelwold and the
reformed monks of the Old Minster cathedral in Winchester envision their
relationship to the laypeople who were now dependent on them for much
of their pastoral care? The text that can best help us to answer this question
is the Translation and Miracles of St. Swithun, composed by the Frankish
monk Lantfred in the early 970s, a hagiographical work that was written
for the reformed monks of the Old Minster and with the cooperation and
approval of Bishop Æthelwold.3 Lantfred wrote this text to celebrate the
translation of St. Swithun on July 15, 971, one of the key events of Æthelwold’s career and the inspiration for a major pilgrimage cult that brought
thousands of laypeople to the Old Minster seeking miraculous aid. Instead
of resenting this intrusion into their church, the reformed monks are
shown in the miracula as not only regularly interacting with laypeople but
also sharing with them their enthusiasm for praising, glorifying, and
thanking God. Lantfred highlights in his text that praise of God, or doxology, was a central concern of the monastic reform movement and one not
limited to the monks in Winchester. Monks were Lantfred’s first audience,
but he makes it clear that they were expected to reach out to the laity.4 The
miracula were written in Latin for educated monks, but in this text monastic readers found that they were portrayed as teachers by example—not the
subjects of the miracles but the instructors of the lay recipients in the
proper response to God’s wonders. Lantfred depicts laypeople as capable of
participating with the monks in their doxologies and presents his patrons,
the monks of the Old Minster, dutifully and often enthusiastically providing the correct model of behavior for laypeople to emulate.
To demonstrate how Lantfred’s miracula of St. Swithun can be used
to reveal the views of Winchester’s monastic reformers toward the laity, it
is necessary to examine Æthelwold’s particular brand of monastic reform at
Winchester in relation to that of his fellow reformers on the Continent and

3. Lantfred, Translatio et Miracvla S. Swithvni (henceforth Lantfred), in The Cult of St
Swithun, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge, [Winchester Studies 4.2], (Oxford, 2003), pp.
252–333; see also Lapidge’s dating of the text, pp. 235–37, and his note on its commissioning, p. 253n8.
4. The words used by Lantfred to denote praise are gloria or glorificare, laus or laudare,
benedicere, gratia, and magnificare; a brief overview of Anglo-Saxon scholarly interest in doxology can be found in Sarah Larratt Keefer, “In Closing: Amen and Doxology in AngloSaxon England,” Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie, 121 (2003), 210–37.

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in England. In addition, an investigation of Lantfred’s text will illuminate
what was innovative rather than merely imitative of the conventions of
hagiography.5
Text and Context
Bishop Æthelwold, like his fellow reformers Archbishop Dunstan of
Canterbury (d. 988) and Archbishop Oswald of York and Worcester (d.
992), was interested in the changes taking place at continental reform centers like Fleury and Ghent, but unlike his English colleagues, he never visited any of them personally. He was the primary author of the Regularis
Concordia, an elaboration and modification of the Benedictine Rule central
to the English reform movement, which was promulgated in 966 at a
synod called by King Edgar the Peaceable and held in Winchester under
the direction of Archbishop Dunstan.6 This document was meant to join
all the reformed monasteries in England under one rule and place them
under the protection of the king, but despite this unifying vision, Æthelwold’s understanding of reform differed from those of Dunstan and
Oswald. 7 Most notably, Æthelwold expelled all the secular clerics from the
Old Minster and New Minster in Winchester, which meant that the town
cathedral and other significant churches were staffed entirely by monks
after 964, whereas both Dunstan and Oswald continued to maintain secular clerics alongside their newly installed reformed monks.8

5. Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from
the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, 2013), pp. 504–86, especially pp. 567–70.
6. The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation: Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. Thomas Symons (London, 1953); D. J. Dales, “The Spirit of the Regularis Concordia and the Hand of St Dunstan,” in St Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed.
Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks, and Tim Tatton-Brown (Woodbridge, UK, 1992), pp. 45–
56; David Pratt, “The Voice of the King in ‘King Edgar’s Establishment of the Monasteries,’”
Anglo-Saxon England, 41 (2013), 145–204. For the most current dating of the Regularis Concordia, see Julia Barrow, “The Chronology of the Benedictine ‘Reform,’” in Edgar, King of the
English 959–975: New Interpretations, ed. Donald Scragg (Rochester, NY, 2008), pp. 211–23.
7. Catherine Cubitt, “The Tenth-Century Benedictine Reform in England,” Early
Medieval Europe, 6 (1997), 77–94.
8. Simon Keynes, “Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of Westminster (c 900–3),
and Bishop of Sherborne (c 993–1002),” in St. Wulfsige and Sherborne, ed. Katherine Barker,
David A. Hinton, and Alan Hunt (Oxford, 2005), pp. 53–94, here pp. 68–69; Nicola Robertson, “Dunstan and Monastic Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-Century Fiction?”
Anglo-Norman Studies, 28 (2006), 153–67; Wormald, “Æthelwold and His Continental
Counterparts,” pp. 37–38; Julia Barrow, “The Community of Worcester, 961–c. 1100,” in St
Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt (London,
1996), pp. 84–99, here pp. 98–99. Dunstan did not even expel the clerics living at Glaston-

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Dunstan and Oswald primarily derived their ideas of reform from the
continental monastic centers of Ghent and Fleury, whereas Æthelwold
drew more heavily on his interpretation of the so-called “golden age” of
English monasticism portrayed by the Venerable Bede in his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People.9 Æthelwold portrayed himself re-creating the world described by Bede, one where the conversion of the English was accomplished by monks who preached, ministered, staffed
cathedrals, and became bishops. Scholars such as Sarah Foot have argued
convincingly that this early English monasticism was extremely varied and
complex, often combining contemplative living and active pastoral care.10
Although Foot rightly shows these earlier monastic communities mixing
asceticism with ministry, she makes her point in part by emphasizing their
differences from the tenth-century reformers, exaggerating later changes as
a sharp break with this tradition.11 The Benedictine reform deserves the
same open-minded re-examination that the earlier period of English
monasticism has received.
Although the reformers sought to distinguish monks from secular
clergy in terms of manner of living, especially by altering liturgical observances and enforcing poverty and celibacy, recent scholarship has begun to
show that this division did not entail seclusion from pastoral concerns.12
The surviving texts are notably lacking in language that would indicate a
move to strictly cloister the monks of Old Minster from all lay interaction,
and there is much evidence pointing to the opposite conclusion, with
Lantfred’s miracula as the best example. Even though Lantfred wrote in an
extremely erudite Latin meant for his monastic patrons rather than in the
bury, the first reformed monastery; see Nicholas Brooks, “The Career of St Dunstan,” in St
Dunstan: His Life, Times and Cult, ed. Ramsay et al., pp. 1–23, here pp. 12–13.
9. Wormald, “Æthelwold and His Continental Counterparts,” pp. 37–42; Antonia
Gransden, “Traditionalism and Continuity during the Last Century of Anglo-Saxon Monasticism,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 40 (1989), 159–207, here 162–63; see, in particular,
the document, almost certainly written by Æthelwold, called “King Edgar’s Establishment of
the Monasteries,” in Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church,
vol. I, pt. 1: A.D. 871–1204, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, Christopher Brooke, and Martin Brett
(Oxford, 1981), pp. 142–54.
10. Sarah Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–900 (Cambridge, UK,
2006).
11. Ibid., p. 286.
12. Francesca Tinti, “Benedictine Reform and Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon
England,” Early Medieval Europe, 23 (2015), pp. 229–51; the author is very grateful to
Francesca Tinti for the opportunity to read her article in advance of publication. For liturgical
changes, see Jesse Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England 597–c 1000 (Woodbridge, UK, 2014), pp. 149–95.

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vernacular for a lay audience, his text is invaluable for showing how the
first generation of reformers conceived of its proper relationship with lay
Christians.13 Lantfred’s text, although a biased lens through which to view
laypeople, is the same lens through which the monks viewed both the laity
and themselves. This view of monastic reform does not contradict the Regularis Concordia and other programmatic documents but rather complements them by providing another perspective on how monks thought
about lay Christians and their responsibilities toward them.
A comparison of Lantfred’s miracula of St. Swithun with its hagiographical forerunners shows how much Lantfred molded the genre for his
own purposes. Since Lantfred was the first person to write Latin hagiography in England in almost a century and a half, and the first to compose a
text that describes in detail the invention and translation (that is, identification and relocation of relics) of an English saint, his changes to the genre
were extremely influential for later English hagiographers.14 Lantfred’s
miracula was so popular that it even spawned derivative works: two decades
later it was recast in poetic meter by another monk of the Old Minster,
Wulfstan Cantor, who left the content largely unchanged but made a few
additions, and at about the same time it served as the basis for an Old English translation composed by Old Minster alumnus Ælfric of Eynsham.15
There were some earlier patristic and contemporary models with
which Lantfred must have been familiar. The text of the miracula demonstrates, for instance, that Lantfred had read St. Augustine’s City of God and
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, both works that contain
descriptions of the posthumous miracles of saints.16 But although each of
13. Michael Lapidge notes that Lantfred was perhaps the best Latin prose stylist in
England since Bede or Aldhelm, creating a “deep impression” in Winchester and further
afield; see The Cult of St Swithun, pp. 224–32. See also Lapidge, “The Hermeneutic Style in
Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature,” Anglo-Saxon England, 4 (1975), 67–111.
14. Michael Lapidge and Rosalind C. Love, “England and Wales (600–1550),” in
Hagiographies: histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire, en
Occident, des origines à 1500, ed. Guy Philippart (Turnhout, Belgium, 2001), vol. III, pp. 203–
325, here pp. 216–18.
15. Both are edited and translated by Lapidge in The Cult of St Swithun; see pp. 335–
551 for Wulfstan Cantor and his text, and pp. 575–610 for Ælfric’s version.
16. Lantfred borrowed phrases directly from several important texts, including Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History, which contains a series of posthumous miracles for St. Oswald of
Northumbria in book 3, chapters 9 through 13, and Augustine’s City of God, which in book
22, chapter 8, records twelve miracles performed by the relics of St. Stephen when they
arrived in Africa, but neither has the same emphases found in Lantfred’s text; see Lapidge,
The Cult of St Swithun, pp. 232–35.

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these earlier texts contains a reference or two to praising God, the language
of each is very different from that of Lantfred, and both lack his particular
focus on doxology.17 Lantfred likewise is not particularly indebted to the
vocabulary of the earliest texts describing saints’ inventions or translations,
partly because he focuses very little on the translation of St. Swithun and
more on the miracles before and after the event.18
It is also likely that Lantfred would have known the posthumous miracle collections recorded by St. Gregory of Tours: four books for St.
Martin and another for St. Julian.19 These two texts, which together consist of roughly 250 chapters describing miracles, are much longer than the
forty chapters of Lantfred’s miracula of St. Swithun but include almost the
same number of explicit references to praising God.20 Gregory had very
different interests than Lantfred, focusing far more on miracles of

17. More recent texts like Einhard’s The Translation and Miracles of the Saints Marcellinus and Peter share some of the features of Lantfred’s later text, but the proportion of miracles
that include a reference to praise or thanks to either God or the saints is still far lower: no
instances in the first or second books, six in the twenty chapters of the third book (1, 8, 11,
12, 16, and 19), and seven in the fourth book (3, 5, 7, 8, 14, 16, and 17; however, since chapters 10, 12, and 14 each include lists of ten or eleven miracles, the proportion is even lower).
See the edition by Georg Waitz in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, vol. 15, pt. 1
(Hannover, 1888), pp. 239–64.
18. Lantfred devotes only one sentence to the actual translation, followed before and
after by sentences describing more miracles; see pp. 284–87. Lapidge notes that Lantfred borrowed elements from the structure of the earliest translation account of a saint—that of St.
Stephen found in Lucian’s Epistola Luciani ad omnem ecclesiam de reuelatione corporis Stephani
martyris primi (PL xli 805–16)—but adds “there are no verbal links between the two
accounts”; see Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun, pp. 232–35. Alan Thacker catalogs and analyzes the prolific English translations of the late-seventh and early-eighth centuries, such as
those found in the works of Bede, which do not share many details in common with Lantfred’s account; see Thacker, “The Making of a Local Saint,” in Local Saints and Local Churches
in the Early Medieval West, ed. Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford, 2002), pp. 45–73.
19. There is some indication that Æthelwold had access to these relatively common
texts, so Lantfred could have consulted them; see Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library
(Oxford, 2006), p. 135.
20. A modern translation of both texts is provided in the appendix to Raymond Van
Dam’s Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), pp. 162–303. The
following six chapters out of the fifty in The Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St Julian contain thanks or praise, sometimes without an explicit recipient or to either God or the saint or
both: 9, 11, 25, 36, 45, and 47. The following twenty-six out of the 207 in The Miracles of the
Bishop St Martin contain thanks or praise: 1.8, 1.9, 1.11, 1.12, 1.19, 1.33, 2.10, 2.22, 2.25,
2.28, 2.35, 2.47, 2.54, 3.2, 3.7, 3.8, 3.16, 3.18, 3.19, 3.24, 3.29, 3.31, 3.32, 3.39, 4.40, and
4.46. For postmiracle praise from the recipient or crowd in Swithun’s vita, see Lantfred,
chapters 2, 3, 8, 9, 11–13, 16–23, 25, 27–29, and 31–37; for the monks praising God or Lantfred mentioning praising God, see Lantfred, chapters 1, 4, 5, 10, 30, 38, and 40.

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vengeance against those who either attacked the property of the saint (that
is, the property of the saint’s church) or who had failed to uphold the Sabbath—hagiographic tropes absent from Lantfred’s text. Gregory was also
particularly focused on dust from the tombs of the saints, which he had
used as his own personal cure-all for various aches and pains and rarely
made available to laypeople.21 Lantfred, however, showed little interest in
the subject of contact relics.
As a monk from Fleury, Lantfred would certainly have been familiar
with the first book of miracles of St. Benedict, which was written there by
Adrevald during Lantfred’s own lifetime, but this text focuses far more on
royal figures as well as the security and history of the monastery than does
the hagiography of St. Swithun.22 Doxology is not absent from this and
other earlier texts, but Lantfred’s repetitive emphasis on doxology for miracles given to the ordinary laity shows his own unique emphasis on the
presentation of St. Swithun’s miracles, however unoriginal the miracles
may be. Even if Lantfred did copy this emphasis from some other, more
obscure source, his decision to ignore so many important precedents—not
only from famous patristic sources but also from his own native institution—indicates the importance of this theme of doxology to him and his
patrons, the reformers at the Old Minster in Winchester.

21. See, for instance, The Miracles of the Bishop St Martin, chapters 1.17, 1.29, 1.30,
1.31, 2.27, and 4.7 for protecting the saint’s property; chapters 2.24, 2.57, 3.3, 3.7, 3.29, 3.31,
3.45, 3.55, 3.56, and 4.45 for vengeance miracles afflicting those working on a festival or the
Sabbath; and particularly (out of numerous examples) chapter 3.60 for Gregory of Tours’s
toothaches and a long list of other illnesses cured by potions made with dust from Martin’s
tomb. Lantfred does include one cure effected by a candle that he had inscribed for a Frankish
woman while he was presumably on a trip back home, but this is not a contact relic; see Lantfred, pp. 222–23. Contact relics were enormously popular both before and after Lantfred
wrote; see Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), p. 27; Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 101–04, 118; Catherine Cubitt, “Sites and sanctity: Revisiting the cult of
murdered and martyred Anglo-Saxon royal saints,” Early Medieval Europe, 9 (2000), 53–83,
here 60–61; Ben Nilson, “The Medieval Experience at the Shrine,” in Pilgrimage Explored,
ed. J. Stopford (York, 1999), pp. 95–122, here p. 108; Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrimage: An
Image of Mediaeval Religion (London, 1975), pp. 82–83.
22. David Rollason, “The Miracles of St Benedict: A Window in Early Medieval
France,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis, ed. Henry Mayr-Harting
and R. I. Moore (London, 1985), pp. 73–90, here pp. 89–90; Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do
Such Great Things?, p. 51.

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Monastic-Lay Interaction in Winchester
In contrast, Lantfred was distinctly focused on the laypeople who
came to the Old Minster seeking cures. This focus on the laity may appear
strange to a modern reader accustomed to thinking of monks as strictly
cloistered and living apart from the secular world. This stereotype, however, was only beginning to become common in the tenth century as the
differentiation between secular canons and monks solidified on the continent, and it did not describe life at the Old Minster under Æthelwold.23
Æthelwold’s decision to remove all the non-monastic clergy at both the
Old Minster cathedral and the New Minster next door was a completely
unprecedented step, and it left no diocesan clergy to perform pastoral care
for the laity at either of Winchester’s two major churches. In contrast, both
Dunstan and Oswald, Æthelwold’s fellow English reformers, retained secular clerics alongside their reformed monks at their sees in Canterbury and
Worcester.24 In this, they were closer to the monastic reforms taking place
on the Continent, such as the dual communities at Sithiu in Flanders,
where Saint-Omer exchanged monks for canons under the direction of
Abbot Fridugis (820–34), whereas the monastic community of St-Bertin
in 941 was reformed by Gerard of Brogne, who left the canons in place
next door.25 Gerard was also responsible for the reform of Saint-Peter’s

23. Wormald, “Æthelwold and His Continental Counterparts,” pp. 18, 37–38; Billett,
The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 64–77. Giles Constable argues that monastic
separation from the laity began around this time; see his Three Studies in Medieval Religious
and Social Thought (Cambridge, UK, 1995), pp. 20–43, and idem, “Monasteries, Rural
Churches and the Cura Animarum in the Early Middle Ages,” Settimane di studio del Centro
Italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 28 (1982), 349–89, here 367, 371, 375–76. Clark agrees
with Constable in arguing that many monks, specifically Benedictines, fought to remain
involved in pastoral care for the laity; see The Benedictines, pp. 131, 178–81.
24. Simon Keynes covers recent scholarship for the long process of monasticization at
Canterbury, Worcester, and Sherborne; see “Wulfsige, Monk of Glastonbury, Abbot of
Westminster (c 900–3), and Bishop of Sherborne (c 993–1002),” in St Wulfsige and Sherborne:
Essays to Celebrate the Millennium of the Benedictine Abbey 998–1998, ed. Katherine Barker,
David A. Hinton, and Alan Hunte (Oxford, 2005), pp. 53–95, here pp. 68–69. Nicholas
Brooks argues that there was a gradual transition to exclusive monasticism in the eleventh
century encouraged by reform-minded successors to Dunstan; see “The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral Community, 597–1070,” in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. Patrick Collinson,
Nigel Ramsay, and Margaret Sparks (Oxford, 1995), pp. 1–37, here pp. 26–27. Julia Barrow
places the expelling of canons from Worcester in the reign of Wulfstan of York (1002–16);
see “The Community of Worcester, 961–c.1100,” pp. 98–99. There is no evidence that
Oswald reformed York Minster.
25. Karine Ugé, Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders (Woodbridge, UK,
2005), pp. 56–61.

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Ghent, one of the two houses named by Æthelwold as the sources for his
own customary, the Regularis Concordia (the other was Lantfred’s own
monastery, Fleury).26 Æthelwold, however, described this borrowing in
terms lifted explicitly from Bede’s description of St. Gregory the Great’s
advice to Archbishop Augustine of Canterbury for founding the English
Church—namely, that the archbishop should borrow what customs
seemed best to him from Rome and Gaul.27 As Patrick Wormald has
argued, although Æthelwold drew on continental reforms for inspiration,
he was ultimately basing his own reforms on Bede’s depiction of the early
English Church, which Æthelwold interpreted to be entirely monastic.28
Æthelwold borrowed continental ideas extensively but not at the expense
of his own notions of English tradition.29 In the case of his minster staff,
his decision to remove all non-monks from his minster’s staff was entirely
at odds with continental reforms and one that necessitated a monastic role
in pastoral care.30
26. Regularis Concordia, p. 3.
27. Regularis Concordia, p. 3: “. . . sanctique patroni nostri Gregorii documenta, quibus
beatum Augustinum monere studuit ut non solum Romanae uerum etiam Galliarum honestos ecclesiarum usus <in> rudi Anglorum ecclesia decorando constitueret, recolentes . . . uti
apes fauum nectaris diuersis pratorum floribus in uno alueario . . .” For the passage in Bede,
see Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B.
Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 80–83.
28. Wormald, “Æthelwold and his Continental Counterparts,” pp. 37–42. He is followed by Alan Thacker, who called Æthelwold’s interpretation of the Bedan past “… all of a
piece and all monastic” and noted that although the continent may have stimulated English
reform, Æthelwold relied foremost on Bede; see “Æthelwold and Abingdon,” in Æthelwold,
ed. Yorke, pp. 43–64, here p. 63. His exact phrasing has been quoted by Sarah Foot in Monastic Life, p. 14, and Simon Coates, “Perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon Past in the Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Reform Movement,” Studies in Church History, 33 (1997), 61–74, here 61.
29. Mechthild Gretsch particularly notes the distinctively English features of the Regularis Concordia kept alongside wholesale continental borrowing; see Mechthild Gretsch, The
Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge, UK, 1999), p. 291; see
also Veronica Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent (Oxford, 1992), p. 266. The
issues of Æthelwold’s exact relationship with continental reform and his own interpretation
of the Bedan past are complex and cannot be examined in full here, but see Christopher
Riedel, “Monastic Reform and Lay Religion in Æthelwold’s Winchester” (PhD diss., Boston
College, 2015), pp. 1–18, 105–35.
30. This was made possible in part because of the rise of ordination in monastic circles,
a trend that was in evidence among the English reformers at Winchester as seen in their Liber
Vitae; see The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed. Simon Keynes
(Copenhagen, 1996), p. 64nn133–34, pp. 87–89; see also Tinti, “Benedictine Reform and
Pastoral Care,” pp. 238–39; on the rise of monastic ordination in general, see Constable,
“Monasteries, Rural Churches and the Cura Animarum in the Early Middle Ages,” pp. 349–
59; Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, their Families and Careers
in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge, UK, 2015), pp. 9–10, 42–43, 90–92.

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There were few alternative sources for pastoral care in Winchester in
the 970s. The other great minsters were New Minster and Nunnaminster;
as the name implies, the latter was a convent, whereas the former was also
re-staffed with monks by Æthelwold and so presents the same issues as the
Old Minster cathedral, although lacking its episcopal status.31 The creation of neighborhood parish churches in towns did not begin in earnest
until the late-tenth or early-eleventh century, primarily as a result of the
breakdown of authority of the old minsters, a process retarded in the case
of cathedral towns.32 Although Winchester had fifty-seven small churches
in the later medieval period, only six can positively be dated to the tenth
century.33 The most famous is the excavated St. Mary in Tanner Street, but
the archaeological evidence shows it was so small that it would only have
been fit for private use when first built and, like the other small churches
in town, was only later expanded in the eleventh century, when it likely was

31. For a description of the relationships between the three minsters, see Helen Foxhall
Forbes, “Squabbling Siblings: Gender and Monastic Life in Late Anglo-Saxon Winchester,”
Gender and History, 23 (2011), 653–84. Although some scholars have theorized that the New
Minster was originally founded to provide pastoral care to the growing town that the ancient
and small Old Minster could not provide, there is not explicit evidence of this, and Nicole
Marafioti has convincingly demonstrated that its main function was as a burial place and
monument to the West Saxon dynasty; see The King’s Body: Burial and Succession in Late
Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2014), pp. 25–31.
32. Gervase Rosser argues that small local churches were only just beginning to be
founded at this time, often as part of private dwellings, and asserts that “[i]n no town before
1000 can the provision of pastoral care have been more than marginally affected by the thenavailable local chapels”; see his “The Care of Souls in English Towns before 1000,” in Pastoral
Care before the Parish, ed. John Blair and Richard Sharpe (Leicester, 1992), pp. 267–84, here
pp. 274–75. Richard Morris dates local churches to the eleventh century; see Churches in the
Landscape (London, 1989), pp. 169–77. John Blair specifies the 980s but admits even “the
possibility of an eleventh-century boom”; see The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford,
2005), pp. 402–05, here p. 405. Julia Barrow sees communal influence on churches beginning
at the end of the tenth century; see The Clergy in the Medieval World, p. 332. Francesca Tinti
asserts that in Worcester, another center of reform, “the cathedral church was the main source
of pastoral care in the town throughout the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period” and that
monks must have provided pastoral care there; see “Benedictine Reform and Pastoral Care,”
p. 239. Nigel Baker and Richard Holt prefer an earlier origin but admit there is insufficient
archaeological evidence and that “final proof is lacking”; see Urban Growth and the Medieval
Church: Gloucester and Worcester (Aldershot, UK, 2004), pp. 220–21, 241, 259.
33. Derek Keene lists all the churches and their earliest dates; see Survey of Medieval
Winchester, vol. I (Oxford, 1985), Table 1, pp. 134–35. See also Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle, “Dispersal or Concentration: The Disposal of the Winchester Dead over 2000 Years,” in Death in
Towns: Urban Responses to Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. Steven R. Bassett (Leicester,
1992), pp. 210–47, here pp. 224–26; Kjølbye-Biddle’s number of churches prior to the Conquest updates that of Martin Biddle in Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and
Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. Martin Biddle (Oxford, 1976), pp. 329–30.

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turned into a parish church.34 Small churches likely filled a variety of liturgical roles other than communal pastoral care as later parishes would do,
such as the two gate churches at Winchester firmly datable to before
1000.35 Although these small churches were unlikely to provide pastoral
care, the monks at the Old Minster Cathedral were capable of doing so, as
many were priests (in keeping with the contemporary trend toward monastic ordination).36 As Francesca Tinti has argued for a similar situation in
Worcester, had the reformed monks suddenly cut all ties with the laity
there would not have been sufficient priests or space left to provide pastoral
care for the town’s residents, as these monks constituted the bulk of the
ordained clergy in Winchester at this time, and neighborhood churches
had not yet emerged to provide a viable alternative to the Old Minster.37
Instead, the Old Minster and the other two minsters retained (and
would continue to maintain) many parochial responsibilities such as nearexclusive baptismal and burial rights within the city and as such dominated
Winchester’s liturgical life before the rise of urban churches that came after
34. For the archaeology of the site, see Martin Biddle, “Excavations at Winchester,
1971: Tenth and Final Interim Report: Part II,” Antiquaries Journal, 55 (1975), 295–337, here
303–12. For Keene’s assessment of changing church roles, see Survey of Medieval Winchester,
vol. I, p. 126, and vol. II, pp. 761–63. See also Morris, Churches in the Landscape, p. 225;
Biddle, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, p. 335; and Rosser, “The Care of Souls in English
Towns,” p. 274.
35. Helen Gittos has remarked on the nature of groups of churches in Anglo-Saxon
England as a result of the peripatetic liturgy of the time; see Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture and
Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2013), p. 102. The two gate churches (out of
the six small churches in Winchester that can be dated before 1000) were St. Martin in the
Ditch and St. Michael over the east gate. The latter was founded in 994 after Æthelwold’s
death; see Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, vol. II, p. 1029, and Biddle, Winchester in the
Early Middle Ages, pp. 329–30. On the nature of gate churches, which were often not
parochial and when they were tended to extra-mural parishes, see Biddle, Winchester in the
Early Middle Ages, p. 333, and Baker and Holt, Urban Growth, pp. 106, 213, 232, 246.
36. For monastic ordination generally in this era, see Giles Constable, “Monasteries,
Rural Churches and the Cura Animarum in the Early Middle Ages,” Settimane di studio del
Centro Italiano di stui sull’alto Medioevo, 28 (1982), 349–89; and Barrow, The Clergy in the
Medieval World, pp. 9–10, 42–43, 90–92. The New Minster Liber Vitae preserves the names
and clerical ranks of the reformed monks of the Old Minster of this generation, demonstrating that most had taken clerical orders; see London, British Library, Stowe 994, fols. 18r–
20v. For a discussion, see The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed.
Simon Keynes (Copenhagen, 1996), pp. 64, 87–89; and Tinti, “Benedictine Reform and Pastoral Care,” pp. 238–39.
37. Francesca Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c. 870 to c. 1100
(Farnham, UK, 2010), pp. 245–46. The physical landscape of religious life in Winchester at
this particular moment in time demands examination in greater detail than can be given here;
for more, see Riedel, Monastic Reform and Lay Religion, pp. 59–104.

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the millennium.38 Even when they acquired burial rites late in the Middle
Ages, the lesser churches were not sufficiently large to provide burial for all
of the laity in town, and burial in the cathedral cemetery would continue
to be the norm for most citizens.39 In Winchester the reformers similarly
maintained a monopoly on baptisms well into the High Middle Ages and
insisted on referring to the parish churches even in the twelfth century as
capellae rather than ecclesiae.40 These birth and death rituals have a powerful
impact on identity, and the reformed monks jealously guarded their control
over this aspect of Wintonian society, just at the time that minsters were
elsewhere beginning to lose their traditional prerogatives to the new breed
of parish churches.41 Even if this was partly motivated by the revenues
entailed by such rites, that does not detract from the fact that laypeople had
to come to the reformed monks at the Old Minster for some of the most
important religious events in their lives.
This lay use of the Old Minster, staffed entirely by reformed monks
after 964, is at odds with our notions of strict monastic claustration. The
38. Martin Biddle particularly discusses the probability that the minsters tightly controlled both burial and baptismal rights even with the rise of smaller churches. See Winchester
in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. Martin Biddle,
[Winchester Studies 1], (Oxford, 1976), pp. 332–33; and Michael Franklin, “The Cathedral
as Parish Church: The Case of Southern England,” in Church and City, 1000–1500: Essays in
Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. David Abulafia, Michael J. Franklin, and Miri Rubin (Cambridge, UK, 2002), pp. 173–98, here pp. 174–77. Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle has made a convincing argument that the more recently excavated Staple Gardens cemetery served a community
of refugees from the Viking raids on Hamwic late in the ninth century, before Winchester
was even reorganized as a burh; see “Dispersal or Concentration: The Disposal of the Winchester Dead over 2000 Years,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to Dying and the Dead,
100–1600 (Leicester, 1992), pp. 210–37, here p. 224. Ben M. Ford and Steven Teague have
demonstrated some skepticism with this argument but admit it is possible; see Winchester: A
City in the Making (Oxford, 2011), pp. 221–22. See also Roger Kipling and Graham Scobie,
“Staple Gardens 1989,” Winchester Museums Service Newsletter, 6 (1990), 8–9; no associated
church has been found with this cemetery, and it is entirely possible that none existed there
in the ninth or tenth century to compete with the minsters. See Dawn M. Hadley and Jo
Buckberry, “Caring for the Dead in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” in Pastoral Care in Late
Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Francesca Tinti (Woodbridge, UK, 2005), pp. 121–47, here p. 127.
39. Baker and Holt have made this point for Worcester and Gloucester, but it is worth
considering in the case of Winchester; see Urban Growth, p. 246.
40. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, I:109, also notes on 127 that references to
parishes before 1400 are rare; see also Biddle, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, p. 332.
41. Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places, pp. 52–53; Blair, The Church, pp.
440–51. Morris notes that, as with so many other aspects of parish development, burial rights
tended to remain with minsters in Winchester, Gloucester, and the other towns of the southwest, whereas eastern towns like Cambridge, Lincoln, and Norwich quickly devolved burial
rights on the more numerous local churches; see Churches in the Landscape, p. 223.

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separation of monks from laypeople in Winchester appears at first glance
to have been the goal of Bishop Æthelwold, because he reorganized some
of the land in the city to create a quarter for the Old Minster, New Minster, and Nunnaminster, for which he secured re-endowments and charters
confirming the land rights of the communities from King Edgar.42 Such a
move might seem to indicate an attempt at strictly cloistering the monks
that would make the kind of interactions found throughout Lantfred’s
miracula of St. Swithun impossible, but a closer look at the charters in
question demonstrates that such an interpretation is incorrect.43
In a document, dated c. 970, which established the precincts of the
three minsters, King Edgar decreed:
. . . none of my successors should presume to try to diminish what I,
extending the monasteries, have enlarged, but that the whole space,
encompassed be walls or hedges, should be perpetually devoted to the
holy monasteries as I have given it.44

These walls or hedges distinguished monastic property and protected it but
seem to have done a poor job of keeping out the laity, because Lantfred
writes that “I also saw the precincts around the monastery in question so
packed on either side with crowds of sick persons, that any traveler would
find difficulty in gaining access to it. . . .”45 Although Lantfred may be
indulging in a hyperbolic trope of hagiography, he certainly presents these
crowds of lay pilgrims as a positive development for the Old Minster rather

42. See especially documents V and VI in Property and Piety in Early Medieval Winchester: Documents Relating to the Topography of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman City and Its Minsters,
ed. Alexander Rumble, [Winchester Studies 4.3], (Oxford, 2002), pp. 98–139. Biddle
describes these as a “. . . series of actions by which Æthelwold secured privacy and seclusion
for the monasteries of the city”; see Felix Urbs Winthonia, p. 134.
43. Alexander Rumble has interpreted these texts as indicating that the Wintonian
monks shunned the laity and were prevented from mixing with them, but he infers this primarily from an example focused specifically on not eating with laypeople; see his “The Laity
and Monastic Reform in the Reign of Edgar,” in Edgar, King of the English, ed. Scragg, pp.
242–51, especially p. 247; on p. 251 he notes that shunning laypeople creates a paradox with
the reality of the situation in Winchester.
44. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 138: “… ut nemo successorum meorum angustare
temere presumat . quod ego amplificans circa monasteria dilataui . sed spacium omne muris
uel sepibus complexum . uti dedi sanctis monasteriis perpetualiter deseruiat.” Translations
provided are by Rumble unless otherwise noted.
45. Lantfred, pp. 286–87: “Vidimus etiam circa presciptum plateas monasterium adeo
refertas utrobique turmis aegrotantium, ut quispiam uiator difficile repperiret iter gradiendi
ad ipsum …” Translations are by Michael Lapidge unless otherwise noted.

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than a distraction to be avoided, which must be compared with King
Edgar’s establishment of minster precincts “. . . so that the monks and nuns
living therein might serve God more peacefully, removed from the bustle
of the citizens.”46
These seemingly disparate impulses at Winchester to encourage
laypeople to come to the monastic cathedral and to provide a private space
for the monks are not incompatible, especially in the light of the recent
expulsion of the former inhabitants of the minster, the secular canons. The
source of the effort to distinguish between secular canons and monks was
legislation promulgated by the Carolingians in the early-ninth century, but
in this earlier attempt at reform, the primary difference between canons
and monks was the latter’s vow of poverty.47 This appears to be one of the
primary justifications for expelling the canons in Winchester, along with
Æthelwold’s particular insistence on clerical celibacy.48 The endowment
establishing Winchester’s monastic precincts mentions providing a grant of
the land to the monastic communities at the expense of the canons, with
the king ordering that the canons’ small houses around the cathedral be
demolished.49 This was an attack on the former canons, who had lived
individually with their wives and personal property rather than chastely and
communally as the reformed monks did. This document emphasizes
monastic purity of living, through material and sexual abstinence, not
seclusion from lay society entirely.50
This distinction is supported by a series of charters confirming the
endowments of the Old Minster composed around the same time, one of
which enjoins, “Let the monks therefore, removed from the cares of this
life, be sustained according to custom whence the canons, intent upon the
46. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 137: “. . . ut cenobite inibi degentes á ciuium tumultu
remoti tranquillius Deo seruirent honorifice magna dilataui cautela.”
47. Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 65–69. Thomas Amos notes
that although Carolingian legislators did make attempts to separate monks firmly from the
laity and to remove monks from cathedral staffs, this policy often had to be ignored because
the need for well-educated clergymen to provide pastoral care for the laity took precedence;
see “Monks and Pastoral Care in the Early Middle Ages,” in Religion, Culture, and Society in
the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and
John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo, 1987), pp. 165–80, here pp. 172–75.
48. Barrow, “English Cathedral Communities,” p. 35.
49. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 137: “. . . spaciumque omne prefatis cenobiis contiguum dissipatis secularium domunculis. . . .”
50. Barrow argues that the language used to describe the secular canons is in some
instances explicitly parallel to the fallen angels and demons that need to be exorcized, see
“The Ideology of the Tenth-Century Benedictine ‘Reform,’” pp. 148-54.

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concerns of this transient life, used to be sustained with excessive greed.”51
These endowment charters are primarily concerned with preserving the
territorial rights of the reformed monastic communities, and the language
of the texts does not indicate strict claustration for the monks but rather a
demarcation of their property and an acknowledgment of their space and
status. The monks were not to live casually among the lay citizens of Winchester as the canons had, but Lantfred’s text suggests that the reformers
had no problem in principle with their interacting with the laity in an
appropriate religious context. The Rule of St. Benedict strictly regulates
monastic activity outside the monastery, but it does not forbid laypeople
from entering it.52 In the case of the Old Minster, Lantfred’s miracula
shows no sign that the reformers sought to keep laypeople out of their
shared cathedral, even if it was their monastic church. This is particularly
well demonstrated by the final illustration in The Benedictional of Æthelwold, where an illustration shows a bishop (likely intended to represent
Æthelwold himself) ministering before an audience of both monks and the
laity (see figure 1).53
Miracles for Laypeople
The clearest indication that Lantfred was primarily concerned with
the laity is that all of the miracles he describes were granted to laypeople
rather than the reformed monks of the community at the Old Minster.
None of the hundreds of people that he reports cured of illnesses or freed
from bondage were monks of the Old Minster, a decidedly unusual exclusion. Only two recipients of miracles in Lantfred’s forty chapters were clergymen, and both were from communities outside of Winchester.54 Lant51. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 132: “Alantur igitur solito monachi . ab huius uitę
curis remoti . unde alebantur canonici; cum auiditate nimia . curis uitę recidiuę intenti.”
52. Regula Benedicti, chapter 66; see The Rule of Saint Benedict, ed. and trans. Bruce
Venarde (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 214–15.
53. London, British Library, Add. 49598, f118v. Helen Gittos points to the depiction
of laypeople above the monks facing the central figure as an example of popular lay interest
in and possible presence at monastic ceremonies; see Gittos, Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred
Places, pp. 185, 214.
54. Lantfred, chapters 2 and 28; the first was a hunchbacked cleric from an unreformed
monastic community (he is described as a cleric raised to that status so he may live amongst
an otherwise unknown and certainly unreformed monastic community). See Lantfred, pp.
266–75, especially n72. The latter is a certain prior Byrhtferth of Abingdon, a different
reformed community established by Æthelwold, but this recipient demonstrates a profound
lack of faith by trying to have his blindness cured by doctors with multiple cauterizations of
his scalp rather than relying from the first on the power of God, perhaps a slight or condescension toward the Abingdon community; see Lantfred, pp. 316–17. In contrast, the only

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FIGURE 1. Illustration of a bishop dedicating a church, thought to be a rendering
of St. Æthelwold in the newly expanded Old Minster. Image from The Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, British Library, London. ©The British Library Board,
Add. 49598, f118v.

fred explicitly states in his second chapter that the miracle he describes was
a sign for everyone, rather than for the monastic community alone:
I think that it happened in this way so that the entire populace [uniuersus
. . . populus] would know without any doubt that the sick man had been
cured by the omnipotent Lord through the merit of the holy bishop
Swithun.55
two posthumous miracles of St. Cuthbert that Bede included in his Ecclesiastical History are
bestowed on brothers in Cuthbert’s community at Lindisfarne, see IV.31 and 32. See also the
earlier discussion about the personal use of St. Martin’s contact relics by St. Gregory of Tours.
55. Lantfred, pp. 282–83: “Quod idcirco actum fore credimus, quatinus sciret uniuersus
indubitanter populus quod per meritum sancti pontificis Suuithuni ab omnipotente Domino
fuisset curatus.”

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PRAISING GOD TOGETHER

Lantfred’s explanation demonstrates how miracles could be utilized as
powerful tools for instructing the whole of society, not just the residents of
Winchester but also the many pilgrims who came from lands near and far.
In one chapter Lantfred makes a crucial theological argument about the
intended audience for St. Swithun’s miracles:
In fact, God is showing to the world so many and such unheard-of marvels in these recent times precisely in order that the stony hearts of evil
men may become gentle and recover their senses, and so hasten toward
heavenly joys with their good works—since miracles are granted to
unfaithful peoples but are in no way essential to the faithful.56

Miracles, according to Lantfred, are not only meant to demonstrate God’s
power but also are specifically necessary to inspire belief in the unfaithful.
In part, this may include the reformed monastic community at the Old
Minster in a display of Christian humility, despite the group’s definite
sense of spiritual superiority over its secular predecessors, but given the
wider context of Lantfred’s work, it more probably indicates the laypeople
who constitute the overwhelming bulk of the miracle recipients in the
miracula. Undoubtedly these laypeople were Christian but, for Lantfred,
they were such only in a nominal or lukewarm sense and therefore were in
need of miracles to shore up their faith in God and encourage proper religious behavior, especially their participation in doxology.
This is not the only possible interpretation of miracles available to
Lantfred. Matthew 13:58 and Mark 6:1–6 note specifically that Jesus did
not perform any miracles on his return to Nazareth because the citizens
there had no faith in him, and Bede’s writings provide several examples
where people were cured on account of their faith (or if they lacked it, they
were not cured).57 This was a prominent alternative theological explanation, and Lantfred’s decision to interpret miracles as intended for unfaith56. Lantfred, pp. 294–95, emphasis added: “Nimirum idcirco Deus tot et tam inaudita
nouissimis temporibus mundo prebet mirabilia, ut mollescant hominum saxea ac resipiscant
prauorum corda et festinent ad celestia bonis operibus gaudia; quoniam signa infidelibus populis sunt tribuenda, fidelibus autem nequaquam necessaria.” The author has changed
Lapidge’s “unbelieving” to “unfaithful” for infidelibus to emphasize the parallel with “faithful”
for fidelibus, which is less pleasing to the ear but better captures Lantfred’s own juxtaposition
of these concepts.
57. See Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, chapter 2.16, and his prose Vita Cuthberti, chapter
23, in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, UK, 1940), p. 232;
these are discussed by Ronald Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval
England (London, 1977), pp. 80–81, and Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind,
pp. 58–59.

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301

ful or lukewarm believers instead of for the deserving faithful (like the
monks for whom he wrote) is a choice that demonstrates the purpose and
moral of his text. Lantfred makes this point at other critical junctures in his
miracula, such as just after describing Swithun’s translation, when he
insists, “Let any disbelievers come as well to the holy servant of God, so
that they may recognize the bounty of the creator and so praise Him!”58
For Lantfred, it is obvious that the saint will cure pilgrims not only of
physical ills but more importantly of disbelief, and the indication of this
spiritual cure is explicitly praising God. By portraying St. Swithun’s miracles in this way, Lantfred demonstrates that the wonders he describes are
intended for a lay audience, even if his miracula were composed for a
monastic one. Lantfred was inculcating in the reformed monks a particular
way of thinking about the laypeople sharing their sacred space. Lantfred
was not educating laypeople directly, but he was teaching his monastic
audience how to educate laypeople.
The lay audience of the miracles in Lantfred’s text is broadly inclusive,
composed of recipients and witnesses from every part of lay society, including the various citizens of Winchester but also many more who were not
the parishioners of the Old Minster. Men and women appear in significant
numbers with no particular predisposition to one type of miracle or
another—both sexes receive cures, visions, and freedom from bondage.
The miracle accounts involve all classes of society, from those clearly identified as secular elites to slaves, beggars, exiles, and thieves, although most
miracle recipients are not identified by any signs that could point to their
social status.59 Lantfred’s inclusion of ordinary laypeople in his text sits at
the very beginning of a trend in hagiographical writing identified by David
Rollason, one that would become commonplace in the eleventh century in
such miracle collections as those associated with St. Benedict at Fleury and
St. Foy at Conques.60 The pilgrims come from both far and near in the
hopes of miraculous aid. Lantfred describes various locals, including sev58. Lantfred, pp. 286–87: “Increduli quique etiam ad sanctum Dei famulum ueniant ut
beneficia conditoris agnoscant et creatorem laudent!”
59. In Lantfred, chapters 3, 7–10, 15, 16, 31, and 35, miracle recipients are identifiable
as being from the elite, sometimes directly in their description but occasionally because they
are noted as having horses or weapons, whereas chapters 6, 20, 25, 26, 34, and 37–39 are
explicitly about slaves, beggars, exiles, or criminals.
60. David Rollason, Saints and Relics, p. 186-95; “The Miracles of St Benedict,” pp.
89–90 (only one book of miracles for Benedict was composed at Fleury before Lantfred wrote,
with a focus very different from the miracles of St. Swithun, but further books were added to
the collection in the eleventh century that gave more attention to the laity). See Pamela
Sheingorn, ed. and trans., The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia, 1995).

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eral slaves, a smith, and a nobleman from Winchester receiving miracles;
many of these townspeople seem to have witnessed miracles or attended
miracle recipients, such as a Wintonian moneyer who hosted a crippled
pilgrim at his home for some time before personally escorting his guest to
the Old Minster.61 While he waited for the pilgrim to receive his cure, this
local notable toured the minster’s other relics (peregratis reliquiis sanctorum), demonstrating that Lantfred had no qualms about at least some local
laymen entering the cathedral and viewing the relics of the saints even
when it was not the appropriate festival day. This description shows that
locals had opportunities and motives to be present at miracles even when
they did not attend services regularly.
But pilgrims came from all over southern England and even from
across the sea, including several noted by Lantfred who came from his
homeland in Francia.62 Many pilgrims came in large groups or brought
companions, retainers, or kinsmen with them, and Lantfred records on
several occasions that there were large crowds witnessing the miracles.63
Even when wonders were not forthcoming, pilgrims could still benefit
from previous miracles, as the monks at Winchester kept mementos such
as iron rings, manacles, and crutches, placing them on the walls of the
cathedral. By displaying these proofs of God’s miraculous power, the
monks integrated the miracles and their didactic function into the very
fabric of the Old Minster, as, according to Lantfred, “. . . everyone [omnes]
who should see them would praise the name of God omnipotent.”64 So St.

61. Lantfred, pp. 266–75.
62. Lantfred (in chapters 5, 7, 8, 11–14, 17–19, 22, 28, 29, and 35–37) describes miracle recipients as coming from parts of England. Recipients in chapters 21 and 24 are from
generally distant places, the first from the far west (ex longinquis occidentalium finibus) and the
second from across the sea (de transmarinis partibus). In chapters 32–34 the recipients are
from Francia; in chapters 3, 6, 20, 38 and 39 the recipients are explicitly described as residents
of Winchester.
63. Lantfred (in chapters 12, 14, 16, 22, and 23) describes large groups cured, whereas
his chapters 7, 15, and 35 note companions, retainers, or kinsmen coming to Winchester with
the sick pilgrim; his chapters 19, 20, 30, and 38 include mention of a witnesses or a crowd.
64. Lantfred, pp. 332–33: “. . . ut omnes qui eas uiderint laudent nomen omnipotentis
Dei. . . .” See chapters 24 and 38 (the latter quoted here). Chapter 30 mentions crutches left
behind that “bore witness [prodiderunt]” to his cure by St. Swithun; these incidents correlate
to passages in the later adaptations of Lantfred’s text, first Wulfstan Cantor’s description of
the “fetters, manacles, crutches, and staves which attest to illustrious miracles” hung in the
church and in Ælfric’s comment that there was not enough room on the walls of the Old
Minster for all of the stools and crutches left behind by cured pilgrims. See Wulfstan Cantor,
Narratio Metrica de S. Swithvno, in The Cult of St Swithun, pp. 372–551 (henceforth Wulfstan
Cantor, translation by Michael Lapidge), here pp. 506–07, and Ælfric, Life of St Swithun, pp.

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Swithun’s miracles, according to Lantfred’s text, were for all laypeople, not
just the citizens of Winchester, to whom the monks of Old Minster owed
some responsibility as the caretakers of the town cathedral.
By taking this inclusive approach to lay society, Lantfred shows that
the type of relationship he describes between monks and laypeople in his
miracula is not pastoral in the narrow sense of providing sacraments to a
specific community. It is worth noting, however, that the monks did in fact
provide some sacraments for the lay community of Winchester and presumably any pilgrims visiting their cathedral. Beyond the Old Minster’s
unusual near-monopoly on baptism and burial within the city, there are
strong indications that the monks shared Sunday and Easter services with
the laity. The Regularis Concordia, which Æthelwold seems to have written
with the needs of a monastic cathedral just like the Old Minster in mind,
notes the presence of laypeople at services on several occasions, notably at
the principal Mass on Sundays.65 Most famously, the text describes the
earliest known version of the Quem quaeratis or Visitatio sepulchri, where
certain monks acted out the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb on Easter
Sunday, which the Regularis Concordia explicitly notes is “. . . for the
strengthening of the faith of unlearned persons [indocti uulgi] and neophytes . . . ,” just as Lantfred insists St. Swithun’s miracles were for
strengthening the faith of laypeople.66 An audience that did not understand the words of the Latin rite could comprehend this dramatic performance, and this performance described in the Regularis Concordia shows the
lengths to which the reformers were willing to go to communicate the fundamentals of the Christian faith to the laypeople sharing their cathedral.67
Lantfred’s description of the events surrounding St. Swithun’s miracles
complements the picture of monastic life found in the Regularis Concordia.
590–609 (henceforth Ælfric), here 606–07. The miracles of St. Foy composed in the earlyeleventh century contain similar accounts of using the iron from broken fetters to make doors
throughout the monastery; see Sheingorn, Sainte Foy, pp. 102–03.
65. The text notes, “. . . the bells shall ring to call the faithful [plebem fidelem] together
and the Mass shall be begun,” with plebem in this context clearly does not describe the monks;
see Regularis Concordia, p. 19 (translation by Thomas Symons). Mary Frances Giandrea
points out that the Regularis Concordia demonstrates the interest of the reformers in the laity;
see Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, UK, 2007), pp. 81–82.
Gittos has documented numerous examples of laypeople sharing in monastic services; see
Liturgy, Architecture and Sacred Places, especially pp. 197 and 277.
66. Regularis Concordia, p. 44.
67. Easter is, after all, the central event of the Christian year and salvation narrative; for
more on this critical liturgical development in England, see M. Bradford Bedingfield, The
Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, UK, 2002), pp. 9–10, 56–57, 162–
64, 226.

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His miracle stories depict interactions outside the kind expected during the
regular program of the liturgical week and year, the scripted events of the
Christian calendar where the monks performed for a passive lay audience.
It is immediately apparent that Lantfred expected the laity to converse
with members of the reformed community, and he gives every indication
that the monks were interested and ready to hear their stories. Some of
these occasions are what one would expect from a hagiographer or historian. Lantfred, for example, explains that he heard a story directly from an
individual such as the smith whose vision begins the narrative.68 On two
occasions the miracle recipients informed Bishop Æthelwold.69 In yet
another case, however, a cured nobleman told both the bishop and the
monks together, and in three further chapters Lantfred simply notes that
the recipients of miracles told “the monks [fratribus]” without specifically
noting the bishop’s presence.70 Indeed, nine of Lantfred’s forty chapters
include explicit reference to laypeople and monks speaking together.71 In
Lantfred’s account for his monastic audience, the laity seem encouraged to
speak directly to the monks about their miraculous experiences.
Several chapters in the miracula indicate that there was even a special
procedure in place for laypeople to contact the monastic community. In
Lantfred’s fifth chapter, a formerly mute young man recovers his voice at
the cathedral and specifically tells the sacrist (custos) about the miracle,
then directs him to call for the monks.72 This is the first time over the
course of four chapters that Lantfred describes this particular officer as a
monk especially responsible for watching St. Swithun’s shrine and interacting with lay pilgrims. This sacrist is also integral to the events of chapter
20, where he is identified as Eadsige, a former secular canon who, during
the events surrounding the first miracle recorded by Lantfred, had been
reconciled to Bishop Æthelwold and taken up the (reformed) monastic
habit.73 Here, Eadsige the sacrist is identified as both an edile and a custos

68. Lantfred, chapter 1, pp. 264–65.
69. Lantfred, chapters 10 and 35.
70. Lantfred, pp. 328–29; Lantfred, chapters 3, 27, and 29: “. . . episcopo preclui
fratribusque ibidem residentibus narrauit. . . .”
71. Lantfred, chapters 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, 26, 29, 35, and 37.
72. Lantfred, pp. 288–89.
73. Lantfred (in chapter 20) identifies the sacrist by name, whereas Eadsige’s past is
detailed in chapter 1, especially pp. 264–65 (Lapidge also notes Ælfric’s revelation that Eadsige was related to Æthelwold; see p. 260). D. J. Sheerin suggests that Eadsige may have been
reconciled in part to appease the local notable after the expulsion of the clerks; see D. J.
Sheerin, “The Dedication of the Old Minster, Winchester, in 980,” Revue Bénédictine, 88

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(both translated as “sacrist” by Lapidge) and is noted several times as the
keeper of the key to the sanctuary containing the saint’s body.74 This same
edile in chapter 10 rings a little bell (tinitinnabulum) to call the monks after
a miracle, just as the former mute had commanded in chapter 5.75 The
interaction between this representative of the monks at the shrine and lay
pilgrims is most pronounced in chapter 37, where the sacrist (here custos
ecclesiae) approaches a partially healed miracle recipient after a night of
vigils in the church to ask if he was feeling better.76 When the pilgrim said
he was in greater pain than ever, the sacrist instructed him, “Address yourself earnestly to God with every effort of your heart, so that you may
quickly be delivered from this disease.” The man obeyed, was cured, and
went away praising God.77 Lantfred portrays the sacrist as the representative of the monastic community immediately available to laypeople, but he
does not indicate in any way that the sacrist was the only monk to whom
the laity had access.
The Shared Responsibility to Praise God
The response of the monks to lay pilgrims and their experience of miracles was to come into the church, where the pilgrims were gathered
hoping for cures, and properly praise God. In doing so, the monks were
sharing their central responsibility, the doxology of the Opus Dei, with the
laity. Lantfred includes several references to the monks coming forward to
praise God after a miracle such as when a formerly mute boy told the sacrist, “Therefore go, call the monks, so that they may give thanks to God in
their usual manner,”78 and in chapter 29, when the monks “. . . gathered in
the church and praised the author of miracles, chanting their hymns
aloud.”79 The monks performed this in front of the lay audience of pilgrims
and locals, as the Old Minster at this point was still substantially the same
small church built 300 years before during the conversion era, with no sep(1978), 261–72. Note that Lantfred gives every indication that Eadsige was a full member of
the reformed community of monks at this point.
74. Lantfred, pp. 302–05.
75. Lantfred, pp. 292–97.
76. Lantfred, pp. 330–31: “Ad quem custos ecclesiae accedens matutino tempore,
interrogauit eum si melius haberet ex parte.”
77. Lantfred, pp. 330–31: “Cum omni mentis intentione diligenter Deum posce, quoniam cito liberaberis ab hac inualitundine.”
78. Lantfred, pp. 288–89: “Quapropter perge, uoca fratres, ut solito more Deo reddant
grates.”
79. Lantfred, pp. 318–19: “Qui ad templum conuenientes, ymnidicis uocibus laudauerunt auctorem uirtutum.”

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arate space for the monks to hide from lay eyes; the later extensive architectural expansions were in large part to accommodate the huge influx of
pilgrims occasioned by St. Swithun’s invention and translation.80 Lantfred
notes immediately after describing the initial translation of the saint’s
remains that he himself saw the precincts of the minster so crammed with
sick pilgrims that it was difficult to access the church, so the monks would
have had a large audience for their required hymns of praise.81 Crowds of
pilgrims may be a trope in hagiography, but Lantfred gives every indication
throughout his work that St. Swithun not only exerted an immense popular appeal for the laity but also that the monastic community greatly
desired such pilgrims.82
Lantfred makes it clear that monastic praise after a miracle was the
expected norm, rather than an occasional practice. He explains that Bishop
Æthelwold specifically commanded his monks to go out into the church
and praise God every time a miracle occurred, a decree that is central to
one of Lantfred’s chapters:
. . . whenever any sick person received the desired cure for his body
through the power of the Lord and the merit of the holy bishop, all the
monks of that place were immediately to drop whatever of importance
they had in their hands, to go to the church, and to magnify God
appropriately.83

This task was the ultimate priority of the reformed monks, according to
Lantfred, who tells us that they were to abandon whatever task they were
doing no matter how important. He emphasizes the significance of the
activity by including an account of a vision experienced by one noblewoman, in which St. Swithun appeared to her in a dream and enjoined her
to tell Bishop Æthelwold that the monks were not fulfilling this task.
Apparently some of the monks—persuaded, Lantfred insists, by the
devil—did not like to rise three or four times a night to attend the miracles.
This is worth noting because these reformed monks were quite accustomed

80. Biddle, Felix Urbs Winthonia, pp. 136–39.
81. Lantfred, pp. 286–87.
82. In the miracles of St. Foy recorded half a century later, the monks are described as
far less sanguine about the miracles drawing so many pilgrims, becoming indifferent to and
even loathing them; see Sheingorn, Sainte Foy, p. 103.
83. Lantfred, pp. 292–93: “. . . quod quandocumque quispiam aeger per uirtutem
Domini et meritum sancti antistitis medelam corporis optatam perciperet, protinus omnes
illius loci fratres necessaria relinquerent queque in manibus tenerent, ecclesiam adirent, et
condigne Deum glorificarent.”

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to the nighttime prayers of the Office disturbing their sleep.84 This is an
indication not only of the frequency of these events at the time Lantfred
was writing but also of the constant presence of the laity in the cathedral,
even during the monastic Night Office.
According to Lantfred, the saint intervened for several reasons but primarily because “. . . the monks in question were esteeming too lightly this
good work and were not obeying the commands of their bishop nor rendering
due praise to God, but were falling into the ruinous snares of Satan . . . .” 85
Lantfred at this point gives a long speech to St. Swithun in the noblewoman’s
dream, including his explanation that these miracles were for the benefit of
unfaithful peoples, and adds, “May those peoples be said to obey God the creator of all things who disregard his bounties? Do they not provoke God to
anger, who by keeping silence deny His grandeur?”86 The vision of the saint
concludes his speech with a warning that if the monks cease their praise, God
would cease his miracles, but if they continue praising God, the miracles
would be the greatest since the time of Christ. The woman quickly told
Bishop Æthelwold, who was attending King Edgar, and the bishop instituted
a penance of seven days on bread and water for any monk who did not immediately go into the church and thank God as soon as a miracle occurred. Lantfred notes that the monks returned to their appointed task, attending to their
doxologies regardless of the time of day or night. Although this incident may
at first seem to indicate a monastic reluctance to interact with the laity, Lantfred emphasizes Æthelwold’s personal role in both creating and enforcing this
obligation, while stressing that only a few of the monks had disobeyed.
Going into the church to praise God before the pilgrims was not just
central to Lantfred’s text but was a critical and defining part of the lives of

84. Lantfred, pp. 292–93: “Accidit autem ut quidam illecti demonum fraudibus
grauiter ferrent, quod tam sepe excitarentur de nocturnis quietibus (scilicet aliquando tribus,
aliquando quattor in una nocte uicibus). . . .” The presence of lay pilgrims during the Night
Office at monasteries seems to have become accepted in several places, as a similar situation
was described at Conques in St. Foy’s miracles; see Sheingorn, Sainte Foy, p. 69.
85. Lantfred, pp. 292–95: “. . . quod fratres praefati bonum paruipenderent opus et presulis illorum iussionibus non obtemperarent, nec debitas Deo laudes persoluerent, sed in perniciosas Satanae decipulas inciderent…” Lapidge notes that the phrase “devil’s snares” is well
attested and is generally associated with temptation or forbidden sexuality, so this is a serious
offence; see Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun, p. 294n188, and P. G. Remley, “Muscipula Diaboli and Medieval English Antifeminism,” English Studies, 70 (1989), 1–14.
86. Lantfred, pp. 294–95: “Numquid Deo rerum conditori obediunt, qui eius beneficia
floccipendunt? Nonne Deum ad iracundiam prouocant, qui silendo eius magnificentiam
negant?” See also the previous discussion of Lantfred’s theology of miracles.

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the reformed monks at the Old Minster. Corroborating evidence exists for
this in two later adaptations of Lantfred’s text by Wulfstan Cantor and
Ælfric of Eynsham, both of whom had grown up as oblates in the Old
Minster under Æthelwold’s tutelage in the 960s and 970s, exactly the time
Lantfred was writing.87 Their accounts not only corroborate Lantfred’s
own depiction of the Old Minster in this era but in particular reinforce his
emphasis on the importance of monastic doxology before the laity. The
two authors kept very close to Lantfred’s account in terms of content, so
their additions are worth noting. Critical to the argument here, both Wulfstan and Ælfric chose to insert themselves into their revised versions of
Lantfred’s narrative to underscore their own experience of praising God
when one of these miracles occurred in the Old Minster. For each author,
then, this doxology described by Lantfred was the defining activity of
monasticism in Winchester during this period, because this was the activity
through which both authors chose to assert their own personal connection
to Æthelwold’s reformed community.
Wulfstan Cantor primarily limits his additions to Lantfred’s account
to several lengthy descriptions of the massive rebuilding of the Old Minster and the second translations of St. Swithun’s relics, events that happened after Lantfred composed his miracula; he adds only one new chapter
dedicated to a miracle.88 In the midst of a series of poeticized retellings of
Lantfred’s miracles, Wulfstan inserted a chapter concerning his youth in
the early 970s, recording that he and his fellow monks were called away
from their meals or lessons, sometimes so often that
. . . we were able to learn virtually nothing in the space of that day because
of the burgeoning miracles, but rather we all went at once to the holy
minster and thus we spend [sic] the entire day in sacred hymns praising
the Lord, Who governs all things unto eternity.89

Wulfstan’s description of the close proximity of the monks and laity is even
more evocative, and he remarks in this added chapter that the sick pilgrims
“cover the pavements of the church” and that “[o]n all sides those crowds . . .
are now . . . prostrate before the Lord, with the monks praising God in unison
87. See Lapidge’s introductions to each text in The Cult of St Swithun for dating and
background for each text and author, especially pp. 335–41 for Wulfstan Cantor and pp. 575–
77 for Ælfric.
88. See Wulfstan Cantor, pp. 372–97, 448–63, 492–97.
89. Wulfstan Cantor, pp. 504–07: “. . . ut tota penitus nil discere luce/possemus, signis
pro crebrescentibus, omnes/sed uice continua sacram repetiuimus aedem,/sicque diem totum
sacris expendimus ymnis/laudantes Dominum, qui cuncta gubernat in euum.”

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with their resounding hymns.”90 The experience had clearly been formative
for the young monk, later the chief liturgist of the Old Minster and author of
Æthelwold’s vita. Moreover, Wulfstan’s adherence to Lantfred’s narrative
shows its authority with the Old Minster community, even as his additions
further emphasize the importance of lay pilgrimage and doxology.
His contemporary Ælfric was also educated at Winchester under the
tutelage of Æthelwold before becoming an abbot at Cerne and later Eynsham where he produced a substantial hagiographic corpus in Old English,
including a translation of Lantfred’s miracula of St. Swithun. Ælfric added
a coda to his condensed version of Lantfred’s chapter concerning the
requirement for the monks to go praise God after every miracle, noting
that the monks “. . . always maintained it regularly afterward, as I myself
have very often seen; and I frequently sang the hymn with them.”91 Elaine
Treharne has noted the unusual nature of this self-insertion for Ælfric
among his voluminous corpus of translations, giving him a personal connection to St. Swithun and Winchester that is missing from the lives he
wrote of other English saints whose cults were popular at reform monasteries.92 His participation with the monks of the Old Minster in singing
God’s praises before the cured lay pilgrims had made a deep impression on
him, as he added his own recollections even though he had not lived at the
Old Minster for nearly a decade by the time he translated Lantfred’s miracula. The interjections of Wulfstan Cantor and Ælfric on this subject,
unusual within their own texts and particularly personal, indicate that
Lantfred was not alone in feeling that this task of singing God’s praises
before the laity after every miracle was central to reformed monastic life in
Winchester’s cathedral.
Lantfred repeatedly shows in his text the importance for everyone,
both laypeople and reformed monks, to praise God. As noted previously,
twenty-six of his forty chapters include laypeople praising God after a miracle occurs, and a further seven mention praise in other contexts. Lantfred
ends eleven of these chapters in a formulaic fashion, with the recipients of
90. Wulfstan Cantor, pp. 504–05: “. . . aecclesiae et tantas pauimenta operire
cateruas?/Vndique sanatis ibi quae iacuere medullis/prostratae coram Domino, iubilantes
una/uoce Deo monachis cum concrepitantibus ymnis.”
91. Ælfric, pp. 600–01: “Hi hit heoldon þa siððan symle on gewunan, swa swa we
gesawon sylfe foroft, and þone sang we sungon unseldon mid him” (translation by Michael
Lapidge).
92. Elaine Treharne, “Ælfric’s Account of St Swithun: Literature of Reform and
Reward,” in Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler and
Ross Balzaretti (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), pp. 167–88, here pp. 185–87.

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the miracles praising God and then returning home.93 This formula reinforces Lantfred’s message that the miracles were meant to change the
recipient spiritually, transforming the pilgrim from his or her previous
unfaithful condition to a more faithful state demonstrated by his or her
praise of God. Lantfred elaborates on this idea in several other chapters
that do not fit his usual pattern. In these, he especially emphasizes that
miraculous cures are both temporal and spiritual, healing the body but, just
as important, saving the soul of the recipient, with the caveat that he or she
must continue to praise God. The first pilgrim to receive a cure, the
hunchbacked cleric Æthelsige, experiences a vision of two shining youths
who tell him if he wishes to be cured, he must go to St. Swithun’s tomb
(not yet inside the Old Minster at this point in Lantfred’s narrative) and
lie down, “. . . and you shall thereby receive the eternal joy of well-being in
either life, if afterward you go on praising the all-creating God incessantly
by day and night.”94 This idea that God’s miracles through St. Swithun
were meant to heal spiritually as well as physically is a recurring theme for
Lantfred, expressed first at the end of his preface to the monks: “. . . nor
after the time of the holy apostles . . . was any mortal saint, enclosed by the
veil of a human body, ever known to have restored so many to a life of
either heavenly or earthly welfare.”95 Lantfred again connects the dual
nature of this healing to praising God at the end of a later chapter where a
man supernaturally freed from prison rejoices that the miracle has allowed
him to escape “. . . the perpetual oblivion of either sort of death . . .” after
which he “. . . glorified the God of heaven and praised the Lord.”96
Praising God is therefore the activity associated with the spiritual
health of the miracle recipients, almost all of whom are freed from physical
ailment or imprisonment.97 Two chapters further elaborate the importance
93. Lantfred, chapters 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 33, and 36; chapter 35 is somewhat different because the miracle was not received at Winchester but rather at a chapel on
the Isle of Wight, after which the recipient went home praising God and later visited the Old
Minster to inform Bishop Æthelwold and his monks.
94. Lantfred, pp. 268–69: “. . . et sic utriusque sanitatis tripudium percipies sempiternum, si incessanter postmodum die noctuque laudaueris cuncticreantem Deum.”
95. Lantfred, pp. 258–59: “. . . necque post sanctos predicatores apostolorum . . .
quisquam sanctus, mortalis septus dematis uelamine, uspiam utriusque sospitatis uite dinoscitur reddidisse.”See Lapidge on the use of utriusque, p. 259n38.
96. Lantfred, pp. 324–25: “. . . mortis interitum utriusque perpetuum . . . glorificans
caeli Deum ac benedicens Dominum.”
97. Lanfred (in chapters 2–5, 7–9, 11–19, 21–23, 25, 26, 28–33, and 35–37) describes
healing miracles, whereas his chapters 6, 20, 24, 27, 34, 38, and 39 narrate miraculous escapes
from bonds or imprisonment. His chapters 1 and 10 describe visions from St. Swithun, the
first involving the smith that leads to the saint’s invention and the second involving the noble-

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to Lantfred of praising God after a miracle. In chapter 9, a sick noblewoman is cured when she promises to visit St. Swithun’s shrine “with many
gifts [cum multis donariis]” and spend one night in vigils before his tomb.
But, according to Lantfred, “. . . she apparently lost her mental faculties
since, being forgetful of God’s bounties to her, she did not observe the
promises to which she had committed herself, and did not repay to God the
thanks that were due . . .”98 She only regained her health when she made
her promised pilgrimage. Promising wealth to the saint (and therefore the
saints’ shrine) would seem to be a fairly standard element of hagiography, as
it appears in many saints’ lives, but surprisingly this is one of only a few incidents in which Lantfred describes a gift being given in thanks for a miracle.99 Lantfred, however, does not mention the promised gifts again in this
chapter—it is not clear whether the material part of the woman’s vow is ever
delivered. Instead, Lantfred emphasizes the woman’s promise to come to
give thanks and praise to God. When she failed to do so, the woman was
again struck ill, and Lantfred explains that she realized “. . . she had behaved
inappropriately when, having been cured by God through the merit of the
saint, she had not returned praise to the creator. . . .” He concludes by
noting that after she recovered her health following a pilgrimage to Winchester, she left, “. . . giving the most well-deserved thanks to the omnipotent Lord.”100 Lantfred does not seem to think that the promised material
gifts were nearly as important as praising God. In chapter 30, a shorter narrative, Lantfred again stresses the central importance of praise after receiving a miracle, for a cripple who was instantly cured when he came to the
shrine “. . . received the health of his body; but he remained mentally infirm,
since he did not repay thanks to God the creator as other sick people did,”
and instead ran off quickly, but the miracle was attested by many in the
crowd at the Old Minster and confirmed by his abandoned crutches.101 In

woman who chides the monks for failing to praise God (perhaps again indicating the critical
nature of this chapter to Lantfred’s moral). Chapter 40 provides a brief conclusion and doxology without any miracles.
98. Lantfred, pp. 292–93: “. . . sed amisit uigorem mentis, quoniam quidem Dei beneficiorum immemor, promissiones quibus sese obligauerat non obseruauit et gratias Deo debitas . . . non rependit.”
99. The others include the previous chapter (8), in which a piece of cloth is left on the
altar, and a slave cured during a trial by ordeal and donated by his master to the saint in chapter 25.
100. Lantfred, pp. 292–93: “. . . quod iniuste egisset quoniam curata a Deo per meritum
sancti haud retulisset gloriam conditori . . .” and “. . . omnipotenti Domino gratias referens
iustissimas.”
101. Lantfred, pp. 318–19: “. . . recepit sospitatem somatis; sed mente permansit
debilis, quoniam conditori Deo grates non retulit sicut ceteri fecerunt egri.” Mente is trans-

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both of these cases Lantfred presents failure to praise God properly after a
cure as being so bizarre and wrong as to indicate a kind of insanity, something distinctly outside the normal state of affairs. This strongly implies
that, as far as Lantfred was concerned, all the other pilgrims properly
praised God, even where he did not mention such an action.
Lantfred uses a variety of words to describe this praise of God in the
forty chapters of his text, almost all of which are used both by laypeople
and the monks, including variations on gloria or glorificare (sixteen chapters), laus or laudare (twelve chapters), benedicere (seven chapters), gratia
(five chapters), and magnificare (five chapters).102 But Lantfred goes
beyond this shared use of operative words to connect lay to monastic
praise; in six chapters the description of lay praise is followed directly with
a quotation from the Psalms. This was the most important book of the
Benedictine liturgy of the Office, and it was recited in full over the course
of each liturgical week; the Regularis Concordia demonstrates that one goal
of the reformers was to increase the chanting of psalms as part of their
revival of monastic life.103 Mechthild Gretsch, moreover, has argued that
Æthelwold had a particular scholarly interest in the Psalms by convincingly
demonstrating that he was the author of the especially highbrow vernacular
translation of the Psalms in the Regius or Royal Psalter.104 Æthelwold also
composed an additional daily round of three Offices for his own monks
that consisted mostly of additional psalmody, so the Psalms may have been
even more important at the Old Minster than they already were for other
monks.105 The laity’s degree of familiarity with the Psalms—especially for
those who were impoverished—is impossible to judge, but that is not particularly essential to understanding Lantfred’s depiction of their use in his
lated here as “mentally” rather than Lapidge’s “spiritually,” as the former not only matches the
earlier translation of the noblewoman’s mistake in chapter 9, where uigorem mentis is translated as “mental faculties,” but in this context translating mente as “spiritually” would overstate
this evidence for the context.
102. Lantfred, chapters 2, 3, 9, 10*, 11, 18, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 37, and 40*
for gloria or glorificare; idem, chapters 2, 4, 8, 10*, 16, 22, 25, 29*, 32, 35, 37, and 38 for laus
or laudare; idem, chapters 1–3, 17, 19, 23, and 34 for benedicere; idem, chapters 5*, 9, 12, 30,
and 36 for gratia; and idem, chapters 10*, 11, 13, 22, and 29 for magnificare (asterisks indicate
chapters where the word describes monastic praise).
103. Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 14–23; Gretsch, Intellectual
Foundations, p. 16.
104. Gretsch, Intellectual Foundations, especially pp. 89–131 and 261–331.
105. Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 900–1066 (London, 1993), p. 199;
Wulfstan of Winchester: The Life of St Æthelwold, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge and Michael
Winterbottom (Oxford, 1991), pp. lxviii–lxxvii; M. J. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter
(Turnhout, Belgium, 2014), pp. 241–42.

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text; what matters is the importance of the Psalms to him and his monastic
audience. It is worth noting, however, that the Psalms were especially pervasive in Anglo-Saxon literature, as well as a “. . . kind of background
murmur in the structure and content of Old English poetry . . .” and in vernacular sermons.106 They were the text most extensively translated into the
vernacular starting with Alfred the Great’s translation program in the lateninth century and continued by Æthelwold himself.
In chapters 11 and 18 Lantfred notes just after each miraculous healing
that the laypeople praised God, “Who alone performs great miracles [qui
facit mirabilia magna solus].” This is a quote from Psalm 135:4 (in the Vulgate numbering), which reinforces the notion that God is the power ultimately responsible for miracles, not the saints.107 In chapter 35 another
nobleman is cured, and he and his retainers praise God, who is a “wonderful
and glorious agent acting through His saints [mirabilis et gloriosus in sanctis
suis]”—using Psalm 67:36 to again emphasize the true nature of miracles
and therefore that God is ultimately deserving of this praise.108 In two chapters Lantfred uses a paraphrase of Psalm 145:7–8 after a person was miraculously freed, in both cases describing God as the one “Who releases those
in bondage and raises up those who are cast down [qui compeditos soluit et
elisos ergit].” The first instance is in chapter 27 just after the recipient prays
to God for help, and the second is in chapter 38 as part of Lantfred’s assertion that everyone who sees the manacles left after a certain miracle will
praise the name of God—again connecting the Psalms to lay praise.109
Lantfred references one psalm that receives particular emphasis in
monastic liturgical texts. In chapter 31 an ealdorman whose boy retainer is
cured by the saint begins to glorify God, who “does not reject a contrite
and humble heart [cor contritum et humiliatum non spernit]”—invoking
Psalm 50:19.110 This last psalm is especially important, as it was the source
of the first prayer (according to the Regularis Concordia) that every
reformed monk was supposed to say upon rising—“Lord open my lips
[Domine labia mea aperies]”—which immediately states, “and my mouth
shall declare thy praise [et eos meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam].”111 This
psalm was also said by the monks just before the prayers for the English
106. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, pp. 363–64.
107. Lantfred, pp. 296–97, 300–01.
108. Lantfred, pp. 328–29.
109. Lantfred, pp. 314–15, 332–33.
110. Lantfred, pp. 320–21.
111. Regularis Concordia, p. 11 (Psalm 50:17).

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king and queen after Matins, Vespers, and Compline in the Regularis Concordia, a formulation that was unique among reformed monastic consuetudinaries.112 Psalm 50 was therefore especially critical to English reformed
monasticism, and Lantfred saw fit to use it to describe lay praise. Although
Lantfred does not place these psalms outright into the mouths of his lay
miracle recipients, he firmly associates their prayers and particularly their
praise of God with the psalms that were so integral to life and liturgy for
Benedictines and reformed monks.
The exact hymns of praise used by the monks are not given by Lantfred, but the three most common words of praise in his vita—glorificare,
laudare, and benedicere—are three of the four verbs used for praising God
in the Greater Doxology—the Gloria in excelsis that is the third prayer said
by every reformed monk upon first rising, according to the Regularis Concordia, as well as after the Morrow Mass—and many other places throughout the reformed customary.113 Wulfstan Cantor does reminisce that he
and the other monks
. . . did not dare to go out and leave the doors of the minster until we had
sung “Praise be to Thee on high, O Christ, and ‘Hosanna’ forever” for
that particular miracle . . .

However, since his text is in poetic hexameter, this is probably not the
exact formulation used by the monks.114 Lantfred includes an important
detail that connects the prayers for miracles performed by the reformed
monks of Old Minster and their regular liturgical lives—namely, that the
sacrist called the monks to these miracles with a bell. This is exactly how
they are called to the perform the various liturgical hours of the monastic
office in the Regularis Concordia, which even notes on several occasions
that the sacrist is responsible for the bell-ringing.115 There are, therefore,
numerous indications that the monastic reformers modeled their special
praise of God performed before the laity in response to miracles on their
112. Symons notes this unique use of the psalm and of prayers for the king and queen
every hour; see Regularis Concordia, p. 14nn3, 6.
113. Regularis Concordia, pp. 11, 17, 29–30, 33, 48–49.
114. Wulfstan Cantor, pp. 504–05: “. . . limina coenobii sumus egrediendo nec ausi linquere, pro signo donec caneremus et illo, ‘Laus sit in excelsis tibi, Christe, et osanna per
euum.’” Lapidge consistently translates Ælfric’s word for this praise, lofsang, as “the Te
Deum” but gives no evidence for this extremely specific assertion; see Ælfric, pp. 596–601.
115. Lantfred, pp. 296–97; for the various hours beginning with a bell, see Regularis
Concordia, pp. 13–24. The aeditui is translated as “sacrist” by Symons, who notes this position
was the same as that called custos in other rules. See pp. 16 (and note 3), 24, and 26 for the
sacrist ringing the bell.

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daily liturgical office. Lantfred’s common choice of words for praise by
both monks and laity, as well as his use of the Psalms (especially Psalm 50)
in describing lay praise, show that he considered lay doxologies to be at
least similar to reformed monastic praise. Although the actual lay pilgrims
and congregation in the Old Minster certainly would not have known all
the various Latin liturgical hymns used by the monks, Lantfred indicates
that they could at least share in the same spirit of praise as part of their
spiritual healing that was the true purpose of Swithun’s, or rather God’s,
miracles in Winchester.
Lantfred, the Laity, and Monastic Reform
Lantfred was not alone in highlighting the centrality of doxology to the
reformers, and this theme can be found in numerous monastic writings unrelated to St. Swithun. The Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis—a mid-twelfth-century text describing the founding of Abingdon, Æthelwold’s first
monastery—places praise at the very heart of the creation of this reformed
community. According to this source, the monks who came to Æthelwold
seeking a stricter form of life had diverse manners of performing the Office,
and so Æthelwold sent for aid from the continental reformed monastery of
Corbie, because he wished his community “. . . to sing praise to God in
church with a harmonious voice . . .”116 The monk Byrhtferth, writing a generation after Lantfred, asserted that King Edgar had supported the reformers
because they could “. . . render [God’s] praise with due honour.”117
But this emphasis on praise is found nowhere more powerfully than
when the reformers compared themselves to the detested secular canons.
The charters promulgated by King Edgar to re-establish the minsters of
Winchester with reformed monks and cast out the former secular clerics
emphasize how the latter failed to carry out the proper liturgical duties now
performed by monks but were instead unclean and disordered.118 The
charter for the New Minster phrases this in terms of intercession, saying
116. Historia ecclesie Abbendonensis, § 31, ed. and trans. J. Hudson, The History of the
Church of Abingdon, 2 vols., Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 2002–07) I:54–57: “. . . uolens
eos in ecclesia consona Deo uoce iubilare . . . .” See also Billett, The Divine Office in AngloSaxon England, pp. 167–69.
117. Byrhtferth, Vita S. Oswaldi, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St
Ecgwine, ed. and trans. Michael Lapidge (Oxford, 2009), pp. 76–77: “. . . qui tuas laudes possunt debitis honoribus persoluere.” See also Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England,
pp. 175–89.
118. Barrow, “The Ideology of the Tenth-Century English Benedictine ‘Reform,’” pp.
148–54.

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that the king did not value the prayers of the old seculars, because these
clergy were contaminated and had refused to fulfill God’s commandments;
thus he installed “. . . throngs of monks pleasing to the Lord, who might
intercede unhesitatingly for us.”119 In the comparable charters for the Old
Minster, however, the intercessory prayers instead are explicitly doxologies,
as King Edgar explains that he
. . . drove out the proud clerks who disdained to serve God, put out of
doors for their criminal deeds and detestable filthiness, and faithfully
gathered there a community of holy monks who might willingly serve the
Lord with hymns and praises.120

King Edgar spends most of the document calling down dire curses on any
who would restore the secular canons or who would take the monks’ lands,
but this explanatory point on the purpose of the monks is a powerful statement supporting Lantfred’s message about reformed monasticism at the
Old Minster. These examples, along with the corroborating details provided by Wulfstan and Ælfric in their additions to the miracles of St.
Swithun, demonstrate that Lantfred was not alone in placing a particular
emphasis on doxology as a central element of monastic reform.121
Reformed monks, then, took over the Old Minster to properly praise
God, but they did not inherit the cathedral from the supposedly proud and
filthy canons so they could seal it off from the laypeople of the city.
Although laypeople could not share in much of the expansive liturgical rituals that dominate the Regularis Concordia’s prescriptions for monastic life,
that does not mean that the reformers felt the laity had no place in praising
God appropriately for the bounties of his creation and miracles. Lantfred
shows us a unique view of religious life in the Old Minster, one where the
reformed monks actively encouraged proper doxology in front of a lay
audience and where laypeople—whether pilgrims or locals—eagerly interacted with and mimicked the monks. Imitating monastic praise was critical
to their own spiritual healing, which was the true purpose of the miraculous physical cures that drew thousands of lay pilgrims to St. Swithun’s
shrine. Lantfred’s miracula indicate that the emphasis reformers placed on
119. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 81: “. . . gratos Domino monachorum cuneos qui
pro nobis incunctanter intercederent . . .”
120. Rumble, Property and Piety, p. 111: “. . . quando superbos clericos qui Deo seruire
contempserunt . pro nefandis suis actibus et detestandis spurcitiis inde eliminatos expuli .
ibique sacram cenobitarum congregationem qui in hympnis et laudibus Domino uoluntarie
seruirent deuotus aggregaui.”
121. See the previous discussion on doxology.

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317

doxology extended beyond the monastic community to the English laity as
well, as the act of praise and thanks transcended barriers between monastic
and lay Christianity and united them in devotion to God. This may serve
as a reminder of the limitations involved in the modern scholarly label
monastic reform, as religious leaders were at least notionally concerned with
all of English Christianity, not just the English clergy.
Lantfred’s text was written for the reformed monks, but the miracles
he describes were not for them—educating monks was, at least in part, a
means to an end. His text emphasizes to these monks that praising God is
a responsibility they share with their lay fellow Christians, and it was their
job to take the lead and provide a proper example for the laity to follow.
The two groups’ doxologies might not be identical in practice, but they had
the same result: the spiritual restoration of faith that saves the soul alongside the body. This cooperative act of worship between the reformed
monastic community and its lay congregants and pilgrims demonstrates
that the idea of strict claustration for monks that would become dominant
in the next century was not inevitable or uncontested. Lantfred’s text shows
that the reformers at Winchester under Æthelwold cared about and
became involved with lay Christian practice even in the early 970s when
the Benedictine reform movement was at its height. This early interest in
lay religion provides a much-needed context for vernacular and pastoral
works of the next generation of reformers in the 990s and 1000s, especially
the Winchester-trained Ælfric, who are often portrayed as bringing the
fruits of reform to the laity after an initial phase concerned only with
monasticism.122 Lantfred’s depiction of Winchester instead implies that
Æthelwold was part of a continuous tradition of lay engagement stretching
back to the initiatives of Alfred or even the earlier Carolingians, now
merged with monastic reform. The miracula for St. Swithun illustrate that
Æthelwold’s plans for monastic life were part of a wider goal for Christian
society, where monks sought engagement with and renewed the faith of
the English laity even as they strove to improve their own professional religious life in Winchester.
122. Joyce Hill, “Monastic Reform and the Secular Church: Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters in
Context,” in England in the Eleventh Century, ed. Carola Hicks, [Harlaxton Medieval Studies,
II], (Stamford, UK, 1992), pp. 103–07. Jonathan Wilcox does emphasize that Ælfric was not
the first to write homilies for a combined monastic and lay audience, but the earlier sermon
collections are not associated with the first generation of reformers like Æthelwold; see his
“The Blickling Homilies Revisited: Knowable and Probable Uses of Princeton University
Library, MS Scheide 71,” in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval
England in Honour of A. N. Doane, ed. Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles (Turnhout,
Belgium, 2011), pp. 97–115, here p. 106.

The Jesuits, Mary, and Joseph:
The Catholic Workers’ College, Dublin,
1951–66
DAVID LIMOND*
The author discusses the operation of the Catholic Workers’ College
(CWC) in Dublin between 1951 and 1966. Founded by the Society of
Jesus to offer education to working-class adults, the CWC came to
occupy a significant place in Irish religious, educational, and social life,
garnering high esteem for its work. Modeled on Plater College in
Oxford, England, the CWC was shaped profoundly by its first prefect
of studies, Edward Joseph Coyne (1896–1958), and his deputy and
eventual successor, Edmond Kent (1915–99).
Keywords: education; Catholic education; Irish Church; Marianism; Society of Jesus

T

he rapid decline of the standing of the Catholic Church in the
Republic of Ireland in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries is a story well enough known story. In 1932 a Eucharistic Congress,
culminating in an open-air ceremony in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, attracted
an estimated 1 million people; in contrast, an equivalent event in 2012 had
unsold tickets for a gathering in a rather more modestly-sized stadium.1 In
addition to the more general processes of secularization that have been at
work in Europe and elsewhere for decades, if not centuries, and which have
had obvious implications for Ireland,2 a series of scandals related to clerical
abuse of children/adolescents have been documented in official3 and pop*Dr. Limond teaches history of education at Trinity College, University of Dublin, and
is a founding member of the Cultures, Academic Values, and Education Research Centre at
Trinity College, email: limondd@tcd.ie. The author thanks the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments.
1. Justine McCarthy, “Pilgrims Are Yet to Flock to Congress,” Sunday Times: Ireland,
June 10, 2012, 7.
2. For general discussions of these themes, see Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise
and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1998) and Louise Fuller, Irish
Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002).
3. Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Child
Abuse (Dublin, 2009).

318

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ular publications,4 some of the latter harrowingly autobiographical.5 Concern at repressive conditions in such residential institutions as orphanages,
children’s homes, and the so-called Magdalene laundries has led to the
construction of a place of fearful repute: “the Catholic school.” In this way,
Catholic education in Ireland has come to be thought of as a site of widespread abuse of power. These matters are probably only now beginning to
receive systematic academic attention,6 but some Catholic educational
institutions continue to be remembered with affection and respect. One
such institution was the Catholic Workers’ College (CWC), or the
National College of Industrial Relations (NCIR).
The roots of the CWC can be traced to 1947, when Irish Jesuit
Provincial Thomas Byrne (1904–78) proposed to establish a “Social
Centre” that would be involved in scholarly research and publication and
affiliated with a college for Catholic workers.7 But implementation of the
Jesuit Provincial’s proposal did not occur until 1951, when the CWC’s
prospective prefect of studies, Edward Joseph Coyne, S.J. (1896–1958, see
figure 1), was delivering lectures to extramural students at University College Dublin.8
Opening its doors to students in a building belonging to the Irish
province of the Society of Jesus in Dublin’s genteel Ranelagh district in
4. For example, see Eamonn McCann, Dear God: The Price of Religion in Ireland
(London, 1999).
5. For example, see Patrick Toucher, Fear of the Collar: My Terrifying Childhood in
Artane (Dublin, 2010); compare Brian Coldrey, “‘A strange mixture of caring and corruption’:
Residential Care in Christian Brothers Orphanages and Industrial Schools during Their Last
Phase, 1940s to 1960s,” History of Education, 29 (2000), 343–55.
6. On abuse specifically in, or linked to, Catholic schools, see Paul Michael Garrett,
“Review Article: ‘It is with deep regret that I find it necessary to tell my story’—Child Abuse
in Industrial Schools in Ireland,” Critical Social Policy, 30 (2010), 292–306; Tom
O’Donoghue, “Teachers and Child Abuse Scandals in Catholic Schools,” in Schools as Dangerous Places: A Historical Perspective, ed. Anthony Potts and Tom O’Donoghue
(Youngstown, NY, 2008), pp. 145–66; and Barry Coldrey, “‘A most unenviable reputation’:
The Christian Brothers and School Discipline Over Two Centuries,” History of Education,
21 (1992), 277–89.
7. Dublin, National College of Ireland Archives (hereafter NCIA), Interim Report on
Province Ministries, n.d. but possibly 1968, item 69.
8. The best general accounts of the college can be found in Edmond Kent, “Education
for Industrial Relations,” Studies, 218 (1966), 139–46; Edmond Kent, “History of the College,” in College of Industrial Relations: Silver Jubilee (Dublin, 1976), p. 10; and Thomas Morrisey, “From Catholic Workers’ College to National College of Ireland, 1951–1998,” Studies,
347 (1998), 291–96. Unless otherwise specified basic facts and details are drawn from these
sources, but only direct quotations from them are acknowledged specifically hereafter.

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T HE J ESUITS , M ARY , AND J OSEPH

FIGURE 1. Edward Coyne, S.J., c. 1950. Photo courtesy of the Irish Jesuit Archives,
Dublin.

February 1951, the CWC commenced a history of operation that, in a
strict sense, has not ended yet. Between 1951 and 1966 it provided lectures
on moral and sociopolitical topics to students from a range of backgrounds,
including industrial managers, supervisors, and union shop stewards. From
1966 to 1984, what was effectively the same body operated as the College
of Industrial Relations (CIR), with the name change intending to signal
that the institution was open to both Catholics and non-Catholics, as well
as workers and managers.
Finally, in the early 1980s, as there were no other colleges of industrial
relations to rival its claim, it took the more grandiose designation of
National College of Industrial Relations, although this signified less of a
change in mission or culture than that from CWC to CIR. In 1998, in a
shift far more profound than either of those that had occurred previously,
the NCIR became part of the newly formed National College of Ireland
(NCI). This last change was accompanied by a move from its Ranelagh
home to one in the recently redeveloped Docklands area, site of the city’s
then growing financial district. By 2011, the heirs of the original venture
were the staff and students of the NCI’s School of Community Studies,

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which faced closure as a result of cost-cutting measures.9 Thus, it may be
something of a moot point whether or not the CWC still exists. The NCI
exists and even thrives as a provider of vocational higher education, but its
culture and ethos does not resemble that of the CWC.
The CWC’s Inspirations and Precursors
By the late 1940s, the idea of a Catholic college for working men, distinct from a Catholic university or seminary, was hardly new. In 1921, in
an article published posthumously in the journal Studies, founded in 1912
by the influential but controversial priest Timothy Corcoran (1871–
1943),10 the English Jesuit Charles Dominic Plater (1875–1921) described
his long-time work in organizing lay retreats. These gatherings, usually for
men, had been spiritual in nature for the most part, but Plater emphasized
his awareness of the need to cultivate
not merely a good level of Catholic piety but a number of well-trained
[lay]men who can express the faith that is in them and apply to the troubled world those Catholic principles which are for the healing of society
as well as of the individual soul . . . [so that religion could act] not merely
as a private source of comfort to themselves, but as the remedy for the
social evils of the world, evils which their faith should impel them to
remedy.11

Thus he was rearticulating the aims of the Catholic Social Guild
(CSG), an organization that he and Henry Parkinson (1852–1924), had
been instrumental in establishing in 1909 as a belated response to the
encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) by Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903, r. 1878–
1903). The CSG was an offshoot of, if not entirely a breakaway from, the
older and more conservative Catholic Truth Society (CTS). The retreats
for laypeople that became central to the CSG’s work were, as Plater readily
admitted, inspired by European models dating back to the 1880s.12 Work9. See Seán Flynn, “10 to Lose Jobs as Part of College Cost-Cutting Plan,” Irish
Times, January 14, 2011, retrieved on August 23, 2013, from http://www.irishtimes.com/
newspaper/ireland/2011/0114/1224287488725.html. The directors of the NCI were revealed
to be attempting to force performance-related pay on its beleaguered academic faculty; see
untitled article, Village, August–September 2013, 12.
10. Corcoran exercised significant influence on education policy in newly independent
Ireland, particularly on the adoption of the Irish language as a compulsory subject in schools and
espoused a conservative, even racist, nationalism. Brian Titley, “Rejecting the Modern World:
The Educational Ideas of Timothy Corcoran,” Oxford Review of Education, 9 (1983), 137–45.
11. Charles Plater, “Retreats for Working-Men,” Studies, 37 (1921), 97–108, here 106.
12. Plater, “Retreats,” p. 97.

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ing alongside Plater in the early days of the CSG was another Jesuit, Leo
O’Hea (1881–1976). When Plater died suddenly in 1921, it largely fell to
O’Hea to continue the educational work of the CSG. This he did in 1922
by founding what would become Plater College.
The ready success of Plater College could be attributed not only to the
influence of Rerum novarum but also to the influence of the new trade
unionism. The changed and changing Britain of the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries saw increased union militancy as well as an
upsurge in interest in political education, exemplified in British secular culture by the Workers’ Educational Association and Ruskin Hall (now College).13 Plater grew and prospered in parallel with these institutions.
Closely modeling its approach on the thought of John Ruskin14 and operating in a succession of sites in the quaintly picturesque medieval city of
Oxford, although not formally affiliated with the university,15 Plater College only closed, amidst scandal and acrimony, in 2005.16 But in 1923, presumably confident that it had a long and productive future ahead of it,
O’Hea outlined its work as promoting a “right understanding of [social]
conditions.” This, he insisted, relied on “knowledge of Economics and
History . . . [and] Moral Philosophy.”17
Elsewhere, directly inspired by the efforts of Plater and O’Hea, the
American Laymen’s League was created as early as 1911. At first specializing in the organization of retreats, its founders soon established a School of
Social Studies.18 However, despite some early success, the Laymen’s League
13. Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven,
2001), especially pp. 282–97, and Rob Sewell, In the Cause of Labour: History of British Trade
Unionism (London, 2003), pp. 179–215.
14. On Ruskin, named after the mercurial medieval revivalist and arts-and-crafts pioneer
John Ruskin (1819–1900), see Brian Harrison, “Oxford and the Labour Movement,” Twentieth
Century British History, 2 (1991), 226–71 and Rose, The Intellectual Life, pp. 256–307.
15. For a general account of its history to the mid-1990s, see Dennis Chiles, A Silken
Thread: The History of Plater College, 1921–1996 (Oxford, 1996). Before the establishment of
CWC, Irish workers interested in self-improvement in an avowedly Catholic atmosphere certainly would have made the short trip over the Irish Sea and enrolled at Plater College,
although the numbers might not be easy to determine.
16. “Objectors Drop College Action,” Oxford Mail, November 9, 2005, retrieved on
August 23, 2013, from http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/archive/2005/11/09/Oxfordshire+
Archive/6643546.Objectors_drop_college_action.
17. Leo O’Hea, “A Catholic Labour College,” Irish Monthly, 598 (1923), 165–70, here
167. It went without saying that “right understanding” on socio-moral questions was the
Catholic view of the matter.
18. Joseph M. McShane, “‘To form an elite body of laymen’: Terence J. Shealy, S.J.,
and the Laymen’s League, 1911–1922,” The Catholic Historical Review, 78 (1992), 557–80.

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fell on hard times and in the 1920s was incorporated into Fordham University as the basis of its School of Social Studies, in the process becoming part
of a more conventional—albeit still Catholic—educational system.
Although the term labor college often is synonymous with Catholic,
there were secular and even overtly communist institutions of the same
type from the 1920s to the 1950s. These included the leftist Brookwood
College and the explicitly communist Jefferson School of Social Science.
Nonetheless, by 1948 a recognizable “sector” of Catholic labor colleges had
come into being.19 Despite European equivalents such as Plater College
and the CWC, the movement for colleges catering to workers was largely
a North American phenomenon. Many of these American Catholic colleges were Jesuit foundations, with their fame chiefly arising from the personal charisma of one Jesuit in particular: John Corridan (1911–84),20 the
son of Irish immigrants and the prototype for the popular ideal, or one
ideal, of the worker priest.21 The international nature of the Jesuit order
19. At its height in the 1940s and 1950s, this loose sector or movement probably
boasted as many as sixty members, and their operations were known in Ireland. See, for example, Francis Corley, “Education for Workers: Catholic Labour Schools in the United States,
Part I,” Irish Monthly, 901 (1948), 296–302 and idem, “Education for Workers: Catholic
Labour Schools in the United States, Part II,” Irish Monthly, 902 (1948), 366–72. On nonCatholic/secular colleges, see Charles Howlett, Brookwood Labor College and the Struggle for
Peace and Social Justice in America (Lewiston, NY, 1993) and Marvin Gettleman, “‘No varsity
teams’: New York’s Jefferson School of Social Science, 1943–1956,” Science & Society, 66
(2002), 336–59.
20. History and legend have long since become blurred where Corridan is concerned,
partly as a result of sensationalist contemporary depictions; see, for example: Malcolm Johnson, “Father Gangbuster of the Docks,” The Catholic Digest, 16, no. 6 (1952), 22–33. Also
significant was a version of his story told in On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan (1909–
2003), scripted by Budd Schulburg (1914–2009) and starring Marlon Brando (1924–2004)
and Karl Malden (1912–2009), the latter as “Father Barry.” For more sober treatments of his
life and work, see James Fisher, “John M. Corridan S.J. and the Battle for the Soul of the
Waterfront, 1948–1954,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 16, no. 4 (1998), 71–87 and Colin Davis,
“‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets’: Father John Corridan, S.J. and New York
Longshoremen in the Post-World War II Era,” The Catholic Historical Review, 86 (2000),
66–84. On Corridan’s contemporaries in this work more generally, see Joseph M. McShane,
“‘The Church Is Not For The Cells And The Caves’: The Working Class Spirituality of the
Jesuit Labor Priests,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 9, no. 3 (1990), 289–304. On the film, now
widely regarded a classic of American social realist filmmaking, see Joanne E. Rapf, ed., On
the Waterfront (Cambridge, UK, 2003) and Leo Braudy, BFI Film Classics: On the Waterfront
(London, 2005).
21. The essential difference between men such as Corridan and those in the workerpriest tradition in places such as France is that Corridan was primarily a priest amongst workers, whereas some took the role more literally and became workers, preaching only as an
adjunct to a more visceral ministry that involved living a certain life in sympathy with those

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FIGURE 2. Edmond Kent, S.J., c. 1960. Photo courtesy of the Irish Jesuit Archives,
Dublin.

makes it hardly surprising that news of such developments, and the inspiration of such figures as Corridan, drifted over the Atlantic, like seeds on
the wind, to take root in Ireland.
Thus a young Jesuit was dispatched to New York to seek inspiration
for and advice on the new educational venture. This young priest, Edmond
Kent, S.J. (1915–99, see figure 2), later recalled his busy itinerary:
I was staying in St Francis Xavier’s Presbytery in West 16th Street, New
York, and was trying to meet as many people as possible in the Labour
Education movement during my short stay there. I had already met . . .
[the directors of colleges including] Fr Philip Dobson, SJ [1909–94] . . .
travelled down to Lafayette Street to spend a morning with John Cort
for whom there was no alternative. On French and Anglican worker priests from the 1920s
to the 1960s, see Gregor Siefer, The Church and Industrial Society: Complete History of the
Worker-Priests and the Present Dilemma (London, 1964), and John Mantle, Britain’s First
Worker-Priests (London, 2000).

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[1913–2006] discussing the educational programme and methods of the
“Association of Catholic Trade Unionists”; I had [also visited a] . . . wonderful little parish, run on co-operative lines, at Douglas Hills, Staten
Island . . . And a few days previously I had taken the subway to Brooklyn
and heard the story of the “Social Action Department” of the Brooklyn
Diocese from its director [and] spent a morning with Miss Eleanor Coit
[1894–1976] who is a pioneer in Labour Education.22

He then made special mention of his encounter with one of the most
turbulent figures in modern American Catholic history, Dorothy Day
(1897–1980). Day was a Catholic convert who had been a member of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) and, with Peter
Maurin (1877–1949), cofounded the Catholic Worker movement
(CWM). Working at first in the depths of the economic conditions of the
1920s and 1930s, Day and Maurin built a small but significant mass
movement of highly committed Catholic laypeople that campaigned on
social and political causes. Initially, the CWM expressed its convictions
amongst the urban poor of the depression years, but (primarily under
Maurin’s influence) it became more rural in outlook, developing self-sustaining, anarcho-communist, agrarian communities at sites in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Latterly, largely at Day’s behest, it took on the cause of
pacifism and became active in a range of political issues. Although the
organization never was an educational provider, and Day did not found a
college or school, she felt able to claim in 1952 that “it was The Catholic
Worker [the movement’s newspaper] and its stories of poverty and
exploitation that aroused the priests to start labor schools.”23 She gave no
credit to the earlier initiative of the Laymen’s League but, even allowing
for some exaggeration on her part of the CWM’s inspirational lead, there
can be no doubt that it did play a significant role in the emergence of
schools for workers in America.
Of all those whom Kent met in his whirlwind visit, it was Day by
whom he was most impressed, as he later made clear in a description of
their encounter in the cramped, dirty office of the CWM in New York.

22. Edmond Kent, “Dorothy Day: An Interview,” Studies, 154 (1950), 176–86, here
176. Kent was not alone in studying the colleges for workers of North America at the time.
Another account of such a visit—although one with a more prosaic concentration on details
of organization, curriculum, and the like—was provided by a fellow Jesuit in another of the
order’s Irish publications. See Edmund Keane, “Experiment in Social Education: Rockhurst
College, Kansas City, Mo.,” Irish Monthly, 920 (1950), 62–67.
23. Dorothy Day, “Labor” [extract from The Long Loneliness, 1952], in Dorothy Day:
Selected Writings, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, NY, 2005), pp. 235–41, here p. 240.

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T HE J ESUITS , M ARY , AND J OSEPH
She . . . face[d] me with a look which seemed to say: “I am a very busy
woman; what can I do for you?” I sat down . . . feeling like a small boy
awaiting a lecture from his mother; for there was something motherly
about her despite her frigid, business-like attitude.24

Despite her apparently intimidating manner, and despite the CWM’s
sometimes awkward relationship with Catholic orthodoxy and its more
than occasional forays into anti-clericalism, Kent emerged sure that Day
was “possessed of so many gifts that she could, if she wished, be a person
of considerable means” and left invigorated by her “stress on the dignity of
the human person, fashioned in the likeness of God.”25 He was now determined to follow her lead, and the nascent CWC offered him the perfect
opportunity to do so.
The CWC’s Founders
Formally, the first head of the new institution was Coyne, professor of
theology at the nearby Jesuit seminary Milltown Institute. Although his
active involvement with the college until his retirement in 1954 does not
seem to have been great, his influence on the early years of the college’s history cannot have been insignificant. Some examination of his personal
interpretation of the meaning and nature of Catholic social teaching and
his relationship to Irish Catholic society in general is relevant to understanding the CWC.
The available sources on Coyne convey an impression that he was
markedly more conservative, socially and politically, than his younger colleague Kent. Coyne, who had studied at University College Dublin (formerly the Catholic University of Ireland) and later returned to teach there,
was a pillar of Catholic Irish society since the 1920s. He had organized
Catholic “social order” summer schools since the 1930s, although these
24. Kent, “Dorothy Day,” p. 179.
25. Kent, “Dorothy Day,” p. 186. Much as Kent’s account hinted, Day was a notoriously
difficult character. The paradoxes of her life are many and various. Although widely seen as a
“saintly” person, she might have been horrified at any suggestion of her own canonization; this
point is discussed at length in Martin Marty, “Dorothy Day: The Exemplar,” in A Tremor of
Bliss: Contemporary Writers on the Saints, ed. Paul Elie (New York, 1995), pp. 286–303. She
founded a movement that was, in a certain sense, an extended family but could appear cavalier
in the treatment of her own blood family. This theme is discussed in Dan McKanan, “Inventing the Catholic Worker Family,” Church History, 76 (2007), 84–113. In the end, it can seem
hard to say why she continued to cleave to the Catholic Church when she so manifestly distrusted, or even disliked, so many of its practices, institutions, and leaders.

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were not so explicitly political as the CWC.26 In addition to his teaching
and writing, he served on various official and quasi-official bodies pertaining to labor-management relations and had been a member of the Commission on Vocational Organisation, established in 1938 by Prime Minister Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) to explore options for closer integration
of Catholic social teaching into Irish socioeconomic life.27 But Coyne was
not concerned only with the needs and conditions of industrial workers in
urban areas and took a keen interest in rural Ireland. To this end, he was
closely involved in the formation of the rural lobby group Muintir na Tíre
(which still exists, although in a diminished capacity from its heyday in the
1950s).28 He was close to the movement’s founder, John Hayes (1887–
1957), also a cleric, and evidently shared the latter’s “virulent Anti–Urbanism” and sense that “[c]ities were the place of sin, dancing, cinema, materialism, individualism, and above all else of ‘foreign’ culture.”29
Further evidence of Coyne’s conservatism is found in his trenchant
role in what is typically seen as the single most important conflict between
church and secular politicians in Ireland’s early history as an independent
state: the so-called Mother and Child Scheme debate of 1948 to 1951. The
radical politician and medical doctor Noel Browne (1915–97), then minister for health in a weak coalition government, proposed to introduce limited, state-funded, antenatal, and general medical care for mothers and
their children. Catholics deemed the plan contrary to the principle of subsidiarity, the devolving of social and political responsibility to the lowest
26. Edward Coyne, “The Social Order Summer School,” Irish Monthly, 771 (1937),
577–87. On older forms of Catholic social action in Ireland, see J. Waldron, “An Rioghacht:
The League of the Kingship of Christ,” Irish Monthly, 924 (1950), 274–80; Eamonn Dunne,
“Action and Reaction: Catholic Lay Organisations in Dublin in the 1920s and 1930s,”
Archivium Hibernicum, 48 (1994), 107–18; Adrian Kelly, “Catholic Action and the Development of the Irish Welfare State in the 1930s and 1940s,” Archivium Hibernicum, 53 (1999),
107–17; and Seán L’Estrange, “‘The community of communities’: Catholic Communitarianism and Societal Crises in Ireland, 1890s–1950s,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 20 (2007),
555–78.
27. Don O’Leary, Vocationalism and Social Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Ireland:
The Search for a Christian Social Order (Dublin, 2000), pp. 74–84.
28. The Irish name translates as something along the lines of People of the Land.
29. Eoin Devereux, “Saving Rural Ireland: Muintir na Tíre and its Anti-Urbanism,
1931–1958,” Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 17, no. 2 (1991), 23–30, here 23. For further
discussion of these profoundly conservative and ruralist tendencies in early-twentieth-century
Irish history, see Eoin Devereux, “The Lonely Furrow: Muintir na Tíre and Irish Community
Development,” Community Development Journal, 28, no. 1 (1993), 45–54. On the movement’s
founder, see John Ryan, “The Founder of Muintir na Tíre: John M. Canon Hayes, 1887–
1957,” Studies, 183 (1957), 312–21.

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practical level at every turn. This was then widely interpreted to mean that
families ought to be required to make provision for their own medical
needs, other than in extreme circumstances. As a consequence, and fearing
that any change along these lines would contribute in general to an undermining or corroding of Catholic values, the Church used its not inconsiderable influence to oppose Browne’s plans. Here Coyne stood foursquare
behind the Catholic hierarchy’s decision to oppose proposals vigorously
that were deemed contrary to the more conservative aspects of the teachings of Rerum novarum. (Some physicians also opposed the scheme for
financial reasons.)
Ultimately, the administration dissolved as some orthodox Catholic
politicians withdrew their support in deference to clerical censure. Coyne’s
was a significant voice raised in support of the claim that the Catholic hierarchy not only had the right to speak in such matters but also had a duty
to do so, and government officials did well to listen if they wished to have
their decisions properly aligned with Catholic doctrine.30
Thus, Coyne was prepared to defend and promote an ideal of a ruralist
Ireland, which employed a rhetorical language that often strongly hinted at
the “soul” of the nation residing outside the major urban centers. He was
happy to defend the right of the Catholic hierarchy to interfere in political
decision-making and felt able, in conscience, to justify the denial of what
some deemed to be basic welfare rights. His was a stern, conservative Catholicism founded on unswerving commitment to hierarchy and authority.
It might be tempting to tell the story of Coyne’s relationship with his
successor, Kent, as that of the Old Sultan to the Young Turk—a tale of
generational change and a corresponding drift toward the political left.
However, it is not accurate to assign these clerics the easy labels of conservative (Coyne) and radical (Kent). Although Kent certainly was the more
turbulent of the two priests, his philosophy was not a secular, political radicalism of the left. It is plausible that Coyne’s and Kent’s Jesuit superiors
yoked them to the same plow in the hope that Coyne might moderate
30. For discussion of these events, typically considered to be the high-water mark of
clerical influence in modern Irish politics, see, for example, David McCullagh, A Makeshift
Majority: The First Inter-Party Government, 1948–51 (Dublin, 1998) and Lindsey EarnerByrne, “Reinforcing the Family: The Role of Gender, Morality and Sexuality in Irish Welfare
Policy, 1922–1944,” History of the Family, 13 (2008), 360–69. On Catholic opposition to the
modern welfare state ideal more generally, see Joan Keating, “Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility,
1945–1962,” Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), 86–108.

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Kent. Nonetheless, the CWC’s founders had a productive relationship,
with much hinging on Kent’s visit to the United States and the lessons
learned there from Catholic leftists. This visit must have had some bearing
on his actions as prefect of studies of the CWC, a role he took up in 1954
and held until after the change from CWC to CIR.
In 1961, in his annual report to the college’s Board of Sponsors (which
represented the interests of employers and trade unions), he “devote[d]
more space than usual [in such a report] to general matters” and gave an
outline both of his view of ten years of the college’s operation and his priorities for its future.31 It is an instructive insight into aspects of his thinking, and even his character. He was conventionally religious, as his position
required him to be, stressing that “[w]e record [the college’s]… successes
in a spirit of thankfulness to God” but hinted at a more liberal point of
view than might have been associated with Coyne when he went on to say:
no system of education can afford to dispense with training such as this
College seeks to give. Too frequently, when we speak or think of education here in Ireland, we think of youth preparing for the battle of life in
some way or other. That concept fitted well enough a static world where
ideas, once learned, never changed and were never challenged. It was
enough when traditional moral, social, political and cultural values and
ideals were accepted, understood, acted upon and taken for granted. But
this is no longer so. There are no social systems that are quite secure.
There are few personal landmarks which could not very quickly be
ploughed under. There can be no final preparation for a way of life the
brand mark of which is instability.32

Although he was not necessarily relishing the “instability” to which he
alluded, his words do not reflect Coyne’s wish to return to bucolic simplicities and certainties. Over several pages, he continued:
to this welter of change men [sic] react differently and frequently badly.
On the one hand there are the traditionalists . . . [opposed to] every sort
of Change . . .
Other men . . . resist all change that is detrimental to their own private
interests . . .

31. Edmond Kent, Education in a Changing World: Report of the Prefect of Studies, 1960–
1961 (Dublin, 1961), p. 2. As copies of CWC annual reports are incomplete in the NCI
archive, press accounts have been consulted when annual reports were unavailable.
32. Kent, Report, p. 3.

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At the other extreme are the so-called Progressives . . . [characterized by]
a rebelliousness or a restlessness with the world as they see it. . . . Progressives believe, implicitly or explicitly, in human progress in every field
of human endeavour. . . . Marxism is perhaps the most explicit [version
of this] . . .
Another type of progressive is found among our teenagers and younger
men and women. Theirs is more rebellion against the present than concern with the future . . . they drift from job to job, from place to place,
restless and rebellious.33

Against all of this, he set out his vision of a productive radical or progressive stance, one grounded in the ability to analyze current conditions
and to understand them in historical context:
A College such as ours does not pretend to be able to hand out the
answer to any difficulty that may arise. Its purpose is, rather, to gather the
knowledge required to enable a man to make up his own mind . . .
draw[ing] reasonable, constructive conclusions.34

It was a humane vision of popular intellectualism and moderate radicalism. As such, it was increasingly removed from the earlier tradition of
social action through workers’ education that sought to cultivate and instill
not criticality but, as O’Hea had said of the CWC’s English precursor,
“fearless . . . loyalty to the Faith.”35
Teaching and Curriculum
A full history of the CWC would encompass aspects such as the social
history,36 the types and numbers of students, the expectations of students,
and the perceptions of students about the impact of their education. However, difficulties in reaching accurate conclusions are posed by the dearth
or paucity of certain records (perhaps a result of a widespread destruction
of archives by twentieth-century Irish Catholic organizations). Thus,
much of what follows is a more conventional “acts and facts” history of the
CWC rather than one that reflects student biographies and experiences.

33. Kent, Report, pp. 4–6.
34. Kent, Report, p. 7.
35. O’Hea, “A Catholic Labour College,” p. 168.
36. The case for such a revitalized form of history of education is made powerfully in
various contributions and an editorial introduction in Silences and Images: The Social History of
the Classroom, ed. Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn, and Kate Rousmaniere (New York, 1999).

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Coyne and Kent initially had “a small Jesuit staff and a number of
dedicated laymen who worked on a voluntary basis.”37 The number of personnel did not grow significantly over the next fifteen years, but by 1968,
there were seven Jesuits involved with the CWC full time (including two
Jesuit brothers). The initial number of lay, volunteer lecturers is unclear,
but by 1966, it seems to have stood as high as a dozen and by 1988, it may
have risen to as many as twenty, although the institution was by then a
more “professional” organization.38 CWC staff members wrote for journals such as Studies and The Furrow, as well as occasional newspaper articles, but their principal research output in the 1950s and 1960s was a
series of pamphlets on Catholic answers to common problems in industrial relations.39 However, their publications were secondary to their main
work of teaching.
The content of the trade unionism course, the mainstay of the CWC’s
work, was outlined in a 1960 synopsis by a Jesuit staff member:
(1) The Nature and Personality of Man [sic] (26 lectures); (2) Trade
Unionism (13 lectures) [in the first year]. In the second year there are
twenty-six lectures in each of two subjects: (1) Social Theory and (2) the
Irish Economy. In the Third Year: Social Ethics (26 lectures) together
with Trade Union Organisation in Ireland (13 lectures) and a factual
survey of the nature, purposes, functions and activities of the Labour
Court (13 lectures). Subjects studied in the fourth year are Trade Union
Law, Current Economic Problems, Irish Social Legislation, [and] Current Trade Union Problems.40

A parallel managers’ course comprised the same elements of “Nature
and Personality of Man . . . Social Theory and Social Ethics” to be found
in the trade union course but was augmented by teaching said to “deal with
industrial and management problems from a specifically human point of
view in such courses as Human Relations in Industry and Occupational
Psychology.”41 Supervisors were taught “twenty lectures on the Nature and
37. Kent, “History of the College,” p. 10.
38. “National College of Industrial Relations,” Education, 3, no. 5 (1988), 7–15, here 7.
39. See, for example, Timothy Hamilton, The Challenge of Collective Bargaining
(Dublin, 1963) and Andrew Ryan, God, Law and the Unions (Dublin, 1964).
40. Timothy Hamilton, “The Catholic Workers’ College in Dublin,” Christus Rex, 16,
no. 3 (1960), 191–99, here 194.
41. Hamilton, “The Catholic Workers’ College,” p. 196. Because original curricular
documents from the earliest history of the college seem not to have been preserved, secondary
accounts compiled by contemporary observers often must be consulted. However, later course
outlines are available (see, for example, Management and Business Relations Course, 1964,

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Personality of Man and twenty on Human Relations in Industry in the first
year . . . [and] Psychology for Supervision and a discussion forum on practical matters of supervision in the second.”42 Course examinations were
conducted orally until at least 1960.43
A more general course in political studies was offered from 1956,
encompassing practical aspects of Irish politics and constitutional law and
the rather polemical sounding “philosophy of National Patriotism.”44
Some advanced teaching was available on moral and theological matters for
selected students, although “adapted to the required intellectual level.”45
Diplomas and certificates were awarded annually to members of various
groups, the first awards for supervisors being made in 1964,46 and the
supervisors’ course, sometimes referred to as Course D, remained significant until at least 1976.47
But alongside, and perhaps at odds, with such socioeconomic or political courses were marriage preparation classes. Teaching of the latter kind
began in 1955 and was still being undertaken in the mid-1970s.48 Preparation of soon-to-be-married couples began with emphasis placed on the par-

NCIA, item 35), which show little evidence of major change. The standard textbook on social
justice for Jesuits in the 1960s and 1970s was Jean-Yves Calvez and Jacques Perrin’s The
Church and Social Justice: The Social Teaching of the Popes from Leo XIII to Pius XII, 1878–1958
(Chicago, 1961). However, the lack of funds to provide them and the inability of CWC students to purchase their own copies meant that its lecturers largely relied on written materials
they could produce cheaply themselves, so it seems students simply imbibed some version of
the contents of The Church and Social Justice indirectly. See Aidan Seery, undated interview
with Liam McKenna, S.J. (1922–2013), transcription by Ekatarina Kozina; Cultures, Academic Values, and Education Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin. The specific reference is from line 853 of the interview transcript. The author is grateful to all concerned for
allowing access to this material. For further details, see Aidan Seery and Liam McKenna,
“The Catholic Workers’ College Dublin: A Personal History,” Saothair: Journal of the Irish
Labour History Society, 39 (2014), 101–06.
42. Hamilton, “The Catholic Workers’ College in Dublin,” p. 197.
43. Idem, p. 194.
44. Idem, p. 198.
45. Idem, p. 194.
46. “News and Views,” Solidarity: Associate Members Bulletin of the Catholic Workers’ College, 8 (1964), 1.
47. “Present Work and Future Policy of the College,” in College of Industrial Relations:
Silver Jubilee (Dublin, 1976), pp. 11–13, here p. 12. The only part of this pamphlet for which
an author can be identified is the “History of the College” by Kent.
48. Generally speaking, primary sources are wanting but a detailed account of the curriculum is given in Michael Moloney, “Marriage Preparation Course,” The Furrow, 7, no. 2
(1956), 86–96.

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ticularly Catholic view of the threefold nature of marriage “as an institution
. . . a sacrament and . . . a vocation.”49 The aim was to present marriage as
“based on the union of Christ with his Church . . . develop[ing] a union of
heart and mind as complete . . . mutual, exclusive and durable as Christ’s for
his Church.”50 A gendered view of roles in married life was promoted, with
lectures on “The Distinctive and Complementary Qualities of Men and
Women”521 and much stress placed on “pitfalls resulting from the ignorance
of the distinctive differences of man and woman.”52 Time was devoted to
promoting Catholic education for children both inside and outside the home
and to stressing the importance of “domestic spirituality.”53 There also was
provision made for more practical matters such as making “simple home
crafts”;54 “making up a household budget”;55 and “prepar[ing] the trousseau,
reception, wedding and honeymoon . . . [including] such details as seating,
speeches and toasts [at the wedding].”56 In these respects, what was offered
may not have differed greatly from the contents of many secular advice manuals of the 1950s and early 1960s. But it seems that the Catholicism of the
teaching was ever present. Thus, although lay speakers contributed on topics
such as children’s health and welfare, the marriage preparation courses were
clerically-led,57 and the highest aim of those who contributed to this always
significant strand of the CWC’s teaching was to promote “union in marriage” that, in turn, required “union with God’s will.”58
As the CWC was a Catholic college, it would be unrealistic to expect
its staff members to confine their teaching to nonreligious matters. The
domestic sphere, understood in that way, was a legitimate part of the
CWC’s interests. However, although Kent had been influenced by the
“uncompromising laicism” of the American CWM that was “quite different from devotional Catholicism,”59 it had little or no equivalent in 1950s

49. Moloney, “Marriage Preparation Course,” p. 89.
50. Ibid.
51. Moloney, “Marriage Preparation Course,” p. 90.
52. Idem, p. 91.
53. Idem, p. 94.
54. Idem, p. 90.
55. Idem, p. 91.
56. Idem, p. 92.
57. Idem, p. 94.
58. Idem, p. 95. See also Jim Edwards, “In This Unique College, They Learn How to be
Happily Married,” Irish Pictorial, September 28, 1957, 3. It is possible that the marriage classes
were used to occupy clerical teaching staff, who otherwise might have been underemployed.
59. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, “On the Margins: The State of American Catholic History,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 21, no. 2 (1998), 77–95, here 90.

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Ireland. Thus, although the CWC displayed certain radical tendencies, it
was straightforwardly Catholic in much of its approach.
Ethos: Mary or Joseph?
By the 1950s, Marian devotion was a significant element of Irish
Catholic religiosity. Only shortly before the CWC began operations in
1951, Pope Pius XII (1876–1958, r. 1939–58) had promulgated the doctrine of the bodily assumption of Mary. Hardly the most politically radical
of twentieth-century Catholic leaders, Pius has been described as filling a
“vacuum created by the suppression of dynamic, creative theology in the
postwar period” with “a popular combination of private devotion and exhibitions of mass loyalty and fervour . . . [crowned by] papal exaltation and
triumphalism.”60 Indeed, the belief persists in some quarters that he might
have gone so far as to “[declare] Mary Co-Redemptrix with Christ,” a
move that would certainly have been “even more earth-shattering than . . .
the Assumption.”61 Papal influence aside, there can be little doubt that the
cult of Mary dominated Irish Catholicism in the first half of the twentieth
century, although its hold was considerably lessened after the 1950s.62 Certainly, the terrain of Irish Catholic conservatism was crowded. One highly
visible expression of this was the Maria Duce group, founded in 1942 by
Denis Fahey (1883–1954) to agitate for the adoption of Catholicism as
something akin to a state religion.63 Other groups, although less specifically Marian in their focus, were active from the 1920s to the 1950s, lobbying in avowedly conservative terms on various issues. Maria Duce had a
mass membership far outstripping that of the religious organizations An
Rioghacht and Christus Rex, but it did not last long after Fahey’s death.64
By contrast, the Legion of Mary (LoM), founded in Ireland in 1921
by Frank Duff (1889–1980), had both mass membership and longevity,

60. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (London, 1999), p. 345.
61. Caitlin Matthews, “Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom,” in The Inner West: An Introduction
to the Hidden Wisdom of the West, ed. Jay Kinney (New York, 2004), pp. 140–55, here p. 150.
62. An excellent general account of this phenomenon (as it were, the story of the
decline and fall of the Irish Marian empire) can be found in James Donnelly, “Opposing the
‘Modern World’: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965–1985,” Eire-Ireland, 40, nos.
1–2 (2005), 183–245.
63. Enda Delaney, “Political Catholicism in Post-War Ireland: The Revd. Denis Fahey
and Maria Duce, 1945–54,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 52 (2001), 487–511.
64. An Rioghacht (in English, League of the Kingship of Christ) was founded in 1926,
and Christus Rex was established in 1941.

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making it the most successful organization of its kind to operate in the
period. However, it may be misleading to bracket the LoM with the
avowedly conservative An Rioghacht and Christus Rex, as the LoM has a
more complicated or contested history.65 Dating from 1563, the Jesuit-run
Our Lady’s Sodality (OLS) admitted women to membership starting in
1825; by the 1950s, women composed the majority of OLS members in
Ireland.66 Despite waning religious influence in general, as late as 1978 it
was possible for the sodality to organize a major national convention in a
Dominican girls’ school in Dublin’s Donnybrook, only a very short distance from the CWC, with several hundred delegates attending.67 Thus,
there were significant links between the Irish Jesuits and popular Marianism in the 1950s and early 1960s. But the overwhelming impression of the
life and ethos of the CWC in the same period is that it was dominated by
the attention paid to the image of St. Joseph. If the Marianism of Pius XII
and others represented conservatism, tradition, domesticity, piety, and
even mysticism, Joseph, as the workers’ saint, could seem to stand for very
different things.
From its foundation, the CWC was associated with Joseph. This
somewhat shadowy figure, described in Matthew 13:55 with only hints as
to his nature and even employment, featured prominently on the CWC’s
original crest. A statue of its spiritual patron (carved, appropriately, in
rough and gnarled wood) was added to the college’s premises in 1958. The
feast day associated with Joseph, May 1, was the center of the CWC’s symbolic calendar. Reports of the gatherings of students convened to mark the
feast day and the speeches by lecturers from the college’s staff that they
often heard appeared in national newspaper reports frequently in the 1950s
and early 1960s.68 All this was very much in keeping with the tone of U.S.
institutions for workers, where Joseph often loomed large in teaching:
The [American] Jesuits’ decision to concentrate on St Joseph was of
course not surprising. They saw in episodes of his life numerous opportunities to reinforce the message which they hoped to communicate . . .

65. On Duff and his organization in his own terms, see his True Devotion to the Nation
(Dundalk, 1966), especially the political “manifesto” “The Legion’s Programme of True
Devotion to the Nation,” pp. 37–48.
66. Gregory Ffrench, “The Sodality of Our Lady,” The Furrow, 5 (1954), 539–48.
67. Donnelly, “Opposing the ‘Modern World,’” p. 195.
68. For further examples, see “Greater Interest in Unions Urged,” Irish Times, May 2,
1958, 5; “Lecturer Urges Need for Adult Education,” Irish Independent, May 2, 1959, 14;
“Luxury Never a Problem for Ordinary Worker,” Irish Times, May 2, 1960, 5; and “Role of
Trade Unionist Defined,” Irish Times, May 2, 1961, 11.

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336

present[ing] him to workers as a colleague who shared a common identity with them.69

Viewed one way, the Marian tendencies of the Irish Jesuits (tendencies
that emphasized the traditionally feminine role in the social order and
barely, if at all, touched on concerns that might be described as feminist,
making them profoundly conservative) could appear to be at variance with
the more radical Christianity of the CWC and its cult of Joseph. This
might seem to entail conflict. But any “conflict” between the paradigms is
illusory. Ultimately, given the very masculine history of trade unionism
that, in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, was typically as
socially conservative as it was politically radical, with a particular stress on
gender hierarchy at home and in the workplace, this largely reflecting fear
that the feminization of labor and “dilution” would drive down wage rates,
it may be no surprise that more emphasis was placed on the masculine
figure of Joseph than the feminine Mary.
Conclusion
Although Catholic workers were never the sole student population at
CWC, they formed the majority of students over the years. In 1954 a representative of the Plumbing Trades Union addressed the annual conference
of the Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC), an organization with members
in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as close ties to the
British Trade Union Congress. He insisted that worker education in Ireland should, above all else, “be Christian education . . . Irish and Christian,” because it was “necessary to be a Christian both at work and at
[union] meetings”; he added: “I am afraid that the Irish worker is frightened of the trade union movement’s educational schemes,” claiming that
this would remain so until it was clear that such schemes were informed by
“Christian as well as trade union principles.” Although he did not allude to
the CWC directly, he contrasted the specter of more secular workers’ education with that organized by such Catholic leaders as Alfred O’Rahilly
(1884–1969; president of University College Cork, 1943–54) and may
have been correct in his reference to a wariness of teaching conducted
under such secular auspices as the People’s College, with which the ITUC
then was closely involved.70 The CWC might well have seemed a safe
69. McShane, “‘The Church Is Not For The Cells And The Caves,’” p. 296.
70. Quoted in Sixtieth Annual Report: Report of the National Executive, 1953–1954
(Dublin, 1954), here p. 143. The People’s College continues to provide adult education
courses in both political and practical subjects for students living in Dublin. For further details

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alternative for many intellectually curious Catholic workers in the period,
as opposed to this apparently more radical option, founded in 1948 and
still in operation today.71 The CWC’s story belongs to a much broader
mobilization on the part of the Catholic Church: the Catholic social action
project, an attempt to locate Catholic workingmen’s lives in a religiously
authorized political and social orthodoxy—keeping them untainted, so to
speak, by socialism (and the apparently more pernicious threat of communism). Although the prime period of the CWC operation lasted only fifteen years, it cannot be regarded as a mere curiosity or failed experiment in
education for a number of reasons.
First, the CWC has an important place at the intersection of two axes:
academic Catholic sociology of the early- to mid-twentieth century and a
better known social-action movement. Second, the CWC reflects not only
the significant influence of the city of Oxford’s Plater College but also that
of the North American labor movement—specifically the Catholic Worker
movement. Third, the CWC showed clear signs of radical and conservative
philosophies, a tension personified by the polarity of Coyne and Kent.
Fourth, despite these coexisting domestic and international philosophies,
the CWC always remained resolutely orthodox in its theology. Finally, an
internal struggle over the CWC’s ethos resulted in a character that was, so
to speak, more Josephite than Marian. The CWW taught, and its staff and
supporters espoused, a Catholic sociology that has been described as
having
a strong pastoral focus . . . heavily influenced by the . . . [social] encyclicals . . . [while being] part of a wider Catholic Action matrix of organisations and associations. It had a “negative” orientation in that it defined
itself as a communitarian Catholicism against an earlier identity emphasizing personal piety [such as the CTS, as discussed elsewhere].72

The greatest influences on the formation of this sociological worldview, at least as it was advocated and adopted in Ireland, were specifically
of its work, visit http://www.peoplescollege.ie. On O’Rahilly’s involvement with adult education for Catholics in that period, see Kathleen O’Flaherty, “Professor Alfred O’Rahilly: An
Appreciation,” Irish University Review, 1, no. 4 (1955), 13–20; and Denis O’Sullivan, ed.,
Social Commitment and Adult Education: Essays in Honour of Alfred O’Rahily, an Irish Adult
Educator (Cork, 1989).
71. For more on the relationship between the CWC/NCIR and the Irish trade union
movement, see Seery and McKenna, “The Catholic Workers’ College.”
72. Brian Conway, “Catholic Sociology in Ireland in Comparative Perspective,” American Sociologist, 42 (2011), 34–55, here 35.

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American. Notable clerical and lay figures in American Catholic sociology
include William Kerby (1870–1936), Raymond Murray (1896–1992), Eva
Ross (1903–70), and Joseph Fichter (1909–94).73 Kerby and colleagues
shaped Catholic sociology in North America; that sociology shaped the
Catholic institutions for workers that inspired the CWC. One author
noted that, in contrast with Ireland, “The cacophony of religious influences
in the United States meant that [Catholic] sociology there was more fragmented, variegated and politicised.”74
Because the CWC’s ethic of social action was determinedly anticommunist, the CWC and its founders thus plotted a course between radical
Scylla and conservative Charybdis, leaning more heavily toward the latter
than the former. The overlap between the sociology of the pious CTS and
the CWC’s own brand is suggestive. The CTS’s publication The Plan of
Society, first issued in 1944 (although not necessarily used by the CWC for
teaching purposes) has been described as “the first sociology textbook [produced] in Ireland.”75 Its chapters include “The Workers’ Share”; “Industrial
Organisation”; “The Unemployment Problem”; and the obviously subsidiarist “Purpose and Competence of the State,” “Church and State,” and
“Church and State: Further Determinations”—all markedly similar to the
CWC’s curricular outlines.76 Thus there was little or nothing taught at the
CWC that would have frightened a loyal member of the CTS.77
That two such seemingly different figures as Coyne and Kent could be
identified with the same institution, affecting to espouse the same credo,
hints at some of the fundamental ambiguities at the heart of the oftenamorphous Catholic ideal of social justice, with its “all things to all persons” nature, so that it can be either profoundly radical or surprisingly conservative and appear contradictory to non-Catholics.78 However, this
73. Conway, “Catholic Sociology,” especially p. 36.
74. Conway, “Catholic Sociology,” pp. 50–51.
75. Conway, “Catholic Sociology,” p. 43.
76. Peter McKevitt, The Plan of Society (Dublin, 1944); compare Hamilton, “Catholic
Workers’ College,” p. 194.
77. On teaching in the CWC/NCIR, see also Seery and McKenna, “The Catholic
Workers’ College.”
78. For some further discussion on this topic, see Gerard Mannion, “Working and
Being: Social Justice and Theology for Workers,” in Catholic Social Justice: Theological and
Practical Explorations, ed. Philomena Cullen, Bernard Hoose, and Gerard Mannion (London,
2007), pp. 89–128; Thomas Shannon, “Rerum novarum,” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching:
Commentaries and Interpretations, ed. Kenneth Himes, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Charles Curran,
David Hollenbach, and Thomas Shannon (Washington, DC, 2004), pp. 127–50; Brendan

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tension between the implicit radicalism of the CWC and its gender conservatism exists only if a standard is applied that expects the left to be synonymous with feminism. This is patently not the case if the culture of Irish
trade unionism of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is considered. In moving the strong, silent Joseph to the forefront of its teaching
and symbolism (as did the U.S. Catholic institutions for workers), the
CWC was expressing both its radical interest in the ennoblement of labor
and its gender conservatism, something simultaneously very Catholic and
consistent with the gendered culture of trade unions in the Ireland of the
1950s and 1960s.

MacPartlin, “The Social Doctrine of a Christian Practice of Liberation,” in Catholic Social
Teaching in Action (Dublin, 2005), pp. 140–53; and James Heft, “Catholic Education and
Social Justice,” Catholic Education, 10, no. 1 (2006), 6–23.

“A Decision that Spits in the Face
of Our History”:
Catholics and the Midcentury Fight Over
Public Prayer and Bible Reading
KATHLEEN HOLSCHER*
During the 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court declared state-organized
prayer and devotional Bible reading within public schools unconstitutional. Roman Catholics joined conservative Protestants in objecting
to the court’s ruling—a radical change from the Protestant-Catholic
conflicts of the early-twentieth century. This article explores the transformation of Catholic attitudes toward publicly mandated prayer—
especially Bible reading—that facilitated this alliance. The new
Catholic support for Bible reading in public education resulted from the
Church’s opposition to secularism during the cold war but was also tied
to “liberal” ecumenical notions about the Bible and conversations about
religious freedom after the Second Vatican Council.
Keywords: Bible, Catholic education, church and state, religious
freedom, Second Vatican Council

A

“

lmighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we
beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.”1 Children attending school in seven public districts in Nassau
County, New York, in the late 1950s began their days reciting this
prayer.2 The Regents’ Prayer was the state-sanctioned invocation of New
York’s educational system. It was a collaborative creation of Protestant
ministers, Roman Catholic priests, and Jewish rabbis, and it had the
endorsement of the directors of the New York School Boards

*Dr. Holscher is assistant professor of religious studies and American studies, and holds
the endowed chair of Roman Catholic studies, at the University of New Mexico, email:
kholscher@unm.edu
1. Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).
2. Bruce J. Dierenfield, The Battle Over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed
America (St. Lawrence, KS, 2007), p. 81.
3. Steven D. Smith, “Constitutional Divide: The Transformative Significance of the
School Prayer Decisions,” Pepperdine Law Review, 38 (2011), 945–1020, here 950.

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Association.3 Students and teachers praying together during school hours
was normal in the United States around 1960—a third of U.S. public
schools sponsored formal prayer in homeroom, and more than a quarter
had lunchtime grace.4 If anything, it was the carefully inclusive and
“exquisitely minimalist” wording of the Regents’ Prayer that set it apart.5
Thirteen states had provisions authorizing recitation of the traditional
Lord’s Prayer in public classrooms.6 Devotional reading of the Christian
scriptures in American schools was more common. At least thirty-five
states authorized or permitted Bible reading in their schools around
1960.7 The practice was especially prevalent in the American South,
where 77 percent of public schools provided students with the opportunity
to read or hear passages from the Bible.8
Amid this show of public piety, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in
a way many Americans found unthinkable. The New York Civil Liberties
Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents who objected to children reciting
the Regents’ Prayer. Ruling on the case Engel v. Vitale in 1962, the court
found state organized or sanctioned prayer in schools to be “a practice
wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause.”9 The following
summer the court went one step further. In an eight-to-one decision in
Abington v. Schempp, the court held a Pennsylvania law requiring Bible
reading “without comment” in public schools unconstitutional as well.10
Even though the statute provided that “any child shall be excused from
such Bible reading . . . upon the written request of his parent or guardian,”
the court determined that it, and policies like it, violated the religious neutrality demanded of both federal and state governments by the First
Amendment. “It is no defense to urge that the religious practices here may
be relatively minor encroachments,” Justice Tom C. Clark (see figure 1)

4. Dierenfield, The Battle Over School Prayer, p. 2, table 1.1.
5. Smith, “Constitutional Divide,” p. 950.
6. Michael W. La Morte and Fred N. Dorminy, “Compliance with the Schempp
Decision: A Decade Later,” Journal of Law and Education, 3 (1974), 399–407, here 401.
7. E. Katz, “Patterns of Compliance with the Schempp Decision,” Journal of Public
Law, 14 (1965), 396–408. Nine states required Bible reading during the period, and twentysix allowed but did not require it (leaving the decision to local jurisdictions). In six of these,
the practice was reported as unknown, meaning that Bible reading was legally practiced in
schools in at least twenty-nine states. The actual number was likely higher; only forty-one
states responded to the Katz survey (p. 402). State laws authorizing Bible reading in public
schools usually included language stipulating voluntary participation.
8. Katz, “Patterns of Compliance,” p. 405.
9. Smith, “Constitutional Divide,” p. 950; Engel v. Vitale.
10. Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).

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FIGURE 1. Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark in the Oval Office on
November 16, 1967. Photo by Frank Wolfe. LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, TX,
serial no. C7518-13a.

wrote on behalf of the majority in Schempp. “The breach of neutrality that
is today a trickling stream may all too soon become a raging torrent.”11
The timing of Engel and Schempp made the rulings especially unpopular. Less than a decade earlier, the U.S. Congress had added the phrase
“under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had
quipped of government that it “has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply
felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.”12 At the height of the cold
war, as Americans steeled themselves against a godless enemy in the Soviet
Union, the Supreme Court’s move to, as one Long Island resident put it,
make God “persona non grata in [the nation’s] public schools” met widespread dismay.13 The court received more negative mail in response to

11. Abington v. Schempp.
12. Qtd. in John C. Jeffries Jr. and Jaames E. Ryan, “A Political History of the Establishment Clause,” Michigan Law Review, 100 (2001), 279–370, here 311.
13. Bruce J. Dierenfield, “Engel v. Vitale,” The Public Debate Over Controversial
Supreme Court Decisions, ed. Melvin I. Urofsky (Washington, DC, 2006), pp. 215–25, here
p. 218.

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Engel than any decision in its history.14 Rep. Frank J. Becker (a Republican
who represented Nassau County) lamented the ruling: “This is not the first
tragic decision of this court, but I would say it is the most tragic in the history of the United States.”15 For Southerners especially, Engel and Schempp
represented a nefarious addendum to Brown v. Board of Education—an
uninvited imposition of the federal government upon states’ right to educate their children. Rep. George W. Andrews (D–AL) did not mince
words. “They put the Negroes in the schools,” he recalled bitterly, “and
now they’ve driven God out.”16 Many states simply ignored the court’s rulings.17 The Southern states were especially defiant—under Governor
George Wallace, the Alabama Board of Education moved to require Bible
reading for the first time after Schempp.18
Religious leaders also voiced anger. Jews were the only major religious
group to reliably back Engel and Schempp.19 Among Protestants, the liberalleaning National Council of Churches supported the decisions, whereas the
National Association of Evangelicals supported Engel but denounced
Schempp a year later.20 Evangelist Billy Graham (see figure 2) described
himself as “shocked” by the later ruling. “Prayers and Bible reading have
been a part of American public school life since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock,” he objected. “Now a Supreme Court . . . says our fathers were
wrong all these years!”21 Some of the most scathing opposition to both

14. Karl E. Campbell, “Senator Sam Ervin and School Prayer: Faith, Politics, and the
Constitution,” Journal of Church and State, 45 (2003), 443–56, here 447. A Gallup poll after
the rulings found 79 percent of Americans still approved of prayers and Bible reading in
schools (Dierenfield, “Engel v. Vitale,” p. 217).
15. Washington, DC, American Catholic History Research Center and University
Archives, The Catholic University of America, qtd. in “Facts About Discharge Petition,”
enclosure of personal correspondence, Robert L. Mauro to Cardinal Albert Meyer, August 8,
1963, Records of the Executive Department/Office of the General Secretary, National
Catholic Welfare Conference/United States Catholic Conference Collection(cited hereafter
as Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections), Box 10, Folder 8.
16. Qtd. in Dierenfield, “Engel v. Vitale,” p. 220.
17. Katz, “Patterns of Compliance,” p. 402. See also Ben A. Franklin, “Pennsylvanians
Lead School Prayer Revolt,” New York Times, March 26, 1969, 1.
18. Katz, “Patterns of Compliance,” p. 401.
19. The major exception was the Synagogue Council of America, which represented
branches of Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative Judaism. See George Duban, “Churches
Divided, With Most in Favor,” New York Times, June 18, 1963, 1.
20. Duban, “Churches Divided”; Jeffries and Ryan, “Political History,” pp. 320–21. On
evangelical responses to Engel and Schempp, see Adam Laats, “Our Schools, Our Country:
American Evangelicals, Public Schools, and the Supreme Court Decisions of 1962 and 1963,”
Journal of Religious History, 36 (2012), 319–34.
21. “Billy Graham Voices Shock Over Decision,” New York Times, June 18, 1963, 27.

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FIGURE 2. Minister Billy Graham, April 1966. Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division, reproduction no. LC-DIG-ppmsc-03261.

Engel and Schempp came from the Catholic Church. In the days after Engel,
the Jesuit magazine America announced the “Black Monday” decision on its
cover and printed the Regents’ Prayer, word for word, in defiantly large
font.22 “‘Asinine’ summed it up,” stated an editorial in the issue. “It is not
only an unpopular decision . . . . It is quite literally, a stupid decision, . . . a
decision that spits in the face of our history, our tradition and our heritage
as religious people.”23 Catholic reactions to Schempp registered similar
indignation, and some of the loudest objections came from Church leaders.
Cardinal Francis J. Spellman of New York (see figure 3) declared of the
court’s Bible reading prohibition that “no one who believes in God can
approve such a decision,” and Cardinal James McIntyre of Los Angeles

22. America, July 7, 1962), np. “Black Monday” refers to Justice Hugo Black, author of
the Engel decision.
23. “Black Monday Decision,” America, July 7, 1962, 456. See also “Prayer in the Classroom,” America, April 28, 1962, 105; “After June 25, 1962,” America, July 14, 1962, 483;
“Religion, Public School Tie Asked,” Our Sunday Visitor, June 10, 1962, 1.

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FIGURE 3. Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, archbishop of New York, c. 1960. Papers
of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, JFK Presidential
Library, Boston, MA, digital identifier JFKPOF-033-003-p0009.

warned that it “can only mean that our American heritage of philosophy, of
religion, and of freedom, are being abandoned in imitation of Soviet philosophy, of Soviet materialism, and of Soviet regimented liberty.”24 Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle of Washington, DC, echoed his colleagues: “It is
obvious that little by little [the court] is discarding the religious traditions
hallowed by a century and a half of American practice.”25
There were exceptions to this Catholic fury. Among the most notable
was Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, who was Catholic. Brennan authored a lengthy concurring opinion in Schempp, in which he concluded the First Amendment required nothing less than “a public secular
education.”26 Observers at the time, however, pointed to nearly unanimous
24. Qtd. in Katz, “Patterns of Compliance,” p. 398.
25. Qtd. in Duban, “Churches Divided.”
26. Abington v. Schempp, concurring opinion. On Brennan’s Catholicism, see Rodney
A. Grunes and Jon Veen, “Justice Brennan, Catholicism and the Establishment Clause,” University of San Francisco Law Review, 35 (2001), 527–63.

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“A D ECISION THAT S PITS IN THE F ACE OF O UR H ISTORY ”

public dissent among Catholics over the rulings.27As Church leaders
denounced the court’s decisions and accused its justices of promoting
Soviet-style atheism, they found themselves lining up with conservative
Protestants and, to a lesser extent, conservative Jews. If Spellman and
Graham made odd theological bedfellows, by 1963 they agreed that
Schempp was a disaster and that God needed to be saved within public education. Historians point to this ad hoc alliance that developed around
public prayer and especially Bible reading as early evidence of the interreligious movement of cultural conservatives that, by the 1970s, would define
one side of the nation’s “culture wars.”28 It was something new. Fifteen
years earlier, conflicts over education and the First Amendment had fractured reliably along religious lines, pitting Catholics against Protestants
and Jews. As public testament to this divide, the pan-Protestant organization Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church
and State, founded in 1947, had explicitly targeted Catholicism, vowing to
defend against “a powerful church . . . committed . . . to a policy plainly
subversive of religious liberty as guaranteed by the Constitution.”29
What happened to bring Catholics and their former opponents to the
same side of the church-state battlefield, in support of public prayer and
Bible reading, by the 1960s? One answer lies in the erosion of Protestant
enthusiasm for the Supreme Court as its interpretation of the Establishment Clause developed between 1945 and 1965.30 The other answer lies in
Catholicism itself. Over the span of a generation, the American Church
reversed its position on invocations like the Lord’s Prayer and, more dramatically, Bible reading in public schools—from opposition to approval. In
doing so, it erased a long and famous source of conflict between Catholics
and Protestants in the United States. When McIntyre looked backward,
appealing to a common “American heritage” in his defense of Bible reading
after Schempp, he was speaking hopefully but not accurately. Catholics had
spent most of the previous century at odds with their Protestant neighbors
over the question of the Bible’s presence in public schools. In the nine27. Carol Burrow Lawrence, “A Survey of Public Reaction to Engel v. Vitale” (MA
thesis, Arizona State University, 1963), pp. 37–38: “It appears that the only support for the
[Enge l] decision to be found among Catholics was local and individual.”
28. See, for example, Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public
Schools (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
29. Qtd. in Harold Fey, With Sovereign Reverence: The First Twenty-Five Years of Americans United (Rockville, MD, 1974), p. 9.
30. On the disintegration of Protestant support for the court’s interpretation of the
Establishment Clause, see Sarah Barringer Gordon, “‘Free’ Religion and ‘Captive’ Schools:
Protestants, Catholics, and Education, 1945–1965,” DePaul Law Review, 56 (2007), 1210–19.

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teenth century, bishops petitioned government officials to remove the
Bible, in its King James version, from publicly funded classrooms. The
American Catholic leadership did not defend the Bible’s presence in those
classrooms until the 1950s—less than a decade before the Schempp ruling.
Why did the American Church change its position? How did it move
from fighting conservative Protestants over the Bible to defending it with
them? These answers lie in the overlapping intellectual histories of cold
war Catholicism and Second Vatican Council Catholicism in the United
States. On one hand, in the eyes of Church leaders, secularism overtook
Protestantism in the early years of the cold war as the biggest threat to the
souls of children. In the shadow of Soviet communism, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews found themselves facing a nearer godless foe that left their
nation vulnerable. Together, Americans committed to defending the
United States against secularism through the work of religious revival. For
many, Catholic and not, public prayer and Bible reading were essential
pieces in that effort. On the other hand, the Catholic change of heart on
prayer and Bible reading was also the product of recent reforming impulses
within the Church. The Second Vatican Council, which opened the same
year as Engel and lasted until 1965, was occasion for the Church to evaluate
many facets of belief and practice in light of the modern world, including
(1) the worth of religious freedom and (2) the character of the Bible. On
the eve of the Council, Engel and Schempp presented the opportunity for
Catholics who were invested in reforms to argue for their applicability—
and their redemptive function—in the nation’s public life.
The Catholic clamor in support of public prayer and Bible reading
during the 1960s reveals how opposition to secularism and the promotion
of modernizing reforms, including a new embrace of religious freedom and
a new ecumenical vision of the Bible, were linked in the minds of many in
the American Church. These impulses—too often artificially separated in
historical hindsight with the labels conservative and liberal—developed in
tandem during the twentieth century, and debates over education became
the occasion for their common expression. Fights over the character of
schooling were at the center of the American Church’s anxious reaction to
secularism, but they also helped to clarify religious freedom and ecumenism as guiding values for American Catholics, as those principles were
finding Vatican affirmation across the Atlantic. The Catholic response to
Engel and Schempp confirms the inadequacy of late-twentieth-century liberal-conservative bifurcations for making sense of the ferment of midcentury Catholic thought. In fact, the Catholic reaction to the court’s rulings
suggests that the interreligious alliance of so-called “cultural conservatives”

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that emerged in the United States during the 1960s and the 1970s was in
part made possible by modern-minded or “liberal” reforms happening inside
the Church.
From Opposition to Support of Public Bible Reading
During the nineteenth century, Catholics opposed use of the King
James Bible and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools. Among the fights
that resulted, the best known occurred in the 1840s in New York City,
where Bishop John Hughes took on the city’s Common Council and
Public School Society, and in Philadelphia, where Bishop Francis Patrick
Kenrick successfully petitioned the city board to exempt Catholic students
from Bible reading and the Lord’s Prayer—a move that resulted in deadly
riots.31 Neither of these prelates desired education free of religious influence; Hughes and Kenrick sought to eliminate public funds for Bible
reading, or to exempt Catholic children from it, only after their requests
to divert funds to Catholic education or to allow children to read from the
Church’s own Duoay translation of scripture were denied. Through the
second half of the century, the American Church threw its energy into
promoting parochial schools as the only truly safe alternative between
dangerous sectarianism and, as one priest put it in 1870, “separation [that]
will lead to the production of a race of infidels.”32 When it came to
Catholic students who continued to attend public schools, however,
ensuring they were not forced to read from Protestant bibles seemed the
lesser evil. In 1852 the First Plenary Council of American bishops pushed
for the expansion of a Catholic educational system and reminded Catholic
parents of their duty to prevent children from reading Protestant translations of the Bible.33
By the late 1800s, some states had begun exempting Catholic students
from required religious activities, and a few moved to eliminate those activities from public classrooms altogether. An example of the latter happened
during the so-called Cincinnati Bible Wars of 1872. In Cincinnati, a fight
reminiscent of the conflicts in New York and Philadelphia resulted in the

31. See Vincent P. Lannie, Public Money and Parochial Education (Cleveland, 1968);
Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport, CT,
1975).
32. Thomas Scott Preston, The Catholic View of the Public School Question (New York,
1870), pp. 17–18.
33. Leo Pfeffer, “Fact and Fiction in the Bible Reading Controversy,” The Idler, September 1964, 6.

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local school board resolving that “religious instruction and the reading of
religious books, including the Holy Bible, are prohibited in the common
schools.”34 Angry Protestants sued to restore the Bible and other devotional practices to the public system, but the state’s high court rejected their
claim. Although its decision rested on the finding that local officials have
authority over their school programs, the court also emphasized the importance of public spaces free from religious instruction. “Religion [lies] outside the true and legitimate province of government,” it concluded. “The
only fair and impartial method, where serious objection is made, is to let
each sect give its own instructions, elsewhere than the state schools.”35 The
Ohio court’s 1872 decision made national headlines, but it was not widely
imitated. Prayer and Bible reading remained common within American
classrooms for another ninety years.
Catholic opposition to the Bible’s public use also persisted. In the
1920s, organizations including the Daughters of the American Revolution
and the Ku Klux Klan made a national push to establish the Bible as a
compulsory part of public education.36 Responsibility for monitoring their
efforts on behalf of the hierarchy fell to the National Catholic Welfare
Conference (NCWC). In 1923 the NCWC clarified its position on the
Bible: “While professing profound reverence for the Sacred Scriptures, the
NCWC believes that conditions existing in public schools of the land
make Bible-reading inadvisable.”37 The next year, the Vatican confirmed
the NCWC’s statement:
The Holy See certainly does not . . . condemn the reading of the Holy
Bible, either in public or in private, provided authentic . . . texts are used
and . . . necessary comments are made by capable persons . . . authorized
. . . to do so.

The Vatican went on to make its position clear:

34. Qtd. in Board of Education of the City of Cincinnati v. John D. Minor et al, 23 Ohio
St. 211 (1872). On relevant nineteenth-century legal disputes, see Steven K. Green, The Bible,
the School, and the Constitution: The Clash that Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine (New
York, 2012).
35. Board of Education v. Minor.
36. J. W. R. Maguire to Bishop P. J. Muldoon, April 17, 1925, Executive Dept.
Records, NCWC Collections, Box 126, Folder 8; George K. Freeman to Bishop William J.
Hafey of Raleigh, February 24, 1927, Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10,
Folder 17.
37. Executive Secretary John J. Burke to George L. Leech, May 8, 1924, Executive
Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 15.

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In case the observance of such necessary conditions and precautions is in
no way guaranteed, and the local laws give full liberty of children to absent
themselves from such reading, it is deemed absolutely necessary that such
assistance of Catholic pupils be explicitly and peremptorily forbidden.38

This statement left no room for debate. In 1930 the Church’s opposition to
public Bible reading remained solid enough that the American Civil Liberties Union approached the NCWC (albeit unsuccessfully) with the prospect
of collaborating to bring the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.39
The American Church began to rethink its stance on the Bible around
1950. In 1949 the NCWC watched from the sidelines as a lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of a Bible reading statute in New Jersey. This
time, both sides sought the NCWC’s help. “The King James . . . Bible is
in current use in the public schools [in question],” NCWC staff attorney
George Reed wrote a colleague about the case. “It is difficult to state . . .
exactly what our position should be.” This uncertainty lingered two years
later, as the New Jersey litigants prepared for the possibility of a hearing
before the U.S. Supreme Court. Again, the Catholic organization declined
to enter the dispute, citing complex “legal, educational and theological
implications.”40 As late as 1952, the NCWC’s executive secretary concluded the Vatican’s 1923 decree made it “practically impossible . . . to take
a definite stand” on the Bible issue.41 It was not until March 1956, in a private memorandum to McIntyre, that NCWC counsel first proposed Bible
reading was constitutional. It is a “tradition which is as old as this country
and which has been intimately associated with our public schools,” Reed
now reasoned.42 Six years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Engel,

38. Qtd. in George Reed to Eugene J. Butler, “New Jersey Bible Reading Case,”
memorandum, November 7, 1949, Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10,
Folder 16.
39. Roger Baldwin to John A. Ryan, April 8, 1930; unknown to John A. Ryan, May
16, 1930, Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 15.
40. George Reed to Eugene J. Butler, “New Jersey Bible Reading Case,” memorandum,
February 9, 1951; Eugene J. Butler to Howard J. Carroll, memorandum, May 7, 1951, Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 15. The case was Doremus v. Board
of Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 US 429 (1952). The court found lack of sufficient injury for it to
consider constitutional questions. NCWC News Service, “Court Dismisses Case Seeking to
Ban Protestant Bible Distribution in Public Schools,” March 16, 1953, Executive Dept.
Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 16.
41. Howard J. Carroll to Bishop John Noll, February 20, 1952, Executive Dept.
Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 16.
42. George Reed to James McIntyre, memorandum, March 12, 1956, Executive Dept.
Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 17.

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the American Church’s about-face in the Bible debate was complete. One
Jesuit, reflecting over the past decade, looked back bluntly. “Can it be that
[in the past] we have been used as dupes?,” he wondered. “In our zeal for
the jots and tittles, have we played into the hands of atheists, or impassively
watched momentous values drifting down the drain?”43
The Danger of Secularism
The problem of secularism loomed large for the U.S. Church as it
reevaluated both Bible reading and the Lord’s Prayer in public education.
Worry about the effects of secularism—or a public sphere permeated by
nonreligious ideologies and exclusion of religion—was not new among
Catholics. The hierarchy had decried secular influences in American
schools since the nineteenth century.44 Nor were Catholic concerns about
secularism limited to education. In the first half of the twentieth century,
U.S. bishops paid as much attention to God’s exclusion from the marketplace, under the reign of “exaggerated” economic liberalism.45 In a 1933
statement, the Administrative Board of the NCWC diagnosed the cause
of that decade’s economic crisis. “We have brought about our present
unhappy conditions,” the bishops concluded, “by divorcing education,
industry, politics, business, and economics from morality and religion.”46
Seven years later, the board issued a public call to “restor[e] Christ to his
true and proper place” by recognizing the “the moral obligations of industrial and economic life.” “We must bring God back . . . into all life,” the
bishops admonished.47
In the late 1940s, the escalating cold war added urgency and focus to
secularism discourse in the U.S. Church, prompting its leadership to call
43. Robert North, “Scripture and Secularization, America, March 10, 1962, 757–60,
here 758.
44. Jose Casanova distinguishes between secularism as statecraft and secularism as ideology. Most Catholic critics conflated these models, arguing the former was grounded in and
promoted the latter; see Jose Casanova, “The Secular and Secularisms,” Social Research, 76
(2009), 1049–66, here 1051–52.
45. “Church and the Social Order,” Statement by the Bishops of the Administrative
Committee of the NCWC, February 7, 1940, in Our Bishops Speak (Milwaukee, 1952), p. 329.
46. “Present Crisis,” Statement by the Bishops of the Administrative Committee of the
NCWC, April 25, 1933, in Our Bishops Speak, p. 275.
47. “Church and the Social Order,” in Our Bishops Speak, p. 325. The bishops drew on
Pius XII’s 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, in which the pope connected “economic instability” to something “deeper and more intrinsic, belonging to the sphere of religious belief and
moral convictions, which have been perverted by the progressive alienation of people from the
unity of doctrine [and] faith.” (Qtd. in ibid., p. 342).

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out secularism as the “most deadly menace to our Christian and American
way of living.”48 As Catholic concerns about the Soviet Union racheted up
between 1946 and 1949, Church leaders and intellectuals all turned their
attention to secularism as the disease that left their nation weak and susceptible to communism. As historian Jonathan Herzog explains, Catholics
during the era “saw Communism as the progeny of larger trends, [especially] the growth of economic liberalism and the spiritual attenuation
wrought by secularization.”49 If communism was the world’s great evil, the
Church identified secularism as its main route into the United States.
In 1947 the U.S. bishops released a direct statement on secularism.
Describing it as “the practical exclusion of God from human thinking and
living,” the bishops cautioned about its effects:
There are many men—and their number is daily increasing—who in practice live their lives without recognizing that this is God’s world. . . . Secularism . . . was the fertile soil in which such social monstrosities as Fascism, Nazism, and Communism could germinate and grow. It is doing
more than anything else to blight our heritage of Christian culture. . . .50

The bishops returned to the topic the next year, acknowledging secularism
as a challenge not only for Catholics, but for “every citizen with definite
religious convictions.”51 Other religious leaders joined Catholics in their
outcry over secularism during the early cold war. The American Council of
Christian Churches adopted its own a resolution in 1947, declaring the
United States in need of a “reemphasis of Christ centered gospel preaching
. . . which puts man in proper relationship with God.”52 As Herzog argues,
the fight against secularism—or what the bishops themselves referred to as
the work of individual and societal “reconstruction”—became the interreligious initiative at the heart of a “spiritual-industrial complex” within cold
war America.53 Catholics, Protestants, and Jews joined together during the
1950s in a “deliberate and managed use of societal resources,” all directed
48. “The Christian in Action,” Statement of the U.S. Bishops, November 21, 1948, in
Our Bishops Speak, p. 145.
49. Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle
against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York, 2011), pp. 55–56, 61–65. American
Catholics had tied secularism to communism before this period but not with the same
urgency (p. 58).
50. “Secularism,” Statement of the U.S. Bishops, November 14, 1947, in Our Bishops
Speak, pp. 137–38.
51. “The Christian in Action,” in Our Bishops Speak, p. 149.
52. Herzog, Spiritual-Industrial Complex, pp. 67–68.
53. “The Christian in Action,” in Our Bishops Speak, p. 146.

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toward reclaiming America’s status as a “covenant”—rather than a secular—nation.54
In their 1947 statement, the U.S. bishops pointed to a host of domestic issues—from increasing divorce rates and use of artificial contraception
to exploitation of the labor force—as signs of secularism at work in American society. As Catholics, they also gave special attention to education.
Spurred by a recent wave of high-profile lawsuits targeting public accommodations for Catholic schooling, the bishops identified education as the
social institution most impacted by secularism. Furthermore, they identified the American tradition of limiting education’s religious character as a
technique perversely appropriated by secularists:
Secularists take this policy, adopted as a practical expedient in difficult
circumstances, and make it the starting point in their philosophy of education. . . . A philosophy of education which omits God, necessarily
draws a plan of life in which God either has no place or is a strictly private concern of men.55

The Church’s fear that American schools were succumbing to secularism
seemed to find confirmation a year later, when the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in McCollum v. Board of Education. The McCollum decision also confirmed that secularism was more than a Catholic problem. The court found
in favor of an atheist plaintiff who insisted that any religious instruction was
illegal inside publicly funded classrooms. Using the “wall of separation”
model, the McCollum ruling declared released time programs that served
Protestant and Jewish as well as Catholic students unconstitutional.56
Despite the broad efforts toward religious revival that marked the
1950s, the next decade opened with the U.S. Church declaring the nation’s
secularism crisis more serious than ever. At their 1961 annual meeting, the
bishops released another statement on the topic. Under the heading
“Unchanging Duty in a Changing World,” the prelates assessed the present state of the problem. Secularism, they reminded their audience, “leads
men to “disregard [moral principles] or reduce them to hazy generalities.”
Its corrosive presence in the nation’s school system was already having disastrous effects. “The result,” they lamented, “is that our society is now
faced with great numbers of young people almost completely devoid of
54. Herzog, Spiritual-Industrial Complex, pp. 6, 9.
55. “Secularism,” in Our Bishops Speak, pp. 140–41.
56. McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948).

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religious belief and moral guidance.”57 On the eve of Engel and Schempp,
the bishops’ latest statement was a plug for Catholic teaching, as a late-inthe-game intervention for wayward modern youth. It also included a tacit
endorsement of any Judeo-Christian influence that might temper the godless amorality on the verge of toppling America’s schools.
The Engel and Schempp decisions registered to Americans worried
about secularism as the nails in the coffin of the godly public school. The
Southern Baptist Strom Thurmond (R–SC) suggested as much when he
denounced Engel as a “major triumph of the forces of secularism and atheism which are bent on throwing God completely out of our national life.”58
The Catholic press amplified this theme. In an open letter to the Supreme
Court, published in the August 1962 edition of America, an anonymous
author adopted a sardonic tone:
Your recent erasure of the school prayers is a wonderful step forward.
Every American recognizes the sanctity of the public classroom. Prayer
has no place there. This should apply not only to the group exercise you
disbanded but to trite ejaculations which accompany sneezes. . . . In fact,
it has long been my belief (to coin a phrase) that teachers should be
required to take a nullity oath disavowing association with any organized
religion.59

Others accused the court of enforcing secularism more directly. “It is the
militant secularists . . . who are driving God out of the public schools,” one
Catholic wrote. “It is the militant secular spirit which is taking every possible opportunity to promote its educational philosophy.”60 An editor at
America agreed and pointed to the dire consequences of this development.
“When the state ceases to have a constitutional right to even acknowledge
the existence of God,” he warned, “it ceases to have any ultimate justification for its own authority.”61
Catholic complaints about secularism around Engel and Schempp were
heartfelt, but they were also strategic. In positing the new public school as
a bastion of government-enforced godlessness, Church leaders saw an

57. “Unchanging Duty in a Changing World,” November 19, 1961, press release,
Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 229, Folder 37.
58. Qtd. in “Prayer Ruling Amendment Pressure is Mounting,” Our Sunday Visitor,
July 14, 1963, 1.
59. “An Open Letter to the Supreme Court,” America, August 18, 1962, 623.
60. “Point of Secularization,” America, April 14, 1962, 34.
61. “Prayer in the Classroom,” America, April 28, 1962, 105.

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opportunity to push for federal aid for their own institutions. Again and
again, Catholic reactions to the court’s decisions honed in on the government’s de facto establishment of a nonreligious ethos and used it to justify
equal funding appeals. Eliminating Bible reading “will not achieve true
equality among citizens,” an editor at America wrote:
Instead, it will make some citizens considerably more equal than others .
. . An aseptically nonreligious public school puts “the power, prestige and
financial support of the government” effectively, if tacitly, behind the
belief that education [has . . .] no place for and no need of God.

“The common curriculum of the public schools is to be purged of all
acknowledgement of God?,” he queried. “So be it. Then let . . . parents
who prefer a religiously oriented school for their children have their fair
share of public support for education.”62 William Ball, quoted in Our
Sunday Visitor, agreed. “May Ideological Brand X . . . be inculcated, but
Ideological Brand Y . . . excluded?,” he asked. Then the government must
fund education “in secular essentials” for all varieties of schooling.63
Catholics reacted furiously to the secularism promoted by Engel and
Schempp, but some of them also recognized the rulings might be “a blessing
in disguise.”64 The strategic bend to the Catholic outcry against secularism
in public schools was recognized by others invested in the court’s rulings as
well. “Paradoxical as it may seem,” renowned separation advocate Leo
Pfeffer remarked, “the [Engel] decision will be used by the Catholic
Church to support its demands for federal funds for parochial schools.”65
Reconsidering Religious Freedom
Secularism riveted the American hierarchy and created common purpose with other citizens who opposed the Supreme Court’s developing
interpretation of the Establishment Clause. But antisecularism was also
tangled with other motivations in the Catholic embrace of public prayer
and Bible reading. For some Catholics, the fight against godlessness in
America was inseparable from modern, reforming impulses rocking their
Church during the early 1960s. Both Catholics and non-Catholics in the
United States took note of the fact that Engel and Schempp were playing
62. “Equal Justice,” America, May 18, 1963, 704.
63. “Religion and Education,” Our Sunday Visitor, March 3, 1963, 4.
64. “Roundup on Prayer Case,” America, July 28, 1962, 542.
65. Leo Pfeffer, “The New York Regents’ Prayer Case (Engel v. Vitale),” Journal of
Church and State, 4 (1962, 150–58, here 158.

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out alongside the early sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Perceptive
observers looked toward events in Rome to help them make sense of the
Catholic response to the court’s rulings.
Pfeffer suspected the changes happening inside the Church signaled a
new era, one in which Catholics would ultimately embrace church-state
separation and support religion-free public schools. As a separationist,
Pfeffer was critical of the immediate Catholic reaction to Engel and
Schempp, but as he looked back over 1963 he saw reason for optimism. He
pointed to a new “acceptance of religious pluralism as a way of life . . . for
the Catholic community in America.”66 This mind-set, he argued, was the
result of both John F. Kennedy’s election and John XXIII’s ascendancy to
the papacy. It was evident, he pointed out, in the deliberations of the Vatican Council—most notably in its apparent movement toward a resolution
on religious freedom. And it boded well for the eventual Catholic acceptance of principles embedded in Engel and Schempp. The majority of American cardinals who traveled to Rome to choose a papal successor upon
John’s death, Pfeffer noted hopefully, refused to publicly criticize the
Schempp decision.67
Pfeffer was correct in part—changes within the Church during the
1960s did eventually make it easier for some Catholics to support a more
robust model of church-state separation. In the near term, however, the
relationship between Church reforms and the Catholic position on prayer
and Bible reading was more complicated. Rather than bringing Catholics
en masse to appreciate current constitutional doctrine, updated Church
teachings—especially those related to religious freedom, the Bible’s role in
the lives of laity, and the validity of multiple translations of scripture—also
had the opposite effect, bolstering arguments to keep prayer and the Bible
in public schools. Catholic opponents of Engel and Schempp found their
best defenses against the rulings—and against secularism—close to home,
in the modern-minded conversations happening inside their Church.
When Archbishop McIntyre invoked an “American heritage . . . of
freedom” in his condemnation of Schempp, he joined an increasingly familiar Catholic refrain.68 By the 1960s, prominent Catholics were using reli-

66. Leo Pfeffer, “A Momentous Year in Church and State: 1963,” Journal of Church and
State, 6 (1964), 36–43, here 39.
67. Pfeffer, “A Momentous Year,” p. 39. John XXIII died the same month as the
Schempp ruling.
68. Qtd. in Katz, “Patterns of Compliance,” p. 398.

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gious freedom as a favored argument in support of public prayer and Bible
reading, as well as public funding for their own schools. By misreading the
First Amendment, they argued, the Supreme Court had effectively established secularism as the state’s “religion,” and in doing so violated the freedom of parents and children. “Secularists say . . . there should be no recognition of the Supreme Being by any part of the government,” observed
Dale Francis in Our Sunday Visitor. “This is their creed as surely as it is the
creed of Catholics, Protestants and Jews that there is a Supreme Being
Whose ‘assistance’ we should ask.”69 “The Engel decision worked injury to
the liberty of a majority of parents of children in public schools,” an editor
at America concluded:
These parents have been hurt in the free exercise of their religion. . . .
What precisely is this lost freedom? It lies in the fact that . . . parents are
now to be stripped of their traditional, reasonable expectations that the
schools to which they commit the education of their children should in
some way acknowledge the existence of the God to whom these same
children are taught to pray at home.70

An editorial published in the Catholic journal Commonweal the same month
struck the same tone. “The triumph of the minority’s rights and sensibilities
has,” the editor opined, “been achieved at the expense of the majority’s.”71
Catholics in the United States had long invoked religious freedom to
defend Church interests. Some of them also celebrated its intrinsic value as
a constitutional principle. John Carroll, writing two years before the First
Amendment’s ratification (and before he became the nation’s first Catholic
bishop), expressed an “earnest regard to preserve inviolate . . . the great
principle of religious freedom.”72 Clergy after him followed suit. For some
of these men, endorsing religious freedom was a matter of expediency—a
tactic for protecting Catholic minority interests in a Protestant-dominated
society. For others, love for the principle was an ordinary result of their
lives as Americans. For many it was both. As Bernard Noone has argued,
American Catholic leaders who embraced religious freedom through the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tended to express “sincere though
undeveloped convictions about the truth of their experience.”73 These
69. Dale Francis, “Faith of Our Fathers,” Our Sunday Visitor, July 22, 1962, 5.
70. “Roundup of Prayer Case,” America, July 28, 1962, 541.
71. “The Court on Prayer,” Commonweal, July 13, 1962, 387.
72. Qtd. in Bernard Noone, “Expediency or Conviction? The American Catholic
Acceptance of the First Amendment,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 1, no. 3 (1981), 73–86, here 75.
73. Noone, “Expediency or Conviction?,” p. 74.

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“undeveloped” convictions failed to account for the contradictions between
the constitutional principle they held at heart and the Church’s own teachings about church and state. Rome, for its part, asserted an ideal of churchstate union—one that favored the establishment of Catholicism when and
where possible, and allowed for unequal treatment of religious dissenters.
Pius IX clarified this position in 1864, when he declared the belief “the
Church ought to be separated from the State” to be an error.74
By the mid-twentieth century things were changing. Catholics who
invoked religious freedom to argue for public prayer and Bible reading, and
for public funds, did so in a different climate—one in which Church leaders, in the United States and in Rome, were contemplating religious freedom anew, as a principle relevant to individuals as well as their Church,
and one that accorded with Catholic teaching. During the 1940s, spurred
by the damage done by totalitarian governments, Pius XII began to
emphasize, in the words of historian Joseph Chinnici, an “unchanging
moral-juridic order established by God and founded on the common basis
of an accessible natural law and the public recognition of innate human
rights.”75 These included “the right to give God his due worship [. . . and]
the right to a reasonable liberty in the choice of a state of life.”76 In 1941
the U.S. bishops adopted a similar tone when they issued a statement of
“sympathy to our suffering brother bishops and their flocks in all countries
where subversive forces are persecuting religion and denying freedoms of
conscience.”77 Through the 1940s and 1950s, concern for church members
living under communist governments fed a new discourse of rights/freedoms among Catholic clergy and laity. As Chinnici explains, “[i]n the
midst of the international battle with communism, the language of law and
justice, human dignity, rights and citizenship, . . . was entering into the
public speech of the Catholic community.”78 This speech was loudest in
the United States, where internationalist concerns of Catholics dovetailed
with the domestic conversation about civil rights.
This developing, if still unfocused, Catholic rights conversation
between the World War II and the Second Vatican Council was a back-

74. “The Syllabus of Errors Condemned by Pius IX,” Papal Encyclicals Online,
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm, accessed April 29, 2013).
75. Joseph P. Chinnici, “Dignitatis Humanae Personae: Surveying the Landscape for
Its Reception in the United States,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 24, no. 1 (2006), 63–82, here 66.
76. Qtd. in ibid., p. 66.
77. Qtd. in ibid., p. 67.
78. Ibid., p. 71.

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drop for the work of John Courtney Murray. As an American citizen and
a Jesuit priest, Murray tackled the problem of religious freedom within the
modern juridico-social order from multiple points of reference, including
Catholic theology, American confidence in the Constitution, and concern
for his co-religionists in the communist world. Although the Vatican censored his church-state work during the 1950s, Murray was invited by John
XXIII to participate in the Second Vatican Council as a theological expert,
and he became the primary architect of the Council’s 1965 statement in
support of religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae.79
Murray’s church-state writing during the fifties was deeply informed
by his own experience of the cold war. The “anticommunist rhetoric of the
Cold War,” Thomas O’Brien argues, “was more than . . . an ingredient of
Murray’s public theology—it was part of the very foundation of this thinking.”80 Murray set out to defend the legitimacy of the “American proposition” in the face of Soviet communism, which he described as a “menace
. . . almost impossible to exaggerate.”81 He positioned his work as a critical
alternative to the knee-jerk and vitriolic anticommunist rhetoric common
in American society, including parts of his own Church, during the
McCarthy era. For Murray, writes Donald Pelotte, “the more positive task
was for the American to learn the inner principles of American institutions, their public philosophy.”82 This included, importantly, the philosophy that undergirded the American principle of religious freedom.
Early in his career, Murray also joined U.S. Catholic leaders in their
outcry over secularism.83 In 1948 Murray reacted with alarm to the McCollum ruling. Spurred by the court’s decision, he spoke of the need for
Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to make “common cause against a
common enemy—secularism, which strikes not only at our respective religions, but at our common American freedom.”84 As he developed his
church-state ideas over the next decade and a half, however, Murray
arrived at—and embraced—a fresh conception of the secular. By the time
he traveled to Rome in 1963, Murray posited the “secular state” as one in
79. The invitation came at the urging of Spellman. See Donald E. Pelotte, John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict (New York, 1976), pp. 78–88, esp. p. 81.
80. Ibid., p. xi.
81. Qtd. in ibid., p. 48.
82. Pelotte, John Courtney Murray, p. 28.
83. Thomas W. O’Brien, John Courtney Murray in a Cold War Context (Lanham, MD,
2004), p. xvi. See also Pelotte, John Courtney Murray, p. 17.
84. Qtd. in J. Leon Hooper, “Murray and Day: A Common Enemy, A Common
Cause,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 24, no. 1 (2006), 45–61, here 45.

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which government is differentiated from, but also fundamentally protective
of, both a freely acting and self-governing Church and the free religious
expressions of its citizens.85 In this form, the secular itself became integral
to Murray’s public philosophy.
In his book We Hold These Truths, which is a collection of articles written between 1950 and 1959, Murray made his case for religious freedom—
explaining why it is correct as a principle of governance and what it
requires of the state. He proceeded in part by distinguishing between the
principle of religious freedom and church-state separation. Church-state
separation only affirms the spirit of the Constitution, Murray argued,
when it exists to serve the “more lofty provision” of religious freedom.86
Separation that enforces a religion-less secularism contradicts the “inner
spirit” or logos that animates the Constitution—“the idea that the American is a free man under a limited government whose actions are themselves
subject to a higher law which derives from the Eternal Reason of the Creator of all things.”87 Free exercise embodies that spirit. In the long run, religious freedom requires the state’s unbiased and circumscribed support for
public services that aid the religious lives of its citizens. Giving this support
is part of the secular function of government. “It has never been the tradition in America,” Murray wrote, “for government . . . to regard the spiritual
and religious needs of the people as being entirely outside the scope of its
active concern.”88 This vision of the American government epitomized for
Murray the “legitimate secularity of society and state.”89
Murray’s church-state work became the foundation of the Council
document Dignitatis Humanae.90 In Dignitatis Humanae the Council
declared unequivocally “the human person has a right to religious freedom.” The document explained the Church’s expectations for modern
governments, flowing from this right:

85. Qtd. in Pelotte, John Courtney Murray, p. 136.
86. John Courtney Murray, “Is It Justice? The School Question Today,” We Hold
These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York, 1960), pp. 143–54,
here p. 150.
87. Ibid., p. 149.
88. Ibid., p. 151.
89. Pelotte, John Courtney Murray, p. 130. See also J. Leon Hooper, ed., Bridging the
Sacred and the Secular: Selected Writings of John Courtney Murray, S.J. (Washington, 1994),
pp. ix–xv.
90. See also Joseph A. Komonchak, “The American Contribution to ‘Dignitatis
Humanae’: The Role of John Courtney Murray, S.J.,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 24, no. 1
(2006), 1–20.

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All men are to be immune from coercion on the part of . . . any human
power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary
to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly . . . within due limits. . . .
This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized
in the constitutional law whereby society is governed.91

Dignitatis Humanae grounded the right to personal religious freedom
within the Catholic tradition by casting it as a corollary of respect for
human dignity. Humans are morally bound, the text explained, to seek
truth. Civil institutions must grant humans space to follow their Godendowed reason and pursue that truth freely.92 Government, the document
instructed, “ought . . . to take account of the religious life of the citizenry
and show it favor, since the function of government is to make provision
for the common welfare.” “However, it would clearly transgress the limits
set to its power,” the text continued, “were it to presume to command . . .
acts that are religious.93
Catholics who invoked religious freedom in their objections to Engel
and Schempp did so as Vatican II was getting underway. Although Dignitatis Humanae was still just a conversation among bishops in 1962-63, U.S.
leaders were already laying new claim to the principle. As Leo Pfeffer predicted, both Murray’s work and Dignitatis Humanae would eventually be
applied by “liberal” Catholics in support of a more firmly separationist
position regarding church and state.94 In the early sixties, however,
Catholics who supported public prayer and Bible reading—and who allied
with “conservative” Protestants around the issues—ably applied this developing discourse on religious freedom to their cause. An emergent Catholic
91. “Dignitatis Humanae,” Online Archive of the Vatican, http://www.vatican.va/
archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatishumanae_en.html, accessed April 29, 2013.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid. Like generations of American Catholics, Dignitatis Humanae employed at
turns two frameworks for situating religious freedom—one anthropological (that is, freedom
of the individual) and one institutional (that is, freedom of the Church to act in public life).
This distinction became a point of reflection in post–Second Vatican Council Catholic discourse, making it easier for “liberal” and “conservative” factions within the Church to arrive
at different positions on public issues. See Catholicism and Religious Freedom: Contemporary
Reflections on Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso and Robert
P. Hunt, (Lanham, MD, 2006), esp. Robert P. George and William L. Saunders Jr., “Dignitatis Humanae: The Freedom of the Church and the Responsibility of the State,” pp. 1–18.
Tension between these models was latent in the Catholic response to Engel and Schempp.
94. Murray is often referred to as a “liberal” Catholic. See, for example, Pelotte, John
Courtney Murray, pp. 30, 34.

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model of religious freedom, one that presented itself as an alternative to a
God-eliminating secularism, allowed them to do this. On one hand, talk
about religious freedom among leaders of the American Church represented a Second Vatican Council moment, a bold engagement with the
modern world. On the other hand, in retaining godless secularism as its
opponent, that Catholic principle also buoyed the culturally “conservative”
causes of public prayer and Bible reading.
Reimagining the Bible
If a developing discourse on religious freedom helped American
Catholics justify their objections to Engel and Schempp, other changes afoot
in the Church made their show of support for public Bible reading possible
in the first place. During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Catholic reformers
in both Europe and the United States were reimagining the character of
the Bible, and its place in the lives of the faithful. Displaying new respect
for modern scholarly methods, ecumenism, and lay authority, they helped
set the tone for Catholic leaders, at the NCWC and across the nation, to
join Protestants in a common defense of scripture.
For centuries, Catholics had defined their relationship to the Bible
differently than the sola scriptura of Protestants. In practice, this generally
meant devoting attention to the sacraments over scripture reading. When
it came to the Bible, Catholic tradition privileged ecclesiastic authority
over the raw authority of a text. During the first period of the Council of
Trent (1545–47), the Church confirmed the Latin Vulgate as the one
authentic Bible, declaring “no one should on any pretext whatsoever dare
or presume to reject it.”95 In the centuries following, Catholic translations
of scripture into the vernacular, including the Duoay Bible, originated with
the Vulgate rather than Hebrew or Greek texts, and the laity was prohibited from reading translations (like the King James version) that did not.
On the heels of the Reformation, Church leaders saw greater and greater

95. Qtd. in Gerald Fogerty, “American Catholic Translations of the Bible,” The Bible
and Bibles in America, ed. Ernest S. Frerichs (Atlanta, 1988), pp. 117–43, here p. 117. On the
Council’s decree on the Vulgate, see John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council
(Cambridge, MA, 2013), pp. 89–98. Opinions at Trent differed regarding competing Latin
as well as vernacular translations of scripture. Those present agreed that “one edition [the
Vulgate] should be declared authentic, that is, reliable for preaching and teaching, and all
others, including Protestant ones, were to be passed over in silence” (p. 96). In elevating the
Vulgate as the authentic translation of scripture, the Council did not intend to reject other
versions explicitly, although “the decree was subsequently interpreted that way” (p. 98).

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need to protect Catholics from these widely available, corrupted, and corrupting variations on sacred text. As David W. Kling put it, “not only did
the [King James version] mistranslate important Catholic dogma, but the
Protestant principle of sola scriptura opened up the inevitable subjective
and heretical interpretation of the Bible.”96 The Church’s restrictions on
Bible reading lasted in modified form into the twentieth century. The 1917
Code of Canon Law forbid “original text editions [. . . of] sacred Scripture
. . . published by any non-Catholic; and likewise versions [of these], in any
language . . . prepared or published.”97 Although the Code did exempt
“[persons] pursuing theological or biblical studies” from its rule, the
Church’s position through the 1930s was otherwise firm—any edition of
the Bible that Catholic scholars (or anyone else) translated from sources
other than the Vulgate could not be “publicly read.”98
In the 1940s the Vatican demonstrated new interest in promoting the
Bible among laity, and it acknowledged that a revitalized body of Catholic
biblical scholarship—one that drew on sources other than the Vulgate—
was critical to that endeavor. In 1943, Pius XII issued the encyclical Divino
Afflante Spiritu. The focus of Pius’s text was biblical study; it qualified the
Church’s reliance on the Vulgate and expressed appreciation for higher
criticism and other “contributions of profane science.” “Quite wrongly . . .
some pretend,” the encyclical acknowledged, “that nothing remains to be
added by the Catholic exegete of our time to what Christian antiquity has
produced.” The document emphasized scholarly renewal as part and parcel
of a larger biblical renewal within the Church, and it concluded by exhorting Church leaders to encourage “all those initiatives by which men . . .
strive to excite and foster among Catholics a greater knowledge of and love
for the Sacred Books.”99 The same year, in the encyclical’s spirit, the Vatican agreed that “translations for the use of the faithful could be made from
the original languages,” so long as liturgical texts continued to come from
the Vulgate.100
96. David W. Kling, “A Contested Legacy: Interpreting, Debating, and Translating
the Bible in America,” American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity, ed.
Catherine A. Brekus and W. Clark Gilpin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2011), pp. 214–41, here p. 224.
97. The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law in English Translation, curated by
Edward N. Peters (San Francisco, 2001), p. 470 (Can. 1399).
98. The 1917 Code, p. 472 (Can. 1400); Fogerty, “American Catholic Translations,”
pp. 129, 131.
99. Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, Online Archive of the Vatican, http://www.
vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divinoafflante-spiritu_en.html, accessed April 24, 2013.
100. Fogerty, “American Catholic Translations,” p. 135.

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The events of 1943 corresponded with, and lent energy to, “a new,
more biblically-oriented era for Catholics, particularly in the United
States.”101 This biblical renewal extended to lay scholars and people in the
pews, and it found an institutional home in the new Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA).102 In 1936 the CBA formed “to afford an opportunity for Scripture professors . . . to encourage the development of scriptural scholarship, and to enable laity “to cooperate in the advancement and
diffusion of biblical knowledge.”103 Among its early initiatives, the CBA
partnered with the U.S. offices of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine
(CCD) in a push to increase lay access to scripture, occasioned by the
CCD’s 1941 translation of the New Testament. Encouraging laity to cultivate an everyday relationship with the Bible was the objective. As Charles
D. White, bishop of Spokane, advised in a 1943 CBA press release,
Each member of the family should . . . have his own copy of The New
Testament. Do not place it on an obscure shelf. Keep it before you in
your room, in your office. Take it with you on your travels. Read some
portion of it daily.104

The CBA/CCD effort continued through the 1950s and peaked with a
nationwide 500th anniversary celebration of the Gutenberg Bible in
1952.105 Although the CBA/CCD partnership was not solely responsible
for the new attention given by Catholic laity to the scriptures by the 1950s,
its organizers took credit for instilling a wide range of scripture-centric
practices. These included
the proliferation of Bible study groups in parishes, schools, and colleges;
the participation by religious sisters in specialized courses in sacred Scripture in summer schools; [and] various activities associated with smaller
children such as the drawing and printing of biblical scenes, the writing
of Bible stories, the retelling of favorite Gospels.106

101. Kling, “A Contested Legacy,” p. 225.
102. On the CBA, see Gerald P. Fogarty, American Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to Vatican II (San Francisco, 1989).
103. Fogarty, American Catholic Biblical Scholarship, pp. 222–23. On the importance of
Divino Afflante Spiritu to the CBA’s work, see Fogarty, pp. 238–40.
104. Qtd. in Joseph P. Chinnici, “The Catholic Community at Prayer, 1926–1976,”
Habits of Devotion: Catholic Religious Practice in Twentieth-Century America, ed. James M.
O’Toole (Ithaca, NY, 2004), pp. 9–88, here p. 35. Chinnici identifies increased missal use as
another component of the era’s biblical revival, a “‘bridge’ activity . . . in the . . . movement of
the Scripture out of the ritual space of the liturgy . . . into the home and the hands of the
people” (p. 34).
105. Ibid., p. 36.
106. Ibid., p. 37.

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Pius XII’s acknowledgment that the Vulgate was not the end all in
scriptural authority—and the broad-based American scriptural revival that
corresponded with it—found decisive affirmation at the Vatican two
decades later. In 1965 the Second Vatican Council issued Dei Verbum, its
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. It followed Pius’s encyclical
by calling attention to the importance of the Bible as part of Catholic practice. The Church, the bishops reminded their audience, “offers to the
faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s
body.” Dei Verbum instructed that “easy access to Sacred Scripture should
be provided for all the Christian faithful.” It also went an important step
further, offering suggestions for how scripture might be produced:
The Church . . . sees to it that suitable and correct translations are made
into different languages . . . from the original texts of the sacred books.
And should the opportunity arise and the Church authorities approve, if
these translations are produced in cooperation with the separated
brethren as well, all Christians will be able to use them.107

By the 1960s, the Catholic Church had redefined, and effectively revolutionized, its members’ relationship to the scriptures. Not only did its hierarchy now encourage access to, and allow its laity to read from, a range of
Bibles—it also permitted Catholics and non-Catholics to cooperate on
their production.108
For American Catholics, these changes happening within the
Church—the new attention being given the Bible and the message that
different and even ecumenical translations all communicated God’s
Word—informed the debate over Bible reading in schools. Catholic leaders considered these developments alongside the threat of secularism as
they framed their response to the court. Catholic writers reflecting on both
the Second Vatican Council and the First Amendment during the era
stressed the importance of the Bible to Protestant, Catholic, and even
Jewish unity. In America in 1962, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., published a
series of articles appealing to his coreligionists to embrace a “common
Bible”—a translation produced collaboratively by Protestants and
Catholics “for use in discussions . . . between members of different
107. Dei Verbum, Online Archive of the Vatican, http://www.vatican.va/archive/
hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html,
accessed April 24, 2013.
108. Following Dei Verbum, the 1966 edition of the Revised Standard Version received
the Catholic imprimatur; see Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E.
Murphy, eds., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990), p. 1111.

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churches.”109 In making his case, Abbott pointed to recent examples of
scholarly collaboration and to grassroots efforts at biblical ecumenism. He
highlighted a recent “Bible week” observed by residents of St. Cloud, Minnesota. During the celebration, the American Bible Society provided
copies of scripture for Protestants, and the local bishop distributed the
CCD translation for Catholics. The local newspaper published daily scripture readings, Catholics and Protestants spoke on the radio about the
Bible’s importance in their lives, and biblical dramas were performed in
town during the evenings.110 Celebrating these accomplishments, Abbott
urged his readers to take the Bible seriously as the best chance for interreligious unity:
To propose that there can by no Christian unity without authority—or
papal infallibility, a hierarchy, the Mass, proper devotion to our Lady—
renders Protestants . . . fearful, reserved, angry, disdainful. We impress
and draw them, however, when we propose to go to the Bible together.111

The editors at Our Sunday Visitor seconded Abbott’s sentiments when they
published a cartoon captioned “Gateway to Unity.” An oversized Bible
dominated the drawing. The book rested with its spine in the air, and its
cover was parted to allow a pair of men (presumably one Protestant and
one Catholic) entry and shelter beneath its pages.112
Other Catholic writers promoted ecumenism by linking it directly to
the fight against secularism and the era’s church-state disputes. “The popular indoor sport these days is dialogue,” Bernard Coughlin, S.J., wrote the
same month as the Schempp decision. Pointing to the ecumenical spirit that
“reached a peak in the first session of the Second Vatican Council,”
Coughlin found reason to be hopeful, even in light of the court’s activity:
“The result has been new comradeship among Protestants and Catholics
which shifted the poles of religious tension from Protestant-Catholic to
religious-secular.”113 The case for ecumenism in the face of Engel and
Schempp was made most clearly by Robert North, S.J., in his 1962 America
article “Scripture and Secularization.” In particular, North identified the

109. Walter M. Abbott, “Bishops and the Common Bible,” America, December 8,
1962, 1215.
110. Abbott, “Bishops and the Common Bible,” p. 1215; “Bible, Laity, Unity,” America, January 27, 1962, 559–60, here 560.
111. “Bible, Laity, Unity,” p. 559.
112. “Gateway to Unity” [cartoon], Our Sunday Visitor, February 11, 1962, 4.
113. Bernard J. Coughlin, “Interfaith Dialogue and Church-State Issues,” America,
June 29, 1963), 901.

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367

Church’s changing ideas about the Bible as the potential lynchpin of a
coalition to save God in public education. North also proposed a common
Bible. It offered, he suggested, the last best defense against secularism in
American schools. Dismissing Catholic objections to a shared translation
as invalid “as an a priori principle,” he made his appeal to his Church. “The
very least common denominator for attempting religious instruction in the
public school is the Bible,” North wrote:
Not that it forms a common bond of unity among Jews, Catholics and
Protestants. It is, in fact, the vehicle of their discord. But the Bible is relevant. And it would obviously be useful too, if discords could be eliminated. . . .114

“Will we ever be willing to meet Protestants halfway?,” the author queried.
“That phrase, he conceded,
is an odious one in Catholic ears. It is taken to imply . . . abandonment
of some part of the divine authority we securely possess. But need it mean
that? If there are roads open to concession, then to go halfway along
them involves no diminution of either doctrine or authority. From the
viewpoint of Catholic dogma, there is no peremptory objection against
working toward a Bible translation that will . . . merit approval of
Catholics, Protestants and Jews.115

North’s article was a familiar Catholic lament over secularism. It was also
a petition to his peers to support the ecumenism implicit in the biblical
scholarship happening in the United States and elsewhere. In his mind, the
fate of the nation’s schools hung in the balance. The road ahead was a clear
one. “We Catholics must face the decision to have either an American
public knowing God and religion from sources [to which] we cannot give
our fullest approval,” he concluded, “or an American public schooled in
atheism by our choice and influence.”116 For North, the push for ecumenism
and the fight against secularism were one and the same.
Although it received less attention than Bible reading in the Catholic
press at midcentury, the Church’s changing position on interdenominational prayer within public classrooms evidenced a similar commingling of
themes—tied as it was both to the fight against godlessness, and to
emphases of the Second Vatican Council era on prayer as a communal
114. North, “Scripture and Secularization,” p. 757.
115. Ibid., p. 758.
116. Ibid., p. 760, emphasis in original.

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“A D ECISION THAT S PITS IN THE F ACE OF O UR H ISTORY ”

(rather than private) experience, and one available to be shared not only by
Catholics but also by like-minded individuals of various religious traditions. As Church leaders began to acknowledge not only the possibility but
the benefits of Catholics and Protestants “praying the same prayers at the
same time for the intention of Christian unity,” school prayer, like Bible
reading, became imagined by Catholics who opposed the court’s rulings as
a medium for uniting Americans of different faiths against the error of secularism, rather than as an obstacle that divided them from one another.117
As one Catholic writer put it in 1962, “The most powerful answer to this
monstrous expression of secularism is—more prayer. It should be public
prayer, uttered by millions.”118
For leaders of the U.S. Church, the early 1960s were defined by two
towering subjects—first, the Second Vatican Council and its implementation on American soil, and second, the cold war and its related struggle to
save American culture from secularism. School prayer and Bible reading
received attention from Catholics not only because the practices entered the
crosshairs of the Supreme Court in 1962 and 1963 but also because they
were topics that cut across these subjects of major concern and revealed
common ground between them. The thought given by Catholics to prayer
and Bible reading makes it clear that motivations, which in hindsight
appear differentiable as harbingers of “liberal” and “conservative” interests in
the late-twentieth-century Church, were often indistinguishable at midcentury. While prominent Catholics who objected to Engel and Schempp targeted secularism in what was, by the sixties, a familiar cold-war refrain, they
also engaged changes happening in their Church, especially its developing
discourses about religious freedom, ecumenism, and the Bible. Rather than
a neatly “conservative” reaction—a digging in of the heels against an
advancing godless culture—the Catholic response to the court’s rulings was
also an opportunity for Church members to engage modern reforms. Engel
and Schempp—a pair of episodes now counted by scholars as progenitors of
the late-twentieth-century “culture wars”—were approached by midcentury
Catholics amid the open-ended intellectual projects of their time.

117. “CCD Lay Committee Urges Unity Prayers,” Our Sunday Visitor, July 1, 1962, 4.
118. Edward B. Lyman, “One First Freedom—The Right to Pray,” unpublished article, August 23, 1962, Executive Dept. Records, NCWC Collections, Box 10, Folder 8.

Book Reviews
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Cristiani entro e oltre gli Imperi: Saggi su Terre e Chiese d’Oriente. By Giorgio Fedalto.
(Verona: Casa Editrice Mazziana. 2014. Pp. 991. €68,50. ISBN 978-8897243-16-8.)
Giorgio Fedalto, a priest of the Patriarchate of Venice, was a professor of the
history of Christianity at the University of Padova from 1975 to 2003. His scholarly
output over the years has been prodigious: since 1963, he has published some 38
books in addition to a much larger number of monographs and reviews. Many of
these shorter works appeared in relatively obscure publications that are not widely
accessible. The present volume brings together sixty-two of these articles and notes
that cover a vast range of topics. It should be noted at the start that the focus of
Fedalto’s work is the Byzantine Empire and secondarily in the churches to the east
of its borders; there are no articles that treat the East Slavic churches in what is now
Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus.
The collected articles have been gathered together in seven sections. The first
of these is devoted to “general questions” that include studies on the Eastern
churches during the first millennium and doctrinal controversies of the time
including Christology and the theology of icons. Another article deals with the
importance of constructing a reliable list of bishops of all the dioceses in the East,
a topic to which he returns at various places in the book because he believes that
such a list is essential for assessing the presence of churches in specific places over
the centuries.
The second section is the largest and treats the Patriarchate of Constantinople
from the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453 to the present day. Here Fedalto is at
his best, supplying detailed studies of the fate of the city in the days following the
Turkish breach of the city walls, the repopulation of the city, the effects of the
“millet” system imposed by the Ottoman authorities, and a brief but fascinating
speculative article about the possible influence on the twenty-year-old Sultan
Mehmet II of Mara Branković, his Christian stepmother, which may explain his
tolerant policy toward Christians and his intense theological discussions with Gennadios Scholarios, the new Greek patriarch appointed by the sultan only three days
after the Conquest. Other articles explore the situation of churches within Constantinople’s orbit under Turkish rule in Serbia, Bulgaria, Dalmatia, and Albania.
Articles devoted to the Latin Church in the East are included in the third section. This is a particularly sensitive area for relations between Catholics and Ortho369

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dox, because the memory of the domination of the Latin Church in the East following the Fourth Crusade has poisoned the atmosphere between the churches
ever since. Fedalto explores the unfolding of the Crusades from various angles, and
also looks closely at the fate of Orthodox clergy in different regions conquered by
the Latins who knew very little about the local indigenous churches. The Latin
policy varied from a complete replacing of the Orthodox hierarchy with a Latin one
in some areas, to keeping the Orthodox bishops in place but under the authority of
a Latin metropolitan in others. Ironically, since the non-Chalcedonian churches,
unlike the Orthodox, were considered to be heretics, they were mostly left alone.
In the next three sections, Fedalto first explores the relationship between
Rome and Alexandria in the pre-Chalcedonian period. He then moves on to Antioch and a rather lengthy study of the list of bishops in different regions of the patriarchate in the first millennium. Here he also includes two studies on the churches
to the east of Antioch, in India and in the vast interior of Asia, and two others on
the Patriarchate of Jerusalem under the Crusaders.
The seventh and final section of the collection is composed of seven articles
on Christian unity, specifically on relations between the Catholic and Orthodox
churches. Having studied in such detail the breakdown of relations between the
two traditions, Fedalto remains hopeful that the divisions of the past may still be
overcome. He is acutely aware of the contribution of human limitations to the divisions and the formidable obstacles that still make full communion a distant hope.
He is aware that the role of the pope in the Church is the most difficult issue. He
considers well-known proposals for a solution, such as the pope exercising a form
of appellate jurisdiction in the East, and reflects on other issues such as the date of
Easter. He concludes with a list of thirteen measures that could be taken even now
to facilitate the long “adventure” of healing the rift between East and West.
This collection of essays is printed on high-quality watermarked paper and is
beautifully bound. Only 500 numbered copies were published in this first edition.
One hopes that more copies will be made available in the future so that the work
of this world-class historian of the Eastern churches may reach a wider audience.
St. Paul’s College
Washington, DC

RONALD G. ROBERSON, C.S.P.

Espace sacré, mémoire sacrée: Le culte des évêques dans leurs villes (IV e–XX e siècle). Actes
du colloque international de Tours 10–12 juin 2010. Edited by Christine Bousquet-Labouérie and Yossi Maurey. [Hagiologia: Études sur la Sainteté en
Occident—Studies on Western Sainthood, Vol. 10.] (Turnhout, Belgium:
Brepols. 2015. Pp. 352. €85,00. ISBN 978-2-503-54531-8.)
All bishops were religious leaders, but many bishops also became saints. In
this volume, the proceedings of a conference held at Tours in 2010, nineteen articles in French or English discuss holy bishops and their connection to their cities.
The span is broad, from late antiquity through recent times, and from Iceland to

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371

Italy to Hungary, but the largest concentration concerns medieval France. The
most original articles focus on how a see’s earliest bishops were remembered and
commemorated centuries later.
The overarching theme is of sacred space. Such a broad theme, coupled with
the geographic range and a period of 1600 years, results in a volume of very disparate pieces. The organization does not help, as the articles are grouped thematically under four broad and rather awkward headings: tensions and rivalries; the ideology of the urban community; relics, art, and architecture; and finally cults in both
urban and rural communities. One cannot but feel that a chronological or geographic grouping would have worked better.
But there is much here of interest in the individual articles. One of the most
intriguing points to emerge is the role that the memory of holy bishops could play
in rivalries between churches. Samantha Kahn Herrick discusses the supposed
apostolicity of several sees’ “founding bishops”; their vitae were used by both bishoprics and monastic houses, because the bishops were buried in suburban monasteries, not the cathedral. Similarly, Yossi Maurey describes the creation in the
cathedral of Tours of a special liturgy for St. Gatien, its supposed first bishop, to
compete with St. Martin, the much better-known sainted bishop of Tours, who
had been appropriated by local regional houses. Alternately, citizens might feel
pride in and a real attachment to “their” saint, as Antoine Coutelle demonstrates in
the case of seventeenth-century Poitiers, where civic leaders and churchmen
together worked in the aftermath of the Wars of Religion to restore the central
position of St. Hilary, their fourth-century bishop.
Other articles focusing on the bishops of late antiquity and their influence
include Dominique Barbe’s on early bishops as church builders and promoters of
the cult of the saints; Stéphane Mouré’s on how the church and city of St.-Denis,
dedicated to the martyred founding bishop St. Denis, became France’s political
capital; and Bruno Judic’s on the ninth-century papal initiative to promote the
sanctity of Pope Gregory I (d. 604), who was revered in England long before his
cult grew in Rome. These all develop the theme that the way that an early bishop
was remembered and commemorated indicates both how sanctity was conceptualized at the time that that memory was constructed and the extent to which control
of memories of the past led to control of the present.
The other articles have a more scattered approach. They are more descriptive
than analytic and touch on such varied topics as architectural decoration, archaeology, bishops’ relations with women, bishops as promoters of education, Gregorian
chant, missions to Eastern Europe, and how bishops were commemorated over the
centuries. Maureen Miller proposes an interesting solution to the puzzle of why
Florence is dedicated to St. John, rather than to Zenobius, its first bishop.
Overall, this volume should find a home in research libraries, but because the
topics are so varied, few scholars will decide to own it themselves.
University of Akron

CONSTANCE B. BOUCHARD

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A History of Science, Magic, and Belief: From Medieval to Early Modern Europe. By
Steven P. Marrone. (New York: Palgrave. 2015. Pp. xvi, 317. $34.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-137-02978-2.)
Steven Marrone begins this useful survey by declaring that the early-modern
“witchcraze” and scientific revolution “both arose from a single process of broad
change sweeping Europe” (p. viii). While general readers, at whom Marrone is in
part aiming, might be shocked to find witchcraft related to science in any way,
experts in these fields will be interested in the nature of the connections he draws.
First, Marrone frames the connection of magic to both science and religion
through the anthropological theories of James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski.
He then begins his historical survey by moving quickly from antiquity, when some
forms of magic were taken seriously as learned scientia, into the early Christian era,
when church fathers resolutely linked magic to demon-worship and therefore to
false religion. Throughout the early Middle Ages, however, Christian elites did not
respond to magic’s diabolical evil so much as they disdained common magical practices intellectually. This changed in the twelfth century, when the idea of magic as
a viable form of scientia re-emerged in medieval Europe. At the same time, however, the Church also developed a judicial apparatus to control popular beliefs and
practices more stringently. Initially these mechanisms focused on heresy, but they
would eventually be turned against magic.
After a brief moment of intellectual respectability, magic was resoundingly
recondemned as evil and demonic by most major Scholastic authorities. Their
thought informed the stereotype of the diabolical witch that emerged in the earlyfifteenth century. Ironically, there was at that time another brief surge in intellectually serious and respectable magic among Renaissance neo-Platonists. This too,
however, never became widely accepted, and the next major intellectual change to
affect magic was the advent of mechanical philosophy, which undermined the
world of active spiritual and occult forces on which magical thinking depended,
leading ultimately to modern science and Weberian “disenchantment.”
The basic outlines of this analysis are well known. Marrone gives the most
attention to twelfth- and thirteenth-century debates about magic as a form of scientia. Despite his initial framing of witchcraft and the scientific revolution, he
offers little coverage to either, and the balance of the book tips decisively toward
the medieval. This is valuable, insofar as many surveys covering these topics tend
to skew heavily toward the early modern. That said, readers who are not already
familiar with the history of early-modern witchcraft or science will find Marrone’s
coverage sparse. For example, his chapter on the “Witchcraze” dedicates more than
twenty pages to the intellectual origins of the witch-stereotype in the fifteenth century, but just one paragraph to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch-hunts
themselves.
By his own admission, Marrone often favors older interpretations rather than
more recent ones. For example, he maintains a distinction between “popular” and

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“elite” magical cultures, where many scholars now stress “common” practices. Marrone’s position is certainly tenable, and he explains his reasoning clearly. Some
points, though, are more problematic. He consistently uses the term witchcraze, for
example, which many experts reject because it implies irrationality (which Marrone’s analysis also opposes) and because it conveys a sense that fear of witches was
rampant throughout this entire era. In fact, witch trials varied dramatically in frequency and intensity across space and time, but Marrone gives no indication of this.
Any book that traces broad developments over the better part of a millennium
will have to eschew some details, and a good survey should try to emphasize points
not stressed in others. Marrone does this in a book that is at its best when exploring
the fraught high-medieval efforts to elevate magic into the sphere of respectable
“science.”
Iowa State University

MICHAEL D. BAILEY

Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America.
Edited by Anna Harwell Celenza and Anthony R. DelDonna. [Early Modern
Catholicism and the Visual Arts, Vol. 9.] (Philadelphia: St. Joseph’s University Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 229. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-916-10180-0.)
After eight volumes devoted mainly to the painting, emblems, and other visual
objects of the Jesuits’ “cultural mission” during the first three centuries of their history, the present volume is devoted to music. Since the foundation of the Society
of Jesus, the order’s members discovered the power of music in their missionary
action, creating a sense of community and good for teaching the Christian principles in places as diverse as Brazil and India. But this volume is not about their wellknown activities in South America or Asia. Instead, the book focuses on less
explored areas: Naples and Milan in Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the end of the ancien régime. The editors both teach at Georgetown University (chapter 9, by coeditor Anna Harwell Cerenza, traces the importance of music at this Jesuit institution from 1789 to 1930). Her coeditor, Anthony
DelDonna, edits the first part of the book, which is devoted mainly to Naples but
includes an interesting chapter by Emanuele Colombo on the Jesuit Oratorio in
Milan. The remaining five chapters of this section are written by Francesco Cotticelli, Paologiovanni Maione, Ausilia Magaudda, Danilo Costantini, Francesca
Seller, and Antonio Caroccia, which describe in detail the history and activity of
the five pedagogical institutions created by Jesuits in Naples: the old Collegio
“Massimo” at the Church of Gesù Vecchio, the Collegio of San Ignazio al Mercato, San Giuseppe a Chiaia, San Saverio a Toledo, and the very influential Collegio of Nobles. DelDonna, in addition to a general introduction (“Jesuit Music in
Eighteenth-Century Italy: North versus South”), offers a case study on the influence of Jesuit culture on Neapolitan society, through the oratorio Trionfo per l’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine by Nicolò Ceva (1705); Ceva was a lesser known
professional musician educated in the Neapolitan conservatory system who became
a Jesuit and an influential figure in the Society’s Neapolitan circles. The survival of

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Ceva’s score in the Library of the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella is quite
exceptional, since most of the primary materials on Jesuit music activities in Naples
have been scattered. The mentioned scholars have used alternative sources to
reconstruct those activities: for instance, the Gazzetta di Napoli provides many
records of musical events not only in Naples but also in the provinces (those from
1675 to 1768 were published in 2011). It is evident that, in Milan and Naples,
music became a powerful resource used by Jesuits to promote their educational
system; not by chance did the music chapel established in the Gesù Vecchio start a
competition in the last decades of the seventeenth century with the most prestigious institution in Naples, the Royal Chapel, and the Jesuits also found a special
confraternity of Jesuit musicians that competed with the main Congregazione dei
Musici Napolitani established in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Only with
the election of Charles of Bourbon as first king of Naples in 1734 did the musical
and theatrical activities of the Society decrease and finally disappear.
If the missions in southern Italy were considered “las indias de por acá” in the
Jesuit correspondance, in “las indias de por allá” (the New World of the Americas),
there were different uses of music. In the second part of the volume, coeditor
Celenza is very clear in describing the creation of “models of implementation for
the cultural mission” (p. 141) of Jesuits in North America—a topic rarely investigated until now. Athanasius Kircher, the author of the monumental Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650), provides many interesting sources of information through
his publications and impressive correspondence (involving 800 regular correspondents). The most emblematic case is the song adapted for a Huron community in
eastern Canada, introduced into a native ritual (atsataion) as a sort of “Last Supper”
by the French Jesuit Jean de Brébeuf in 1637. The tune is a parody of the late-sixteenth-century chanson “Une jeune pucelle,” translated into the Wendat language
and transformed into a sacred noël; it later became a “Huron noël” with the title
“Jesous Ahatonnia.” There are original seventeenth-century sources for each passage of this popular Huron tune—a case seldom seen in the study of any oral culture. The last contribution, by Michael A. Zampelli, is full of interesting perspectives, since it explores Jesuit performance pieces of the past staged for contemporary
audiences. One good case is Charpentier’s Judicium Salomonis (Paris, 1702), performed at Boston College in 2008. Even with a superimposition of ideological and
educational messages, these works still fascinate present-day audiences.
This volume serves as a milestone in the study of the role of music in the Jesuit
world during the baroque period as well as an example of a perfect methodology for
the performance of this music in the modern age.
University of Basilicata/Conservatorio di Napoli

DINKO FABRIS

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ANCIENT
Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity. Edited by Éric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke. [CUA Studies in Early Christianity.] (Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press. 2015. Pp. viii, 331. $65.00. ISBN
978-8-13-22743-6.)
This edited volume contains the proceedings from a 2011 conference hosted
by the research group on “Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective,”
which is based at the Max Weber Centre at the University of Erfurt. The group’s
research takes direction from a central question: to what extent are the real characteristics of individual actors from late antiquity clarified or obscured when considered in the framework of the religious tradition to which those actors ostensibly
belong? Following this general direction, Group Identity and Religious Individuality
offers ten essays, stellar to a one, that join the recent bloom of books and edited
volumes exploring the analytical category of the individual.
Although all of the essays are detailed examinations of localized religious traditions or practitioners, that is not all they are. For, as the introduction explains,
these pieces are not meant to serve solely as examples of individuality on display,
exhibits 1 through 10 made to add coloration to our otherwise unchanged picture
of late antiquity (although they certainly accomplish this). Their function is far
more radical. Implicitly or, in many cases, explicitly, their authors persuade that the
individual, rather than the religious tradition, must be the historian’s focus of attention. As the editors argue, “only occasionally is group identity the decisive factor in
understanding individual behavior” (p.11) and to see the group first is to import a
set of assumptions—about motivations, expectations, and causes—that may
obscure rather than clarify.
Methodologically, what does this mean? For many of the essays, it means that
each actor’s religious group membership is no more or less significant a characteristic than is his education and economic status, his network of his peers, and his
intellectual formation. Writers, stories, and spaces that could be seen as important
because of the position they occupy in the story of major religious traditions—like
Christianity, Judaism, or Roman religion—are removed from their obligation to
confirm something about the tradition to which they belong, and thus are more
clearly to be seen in their own eras and contexts. The volume’s contributors are outstanding scholars in their particular fields (Éric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke both have
essays beyond their introduction, alongside Jason David BeDuhn, Kim Bowes,
Susanna Elm, Kristine Iara, Karl Leo Noethlichs, Judith Perkins, Rubina Raja,
Tessa Rajak, and Wolfgang Spickermann), and their collective effort advocates
greater attention to the varieties of religious experience and practice in late antiquity than what can be found by simply thinking of the larger traditions as the prime
category of analysis.
As this is a new contribution to a developing area of research, it does raise
some questions that must be considered. The first is posed by Kristine Iara, in her

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essay on the senatorial aristocracy: can a research method focused on the individual
capture “religion” at all, which is easiest seen as a social phenomenon? (p. 192).
Second is the question raised by Rubina Raja in her contribution on the Church of
St. Theodore at Gerasa. She points out that inscriptions (and other works of the
public good) are acts of self-representation, which require the historian’s keen and
often skeptic eye if they are not to be taken as simple records of reality (p. 273).
Would not the issue of self-representation and its attendant problems adhere to
most evidence about individuals from late antiquity, and how should the historian
balance questions about authenticity and singularity in such cases?
These are difficult, although not impossible, questions; they will require careful methodological attention from researchers who want to adopt the category of
the individual as a prime category of analysis. Based on the vigor and brilliance of
the scholarship in this volume, however, the community of scholars working in this
emerging area of research is not only capable of answering them but also capable of
continuing to pose additional, novel questions and to offer exciting perspectives for
historical analysis.
University of Michigan

ELLEN MUEHLBERGER

Augustine and the Catechumenate. Rev. ed. By William Harmless, S.J. (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press. 2014. Pp. xxxviii, 476. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-08146-6314-1.)
For readers of the popular first edition (Collegeville, MN, 1995), this revision,
completed shortly before the author’s untimely death, entirely supersedes its predecessor. As Harmless states, “nearly every page” has been changed to produce a new
edition that is “up to date from top to bottom” (pp. xxi–xxii). Among other things,
the numerous well-chosen references to St. Augustine’s texts have now incorporated new translations and new editions (including of newly discovered sermons).
Some discussions have been excised, whereas others have been greatly expanded.
What the author does not state is that he became a better scholar every year since
the publication of what was then his revised dissertation. The new edition, thereby,
benefits both from the hard-won expertise of a senior scholar and from the exponential growth in the last twenty years of two bodies of scholarly literature: specialized studies in Augustine’s works (particularly of his sermons) and ongoing
research on early Christian liturgical practices. Admittedly, there are now—in the
burgeoning field of Augustinian studies—other academic studies more technical
than this one (such as J. Patout Burns and Robin Margaret Jensen’s Christianity in
Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs [Grand Rapids, MI,
2014]), but this one will continue to be of value because of its unmistakable virtues.
Harmless has once more produced a very readable descriptive history with
broad appeal that is of value to experts but deliberately written in a style that is
accessible to nonspecialists. After outlining the general shape acquired by the catechumenate in the fourth century in various locations (including what Augustine is
thought to have experienced in Milan with Ambrose), Harmless turns to the cate-

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chumenate in Hippo for the bulk of his study. There he mines Augustine’s homilies
that are directly related to catechism to recover a thick initiation process extending
from the enrollment of catechumens, their Lenten preparation, and their eventual
Easter baptism to their post-Easter mystagogy.
Worrying that contemporary rites of initiation, when compared to their
ancient counterparts, can appear to be reductive and thin, Harmless attempts
through these chapters to infuse contemporary practice with greater substance. In
due course, he expands upon a whole range of activities, including biblical interpretation, preaching, and any number of sometimes forgotten ancient liturgical practices. He makes every effort to provide the necessary background for the non-expert
reader by explaining terms and concepts along the way while supplying multiple
charts and other scholarly aids. He takes the reader by the hand through Augustine’s catechetical works and sermons while strongly emphasizing their liturgical
context and the evidence they provide for recovering the initiation rites and rituals
involved in ancient catechesis. What emerges is the broader story of how the highly
selective catechumenate of the church of the martyrs evolved into an instrument of
mass assimilation of new converts in the wake of the conversion of Constantine.
Like its predecessor, this book will appeal to at least three audiences: those
concerned with implementing the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) and
other contemporary catechetical forms; those interested in early Christian liturgies;
and those attending to the still too often neglected ministerial context of Augustine
that informed nearly everything else he thought and did. Harmless turned to
ancient Christian sources, not to return Christians to an earlier time but to help
them move forward with fuller and more intelligent resources (pp. xxv–xxvi, 20–24,
404–05). Although readers have been deprived of what this energetic and imaginative Jesuit would have written next, they will, no doubt, be better equipped than
they would have been without his thoughtful and thorough revision of this wellregarded and useful book.
PAUL R. KOLBET

Yale Divinity School

MEDIEVAL
Envisioning the Bishop: Images and the Episcopacy in the Middle Ages. Edited by
Sigrid Danielson and Evan A. Gatti. [Medieval Church Studies, Vol. 29.]
(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. 2014. Pp. xx, 448. €110,00. ISBN 978-2-50354799-2.)
Envisioning the Bishop is a collection of articles based on papers that were originally presented at International Medieval Congresses (Leeds, 2009; Kalamazoo,
2009–11). The main topic is images of medieval bishops. “Images” are understood
in several ways: on the one hand, the production of images as artifacts like book
illustrations and ivory plaques; on the other hand, the construction of images as
conceptions and Vorstellungen. The collection includes excellent scholarly works

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from different disciplines such as literature, architecture, art history, and history on
bishops during the Middle Ages. The essays present a wide range of perspectives
and objects of investigation from the fourth to the thirteenth century and are placed
in chronological order. The focus lies on Western Europe, the British Isles, and
Ireland.
Editors Sigrid Danielson and Evan A. Gatti give a helpful overview in the
introduction on the recent historiography concerning bishops and the ideal of the
bishop in the Middle Ages. They also highlight the methodological approach that
ties the articles together. Based on the thought of the German art-historian Hans
Belting, they emphasize that images do happen, take place, and are a sort of
“event”—image-making and image-creating are processes based on historical and
social structures that have an impact on reality.
The collection starts with an investigation of the episcopal architectural style
in fourth- century Rome and the differences from that promoted by female patrons.
A range of essays deals with examples drawn from the visual arts: stone crosses,
sculptures, liturgical manuscripts, liturgical textiles, and ivory works. Danielson
discusses the latter, showing how bishops were responsible for the right liturgy in
ninth-century Western Francia. In particular, illustrations in liturgical manuscripts
provide insight into the construction of images and the use of images in the “daily
work” of the bishops. Other essays focus on the written image of the bishop, as, for
example, the paper of John Ott on poetry from the court of Archbishop Manasses
I of Reims and the study of Alice Chapman on the images of a bishop in the work
of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Apart from historiography (for example, the Venerable
Bede; St. Gregory of Tours), hagiography (the life of St. Wulfstan of Worcester)
and even mnemonics and book dedications are discussed as sources for the construction of images of bishops.
In the introduction the editors suggest some ways that the essays complement
one another—mostly with regard to contents and objects of investigation. In her
afterword Maureen C. Miller presents yet another way of binding the essays
together; she mainly focuses on “norm-building.” She points out that these ideals
changed during the centuries, intriguingly demonstrated in the articles on bishops
in medieval hagiography. Both ways are inspiring.
The essays show, in a wide chronographical and geographical range, the difficulty in even one period to create broad consensus about the question of an ideal
bishop. The norm-building is manifest in the representation of the various and heterogeneous ideals of the single bishop as well as of the episcopal office in literature,
visual art, and architecture. The collection has, without doubt, a wider relevance for
all those interested in the cultural history of the medieval bishop.
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

CHRISTINE KLEINJUNG

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From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest. By Maged S. A. Mikhail. [Library of Middle East History, vol. 45.]
(London: I. B. Tauris; distrib. Palgrave. 2014. Pp. xiii, 429. $100.00. ISBN
978-1-848-85938-8.)
Maged Mikhail’s From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt examines the transformations in Egyptian society, religion, and politics occasioned by the Arab-Muslim
conquests of the seventh century. It is an ambitious undertaking. In twelve chapters
spanning the seventh to the tenth centuries, the book seeks to examine an extensive
range of historiographically significant subjects. These include relations between
the conquerors and indigenous Christian elites; religious conversion; linguistic
change; Muslim rulers’ reforms to the Byzantine administrative system; law and
justice in the cities and countryside; the settlement and evolution of Egypt’s
Muslim population; relations with the churches of Nubia, Ethiopia, and Syria; the
reconstitution of ecclesiastical authority under Muslim rule; and the practical and
discursive construction of Coptic, Melkite, and local Muslim religious identities.
In many respects, the book succeeds in accomplishing its ambitious goals. Its
greatest strength is its full use of the exceptionally wide range of textual sources
Egypt has to offer—narrative texts in both Coptic and Arabic, as well as Greek,
Arabic, and Coptic documentary papyri—in the service of its broad historical
vision. The source material and historiographical debates related to Egypt are
extensive enough that the subject of any of the book’s chapters could be a monograph of its own. Mikhail’s signal contribution is to bring such a diverse array of
material together to offer both compelling and coherent syntheses of his chosen
topics and a number of new arguments of his own. Chapter 9’s discussion of the
Coptic Church’s relations with Nubia and Ethiopia is noteworthy; Mikhail ably
makes the case that those relations fundamentally structured the Coptic hierarchy’s
political position vis-à-vis the Muslim rulers back in Egypt. Although other
provinces of the early Islamic caliphate have received treatments comparable in
their breadth (Michael Morony’s seminal Iraq after the Muslim Conquest [Princeton,
1984] comes to mind), Egypt was surely in need of one. Mikhail has made an
important contribution in this regard.
From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt will be most readily accessible to specialists in
late antiquity and early Islam. On the whole, its chapters tend to dive straight into
historiographical debates; students or nonspecialists might want to read a more
general history before engaging with Mikhail’s arguments.
Certain limitations arise in the book’s approach to the formation of communal
religious identities. Mikhail frequently and laudably objects to primordialist narratives of Egyptian history (although which contemporary scholars actually hold such
views is not always clear), and tends to emphasize the constructedness of religious
identities. Despite this framework, however, the book uses the terms Coptic and
Melkite interchangeably with anti-Chalcedonian and pro-Chalcedonian throughout.
This becomes problematic at times. For example, Mikhail justly argues that Coptic
religious elites began to portray Byzantine rule as exclusively persecutory only in the

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ninth century and that doing so was an effort to define the Church’s place in both
the Egyptian past and the Islamic order (p. 36). It would have been useful, however, to consider whether indigenizing discourses like this played some role in producing the very idea of Coptic Christianity as a discrete religious tradition and in
transforming anti-Chalcedonian Egyptians into Copts as an ethno-religious category. In this respect, the book’s terminological conventions sometimes obscure the
cultural transformations it otherwise documents so well.
These limitations are not an indictment of the book’s overall quality. It is a
very impressive success to provide both broad syntheses and detailed examinations
of a topic so vital to the history of the Middle East and Christianity. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt is a welcome contribution to the historiography of the early
Islamic world, Coptic Christianity, and late-antique and medieval Egypt.
The Catholic University of America

LEV WEITZ

Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission
and Monastic Culture. By Felice Lifshitz. [Fordham Series in Medieval Studies.] (New York: Fordham University Press. 2014. Pp. xxiv, 349. $55.00.
ISBN 978-0-8232-5687-7.)
Felice Lifshitz’s book poses two provocative theses: First, that early-medieval
female monasticism was determined by a feminist consciousness, and second, that
this consciousness manifested itself in structures of autonomous textual transmission within networks of female communities. Lifshitz argues that this consciousness flourished especially in the syneisactic monastic world that was established in
the (as she terms it) Anglo-Saxon cultural province, the region in which AngloSaxon monks and nuns—particularly St. Boniface and his female and male followers—shaped ecclesiastical and monastic structures.
Defying (perhaps understandable) hesitations to apply a modern and still
highly politicized concept to the early-medieval world, Lifshitz convinces the
reader that it makes sense and, indeed, is hermeneutically productive to examine
early-medieval Christianity in the context of feminism, albeit by specifically defining feminism as propagating gender equality, claiming participation in liturgical
activities, and rejecting patriarchal and misogynist patterns of thought.
Lifshitz develops her theses around a collection of six manuscripts preserved
in the Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg that she convincingly identifies as products
of the scriptoria of the Franconian female communities of Karlburg and Kitzingen.
Her approach is based on two premises that are widely accepted in medieval studies
but have not yet been applied in this particular context. The first premise is that
there is a decided absence of uniformity in Christian thought in the early-medieval
period. Within, and sometimes stretching, the borders of orthodoxy there exist a
vast variety of viewpoints, even on crucial theological questions such as the issue of
gender differences, the value of virginity and female autonomy, and the range of

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options for active participation in Christian life and ecclesiastical structures. The
second premise is that textual transmission—the choice, selection, and presentation
of texts—is based on conscious decisions that are determined by this plurality of
viewpoints.
These premises imply that it is indispensable to move away from printed editions and reconstructions of a presumed Urtext and to work with the texts as they
appear and are assembled and arranged in the manuscripts themselves. Lifshitz
applies this “whole-book approach” in an exemplary manner, combining the entire
apparatus of Hilfswissenschaften (codicology, paleography, philology, and so forth)
with both a profound knowledge of theological frameworks and meticulous analyses of texts and images. Comparing the versions of the texts as they appear in the
manuscripts of Karlburg and Kitzingen with modern reconstructions of a presumed
urtext leads to an immense array of evidence indicating that the nuns of Karlburg
and Kitzingen worked to select, appropriate, and contextualize their texts in a
manner supporting their feminist theological viewpoints.
The first manuscript that Lifshitz examines, which contains the letters of St.
Paul, should, as the author suggests, be read along with the Visio Pauli, a profoundly
egalitarian text on gender that was present in the Kitzingen community and puts
into perspective Paul’s attitude on the role of women in the first Christian communities. In reading the letters of Paul, Lifshitz puts a special emphasis on interpreting
the Crucifixion frontispiece of the text as an expression of feminist theology.
Two manuscripts containing sections from St. Augustine’s Enarrationes in
Psalmos and St. Gregory the Great’s Homiliae in Evangelia, show how its compilers
consciously chose gender-egalitarian passages and evaded expressions of patriarchal
and antifemale theologies, to such an extent that they almost overcome Augustine’s
misogyny. Kitzingen’s Deus per Angelum, a collection of female passiones, and a collection of apostolic passions from Karlburg present numerous options for syneisactic life and show how the nuns of Karlburg and Kitzingen shifted the focus from
an emphasis on virginity and victimization to one of female power and autonomy,
and, in doing so, developed their own somewhat Pelagianistic theology on grace
and work. A manuscript that contains St. Isidore of Seville’s Synonyma—the passions of Potius and Eugenia—and a florilegium based on the Liber Scintillarum
show how the nuns, through their choice, alteration, and arrangement of texts, take
a clear stand on gender equality and the issue of participation in liturgical activities.
Lifshitz’s endeavor to map a cultural and intellectual world and explore a collective
identity on the basis of a limited—yet unique—set of sources not only forms an
important contribution to feminist scholarship but also creates a model for other
manuscript-based explorations of collective identities. This is a splendid book.
Syracuse University

ALBRECHT DIEM

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Papacy, Monarchy and Marriage, 860–1600. By D. L. D’Avray. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2015. Pp. xiii, 355. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-10106253-5.)
David D’Avray brings together here two themes that have featured in his written work: medieval marriage and the role of rationality (or rationalities) in history.
He observes that, from the thirteenth century, it became ever easier for monarchs to
obtain papal dispensations allowing marriage within forbidden degrees; yet it
became more difficult to annul marriages once they were created. Previous scholarship, he notes, has explained both these developments as occasioned by the papacy’s
desire to exert authority and control over the marriages of the laity, and particularly
kings and their alliances. This, he argues, will not do: “one cannot have it both ways
and see both the rigidity of annulment law and the flexibility of dispensation law as
instruments of papal domination” (p. 24). Rather, the two phenomena are based on
two different modes of thought. The indissolubility of marriage was based on what
he calls a “value rationality”—“the absolute indissolubility of consummated Christian marriage was woven into the fabric of thirteenth-century theology” (p. 209)—
and there could be no exceptions to it. The forbidden degrees in marriage, on the
other hand, were based on an “instrumental rationality,” not on the incest taboo
(which operated only in regard to marriage between very close relations, like siblings
or parent and child) but on the promotion of “social charity” (p. 210). Therefore, the
pope had the ability to dispense from them to reach the same goal.
The limiting of the prohibited degrees at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
made it more difficult to discover or invent previously unknown or unmentioned
impediments and thereby annul marriages. At the same time, the papacy retained
the right to dispense from the newly defined degrees. Although based on “soft
rationality” (p. 229), the dispensation—demonstrated by D’Avray through both
narrative and an extensive appendix of documents—developed a great deal of
formal legal precision. Because of that precision, dispensations tailored to the case
(as opposed to general ones) were very difficult to overturn, and marriages based on
them could not be annulled.
D’Avray tells good stories; there is some coverage here on well-known cases
such as that of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and more on lesser known cases
such as Wladislaw of Poland and Barbara of Brandenburg (pp. 161–69). One need
not be a professional medievalist to find these stories fascinating, and they are combined with an admirable clarity of terminology. The appendix of documents will
likely be of interest largely to specialists, but D’Avray uses typographical conventions
to identify the points in the text important to particular parts of his argument, so
readers are not left to figure it out. A previous companion volume, Dissolving Royal
Marriages: A Documentary History, 860–1600 (Cambridge, UK, 2014), focused on the
annulment side, whereas the documents in this book come from dispensation cases.
Scholars not interested in marriage specifically can also learn a great deal from
this volume, because one of D’Avray’s most important arguments concerns not the

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formation and de-formation of royal marriages but rather the nature of historical
cause and effect. Taking from Quentin Skinner the lesson that “we do not need to
be sure about sincerity before we estimate the effects of principles on actions” (p.
25), he demonstrates that a certain cynicism about papal motivations is not incompatible with taking seriously the legal and theological ideas and the rhetoric they
used to justify their decisions. Legal formality in both the annulment and dispensation process served the papacy well.
University of Minnesota

RUTH MAZO KARRAS

The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the
Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs. By Julia Verkholantsev.
(De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2014. Pp. xi, 262. $49.00. ISBN
978-0-87580-485-9.)
The growth of the popularity of St. Jerome in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and the accompanying creation of apocryphal documents about his life,
is a fascinating story. The work of law professor Giovanni D’Andrea furthered the
cult and added to it a humanistic emphasis that would continue to enhance the
popularity of Jerome as ascetic, biblical scholar, and learned humanist throughout
subsequent centuries. Although this aspect of the cult of Jerome is well known to
scholars, in this new book Julia Verkholantsev illuminates what could be called a
parallel legend of Jerome as an apostle of the Slavs and the creator of the Glagolitic
alphabet—a script of “Slavic Letters”—as well as the translator of the Bible and
liturgy into Slavonic. In this fascinating and engaging new study, Verkholantsev
sets out for the reader the origins and growth of this legend, as well as its spread
and influence on religious history and culture throughout the lands of the western
Slavs, particularly in the later Middle Ages.
Chapter 1 discusses the ninth-century work of Cyril and Methodius in
Moravia and theories about the historical origins of the Glagolitic alphabet as a
missionary tool. Chapter 2 illuminates how, although this rite and alphabet were
banned in Frankish and most other Latin lands, they survived in Croatia, where in
the later Middle Ages they would continue to thrive in Benedictine and other religious houses. A key moment in the association of Jerome with Slavic matters seems
to have come in the mid-thirteenth century, when a Croatian bishop made the
argument to the pope that the Glagolitic script had been given to the Slavs by
Jerome himself. The legend, based upon some interesting Carolingian writings and
the fact that Jerome was born in what ultimately would become Slavic lands, led to
the growth of the idea that he was a Slav and had translated the liturgy and Bible
into Slavonic. In this way Jerome replaced Cyril and Methodius, now primarily
associated in many Latin minds with eastern “schismatics,” as patrons of the
Glagolitic script, giving it impeccably Roman credentials. Chapter 3 examines the
role of this Slavonic heritage for Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor and king of
Bohemia in the mid-fourteenth century, and the role in Slavonic and Bohemian
culture of the Glagolitic Benedictines and the cult of the Slavic Jerome that he

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introduced from Croatia, including biblical translations into Czech. Chapters 4 and
5, respectively, examine the foundation of Slavonic monasteries in Silesia and
Poland in the later fourteenth century and the role they played there, with particular attention to the relationship and cultural dynamic between the kingdoms of
Bohemia and Poland. An epilogue discusses the fate and continued influence of
these ideas in the post-Hussite era, and the continuing influence and persistence of
the idea of St. Jerome as Slav and founder of sacred Slavic culture. This myth found
its way into Reformation debates about vernacular translations of scripture and in
the writings of Erasmus found a new and powerful advocate, one not really refuted
until the critical work of the Bollandists.
This well-researched, original, and accessible book will appeal to specialists in
many fields of medieval culture. The author draws upon an impressive command
of languages and sources, including hagiography, art history, and liturgical texts
that may not be well known beyond Slavic specialists. She deftly and judiciously
guides the reader through many scholarly debates that range over time and across
national, religious, and disciplinary boundaries, introducing new and convincing
interpretations that demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship at
its best. It will prove to be an indispensable contribution and excellent addition to
scholarly work available in English on many aspects of medieval and Renaissance
Slavic culture.
University of St. Andrews

WILLIAM P. HYLAND

Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics. By Lisa Wolverton. (Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 307. $65.00
clothbound, ISBN 978-0-8132-2691-0; ISBN 978-0-8132-2692-7 e-book.)
This book is the second monograph about Cosmas (c. 1045–1125), the oldest
Czech chronicler and canon of the Chapter of Prague; it also is the first written by
a non-Czech author. Lisa Wolverton, the author and associate professor of history
at the University of Oregon, aims at offering a reinterpretation of the main piece
of Czech medieval historiography, which has been reached by the author during
her work on an English translation of Cosmas’s chronicle. She is particularly interested in “its story, the narrative shape and style of Cosmas’ history” (p. 2). She
offers a detailed analysis of the language, the way of expression, the intentions, and
the content of the chronicle; at the same time, she contextualizes and compares it
to the works of some contemporary historians of Latin Europe. She wants to read
the Cosmas chronicle “in all its fullness with new eyes” (p. 18).
The book is composed of seven chapters. In the introduction, the author gives
fundamental information about the present study of Cosmas’s work, its author, and
the chronicle itself, as well as discusses her book’s goals. Her work is motivated by
the tendency in the Anglo-Saxon world to overlook Cosmas’s chronicle or to consider it only in relation to the chroniclers’ view on women. Wolverton wants to
bring “the text into the interpretative frame of Anglophone medievalists” (p. 3). At

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the same time, she would like to correct the supposed absence of Czech (and
Polish) literature, with only a handful of articles and one monograph trying “to
analyze the text on its own terms” (p. 3). However, Wolverton neglects several
recent works by Czech historians (such as Martin Wihoda, Petr Kopal, Josef
Žemlička, and this reviewer) that analyze problems similar to those examined by
the author.
In the second chapter, “The Historian’s Craft,” she analyzes the sources of
Cosmas’s narrative in detail, examines the method of composition, and successfully
reconstructs Cosmas’s procedures for work. Using a detailed analysis of Cosmas’s
text, she disproves Dušan Třeštík’s hypothesis that the Annales Pragenses served as
Cosmas’s source and considers other sources. She states that Regino of Prüm
deeply influenced Cosmas because of the language, the way of expression, the
source of information about past events, and especially the craft of history.
The third chapter, “The Pessimistic Theory of Power,” is dedicated to
Cosmas’s political opinions on politics and the functions of law, the appointment
and position of the monarch, and the critique of political power. In this context,
the author rightly emphasized the fact that Cosmas had not been a court chronicler, as many experts believe, but had been writing the book independently. Peter
Hilsch drew a similar conclusion recently, but his study is not mentioned.
The author devotes the fourth chapter, “Gendered Politics and Women´s
Voices,” to Cosmas’s view on women and their position in the society.
In the fifth chapter, “Characterizing a Decadent Political Culture,” Wolverton
shows Cosmas’s critique of common political means such as monarchs’ greed, corruption, and corrupt practices, as well as wars and fratricides.
In the sixth chapter, “The Birth of National History,” she rejects the usual
description of Cosmas’s chronicle as national history. She reminds us that Cosmas’s
Czechs did not come from Troy, as most of (West) Slavic nations, but “from
nowhere” (p. 224), and they have become the nation after entering their destined
land. The author’s interpretation is inaccurate, as Cosmas posits the first inhabitants’ arrival in Bohemia in relation to the dispersal of people during the construction of the Tower of Babel. Unlike other researchers, Wolverton considers the land
to be most important in Cosmas’s narration.
In the conclusion, the author sums up her research results: Cosmas’s chronicle
is, first of all, a political work. It is not a justification or celebration of the ruling
dynasty; Cosmas is not a supporter of national identity. He is, above all, a critic of
the political order of his time.
The book about Cosmas represents a truly unorthodox approach to the topic
and offers several new observations. For example, Cosmas’s chronicle is shown to
arise from political crisis and to reflect political and pessimistic realities that do not
celebrate lordship. On the other hand, the author presents some phenomena as new
discoveries, but these have appeared in other literature. Viewing the source through

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its own text clarifies some seemingly unsolvable questions about Cosmas’s narration
(such as Cosmas’s date for Duke Bořivoj’s christening) and facilitates a partial
understanding of the way of thinking of the medieval author and his approach to
work. It also shows more substantial inspiration from antiquity, never stated in
Cosmas’s chronicle. Among other things, Wolverton’s work illustrates the possibility of gaining new information from long-known sources.
Charles University in Prague

MARIE BLÁHOVÁ

In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend. By Jacques
Le Goff. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press. 2014. Pp. xviii, 214. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-15645-3.)
For the past two decades, the Golden Legend composed by the Dominican
prelate Jacobus de Voragine—as well as the genre of abridged legendaries (legendae
novae)—have been a major subject of scientific research, inspiring extensive studies
by scholars such as Barbara Fleith and Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, as well as editions, commentaries, and translations by Maggioni, Emore Paoli, and this
reviewer. Following these books, the last major work by Le Goff, the doyen of
medieval studies (who died in 2014)—humbly qualified by himself as an essay—
investigates a key theme of his broad examination of medieval society: time as a
defining factor of the Christian philosophy of life.
The mastering and the “sacralization” of time is, according to this work, the
main goal of the Legenda Aurea that defines itself less as a legendary than as a somme
sur le temps, or a handbook on time. The interpretation of human history as history
of salvation, as well as the spiritual conception of time, appear clearly enough in the
texts belonging to the genre of liturgical handbooks, where the chronological order
of Lives and Passions (“Sanctorale”) is combined with movable or fixed church
feasts and festival periods (“Temporale”); these types of handbooks were commonly
designated as Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis or Mitrale. From the beginning, Jacobus
establishes a pattern of liturgical time divided into four periods, following the
example of John Beleth’s handbook (c. 1160): times of renewal, deviation, reconciliation, and pilgrimage. Le Goff adopts this pattern as a manner of spiritual guide
and leads his reader—sometimes offering detailed analysis, at other times summarizing or paraphrasing—through this massive text that encompasses the liturgical
year. His vast and profound knowledge enriches his commentary with multiple
insights into medieval society and its mentality.
The bibliography of the English edition is provided in English, and a practical
index of names and terms also is supplied.
The problems of dating and distinguishing literary genres, as well as those of
source selection and use, naturally play a secondary role in a study of such comprehensive nature; however, they are important to study of the Golden Legend. For
instance, given the fact that the saints’ days for their feasts were established accord-

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ing to the pre-existing calendar, an attempt to analyze the Sanctorale in terms of the
four eschatological aspects of the ecclesiastical year (such as “the sanctorale of the
time of pilgrimage,” p. 132) appears unconvincing.
Recent research has shown that Jacobus did not create any new material but
compiled and arranged his written sources; yet Le Goff frequently praises his narrative talent (see, for example, “talent as a narrator,” p. 27; “fondness for telling dramatic stories in the style of thrillers,” p. 91; “shows his exceptional talent as narrator
of titillating tales,” p. 126). The figure of John the Almsgiver and his vita were not
invented by the Dominicans, as the author implies (p. 81), but stem from the writings of his friends Johannes Moschos and Sophronios that Jacobus, lacking knowledge of Greek, used in Latin translation by Anastasius Bibliothecarius. Furthermore, Guillaume Durand’s Rationale could not serve Jacobus as a source (c. 1280;
“one of his favorite authors,” p. 28), but rather the work of earlier liturgists (Bishop
Sicard of Cremona, Beleth) must have been used.
The fundamental elements of a legendary—veneration of saints, cult of relics,
idea of purgatory, faith in the effective intercession of the saints and in corresponding miracles—were strictly rejected by the Cathars. Therefore, the Golden Legend
can be considered as a Summa contra haereticos. The copious chapters on All Saints’
Day and All Souls’ Day emphasize, without mentioning their opponent, the fundamental role played by saints in the orthodox doctrine of salvation. In addition,
one minor dating problem related to this subject is worth mentioning: Jacobus dedicated one of the longest chapters of his book to the Dominican Peter Martyr,
appointed in 1251 as an inquisitor, killed by the Cathars in 1252, and rapidly canonized in 1253. To affirm (p. 118) that Jacobus added Peter Martyr to his legendary several decades later (c. 1298) contradicts the intensive political and ecclesiastical impact of the Golden Legend; moreover, this chapter appears in both of the
oldest manuscripts of the Golden Legend: Paris nouv. acq. 1800 (dated 1281) and
München clm 13029 (dated 1282).
Basel, Switzerland

BRUNO HÄUPTLI
Translated by Helena Kogen

Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in
the Twelfth Century. By Atria A. Larson. [Studies in Medieval and Early
Modern Canon Law, Vol. 11.] (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press. 2014. Pp. xx, 553. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-8123-2168-7.)
This careful study of Gratian’s thinking on the topic of penance reworks a dissertation written at The Catholic University of America into a rich and carefully
argued book. The study of Gratian and his work has recently been transformed by
Anders Winroth’s discovery of the original version of Gratian’s groundbreaking
work, a version that differs in many respects from the work regarded by scholars as
Gratian’s Decretum. This study considers results that help to refine the findings of
Winroth in this field.

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The book is devoted mainly to the part of Gratian’s Decretum that we know
as De Penitentia and was included in causa 33, a case that discussed a man who
had become impotent as a result of magical means (maleficium). When the man
confessed his sin to God alone, he was relieved of his impotence, and this formed
the incentive for Gratian to discuss the efficacy of confession in some detail. The
treatise is thus placed rather awkwardly in the conception of the whole work. This,
together with a clearly more theological approach that contrasts with the more
legal character of the rest of the work, has in the past led to doubts about its
authenticity. Since De Penitentia is, however, included in the first recension that
Winroth discovered, it must be regarded as an authentic part of the Decretum. Several parts of the text, however, found in the standard edition of Gratian as prepared by Emil Friedberg do not appear in the early recensions and must therefore
have been added later.
Atria Larson carefully tries to reconstruct Gratian’s thinking about penance on
the basis of the text of the first recension. In doing so, she establishes that Gratian
composed his work in a systematic way, the economy of which is hardly visible in
the edition by Friedberg because of the many accretions included in its text. Larson
is able to demonstrate that Gratian composed his work with great care and diligence, and that it ties in neatly with the other parts of the Decretum in which
penance is discussed. The author establishes Gratian’s reliance on many works that
are associated with the school of Anselm of Laon and concludes that it would be
unwise to deny the direct relationship between the two—that is, Gratian must have
been a disciple of this school. That would explain the close affinities between Gratian’s work and that of Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, although there is no
proof of any direct acquaintance with their works (or vice versa). The affinities are
to be explained by the fact that all three men were indebted to Anselm’s teachings.
Larson regards the Decretum first of all as a textbook, reflecting Gratian’s teaching
in Bologna. His work was meant to instruct the clergy and should be considered as
part of a broader movement for educational reform of the clergy.
After this convincing analysis of the text of De Penitentia, the author goes on,
in the second part of the book, to investigate its influence. She starts with the use
that Peter Lombard made of it for his Sententiae, a work finished in 1155–57. For
his discussion of penance in book IV (distinctions 14–22), Peter relied on two main
sources: Odo of Lucca’s Summa Sententiarum and Gratian’s De Penitentia. Peter
did not always agree with Gratian, but he certainly valued him as a theologian, not
only as a compiler of canons. It becomes clear that Peter Lombard preferred Gratian’s theological views over those of Peter Abelard. Early commentators on the
Decretum—such as Paucapalea, Rolandus, or the author of the Summa Parisiensis—
in Bologna and elsewhere did not pay much attention to De Penitentia, because of
its length and its more theological character. The work, however, was valued more
from a theological point of view, sometimes by the same masters (Rolandus). This
study makes clear that there was no clear distinction between canonists and theologians in the period when Gratian wrote his work as well as in the three decades
thereafter. Only we, from a modern perspective, distinguish between legal studies

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and theology and therefore tend to regard the De Penitentia more as an anomaly in
Gratian’s work than contemporaries did.
Later twelfth-century authors such as Peter the Chanter and Huguccio, the
latter in comments on the Decretum, devoted ample attention to De Penitentia. This
demonstrates that, by the end of the twelfth century, De Penitentia had become the
foundational text for discussing penance in the schools of Paris and Bologna. From
the second half of the twelfth century onward, there are also indications that De
Penitentia was read and used in the world outside the classroom. Bartholomew of
Exeter drew on it when composing his penitential handbook, and Master Vacarius
used it to refute what he regarded as the heretical views of Hugo Speroni on predestination. Furthermore, Gratian’s treatise made its presence felt in Rome where
Popes Alexander III and Innocent III can be shown to reproduce Gratian’s thought
without reproducing his precise words. Through Innocent III, Gratian’s views also
had a formative influence on the Fourth Lateran Council, particularly on its provision regulating yearly confession as a prerequisite for Christian life.
This book, therefore, not only succeeds in reaching a better understanding of
the role of De Penitentia in the Decretum as such and of its background and argument; it also maps its influence in the twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries in a
detailed and stimulating way. By focusing on a rather neglected part of Gratian’s
masterwork, this study illuminates the fascinating world of twelfth-century intellectual life from an unexpected angle and is a real contribution to our knowledge of
Gratian, penance, and the intellectual world of the long twelfth century in general.
Utrecht University

ROB MEENS

Summa ‘Omnis qui iuste iudicat’sive Lipsiensis. 3 tomes. Tome 1: Edited by Rudolf
Weigand (†), Peter Landau, and Waltraud Kozur, with the collaboration of
Stefan Häring, Karin Miethaner, and Martin Petzolt; Tome 2: Edited by
Peter Landau and Waltraud Kozur, with the collaboration of Stefan Häring,
Heribert Hallermann, Karin Miethaner-Vent, and Martin Pezolt; Tome 3:
Edited by Peter Landau, Waltraud Kozur, and Karin Miethaner-Vent. [Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series A: Corpus Glossatorum, Vol. 7/1–3.] (Vatican
City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2007, 2012, 2014. Pp. xlvi, 557, $90.00,
ISBN 978-88-210-0808-9; pp. xlvii, 422, $110.00, ISBN 978-88-210-08986; pp. 459, €60,00, ISBN 978-88-210-0924-2.)
A team of scholars assembled by Rudolf Weigand in Würzburg has labored
many years on texts of canon law from Northern Europe in the twelfth century.
Weigand died in 1998, but his passion for medieval canon law and its manuscript
traditions lives on. The first volume of the projected four volumes of the edition
was published in 2007. The text is anonymous but was written by a French or
Anglo-Norman canonist at the beginning of the last quarter of the twelfth century.
Trying to identify the authors of anonymous legal texts has been an ongoing project
in legal history, pursued most vigorously by André Gouron (†2009) and Peter

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Landau. Landau has recently argued that a little-known canonist named Rodoicus
Modicipassus wrote the Summa ‘Omnis qui iuste iudicat.’
The work has been introduced by four “summaries” in English, French, Italian, and Spanish, followed by a foreword in German. One may wonder why multilingual summaries are necessary for a work in Latin. Nevertheless, there are interesting differences among them. The author of the English version (2014) claims
that the work “is the major canonistic work of the twelfth century” (“changed from
one of the major” in 2007), the French “une œuvre canonique majeure du XIIe
siècle,” whereas the Italian author thinks that the work is “come opera di particolare
rilievo nella canonistica del XII secolo.” The Spanish version declares “puede considerarse como una obra maestro de la canonística del siglo XII.” The German
“Vorwort” avoids making any evaluation of the text’s importance. One may make
an argument for the Italian summary’s generalization, but the English version is
simply wrong (Gratian, Rufinus, Huguccio?). Not only is much of the text derivative of Bolognese jurisprudence but also there are only two complete manuscripts
of the work. Two manuscripts (two others are incomplete) do not argue for a wide
audience or broad significance.
Since the Summa is heavily dependent upon Bolognese canonists, as the editors note in their introductions to the volumes and helpfully illustrate in the critical
apparatus, the sources from which the author borrowed passages and ideas were
Rufinus, Stephen of Tournai, Simon of Bisignano, and Johannes Faventinus—the
major figures of the time. It has yet to be proven that Huguccio borrowed from the
Summa. Huguccio read the same jurists.
The transcriptions of the manuscripts are well done and accurate. There are,
however, quibbles. Stephan Kuttner’s guidelines for editions in the Monumenta
iuris canonici are altered. The most significant departure, and for this reviewer the
most troubling, was to substitute line numbers for footnote numbers in the apparatus fontium. It is hoped that future editors will not follow this example, as it can
be annoyingly difficult to find the citations—particularly on pages with many citations. Kuttner would have thought that the editors followed the abbreviations in
the manuscripts too closely. The rationale for always expanding “infra” from the
manuscripts’ “ia” and “supra” from “sa,” and never expanding e. and d., is opaque at
best. Worse, it will confuse or stymie new readers of these texts. Apparatus fontium
of legal texts can be difficult. The editors do a good job tracking down allegations
in canon law but sometimes miss those for Roman law. This medieval canonist’s
vague citations to Justinian’s later legislation betray his lack of knowledge about
how to deal with it. The civilians excerpted Justinian’s Novellae and placed them in
the margins of the Codex during the twelfth century. For modern editors, that
means they must check whether the reference is to Justinian’s legislation in its
medieval guise, the Authenticum, or to one of these marginal texts in the Codex
(e.g., citation to C.12 q.3 c.1, line 10, which should be post Cod. 1.3.33 = Nov. 131
c.13, not Auth. 119.9.6; Kuttner would not have italicized Cod., Nov. Auth., etc.).
The indices are detailed and excellent.

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This edition is a splendid piece of work. Its flaws are few; its merits great.
Unless scholars have attempted to edit a text that has never before been edited, they
cannot know the intellectual demands of the task. Critical editions are shamefully
undervalued in today’s academic world. These volumes are worthy additions to the
Monumenta iuris canonici.
The Catholic University of America

KENNETH PENNINGTON

Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. By David M. Perry.
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2015. Pp. xiv, 233.
$69.95. ISBN 978-0-271-06507-6.)
The conquest of Constantinople by the crusader troops in 1204 is an event
that has been much discussed from a number of points of view. David Perry, an
ecclesiastical historian, brings forward still another take on the subject. Who
besides the Venetians benefited from the takeover of the richly endowed city of
Constantinople, and how did they explain themselves?
Often excoriated as “the infamous Fourth Crusade,” the crusade was proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1198, another attempt to bring lands of the East
back into the Christian fold. It has a dramatic history quite unlike that of the others.
After a drawn-out series of negotiations that has engendered several books of its
own, the original plan to attack Egypt as a step on the way to Jerusalem fell by the
wayside. The crusader troops finally set sail from Venice in 1202. Diverted—
largely, it has been argued, due to Venetian maneuvering—the galleys went to Zara
to secure the Venetian hold on the city, arriving in 1204 at the gates of Constantinople. Here were riches of an almost unimaginable splendor, the most famous
relics of Christendom. Perry lays out the stages of acquisition. The first wave of
greedy and chaotic pillaging in which churches were ruthlessly stripped of value
comes across vividly in eyewitness reports such as the impassioned denunciation by
the Greek historian Niketas Choniates. This was followed by a more orderly appropriation and then the slow, steady export of precious relics to the West during the
period of the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople, 1204–64. Gifts of relics were made
to powerful Western rulers, one major example being the gift of the Crown of
Thorns in 1239 by Baldwin II, installed as the Latin emperor of Constantinople, to
his cousin, Louis IX, king of France—a relic later to be extravagantly enshrined in
the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Reactions to the despoiling of the treasures of Constantinople were immediate and harsh, especially on the part of Rome.
The core of the book lies in Perry’s discussion of nine narratives that “collectively offer an interpretation . . . that celebrates the very behaviour condemned by
the papacy and other critics” (p. 111). The author makes it clear that his work is
heavily indebted to Paul Édouard Didier Riant’s two-volume Exuviae sacrae Constantinopolitanae (Geneva, 1877–78), the canonical study of the deployment of the
relics of Constantinople and one of the masterpieces of late-nineteenth-century
French scholarship.

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Perry’s study stands as something of a gloss on Riant, placing key sources collected
by Riant within an interpretive framework. The nine texts used by Perry draw from
Riant’s three categories: official accounts, contemporary reports, and posterior narratives. After a brief summary, the argument set forth in each text is analyzed and
compared from the point of view of an authorized transfer (“translatio only,” p.
111) versus texts that celebrate the acquisition as an act of reverence (“pious-theft,”
p. 111 f.) Discrete portions of the texts used are quoted in the book; full references
are given in the notes and bibliography. Treating the texts within groups rather
than as individual pieces leads to some confusion but serves Perry’s aim of emphasizing the shared goals of the reports in separating their relic acquisition from the
wanton behavior of the marauding crusaders. The major beneficiaries of the
deployment of the relics of Constantinople were, of course, the Venetians. Two of
Perry’s analyzed texts relate to Venetian relic acquisition, and the last section of the
book is given over to a review of relic management in Venice before, during, and
after the Fourth Crusade. Perry draws skillfully here on an extensive literature
devoted to Venice’s skill at myth-making and its use of relics to support a script that
made Venice the recipient of a divine plan for success.
The study is designed to point up, once again, the importance of relics in the
culture of the late Middle Ages. The particular value of Perry’s book lies in its
enlarging of the 1204 discussion, bringing to the fore for the modern reader the
role of the Fourth Crusade in spreading Byzantine relics across the map of Europe
and into the territories of Germany and France. Although perhaps a bit heavy on
its theoretical apparatus, Perry’s book is a serious, carefully considered study that
represents a useful addition to the Fourth Crusade dialogue.
Washington, DC

DEBRA PINCUS

University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, c. 1300–c. 1350. By F. Donald Logan. [Studies and Texts 188.] (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2014. Pp. xiv, 197. $80.00. ISBN
978-0-88844-181-1.)
In this short volume, Donald Logan provides a compact but comprehensive
analysis of the licenses for nonresidence to attend university that were granted to
parochial rectors in the English Diocese of Lincoln during the first half of the fourteenth century. The voluminous episcopal registers for those decades record thousands of administratively ephemeral documents not normally preserved elsewhere,
including more than 1200 licenses allowing parish rectors to be nonresident so they
could pursue study yet retain their ecclesiastical incomes. Many of the licenses were
issued in accordance with the papal constitution Cum ex eo, promulgated by Pope
Boniface VIII in 1298. This permitted absence for up to seven years by rectors who
might initially be merely acolytes or subdeacons. Other licenses of shorter duration
were granted by the bishops on their own authority to rectors who were usually
priests. (Incumbent vicars were denied such opportunities: their cures required permanent residence.)

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The book divides almost exactly into two halves. The first segment offers
analysis and commentary, and is short enough to be read (but perhaps not fully
digested) at one sitting. The second half consists of an alphabetical register of the
recipients of the nonresidence licenses, detailing the grants, adding occasional further references, and providing cross-references to Alfred Brotherton Emden’s Biographical Registers for the few recipients (under 5 percent) who appear in them. That
percentage alone suggests the value of this study for future work on university
attendance in pre-Reformation England.
Logan’s first-half commentary is essentially a quantitative dissection of the
information provided by the licenses, preceded by an introduction and an initial
chapter offering orientation on “Canon Law and Clerical Learning.” Chapters 2 to
4 offer a chronological analysis, its periodization shaped by episcopates. That of
John Dalderby (1299–1320) provides “the beginning”; under Henry Burghersh
(1320–40) licensing is “in full stride”; “the process continues” in the 1340s. More
extensive investigation is abruptly curtailed by the administrative changes that
ended the routine registration of such licenses in 1351. The licenses are counted,
assessed, and compared; educational histories of individual rectors are traced. By
linking Cum ex eo licenses with subsequent episcopal grants, individuals could
extend their time at university into a decade or more, but few did. Indeed, despite
the opportunity for extended absenteeism provided by Cum ex eo, the average overall length of recorded study was a little over three years.
The final chapter goes beyond the preceding discussion and number-crunching to address “Seven Further Questions,” deepening the analysis by seeking to
penetrate behind the licenses to address their wider implications and practical
import. Here, Logan briefly but succinctly addresses the financing of nonresidence,
location, and content of studies (with most recipients attending Oxford, even if
their licenses did not say so); the contemporary developments at Oxford; and the
question of whether these rectors returned to their rectories after completing their
studies. (He suggests that those who studied for less than four years almost certainly did, and those with seven years of study probably did.) His response to the
final question—of whether the pattern recorded at Lincoln was typical—is to make
comparisons with the record of licenses issued in the Lichfield and Worcester Dioceses, respectively in 1299–1321 and 1328–37, offered in the hope of stimulating
further investigation there and elsewhere.
Despite its brevity, this book offers valuable additional information and analysis to illuminate the educational and intellectual engagement of the parish clergy of
fourteenth-century England. It also hints at how much more remains to be excavated from those English episcopal registers that have not yet attracted intense
scholarly attention.
University of Birmingham

R. N. SWANSON

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The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement.
By Laura Swan. (Katonah, NY: BlueBridge, an imprint of United Tribes
Media. 2014. Pp. 202. $16.95. ISBN 978-1-933346-97.7.)
Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe. Edited by Letha
Boehringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and Hildo van Engen. [Sanctimoniales, Vol. 1.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. 2014. Pp. xii, 235. €80,00. ISBN
978-2-503-55135-7.)
The Wisdom of the Beguines is a general introduction to beguine spirituality
written for a general readership; the edited volume Labels and Libels brings together
eight studies by specialists on problems of terminology and identity of medieval
beguines.
Laura Swan, in her introductory study, proves to be well-read in recent scholarship, although in English only; German scholarship eludes her. She writes an
emotive history of beguine spirituality into which she weaves exquisite passages
from beguine authors. She is clearly on the lookout for authentic voices of
medieval women authors. Although she follows the expert Walter Simons in his
study of the label beguine and its connotation of praying laywomen, and although
she also states herself that beguines were lay, she is not held back by her own definition and incorporates all kinds of religious women “who gave voice to their own
experience of the Divine” (p. 7). She includes monastic women such as the Cistercian nun Lutgard of Aywières and the Dominican sister Maria de Santo
Domingo, the Mantellata Catherine of Siena, and female authors who never lived
in beguinages. For this reviewer, a European academic, her selection is questionable, but for an American general readership it yields a compelling introduction to
female spirituality in the Middle Ages.
For Swan, beguines are those women who “lived lives of profound simplicity,
generosity to the poor, taking care of lepers, and daily attendance at prayer in
church” (p. 18). Beguines lived on their own or in informal communities and
devoted themselves to teaching and preaching. Their “profound experience of the
divine presence impelled them to serve the hurting and defenceless around them”
(p. 83). But they had a keen business sense as well and earned their own living. The
author concludes: “The story of the beguines affirms that women have contributed
far more to spirituality and culture than history books have traditionally acknowledged. Their voices proclaim a divine presence that yearns for relationship with
each of us” (p. 179).
Labels and Libels is the first publication in the new series Sanctimoniales: Religious Women—Geistliche Frauen set up by AGFEM, the Research Group of
German and American Medievalists for the Study of Religious Women (composed
of members both inside and outside monastic orders). This first volume collects
eight studies on problems concerning the name and status of beguine women, in
which the authors search for characteristics of the beguine way of life but do not
cover their beliefs and spirituality.

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A few general observations can be drawn from their diversified studies. First,
it is clear from their work that beguines had no formally recognized canonical
status; they did not form an ecclesiastical institution. If popes and canonists proclaim decrees on beguines (such as at the Council of Vienne in 1311), it is because
they are afraid that beguines claim ecclesiastical status without complying with
resulting obligations (wearing a habit but not promising obedience, not renouncing
possessions or professing a rule). Nonetheless, scholars still linger over church-historical and institutional questions (see the essays by Elizabeth Makowski, Jennifer
Kolpacoff Deane, Letha Boehringer, and Koen Goudriaan).
Second, scholars would do better to start their research from a socio-historical
and socio-religious angle, asking which women called themselves beguines or were
called so by others, and why. What were the characteristics of their way of life? And
why did common believers value them so much? As Sean Field notes, beguines had
“a reputation for unique access to divine knowledge, . . . the beguina label served as
shorthand to refer to a celibate, ardently religious laywoman looking and acting in
a manner visibly so distinct as to require a unique designation” (p. 132). This designation did not refer to a canonical status or formal institution but to a socio-spiritual identity, a recognizable way of existing and a distinctive dress (habit) as the
expression thereof. Beguines earned the love of others because of their penitential
lifestyle and devotion to service (see the essays by Walter Simons, Field, and Tanya
Stabler Miller).
Third, the contributors hardly speak about the beguines’ personal beliefs and
spirituality. As Giles Constable notes in his lucid introduction, this is caused by the
paucity of the sources: “The best historians can do in this respect is to extrapolate
from the spiritual writings of the more articulate members of related, if different,
movements.” And this—note well—is exactly what Swan does in Wisdom of the
Beguines.
University of Groningen, the Netherlands (Emerita)
Fellow of the Max-Weber Kolleg,
University of Erfurt, Germany

ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER

From England to France: Felony and Exile in the High Middle Ages. By William
Chester Jordan. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 223.
$39.50. ISBN 978-0-691-16495-3.)
Using more than 2000 recorded cases of abjuration from England and adding
comparative examples from the Continent, William Chester Jordan brings to life
the 700-year-old ghosts of those who were subject to the practice of forcible deportation by the judicial authorities. Medieval justice was physically and emotionally
harsh. Public execution and deliberately stomach-churning acts of mutilation (often
in concert with one another) were the stock responses of the law to felony. Allowing
a person to live because he or she had made it to sanctuary, confessed to his or her
crime, and made an oath to abjure the realm was, therefore, an act of mercy, albeit

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a “fearsome” form of mercy. Exile was no easy option. Barefoot, bareheaded, and
carrying the penitent’s cross, the abjurer had to make her or his way to a port of
embarkation at rapid pace; then she or he was forced to stand in the sea and appeal
for passage to the Continent. Once in the port of Wissant (the first destination of
most of Jordan’s abjurers), the exile had to find a way of creating a new life for herself
or himself. Most, it seems, probably failed to do so and found their end in the large
cemetery that abutted the town. A few succeeded, and even fewer managed to make
a return to their homeland. The consequence of returning to one’s homeland without permission could be catastrophic. A woman who returned to Paris after exile was
buried alive beneath the gallows of the bailiwick of St-Maur-des-Fosses, an act that
was done in full view of the public pour encourager les autres.
This book makes for painful reading, and the passage of time has not lessened
the impact of the tragic stories used by Jordan to explore his topic. We meet, for
example, Alice de la Venele who was persecuted by, among others, the bailiff of
Bury St. Edmunds who had designs on her property. Her fiancé was driven into
exile, and then so was she. Despite appealing to King Edward I for redress, she
seems to have lived out the remainder of her life a stranger in a foreign land.
There is some relief from the litany of a multitude of tragic lives unveiled. The
chaplain William of Bugbrooke, for example, who thought that he had been caught
fornicating with another man’s wife, first hid in a chest and then made his escape
to sanctuary where he confessed his crime only to discover that the woman’s husband had no notion that the chaplain had been having carnal knowledge of his
wife. He did now. William invented a story of how he had stolen 8 shillings so that
he could go into voluntary exile. Better that than meet the fury of the cuckolded
husband. History does not recall how the wife fared.
It is Jordan’s command of the English and the continental evidence that
makes this such an impressive piece of work. One might carp at his use of his “historical imagination” to reconstruct some probable historical events, but since he is
such a consummate historian, it would be foolish to so do. His best guess is better
than the best guesses of most scholars. It is refreshing to see the method employed
so well. Jordan writes elegantly and engagingly, too. One is never lost. He talks to
his readers in an intimate style and guides them through the subject with real skill.
This book should be required corrective reading for all those who would subscribe
to the “Merrie England” school of history. It will bring that reader up short.
University of East Anglia, UK

STEPHEN CHURCH

Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Visionary Autobiography of a Fourteenth-Century
French Monk. By Claire Fanger. [Magic in History.] (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2015. Pp. xvi, 214. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-27106650-9.)
This book introduces the sprawling Liber florum celestis doctrine (“Book of
Flowers of Celestial Teaching”), written over a period of time from 1301 to shortly

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before 1323 by an otherwise unknown Benedictine monk, John of Morigny. By any
account, the Liber florum is a fascinating work, one that interrelates magical knowledge with arcane figures, accounts of visionary experiences, theology, and original
prayers. John was interrupted in his writing by the criticism of censors (“Barking
Dogs,” p. 2), to which he responded by producing an alternate version of the part
of his work they had impugned. Given that both of these versions survive, it is possible to obtain a fuller view of what he was doing. Claire Fanger, together with
Nicholas Watson, is bringing out a complete edition; the present volume is
intended to offer an overview of a work that most scholars had never heard of.
Fanger’s account surely brings out the fascination of the Liber florum, especially
because she cites from it copiously. In one of John’s dreams Jesus orders an associate
to beat him with his fist, saying, “[t]ake that” (p. 60); in another (pp. 105–06):
I saw myself lying and sleeping on the breast of the virgin Mary, and she put
her breast in my mouth and I suckled and slept. . . . Also I saw myself playing
ball with Christ as a boy. And I saw that our lord Jesus Christ kissed me on
the mouth. . . . Also I saw that the crucified one was above my cup and drops
of blood from his feet ran into my cup.

John’s diagrams and prescriptions for diagrams feature letter play and what Fanger
with ample warrant calls “turbid complexity” (p. 100). But Fanger’s presentation
stands uncomfortably between John and the reader because she is resolved to be as
prominent as he is. She announces that she is writing “a memoir of a journey” so
the reader can see how John “has shaped me, made me who I am” (p. 7). She is
“preach[ing] about John’s practices by practicing his manner of preaching” (p. 10).
Accordingly we have confessions: “I am saturnine, choleric, and melancholic” (p.
18). Referring to her viewing of a manuscript in the Bodleian “on a hot and humid
day in July” she describes it as a “foreshock” of “a transformation of the self” (p. 86).
She also indulges in quoting long passages from her earlier writings (“As I argued
in my earlier essay,” p. 74; “I quote here some of the least wrong parts of my own
conclusions,” p. 86) and in sprinkling her account with oracular dicta: “knowledge
is a journey . . . there are no partitions between the elements” (p. 15); “the poet’s
discipline is not much different from the scholar’s” (p. 17); “interest is one’s own
stake in the matter” (p. 171). (At least the meaning of these pronouncements is
clear, but this reviewer is baffled by the book’s last sentence: “So the poor have
hope, and injustice shuts its mouth,” p. 168.) If John favors litanies, so does the
author—in her case, from contemporary scripture: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Pierre
Bourdieu, Talal Asad. While some or all of these traits may be to the taste of
others, this reviewer finds them exceedingly distracting.
A blurb on the back cover asserts that this book is an “exploration, not of a
strange intellectual outlier but of a . . . quintessentially medieval mind.” Is this true?
The author herself writes that “there is no other visionary autobiography by a selfconfessed magic user seeking to produce a prayer book” (p. 17). Yet she proclaims
that John challenged or changed “nearly everything I thought I knew about the
Middle Ages” (p. xii). Although John is a fascinating writer, worthy of recom-

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mending to others, knowledge of him has not changed this reviewer’s view of the
Middle Ages because this period is well known for its numerous remarkable esoteric outliers.
Northwestern University

ROBERT E. LERNER

The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman between Demons and
Saints. By Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski. [The Middle Ages Series.]
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 236. $55.00.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4715-2.)
Late-medieval accounts of illiterate peasants are few and far between, making
this in-depth study of Ermine de Reims (c. 1347–96) and her otherworldly encounters a welcome addition to medieval studies. Ermine shares some characteristics
with other visionary women: her unwavering faith, her supernatural experiences,
and her strong relationship with a male confessor. However, the foundations of her
faith are basic and unlearned, unlike most other holy women, and the experiences
chronicled by her confessor are found in a carefully dated “logbook” of Ermine’s
near-daily torment by demons for the last ten months of her life, instead of the
more typical collection of miraculous visions or vita giving important details of the
holy woman’s life.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski explores the world of Ermine in broad strokes,
telling Ermine’s intriguing story and filling in the corners with context. The first
chapter focuses on the city of Reims in the fourteenth century; Ermine’s biography;
and the religious, political, and economic turmoil of her time. The unusual offer from
her confessor, Augustinian friar Jean le Graveur, that allowed the widowed Ermine
to live in a house next to the priory also granted Jean access to daily narratives of the
supernatural events she experienced. The second chapter explores in more detail the
complex bond shared by Ermine with her confessor. Blumenfeld-Kosinski argues
that Jean’s representation of Ermine is designed to draw attention to similarities
between Ermine and other well-known holy women while bolstering his own reputation through his connection with her. Although Ermine practices some forms of
asceticism, her truest demonstration of faith is her loyalty to her confessor through all
demonic torments and deceit, a point that is emphasized throughout the narrative.
The remaining chapters focus more specifically on Ermine’s strange encounters. The third chapter details how demons plague her in various forms, including
those of animals, attractive men and women who perform sexual acts in front of
her, and false saints. Confusingly, the demons often speak true Christian doctrine;
the most reliable sign that they are demons is their attempts to make Ermine mistrust her confessor. She is also occasionally visited by true saints and even, on one
notable occasion, by the Virgin Mary, who confirms Ermine’s worthiness as
receiver of true visions.
The fourth chapter, following logically, revolves around the discernment of
spirits—how Ermine determines whether her experiences are demonic or holy in

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nature. This chapter is of particular interest, providing a framework for Ermine’s
narrative and Jean le Graveur’s motives in writing down her experiences. Blumenfeld-Kosinski also threads Jean Gerson (1364–1429), theologian and chancellor of
the University of Paris, throughout the narrative. Gerson wrote several influential
treatises on the discernment of spirits, and his two pronouncements about Ermine,
made around twenty years apart, demonstrate a shift in his thinking both on
Ermine and on the discernment of spirits more generally.
The book is entertaining for the casual reader, and it will also give undergraduates and other scholars an overview of the late-medieval piety of Ermine and her
contemporaries, including the pastoral care Jean le Graveur attempts to provide for
her. The translated excerpts of Jean le Graveur’s writings about Ermine provided in
the appendix also grant the reader access to the large portions of the text itself. The
adventures of one widowed peasant can never be fully representative, but Blumenfeld-Kosinski demonstrates how political and religious turmoil shaped daily lives in
fourteenth-century Reims, as well as indicating how Ermine’s experiences fit into
late-medieval discourse about the veracity of visions and other supernatural events.
Collin College
Frisco, TX

ALAYA SWANN

Plague and Pleasure: The Renaissance World of Pius II. By Arthur White. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2014. Pp. xxiv, 407.
$29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-80813-226811.)
This admirable book exemplifies what the author calls a “metanarrative” (p.
xvi): an extensive and consistent theme—here an interpretation of Italian cultural
life from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries—reinforced by a “sample” (p.
xvii) to illustrate the thesis in depth. The sample in this case is yet another biographical study of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, that prolific, self-promoting, minor
Sienese nobleman who served briefly as Pope Pius II (1458–64). With an acknowledgment to Johann Huizinga for his famous study of tormented northern mentalities, White fits Pius into an equivalent southern picture—a fearful, pessimistic
world of sudden deaths from war and pestilence (he provides at the end of the book
a list of plague-infected locations year by year, 1347–1691)—characterized culturally by varieties of escapism and fantasy building. Thus, for White, the so-called
Italian Renaissance was the typical outcome, with its aspirations to imitate the
values and attainments of Greek and Roman antiquity; it was the thirteenth century that contained the seeds of progress in Western civilization.
Pius is a good choice because he devoted himself to seeking his own immortal
fame, whether as poet, international statesman, Christian leader, or martyr, and
wrote so much about himself and his times. His vainglorious illusions included the
project, partly realized, of rebuilding his birthplace, Corsignano, as a showpiece of
Renaissance architecture renamed Pienza, although White leaves the reader uncertain whether this was merely the upgrading of a “hardscrabble . . . village” (p. 48)

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or an experiment in utopian urban planning. In any case he presents it as illustrating another typical Renaissance motive: the urge to retreat into seclusion from a
horribly dangerous world, as a prince into his studiolo or a penitent into his or her
frugal cell (such as Catherine of Siena, whom Pius canonized). White recounts
Pius’s life story skillfully, making use of the abundant printed source material and
secondary literature. He is good at clarifying the complex politics of Italy in Pius’s
time and judges that the pope made a fatal mistake by abandoning the French or
Angevin claim to the throne of Naples (Pius made no secret of his rather unapostolic loathing of the French, nor indeed his detestation of the Venetians). It does
not seem that Pius dwelt excessively on the horrors of plague and war, although he
describes how he once thought he had found a plague boil on his own body; in fact,
he glorified war if it was in the interests of the Church, suffering remorse for his
slowness and limited success in launching Holy War against the Turks (he ended
by dying from chronic illness and exhaustion at Ancona, still believing that his crusade was going ahead).
Some readers fascinated by Pius might find it irksome that he is sometimes
lost to view in this long book. There are whole chapters that hardly mention him,
such as those expounding “Renaissance Chivalry,” “The Age of Spectacle,” and
“Villas and Gardens”; he even plays little part in “Urban Dreams.” Some might also
have preferred a map confined to central Italy so that more of the places visited by
Pius could be shown and more precisely located. The copyeditor seems to have
missed a few minor errors, such as the misspelling throughout of the name Rubinstein as Rubenstein and Pavia (p. 73) becoming Padua a few pages later (p. 76); the
black-and-white illustrations also might have been clearer. But generally the production is exemplary, with full bibliography, index, and—above all—footnotes, the
last being so rare to find these days, particularly in a book intended for a wide readership. White is justified in his wish, whether or not his overall argument is acceptable, to correct some of the conventional platitudes about the Renaissance and to
have insisted that the true paths of human progress were already defined before the
fourteenth century. One wonders if he means to imply that our own time is also
characterized by escapism into illusory worlds—the cult of virtual reality attainable
through digital technology and drugs, to counter the prevalent terrors of cancer and
other diseases, air pollution, jihadism, nuclear explosion, and so forth. On the other
hand, most people do not and cannot allow these fears to dominate their lives and
motivations. So maybe it was also thus to some extent in fifteenth-century Italy?
Warburg Institute, University of London

DAVID CHAMBERS

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EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN
Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science. By
Craig Martin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2014. Pp. viii,
262. $54.95. ISBN 978-1-4214-1316-7.)
In Subverting Aristotle, Craig Martin takes us on a brisk trot through the history of anti-Aristotelianism from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. Singling out one particular strand of hostility to Aristotle, he first traces the problems
that arose from the continuous attempts on the part of both philosophers and theologians to adapt a pagan Greek philosophy to the needs of European Christendom and then shows how these eventually contributed to the downfall of Aristotelianism. Covering such a large amount of intellectual territory in just 180 pages
of text and 58 pages of endnotes is something of a tour de force, for which Martin
deserves not only plaudits but also warm gratitude from the many readers who will
find a mine of useful information in his survey. By taking account of so many
authors—some well known, but others scarcely familiar even to specialists—over
such a long period of time, he leaves himself very little space to discuss any of them
in detail or, more regrettably, to place them in their historical context. In compensation, however, Martin has a sharp eye for apt quotations, which he provides in
abundance, usually giving just an accurately (if at times a bit clumsily) translated
snippet, with the original cited in the endnotes.
The Ariadne’s thread by which Martin leads the reader through this labyrinth
of accusations and counter-accusations is his conviction that “the religious motivations of promoters of new natural philosophies who attacked Aristotelianism were
sincere” and that “subverting Aristotle’s authority was necessary for and concomitant to the ascent of modern science” (p. 10). His aim is to counter the Whiggish,
and now rather outdated, view that the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth
century was a reflection, if not a direct result, of the progressive secularization of
European thought. He argues that these new developments were instead closely
allied to religion and marked the culmination of a centuries-long battle against
both the impiety of Aristotle and the misguided efforts of generations of Aristotelians to reconcile his intractably pagan beliefs—the eternity of the world, the
mortality of the soul, the absence of divine providence in the sublunary world—
with Christian theology. As Martin points out, the opponents of Aristotle were
paradoxically assisted in their campaign by Renaissance Aristotelians such as Pietro
Pomponazzi, who maintained that combining philosophy with theology was like
“mixing different soups” (p. 67) and who defiantly defended the right of philosophers to investigate natural phenomena according to the principles of nature and of
Aristotle, free from interference by the Church—although conceding that their
own merely probable reasoning was trumped by the certainty of the Bible, revelation, and Catholic dogma. It was far from their intention to loosen Aristotelianism’s stranglehold on the European mind; yet these professional Aristotelians
helped to do just that, since, by explaining Aristotle’s doctrines without recourse to
theological adjustment, they laid bare their unacceptable pagan underpinnings. In

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similar fashion, humanist scholars like Gabriel Naudé, by “historicizing” Aristotle,
made it clear that he and his philosophy were inextricably part of the pagan world.
Reading the wildly varying portrayals of Aristotle’s relationship to religion,
from virtual Christian to benighted atheist, which Martin has collected together in
this rich study, one cannot but agree with the French Jesuit René Rapin that “it is
difficult to understand how in the succession of time it has been possible to make
such different judgments on the same person” (p. 167).
Warburg Institute, University of London

JILL KRAYE

Religion, Reformation, and Repression in the Reign of Francis I. Documents from the
Parlement of Paris, 1515–1547: Vol. I: Documents 1515–1543; Vol. II: Documents 1544–1547. Edited, annotated, and introduced by James K. Farge.
[Studies and Texts 196.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
2015. Pp. xlvi, 710; x, 711–1463. C$200.00. ISBN 978-0-88844-196-6.)
This carefully selected and edited collection of documents concerning the Parlement of Paris’s treatment of “matters of religion” (p. xiii) during the reign of
Francis I is a great gift to scholars of the Reformation and of sixteenth-century
France. It clarifies not just what the magistrates of the Parlement did during their
workdays but also how they conceived of their duty—their religious duty, one
might say—as judges of the Most Christian King of France. James Farge’s introduction is limpid, building on decades of the research by himself and others. Documents are presented chronologically, with the exception of those consigned to the
appendices for reasons explained in the introduction. Each document is numbered
and described with a heading. Textual variants and explanations are given in footnotes. The bibiliography and index are detailed and helpful. Farge’s immense
labors have created a resource that is well put together.
But it must be used with an awareness of editorial choices, principally how
Farge delimits “matters of religion.” He observes that “the Parlement of Paris was
always ready to move matters of religion to the top of its agenda” (p. xiii). The footnote shows this to be a paraphrase of how Pierre Lizet, the king’s avocat, claimed
in 1525 that “la Court s’est tousjours monstree . . . prompte a . . . donner les premieres audiences aux choses concernans observantiam cultus divini et religionis.”
Farge elsewhere notes that “religio” in this period often referred to particular religious orders (p. xxvii, n53), but here Lizet’s equation of the cultus divinus and religio
approaches modern usage. However, Lizet, who later headed the court, and the
other magistrates understood matters of religion broadly: prior to the appearance of
Protestantism, they sought to suppress the heretical ecclesiology they believed to be
manifested by the Concordat of Bologna. Farge consigns the court’s resistance to
the Concordat to an appendix, “because the Concordat was more a political matter
than a doctrinal or religious one” (p. xviii), and explains that disputes over benefices
between those appointed by the king in virtue of the Concordat and those elected
in virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges are “not . . . included . . . in this col-

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lection because they are concerned with status and income, not with religion” (p.
xxiii). Apparently only theological and liturgical issues are religious, in contrast to
merely political debates over the form of the Church.
Yet if “politics and religion were inextricably mixed” (p. xxv), it is hard to justify segregating disputes over the Concordat. The judges certainly viewed the suppression of Protestant heresy as a religious duty, explaining to regent Louise of
Savoy in December 1525 that they could not obey her order to cease prosecuting
certain suspected heretics “without greatly offending God and violating the debt of
our offices” (“sans grandement offenser Dieu et violer le deu de noz offices,” p.
233). They likewise believed that their “debt (deu, debitum)” to God, to the king,
and to his subjects entailed the suppression of ecclesiological heresy: in 1489 one
avocat had even asserted that France’s adherence to the Pragmatic Sanction meant
that “the kingdom of France has never strayed and knows not monsters [sc of
heresy], and thus the true Church is in the kingdom of France” (“le royaume de
France na jamais erre et non novit monstra [sc haeresis], et sic la vraye eglise est ou
royaume de France”).1 Why, then, exclude from the collection such cases as the
politically and religiously motivated harassment of François de Rohan, bishop of
Angers and an intimate of the regent appointed in virtue of the Concordat, whom
Lizet decried in February 1525 as a heretic returning to his vomit of simony?2
Farge’s collection offers an implicit narrative of Catholic confessionalization
during the reign of Francis I—what he has elsewhere called the formation of the
parti conservateur (Le parti conservateur au XVI e siècle: Université et Parlement de
Paris à l’époque de la Renaissance et de la Réforme [Paris, 1992]). That the collection’s
first two documents concern the reformation or restoration to strict observance of
the nuns of Yerres in 1515, which resulted in the Parlement’s commissioner suspending the abbess and transferring protesting nuns elsewhere (pp. 3–4), suggests
that the implicit narrative might be of the Parlement’s shift from resisting ecclesiological heresy to suppressing Protestant, doctrinal heresy. This is a rich, useful,
and provocative resource.
University of California, Berkeley

TYLER LANGE

The Early Luther: Stages in a Reformation Reorientation. By Berndt Hamm. Translated by Martin J. Lohrmann. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing. 2014. Pp. xx, 286. $36.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-6924-1.)
A cottage industry of twentieth-century studies of Martin Luther was the
reconstruction of his Reformation “turn” (Wende) or “breakthrough” (Durchbruch).
In the preface to the 1545 edition of his Latin works, Luther described a sudden
1. Paris, Archives nationales [AN], X1a4830, 329r; alluding to Jerome, Contra
vigilantium.
2. AN X1a4876, 154–156v; on simoniaca haeresis: C.1 q.1 c.28, and Jean Leclercq,
“Simoniaca Heresis,” Studi Gregoriani, 1 (1947), 523–30.

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insight into the active righteousness of God, after which he felt that he had “entered
paradise itself through open gates.” Unfortunately, his references to the date of this
discovery are unclear, and his description of what he discovered does not easily mesh
with his early writings. The scholarly task has thus been twofold: to describe what
was the new discovery that transformed Luther from late-medieval monk into
Protestant Reformer and to date just when this discovery occurred.
Berndt Hamm of Erlangen University has been at the forefront of the
rethinking of this problem in recent decades. Rather than seek a single breakthrough, he traces the complex development of Luther’s thought from his earliest
notes from 1509 through his tracts of 1520, by which time the essential elements
and form of his Reformation theology are set. There is no single breakthrough or
turn in Luther’s thought but rather a complex, interrelated series of shifts and
breaks. Driven by his engagement with scripture in the classroom and by his own
spiritual and theological problems, he developed a different way of thinking about
Christian faith and life. This volume, although a collection of essays mostly printed
elsewhere over a twenty-year period, constitutes a comprehensive and careful analysis of the most important of these shifts. Each essay can be read independently, but
together, they constitute the most up-to-date and detailed analysis in English of
Luther’s development during these decisive years.
As Timothy Wengert notes in the introduction, the most important elements
of Luther’s proposal are in the first three essays, which focus on the shift between
1510 and 1516 from love to faith as the central concept that undergirds his portrayal of the Christian life. This shift was rooted in late-medieval developments
related to penance and humility in the context of an emergent “piety theology”
(Frömmigkeitstheologie). In a far more detailed way than was the case fifty years ago,
Luther’s evolution is situated in its late-medieval setting.
Also especially worthy of note is the essay on the way in which Luther appropriated and transformed strands of late-medieval mysticism into a new vision of the
union of the Christian with Christ that focused on the Word as a mode of mediation that produced its own sort of immediacy. The volume closes with Hamm’s
own summary of Luther’s mature theology of justification.
A tension that permeates the essays is between Hamm’s careful delineation of
continuities and discontinuities between Luther and his immediate medieval forebears
and his own insistence, common to most Protestant Luther scholarship of the last
hundred years, that what finally results constitutes a “total break” (p. 177) with what
preceded it. Here Hamm’s own theological commitments perhaps shape his reading.
The translation is occasionally clumsy but, in the cases where this reviewer
checked the original German, accurate.
This volume is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand
Luther’s early development.
The Catholic University of America

MICHAEL ROOT

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405

The Roman Monster: An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics. By
Lawrence P. Buck. [Early Modern Studies, 13.] (Kirksville, MO: Truman
State University Press. 2014. Pp. xiv, 258. $49.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1612481-06-7.)
It comes as a surprise to many undergraduates, and to not too few who are not,
that criticism of the papacy and calls for reform and renewal did not spring fully
formed from the head of Martin Luther. In The Roman Monster, Lawrence Buck
explores a late-fifteenth-century icon of antipapal propaganda and then its use and
embellishment by Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s ally in Wittenberg, in the 1520s
as part of Luther’s campaign against Pope Leo X.
In January 1496, during the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503, r. Alexander VI from 1492), Rome suffered one of its worst floods. As the waters receded,
people began to report the sighting of a monster that had washed up on the banks
of the Tiber. The monster was quickly seen by many as a portent of papal incompetence generally and Borgia corruption specifically. In the opening section of The
Roman Monster, Buck meticulously uncovers the origin of the stories about the
monster that washed ashore and its depictions in both poetry and woodcuts. The
Roman Monster was a conglomeration of animals that each represented a different
vice or corruption and displayed a nightmare visage. The Monster had the face of
an ass, the torso and left hand of a female human, and the right hand of an elephant’s trunk. Its legs were an ass’s and a raptor’s talon, its tail was a dragon’s neck
and head, and its buttock was a fiendish old man’s head. The image and some of
the poetry soon found their way into the small Waldensian community in Rome,
where these were circulated. Buck then traces its movement from Rome to
Bohemia, where Waldensians continued to use it as they hurled criticisms at the
papacy. The detective work demonstrated in this section of the book is to be
lauded. Many people have seen the bizarre image, as it became even more popular
in the sixteenth century when it was adopted by Luther’s circle, but few have ever
asked about its origins and evolution. Masterfully and deftly, Buck finally has given
us the answers to those questions.
Buck next turns his attention to how the image might have come to the attention of Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg in the 1520s. In 1521 Luther published his Passional Christi unnd Antichristi, in which he contrasted the true Christ
over and against the papal antichrist; he was excommunicated by Leo X and later
that year was banned by Emperor Charles V. After spending nearly a year in
hiding, Luther re-emerged in 1522 and began one of his most prolific seasons as a
theologian, writer, and (most important for this book) antipapal polemicist. In
1522–23, he returned to biting commentary. Although written by Melanchthon,
The Pope Ass has Luther’s fingerprints all over it. For example, the Pope Ass of 1523
is full of lowbrow humor, which was rather a hallmark of Luther but was rarely
used by Melanchthon. What Buck does, however, is demonstrate the degree to
which Melanchthon used this tone that is more typical of Luther to promote a very
deep and theological exegesis of the Roman Monster by aligning each of its parts
with some form of papal turpitude.

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The final section of the book details the ways in which this wildly popular
pamphlet became a set-piece of Lutheran antipapal propaganda (with thirteen
reprints appearing in nine cities). Even when The Pope Ass was not printed, the
image of the Monster continued to have a life of its own.
One did not have to look past the pope’s own curia to find vigorous and vociferous opponents of Alexander VI. In general, however, when stories of pre-Luther
criticisms of the papacy are told, Girolamo Savonarola often dominates the discourse between Jan Hus and Luther. Buck has added an important voice to the
story and showed the ways in which that fifteenth-century voice was taken over and
manipulated to different ends in the sixteenth century.
Baylor University

DAVID M. WHITFORD

The Lives of the Popes and Emperors. By Pseudo-Petrarch. Translated by Aldo S.
Bernardo and Reta A. Bernardo. Edited and introduced by Tania Zampini.
(New York: Italica Press. 2015. Pp. xxxviii, 280. $50.00. ISBN 978-1-59910253-5.)
The anonymous Chronica de le vita de pontefici et imperadori romani is a narrative history of the pontiffs and emperors from the first century to 1526. The work
was published in four editions—1478, 1506, 1526, and 1536—in the original
Tuscan. The present translation is based on the fourth edition. The translation of
the text by Aldo S. Bernardo and Reta A. Bernardo is excellent. In checking the
Italian against forty pages of the English, this reviewer found only four errors or
infelicities (p. 202, line 18: praestantia—“persistence” here should read “excellence”;
p. 199, line 3: ovviare—“help” here should read “oppose”; p. 218, lines 4–5: constituzioni—“decisions” should read “decretals”; and universali studii—“appropriate
offices” should read “studia generalia” [a note on these studia would be needed
here]; and p. 222, line 19: ciascuno: “dukes” should read “each one”).
Although Tania Zampini makes it clear that the attribution of the whole narrative to Petrarch up to 1526 is impossible, her introduction fails to discuss the
layers of texts that bring the narrative up to 1526. She footnotes the key passage
that signals the end of what appears to have been the original text—that is, the passage, “Here end The Lives of Roman Pontiffs and Emperors composed by Messer
Francesco Petrarch” (p. 222)—and concludes that the text ended in 1374. The final
sentence before this passage, however, refers to Pope Gregory XI’s return to Rome
early in 1377. Moreover, it would have been important to state clearly that the
author of the passage was expressly adding his text to an already existing one. It was
either this author or a later one who inserted a passage in the section on the pontificate of Alexander III (1159–81), observing that the text must be corrupted
because Petrarch would not have omitted mention of the Venetian victory over the
emperor in 1176. According to Zampini, the 1536 edition mirrors that of 1526, but
what did the 1526 edition add to that of 1505, and what was the difference between
the latter and the 1478 edition?

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Zampini has indicated in her discussion and notes to the text a number of possible sources for the work, but it is almost certain that the structure interweaving
papal and imperial biographies and much of the information used up to 1277
comes directly or indirectly from the widely circulated Chronicon pontificum et
imperatorum of Martin of Poland, which covered the line of popes and emperors
from the beginning to the ascension of Nicolas III. Martin’s Chronicon was innovative in that it presented tabular biographies of the popes by fifty-year periods on
the verso of the manuscript page and on the recto those of the emperors corresponding to that period. Likely due to the complicated spatial arrangements of the original text, the papal and imperial biographies over time followed one another
roughly in chronological order as they do in the Chronica.
In the case of the popes to 872/891, word-for-word passages might have been
taken from the Liber pontificalis, another source on which Martin drew heavily, but
borrowings of the Chronica for the subsequent centuries suggest dependence on
Martin’s work up to 1277. However, especially for the thirteenth century, the
author of the Chronica used other sources for the popes as well. The Italian text’s
interest in miracles and prodigies stands in marked contrast to the Chronicon. This
reviewer’s impression is that Martin was also much less influential in the case of the
imperial biographies, particularly for the thirteenth century. Beginning in the
second half of the thirteenth century, Zampini has rightly noted the influence of
Italian sources, especially Giovanni Villani.
The belief of a later author that the text was corrupted because of the omission
of a reference that Petrarch would have had to make suggests that he at least believed
that the text up to 1377 was the work of the humanist. Whether or not the printers
of the text believed in Petrarch’s authorship, they took advantage of the revival of
interest in Petrarch’s writing—especially his Italian poetry—to make a profit.
The importance of the Chronica is that it reflects the publishers’ understanding
of the historical interests of a large group of readers with middling education.
Duke University (Emeritus)

RONALD G. WITT

The Life of Ignatius of Loyola. By Pedro de Ribadeneira, S.J. Translated by Claude
Pavur, S.J. [Jesuit Primary Sources in English Translation, No. 28.] (St.
Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources. 2014. Pp. xxxii, 483. $34.95 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-880810-83-2.)
At long last, this indispensable source for the biography of St. Ignatius Loyola
is made available in English. Pedro de Ribadeneira, born in 1526, was singularly
well placed to write this “life” since, as a mere lad of thirteen, he had struck up a
friendship with Ignatius in Rome. He knew all the early companions, was present
at the creation of the Society of Jesus, and witnessed the First Vows. As a member
of the Society himself, he occupied key posts in Italy, Belgium, and England but
retired to Madrid when barely fifty because of ill health. However, he lived on to

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an astonishing old age, dying in 1611, having experienced the growth of the order
throughout the world.
Ribadeneira’s original text is something of a headache for librarians, as he
produced numerous editions of this work in both Latin and Spanish. Translator
Claude Pavur has very reasonably opted for the “approved” (third) Latin version
of 1586, even though a fuller Spanish edition has dominated the Spanish-speaking
world ever since it was published by the author in 1605, largely because of the
sheer mastery of the language: Ribadeneira’s works coincided with the flowering
of Spain’s Golden Age of Literature. In his introduction, the translator mentions
the fidelity with which Ribadeneira uses his sources. These are easy to identify: the
key letter of Diego Lainez to Juan Polanco, which was the first biography of
Ignatius and was written in 1547, almost ten years before the death of the saint;
Polanco’s own account that added many comments to that letter; the Memoriale of
Gonçalves da Câmara; and the reminiscences dictated by Ignatius shortly before
he died in 1556. However, Pavur cautions the reader about the slant given by Ribadeneira in this work. It is, in fact, more than a “life” and attempts to present the
“works” of Ignatius, tracing in considerable detail the early history of the Society
of Jesus. Ignatius is here frequently presented in military terms, and the “battle”
with the Protestant Reformation is described in vivid, even bombastic language.
Many modern readers will note with raised eyebrows the views of Ignatius on the
potential dangers of studying Hebrew; and even more his warning against any
close association with women. As a historian, Ribadeneira may have aimed to be
objective and factual—and at times, he succeeds—but his hagiographical enthusiasm for his subject tends to exclude critical reflection. Such partiality affects the
account of early Jesuit expansion, remarkable though that was. The work is
divided into five books: the first four give a chronological account of both the life
of Ignatius and the spread of the Society; the fifth concentrates on the virtues of
the saint and follows the description of the ideal Superior General that Ignatius
had inserted into the Constitutions of the Society. The indefatigable Ribadeneira
also wrote extensively elsewhere on the institution—defending its originality—
and published shorter lives of saints, including one on Ignatius. Among the papers
he left behind are Notes on the governance of Ignatius that still await an English
translation (now in preparation by this reviewer), but this biography remains his
magnum opus.
Campion Hall, Oxford

JOSEPH A. MUNITIZ, S.J.

God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England. By Jessie Childs. (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2014. Pp. xxiv, 443. $29.95 clothbound, ISBN 9780-19-939235-3; $13.19 ebook, ISBN 978-0-19-939237-7.)
Jessie Childs brings to us, with vivid storytelling and in-depth scholarship, the
heroic witness to Catholic faith in a time of persecution. Modern readers, so complacent in constitutional protections of religious liberty, will be awakened by this
chronicle of another time when the once-established Catholic religion was strug-

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gling to stay alive in a Protestant England afraid of Catholic plots from within and
Catholic Spain’s attempts to reassert the ancient faith by invasion.
The book follows the activities of two generations of the Vaux family—their
co-religionists of the noble classes (some thirty-one families) and everyday members of their households—through the arc of Elizabeth’s reign, which, as far as
English Catholics were concerned, could be divided into two epochs: before and
after the failed (and subsequent) armadas of 1588.
The poles of this pre/post armada span can be denoted by two quotations
given by the author. The first, asserting the intention of the Jesuit-led reclamation/resistance, is from Edmund Campion’s Bragg (1580): “So the faith was
planted, so it must be restored” (p. 43). The second, stating the consequence of
these efforts, is from John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, who in 1588 said:
“We are disgraced, defaced, confined from our native countries, imprisoned,
impoverished, forsaken of friends, triumphed upon by foes, scorned of all men” (p.
164). In the aftermath of the failed invasion, seventeen priests, nine laymen, and
one woman were executed to pay for “the time of fright and rumour” (p. 160).
At first, Elizabeth was timid in her persecution of Catholics, attempting only
to starve them out by advancing the purification begun by her brother, Edward VI,
ridding her kingdom of priests—hence, killing the sacramental life essential to
Catholic piety and practice. Later, after Pope Pius V’s bull (Regnans in excelsis,
1570) excommunicated her and basically gave Catholics permission to disregard
their sovereign’s laws, the queen and her government became more vigorous and
determined to suppress any fifth-column subversions, and there were many
between 1569 and 1605.
Childs documents how the Catholic faithful offered lodgings, funding, escort,
cover, and the protection (priest rooms) of host families to the priests who served
them from 1574 through the “Jesuit invasion” of 1581 and beyond. In the process,
she describes daily Catholic life under the wary eye of Protestant officials, “relic
traffic” (p. 175), scruples over relaxing fixed canon-law regulations regarding celebration of Mass, notorious exorcisms, star-chamber trials of accused Catholic nonconformists (“recusants”), and their punishments and executions. She provides
nuanced and moving accounts of Vaux family members and of Jesuits-in-charge of
the reclamation project: notably Edmund Campion and Henry Garnet. (These
Catholics lived by what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, many centuries later, would call
“costly grace.”)
An ironic footnote to the success of Elizabeth’s anti-Catholicism and the subsequent secularization of England is the fact that Harrowden Hall, the Vaux family
estate in the Midlands and the center of Catholic resistance to Protestantism, is
now the site of the Wellingborough Golf Club.
This work is essential reading for all Catholics interested in history but especially for American Catholics. The history of anti-Catholicism in the United

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States, from the first British settlement until the Civil War, is attributed to the
conflicts between English Catholics and Protestants in the “old country” precisely
during times recounted in these pages. Hostility to Catholicism was embedded into
laws of all thirteen colonies, and that spirit of animus endured until Catholics and
Protestants died on the same battlefields defending their respective causes.
Marymount California University

KENNETH J. ZANCA

Private Libraries in Renaissance England: A Collection and Catalogue of Tudor and
Early Stuart Book-Lists. Vol. VIII: PLRE 167–260. Edited by Joseph L.
Black; General Editor R. J. Fehrenbach. [Medieval and Renaissance Texts
and Studies, vol. 455.] (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies. 2014. Pp. xxxii, 470. $70.00. ISBN 978-0-866-98506-2.)
This latest volume in the editorial project Private Libraries in Renaissance
England (PLRE) moves on from the scope of the previous volumes—the book lists
in the Oxford University inventories 1507–1653—extending its field of inquiry
both geographically and socially. The editors have also adopted helpful prosopographical approaches in editing the lists by owner and providing biographical
details of each of them as well as a valuable analysis of their collections.
The first section presents forty-five lists gathered from probate inventories drawn
up between 1580 and 1603 in Norfolk and Suffolk. They reveal book owners from
varied social backgrounds following a range of occupations, including—among
others—rural clergymen and landowners, lawyers, physicians, grocers, bakers, haberdashers, blacksmiths, a scrivener, and an innkeeper. The inventories of six women, all
identified as widows, are also included. All these diverse collections include a copy of
the Bible and most of them “a booke of martyrs.” There are telling details among them
that provide fleeting but vivid glimpses of these distant lives. The widowed Katherine
Scarlet, for example, who died in 1595, owned “a Geneva bible, and olde Testament
and other bookes,” and the inventory also lists her “Readyng glass” (pp. 78–79). John
Ormesby, the proprietor of “The George” inn in Norwich, owned “A boocke of martirs” and a Bible, which he kept in a public room for the use of his customers. He also
kept a framed “Ten Commandments” for them to peruse (pp. 122–23).
The second section of the volume comprises the lists of forty-one Catholic
recusants, men and women. These are derived from two sources: inventories of
books confiscated during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period from the chambers
of recusant Catholics imprisoned in jails in London and Winchester and in Wisbech
Castle, and those seized by pursuivants in the 1580s from the private homes of those
suspected of practicing Catholicism and harboring priests. A valuable introductory
essay on Catholic libraries by Alexandra Walsham and Earle Havens situates these
lists in the context of the Catholic community during this period.
A third section covers the substantial book lists, spanning the period 1578–
1647, of three Protestant women representatives of the aristocracy, the gentry, and
the middle classes respectively.

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The final section presents the sizable and varied booklists, dated 1584–1639,
of five Protestant clergyman. Three served rural parishes; the other two were based
in London. The Paris-born Jean Loiseau de Tourval came to London in 1603. He
spied for King James I, was a friend of John Donne (who presented him with a rich
living in the City of London), and became well established in London literary circles. The books of the radical Protestant Hanserd Knollys, a member of the Particular Baptists, were confiscated in 1639. It is the inventory drawn up on this occasion that is published here.
This volume is a most welcome addition to this outstanding series. These
comprehensive catalogs, made easily accessible by clear presentation, organization,
and methodology together with the comprehensive indices, will be an invaluable
resource for all scholars working in the intellectual, religious, and social life of the
period. Collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library has allowed the PLRE’s
database of all records so far generated by the project, including those published in
this volume, to be made accessible online at http://plre.folger.edu.
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge

ANNE DILLON

Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich. Edited by Luca
Baschera, Bruce Gordon, and Christian Moser. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2014. Pp. x, 300.
$134.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6796-4.)
In grand narratives of the Reformation, the Swiss contribution has often been
sidelined, and those dealing with conditions after the integration of Zurich tend to
focus on the movement’s early leader, Huldrych Zwingli, who died on the battlefield in 1531. This collection of essays exemplifies more recent efforts to challenge
these representations, to which many of the authors have already made notable
contributions. It explicitly focuses on the period after Zwingli’s death and particularly that overseen by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75). At the same
time, as the title implies, the volume is concerned with the consequences of
Zwingli’s original break with the Catholic Church and the ways in which models
and exempla from the past were used in the development of a new church and society. The opening chapter, written by the editors, is a veritable tour de force: it provides a wide-ranging and highly insightful discussion of the various means by
which the past, both distant and more immediate, could provide templates that
contributed to the leading Reformers’ understanding and helped to shape the direction they took. Despite the radical nature of the break, the connections with the
past were also manifest. As the editors wryly note, “The Reformation had to live in
its parents’ house” (p. 8). The following ten chapters offer a range of case studies
that collectively illustrate this complex dynamic.
Mark Taplin examines Josias Simler’s engagement with a range of patristic
writings that had an importance for Christological debates in his Scripta veterum
(1571); Jon Delmas Wood’s article is concerned with the idea of “collective episco-

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pacy” (p. 81), derived from the Old Testament and expounded by Bullinger in his
Sermones synodales. Torrance Kirby’s chapter offers a close reading of the letter of
praise written by Peter Martyr Vermigli on the accession of Queen Elizabeth I of
England in 1558 and demonstrates the varied messages that comparisons with Old
Testament figures David and Josiah were meant to convey. Christian Moser highlights the vogue for Commentaries on the Book of Ruth in Zurich between 1530
and 1600, compared with only limited interest elsewhere: the principal characters in
Ruth evidently provided useful models of behavior for the readers of the text. In
similar fashion, Rebecca Giselbrecht examines the transformation of the image of
Mary in the Reformation through an examination of her portrayal in the works of
Zwingli and Bullinger. Kurt Jakob Rüetschi focuses on two sermons delivered by
Rudolf Gwalther in 1533, in which he drew lessons for child-rearing from the childhood of Jesus: only if children were raised appropriately, Gwalther contended,
would the Reformation be successful. Urs Leu considers the delicate relationship
with classical literature through an analysis of the edition of Martial’s Epigrams published by Conrad Gessner, a teacher in Zurich, in 1544. Gessner censored this work
for use in the classroom and, in an accompanying dialogue, offered a more general
discussion of the issues raised by this practice. Luca Baschera evaluates Otto Werdmüller’s approach to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics in a work of 1545. Werdmüller believed that Aristotelian ethics ought to be integrated with the study of a
range of academic disciplines. Matthew McLean looks at the interactions between
the Hebrew and Old Testament scholars Konrad Pellikan and his student, Sebastian
Münster, as a means of examining models of scholarly friendship. Finally, Bruce
Gordon analyzes two biographical writings—Pellikan’s autobiographical Chronicon
written for his son and nephew, and Johannes Jud’s Historische Beschreibung, a portrait of his father, Leo Jud—to show how the subjects of both works were presented
as exemplary and how these portrayals were shaped by familial concerns.
Taken together, this collection of essays greatly enhances our understanding
of the Reformation in Zurich in these less familiar decades. In addition, it provides
an excellent and coherent case study through which the relationship between the
past and the present in the Reformation era are exemplified. For these reasons, this
volume is a truly valuable addition to the literature.
University of Bristol

KENNETH AUSTIN

Andrew Melville (1545–1622). Writings, Reception, and Reputation. Edited by
Roger A. Mason and Steven J. Reid. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation
History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2014. Pp. xvi, 306. $134.95.
ISBN 978-1-4094-2693-6.)
This is a collection of studies on the enigmatic Andrew Melville, Scottish
ecclesiastical activist, Latin poet, divinity professor, and nominally a minister. His
fame lay in being the putative chief driver of Scottish de iure divino Presbyterianism
and a stentorian watchman against the drift to church-state fusion. This involved
quasi-Manichaean antagonism to both episcopacy and Erastianism, engendering

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images of him as either a noble dissident or a subversive rebel. The positive picture
of Melville projected his herculean efforts, along with his university reforms rooted
in his humanist and Calvinist commitment, reinforced by a cosmopolitan past.
The book advances the quest for the historical Melville that has been picking up
steam after nearly two centuries of inertia. It aspires to strip Melville historiography
from the coloring of Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Catholic accounts. There are
allusions to a Melville “myth,” “legend,” and “fable,” but any revisionism is not pejorative or triumphalist. Sane reconstruction or reimaging is the objective. Retrieving
and elucidating sources is the priority—especially his preferred medium of Latin
poetry on various issues—but challenging, as Melville’s Latin is “difficult, gnarled and
gritty . . . thorny, unyielding” (p. 175). Although some Melville prose is extant, he
published nothing in that form in his lifetime—bequeathing a research black hole.
The book has nine chapters (plus a sophisticated bibliography of Melville
writings), but just seven authors, as Steven Reid is responsible for two chapters (full
of nuggets) and the bibliography, as well as serving as coauthor of the introduction.
Roger Mason’s detective work on Melville’s notes in copies of George Buchanan’s
History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1582) demonstrates its resonance in Melville’s ideas
of kingship, church-state relations, and Presbyterian origins in antiquity to repudiate Catholic charges of innovation. However, Buchanan’s radicalism on tyrant
deposition and tyrannicide apparently appealed less to Melville for reasons like loyalism, to which one could add a conservative Calvinism. Reid also raises the matter,
suggesting that Melville’s reticence was due to a “theological mindset,” bowing to
scriptural authority as in Romans 13 (p. 6) and the force of “theological imperatives” (p. 70). Yet among Reformed writers everywhere there was a spectrum from
the very radical to the very conservative—all claiming biblical legitimation. Reid
also considers Melville’s “two kingdoms” notion, the parallel autonomous spheres
of spiritual and secular jurisdictions. “Strict separation” (pp. 47, 53) may not be the
right formulation. In Reformed (as in medieval) theology there was legitimate
intersection and degree of mutual coinherence, a sine qua non in what was still a
Christendom situation. The lines of demarcation were the flashpoint, concerning
the respective competencies circa sacra and in sacra including the definition of
sacra—sketched by Melville (p. 53). The fluidity of the red line in some Protestant
contexts made the question contentious.
A chapter on Melville’s British political ideology by Arthur Williamson shows
that along with other Scottish thinkers Melville’s influence was not confined to
Scotland. A Protestant Britannia would have an eschatological mission to help overthrow the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, the Counter-Reformation, and Rome. To
this anti-imperialist end “Scottish Judeocentric Calvinism” and “English apocalyptic
philo-Semitism” (p. 92) would unite. Mark Elliot’s chapter on Romans commentaries by Robert Rollock, Robert Boyd, and Melville is not quite comparing like with
like, since Melville’s “Romans” was manuscript material for college students and was
not published until modern times. It reflects standard, early Reformation exegesis
centering on justification, sanctification, and election, adding a Calvinist emphasis

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on double predestination. Absent are echoes of the emerging covenant-of-grace theology, as in Rollock, due to become the hallmark of Reformed orthodoxy.
Reid’s contribution on Melville’s anti-episcopal poetry highlights the latter’s
preoccupation—corrosion in the spiritual jurisdiction due to bishops imposed by
the monarch. For Melville, a presbyterial church system, elective and conciliar, was
an antidote against an impure, hierarchical state church. The special qualities of
Melville’s verse are highlighted in Jamie Reid Baxter’s lively discussion of his poem
on the English Catholic Gunpowder Plot (1605), composed—along with some
Psalms paraphrases—during Melville’s detention in London. There are also precious translations in appendix 1. David McOmish’s chapter on Melville’s poetic
skills in relation to classical and neo-Latin examines some samples. The highly
technical analysis concludes that while (implicitly) Melville may not have been a
great poet, he was “more than capable” (p. 199).
John McCallum’s chapter discusses an important source on Melville: the diary
and autobiography of James Melville, his nephew. Although some elements nourished the heroic Melville image, McCallum demonstrates that overall, James’s
account does not depict his uncle as a saint or titan. Caroline Erskine’s fascinating
study on the partisan fashioning of Melville focuses on the influential biography by
Thomas McCrie (Edinburgh, 1819). She places it in the context of “the contested
Melville legend” (p. 218). This was both positive and negative: the glorifying one
manufactured by militant Presbyterians and Covenanters, the disparaging one by
Episcopalians and Anglicans.
This collection is an embarass de richesses whose value after digestion will endure.
University of Glasgow

IAN HAZLETT

Una gentildonna davanti al Sant’Uffizio: Il processo per eresia a Isabella della Frattina,
1568–1570. By Federica Ambrosini. [Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance,
no. DXXXV.] (Geneva: Librairie Droz. 2014. Pp. lxxxix, 440. $98.40 paperback. ISBN 978-2-600–01930-9.)
This book presents an edition of the voluminous documents of the trial for
heresy of the noblewoman Isabella della Frattina by the Venetian Holy Office and an
historical introduction. Although few women were tried by Italian inquisitions, this
useful book tells us a good deal about how they presented themselves to inquisitions.
Isabella da Passano was born in Padua, the daughter of a Genoese noble
couple. She married another noble, Marco della Frattina from Portogruaro in
Friuli, where they lived. In 1559 she was denounced as a heretic because she was
seen with an unnamed heretical book in her hands, and because she ate meat on
days of abstinence. The local inquisitor did little. However, in 1568 her mother,
then living in Mantua, in response to intense questioning from an inquisitor investigating a group of Protestants there, mentioned Isabella as a possible heretic. The
mother said that she feared that Isabella might have contracted heretical ideas from

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learned men who came to the Passano house in Padua. Federica Ambrosini speculates that the mother may have implicated her daughter because she feared for herself if she did not offer some names. Because of the mother’s statement, plus evidence that a man hired to teach the Frattina children in Portogruaro had read from
heretical books to Isabella and her husband, Isabella (now a widow) was arrested
and brought to Venice for trial in 1568. She was about thirty-six years of age.
A long trial from June 1568 to May 1570 followed, during which Isabella was
confined to a female convent. The Venetian Holy Office followed its customary practice of carrying on several trials simultaneously, which meant that Isabella or witnesses were questioned only once a week or every fortnight. Isabella, a strong personality, immediately admitted having looked at heretical books for reasons of curiosity
in the past. But she denied any adherence to Protestant ideas, the customary defense
of those accused. She adopted the stance that as a woman she did not think about
theological matters. That was for men. Even though she was Latin literate, she
claimed to be a devout and conforming woman who read only the Little Office of
Our Lady, a popular devotional work, and prayed the rosary. Ambrosini points out
that this position enabled her to avoid any potential doctrinal traps and was consistent
with contemporary attitudes concerning women and religion. On May 11, 1570, the
Venetian Holy Office absolved Isabella della Frattina for lack of evidence.
The decision was expected, because no heretical books were found, because
the titles of works that she might have read or heard were not identified, and
because she practiced all the daily actions and rituals of Catholicism. Ambrosini
comments that people often revealed their heterodoxy by their failure to do ordinary Catholic actions, such as attending Mass and observing the rules of fast and
abstinence. Ambrosini opines that there are three possible conclusions about
Isabella. She might have been telling the truth. Second, she and her husband had
been philo-Protestants nourished in a Protestant conventicle in Padua of which her
mother was part. But then the couple rejected Protestantism and became exemplary
Catholics. Or, third, that Isabella was a Nicodemite, one who conformed outwardly to Catholicism, while holding heretical views in secret.
This is an excellent book. In her long introduction, Ambrosini provides a balanced assessment of heresy in the Veneto, the operations of the Venetian Holy
Office, and analysis of what the trial revealed. Most important, the trial documents
have been carefully edited and provided with extensive notes. It is sometimes forgotten that the accused had the right to defense counsel in Italian inquisition trials.
The surviving documentation of this trial is very unusual in that it includes the text
of the twenty-pages-long impassioned and effective oration in her defense by a
well-known lawyer from Friuli. Three indexes and a comprehensive bibliography
complete the book. Anyone interested in the history of heresy in the Veneto and
the Venetian Inquisition will learn a good deal from this book.
University of Toronto (Emeritus)
and Chapel Hill, NC

PAUL F. GRENDLER

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The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France. By Joseph Bergin. (New Haven:
Yale University Press. 2014. Pp. xi, 379. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-300-20769-9.)
Perhaps no one but Joseph Bergin could have written this book, as it is probably the crowning work of his long career studying the Catholic Church in France
during the seventeenth century. It could be seen as the second volume of a comprehensive history of the French Catholic Church that he began with his Church, Society, and Religious Change in France, 1580–1730 (New Haven, 2009), with this
volume dealing with the relationship between church and state.
Bergin begins his work in 1560, when the monarchy suddenly found itself
confronting a powerful Protestant movement that challenged the traditional understanding of the monarchy and the Church. The crown found it necessary to grant
limited freedom of conscience to the Huguenots, albeit not to other Protestants, as
it lacked the power to crush them militarily. He emphasizes the impossibility of the
monarchy ever becoming Protestant, which Henry of Navarre was forced to recognize in his decision to become Catholic to gain the throne; the author points out
that this reversed cujus regio, ejus religio. The subsequent negotiations with the
papacy to secure the lifting of Henry’s excommunication allow Bergin to introduce
a major theme: the contentious relationship between pope and king over who really
did control the French Church, which continued unabated until 1715.
The next three chapters deal with the era from 1595 to 1624. They stress the
themes of reconciliation after the religious wars, examining the difficult negotiations creating the Edict of Nantes and its strengths and weaknesses for both
churches; Gallicanism, demonstrating that a still potent ideology of an independent
Gallican church allowed the assembly of clergy to become the most powerful of the
three estates; and the rise of the dévots, tracing how the rise of a zealous Catholic
religiosity impacted royal politics. Then comes a chapter examining Richelieu
largely as the leader of the clergy.
The following three chapters cover major topics over much of the seventeenth
century: the monarchy’s efforts to draw on the vast financial resources of the
Catholic Church, the challenges faced by the Huguenots in dealing with renewed
civil war and the opposition of revived Catholicism, and Jansenism. In respect to
the last, Bergin empathizes it was not an organized movement of opposition to the
monarchy; yet the royal efforts to crush it only attracted more to its ranks. The final
chapters deal, of course, with Louis XIV’s reign. They treat the renewed Gallicanism that led to the crisis with the papacy over the régale and the Four Gallican Articles, the status of the Huguenots prior to 1685 and the process leading to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the role of the monarchy in securing papal
condemnation of Jansenism in 1705. In a succinct conclusion the author makes two
major points: First, both Richelieu and Mazarin managed to keep religious dissenters, whether Protestant or Catholic, from becoming a major issue for the
monarchy, but Louis XIV with his more personalized rule allowed them to become
problems; second, the French Catholic Church had both clerical assemblies and a

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cadre of effective bishops that gave it a more autonomous voice, which it directed
largely to implementing the medieval vision of un roi, une loi, une foi.
Bergin’s Church, Society, and Religious Change and this book together could be
considered the definitive work on the seventeenth-century French Catholic
Church except for the absence of an in-depth examination of life at the parish level
in either one. The book at hand draws heavily from his many earlier books, but it
is also a synthesis of a vast number of works by other historians. The bibliography
alone would make this an important work. Well written and persuasive, it will
likely be a long time before it is superseded.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

FREDERIC J. BAUMGARTNER

The Catholic Rubens: Saints and Martyrs. By Willibald Sauerländer. (Los Angeles:
Getty Research Institute. 2014. Pp. 311. $45.00. ISBN 978-1-60606-268-5.)
Willibald Sauerländer (born in 1924) is an internationally recognized art historian, who taught during his prolific career at universities in the United States,
Germany, and France. Being a medievalist, he wrote several tone-setting publications redefining the history of French medieval sculpture. This book stems from a
review of the 2006 Rubens exhibition at Lille, rejecting the simplistic view that
ranges the essence of Rubens’s oeuvre under the label of “baroque passions.”
Instead, Sauerländer draws attention to the ethical, philosophical, and religious
tension that is at the heart of Rubens’s art. The volume appeared in German in
2011. Thanks to the Getty Foundation, it has been published in English, allowing
the publication to reach a larger audience.
As the title suggests, Sauerländer focuses on the characteristics of Rubens’s
work as one of the major painters of the Counter-Reformation. The book therefore focuses on three topics that were at the center of religious strife in the Netherlands. The first is the dogma of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and
his sacrifice to save the world. The second is the veneration of the Virgin, and the
last is the veneration of saints and saint martyrs. The volume certainly does not
aspire to giving an exhaustive overview of Rubens’s religious work. On the contrary, the author has selected some representative examples that highlight the
visual rhetoric used by Rubens to underscore the Catholic position regarding these
primary themes. He uses the selected paintings to refer to related works, thereby
offering the reader a broader perspective on the painter’s oeuvre. The execution is
inspired by the commissioners, often religious congregations such as the Jesuits or
the different mendicant orders. For each of the paintings the author provides a
contextual summary of the commission and a thorough analysis of its iconographic
program.
Herein lies the important contribution of the book. Next to the adequate
introduction to the content of each work, the author is still able to present some
new and challenging iconographical insights. They illustrate how Rubens—

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according to the author—adapted his methods to visualize the subjects of the
painting depending on each individual patron. This raises, however, an important
question: was it indeed Rubens who put his “versatile and sensitive genius” in the
service of his commissioners but at the same time monopolized the content of his
works? Without detracting from the talent of the artist who certainly was capable
of providing his work with the most eloquent references, the question yet arises
whether the commissioners really remained on the sidelines as to the iconographical program of their commissions. The problem here is, of course, that sources
documenting the genesis of these paintings are extremely scarce. But in the case
of the documented commission of the thirty-nine ceiling paintings for the Jesuit
church in Antwerp, for instance, it is clear that it was the Jesuit fathers who had
the last word:
That the aforesaid Sr. Rubens shall furnish . . . the thirty-nine paintings . . .
according to the list [of subjects] of such paintings delivered to him by the
aforesaid Superior, at whose pleasure he shall nevertheless be obliged to
change several of these subjects, when the aforesaid Superior shall deem it
useful.1

Although the author seems to be aware of the problem—“With respect to the surviving sources, in our ignorance of the wishes and instructions of his clients, we are
at an inevitable disadvantage in our historical understanding of Rubens’s paintings
of saints” (p. 133)—it seems that some more nuance in favor of the patrons would
have been appropriate.
Apart from this reservation, The Catholic Rubens is an outstanding, entertaining publication of a convenient size and abundantly illustrated. It is not only an
excellent introduction for a broad audience to the very essence of Rubens’s religious
oeuvre; it also convinces the more advanced reader by its many persuasive, innovative findings.
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

VALÉRIE HERREMANS

The Christian Monitors. The Church of England and the Age of Benevolence, 1680–
1730. By Brent S. Sirota. [The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century
Culture and History.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 360.
$65.00. ISBN 978-0-300-16710-8.)
This is a well-written, wide-ranging, and important book that sheds significant
fresh light on the Anglican revival of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Sirota examines the breadth of that revival, from attempts to improve pastoral
care and an increase in devotional writing and charitable endeavors, to the founding
of a variety of religious societies, including the societies for the reformation of man-

1. Contract as published in J. R. Martin, The Ceiling Paintings for the Jesuit Church in
Antwerp, [Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, 1], (New York, 1967), p. 217.

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ners (the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts). Although some of this is very well-trodden
ground, Sirota brings out much more clearly than previous scholars the theological
politics of this many-faceted enterprise and situates it within the broader political
world of the age, emphasizing as he does the voluntary, associational, entrepreneurial, improvisatory, and lay elements of the revival that resonated well with some of
the characteristics of the day. In so doing, he makes a number of crucial arguments
and provides insights that will be eagerly discussed by other scholars. First, he
stresses that this revival preceded the Revolution of 1688–89, being rooted in Anglican enterprises in the 1680s. Second, pace Tony Claydon and others, Sirota notes
the relative failure of the crown under William and Mary to harness this impulse
that explains its outpouring in the reformation of manners societies and voluntary
activities. Third, in an illuminating study of the SPCK, Sirota points to the drift to
Church Whiggery in its ideology as well as the significance of remaining without a
charter that ensured that it was able to respond to a plethora of causes, particularly
ecumenical ones. Fourth, and important in a period where we have been used to
thinking about the attacks on priestcraft, Sirota highlights the “moral counterrevolution” (p. 187) that tried to contain this revival within establishment—and particularly ecclesiastical and clerical—fora, and he maintains that irreconcilable visions of
Anglican revival played a crucial role in creating the political and religious divisions
of the times. Last, he argues that this activity led to the age of benevolence, and, as
exemplified by the work of the SPG, which encouraged Englishmen and -women
to feel compassion for people round the world, Sirota suggests this anticipated Victorian and modern humanitarian concerns.
Much of this is thought-provoking. In particular, Sirota observes that this
activity can best be seen as secularization in its true sense—the taking of religion
out of the churches into the world and being led by laymen and -women instead of
by clergy. But, as he notes in the conclusion, this could also be seen as laicization
or as an alternative sacralization of civil society (and it might have helped him make
his case even more arresting if he had used the concept of sacralization to describe
this process rather than secularization that has its own intellectual baggage). It
might also be that Sirota is over-egging the case in emphasizing the uniqueness of
the Anglican revival in creating an age of benevolence. Much of what he outlines
could be said of the associational world of late-medieval Catholicism with its
guilds, fraternities, and concern for the poor; and, in any case, some of the broader
points he makes have been claimed for the Counter-Reformation in eighteenthcentury France by Louis Chatellier. It is open to question whether the binary polarities he finds between the two visions of Anglican revival—lay or clerical; associational or ecclesiastical; novel or traditional; and confessional or ecumenical—were
as clear-cut as he implies, and his express desire to find the “fault lines” between the
Church and civil society is rather misleading in a period where leading clergy would
have seen the two as part of the same. Sirota concludes that the result of the
endeavors he has examined was “a space perhaps where individuals may be
improved, but not saved.” Although debates occurred in the late-seventeenth and
early-eighteenth centuries, as in other periods, about what one needed to do to be

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saved, to its religious adherents, civil society in the eighteenth century would surely
have been seen as a space where one could be saved as well as improved.
University of Nottingham

JEREMY GREGORY

Pursuing Social Holiness: The Band Meeting in Wesley’s Thought and Popular
Methodist Practice. By Kevin M. Watson. (New York: Oxford University
Press. 2014. Pp. xiv, 221. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-19-933636-4.)
In Pursuing Holiness Kevin Watson has given us a lavishly documented historical study of the inception, role, and transitions that occurred in the “band meetings” that played a significant role in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century
British Methodism. Using John Wesley’s original understanding of “social holiness” as referring to the life of sanctity as being worked out within the Christian
community, Watson gives the reader an insightful and stimulating study of the
bands of early British Methodism.
Watson rightly views the bands as being distinct from Wesley’s more famous
“class meetings,” where those who had been raised up by Wesleyan evangelism
were prompted to experience the fruits of conversion or initial justification. The
bands, which Watson described as a locus for “communal Christian formation” (p.
2), were more properly the place for a person’s quest for holiness of heart and life
(in Wesleyan theological parlance “entire sanctification” or “Christian Perfection”).
The Band was a small group of four to six intentional and mature Christian disciples, who—as one of the early Methodists, Charles Perronet put it—“aim at being
wholly devoted to God . . .” (p. 141, emphasis in original). In this sense, the band
meeting was “a means of grace” (p. 62) for the early Methodists, in which spiritual
formation practices and the discipline of examination of the conscience were practiced among Protestant laity.
Watson does a wonderful job of showing how the band meetings were a synthesis of Moravian experiential religion and Anglican-style spiritual formation. He
gives the reader a generous dose of the Wesley brothers’ ardent and sometimes conflicting understanding of the role and value of this small group. He does us the further service of taking the reader inside the sessions of the bands through a careful
study of letters, journals, and diaries of early Methodists. He also traces the decline
of the band meetings as they were gradually replaced by prayer meetings, revivals,
camp meetings, and other experiences that were focused more on Christian fellowship than intentional spiritual formation.
Watson’s concluding sentences read like a mild indictment against the
Methodist movement for leaving aside the bands in favor of more popular forms of
Christian fellowship:
Wesley was convinced that God had raised up the Methodists in order to
proclaim the doctrine of entire sanctification. He was also convinced that this
vision would not be actualized without Christian community. The band

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meeting offered the most effective approach to social holiness that Methodism has deployed to date. It was abandoned not because it was tried and
found to be wanting, but because it was laid aside as the early Methodist
emphasis on entire sanctification began to be watered down and the understanding of social holiness shifted toward larger-scale revivals and away from
more intimate and frequent gatherings where people unburdened themselves
and shared the burdens of others. (p. 186)

This book is highly recommended for students of Methodism, as well as for
all those readers interested in the vital role played by that Christian community in
the challenging process of spiritual formation and sanctity. It is, further, a poignant
reminder that the spiritual individualism that characterizes so much of contemporary Christianity is neither entirely helpful nor desirable.
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

JOHN R. TYSON

LATE MODERN EUROPEAN
The Saint and His Disciple: Cardinal John Henry Newman, the Reverend George
Dudley Ryder and the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth Century England. By
Penelope Hunting. (Palo Alto, CA: Academica Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 206.
$75.95. ISBN 978-1-936320-01-1.)
As the grandson of an earl and the son of a bishop, George Dudley Ryder
might well have enjoyed congenial preferment in the Church of England—had he
not gone up to Oriel College in 1828 and met the future cardinal John Henry
Newman, under whose influence he fell. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1834, and his marriage to Sophia Sargent (sister of Caroline) made him a
brother-in-law of both Henry Edward Manning and Henry Wilberforce. To the
horror of their Evangelical relations, the Ryders were received into the Roman
Catholic Church en famille in 1846.
George Ryder’s story deserves to be much better known. As in so many other
cases, his secession from the Church of England divided his extended family and was
the cause in some quarters of a good deal of bitterness—certainly his relationship
with Samuel Wilberforce never recovered. Ryder appears as the scion of an impeccable Evangelical lineage—which made the blow all the more painful for those of its
members who remained in the Church of England— whose fortunes after he became
a Roman Catholic were never buoyant. He could not be ordained because he was
married; and he relied to a great extent on the goodwill of his cousin, Ambrose
Phillipps de Lisle. His later attempt to seek orders after Sophia’s death in 1850 was
foiled by his responsibilities to their seven children; and, in time, Newman’s influence
over Ryder’s sons, George and Henry, soured their previously warm relations.
Penelope Hunting’s book brings out to a great extent the soul-wringing that went
on and, using the private family archives, also presents thoroughly the various family
networks in minute and painstaking detail. The thoroughness of this aspect of her

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work is undermined, however, by a series of sweeping statements and generalizations
elsewhere. Hunting states, for example, that Samuel Wilberforce was so embarrassed
by the converts among his near relations that “he considered resigning from his position in the Anglican Church” but that he stayed at his post “with his eye on the bishopric of Winchester” (p. 70). Wilberforce was not without ambition, of course, but if
this particular gambit can be proved, then it needs a footnote. Elsewhere, the statement “Ryder was threatened with excommunication if, as a Catholic, he lived in the
Bishop’s [Wilberforces’s] diocese” (p. 70) is baffling—and similarly unreferenced.
Meanwhile, her description of the Catholic Wilberforces praying separately from
their Anglican kinsmen at Samuel Wilberforce’s funeral as “an outstanding example of
religious prejudice” (p. 171) does not take into account the ecclesiastical restrictions
that then existed relating to Catholics taking part in non-Catholic services nor David
Newsome’s conclusion in the epilogue of The Parting of Friends (London, 1966) that
the funeral was for the most part a rare moment of familial unity.
There are too many unqualified assertions in this book, and oracular statements such as “Blessed John Henry Newman will soon be a Saint” (p. 1) are not
terribly helpful. They begin in the foreword, where Alan McClelland mentions—
again—his perceived “prejudice” (p. ix) of cradle Catholics toward converts and
impugns—again—Archbishop George Errington on this issue. If the story that he
mentions is actually “recorded” (p. ix), then it would be good to know where.
St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

SERENHEDD JAMES

Reforming Rome: Karl Barth and Vatican II. By Donald W. Norwood. (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2015. Pp. xxi, 263. $35.00
paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-7210-4.)
The author (b. 1940) is a minister of the United Reformed Church in Britain
and “a longtime participant in ecumenical affairs,” as the bookjacket tells us. His
expertise shows itself in the ease with which he presents ecumenical discussions of
various doctrinal topics, some of them more and some less disputed.
Donald W. Norwood claims that Karl Barth “should be understood as an heir
of the Reformation” in the sixteenth century, thus also inheriting “a vocation to
contribute to the reform of Rome” (p. 7). Barth was invited to participate in the
Second Vatican Council as observer, but due to ill health he preferred not to attend.
In 1966, however, he traveled to Rome for a series of conversations with highranking Vatican representatives, including a brief meeting with Pope Paul VI. The
events are documented in Barth’s collection Ad Limina Apostolorum (Zurich, 1967).
On the whole, Norwood’s presentation of theological topics and discussions occurs
in the form of an ecumenically minded essay. Only few sections develop an argument systematically or in detail.
The book consists of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the following questions: Why Rome? Why Reform? Why Barth? The second chapter clarifies

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why the Council was a reform council. Chapter 3 discusses two constitutions, Dei
Verbum (1965) and Lumen Gentium (1964), and Barth’s comments on them. Norwood could have added depth to his presentation by including material from the
protocols of Barth’s seminars on Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium at the University
of Basel, which are now published in the diary of Barth’s confidante Eberhard
Busch, Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth (Göttingen, 2011). Chapter 4 discusses the
papacy and the question of order in the church, again with Barth’s comments.
Chapter 5 changes the focus and addresses several areas of concern for Roman
Catholic critics of Barth, including ecclesial mediation, human cooperation in salvation, and the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. It also devotes a section to the
role of women in the Church, which is “a question addressed to Barth and Rome”
(p. 146, emphasis in original). Chapter 6 considers remaining differences between
Rome and the Protestant churches in the post–Second Vatican Council era, including the question of justification by faith, the analogia entis (natural knowledge of
God), and Mariology. In regard to the last topic, which is difficult for many Protestants (and for some Roman Catholics as well), Norwood claims that the Council
was determined to listen to non-Roman Catholic theologians [and] heard
and accepted the criticism that whatever was said about Mary must not
detract from the shared belief that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus
Christ, Savior of the World and Son of God. (p. 192)

Still, what exactly it means to “detract” from the uniqueness of Christ’s person and
work needs clarification.
Finally, the seventh chapter refers to the question of church unity as perhaps
the central issue. It is cautious in regard to the widely heralded Decree on Ecumenism (Unitas Redintegratio, 1964) and proposes that the Council itself “became
a much better example of the church seeking to answer Jesus’ prayer that all may be
one” (p. 198). For Norwood, the Council was an event that proved that church
unity can become real as a gift, in practice rather than on paper, such as in praying
together and responding to the Word of scripture. Moreover, the Council “can
revive our confidence in the discovery of Truth through debate” (p. 220).
On the whole, the book displays a refreshing ecumenical optimism and corresponds to Barth’s own confidence that in Christ we already are one:
it belongs to the being of the congregation [Barth’s preferred term instead of
church] to be a unity in the plurality of its members, i.e., of the individual
believers assembled in it, and to be a single unity, not having a second or third
unity of the same kind side by side with it.1

University of Basel

MATTHIAS GOCKEL

1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans.
G. W. Bromiley (London, 1956), vol. IV, pt. 1, p. 668, emphasis in original. This reviewer
has slightly revised Bromiley’s translation.

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The Spirit of Vatican II: Western European Progressive Catholicism in the Long Sixties.
By Gerd-Rainer Horn. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. x, 264.
$90.00. ISBN 978-0-19-959325-5.)
This is a sequel to the author’s The Spirit of ’68 (New York, 2007), a standard
work on 1960s radicalism. Gerd-Rainer Horn notes that no reviewer commented
on the absence of religion from the book. Yet, in his view, this was a serious lacuna.
He argues that the ferment arising from the Second Vatican Council prepared
Catholics to be active participants, and sometimes pioneers, in the social movements of the “red decade” from about 1966 to 1976. Moreover, the “utopian”
dimensions of progressive theology mixed readily with the utopianism of the “early”
Marx that was so influential at the time. The book is entirely about Catholics,
although he notes similar developments among European Protestants. The principal focus is on Italy, but there are also substantial sections on Spain, France, and
Belgium. Horn brings to this book a unique range of skills. He is the leading
authority on “Left Catholicism,” and although primarily a social and political historian, he is well versed in theology and is able to draw on sources in seven languages. The book is written with an enthusiasm that energizes his narrative, without ever becoming uncritical. He has a keen eye for the local and for the role of
particular personalities, while also placing these specifics in a wider political, social,
and intellectual context.
He begins with the Second Vatican Council and the theologians who were
shaping the thinking of progressive Catholics, including both internationally
renowned figures and those whose influence was more national, such as Ernesto
Balducci in Italy and José María González Ruiz in Spain. Subsequent chapters
focus on the renewed worker-priest movement and the organizations of radical
priests that proliferated in the later 1960s; on base communities (especially numerous in Italy); on Catholic student organizations; and, in an outstanding chapter, on
industrial militancy, in which the role of Catholics was especially important in Italy
and, for a time, in Spain. In the conclusion he looks both at the reasons for the
efflorescence of Catholic radicalism and at its decline in the later 1970s. Summing
up, he claims that “in many countries throughout Western Europe, a large number
of social movements—of which student movements were often only the most visible component—in the mid-to-late-1960s were animated to a significant degree by
Catholics” (p. 254). As he shows, the familiar picture of the “secular Sixties” is a
serious oversimplification insofar as many parts of Catholic Europe were concerned. In the early and middle years of that decade, levels of religious practice were
high, and in the very specific atmosphere of the later 1960s the dense networks of
Catholic organizations were readily mobilized for new causes. The Catholic
activists of those years eventually moved in many different directions. Some are still
living and still upholding the same ideals in a very different world; some moved
into more secular forms of radicalism; some retreated, disillusioned as so many were
by the defeat of their utopian hopes, into private life. Horn has not said the last
word. There is room, for example, for a book that looks much more closely at the
role of the Catholic hierarchy, including both those like Cardinal Michele Pelle-

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grino of Turin, who provided a relatively favorable environment for radical priests
and laypeople, and those like Cardinal Ermenegildo Florit of Florence, who did his
best to make life impossible for them. We have here the story as seen through the
eyes of the activists, and it is a story that is both important and wrongly neglected
(for reasons that Horn explains). But Horn’s impressive book will be the essential
starting-point for all future work in this field.
University of Birmingham (Emeritus)

HUGH MCLEOD

AMERICAN
Patrick N. Lynch, 1817–1882: Third Catholic Bishop of Charleston. By David C. R.
Heisser and Stephen J. White Sr. (Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press. 2015. Pp. viii, 271. $39.95. ISBN 978-1-61117-404-5 clothbound;
978-1-61117-405-2 e-book.)
This biography of Charleston’s third Catholic prelate, Patrick Neison Lynch,
has been long in the making. David Heisser, a native Charlestonian, initiated the
research, dying in 2010. Stephen J. White of the Charleston Historical Society has
completed this book. Like Bishop John England, who led the Charleston Diocese
from 1820 to 1842, Lynch proved to be a gifted thinker and orator who brought
talent to his missionary diocese. In England’s era the diocese encompassed both
Carolinas and Georgia. By Lynch’s episcopacy, the Diocese of Charleston contained both Carolinas, yet North Carolina was severed from the diocese in 1868.
Born in Ireland on May 17, 1817, Lynch was an infant when his family sailed
to America. In 1819 his family settled in Cheraw, South Carolina. His parents had
a dozen children, with two daughters and one son (Lynch) entering religious life.
Lynch enrolled in Bishop England’s seminary in 1829, and the bishop dispatched
the boy to Rome in 1834. Lynch studied with various seminarians; most were from
English-speaking countries. He learned to speak or read seven languages (pp. 21–
22). On April 2, 1840, Lynch was ordained a priest and given a doctorate in theology. After visiting family in Ireland, he arrived in Charleston by fall 1840.
Lynch soon became, like Bishop England, a part of the literati in Charleston.
In addition to his writings, Lynch gained “a national reputation for his work on
wells and for his contributions to geological science” (p. 37). This talented cleric
worked in various capacities, including editing the Catholic newspaper, directing
the seminary, and serving as vicar general. After the see became vacant in 1855,
Lynch was consecrated as Charleston’s third bishop on March 14, 1858.
Although Lynch did not espouse his views on slavery until late in the Civil
War, he was a slaveholder of some note, acquiring his first bondsmen in 1857. In
early 1861, a wealthy Catholic left Lynch substantial property and more than a
hundred slaves in the South Carolina interior—an area with properties managed by
prominent Catholics. The Church permitted ownership of slaves, as long as they
were baptized, were given religious instruction, were not abused, and were not sep-

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arated from their families. Regarding the legacy left to Lynch, the authors state that
Lynch “tried to be true to his publicly expressed principles” (p. 71). In 1861 he
sparred with Archbishop John Hughes of New York over the war, attacking the
North’s antislavery fanaticism and refusal to allow the South to depart peacefully.
Such loyalty prompted Confederate President Jefferson Davis to dispatch
Lynch on a desperate mission to secure papal recognition. Pius IX received Lynch
on July 4, 1864, but only as a bishop, not as a Confederate representative. Lynch
correctly surmised that slavery hurt the Confederacy’s cause. His treatise defending
the peculiar institution was published in late 1864. This work, however, did not
alter the Confederacy’s status with the Vatican. Since Lynch had traveled as a
diplomat, he had to obtain a pardon from President Andrew Johnson. With that
in hand, he returned to Charleston by December 1, 1865, spending the rest of his
episcopacy raising funds for his devastated diocese. These efforts exhausted the
Irish cleric, and he died on February 26, 1882.
This is a well written, deeply researched biography of a Southern Catholic
prelate. The authors have outlined his career and explained his positions. One
caveat is that little coverage is provided of Lynch’s activity at the First Vatican
Council. He joined other American prelates who spoke against Pius IX’s schema
to unite church and state. If Lynch supported the dogma on papal infallibility, why
did he leave in April, three months before the final vote? This is nonetheless a valuable account of a bishop who led his diocese through tumultuous times.
Georgia Southern University

JAMES M. WOODS

Les missions du Minnesota: Catholicisme et colonisation dans l’Ouest américain, 1830–
1860. By Tangi Villerbu. [Des Amériques.] (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de
Rennes. 2014. Pp. 333. €21,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-7535-3554-1.)
In the three decades from 1830 to 1860 Minnesota was a microcosm of the
American West. Mostly peopled by Natives—Dakotas, Ojibwas, and Winnebagoes (Ho-chunk)—Minnesota moved from being a mostly French-speaking region
to a territory (1849) and a state (1857) where Irish and German-speaking newcomers came to represent the majority of the population. The Manitoba multiethnic
community also included a large Métis population, although this was never institutionally recognized as it was in neighboring Manitoba. Catholicism in Minnesota—and in most of the West—went from being the dominant religion of a
well-established flock served by very few missionaries to a more structured reality
that included a bishop in St. Paul (Joseph Cretin, arrived 1851), a number of parish
priests, and religious communities both male and female (see map no. 4, clearly
designed by Pascal Brunello). Tangi Villerbu is a French cultural historian and the
author of a book on the Lewis and Clark expedition (Neuilly, 2006) and of another
on the French view of U.S. western expansion (Rennes, 2007). His new book represents an ambitious attempt to document Minnesota’s “transition . . . through the
lens of Catholicism” (p. 19).

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In Villerbu’s view, U.S. historians have so far shown an “astonishing” ignorance of documents relating to or originating from western Catholic dioceses managed by French clergy—from St. Paul to New Orleans (pp. 19–20). Consequently,
during the past decade he has systematically combed a number of archives in
France and the American Midwest. With regard to frontier historiography, he
assesses at length such trendy concepts as middle ground, borderland, common and
contested ground, divided ground, and settler colonial studies, and shows an uncommon
grasp of western Métis historiography. Conversely, he makes little reference to previous Catholic literature, except for criticizing Maura Jane Farrelly’s Marylandcentric approach (p. 21). He also relegates French historian Charles Lemarié, who
trod on similar ground, to the bibliography and overlooks U.S. historian Robert F.
Trisco, who in his book (Rome, 1962) documented Rome’s role in the development of the western church. (It might be that he simply wanted to distance himself
from what he considers traditional ecclesiastical history.) In fact, in his book frontier and Catholic historiographies proceed along parallel but separate paths. In
Villerbu’s narrative, only American historian Jay P. Dolan seems to provide the
bridge between the two when he shows the impact of immigration and frontier
conditions on the development of the American Church (pp. 187, 226). While
reading Les missions du Minnesota, this reviewer often found himself wondering
whether Villerbu’s book was about Minnesota or Catholicism.
From a documentary point of view, Villerbu’s research is impressive. One
would wish that he had also looked north of the border—to Red River, for example, or all the way to Rome. But one cannot do it all, and as far as this reviewer can
tell, available documentation in those archives does not run counter to any of his
arguments. Of course, even a carefully written and edited book such as this could
not avoid a few inaccuracies. The Dominican priest Samuel (Samuele) Mazzucchelli went to the United States in 1827, not 1828, and the latest study on Mazzucchelli is Mary N. McGreal’s biography (Notre Dame, 2005), not his Memoirs
edited by Archbishop John Ireland (Chicago, 1915). David J. Silverman’s Faith and
Boundaries was published in 2005, not 2007. Works by Jennifer H. S. Brown,
Michel Pasquier, and Susan Sleeper-Smith are titled incorrectly.
Perhaps contrary to the author’s intention, given his initial emphasis on
methodology, ultimately this book is most valuable for the evidence on which its
several conclusions are based. The following are a few examples. The debate on
mixed marriages has been ideologically marred, and its results must be reassessed
by going back to the primary sources (p. 68). Indian missions were never a real priority, in spite of their mythical aura (pp. 121–22). French missionaries were also
migrants, and scholars who study them should pose the same questions asked of
other migrant populations (p. 178). If missionary efforts mostly ended up as failures, that was on account of multiple causes, first and foremost cultural incomprehension on both sides, rather than either party’s unwillingness to establish a mutually advantageous relationship (pp. 256, 279, 287). Finally, in spite of long-term
trends, individual solutions differed, because everyone found “his own way to get
along in this world” (“chacun bricole sa manière d’être au monde,” p. 288). With

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his new book, Villerbu has certainly placed the history of Minnesota and of its
Catholic community on firmer ground. Original primary research, plus the right
dose of historiographical common sense, makes Le missions du Minnesota an excellent and useful book.
Saint Mary’s University and
University of Notre Dame

LUCA CODIGNOLA

Saint Katharine: The Life of Katharine Drexel. By Cordelia Frances Biddle. (Yardley,
PA: Westholme Publishing. 2014. Pp. x, 266. $26.00 hardcover. ISBN 9781-159416-211-4.)
Katharine Drexel: The Riches-to-Rags Story of an American Catholic Saint. By Cheryl
C. D. Hughes. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2014.
Pp. vii, 276. $20.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-6992-0.)
By all accounts, St. Katharine Drexel (1858–1955) lived a remarkable life.
Born into privilege as the daughter of a Gilded-Age Philadelphia banker, her spiritual yearnings ultimately drew her to embrace the religious life. In 1891 she established a religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and used her inherited
wealth to fund their missionary work among Indians and blacks, two groups that
had been neglected by the Catholic Church in the United States. Her actions and
example led to her beatification in 1988 and subsequent canonization in 2000,
making her the second American-born saint officially recognized by the Holy See.
In telling Katharine’s story, these two biographies approach her life from distinctive perspectives: one from the lens of family, the other from the lens of faith.
Although the authors may not have been responsible for the design, it is revealing
how the images chosen for the cover of the books each capture something of the
Katharine that appears within. Biddle’s volume depicts a photograph of Katharine
as a young woman of society. The image is set within a large gilt frame and sits
upon a wallpaper-patterned background, so it resembles a portrait of a cherished
relative hung on the wall of the family parlor. Hughes’s work, in contrast, displays
a photo of Katharine dressed in the habit of her religious order, engaged in ministry, and greeting the families of Xavier University students on graduation day. A
college building can be seen behind her, thus situating her between the institutions
she built and the people she served.
Biddle’s biography is indeed a tribute to a member of the family. Written by
the great-great granddaughter of Anthony Drexel, Katharine’s uncle and the
founder of Drexel University, the book draws upon archival research and family
lore to offer a lively account of the family member who has enjoyed the most enduring fame. In her narrative, she seeks to unearth origins of Katharine’s “iconoclastic
spirit” and “non-conformist nature” (p. 2). Biddle provides particularly rich
descriptions of the social world that Katharine inhabited, with fully half of the book
focusing on her life before she entered the convent. Her attention to the social customs of the day and class expectations helps demonstrate the radical nature of

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Katharine’s decision. As Biddle notes, “third-generation Drexels” and other members of her extended family who enjoyed the comforts and luxuries that their wealth
afforded “found themselves perplexed and even threatened by their cousin’s selfabnegation” (p. 119). Yet as confounded as Katharine’s cousins may have been by
her actions, Biddle herself seeks to show that Katharine remained entirely herself
within her vocation. She emphasizes how Katharine lost none of her childhood
exuberance and mirth, nor the keen financial acumen and strong personal resolve
that had long been her hallmarks.
Written for a popular audience, Biddle’s account sparkles with engaging prose
and entertaining anecdote. At the same time, however, it will likely leave scholars
of American Catholicism unsatisfied. It does little to interrogate Katharine’s religious motivations or discuss the development of her religious order. Nor does it
offer a critical analysis of Katharine’s spiritual convictions or her views on race and
poverty, which could be both radical and conservative at the same time. More troubling, however, is the occasional lack of documentation to substantiate claims about
Katharine’s personality and character. This is noticeable, for instance, when Biddle
speaks of how the young Katharine “blossomed” in the “permissive and carefree
environment” of her Uncle Tony and Aunt Ellen’s household, in which she lived
temporarily following the death of her mother (p. 29) or how as a teenager she
sought to model herself after her elegant and graceful cousins. Such remarks reveal
as much about how Katharine’s relatives wished to remember her—and themselves—as they do about Katharine’s own views. The book also contains a number
of statements that betray the author’s shaky knowledge of Catholicism such as her
references to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament as a “teaching” order when they
should properly be recognized as a missionary one. She likewise risks misrepresenting Katharine’s work by placing it within the context of the Social Gospel, a movement built upon different theological presuppositions.
Hughes offers a sturdier biography, although one that works from an
assumption of Katharine’s saintliness and affirms the working of the spirit in her
life. Throughout the book, Hughes reads Katharine through the eyes of faith,
seeking to uncover “her mystery, those personal, intellectual, and religious motivations that helped her to become a saint” (p. 1). Drawing upon Katharine’s extensive writings and personal communications, she smoothly lays out her subject’s
early life, emerging vocation, and leadership within her religious community in
the first three chapters of the book. In the final two, she offers an extended analysis of Katharine’s spirituality and then reflects on the meaning and significance of
her sanctity. As she recounts Katharine’s life, Hughes is particularly interested in
tracing Katharine’s spiritual discernment, calling attention to both her struggles
with self-doubt and her perseverance in pursuing her vocation, even when cautioned against it by her spiritual adviser, who initially feared she was not wellsuited to convent routine. To that end, Hughes includes a number of lengthy passages from Katharine’s spiritual journals and other writings, which not only help
convey the state of Katharine’s soul but also invite the reader to meditate on her
words and reflect on her spiritual insights.

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Hughes’s most original contribution is her chapter on Katharine’s spirituality,
which she identifies as both kenotic (self-emptying) and Eucharistic. Seeing it as
more than just asceticism, Hughes argues that Katharine sought a death of self in
order to be filled with Christ. The two impulses complemented each other, giving
Katharine the strength she needed to carry out her mission. In talking about
Katharine’s spiritual practices, Hughes deals frankly with Katharine’s acts of physical mortification, including her abstemious eating habits, strenuous physical exertions, and frequent corporal punishment, at times employing a metal-tipped discipline. Extreme pain, she argues, became the “ultimate tool for kenosis, one that
Katharine did not hesitate to employ” (p. 178). In dealing with Katharine’s spirituality, however, more could have been said about her missionary impulse and how
her desire to bring souls to the Church animated her actions and guided the work
of her religious order. This is an aspect of Katharine’s life that tends to be downplayed by both Hughes and Biddle, perhaps because of the negative connotation
now associated with proselytism and conversion.
To conclude, Hughes offers an assessment for why Katharine’s cause found
particular resonance under the pontificate of John Paul II. She demonstrates that
there was an affinity between the Eucharistic spirituality and evangelical zeal of
John Paul II and Katharine’s own, and argues that Katharine might serve as a
model of personal virtue and guide how we ought to respond to materialism,
racism, individualism, and other problems of the present day. Although this final
chapter is helpful in putting Katharine’s cause into context and explaining why it
found favor in the Vatican, the discussion is at times strained. There is little direct
evidence that the pope saw Katharine in the way that Hughes suggests. The discussion reveals more about the Church’s priorities under John Paul II’s pontificate
than it does about Katharine’s own vision. Nevertheless, it serves as a reminder that
understandings of sanctity change over time and that lives can take on new meaning in each retelling.
Seton Hall University

THOMAS RZEZNIK

Teach Me to Be Generous: The First Century of Regis High School in New York City.
By Anthony D. Andreassi, C.O. (New York: Fordham University Press.
2014. Pp. xviii, 250. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8232-5633-4.)
There is a private joke among New York Jesuits that you can always tell
whether a fellow Jesuit went to Regis. He’ll tell you right away. This little glimmer
of ego is understandable; for more than 100 years Regis High School has been
unique: entrance is highly competitive, and it is free. In this centennial history,
Oratorian priest Anthony D. Andreassi, who teaches history at Regis, lifts the veil
from the mystique and reveals how Regis is just another Jesuit high school and how
it is very different. In an introduction he puts the school in the context of the history of Jesuit education in America, introducing Regis as “the first freestanding
Jesuit high school founded in the United States” (p. 1). He then navigates through
decades of economic peril and evolving identity.

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Regis owes its existence to one very rich and prominent Catholic family led by
Hugh J. Grant—a product of Tammany Hall with a reputation for integrity who
attended St. Francis Xavier on 14th Street and Columbia Law School, and served
as mayor of New York from 1889 to 1893. In 1895 he and socialite Julia Murphy,
daughter of Catholic Senator Edward Murphy Jr. (D–NY), celebrated their wedding in the family’s plush Washington home, with the permission of Cardinal
James Gibbons. Julia persuaded her husband to both give up politics and shave his
heavy black beard. In their mansion at 261 West 73rd Street, they raised three children. But Grant’s death in 1910 and an inheritance of $9.2 million brought Julia
into the circle of David Hearn, S.J., the pastor of St. Ignatius Loyola Church on
Park Avenue who had long dreamed of founding a high school for the poor. He
became her adviser.
So on September 14, 1914, 240 Catholic young men (joined by another
thirty-nine in February 1915) came from their modest homes and faced the standard Jesuit curriculum of the time: Latin (twice a day), English, algebra, geography,
Christian doctrine (only once a week), and elocution. Later Greek was added,
crowding science out of the curriculum. By 1918, they produced their first full-scale
play, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, and continued with a Shakespeare play every
year for twenty years. The football record was weak: in 1920 the team lost to
Brooklyn Prep 61–0 and in 1930, to Fordham Prep 52–0. In the late 1930s the
Jesuit Charles Taylor, in his master’s thesis at Saint Louis University, attributed
Regis’ success to its classical curriculum, spiritual formation, and physical and
recreational activities. Taylor rejected the “radical egalitarianism” of Jacksonian
democracy and held that the Jesuit tradition is to educate the “natural, intellectual
aristocracy” (p. 59). He also wondered why, after careful selection, more than half
of the students dropped out.
In tracing Regis’ history, Andreassi piles on the statistics. In the 1930s 12
percent of graduates had religious vocations. Among other graduates, lawyers
predominated, followed by civil servants, teachers, accountants, and physicians.
In 1964 four men entered the seminary; in 1973 not one. In a chapter that
should have been titled “Jesuits Behaving Badly,” Jesuits with Roman influence
fought Julia’s determination to fund Regis rather than their project, a seminary
in Yonkers. When one griped at a curia meeting that American boys are “too
proud to go to a free high school” (p. 66), Julia nearly collapsed. Following her
death in 1944, her son Hugh and other family members continued their support.
In the 1960s and 1970s, under Robert Newton, S.J., a new “freedom” reigned,
with features such as slideshows of Vietnam at Mass, hymns written by students,
more science, and music appreciation. Greek was down, and Chinese was up.
First-year students were no longer required to stand during lunch. Independent
study replaced classes. The Society of Jesus shrunk from 8338 in 1960 to 7055
in 1970. Sodalities all but disappeared. Latin was no longer required. A series of
three Middle States reports suggested that the Catholic Jesuit identity was
fading. Only five priests were on the faculty in 2007. Today only one is a faculty
member.

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The most significant reform has been the decision to diversify the student
body by considering economic circumstances in granting admission. Without the
school lowering academic excellence or admitting non-Catholics, more of the students will be minorities and from low-income backgrounds. But chances are that
when people meet them it will not take long to reveal where they went to high
school. Meanwhile the Regis alumni magazine has published a list of sixteen
prominent alumni authors, including National Book Award winner Phil Klay and
Matthew Thomas.
America Magazine
New York, NY

RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J.

God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America’s Armed Forces in World War II. By
Michael Snape. (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer. 2015. Pp. xxiv, 704.
$50.00. ISBN 978-1-843-83892-0.)
Michael Snape is the Michael Ramsey Professor of Anglican Studies at
Durham University in England and the author of numerous articles and books on
religion in the British Army. In God and Uncle Sam, he discusses the pervasive religiosity that characterized America’s armed forces during World War II. His book
is based on an incredible variety of published and archival material, including newspapers and periodicals, U.S. Army and U.S. government publications, and hundreds of other primary and secondary sources.
Snape is quite forthright in challenging historians such as Paul Fussell who
declared World War II “a notably secular affair” (qtd. on p. 599) and emphasized
American soldiers’ indifference regarding religion. Snape reveals the great number
of individuals and groups promoting religion among the troops during that war.
Army and Navy chaplains, as well as an overwhelmingly Protestant officer corps
emphasized the importance of religious preaching as a means of building soldiers’
military morale. Civilian America agreed that religious belief was a vital component
of military might. Almost every denomination or faith group in the nation spent
huge sums of money sending religious tracts, magazines, and other publications to
both chaplains and soldiers. Snape also points out that warfare itself aided the promotion of soldiers’ religious faith. In one of the most interesting chapters in the
book, on “foxhole religion” (pp. 317–95), he explains how the threat, experience,
and aftermath of combat stimulated religious belief and practice among the troops.
Another chapter shows how both soldiers and leaders of America’s armed forces
“were strongly inclined to understand their enemies and their allies in religious
terms,” depending on whether they felt a “sense of religious commonality or difference” (p. 397). This approach resulted in hatred for Nazism and the Japanese but
also some degree of sympathy for German and Japanese Christians. It also created a
dilemma for many American soldiers who, as Christians, agonized over the destruction and profanation of churches and sacred sites in Europe, the Pacific, and Japan.
According to Snape, the armed forces’ embrace of religion during World
War II exerted a significant effect on the postwar period. He describes World War

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II as “a key period in the history of American religion in the twentieth century,
acting as a pivotal phase between the troubled years of the interwar decades and
the booming religiosity of the late 1940’s and 1950’s” (p. 3). Snape views the
“experience of military service” in that war as a crucial “agent of . . . change” (p. 3)
during the postwar years. Among the results he cites a “tremendous vindication”
(p. 510) and invigoration of overseas missionary work, a striking increase in religious membership and participation, particularly on the part of ex-soldiers and
their families, greater religious toleration among the American people, the development of a religious interpretation of the communist threat, and the rise of evangelical religion.
At a time when the role of religion in the U.S. armed forces is under scrutiny
and the subject of much debate—not just in the Army, Navy, and Air Force but in
the civilian sector as well—this book about religion in World War II might provide
a new perspective on the issues that are being raised. By the same token, general
readers and scholars who are interested in the religious or military history of America will find this book a treasure trove of information that has not been readily
available in the past.
Louisiana State University

ANNE C. LOVELAND

The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer: Ad Majorem Dei
Gloriam. Edited by F. Douglas Scutchfield and Paul Evans Holbrook Jr.
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2014. Pp. xviii, 333. $40.00. ISBN
978-0-8131-5352-0.)
Books about Thomas Merton proliferated around 2015, the centenary of his
birth. This volume may be the most significant. It records an extended, important
friendship; illuminates Merton’s European origins (a facet underplayed in American Merton scholarship); his interest in aesthetics; and his voracious intellect. The
editors “have reproduced the entire corpus of work that we have found, fragments,
postcards, and quick notes on dates to meet . . .” (p. xvi). Notes about arranging for
meetings indicate the devotion of Victor and Carolyn Hammer to Merton. They
provided meals; traveled from their home in Lexington, Kentucky, to the Abbey of
Gethsemani; offered Merton humane emotional and intellectual sustenance; and
connected him to wider intellectual and artistic communities. Substantive aspects
of this correspondence include “art and spirituality . . . collaborative publications,
Merton’s reading lists, and mutual friends” (p. 271).
The letters begin after the couple met Merton in September 1955 through
mutual friends Jacques Maritain and James Laughlin, and end with Merton’s death
in 1968. As Merton was born in France in 1915 and educated in England, his sensibility was not circumscribed by cultural myths of the United States to which he
emigrated in 1934, three years after the death of his artist father. Baptized in 1938
while a student at Columbia University, he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in
1941 and became a U.S. citizen in 1951.

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Victor Hammer was born in Vienna in 1882 and educated there. By 1937, he
was teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts. After Germany annexed Austria in
1938, Hammer was “retired.” In 1939 he began teaching at Wells College in New
York and was later artist in residence at Transylvania College (now University) in
Lexington. After his first wife died, he married Carolyn Reading, a University of
Kentucky librarian and small-press enthusiast.
Victor Hammer was a father figure and an intellectual partner for Merton.
Both men were European immigrants, deeply spiritual Catholics, and serious
explorers of art and faith (as master of scholastics, Merton gave conferences on the
topic “Notes on Sacred Art” in October and November 1954). Their friendship was
rooted in this mutual interest, in Merton’s need for books, and in projects involving
editions of Merton’s works. The Hammers’ press published Merton’s long poem,
Hagia Sophia (which inspired Hammer’s painting), and works on the early Fathers.
The weightiest letters discuss art and spirituality topics such as Conrad Fiedler’s theories (pp. 19–29), Hagia Sophia (pp. 64–69), and Hammer’s painting of the woman
caught in adultery (pp. 173–81). Thus the book will surely interest art historians.
Merton’s letters to Carolyn request books on an astonishing variety of subjects. Without her help he could not fully have explored interests in Russia, Latin
American literature, Celtic Christianity, Islam, Zen Buddhism, American literature, and contemporary social and political thought—subjects to which he made
significant, sometimes seminal, contributions. His book requests are as staggering
as his cavalier attitude toward borrowing practices and publishing legalities. Carolyn played a crucial role in Merton’s work, a debt heretofore unheralded.
Both Kentucky scholars, the editors have produced an important volume
illustrating Catholic intellectual life in the mid-twentieth century. Their extensive
notes are valuable especially in identifying people mentioned and in synchronizing
letters with Merton’s journals. The University Press of Kentucky has produced an
attractive volume. Eight pages of photographs and an index enhance the text. The
editors hoped the reader would “share in the friendship of these polymaths” and
“extract nourishment for themselves” (p. 271). This reviewer did.
Wheeling, WV

BONNIE THURSTON

Confidence and Crisis: A History of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, 1959–1977. By
Steven M. Avella. [Urban Life Series, no. 7.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2014. Pp. 344. $24.00. ISBN 978-0-87462-086-3.)
When does “the past” become “history”? At what point, in other words, do we
gain sufficient perspective on recent events to place them with reasonable confidence in an overarching political, social, or cultural narrative? There seems to be a
growing consensus among historians of American Catholics that the decades
immediately following the Second Vatican Council have become “history.”
Nonetheless, it requires courage to navigate this particular piece of the past, given

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the controversies that still surround it and the presence among us of many who
lived through those turbulent times. Steven Avella is thus to be congratulated for
his scholarly boldness in producing a history of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee
during the episcopate of Archbishop William Cousins (1959–77).
Cousins was an amiable if not terribly distinguished churchman, whom Avella
treats with a nice mixture of sympathy and intelligent criticism. He was well-suited
to the prosperous times that prevailed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee until 1965.
The early years of Cousins’s tenure were years of building, largely in Milwaukee’s
burgeoning suburbs, along with ambitious planning for a major expansion of the
local seminary. Presumably some at the chancery were concerned, at least in passing, about white flight from the center city and its growing impoverishment. But
until the mid-1960s, the Cousins chancery appears to have assumed that the future
of the archdiocese would be much like its recent past. Vocations would continue to
increase, as would the numbers of Catholic schools, and racial segregation in housing—and hence, for the most part, in education—would continue to be the order
of the day. Cousins was cautiously sympathetic to the civil rights movement, particularly in its Southern manifestations, and no laggard when it came to implementing the various liturgical reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council.
But his instinct was always to conciliate, indeed to temporize, rather than take a
principled stand.
Circumstances changed abruptly in 1965. As in other dioceses of the United
States, Milwaukee saw a sudden diminution in seminary enrollments, even as
growing numbers of priests left the active ministry. The numbers of women religious fell sharply, too, which endangered the future of local Catholic schools. A
hitherto quiescent black population erupted into militancy, especially around the
issues of housing and schools. And much to the astonishment of local Catholics,
the city’s best-known civil rights activist by 1965 was James Groppi, a priest
ordained for Milwaukee in 1959. Passionate in his espousal of open housing,
school integration, and economic justice, Groppi made the national news with
his leadership of local protests that sometimes ended in arrests. (He was the first
priest in the history of the archdiocese to spend time in jail.) Groppi was a divisive figure among the local clergy and even more so among the laity. But Archbishop Cousins remained on the fence, neither disciplining his famous priest nor
condemning the racism displayed by many of his critics. In the end, Groppi
drifted out of the priesthood, marrying a local activist in 1976 and fathering three
children.
Avella’s two chapters on Groppi are his best—the most alive and charged with
personality. Other chapters examine the implementation of the Council reforms in
the archdiocese, the eventual crisis of the parochial school system, changes in seminary education and related developments among the local clergy, the altered contours of vowed religious life, postconciliar parish life, and ministry to Hispanics.
The breadth of its subject matter is among the book’s many strengths. The author
has little to say, however, about the changing religious mentality that marked the

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turbulent years he chronicles; perhaps he concluded that, in this respect, these years
are not yet ripe for historical analysis.
The Catholic University of America (Emerita)

LESLIE WOODCOCK TENTLER

LATIN AMERICAN
Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas. Edited by Stephanie Kirk
and Sarah Rivett. [The Early Modern Americas.] (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. 2014. Pp. vi, 352. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-4654-4.)
The ten contributors to this book edited by Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett
achieve their goal of producing a cross-disciplinary volume that “grasp[s] the complexity and variety of the [Atlantic] colonial world as it augmented, transformed, and
challenged a range of Christian beliefs ” (p. 20). The editors’ introduction is followed
by chapters in “Part I: Comparisons” by John H. Elliott, Ralph Bauer, and David A.
Boruchoff; “Part II: Crossings” by David D. Hall and Asunción Lavrin; “Part III:
Missions” by Matt Cohen, Júnia Ferreira Furtado, and Carmen Fernández-Salvador;
and “Part IV: Legacies” by Teresa A. Toulouse and Sandra M. Gustafson.
Elliott’s chapter appropriately begins the work by differentiating between the
Indian societies encountered by the Spanish and English. He emphasizes the imperial projects of these mother countries and concludes that the conquerors “found it
necessary to adapt their ideas and rituals to their new environment . . . [and that]
accommodation and selective adaptation were the order of the day not on one side
of the religious encounter only, but on both sides” (p. 38). Bauer examines Spanish
and especially English attitudes about the religions of the people whom they
encountered. If, at the beginning of their conquests and colonies, Spaniards were
more predisposed than the English to view native religions in satanic terms, by the
late-sixteenth century writers from both countries “associate[d] Native American
religions not only with paganism but with Satanism” (p. 77). Boruchoff focuses on
South America to demonstrate early efforts by a few priests, mostly Franciscans, to
espouse the best practices of Christian living in an effort to convince natives to
emulate their conduct. He contrasts the early example of these good friars by
including five wonderful drawings by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and emphasizing the general disrepute and disdain afforded the Dominicans, Augustinians,
and especially the Mercedarians; the last became known for their “greed, impiety,
wantonness, and cruelty” (p. 92).
Hall’s engaging historiographical essay concentrates on New England transatlantic politics and analyzes the political circumstances and the theological and cultural ideas that shaped “the Reformed international” (sic, p. 111). Lavrin studies the
unique experience of martyrdom in New Spain. Indigenous peoples in the northern
frontier proved to be difficult adversaries to crusading priests who viewed “conversion of the indigenous peoples as part of a larger plan of salvation for all humanity”
(p. 133). Although most missionaries neither expected nor desired martyrdom,
some sought glory and “a shot at dying for its cause” (p. 136).

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Cohen’s historiographical essay examines the changing religious forms of
Europeans in North America during their first century of residence and calls attention to the “stumbling blocks to thinking interculturally about religion in early
colonial New England” (p. 162). Furtado’s chapter studies the Portuguese-Brazilian mission to convert the king and subjects of Dahomey to Catholicism. Combining missionary work with commercial enterprise, two Brazilian priests, one certainly mulatto and the other of probable African ancestry, traveled to present-day
Benin between 1796 and 1798 to promote conversion as a tool to gain greater political and economic clout in the region. They willingly endured physical suffering in
Africa much like Lavrin’s mendicants did in northern New Spain. Like Furtado,
the next chapter by Fernández-Salvador emphasizes how “scientific geography was
closely linked to the spiritual and material conquest of indigenous peoples” (p.
205), although the setting here is the Amazon basin in the 1630s. She explains the
Habsburg preoccupation with efficient administration and the need to define
boundaries, especially given Portuguese expansionism in the region. Jesuit missionary activities and martyrdom served “to justify Quito’s, and the Jesuits’, jurisdictional rights over the Amazon (p. 209). Toulouse’s highly theoretical chapter examines the influences of Sir William Phips and Cotton Mather in colonial New
England and “the ways a rhetoric of moral projecting can become associated with
a material and spiritual preparedness open to providential aims unfixed from a local
political structure” (p. 250). The final chapter by Gustafson deftly discusses both
Spanish America and British North America and the contested meaning of the
term republic. Writers from both areas found indigenous forms of governance
worthy of study, although Anglos were more likely than Latino scholars to laud
American Indians as model republicans. Gustafson’s concluding paragraphs
remind the reader of the volatile relationship in many societies regarding religion
and secular government. She cites the examples of Islam in the Arab Republic of
Egypt and the challenge faced by the U.S. “to peacefully absorb a growing number
of Muslim and other non-Christian immigrants” (p. 263).
Kirk and Rivett begin their well-written and conceived introduction by
emphasizing the persecution faced by missionaries from native populations as they
tried “to replicate the primitive church of Christian antiquity” (p. 1). Although
true, it was surprising not to read a more forceful assessment of the brutality faced
by the native populations. The millenarian vision of early mendicants is well documented but so, too, are the ecclesiastical realities of European colonialism beyond
the invigorating days of early conquest. Readers would have benefited had the
introduction tied together similar themes throughout the book and if contributors
had included references to one another’s chapters when appropriate.
This is a scholarly work best suited for graduate students, but undergraduate
students will find the chapters by Elliott, Boruchoff, Lavrin, and Gustafson accessible and interesting.
University of Scranton

LEE M. PENYAK

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The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito / El arte de la pintura en Quito colonial. Edited
by Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt; organized by Judy de Bustamante. [Early
Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 6.] (Philadelphia: St.
Joseph’s University Press. 2012. Pp. xiv, 223. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-91610169-5.)
This is a remarkable publication, and yet another example of the contributions
of the St. Joseph’s University Press to studies of important yet little known Latin
American visual materials. In this handsome volume, a selection of more than
eighty paintings from late-sixteenth- to early-nineteenth-century Quito are presented in excellent reproductions, with an informative historical introduction by
Carmen Fernández Salvador and explanatory texts in both English and Spanish. A
bibliography and an index of proper names complete the book. The general idea of
the editor, Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, and the organizer, Judy de Bustamante, was
to present these paintings in the guise of a virtual exhibition. The paintings are in
mostly chronological order, and each is discussed by one of a team of scholars.
Stratton-Pruitt is well known for her contributions to projects on Latin American
colonial painting and has worked on major museum exhibitions of these types of
materials, so this “exhibition” in a book is an obvious solution to the basic problems
presented by these paintings: how to make them more widely known so that they
may be better studied and adequately conserved. The fact that Ecuadorian scholars
and institutions collaborated in this project will help achieve these goals.
What first strikes the reader is the high quality of these works. Many are truly
outstanding. Although the names of a few artists are known in the field of Quito
paintings—Miguel de Santiago immediately comes to mind—it is astounding that
most of the works presented in this book are by still anonymous masters. StrattonPruitt summarizes the historiography, and Fernández Salvador provides general
outlines of the little that is known about the history of painting in Quito. Certainly
the photographs stand out, presenting one revelation after another. Of course,
images of some of the paintings already have been published, and a few works have
been exhibited internationally, but even these acquire more presence in this
volume, accompanied as they are by numerous other works of similar quality. Also,
much of the iconography, although not entirely surprising for a Spanish American
context, is nevertheless intriguingly peculiar.
Accompanying the illustrations, the texts register the historiography of each of
the paintings and also contribute to questions of condition, attribution, and iconography. At every step, observations are made for which the reader can only be grateful. Often the discussion of iconography takes over the catalog entries. Although
informative for understanding the subject of each painting, iconography can provide
greater depths of comprehension when it includes more comparative observations.
Some of the entries do, in fact, discuss the relationship of the particular composition, if appropriate, to the traditions of Ecuador, Spanish America, and Spain. More
of this type of analysis is necessary for greater understanding. Obviously, there is
much research to be done, such as on the paintings’ materiality, supports, colors,

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pigments, and physical makeup and condition. This book certainly provides the
inspiration to continue to think about and to study more deeply these and other
paintings in Ecuador and in all of Latin America that are still too little known.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Mexico City

CLARA BARGELLINI

The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Conversos: Uncovering Hidden Influences from
Spain to Mexico. By Marie-Theresa Hernández. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2014. Pp. xi, 260. $27.95 paperback. ISBN 978-08135-6568-2.)
This book was inspired by the author’s discovery in the archives of the New
York Public Library of some works of Manuel Espinosa de los Monteros (1773–
1838), a canon of the collegiate church of Guadalupe. Her purpose is “to challenge
the oft-repeated narrative of the disappearance of the judaizantes in Spain and the
Americas” (p. 10). Historians today speak of Catholicisms in the plural, a term as
applicable to the peninsula as it is to Spanish overseas dominions. This book contains valuable insights and much of value. At the same time there are serious flaws
that prevent an overall favorable review.
It is not an easy read, as it jumps from one topic to another. The style is meandering. Thus Marie-Theresa Hernández deals with Benito Arias Montano on
pages 93–94, interrupts the treatment, and resumes the discussion on page 104.
She probably overestimates converso impact on Catholic Spain: “A concentrated
voice of Jewish Christian existence that left its traces in all aspects of culture and
tradition” (p. 34).
She cites the copy of the Nican mopohua in the New York Public Library but
seems unaware that it was originally published by Laso de la Vega in 1949. She does
not cite his work in the bibliography. She seems to accept the story of Winfield
Scott’s seizure of the Guadalupan documents as related by Mariano Cuevas (unreliable in matters of Guadalupe) and does not cite Ernest Burrus’s refutation of this
legend. She repeats the commonly accepted but inaccurate assertion that the Mexican Guadalupe is pregnant (p. 14). There is no basis for this in Nahua belief or practice. Spanish kings were not crowned (pp. 96–97) but ruled the different kingdoms
of the peninsula according to different constitutions and forms of government.
The book contains surmises and suppositions such as “very likely” (p. 128),
“[i]t is likely (p. 133), “[i]t is possible” (p. 134), “[i]t is very possible” (p. 138), “[i]t
is very likely” (p. 142), and “[w]as he trying to hide something within his communication?” (p. 153).
She overemphasizes role of the Inquisition (pp. 16–17) and overlooks the
complexity of the tribunal. It was not a static institution but varied from time to
time and place to place such as in Castile, Aragon, and New Spain. She also overlooks hostility to the Inquisition by Spanish traditionalists. The introduction of the

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tribunal into New Spain upset a delicate balance of power. Archbishop Moya de
Contreras, the first inquisitor in Mexico, complained that Viceroy Martín
Enríquez treated it “with contempt.” Hernández does not cite Henry Kamen’s revisionist interpretation.
She also ignores the local nature of religion in Spain and does not cite the
works of William Christian. She considers Philip II to be a semi-heretic, although
he was a devout Catholic who pursued antipapal policies. She states, “According to
Scripture the Virgin Mary did not die; instead she ascended into heaven” (p. 25).
Scripture says nothing about Mary’s death. In addition, Hernández confuses the
Order of Santiago with a religious order (pp. 93, 112). It was a military order,
mostly lay, that was in a high degree honorary. She defines audiencia as congress
and cabildos as government administrators (p. 122).
There are several typographical errors such as Jaen (p. 53) for Jaén and Jean
for Jaén (p. 41). The author mistranslates pinceps [sic] missus a celo as “the prince
who relates the secret” (p. 92) when it means “the prince sent by God”—a reference
to John 1: 6.
Most arguable is Hernández’s treatment of the first known account of the
Mexican Guadalupe apparitions: Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María
(1648). She dates the revision of this work to 1655. She apparently means Mateo
de la Cruz’s adaptation of 1660. The author states, “It also appears that Sánchez
was attempting to communicate with the judaizante community of México” (p.
17). Actually he was communicating with the creoles. She overemphasizes the
Jewish roots of Sánchez (p. 119). Sánchez did not establish “a more solid base for
Catholicism among the indigenous people” (p. 123). She claims that Sánchez had
a “special relationship with Judaism” (p. 161) and states, “In Sánchez’s narratives it
is the corrupt Roman Church and its clergy who are oppressing the Jews and the
indigenous people” (p. 146). She misinterprets the significance or meaning of de la
Cruz’s version of 1660 (p. 136). “What is curious is that Sánchez’s book was well
received once the Jewish themes were purged” (p. 154). It is difficult to justify such
claims on the basis of available evidence.
Equally arguable is her statement that “[a]ny discussion of Esther at that particular time would have probably sent a person to the Inquisition jails” (p. 135). It
was and is common to use Old Testament symbols for the Virgin Mary such as the
Song of Songs.
As previously mentioned, this book contains much of value. It must, however,
be approached with a certain degree of caution.
Los Angeles, CA

STAFFORD POOLE, C.M.

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The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West. By Todd Hartch.
(New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. xiv, 235. $29.95. ISBN 9780-19-020456-3.)
Todd Hartch, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University and the author of
The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity (New York, 2014), has succeeded
admirably in providing context for understanding and significant analysis, both historical and theological, of the priest and social critic Ivan Illich (1926–2002). This
book is best understood not as a biography in the traditional sense but rather as a
successful effort to trace the development of Illich’s thought and work, especially
focusing on his years in Puerto Rico (1956–60) and Mexico (beginning in 1961 and
continuing for about ten years), and on his critique of modern society, especially its
hegemonic educational and medical systems, as exemplified in his books, Deschooling Society (New York, 1971) and Medical Nemesis (New York, 1976).
Illich, whose father was Croatian and mother a Sephardic Jew, was born in
Vienna. He was widely recognized as a polyglot and an extremely talented and
intelligent man. He studied science in Florence as well as philosophy and theology
in Rome, and earned a doctorate in history in Salzburg. In Rome, he wrote on
Romano Guardini and was significantly influenced by Jacques Maritain, with
whom he read St. Thomas Aquinas. When he was ordained a priest in 1951, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, surrogate (sostituto) for ordinary affairs in the
Vatican Secretariat of State and the future Pope Paul VI, hoped that he would
enter the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici in preparation for a career as a papal
diplomat. Illich chose instead to attend Princeton University and write a second
doctoral dissertation (habilitation), on Albertus Magnus, so he could secure a post
as a professor. During his time in Princeton, he assisted the Archdiocese of New
York in serving as a curate to Puerto Rican immigrants.
While working among these immigrants, he decided to abandon a traditional
academic career and was named in 1956, under the auspices of Cardinal Francis J.
Spellman, vice-rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. There he
established a language school for New York priests and religious to expand the
“Spanish apostolate” in New York. His method involved a deep cultural and sociological immersion by the student in addition to language studies. He judged many of
the American priests and religious on the island to be ill-prepared and ill-suited for
pastoral service there and, as a consequence, ineffective as agents of the Gospel and
Church. He was also quick to criticize publicly the American bishops assigned to
Puerto Rico, particularly for their political stances. They insisted that he be removed.
Still supported by Spellman, Illich established a language school at Cuernavaca in 1961, intending to prepare American missionaries to serve the Church in
South America, in response to a papal appeal. It was not long before Illich, ironically, concluded that it would be advisable to send home the potential missionaries
or have them choose a different path. He did this by vigorously challenging the
motives and capacities of his students. He often proved to be merciless both with

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the naïve and the culturally arrogant. In 1967 he published a scathing critique,
“The Seamy Side of Charity,” in which he attacked the entire effort he was sent to
support with formation as well as some of his most ardent supporters.1 This direct
challenge to the missionary endeavors of the Holy See and the U.S. Church in
Latin America drew a papal inquiry, which, although it never led to any ecclesiastical penalty, appears to have been a prelude to his renouncing the public exercise
of his priesthood, as well as ecclesiastical titles (including Monsignor) and privileges.
Hartch is not hesitant both to express sympathy for Illich and many of his
views, as well as highlight his shortcomings and inconsistencies, including a tendency to undermine the institutional pastoral structures entrusted to him. The
book is complete with good endnotes, a significant bibliography, and a basic index.
Graduate students and specialists in late-modern church history, missiology, Latin
American studies, and postconciliar Catholic ecclesiology will find this book
insightful and helpful. Hartch left this reader with a desire for more details and
analysis of his subject’s formative and final years. However, what we are given is an
excellent overview of Illich’s most significant thought and work, and provides a
window through which the tumultuous life of the Catholic Church during the
period, theologically and pastorally, might be better understood.
Mount Olive, NC

JAMES F. GARNEAU

1. Ivan Illich, “The Seamy Side of Charity,” America, January 21, 1967, 88–91.

Notes and Comments
ANNIVERSARY
The Harlem-based congregation of black sisters known as the Franciscan
Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Founded in Savannah, Georgia, in 1916 by Father Ignatius Lissner, who enlisted
the help of Barbara Williams, a black woman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who
later became Mother Theodore, F.H.M., the congregation educated black children
when local segregationist legislation forbad white religious leaders from providing
pastoral care for blacks in Georgia. On the invitation of Cardinal Patrick Hayes of
New York, the sisters moved to Harlem, where they opened schools and a nursery
and fed the hungry in the New York area. They eventually sent medical missions
to Nigeria.

EXHIBITION
The Gothic panel painting known as the Madonna of Veveri, painted in the
first half of the fourteenth century in southern Bohemia, was venerated in the
parish church of Veverska Bityska, near to the Veveri Castle, until the late 1930s
when the Czech government took possession of it, eventually giving it to the
National Gallery in Prague. According to restitution laws, property seized by the
communist government is to be restored to churches that previously owned it. In
return, the state will gradually cease financing churches. On the basis of a court
ruling the painting has been returned to the parish and will be displayed as part of
the Vita Christi exhibition in the diocesan museum in Brno.

RESEARCH PROJECT AND TOOLS
The Newberry Library of Chicago is launching a scholarly, multidisciplinary
initiative focused on “Religious Change in Europe, 1450–1700.” The project will
include gallery and online exhibitions, as well as digital resources and programs
such as studying the Reformation and its immediate aftermath. To assist in organizing these initiatives, there will be a Newberry Mellon Major Projects Fellow, who
will receive a one-year, grant-funded position running from July 1, 2016, to June
30, 2017. Applications should be sent to the Office of Human Resources (hr@newberry.org); the deadline is May 1.
The newsletter of Medieval Memoria Research with its bulletin board listing
events is now available at http://mmr.let.uu.nl/index.html; a pdf version is available
at http://mmr.let.uu.nl/pdf/MMR_016.pdf.
443

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FELLOWSHIPS
The American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with the Vatican Library,
is sponsoring a course on Greek paleography and codicology as part of its 2017
Winter Program, scheduled for January 9–20, 2017. Applications from graduate
and postgraduate students of classics, history, theology and religious studies, and
Byzantine studies are welcome to apply at events@aarome.org. The deadline is
May 15, 2016.
The Istituto Sangalli for religious history and cultures in Florence, in collaboration with other entities, is sponsoring the Florence short-term residential fellowships in religious history and religious studies lasting for one to two months
from July 1, 2016, to July 30, 2017. Applicants should be scholars based in nonItalian universities and research centers. The deadline is May 30, 2016. For more
information, visit http://www.istitutosangalli.it/en/scholarships/florence-shortterm-fellowships-program-the-call-for-applications/.
The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies sponsors various fellowships in
support of the study of the religious history of the Ukraine. The funding for these
comes from the Anna and Nikander Bukowsky Endowment Fund, the Research
Program on Religion and Culture Fund, the Father Hryhorij Fil and Olga Fil
Endowment Fund, and the Yurkiwsky Family Memorial Endowment Fund. They
support research and publications. For more information, contact ciusfin@ualberta.ca or visit https://uofa.ualberta.ca/arts/research/canadian-institute-ukrainian-studies/funding-and-awards

PRIZES
The European History Section of the Southern Historical Association welcomes applicants for its John L. Snell Prize in European History for 2016. It is
awarded annually to a graduate student who submits the best seminar research
paper in European history written during the past academic year, including
summer 2016. Only seminar papers of a maximum of fifty pages (including footnotes or endnotes and excluding bibliography) and typed in New Times Roman,
12 point font, with double spacing, can be submitted. Together with a letter of
endorsement from the supervising faculty member, one copy should be sent to each
of the following: Hunt Tooley (htooley@austincollege.edu), Stephen J. Stillwell Jr.
(wilding@uta.edu), and Christopher Ward (ChristopherWard@clayton.edu). The
deadline is August 1, 2016.
The Society for Italian Historical Studies announces the Ezio Cappadocia
Prize for the best unpublished (but deemed worthy of publication) manuscript on
the history of Italy of dissertation or book length. It should be the first study in the
field by a scholar who has received the PhD since January 1, 2015, and regularly
resides in Canada or the United States. An electronic copy of the manuscript, plus
a brief curriculum vitae, should be sent by August 15, 2016, to each of the selection

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445

committee members: Giovanna Benadusi (benadusi@usf.edu), Sarah Gwyneth
Ross (rosssj@bc.edu), and Dario Gaggio (dariog@umich.edu). In addition, a brief
cv and the title of the entry should be sent by email to Executive Secretary Roy
Domenico (roy.domenico@scranton.edu), to whom all requests for further information should be addressed.

CONFERENCES
The Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique is sponsoring the
international conference “La mission dans tous ses états (XXe et XXIe siècles): Circulations, rencontres, échanges et hybridités,” which will be held June 9–10, 2016,
at the Université du Québec at Montreal. It will address the theme of the measures
of the cultural, political, and socioeconomic transformations undertaken by
Catholic missionaries during the long twentieth century in the francophone world
of north Africa and of the near and middle East, where few persons converted to
Christianity. The conference program is accessible online at http://religions.uqam.
ca. The eighty-third congress of the Société will be held at the Université du
Québec à Trois-Rivières from September 30 to October 1, 2016, with the theme
“Regards interdisciplinaires sur les religions, XVIIe–XXIe siècles.” It will study the
changes in Christianity and Judaism that have occurred in the West, and especially
in the recent decades in Québec. Proposals for papers, along with a 300-word
abstract and a cv, should be sent to committee organizer Jean Roy (Jean.Roy@uqtr.ca).
The program of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference to be held in
Bruges, Belgium, on August 18–20, 2016, is available at http://scscdocuments.
org/files/SCSC2016ProgDraft.pdf. The plenary lecture, “From Ghent to the
World: Charles V’s Longest Living Legacy” by Rolena Adorno of Yale University,
will be given on August 19 in the medieval Stadshallen next to the Bruge Belfry.
In Chicago in 2017, the Renaissance Society of America and the Centre for
Reformation and Renaissance Studies will cosponsor the program “The Language
of Reform,” which will explore how Reformation ideas were presented and debated
in Latin and the vernacular languages and in music. Various prose styles were
employed: academic or popular with even satirical and scatological jokes. Music
used old iconographic “languages” or the new “visual languages.” For more information, contact Andrew Fleck (ajfleck@utep.edu) or Mark Rankin
(renkinmc@jmu.edu).

PUBLICATIONS
Five articles concerning “Figure episcopali nel Tardo Antico: L’episcopato è
sempre un bonum opus?” have been published in the Urbanian University Journal
(vol. LXVIII, no. 3, 2015): Francesca Cocchini, “Origene: Cristo vero vescovo e
pontefice” (pp. 13–28); Giuseppe Caruso, “Girolamo: un vescovo mancato” (pp.
29–51); Armando Genovese, “Sinesio: un vescovo demi-chrétien” (pp. 53–66);
Guido Innocenzo Gargano, “Due grandi vescovi davanti alla povertà: Basilio di

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Cesarea e Gregorio Magno” (pp. 67–93); and Angelo Segneri, “Basilio di Cesarea:
un vescovo tiranno?” (pp. 95–119).
“La liturgie hispanique” is the theme of the issue for July–September 2015
(vol. 58, no. 231) of Cahiers de civilization médiévale: X e–XII e siècles. Following an
avant-propos by Martin Aureli (pp. 225–26) are five articles: Thomas Deswarte
and Alain Rauwel, “Introduction: le rit hispanique dans l’Europe Médiévale” (pp.
227–30); Manuel Pedro Ferreira, “Conclusit vias meas inimicus: un répons wisigothique en Gaule” (pp. 231–38); Eva Castro Caridad and José Ma Anguita Jaén, “Les
prières rythmiques hispaniques. Un témoignage récupéré: l’Antiphonaire de Léon
(ACL 8)” (pp. 239–58); Vicente García Lobo and Ma Encarnación Martín López,
“La liturgie hispanique dans l’épigraphie (VIIIe–XIIe siècles): la liturgie sacramentelle et la liturgie funéraire” (pp. 259–78); and Thomas Deswarte, “Liturgie et
royauté dans les monarchies asturienne et léonaise (711–1109)” (pp. 279–90).
Church History & Religious Culture has devoted a thematic issue to the Carthusians (vol. 96, nos. 1/2, 2016) with six articles: Mathilde van Dijk, José van Aelst,
and Tom Gaens, “Faithful to the Cross in a Moving World: Late Medieval
Carthusians as Devotional Reformers” (pp. 1–12); Tom Gaens, “Sic vivere est
devote vivere: Henry of Coesfeld as Theologian of Modern-Day Devotion” (pp.
13–39); Michael G. Sargent, “Nicholas Love as an Ecclesiastical Reformer” (pp.
40–64); José van Aelst, “Ad modum Cartusiensium: Carthusian Inspiration for the
Enclosed Saint-Agnes Convent at Maaseik” (pp. 65–79); Suzan Folkerts, “The
Transmission and Appropriation of the Vita of Christine Mirabilis in Carthusian
Communities” (pp. 80–105); and Mathilde van Dijk, “Working with Tradition,
Aiming for Reform: Dorlandus’s Perspective on Hagiography” (pp. 106–29).
A “Special Issue” of Moreana dated December 2015 (vol. 52), consists of “A
Collection of [twenty] Essays by Elizabeth McCutcheon” following “Words from
[eight] Amici.” The essays were originally published between 1969 and 2003.
Romuald I. Lakowski has compiled a bibliography of McCutcheon, who is a professor emerita of the University of Hawaii.
A “Dossier Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La religion personnelle. Interprétations et
receptions” has been published in the last number (4) for 2015 (vol. 90) of Études
théologiques et religieuses. It consists of five essays: Pierre-Olivier Léchot and
Guglielmo Forni Rosa, “Le christianisme au tournant: Rousseau penseur de la religion (Avant-propos)” (pp. 547–50); Philip Knee, “L’autorité de la conscience et
l’indifférence sceptique dans la Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard” (pp. 551–61);
Bernard Cottret, “Rousseau était-il protestant? Péché, justification et Écriture
selon Jean-Jacques” (pp. 563–80); Roberto Gatti, “Religion et démocratie: du
vicaire savoyard à nous” (pp. 581–90); and Guglielmo Forni Rosa, “Karl Barth: du
Rousseau romantique à la théologie libérale” (pp. 591–605).
Six articles in the February 2016 issue of Women’s History Review (vol. 25, no.
1) are devoted to Constance Maynard. Among them are Angharad Eyre, “Love,

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447

Passion, Conversion: Constance Maynard and Evangelical Missionary Writing”
(pp. 35–52); Naomi Lloyd, “Religion, Same-Sex Desire, and the Imagined Geographies of Empire: The Case of Constance Maynard (1849–1935)” (pp. 53–73);
Elisabeth Jay, “Constance Maynard’s Life-Writing Considered as Spiritual Autobiography” (pp. 74–88); and Lorraine Screene, “An Exploration of Religion and
Education in the Life of Constance Maynard, Mistress of Westfield College” (pp.
89–104).
An international symposium with the theme “Universalismo e servizio alla
società romena” and devoted to Raymund Netzhammer, O.S.B., Latin archbishop
of Bucharest (1905–24), was held at the Pontifical Oriental Institute on May 18,
2007. The proceedings of the symposium have now been published in Orientalia
Christiana Periodica (vol. 81, no. 2, 2015). The nine contributors are Ana-Maria
Botnaru, George Gutu, Sorin Mitu, Ernst Christoph Suttner, Reimund Haas,
Constantin Simon, Elena Siupiur, Alexandru Barnea, and Violeta Barbu.
Sexuality is the theme of the articles published in the winter 2016 issue of U.S.
Catholic Historian (vol. 34, no. 1): Kristy L. Slominski, “Cardinal Gibbons as a
Symbol for Early Sex Education” (pp. 1–25); Ralph Frasca, “Abortion in the Early
American Press: Secular and Catholic Approaches to the Pre-Born Child” (pp. 27–
51); Alexander Pavuk, “Catholic Birth Control? Father John O’Brien, Rhythm,
and Progressive American Catholicism in 1930s Contraception Discourse” (pp.
53–76); Daniel K. Williams, “From Anti-Contraceptive Campaigns to Fetal
Rights: The Pro-Life Movement’s Attempt to Separate Itself from the Politics of
Birth Control” (pp. 77–102); Robert N. Karrer, “Abortion Politics: The Context of
the Cuomo-O’Connor Debate, 1980–1984” (pp. 103–24); James P. McCartin,
“The Church and Gay Liberation: The Case of John McNeill” (pp. 125–41); and
Thomas F. Rzeznik, “The Church and the AIDS Crisis in New York City” (pp.
143–65).
Several causes of canonization of Servants of God currently being promoted
in dioceses of the United States are reviewed in the winter 2016 issue of Chicago
Studies (vol. 55, no. 1), as follows: Martin Zielinski, “Report for the Historical
Commission in the Cause of Father Augustus Tolton (1854–1897), Archdiocese of
Chicago” (pp. 11–25); Lawrence Hennessey, “Report for the Theological Commission in the Cause of Father Augustus Tolton (1854–1897), Archdiocese of
Chicago” (pp. 26–43); Mary Paynter, “What Should Be Important in Our Lives
Today? The Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli, O.P.” (pp. 44–61); Seth A. Brown, “A
Dead Man Stepped Off a Plane at New York: The Amazing Case of Father Walter
Ciszek, S.J.” (pp. 62–75); Michael McDevitt, “The Mystery of a Singular Grace:
The Ecstasies of Cora Evans” (pp. 76–88); and Edward Looney, “Adele Brise: A
Student in the School of Our Lady” (pp. 89–100).

Periodical Literature
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
La canonizzazione dei Santi. Infallibile? Maurizio P. Faggioni, OFM. Gregorianum, 96 (3, 2015), 527–50.
Zur Tagzeitenliturgie an den drei Tagen vor Ostern. Vom römischen (und monastischen) Offizium zur heutigen Liturgia Horarum. Ingrid Fischer. Liturgisches
Jahburch, 65 (2, 2015), 105–24.
The Liturgical Reform and the “Political” Message of Vatican II in the Age of a
Privatized and Libertarian Culture. Massimo Faggioli. Worship, 90 (Jan.,
2016), 10–27.
The History of Clerical Taxation in England and Wales, 1173–1663: The Findings of the E 179 Project. Maureen Jurkowski. Journal of Ecclesiastical History,
67 (Jan., 2016), 53–81.
Quando il sole tramontava alle ventiquattro: orologi, campane e campanili, calendari e ricorrenze liturgiche a Venezia. Sergio Baldan. Studi Veneziani, LXIX
(2014), 393–540.
Medicina e religione sulla longue durée: equilibri instabili e giochi di potere. Sabrina
Minuzzi. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXIII (IV, 2015), 719–33.
The Repugnant Other: Soldiers, Missionaries, and Aid Workers as Organizational
Migrants. Leo Lucassen and Aniek X. Smit. Journal of World History, 26
(Mar., 2015), 1–39.
Noticias de la Provincia Renano-Suiza. Carl B. Ebner and Clemens Schroeber.
Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XL (2016), 175–216.
The Missio sui Iuris: To Be or Not To Be a particular Church (c. 371 § I): Historical Development of the Missio sui Iuris in Mission Territories (1896–2002)
and the Praxis of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in
Erecting Them. Joseph V. McCabe, M.M. Jurist, 75 (2, 2015), 313–85.
Synesius of Cyrene and the American “Synesii.” Jay Bregman. Numen, 63 (2–3,
2016), 299–323.
Pedro Arrupe y el Concilio Vaticano II. Santiago Madrigal, SJ. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 91 (Jan.–Mar., 2016), 143–72.
Filippo Rotolo OFMConv. Operoso storico francescano collaboratore della “Miscellanea Francescana.” Francesco Costa, OFMConv. Miscellanea Francescana,
115 (III–IV, 2015), 331–67.
448

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449

ANCIENT
El paso de Asclepio a Cristo en la primera literatura cristiana. Juan Carlos Alby.
Theologica Xaveriana, 65 (Jan.–June, 2015), 185–208.
The Original Language of the Muratorian Fragment. Christophe Guignard. Journal of Theological Studies, 66 (Oct., 2015), 596–624.
Los dos focos de persecución cristiana en el Imperio romano: el Norte de África y
Asia Menor. M. Amparo Mateo Donet. G regorianum, 96 (3, 2015), 551–70.
Divine or Human Images? Neoplatonic and Christian Views on Works of Art and
Aesthetics. Arja Karivieri. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 196–209.
L’ο′µοου′σιος nel III secolo. Note critiche sulla questione dei due Dionigi e il concilio di Antiochia del 268. Giuseppe Bartolozzi. Cristianesimo nella storia, 36
(3, 2015), 487–503.
La Passion grecque abrégée de sainte Cyprille, martyre à Cyrène en Libye (BHG
2093). Xavier Lequeux. Analecta Bollandiana, 133 (Dec., 2015), 241–48.
Les programmes religieux de Constantin et de ses concurrents vus à travers les
monnaies. Christian R. Raschle. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–
Dec., 2015), 587–616.
Abba Moïse l’Éthiopien, moine de Scété, et sa trajectoire de sanctification. JeanLuc Molinier. Collectanea Cisterciensia, 77 (4, 2015), 343–67.
Athanasius’ ‘Vita Antonii’ as Political Theology: The Call of Heavenly Citizenship. Sophie Cartwright. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 241–
64.
“Segregati a credentium turbis”. Historical and theological reflections on ecclesial
aspects of monastic origins. Mark Sheridan. Cristianesimo nella storia, 36 (2,
2015), 251–75.
The Sardican Paper, Antiochene Politics, and the Council of Alexandria (362):
Developing the ‘Faith of Nicaea’. Donald Fairbairn. Journal of Theological
Studies, 66 (Oct., 2015), 651–78.
Byzantine Visual Culture: Conditions of “Right” Belief and Some Platonic Outlooks. Anne Karahan. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 210–44.
Briser les idoles païennes ou les sauvegarder? Le sort des statues divines de Caesarea
(Cherchel, Algérie) à la fin de l’Antiquité. Gabriel de Bruyn. Revue historique,
140 (Jan., 2016), 3–24.
Les stylites, des moines perdus entre terre et ciel. Philippe Henne. Mélanges de Science Religieuse, 72 (4, 2015), 5–15.
Das sogenannte Bekenntnis des Ambrosius (CPL 167a) bei Theodoret und der
Brief In prolixitate epistolae Papst Anastasius’ II. (CPL 1610; CPG 9160).
Wolfram Kinzig. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 19 (3, 2015), 452–80.

450

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Fondazione di una chiesa (Codex Theodosianus, XVI, 10, 25 e Iustiniani Corpus Iuris
Civilis): problematiche storico-giurdiche e liturgiche. Vincenzo Ruggieri. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 81 (2, 2015), 411–32.
Paradigmatic Piety: Liturgy in the Life of Martha, Mother of Symeon Stylites the
Younger. Lucy Parker. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 24 (Spring, 2016),
99–125.
Erotic Persuasion and Characterization in Late Antique Hagiography: the Passio
Caeciliae and the Passio Susannae. Annelies Bossu, Danny Praet, and Koen De
Temmerman. Latomus, 74 (Dec., 2015), 1059–72.
Edfu and the Oriens: On Re-discovering Ancient Egyptian Lore in the Coptic
Apocalypses. Daniele Tripaldi. Journal of Ancient Christianity, 20 (Jan., 2016),
127–46.

MEDIEVAL
The Endorsement of Royal-Episcopal Collaboration in the Fredegar Chronica.
Gregory I. Halfond. Traditio, 70 (2015), 1–28.
The Historia Ekklesiastike kai Mystike Theoria: A symbolic understanding of the
Byzantine church building. Vasileios Marinis. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 108
(Dec., 2015), 753–70.
Gendering Dark Age Jesus. Lynda Coon. Gender and History, 28 (Apr., 2016), 8–
33.
Double Predestination, Augustinian Tradition and Carolingian Ecclesiastical Politics. The Debate on Double Predestination in the Southern Realm and its
Conclusion. Diana Stanciu. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec.,
2015), 619–59.
Assembling the Austrasian Letters at Trier and Lorsch. Graham Barrett and George
Woudhuysen. Early Medieval Europe, 24 (Feb., 2016), 3–57.
Christianity’s Content: (Neo)Platonism in the Middle Ages, Its Theoretical and
Theological Appeal. Willemien Otten. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 245–70.
Augustine in the Predestination Controversy of the Ninth Century, Part I: The
Double Predestinarians Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie. Brian
J. Matz. Augustinian Studies, 46 (2, 2015), 155–84.
The Invocation of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel attributed to Metrophanes,
metropolitan of Smyrna (BHG 1292). Erika Gielen. Byzantinische Zeitschrift,
108 (Dec., 2015), 653–72.
The Priests of the King’s Reliquary in Anglo-Saxon England. James Lloyd. Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 265–87.
Zur Konstruktion einer nationalreligiösen Identität. Östliche und westliche
Sichtweisen auf den Bogomilismus. Martin Illert. Ökumenische Rundschau, 65
(Jan.–Mar., 2016), 30–41.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

451

“The Most Blessed Hilary Held an Estate”: Property, Reform, and the Canonical
Life in Tenth-Century Aquitaine. Anna Trumbore Jones. Church History, 85
(Mar., 2016), 1–39.
“I Consider Translation Very Rational”: A Vernacular Translation of the Benedictine Rule in the Tenth-Century English Monastic Reforms. Julie Smith.
American Benedictine Review, 67 (Mar., 2016), 58–80.
Apocalyptic and Eschatological Thought in England around the Year 1000.
Catherine Cubitt. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (6th series), 25
(Dec., 2015), 27–52.
The Rhetoric and Reality of Reform in Irish Eschatological Thought, circa 1000–
1150. Elizabeth Boyle. History of Religions, 55 (Feb., 2016), 269–88.
Archbishop Wulfstan and the importance of paying God his dues. A. D. Smart.
International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 16 (1, 2016), 24–41.
Representations of the warrior-bishop in eleventh-century Lotharingia. J. R.
Webb. Early Medieval Europe, 24 (Feb., 2016), 103–30.
Al diavolo la tassa! Un episodio interpolato della Vita S. Ædwardi regis et confessoris
di Aelredo di Rievaulx. Francesco Marzella. Analecta Bollandiana, 133 (Dec.,
2015), 256–81.
The Fate of Anglo-Saxon Saints after the Norman Conquest of England: St
Æthelwold of Winchester as a Case Study. Rebecca Browett. History, 101
(Apr., 2016), 183–200.
Matilde di Canossa e la Prima Crociata: l’enigma di una scelta. Corrado Corradini.
Stvdi Medievali, LVI (Dec., 2015), 513–53.
The Kanonikon by John the Faster. Frans van de Paverd. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 81 (I, 2015), 83–137.
Tres sermones de Hugo de San Víctor (1096–1141) para la fiesta de San Agustín.
Guillermo Pons Pons. Revista Agustiniana, LVI (May–Dec., 2015), 363–89.
Die Diplome Karlmanns und Heinrichs IV. für Kremsmünster. Die älteste Überlieferung in Fragmenten des 12. Jahrhunderts und ihre Adaptierung durch
Bernardus Noricus. Winfried Stelzer. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 123 (2, 2015), 317–40.
The Church of St. Catherine in Thessalonike: Its topographical setting and the
current state of scholarship. Evangelia Hadjitryphonos. Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, 108 (Dec., 2015), 673–714.
The Reform of the Chapter of Sées (1131) Reconsidered: The Evidence of the
Episcopal Acta. Richard Allen. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Jan., 2016),
23–52.
Between Byzantium and Jerusalem? The principality of Antioch, Renaud of
Châtillon, and the penance of Mamistra in 1158. Andrew D. Buck. Mediterranean Historical Review, 30 (Dec., 2015), 107–24.

452

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Sabatati: The Significance of Early Waldensian Shoes, c. 1184–c. 1300. Adam
L. Hoose. Speculum, 91 (Apr., 2016), 356–73.
Gift Exchange with Saints in Medieval Icelandic Miracle Stories. Davide Zori.
Viator, 47 (1, 2016), 85–106.
Yes and No: Late Medieval Dispensations from Canonical Bigamy in Theory and
Practice. Wolfgang P. Müller. Traditio, 70 (2015), 281–305.
Le Graal et le silence de l’Église. Jean-René Valette. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de
France, 101 (July–Dec., 2015), 261–76.
Magisterial Authority, Philosophical Identity, and the Growth of Marian Devotion: The Seals of Parisian Masters, 1190–1308. William J. Courtenay. Speculum, 91 (Jan., 2016), 63–114.
Guilty or Innocent? Pope Innocent III’s Perceptions and Attitudes towards the
Byzantines (1198–1204). Savvas Neocleous. Stvdi Medievali, LVI (Dec.,
2015), 555–94.
Il concetto di concelebrazione nel XIII secolo. Lettura liturgica di Papa Innocenzo
III e di Tommaso d’Aquino. Dominik Jurczak. Ecclesia orans, XXXII (2,
2015), 387–429.
The Myth of the White Monks’ “Mission to the Orthodox”: Innocent III, the Cistercians, and the Greeks. Chris Schabel. Traditio, 70 (2015), 237–61.
The Fourth Crusade in the Italian historiography of the second half of the twentieth century. Luigi Andrea Berto. Studi Veneziani, LXIX (2014), 15–21.
Antecedentes del clericalismo y anticlericalismo en España (De Nerón a Carlos
III). Una introducción (VI). Santiago, Cruzadas y Órdenes militares. Victor
Manuel Arbeloa. Lumen, LXVI (Apr.–June, 2015), 143–72.
Valdes von Lyon und Franz von Assisi une ihre Nachwirkung in der ‘abendländischen’ Christentumsgeschichte. Einige Überlegungen fünfzig Jahre danach
(nach meinem ersten Wortmeldungen zu ihrem Verständnis: 1961 und 1966).
Kurt-Victor Selge. Cristianesimo nella storia, 32 (2, 2015), 277–97.
A fundação dos conventos franciscanos em Leiria e Porto com o apoio do Papa
Gregório IX. Teresinha Maria Duarte. Itinerarium, LXI (May–Aug., 2015),
375–91.
… dass die Erde die Mutter und die Sonne der Vater der Pflanzen ist. Bartholomaeus
Anglicus’ enzyklopädisches Wissen über Pflanzen im Solarzeitalter. Dorothee
Rippmann. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 123
(2, 2015), 341–70.
Armenia Jacobea. Francisco J. Buide del Real. Compostellanum, LX (July–Dec.,
2015), 593–643.
Papal Executors and the Veracity of Petitions from Thirteenth-Century England.
Thomas Smith. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec., 2015), 662–82.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

453

El Oficio divino en la vida del clero entre los siglos XIII y XVI: una visión a través
de las contituciones sinodales hispanas. Juan Pablo Rubio Sadia. Ecclesia orans,
XXXII (2, 2015), 287–337.
Unicuique Suum. The Restitution to John of Wales, OFM of Parts of Some Mirrors
for Princes Circulating in Late Medieval Portugal. Marco Toste. Franciscan
Studies, 73 (2015), 1–58.
Il Capitolo generale di Pisa 1263. Decreti e significato. Emil Kumka, OFMConv.
Miscellanea Francescana, 115 (III–IV, 2015), 307–17.
La pancarte de l’abbaye cistercienne de Fontfroide (1266): de l’usage tardif d’un
type diplomatique. Véronique de Becdelièvre. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de
France, 101 (July–Dec., 2015), 277–304.
Il monastero di Santa Lucia di Rieti e la lettera collettiva d’indulgenza del 1289.
Federico Micciarelli. Salesianum, LXXVI (Oct.–Dec., 2014), 719–30.
Hagiographie et prédication: le légendier Charleville-Mézières, BM, 177. Cécile
Lanéry. Analecta Bollandiana, 133 (Dec., 2015), 282–349.
“Idem quod evangelium Christi”. Interpretazioni dell’identità tra Regola francescana e Vangelo da Olivi a Clareno. Roberto Lambertini. Cristianesimo nella
storia, 32 (2, 2015), 299–327.
Triplex periculum: The Moral Topography of Giotto’s Hell in the Arena Chapel,
Padua. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, LXXVIII (2015), 41–70.
Il Liber Maximus A. Origini e contenuto di un cartulario trevigiano del sec. XIV.
Gabriele Giusto. Studi Veneziani, LXX (2014), 15–42.
Torture and Confession in the Templar Interrogations at Caen, 28–29 October
1307. Sean L. Field. Speculum, 91 (Apr., 2016), 297–327.
Royal Agents and Templar Confessions in the Bailliage of Rouen. Sean L. Field.
French Historical Studies, 39 (Feb., 2016), 35–71.
Philip the Fair, Clement V, and the End of the Knights Templar: The Execution
of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny in March 1314. Elizabeth A. R.
Brown. Viator, 47 (1, 2016), 229–92.
Du nouveau sur le poverello breton [Jean Discalcéat, †1349]. Marie-Madeleine de
Cevins. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 122 (4, 2015), 7–30.
Recluse: due casi a confronto (Siena e Pisa). Eleonora Rava and Allison Clark
Thurber. Cristianesimo nella storia, 36 (3, 2015), 505–35.
Bishops, Parliament and Trial by Peers: Clerical Opposition to the Confiscation of
Episcopal Temporalities in the Fourteenth Century. Matthew Phillips. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 288–305.
L’obituaire du grand hôtel-Dieu de Meaux. Jean-Loup Lemaitre. Journal des
Savants, 2015 (July–Dec.), 241–72.

454

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

“Fare per lettera”: le traduzioni latine del Libro di divina dottrina di Caterina da
Siena. Silvia Nocentini. Stvdi Medievali, LVI (Dec., 2015), 639–80.
Shrouding the Divine: Observations on the Iconography of the Entombment of
Christ in Ethiopian Illumination of the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries. Jacopo Gnisci. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 81 (2, 2015), 473–92.
Signes de sainteté et vecteurs de virtus dans les miracles posthumes du carme
Albert de Trapani relatés aux XIVe–XVe siècles. Jean-Marie Sansterre.
Analecta Bollandiana, 133 (Dec., 2015), 433–40.
Lollardy, Hussitism and the Scottish Inquisition, c. 1390–c. 1527. Katie Stevenson. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec., 2015), 684–714.
Urban Order and Urban Other: Anti-Waldensian Inquisition in Augsburg, 1393.
Eugene Smelyansky. German History, 34 (Mar., 2016), 1–20.
Are Things ‘Indifferent’? How Objects Change Our Understanding of Religious
History. Caroline Bynum. German History, 34 (Mar., 2016), 88–112.
Parallele Karrierien in Staat und Kirche. Der Venezianer Adelige Filippo Correr
und sien Bruder Angelo, Papst Gregor XII. Dieter Girgensohn. Mitteilungen
des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 123 (2, 2015), 371–401.
Articulating Work and Family: Lay Papal Relatives in the Papal States, 1420–
1549. Jennifer Mara DeSilva. Renaissance Quarterly, 69 (Spring, 2016), 1–39.
A proposito del movimento dell’osservanza francescana in Sicilia. Dal rientro nell’isola di frate Matteo di Agrigento al pontificato di Sisto IV. Antonio Mursia.
Miscellanea Francescana, 115 (III–IV, 2015), 318–30.
Da Ambrogio Traversari a Luca Carducci: aspetti e momenti della riforma camaldolese nell’età di Eugenio IV. Simona Iaria. Aevum, LXXXIX (Sept.–Dec.,
2015), 483–524.
Ideology, Careerism and Civic Consciousness: The Crusade against Basel, 1482–
1485. Norman Housley. English Historical Review, CXXX (Dec., 2015),
1392–1417.
The Marketplace of the Ministry: The Impact of Sacerdotal Piecework on the Care
of Souls in Paris, 1483–1505. Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher. Speculum, 91 (Jan.,
2016), 149–70.
Cosimo Rosselli’s Birmingham Altarpiece, the Vallombrosan Abbey of S.
Trinità in Florence and its Gianfigliazzi Chapel. Susan J. May and George
T. Noszlopy. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LXXVIII
(2015), 97–133.
Liber introitus conventus S. Marcelli de urbe. Libro di entrata del convento di S. Marcello di Roma da ottobre 1491 a settembre 1510. Fra’ Ubaldo M. Todeschini.
Studi Veneziani, LXX (2014), 171–426.
San Giobbe nell’Italia del Rinascimento. Le dimensioni di una devozione. Michele
Lodone. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, LI (1, 2015), 3–56.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

455

SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Il testamento e la libreria di Sebastiano Salvini (1512). Pierluigi Licciardello.
Aevum, LXXXIX (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 525–60.
Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles Tapestries for Leo X: Sight, Sound, and Space in the
Sistine Chapel. Lisa Pon. Art Bulletin, 97 (4, 2015), 388–408.
La Lettera a Leone X di Raffaello e Baldassar Castiglione: un nuovo manoscritto.
Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro. Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa,
series 5, 7 (1, 2015), 119–68.
Da Marignano a Bologna. Il riavvicinamento diplomatico tra Leone X e Francesco
I. Noemi Rubello. Aevum, LXXXIX (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 609–27.
Thomas More as Theologian in his Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. John
F. Boyle. Moreana, 52 (June, 2015), 11–43.
Suffering and Spiritedness: The Doctrine of Comfort and the Drama of Thumos in
More’s Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. William B. Stevenson. Moreana, 52 (June, 2015), 109–22.
Thomas More, the Mystic? Marie-Claire Phélippeau. Moreana, 52 (June, 2015),
135–54.
Thomas More and Charles V. Part III/III.—Such a worthy councellour. Eugenio
M. Olivares Merino. Moreana, 52 (June, 2015), 191–235.
Henry VIII: ‘Catholicism without the Pope’? G. W. Bernard. History, 101 (Apr.,
2016). 201–21.
Et aures habentes non auditis: Getting the Message about Images in SixteenthCentury Amiens. Mary Jane Chase. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI (Fall,
2015), 565–85.
A New Perspective on Islam in Henrician England: The Polemics of Christopher
St. German. Daniel Eppley. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI (Fall, 2015),
587–606.
Mixing Canon and Common Law in Religious Prosecutions under Henry VIII and
Edward VI: Bishop Bonner, Anne Askew, and Beyond. Henry Ansgar Kelly.
Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI (Winter, 2015), 927–55.
The Lost Book of the Strasbourg Prophets: Orality, Literacy, and Enactment in
Lienhard Jost’s Visions. Jonathan Green. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI
(Summer, 2015), 313–29.
“Et questo mi pare quanto agli studij vostri”: una lettera inedita di Juan de Polanco
a Pedro de Ribadeneira (1547) alla origini della pedagogia gesuita. Lorenzo
Mancini. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV (II, 2015), 187–219.
Los primeros hermanos jesuitas. Marcos Recolons de Arquer SJ. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV (I, 2015), 55–77.

456

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Penance in the Jesuit Mission to Japan, 1549–1562. James Fujitani. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 306–24.
Seroras and Local Religious Life in the Basque Country and Navarre, 1550–1769.
Amanda L. Scott. Church History, 85 (Mar., 2016), 40–64.
Michele Trivolis/Massimo il Greco (1470–circa 1555/1556). Una moderna adesione al vangelo nella tradizione ortodossa. Marcello Garzaniti. Cristianesimo
nella storia, 32 (2, 2015), 341–66.
L’evangelo e le riforme ecclesiastiche del XVI secolo nella storiografia di Gottfried
Arnold. Roberto Osculati. Cristianesimo nella storia, 32 (2, 2015), 367–402.
La renovación eclesial. A la luz del sínodo diocesano de Santo Tomás de Villanueva. Arturo Llin Cháfer. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXVIII (Sept.–Dec.,
2015), 737–57.
The Synoptic Problem in Sixteenth-Century Protestantism. Michael Strickland.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Jan., 2016), 82–93.
The 1559 Books of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Reformation. Cyndia
Susan Clegg. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Jan., 2016), 94–121.
Clerical Conformity and the Elizabethan Settlement Revisited. Peter Marshall and
John Morgan. Historical Journal, 59 (Mar., 2016), 1–22.
San Juan de Ávila, maestro de Santa Teresa de Jesús. F. Javier Díaz Lorite. Estudios
Eclesiásticos, 90 (July–Sept., 2015), 505–40.
La conversión de Santa Teresa y el influjo de San Agustín. Salvador Ros García,
O.C.D. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXVIII (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 613–41.
“The Sisters of Rachel”: Interpreting Dying in Childbed in Early Modern Denmark-Norway. Eivor Andersen Oftestad. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI
(Winter, 2015), 957–81.
Tra Osservanza e Controriforma. Le Costituzioni dei monasteri di s. Chiara e di s.
Maria della Ripa di Forlì. Juri Leoni, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 108 (July–Dec., 2015), 431–84.
Tiziano e il Tributo della moneta: due invenzioni, una variante. Andrea Donati.
Studi Veneziani, LXX (2014), 83–146.
San José de Calasanz en la Roma de la Reforma Postridentina. Severino Giner
Guerri. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XXXIX (2015), 57–77.
The Flight from France of Nicolas Des Gallars: Archival Discoveries on his Interlude in Geneva (1568–1571) with Beza and the Histoire ecclésiastique des Eglises
reformées au Royaume de France. Jeannine E. Olson. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme
et Renaissance, LXXVII (3, 2015), 573–603.
From Slurs to Silence? Sodomy and Mendicants in the Writings of Catholic
Laymen in Early Modern Ghent. Jonas Roelens. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XLVI (Fall, 2015), 629–49.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

457

Un carteggio inedito di san Carlo Borromeo (1578–79): la Sindone e l’escorcismo
di una calvinista. Ada Grossi. Aevum, LXXXIX (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 687–720.
Concord and Toleration in the Thought of Francesco Pucci, 1578–81. Neil Tarrant. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI (Winter, 2015), 983–1003.
I più antichi brevi pontifici dei Chierici Regolari Minori in San Lorenzo in Lucina:
i primi anni di storia dei Caracciolini (1578–1627). Federico Micciarelli.
Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec., 2015), 716–41.
Profezie e alchimia alla corte di Gregorio XIII e Sisto V: un carteggio dall’Accademia Carrara di Bergamo. Lorenzo Comensoli Antonini. Aevum, LXXXIX
(Sept.–Dec., 2015), 721–44.
Las Costumbres de los Indios Tagalos de Filipinas. Según el franciscano Juan de
Plasencia. Estudio Preliminar, Edición Critica y Notas. Fernando Cid Lucas.
Itinerarium, LXI (May–Aug., 2015). 353–74.
Los verdaderos téminos del tránsito de la Reforma a la Reforma Católica en Valencia: Política, Iglesia y Cultura (1585–1611). José Seguí Cantos. Miscelánea
Comillas, 73 (July–Dec., 2015), 313–66.
Flame into Being: Spirit, Soul, and the Physiology of Early Modern Devotion.
Richard Sugg. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 46 (1, 2016),
141–65.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
L’ange gardien, entre théologie, dévotion et spiritualité (XVIe–XVIIe siècles).
Antoine Mazurek. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 233 (Jan.–Mar., 2016), 21–
47.
Projet d’une dévotion à l’échelle mondiale. La Josephina de Gracián de la Madre de
Dios. Elisabeth Heijmans. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec.,
2015), 743–59.
La rivoluzione scientifica di un francescano: Ilario Altobelli tra astronomia e
astrologia. Flavia Marcacci. Franciscan Studies, 73 (2015), 199–213.
Las persecuciones contra los cristianos de Edo (actual Tokio) y Arima (1612–
1614). Caeytano Sánchez Fuertes, OFM. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
108 (July–Dec., 2015). 485–554.
The British Pharaoh? James I and VI and internationalist religious writing at the
wedding of Friedrich V and Elizabeth Stuart. Kevin Chovanec. Seventeenth
Century, 30 (4, 2015), 391–409.
Suggerire l’indicible: amor e conoscenza negli ultimi scritti di Pierre de Bérulle.
Mariel Mazzocco. Rivsita di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, LI (1, 2015), 79–
91.

458

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

“Lo scalzo” Alessandro di San Francesco e la prima traduzione italiana delle Opere
di San Giovanni della Croce (Roma, 1627). Pamela Trincado. Rivista di
Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, LI (1, 2015), 57–78.
Le Accademie di San Pantaleo. Goffredo Cianfrocca. Archivum Scholarum Piarum,
XXXIX (2015), 109–32.
A “Theological Junto”: the 1641 Lords’ subcommittee on religious innovation.
Stephen Hampton. Seventeenth Century, 30 (4, 2015), 433–54.
Reinventing Westminster Abbey, 1642–1660: A House of Kings from Revolution
to Restoration. J. F. Merritt. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Jan., 2016),
122–38.
Il “Quaresimale” di p. Innocenzo Marcinnò (1589–1655). Una lettura pastorale.
Roberto Cuvato. Laurentianum, 56 (2–3, 2015), 317–408.
Confession and Authority in Post-Westphalian Alsace, 1648–1789. Stephen
Lazer. Journal of Early Modern History, 20 (2, 2016), 141–64.
The Old Believers Praying for the Tsar in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Maureen
Perrie. Slavonic and East European Review, 94 (Apr., 2016), 243–58.
The Anglican patient: Robert Boyle and the “Medicalised Self” in early modern
England. Stephen Pender. Seventeenth Century, 30 (4, 2015), 455–83.
Sancti Isidori Visitatio Apostolica (1663). I Fratri Minori irlandesi a Roma dopo
Luke Wadding. Donatella Bellardini and Claudia Costacurta. Archivum
Franciscum Historicum, 108 (July–Dec., 2015), 609–30.
Memorie di Costantinopoli: Veneziani e Ottomani durante la guerra di Candia.
Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby. Studi Veneziani, LXIX (2014), 327–56.
Notizie Historiche (continuazione). Giancarlo Caputi. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XXXIX (2015), 3–56.
Notizie Historiche (continuazione). Giancarlo Caputi. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XL (2016), 5–70.
‘Theological Wars’: ‘Socinians’ v. ‘Antinomians’ in Restoration England. Christopher Haigh. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 325–50.
Visitations of God in the Land of Sin: a history of the Byzantine Empire from a
Du Cange’s manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Elisa Bianco.
Studi Veneziani, LXIX (2014), 357–91.
The Self-Reflective Gaze: Devotional Art between New Piety and Pietism in
Lutheran Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Judith P. Aikin. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVI (Winter, 2015), 853–90.
“Those Times can Tell the Story”: The Anglican Reformation, Henry VIII’s Succession Statutes, and England’s Exclusion Crisis, 1679–1681. Chris Petrakos.
Anglican and Episcopal History, 84 (Dec., 2015), 393–415.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

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Pierre Perrier’s 1699 Vie de Sainte Isabelle de France: Precious Evidence From an
Unpublished Preface. Sean Field. Franciscan Studies, 73 (2015), 215–47.
Benedict Brechtbühl (1666–1720) of the Emmental: Anabaptist teacher, bridge
builder, and border crosser. Hanspeter Jecker. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 89
(July, 2015), 405–65.
Les ecclésiastiques à l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres sous l’Ancien
Régime. François Fossier. Journal des Savants, 2015 (July–Dec.), 273–90.
L’anti-Pascal di Fénelon. Benedetta Papàsogli. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, LI (1, 2015), 93–115.
Marginal Importance. Scottish Accountability and English Watchfulness. Alistair
Mutch. Church History & Religious Culture, 96 (1–2, 2016), 155–78.
The Early Eighteenth-Century German Confessional Crisis: The Juridification of
Religious Conflict in the Reconfessionalized Politics of the Holy Roman
Empire. Patrick Milton. Central European History, 49 (Mar., 2016), 39–68.
Jean Barbeyrac, Supererogation, and the Search for a Safe Religion. Greg Conti.
Modern Intellectual History, 13 (Apr., 2016), 1–31.
Ideas of monarchical reform: Fenelon, Jacobitism and the political works of the
Chevalier Ramsay. John Callow. Seventeenth Century, 30 (4, 2015), 490–94.
El rector Vicente Blasco y el P. Benito Feliu de San Pedro en la cultura valenciana
del Setecientos: la reforma universitaria. Maria Llum Juan Liern. Archivum
Scholarum Piarum, XXXIX (2015), 83–107.
Per insegnare naturali le scienze. A proposito delle Scuole Pie dei Padri Scolopi ad
Adrano. Antonio Mursia. Archivum Scholarum Piarum, XL (2016), 109–17.
Mr. Wesley, Since you Wanted to Help the Poor, Why did you Ignore the English
Poor Law of your Day? George E. Hendricks and M. Elton Hendricks.
Asbury Journal, 70 (Fall, 2015), 55–77.
La polemica antigesuititica nella seconda metà del XVIII secolo: Trilogia delle lettere ad una Dama dubbiosa. Tiziana M. Di Blasio. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV (II, 2015), 221–86.
“Brevis Descriptio Inclytae Provinciae Styriae et Carinthiae Ordinis Fratrum
Minorum Conventualium (1766)”. Trascrizione e commento del manoscritto
di p. Arsenius Platner. Igor Salmič, OFMConv. Misecllanea Francescana, 115
(III–IV, 2015), 478–538.
Revisiting Ecclesiastical Adultery Cases in Eighteenth-Century England. Junko
Akamatsu. Journal of Women’s History, 28 (Spring, 2016), 13–27.
Obstinate juries, impudent barristers and scandalous verdicts? Compensating the
victims of the Gordon Riots of 1780 and the Priestley Riots of 1791. Jonathan
Atherton. Historical Research, LXXXVIII (Nov., 2015), 650–73.

460

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Leopoldina Naudet, l’Amicizia Cristiana e la Bibbia: l’influenza dei gesuiti nell’apostolato del libro. Adriana Valerio. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu,
LXXXIV (I, 2015), 79–108.

NINETEENTH TO TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
Religion, culte, liturgie et processus de civilisation dans la France du XIXe siècle.
Vincent Petit. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 101 (July–Dec., 2015),
305–24.
The Copied Hymns of John Young. Ralph Thomas Kam. Hawaiian Journal of History, 49 (2015), 47–58.
Gran expolio artístico del Real Monasterio del Escorial durante la invasión francesa
(1808–1814). José Rodríguez Díez. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXVIII (Sept.–
Dec., 2015), 805–35.
Les missions étrangères au cœur du rétablissement de la Compagnie de Jésus en
France. Philippe Lécrivain SJ. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV
(I, 2015), 15–48.
“The Lord Has Done Great Things for Us”: The 1817 Reformation Celebrations
and the End of the Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Lands. Scott Berg.
Central European History, 49 (Mar., 2016), 69–92.
La libertad de imprenta en el Trienio liberal (1820–1823). Actitud de la Santa Sede
y los obispos españoles. Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo. Aevum, LXXXIX (Sept.–
Dec., 2015), 759–82.
Pietist and Methodist Roots of the Société des Missions Évangéliques de Paris.
David Bundy. Asbury Journal, 70 (Fall, 2015), 28–54.
Modern Western Christian Missions in Iran: The Connection between Government and Missionary. Philip O. Hopkins. Iran and the Caucasus, 19 (4, 2015),
299–309.
Giovanni Perrone’s Theological Curriculum and the First Vatican Council. C.
Michael Shea. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec., 2015), 789–816.
The ‘blood of martyrs’ and the growth of Catholicism in late Chosǒn Korea.
Andrew Finch. Historical Research, LXXXVIII (Nov., 2015), 674–92.
Irish education and the legacy of O’Connell. Brian Fleming and Judith Harford.
History of Education, 45 (Mar., 2016), 169–87.
Which Irish men and women immigrated to the United States during the Great
Famine migration of 1846–54? Tyler Anbinder and Hope McCaffrey. Irish
Historical Studies, 39 (Nov., 2015), 620–42.
A tale of two schools: educating Catholic female deaf children in Ireland, 1846–
1946. Noel Patrick O’Connell. History of Education, 45 (Mar., 2016), 188–
205.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

461

P. Gennaro Fucile de S. Andrés, Prepósito General de la Orden de las Escuelas
Pías (1848–1861) (continuación). Adolfo García-Durán. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XXXIX (2015), 133–218.
P. Gennaro Fucile de S. Andrés, Prepósito General de la Orden de las Escuelas
Pías (1848–1861) (continuación). Adolfo García-Durán. Archivum Scholarum
Piarum, XL (2016), 119–62.
Correspondance des bollandistes A. Tinnebroeck, É. Carpentier, H. Matagne, R.
De Buck, C. De Smet, G. Van Hooff, J. Van den Gheyn at H. Delehaye avec
Jean Gagarin et Jean Martynov. Bernard Joassart. Analecta Bollandiana, 133
(Dec., 2015), 362–432.
Der ausgebliebene Kulturkampf. Die Errichtung des Mariä-Empfängnis-Domes
in Linz im Kontext der Politik in Oberösterreich und Linz (1861–1935).
Cathrin Hermann. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 123 (2, 2015), 402–27.
Costantino l’africano. Il progetto politico-religioso di Charles Lavigerie per l’Africa
centrale (1878–1885). Silvia Cristofori. Cristianesimo nella storia, 36 (3, 2015),
537–92.
Vida e Obra do Cardeal D. Fr. José Sebastião Neto, OFM. Henrique Pinto Rema,
OFM. Itinerarium, LXI (May–Aug., 2015), 191–297.
The Anatomical Perspective: Epistemology and Ethics in a Colonial Missionary
Clinic. Kevin E. Ko. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58 (Jan.,
2016), 211–41.
‘The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of
Ottoman/Turkish Women’s Bodies, 1890–1932. Caroline Kahlenberg.
Gender and History, 28 (Apr., 2016), 150–76.
Venezia, 21 gennaio 1892: i candelabri di Pio VII ritornano a S. Giorgio Maggiore.
Sergio Baldan. Studi Veneziani, LXX (2014), 453–85.
A constituição e o percurso das colecções científicas dos jesuítas exilados pela 1a
República: o caso de Carlos Zimmermann SJ (1871–1950). Francisco Malta
Romeiras. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV (2015, II), 287–326.
Antonino De Stefano (1880–1964) modernista: la teologia della storia. Salvatore
Corso. Laurentianum, 56 (2–3, 2015), 409–66.
The Politics of Transcendence in Colonial Uganda. Derek R. Peterson. Past &
Present, no. 230 (Feb., 2016), 197–225.
Ernesto Buonaiuti, la Grande guerra e i protestanti. Barbara Faes. Protestantesimo,
70 (4, 2015), 307–27.
Deutsche Franziskaner im Ersten Weltkrieg. Gisela Fleckenstein, OFS. Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum, 108 (July–Dec., 2015), 555–81.

462

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Une conférence méconnue du père Sertillanges: Le travail unanime (1919). Giovanni Cavagnini. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 101 (July–Dec., 2015),
373–89.
Le renouveau thomiste de la théologie morale dans l’entre-deux-guerres. La
présence oubliée des moralistes du Saulchoir dans le Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique (1). Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique,
110 (July–Dec., 2015), 817–44.
The Vatican, Nazi-Fascism, and the Making of Transnational Anti-communism
in the 1930s. Giuliana Chamedes. Journal of Contemporary History, 51 (Apr.,
2016), 261–90.
De l’invention d’un judaïsme dans l’Italie fasciste. Un cas d’auto-conversion spontanée. Kathy Agazzini. Revue des Sciences Religieuses, 90 (Jan., 2016), 63–80.
La vie monastique en Moldavie soviétique de 1944 à 1954. Panteleimon Pavlinciuc.
Istina, LX (Oct.–Dec., 2015), 411–29.
“Doubleday affaren”: The Story of Sigrid Undset’s Caterina av Siena. Natalie Van
Deusen. Scandinavian Studies, 87 (Fall, 2015), 383–400.
El concordato de 1953 y la España católica. Pedro Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes.
Estudios Eclesiásticos, 91 (Jan.–Mar., 2016), 173–90.
Conceptualizing and responding to poverty in the Republic of Ireland in the 1960s:
A case study of Dublin. Carole Holohan. Social History, 41 (Feb., 2016), 34–
53.
War and Peace: The Catholic Church, Max Charlesworth and B. A. Santamaria.
Kathleen McCarthy. Australasian Catholic Record, 92 (Oct., 2015), 433–46.
Warum der Dialog zu einem Ende kam. Der Abbruch des ökumenischen Dialogs
zwischen der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche und der EvangelischLutherischen Kirche in Finnland im Jahr 2014. Heta Hurskainen. Ökumenische Rundschau, 65 (Jan.–Mar., 2016), 77–98.

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN
Statistics in the Hands of an Angry God? John Graunt’s Observations in Cotton
Mather’s New England. Ted McCormick. William and Mary Quarterly, 72
(Oct., 2015), 563–86.
Making Sense of the Shepard Conversion Narratives. Lori Rogers-Stokes. New
England Quarterly, 89 (Mar., 2016), 109–38.
The Most Memorable Circumstances: Instructions for the Collection of Personal
Data from Church Members, circa 1752. Thomas J. McCullough. Journal of
Moravian History, 15 (2, 2015), 158–75.
Reason and Religion During the Revolutionary Period: Robert Morris’ Views on
Omnipotence and the Afterlife. Marko Junkkarinen. Anglican and Episcopal
History, 84 (Dec., 2015), 416–38.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

463

The Quaker Exiles: “The Cause of Every Inhabitant.” Paige L. Whidbee. Pennsylvania History, 83 (Winter, 2016), 28–57.
“Jacobins” at Princeton: Student Riots, Religious Revivalism, and the Decline of
the Enlightenment, 1800–1817. Charles Bradford Bow. Modern Intellectual
History, 13 (Apr., 2016), 93–122.
“This Week Black Paul Preach’d”: Fragment and Method in Early African-American Studies. John Saillant. Early American Studies, 14 (Winter, 2016), 48–81.
Father Richard’s Motives for Publishing the First U.S. Catholic Newspaper. Ralph
Frasca. American Catholic Studies, 126 (Winter, 2015), 57–72.
DuBourg’s Defense of St. Mary’s College: Apologetics and the Creation of a
Catholic Identity in the Early American Republic. Michael T. DeStefano.
Church History, 85 (Mar., 2016), 65–96.
The Haube Revolt: Conflict and Disagreement in the Moravian Community of
Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 1815. Paul Peucker. Journal of Moravian History, 15
(2, 2015), 136–57.
“A Convenient Seat in God’s Temple”: The Massachusetts General Colored Association and the Park Street Church Pew Controversy of 1830. Marc M.
Arkin. New England Quarterly, 89 (Mar., 2016), 6–53.
The Long Reach of the Log Cabin College: A Study of the Inaugural 1839–1840
Class of the Log Cabin College in Dresden, Missouri. Part Two. Warren R.
Schmidt. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 88 (Fall, 2015), 7–26.
From abolitionists to fundamentalists: the transformation of the Wesleyan
Methodists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Randall J. Stephens.
American Nineteenth-Century History, 16 (June, 2015), 159–91.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic and American Civil Religion. Richard M. Gamble.
Modern Age, 56 (Fall, 2014), 55–64.
‘Better right than Mennonite’: from ‘Egly Amish’ to the Defenseless Mennonite
Church to the Evangelical Mennonite Church to the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches. Timothy Paul Erdel. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 89 (July,
2015), 467–87.
The Character and Influence of Abolitionism: A Sermon that Gripped a Nation
and Defined a Man [Henry Van Dyke]. Sean A. Scott. American Nineteenth–
Century History, 16 (June, 2015), 193–211.
Franz Julius Blitz: A Faithful Shepherd During the Terrors of the Civil War. R.
Lee Hagan. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 88 (Winter, 2015), 7–16.
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied: An Account of the Conspiracy to Murder Albert
Molitor at Rogers City, Michigan, August 23, 1875. Jack D. Ferguson. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 88 (Winter, 2015), 33–58.
Murder on the Brazos: The Religious Context of the Populist Revolt. Charles
Postel. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 15 (Apr., 2016), 197–219.

464

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Seeking justice through novel writing and book publishing: Sutton Grigg’s commitment to literature and battles in print. John Cullen Gruesser. Baptist History and Heritage, 50 (Summer, 2015), 4–16.
Justice: Walter Rauschenbusch’s contribution to Baptist identity. William L. Pitts.
Baptist History and Heritage, 50 (Summer, 2015), 33–51.
“Unity by Inclusion”: James Edmund Jones, Canadian Churchman, and the Creation of The Book of Common Praise (1908). Kenneth R. Hull. Worship, 90
(Jan., 2016), 45–65.
Archbishop Edward Hanna of San Francisco: An Archetype for Twentieth-Century American Catholicism. Richard Gribble, CSC. American Catholic Studies,
126 (Winter, 2015), 29–55.
‘A high-class Christian gentleman’: Tennessee governor Ben W. Hooper and progressive era reforms. Merill Hawkins Jr. Baptist History and Heritage, 50
(Summer, 2015), 17–31.
Region, Religion, and Competing Visions of Mountain Mission Education in the
Ozarks. Brooks Blevins. Journal of Southern History, LXXXII (Feb., 2016),
59–96.
Lions for the Faith: The Knights of Columbus Battle the Bogus Oath in Texas
During the Second Rising of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Fossey. Catholic
Southwest, 26 (2015), 3–36.
“Join the Liturgical Apostolate: Subscribe to Orate Fratres!”. Katharine E. Harmon.
Worship, 90 (Mar., 2016), 106–25.
Another Long Civil Rights Movement: How Catholic Interracialists Used the
Resources of their Faith to Tear Down Racial Hierarchies. Karen Joy Johnson. American Catholic Studies, 126 (Winter, 2015), 1–27.
Enshrining the Mission: The Bishop Sheehan Memorial Museum and Vincentian
Visions of China. John Harney. American Catholic Studies, 126 (Fall, 2015),
45–69.
Fray Angélico Chávez and the Colonial Southwest: Historiography and Rematerialization. Ellen McCracken. The Americas, 72 (Oct., 2015), 529–47.
Giovanni Battista Montini (Paolo VI) e Thomas Merton. Corrispondenza (1949–
1968). Un’amicizia nel comune sentire nella Chiesa. Mario Zaninelli. Istituto
Paolo VI, notiziario n. 70 (Dec., 2015), 7–56.
“Where else did they copy their styles but from church groups?”: Rock ’n’ Roll and
Pentecostalism in the 1950s South. Randall J. Stephens. Church History, 85
(Mar., 2016), 97–131.
Ahead of its Time . . . Or, Right on Time? The Role of the Sister Formation Conference for American Women Religious. Carol K. Coburn. American Catholic
Studies, 126 (Fall, 2015), 25–44.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

465

Prudence and Intransigence: Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel and the Prelude
to Catholic Education Integration in Southeastern Louisiana. R. Eric Platt.
Catholic Southwest, 26 (2015), 37–63.
White Mississippi Baptist ministers who helped crack the wall of the ‘closed society,’ 1954–1974. Charles M. Dollar. Baptist History and Heritage, 50
(Summer, 2015), 52–67.
A ‘practical outlet’ to premillenial faith: G. Douglas Young and the evolution of
Christian Zionist activism in Israel. Daniel Hummel. Religion and American
Culture, 25 (Winter, 2015), 37–81.
A flea against injustice: The social Christianity of Marian Wright Edelman. Jerry
L. Faught II. Baptist History and Heritage, 50 (Summer, 2015), 68–80.
“Peace with Justice”: Bishop Mark J. Hurley and the San Francisco State College
Strike. William Issel. American Catholic Studies, 126 (Fall, 2015), 1–23.
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Gardena, California: The First Japanese-American
Congregation in the Missouri Synod. Part One. Michael J. Doyle.
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 88 (Fall, 2015), 27–58.
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Gardena, California: The First Japanese-American
Congregation in the Missouri Synod. Part Two. Michael J. Doyle. Concordia
Historical Institute Quarterly, 88 (Winter, 2015), 17–31.
A Reflection on Zohmah Charlot’s 1979 Letter to the Editor, Kansas Monks
Newsletter. Glenda L. Carne. Catholic Southwest, 26 (2015), 77–84.
The Last Wendish Sermon in Serbin, Texas. Trudla Malinkowa with Peter
Barker, Weldon Mersiovsky and David Zersen. Concordia Historical Institute
Quarterly, 88 (Fall, 2015), 59–72.

LATIN AMERICAN
Presencia de Santa Teresa de Jesús en Quito. “Llegó” con sus hermanos y sus hijas
espirituales, las carmelitas. Félix Carmona Moreno, O. S. A. La Ciudad de
Dios, CCXXVIII (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 675–708.
Medicinal Flora and the Jesuits in Latin America (XVI–XVII centuries). Isabel
Maria Madaleno.Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXIV (I, 2015), 111–
47.
Tan a banderas desplegadas: el poder de un comisario inquisitorial en las periferias
virreinales del Perú a comienzos del siglo XVII. Federico Sartori. Colonial
Latin American Review, 24 (Sept., 2015), 356–82.
Crossing Mexico (1620–1621): Franciscan Nuns and their Journey to the Philippines. Sarah E. Owens. The Americas, 72 (Oct., 2015), 583–606.
Writing violence in Seventeenth-Century Yucatan: Fray Bernardo de Lizana’s
Devocionario de nuestra Señora de Izamal y Conquista espiritual de Yucatán

466

PERIODICAL LITERATURE
(1633). Alejandro Enríquez.Colonial Latin American Review, 24 (Sept., 2015),
383–405.

Christian Salvation as Ethno-ethnohistory: Two Views from 1714. Louise M.
Burkhart. Ethnohistory, 63 (Apr., 2016), 215–35.
The Inquisition and prohibited sexual artwork in late colonial Mexico. Lee M.
Penyak. Colonial Latin American Review, 24 (Sept., 2015), 421–36.
Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Single Colonial Mexican Painting.
Sarah Cline. Mexican Studies, 31 (Summer, 2015), 218–47.
Os esforços para resgatar as necessitadas almas do purgatório. Os ritos fúnebres da
Ordem Terceira Franciscana de São Paulo ao longo do século XVIII. Juliana
de Mello Moraes.Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, 75 (Oct.–Dec., 2015), 889–
909.
De los obispos ilustrados al Porfiriato. Lilia Esthela Bayardo Rodríguez. Estudios
Jaliscienses, 103 (Feb., 2016), 27–58.
El clero argentino durante la Revolución (1810–1816) según las oraciones patrióticas. Análisis de los cases de: Diego Zabaleta, Gregorio Funes, Francisco de
Paula Castañeda y Pedro de Castro Barros. Hugo Luis Viano. Temas de historia argentina y americana, 22 (Jan.–Dec., 2014), 225–54.
El proyecto rioplatense de una congregación francesa agonizante: “Mon voyage à
Montevideo” de Pierre Donat. Susana Monreal. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (July–Dec., 2015), 761–86.
Zapotlán el Grande: entre la fe y la modernidad. José Alberto Moreno Chávez.
Estudios Jaliscienses, 103 (Feb., 2016), 39–47.
The Ocho poetas mexicanos and the marginalisation of Catholic authors in postrevolutionary Mexico. Sarah Bowskill. Journal of Iberian and Latin American
Studies, 21 (Aug., 2015), 89–106.
C. René Padilla and the Origins of Integral Mission in Post-War Latin America.
David C. Kirkpatrick. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (Apr., 2016), 351–71.

Other Books Received
Barron, Robert. Exploring Catholic Theology: Essays on God, Liturgy, and Evangelization. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Publishing. 2015. Pp. xvi, 250.
$24.95 paperback.)
Bollermann, Karen, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman (Eds.). Religion,
Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries: Playing the
Heresy Card. [The New Middle Ages series.] (New York: Palgrave, an imprint
of Macmillan. 2014. Pp. xviii, 242. $74.99 clothbound.)
Boulton, Maureen Barry McCann. Sacred Fictions of Medieval France: Narrative
Theology in the Lives of Christ and the Virgin, 1150–1500. [Gallica, vol. 38.]
(Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer. 2015. Pp. xii,
380. $90.00 clothbound.)
Bradley, James E., and Richard A. Muller. Church History: An Introduction to
Research Methods and Resources. 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2016. Pp. xxii, 293. $30.00 paperback.) First ed. published
in 1995.
Clark, Patrick M. Perfection in Death: The Christological Dimension of Courage in
Aquinas. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2015.
Pp. xxiv, 314. $65.00 clothbound.)
Coornhert, D. V. Ethics: The Art of Living Well, By Means of Knowledge of the Truth
about Man, Sin, and Virtue, Described for the First Time in Dutch. Trans., ed.,
and introd. Gerrit Voogt. [Bibliotheca Dissidentium Neerlandicorum.] (Hilversum, The Netherlands: Verloren Publishers. 2015. Pp. 502. €49,00 paperback.)
Farrow, Douglas. Desiring a Better Country: Forays in Political Theology. (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 198. $29.95 paperback.)
Ferngren, Gary B. Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009. Pp. xiv, 246. $29.95 paperback.)
Reviewed by Peregrine Horden, ante, vol. 97 (2011), 566–67.
Freeman, Philip. The World of Saint Patrick. (New York: Oxford University Press.
2014. Pp. x, 225. $21.95 clothbound.)
Geary, Patrick J. (Ed.). Readings in Medieval History. 5th ed. (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press. 2016. Pp. xvi, 712. $49.95 paperback.)
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vol. V: Probing the
Authenticity of the Parables. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2016. Pp. xvi,
441. $55.00 clothbound.)
467

468

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Nold, Patrick. Marriage Advice for a Pope: John XXII and the Power to Dissolve.
[Medieval Law and Its Practice, vol. 3.] (Leiden: Brill. 2009. Pp. xcvii, 206.
$150.00 clothbound.) Reviewed by Charles Donahue Jr., ante, vol. 94 (2011),
782–83.
Peters, Greg. The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Publishing. 2015.
Pp. x, 278. $22.95 paperback.)
Sommerlechner, Andrea, and Herwig Weigl (Eds.); Othmar Hageneder, Rainer
Murauer, and Reinhard Selinger (Collab.). Die Register Innocenz’ III. 13.
Band. 13. Pontifikatsjahr, 1210/1211. Texte und Indices. [Publikationen des
historischen Instituts beim österreichischen Kulturforum in Rome, II.
Abteilung: Quellen, I. Reihe.] (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften. 2015. Pp. cxvi, 363. €129,50 paperback.)
Urban, William. Medieval Mercenaries: The Business of War. (Havertown, PA:
Casemate Publishers. 2016. Pp. 304. $24.95 paperback.) Originally published
in 2006.