THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 102

SUMMER, 2016

NO. 3

The First Nunnery in Manila:
The Role of Hernando de los Ríos Coronel
JOHN N. CROSSLEY AND SARAH E. OWENS*
Sor Jerónima de la Asunción is renowned for establishing the first
Franciscan nunnery in the Philippines. Despite her relative fame,
there is still much to be written about Sor Jerónima and the small
group of founding nuns that journeyed from Toledo to Manila in
1620–21. This essay sheds light on the cast of characters that helped the
nuns receive the necessary licenses to travel to Asia. Key is the role of the
relatively unknown Hernando de los Ríos Coronel, procurator general
of the Philippines. In a saga that lasted twenty years, de los Ríos
became the linchpin in helping the nuns finally travel to Manila. This
essay draws on an unpublished manuscript written by Sor Ana de
Cristo, a nun who accompanied Sor Jerónima, and other sources from
Spanish, Philippine, and Vatican archives.
Keywords: de los Ríos, Hernando; Discalced Franciscans; Jerónima de la Asunción; Philippine Church; Poor Clares

S

ometime late in 1619 a remarkable meeting took place in Toledo,
Spain. Two seemingly very different people would come together to
discuss the final details of the founding of the first nunnery in Manila, the
Philippines. When they met in the Franciscan convent of Santa Isabel de
los Reyes in Toledo, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel (1559–1623/24) was
about fifty-nine years old, and Sor Jerónima de la Asunción (1556–1630)
*Dr. Crossley is emeritus professor at Monash University in Clayton, Australia, email
John.Crossley@monash.edu. Dr. Owens is professor of Spanish at the College of Charleston,
email OwensS@cofc.edu. Dr. Owens’s research for this article and book project on the Spanish nuns in the Philippines is sponsored by a fellowship from the National Endowment for
the Humanities. The authors wish to thank Sir John Elliott for his thoughtful comments and
advice.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

was sixty-three. De los Ríos would die three years later and would be relatively forgotten by history books and historians alike until recently.1 Sor
Jerónima would live another decade, making a name for herself not only as
the founder of the first nunnery in the Far East but also as a candidate for
sainthood, a process that continues to this day.2
De los Ríos Coronel was perhaps the most distinguished intellectual
living in the early Spanish Philippines. In the words of Wenceslao Retana
y Gamboa, he was “one of the truly great figures in the history of the
Philippines: a most notable intellectual, not only outstanding as a fine
writer and politician, but also as a man of science of real talent.”3 Despite
earthquakes, typhoons, insects, and the ravages of two major wars, more
than thirty of the books he owned are still in the library of the University
of Santo Tomas in Manila.4 De los Ríos first went to the Philippines as a
soldier, but later in his career, he held many diverse positions.5 He was
thrice appointed a captain, became superintendent of the royal hospital in
Manila, served two times as procurator general to the Spanish court, and
toward the end of his life he was ordained a secular priest. Since he was
not affiliated with any religious order, his wide variety of occupations gave
him a unique perspective on the Philippines. He lived in Manila on and
1. See John Newsome Crossley, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines
in the Golden Age (Farnham, UK, 2011). In the literature about the early Spanish colonization
of the Philippines, the name of de los Ríos constantly recurs: for example, there are more than
fifty references to him in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, The Philippine
Islands, 1493–1898 (Cleveland, 1903–09), 55 vols. (hereafter BR). The only biographies until
recently were a single column in Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana: etimologías
sanscrito, hebreo, griego, latín . . . (Madrid, 1930), 55:753 (which has not been updated) and a
few pages in Wenceslao Retana y Gamboa, Aparato bibliográfico de la historia general de Filipinas deducido de la colección que posee en Barcelona la Compañía General de Tabacos de dichas islas,
3 vols. (Madrid, 1906), 1: 72–73.
2. Most recently the Positio assembled in 1991: Congregatio de Causis Sanctorum,
Prot. 1720, Manilen. Beatificationis et canonizationis Ven. servae dei Sororis Hieronymae ab
Assumptione (in saec. H. Yañez) Fundatricis et primae Abbatissae Monasterii monialium excalceatarum S. Clarae ordinis S. Francisci in civitate Manilana Philippinarum in Indiis Orientalibus
(1555–1630), Positio super vita et virtutibus (Rome, 1991).
3. “una de las figuras de mayor realce en la Historia de Filipinas: fue, como ahora se
dice, un intelectual muy notable, pues no sólo descolló como buen escritor y político hábil,
sino como hombre de ciencia de verdadero talento.” Retana, Aparato bibliográfico, p. 72.
4. See Crossley, Hernando, pp. 114–29.
5. See Crossley, Hernando. In that book it is only mentioned that de los Ríos wanted
nuns to come from Spain to found a convent (p. 166). When Crossley wrote the book, he was
unaware of the events described in this essay. He is grateful to Sir John Elliott who first told
him about the connection between los Ríos and Sor Jerónima in 2010 and to his recent correspondence with Sarah E. Owens and subsequent coauthorship of this article.

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471

off for about thirty years.6 In an age when overland journeys and ship voyages were extremely risky, he made two trips from the Philippines to
Spain. He first sailed to the Philippine Islands in 1588 when he appears
to have been a lowly soldier. In 1605 the people of Manila sent him to the
Spanish court as procurator general. He returned in 1610, shortly after his
ordination. He described both directions of this first roundtrip journey in
a series of travel logs and memorials that became extremely useful to
future expeditions and sailors.7 Then, in 1617, he was again sent to Spain
as procurator general.
The term procurator general has been used in a number of contexts,
both religious and secular, but its most accurate definition is as a title for
the representative of a particular group of people.8 For example, Friar José
de Santa María was appointed procurator general of the Franciscan
province of San Gregorio Magno. De los Ríos described himself simply as
“Procurator General of the Philippines.”9 Although we do not know how,
the people of Manila appointed him as their representative. He interpreted
that position to include the indigenous inhabitants to some extent. De los
Ríos was part of the system of checks and balances of the running of the
new colony. Theoretically the audiencia (high court) in Manila was supposed to provide a counterbalance to the governor but was not always
effective. De los Ríos, however, was a stern and fearless critic of the
authorities when he felt it necessary.10 His remit covered all matters civil,
administrative, and—to some extent—religious, but he had no personal
power: his power and effectiveness came from the decrees he obtained
from the king. His positive opinion of the islands, however, put him in the
minority in Spain on his second return. During the early 1600s, the Philippines were viewed as a financial liability, and in 1619 King Philip III was
6. See Hernando de los Ríos Coronel, Memorial y relación para su Magestad, del Procurador General de las Filipinas, de lo que conviene remediar, y de la riqueza que ay en ellas, y en las
islas del Maluco (Madrid, 1621), fol. 1r. An English translation by John N. Crossley is available at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jnc/Rios/1621Memorial.pdf, accessed November
14, 2012.
7. See Crossley, Hernando, pp. 65–92, 145–74, 187–89.
8. Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes expresses this correctly in his recent article, “Los monasterios de Santa Clara de Manila y Macao. Nuevos documentos para su historia,” Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum, 105 (2012), 51–139, here 53. However, there have been misinterpretations of the role such as “Procurator General of the Archdiocese of Manila,” in Reginald
D. Cruz, “Servir a Dios en Recogimiento: Religious Life as Woman’s Space in the Archdiocese of Manila (1590–1700),” PhD diss. (University of the Philippines, 2009), p. 202.
9. De los Ríos, Memorial, fol. 1r.
10. See, for example, de los Ríos on the governor’s behavior, in Crossley, Hernando,
p. 153.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

seriously contemplating giving up the islands. De los Ríos, as a relatively
impartial source, testified to the islands’ importance, especially spiritually,
to the Crown, and ultimately he (and others, most notably the Franciscan
Hernando de Moraga) influenced the king not to abandon the
Philippines.11
De los Ríos believed that one of the ways to cement the success of the
islands was to establish a permanent female convent in Manila. In his letter
to the king he ties the foundation of the convent of Poor Clare nuns to the
“merits with which God has favored that land.”12 Ultimately, his involvement with and access to important figures in both Spain and the Philippines were of vital importance in acquiring the civil permissions for Sor
Jerónima and her companions to travel to the Philippines. Thus, this essay
seeks to shine a light on the role of de los Ríos in the foundation of the first
nunnery in Manila.
The Spanish nun Sor Jerónima de la Asunción, immortalized by Diego
Velázquez in the portrait that now hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid
(and another in a private collection; see figure 1), is much better known
than de los Ríos. Sor Jerónima was born Jerónima Yañes de la Fuente in
Toledo on May 9, 1556.13 Her parents, the Licentiate (Licenciado) Pedro
García Yáñez and Doña Catalina de la Fuente, were members of Toledo’s
elite and came from wealthy, noble, and “Old Christian” families. Jerónima
was the third of four daughters. Her mother took care of her education and
taught her how to read and write by age six. From an early age Jerónima
knew she wanted to be a nun. After reading St. Clare’s biography she felt
inspired to live a life of poverty. On August 15, 1570, she entered the convent of Santa Isabel de los Reyes in Toledo where she had two aunts who
were nuns.14 At that time she renounced her secular life and changed her
11. See Crossley, Hernando, pp. 150–53.
12. “sus méritos á de fauorecer Dios aquella tierra.” Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 78.
13. Sor Ana de Cristo, Sor Jerónima’s first biographer, recorded her birthdate as May
9, 1555 (a mistake that would be repeated by future biographers). She also says that the newborn was baptized soon thereafter in the church of San Bartolomé; see Toledo, Spain,
Archivo del Monasterio de Santa Isabel de los Reyes (hereafter AMSIRT), Vida de Sor Jerónima de la Asunción, fol. 2. Her baptismal records, however, clearly state that she was baptized
on May 20, 1556; see Toledo, Spain, Archive of the Parroquia de San Andrés de Toledo,
Libro de Bautismos de San Bartolomé 1548–1577. Infants during this period were baptized
within weeks, if not days, after their birth, thus pointing to the fact that Jerónima was born
in 1556.
14. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 6v.

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473

FIGURE 1. Portrait of La Madre Jerónima (1620), by Diego Rodríguez Velázquez.
Private collection, made available through Album/Art Resource, New York.

name to Jerónima de la Asunción. A year later she professed as a blackveiled nun.15 She would spend the next five decades living a life of enclosure
in Toledo. During those years she starved and abused her body. For
penance, she ate bitter oranges and pomegranates, as well as wrapping her
body in hair shirts made of sharp metal from combs used to card wool. She
slept little and spent most nights knelt in prayer in the convent choir. She
worked tirelessly in the convent garden and chicken coop. She sent chickens
and eggs to the local prison and hospitals. Although she never became
abbess, many novices learned to read under Sor Jerónima, since she served
as the novice mistress on multiple occasions. Word began to spread about
her extreme piety, and many people, rich and poor, including members of
the royal family, began to seek her out for prayers and intercession. By the
15. “Carta de dote de doña Ieronima Yáñez. Y en la religión llamada sor Gerónima de
la Assumpción,” August 8, 1571, AMSIRT.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

time Sor Jerónima had been named as the future abbess of the foundation
in Manila, she had become known as the Saint of Toledo.16
Shortly after meeting de los Ríos in Toledo, Sor Jerónima left her
cloistered convent in Toledo in 1620, never to return. Escorted by two
friars and seven female religious, the small travel party journeyed from
Spain, via the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, to Mexico.17 Two more
nuns joined the small travel party during their stopover in Mexico City,
and from there they mounted mules on the China Road down to the port
of Acapulco where they boarded the Manila Galleon to the Philippine
islands. After a fifteen-month odyssey, the nuns finally arrived in Manila
in August 1621.
Travel to the Philippines, across two oceans and continents, was no
small undertaking. Sor Jerónima would have known the risks, and she
would have been familiar with the Franciscan martyrs who had died in
Japan.18 Although she could not officially aspire to martyrdom in the same
way as her male counterparts, the dangerous trans-Atlantic and transPacific voyages would expose her to extreme suffering and possibly death.
Not only did friars (and nuns) view martyrdom as the ultimate sacrifice in
spreading the Christian faith, but they also embraced it as the highest possible honor. Travel to Asia, even in the best of circumstances, exposed
many friars to a tortuous death for their missionary work (two of whom
came into close contact with Jerónima as will be discussed later). Ironically
it was not Sor Jerónima who died on the voyage but another one of the
small cohort of founding nuns who accompanied the future abbess.
For years, Sor Jerónima had dreamed of founding a new community
under the strict auspices of the First Rule of St. Clare. Under the First Rule
she envisioned a convent that would live completely off of alms; would not
accept dowries or property from novices; and would accept all classes of
16. “La santa de Toledo,” Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 45v, 50, 72v, 111. All English translations from Sor Ana’s manuscript are by Sarah E. Owens.
17. From the convent of Santa Isabel de los Reyes, Toledo: Jerónima de la Asunción,
Leonor de San Francisco, Ana de Cristo, Juana de San Antonio, and Luisa de Jesús (before
taking her vows she was called Luisa de San Francisco). From the convent of Santa María de
la Cruz, Cubas: María Magdalena de la Cruz and María Magdalena de Cristo. From the convent of Santa Clara de la Columna, Belalcázar: María de la Trinidad—who died in transit.
From the convent of la Visitación (Santa Isabel), Mexico City: Leonor de San Buenaventura
and María de los Ángeles.
18. On these martyrs and the cult of the first Mexican saint, see Cornelius Conover,
“Saintly Biography and the Cult of San Felipe de Jesús in Mexico City, 1597–1697,” The
Americas, 67 (2011), 441–66.

JOHN N. CROSSLEY AND SARAH E. OWENS

475

women, even native Filipinas, as postulants. Her home convent of Santa
Isabel de los Reyes in Toledo followed the less austere Second Rule of St.
Clare and was thus known as an Urbanist convent.19 In Spanish these types
of female Franciscan convents are known as clarisas, and in English they
are called “Clares.” “Poor Clares” did not own property; “Rich Clares” did.
Jerónima belonged to a “Rich Clare” monastery in Toledo. Its black-veiled
nuns came from “Old Christian” and wealthy families, and many brought
servants with them to the convent to take care of chores. When Jerónima
lived in Toledo, a total of four Rich Clare convents followed the Second
Rule.20 Nevertheless, throughout her adult life she adhered to her own personal version of the First Rule by starving her body, wearing hair shirts,
and aiding the poor. She gained a name for herself as a holy woman and a
possible candidate for sainthood, but her religious convictions were not
enough for her dream. Sor Jerónima needed many backers, not to mention
ties to the royal family, to accomplish her mission. De los Ríos shines as a
key figure in her web of support. Although the memory of his role has
faded with the passage of time, his letters to the king of Spain endorsing
the foundation of the new convent, as well as other primary sources, document how he became an important player in achieving the king’s support.
Shortly after Sor Jerónima’s death on October 22, 1630, Franciscan
friars in Manila began conducting the first interviews for her beatification
process.21 In addition to interviews and testimonies from those who had
known her, the friars would draw heavily on information from several biographies written about Sor Jerónima. Sor Ana de Cristo, another nun from
Toledo and a companion on the journey, had penned the first biography of
19. For a discussion on the differences between these two Rules of Saint Clare, see
Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Spain. The Permeable Cloister (Burlington, VT.
2005), pp. 151–52. On the convent in Toledo, see Luis Rafael Villegas Díaz, “Santa Isabel de
los Reyes (Toledo) en el siglo XVII. Datos para su historia,” Archivo Ibero-americano, 54
(1994), 511–44.
20. See Laura Canabal Rodríguez, “Los conventos de clarisas en Toledo (siglos XIV,
XV y XVI),” Archivo Ibero-Americano, 54 (1994), 473–83. By far, convents of Clares dominated the religious landscape of early-modern Spain. For example, in 1762 there were 422
convents of Clares, as opposed to 138 of Dominican nuns, eighty-three Discalced Carmelites
(whose reform was initiated by St. Teresa), twenty-seven Calced Carmelites (a less strict
order), twenty-five Capuchins, and five Bridgettines. See Angela Atienza López, Tiempos de
conventos. Una historia social de las fundaciones en la España moderna (Madrid, 2008), appendix,
“Cuadro 1 Conventos en España en 1762,” n.p.
21. Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano (ASV), “Proceso ejecutado por Autoridad Ordinaria en la Audiencia Arzobispal de esta Ciudad de Manila sobre la ejemplar vida
y Milagros de la Venerable Madre Gerónima de la Asumpción,” Congr. Riti, Processus
1654, Vol. I.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

Sor Jerónima.22 She had known the abbess for more than forty years, and
her manuscript provides a firsthand account of her spiritual sister. Although
her work was never published, it served as the basis for two subsequent
biographies. Ginés de Quesada, who wrote the first, was Sor Jerónima’s
confessor during her last months of life. He wrote his biography shortly
before his departure for Japan in 1632, where he died a martyr in 1634.23
The second was by Bartolomé de Letona, who never met the nun from
Toledo but traveled from Mexico to Manila in the early 1650s and interviewed some of the nuns who had known Sor Jerónima. Letona wrote his
work, Perfecta Religiosa, based on the “perfect” life of Jerónima and used it
as a model for Poor Clare nuns.24 Since that time there have been attempts
over the centuries to have Sor Jerónima beatified and declared a saint. All
of these works, and others (including recent studies), only briefly mention
the relationship between de los Ríos and Sor Jerónima.25
It would be remiss to say that de los Ríos was the only person involved
in helping the Spanish nuns establish the first nunnery in the Philippines.
He did, however, have connections with most of the important players. Several men and women—religious and secular, highborn and common,
natives of Spain or the Philippines—played a role in the building of the new
foundation. Three male religious took center stage: Dominican friar Diego
de Soria, who first inspired the idea of going to the Philippines in Sor
Jerónima when they met in Toledo; Franciscan friar José de Santa María,
who escorted the women to Manila as head of the mission and chaplain of
the nuns; and Franciscan friar Luis Sotelo, who was fluent in Japanese and
served as interpreter for the Japanese embassy in Spain. Sotelo met with Sor
22. For more information on Sor Ana’s role as biographer, see Sarah E. Owens,
“Monjas españolas en Filipinas: la formación de lectura y escritura de sor Ana de Cristo,” in
Letras en la Celda. Cultura escrita de los conventos femeninos en la España moderna, ed. Nieves
Baranda Leturio and María Carmen Pina (Madrid, 2014), pp. 379–93.
23. See Ginés de Quesada, Exemplo de todas las virtudes, y vida milagrosa de la venerable
madre Gerónima de la Assumpción, Abadesa, y Fundadora del Real Convento de la Concepción de
la Virgen Nuestra Señora, de Monjas Descalzas de nuestra Madre Santa Clara de la Ciudad de
Manila (México, 1713). The version of Quesada’s book used here is contained within the
Positio on Sor Jerónima.
24. Bartolomé de Letona, Perfecta Religiosa (Puebla, 1662).
25. See Pedro Ruano, Jerónima de la Asunción: Poor Clares First Woman Missionary to the
Philippines (Quezon City, 1991), pp. 29–30; Herbert González Zymla, “La fundación e historia del convento de monjas franciscanas de Manila. Una frontera espiritual y artística del
imperio español,” in Fronteras del mundo hispánico: Filipinas en el contexto de la regiones liminares novohispanas, ed. Marta María Manchado López and Miguel Luque Talaván (Córdoba:, 2011), pp. 207–40, here pp. 215–16; and Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 53.

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Jerónima in Toledo and Manila, and later would die a martyr in Japan in
1624. These well-traveled men had already witnessed the success of the
Spanish imperial enterprise in establishing religious and charitable organizations in its colonies, especially Mexico (for example, the first convent for
women was established in Mexico City in 1540), and they understood that
a nunnery in Manila would help secure their missionary expansion in Asia.26
With the advantages of ties to nobility and the connections of her
affluent family, Sor Jerónima also cultivated her own network of support:
she received endorsements from the Spanish monarchs and their retinue,
and corresponded with other influential nuns of her time such as the
famous ascetic Sor Luisa de la Ascensión.27 Two oceans away in the
Philippines, the wealthy Spanish couple Pedro de Chávez and his wife,
Doña Ana de Vera, were committed to becoming the convent’s founding
patrons, as will be described later. With many of the important pieces set
in place for the establishment of the nunnery, it was de los Ríos who
became the linchpin in the process. He was a man who had connections at
both ends of the globe, and, in an age when a one-way trip from Manila to
Madrid could take from one to three years, he served not only as messenger
regarding the logistical steps needed to bring the nuns but also as a staunch
supporter of establishing the first convent in the far-off Spanish colony.
The story of Sor Jerónima’s endeavor to go to the Philippines began
in 1599, twenty-one years before she left the Iberian Peninsula. In that
year, Soria was visiting a family member who was a nun in the same convent in Toledo as Sor Jerónima.28 He met Sor Jerónima and explained to
her the urgent need to found a female monastery in the Philippines. He
communicated the risks, including the long and dangerous journey
required to reach the islands. This did not dissuade Sor Jerónima but rather
the reverse, and so began her desire to leave Toledo. She did, however, tell
him that she would prefer to deal with Franciscan friars of her own order.29

26. The first female convent in Mexico City was the Convento de Nuestra Señora de
la Concepción. On Mexico as a stepping stone to Asia, see Francisco Morales, “De la utopía
a la locura. El Asia en la mente de los franciscanos de Nueva España: del siglo XVI al XIX,”
in Ordenes religiosas entre América y Asia. Ideas para una historia misionera de los espacios coloniales, ed. Elisabetta Corsi (Mexico City, 2008), pp. 57–83.
27. For the definitive work on Sor Luisa, see Patrocionio García Barriúso, La monja de
Carrión: Sor Luisa de la Ascensión Colmenares Cabezón (Madrid, 1986).
28. Sor Ana says he was visiting a family member; AMSIRT, fol. 33v. Quesada says a
cousin; see Exemplo de todas las virtudes, p. 339. Ruano says a sister, Jerónima de la Asunción,
p. 26.
29. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 33v. Quesada, Exemplo de todas las virtudes, pp. 339–40.

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Soria then traveled to Rome, but although he was appointed to the bishopric of Nueva Segovia in 1602, he did not return to the Philippines to
take up his position until 1604.30 Most likely—as a friend of de los
Ríos31—Soria spoke to de los Ríos about the Clares, conveying Sor Jerónima’s desire to undertake the venture.
Although de los Ríos’s role did not become solidified until later, there
had long been interest from Manila in establishing a nunnery. The Jesuit
priest Alonso Sánchez was sent to Spain from the Philippines as procurator
general in 1587 to ask for a “good governor.” He went with a list of
requests, which subsequently were reflected in the king’s instructions to the
new governor, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas. Item no. 26 from the list ordered
the establishment of a convent for young girls.32 The Franciscans subsequently founded the College of Santa Potenciana in 1593, an institution
that took in orphaned girls—many of whom were daughters of conquistadors—but never became a proper convent.33
As previously mentioned, Chávez was later to bequeath money and
property to bring the Clares to Manila. De los Ríos had known Chávez
since at least 1594, when de los Ríos served as the administrator of the royal
hospital in Manila and testified at an inquiry into the hospital’s need for
more money, led by Governor Luis Pérez Dasmariñas (the son of the previous governor, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas). Witnesses at the inquiry
included Alonso Jiménez, the Dominican provincial; Antonio Sedeño, the
Jesuit superior; Diego Vázquez de Mercado, the dean of the cathedral; and
Pedro de Chávez, maestre de campo.34 They all supported de los Ríos.
At this time, the Crown funded the College of Santa Potenciana
through revenue generated by encomiendas.35 Later, the charitable Confra30. Nueva Segovia was a new diocese in the north of Luzon originally based in Lal-lo
but now in Vigan.
31. He is mentioned on fol. 58r of de los Ríos, Memorial.
32. Seville, Archivo General de Indias (henceforth AGI), Filipinas, 339,L.1, fols.
365v–389r, reproduced in Francisco Colín, Labor evangelica de los Obreros de la Compañía de
Jesús en las Islas Filipinas, Nueva edición. Ilustrada con copia de notas y documentos para la
crítica de la Historia general de la soberanía de España en Filipinas por el Padre Pablo
Pastells, SJ, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1900–04), 3:741–50.
33. See Cruz, Servir a Dios, chapter 3.
34. See BR 9, pp. 89–94. The Maestro de campo was the second in command under the
governor.
35. An encomienda was a land grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist conferring the
right to tribute and forced labor from the indigenous inhabitants.

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ternity of the Misericordia funded the college. It was modeled after the
Portuguese confraternities and Luis Pérez Dasmariñas—who served as the
confraternity’s first presiding officer—wrote that its members were the
“most illustrious and prominent people of this city.”36 Governor Francisco
Tello de Guzmán pointed out in 1599 that it “includes the richest people
of this country.”37 De los Ríos became a member. It seems highly likely
that Chávez also joined the confraternity, but lists of its members are
scarce, and his name does not appear in extant records.38
Just as de los Ríos made friends, allies, and connections in the Philippines, also in Spain, Sor Jerónima began to cultivate important relationships, especially with members of the royal family. The fact that several
members at court sought out her spiritual counsel speaks to her reputation
as a holy woman. For example, in 1604, Margaret of Austria, the wife of
King Philip III, went to visit Sor Jerónima in Toledo. The queen was only
twenty years of age, but since she had been married for six years, she worried that she had not yet given birth to a son (she had borne two girls, but
one infant had lived only a few weeks). According to Letona, Sor Jerónima
put her hands on the queen’s belly, and a few months later (on April 8,
1605) Queen Margaret bore a son, the future Philip IV.39 Furthermore,
according to Sor Ana, Sor Jerónima informed the queen how Soria had
said, “nuns in the Philippines would be even more valuable than friars.”40
Queen Margaret then told Sor Jerónima to let her know if she could be of
any help in this endeavor.
Sor Jerónima had other royal connections. The Duchess of the Infantado, Ana de Mendoza (her husband was the king’s majordomo in 1618),
visited the nun on several occasions.41 In one instance, when the duchess
36. “… la gente grande y de posible de esta ciudad.” Governor-General Luis Pérez
Dasmariñas to the king, June 15, 1594, Manila. AGI, Filipinas, 18B, R. 4, N.27; BR IX, p.
138. Regarding the Misericordia, see also Juan Oliver Mesquida, “A Historical Study of the
Institutional, Economic, and Social Aspects of the Misericordia of Manila,” PhD diss. (University of Santo Tomas, Manila, 2005), p. 40.
37. “que es de la mas rica gente de esta tierra.” Governor-General Francisco Tello de
Guzmán to the king, July 12, 1599, Manila. AGI, Filipinas, 6, R. 9, N.167; BR X, p. 250.
38. See Mesquida, A historical study, passim. The Misericordia later funded the College
of Santa Isabel, a school for poor Spanish girls, from 1632. (Ibid., p. 81.)
39. Letona, Perfecta religiosa, fol. 27v.
40. “Si llevasen monjas allá que harían más provecho que los padres.” Sor Ana,
AMSIRT, fol. 23v.
41. Her husband was Don Juan Hurtado de Mendoza whose sister, Doña Juana de
Toledo, was one of the nuns at Santa Isabel. Several other nuns there hailed from Spain’s
most illustrious families such as Doña Estefanía Manrique, who was abbess at the time of Sor

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

was ill with edema, Sor Jerónima advised her to stop drinking liquids and
promised to pray a Hail Mary for her: “This made her happy and within a
few days she recovered.”42 Sor Ana continues by stating that “she did the
same with many other ladies who came to ask her for Hail Marys; and with
these she healed them; such was the devotion and faith that they had in the
prayers of the holy mother.”43
Sor Jerómina was not the only woman religious with ties to the royal
family. During the early-modern period a number of other nuns had connections with and held sway over the Spanish kings. King Philip II; his
son, Philip III; and his grandson, Philip IV, were all subject to powerful
religious female influences.44 Further, several key women in the Spanish
royal family professed vows and surely wielded some power over their
brothers and fathers at court.45 In regard to Sor Jerónima and the Philippines, although King Philip III is quoted as saying that he objected to
“such a saintly woman” leaving Spain, eventually he became amenable to
the idea.46

Jerónima’s departure. Doña Estefanía’s brother, Don Francisco Tello de Guzman, had been
governor of Manila from 1596 to 1602. See Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favoritism in the
Spain of Philip III, 1598–1621 (New York, 2000), p. 249, Tanya J. Tiffany, Diego Velázquez’s
Early Paintings and the Culture of Seventeenth-Century Seville (University Park, PA, 2012), p.
54, and Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 70.
42. “Ella quedó contenta y en pocos días estuvo buena.” Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 21v.
43. “Lo mismo hizo con otras señoras que venían a pedir las Ave Marías, y con eso
sanaban, según su fe y devoción que tenían con las oraciones de la santa madre.” Sor Ana,
AMSIRT, fol. 21v.
44. See Magdalena S. Sánchez, “Where the Palace and Convent Met: The Descalzas
Reales in Madrid,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 46, (2015), 53–82; and María de Jesús de
Ágreda, Correspondencia con Felipe IV, Religión y Razón de Estado, introd. and annot. Consolación Baranda (Madrid, 1991).
45. Philip II’s sister, Juana de Austria, founded the Poor Clare convent of the Descalzas
Reales (Discalced Franciscans) in Madrid in 1557, and it became a place of refuge for several
members of the royal family. Notably, Empress María of Austria lived with the Discalced
Franciscans until her death in 1603, and her daughter, Margaret of the Cross, entered that
convent in 1588 and remained there until her death in 1633. See Stephen Haliczer, Between
Exaltations and Infamy. Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (Oxford, 2002), p. 242. See
also Magdalena S. Sánchez, “Pious and Political Images of a Habsburg Woman at the Court
of Philip III (1598–1621),” in Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and realities, ed. Magdalena S. Sánchez and Alain Saint-Saëns, [Contributions in Women’s Studies, no. 155],
(Westport, CT, 1996), pp. 91–107, here p. 91; Sánchez, The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun:
Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain (Baltimore, 1998); and Sánchez, “Where
the Palace and Convent Met.”
46. “Hasta el rey dijo, mucho siento echar mujer tan santa de Castilla”: Sor Ana,
AMSIRT, fol. 34v.

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481

Despite Philip’s reservations, the Franciscan order had a real interest
in bringing Sor Jerónima to Manila. Senior ecclesiastical officials such as
Pedro Matías de Andrade, definitor and procurator of the Philippine
province of San Gregorio Magno, and Francisco de Sosa, Minister General of the Franciscans,47 both met her on a visit to Toledo in 1606.48 A
few years later, Friar Luis Sotelo also visited her, most likely speaking at
length about Japan and encouraging Jerónima to found a convent not only
in Manila but also in Macao, China (which did occur after her death).
They all viewed Sor Jerónima as a real asset to their missionary campaign
in the Philippines. The possibility of bringing a holy woman to the Far
East, combined with her status as a role model for other nuns during her
journey through Mexico, could provide a real boost, both spiritually and
materially, to their order.49 Advocates of maintaining the Philippines as a
Spanish colony, such as de los Ríos, surely viewed the possibility of a future
saint in Asia as cementing Spain’s commitment to the islands.
The new convent in Manila, however, could not be sustained on aspirations of sainthood alone. It needed to be backed with the real possibility
of patronage and donations. To this end, when Pedro Matías returned to
the Philippines in 1612, he sparked the interest of Chávez and his wife,
Doña Ana de Vera, in sponsoring the first nunnery in Manila.50 Chávez
had long been a faithful servant of the Spanish Crown, even from the time
of Governor Guido de Labezaris (in office 1572–75). He had served on
many campaigns, including the fateful one in 1593, when Governor
Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was killed.51 In 1607 Chávez and his wife were
the first lay Spaniards to endow a capellanía (chaplaincy) in the
Philippines.52 Recent scholarship on patronage also teaches us that not all
donations were based solely on religious zeal. Endowing a chaplaincy and
then donating buildings and land for a convent could have been ways for
the couple to rise in status amongst other wealthy and noble Spaniards in
Manila. It also was not uncommon for childless couples, looking for a place
47. González Zymla, “La fundación,” p. 215.
48. Sor Ana describes their visit to the convent in Toledo; see AMSIRT, fols. 54–54v.
Ruano, Jerónima de la Asunción, p. 27; Letona, Perfecta religiosa, fol. 39r.
49. See Sarah E. Owens, “Crossing Mexico (1620–1621): Franciscan Nuns and the
First Convent of the Philippines,” The Americas, 72 (2015), 583–606.
50. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 54v; González Zymla, “La fundación,” p. 215.
51. See, for example, BR 3, p. 283; Gaspar de San Agustín, Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, 1565–1615 (Manila, 1998), 1st bilingual ed., trans. Luis Antonio Mañeru, ed. Pedro
Galende, orig. publ. 1698, p. 943.
52. Luciano P. Santiago, “The First Filipino Capellanías (1605–1699),” Philippiniana
Sacra, 22 (1987), 421–34, here 423.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

to invest their legacy, to become convent patrons, but this was not the case
here, since we learn from Sor Ana that Chávez and his wife had a son (who
was still alive when the nuns arrived in Manila).53
Presumably, as a consequence of the information provided by Matías,
Chávez and his wife made a will in which they promised to fund a convent.
The following fragment of the will, dated August 27, 1612, clearly states
that the couple specifically wanted Sor Jerónima—and no one else—to
found the nunnery:
The information that we have on Doña Jerónima de la Asunción, the nun
in the monastery of Santa Isabel, in the City of Toledo, is praiseworthy.
Therefore, we would like that she be the founder because we know God is
moving her on this project. Should she die on her journey to Manila, a nun
from among the ones she had taken along with her should take over. If the
said Doña Jerónima de la Fuente has died, let this donation be void.54

After her husband’s death, Doña Ana still planned on becoming the
community’s principal patron. Her new will, dated July 10, 1617, contains
the same provisions and adds details that she will provide houses in Manila
and ranches in San Palóc (now Sampaloc). It should be noted that in this
will, she specified that if the Discalced Franciscans did not succeed in bringing the Poor Clares to Manila, she would revoke the document, transferring
her patronage to sponsor nuns from another religious order.55 The words
contained in this will speak to the power and agency of female patrons.
Since Doña Ana was supplying her land and rents, she wanted a say in the
foundation of the first convent. Like other patrons before her (for example,
St. Teresa of Ávila’s “problematic” patrons are well documented),56 she had
specific expectations. In this case, Doña Ana wanted the Poor Clares led by
Sor Jerónima—a potential saint—regardless of her age.
Six weeks after the drafting of Doña Ana’s will, de los Ríos made his
second, and although he may not have known it at the time, final journey
back to Spain. On August 24, 1617, he boarded a ship that arrived in Aca53. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 97. On the diverse reasons for convent patronage, see
Atienza López, Tiempos de conventos, pp. 266–74.
54. The translation is from Cruz, Servir a Dios, p. 201. Madrid, Archivo Franciscano
Ibero-Oriental (AFIO), Will of Pedro de Chávez and Ana de Vera, August 27, 1612, Manila,
Box 47, Filipinas–Papeles varios, Escritos: 1611–1703.
55. Cruz, Servir a Dios, p. 202. Will of Ana de Vera, July 10, 1617, Manila. AFIO, Box
47, Filipinas–Papeles varios; Escritos: 1611–1703.
56. Alison Weber, “Saint Teresa’s Problematic Patrons,” Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies, 29 (1999), 357–79.

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483

pulco, Mexico, on January 10, 1618. After spending several months in
Mexico, he arrived in Spain sometime in fall 1618.57 He carried his own
letter with him that stated the details of the will and also mentioned
another donation of stone houses by Doña María de Jesús.58 In his letter,
de los Ríos described the promise of some stone houses (in the walled city)
and haciendas with 6000 cows, horses, slaves, and farmlands from Doña
Ana. The haciendas were situated in what is now Sampaloc, a couple of
kilometers outside the old walled city of Manila.59 (Sampaloc is the present
location of the Dominican University of Santo Tomas, but even into the
middle of the twentieth century much of it comprised rice fields.) The last
section of his letter asked permission for the discalced Franciscan friar José
de Santa María to escort the nuns to the islands.
In addition to his own correspondence, it is possible that de los Ríos
carried another letter to Spain. The author was Juan Oñez, chaplain of the
College of Santa Potenciana, who wrote his letter on July 15, 1617, just
five days after Doña Ana revised her will.60 He asked King Philip III for
money to help fund the college and for nuns to be sent to found a convent
in Manila. Evidently the college was in a deplorable state: “It receives so
little aid that the girls are in need. They are barefoot and almost naked,
have wretched food, and live in very narrow, obscure, and damp, and consequently unhealthy, quarters.”61 As noted above, the Franciscans set up
the college in 1593 to shelter orphan girls, but by 1617, it had opened its
doors to “the illegitimate daughters of Spaniards and Indian women (and
they are numerous),”62 battered wives, and destitute widows. Oñez wrote
57. Crossley, Hernando, p. 149.
58. The letter is AGI, Filipinas, 5, N.213, which is published in full in Sánchez
Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” pp. 78–79.
59. The mention of “stone houses” is interesting. In the earliest Spanish times the
houses were built of wood with roofs made of Nipa (a kind of palm, Nypa fructicans). Sedeño,
mentioned above, found a source of stone, known locally as “adobe” (a kind of tufa) and persuaded Governor Gómez Pérez to use it for construction of the circumvallation of Manila.
(See Horacio Villamayor de la Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581–1768 (Cambridge,
MA, 1961), here p. 122.) The number of 6000 cows seems excessive, but it is repeated in a
much later document of about 1700. There it says “seis mill cavezas” rather than “seis mil
vacas.” See Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 130.
60. The original letter clearly states “Oñez” and not “Ordoñez” as rendered in Crossley,
Hernando, pp. 1, 116, 166. See AGI, Filipinas, 5, N.213, and for an English translation, BR
18, p. 282.
61. “Pero tan poco favoreçido, padeçen grande necessidad, andan descalças, y casi desnudas, comen mal, y viven en casa muy estrecha, lobrega, y humeda, y por tanto achacosa.”
AGI, Filipinas, 38, N.46.
62. “Las niñas illegitimas, hijas de españoles y de indias, que son muchas.” Ibid.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

that it was the intent of de los Ríos that a nunnery be established in order
to provide extra women to run the college:
For its good management, your Majesty might aid the pious intent of
Licentiate Hernando de los Rios, procurator of this city, to bring nuns to
found a convent in this city, from which nuns might be sent every three
years to govern this seminary; for through lack of persons who can be
placed in charge of it, and who are suitable for that post, it is and has
been managed by only one woman, although four are needed.63

Oñez specifically mentions that once in Spain, de los Ríos will tell the
king all about the matter of the nuns, since he is “well informed about
everything.”64 What we have yet to discover, is whether de los Ríos ever
mentioned to Sor Jerónima the possibility of using nuns from the future
convent to run the college (something that never occurred). Most likely
this was a minor aside for de los Ríos, since his real concern was to facilitate the founding of the new nunnery. Furthermore, as procurator general
he needed to present a whole other set of concerns to the king as dictated
by the needs of the people of the Philippines.65
When de los Ríos arrived in Spain 1618, probably late in September, he
had considerable difficulty securing an audience with the king. This may
have been because he arrived just as the Duke of Lerma fell from grace on
October 2.66 From then on, the king said he would take charge of and would
sign everything concerning universal orders, mercedes (grants), and other
important matters.67 De los Ríos wrote a request to the king, dated February
6, 1619, asking for the date of an audience.68 However, it was only in September 1619 that de los Ríos began to receive responses from the king.69

63. “para su buen gobierno ayudar al pro intento, que lleva a cargo el L[icencia]do Hernando de los rios procurador de esta ciudad, de traer monjas, que en ella funden un convento.
de el qual podran salir por trienios a gobernar este collegio, porque por falta de quien se aplique, y sea aproposito es y a sido gobernado de una sola muger, siendo menester quatro.” AGI,
Filipinas, 38, N.46; BR 18, p. 282.
64. “que va bien informado de todo.” Ibid.
65. See Crossley, Hernando, pp. 153–58.
66. See Feros, Kingship, p. 246. According to M. Sánchez, “Pious and Political,” p. 97,
“If Novoa [the author of Tratado de república y policía christiana, Madrid 1617] is to be
believed, [Fray Juan de] Santa María [who heavily influenced Margarita of Austria] and Mariana de San José were responsible for Philip III’s dismissal of Rodrigo Calderón, and even of
the Duke of Lerma.”
67. See Feros, Kingship, p. 248, quoting Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, 1858,
Relaciones de 1618 a 1621, fols. 24v–25r.
68. AGI, Filipinas, 77, N.43.
69. AGI, Filipinas, 27, N.108; see also Crossley, Hernando, p. 153.

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485

On his mission, de los Ríos had a very pressing request: he wanted a
relief fleet to be sent to Manila to protect the new colony against the Dutch
who were constantly threatening the Philippines. The April before he left,
the Dutch, although they were eventually defeated, ran aground and
wrecked one of the Spanish galleons at the battle of Playa Honda.70 However, when de los Ríos arrived in Spain, he discovered that, in addition to
the various matters he wanted to broach with the king and the Council of
the Indies, another issue had arisen. The Philippine governors had always
been short of money and, since they came under the jurisdiction of Mexico,
it was the viceroys of New Spain who always had to send money to support
the colony. The question had been raised in Spain as to whether Spain and
Portugal should exchange the Philippines for Brazil71 or even that Spain
should simply abandon the Philippines. De los Ríos adamantly believed
that the islands should be kept within the Spanish empire. Indeed (apparently after he had arrived in Spain), he added a whole new chapter to the
already long monograph that he had written on the protracted sea journey
from the Philippines.72 He first dealt with the political and financial arguments but then introduced the crucial spiritual issue:
if Your Majesty possesses the Indies, with so honorable a warrant as that
of the Catholic Church, in order to convert souls, . . . what excuse would
you have before the Divine Majesty, for not aiding [the Islands] in time
if, for this reason, so many millions of souls should regress from the
Faith, and the great multitude who, it is hoped, will come to the knowledge of the true God.73

Fortunately for de los Ríos, he acquired a formidable ally in the extraordinary Franciscan Hernando de Moraga, who had also recently arrived in
70. See the de los Ríos, Memorial, part I, chapter X. See also informatory memorial
addressed to the king. Juan Grau y Monfalcon, Madrid, 1637, BR 27, pp. 55–215, here p.
195.
71. Brazil was the only part of Latin America not under the Spanish flag, and, although
Spain and Portugal were united under the same king, they still operated as separate countries.
72. The chapter is titled “In which are answered those who feel that the Philippines
should be left, or exchanged with the Crown of Portugal for Brazil” (slightly modified version
of the translation in BR XIX, p. 237). “En que se responde a los que sienten que se dexen las
Filipinas, o se truequen a la corona de Portugal, por el Brasil.” De los Ríos, Memorial, part 2,
chapter 2, fol. 27v.
73. “. . . si V. Magestad posee las Indias con tan honroso titulo como le da la Yglesia
Catolica, en orden a la conuersion de las almas, . . . que disculpa auria con la Magestad Divina,
para no socorrer la cõ tiempo, si retrocediessen por esta causa de la Fè, tantos miliones de
almas, y la multitud grande que se esperan venir en el conocimiento de su verdadero Dios.”
De los Ríos, Memorial, part 2, chapter 2, fols. 52r, v. (Slightly modified version of the translation in BR XIX, pp. 244–45.)

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Spain after traveling mainly overland (across India and Persia) from the
Philippines. Moraga was instrumental in obtaining an audience with the
king for them both in fall 1619. There they succeeded in asserting great
influence on the monarch against Spain abandoning the Philippines.74
It would appear to have been no later than September when Moraga
and de los Ríos were granted audiences by King Philip III. Moraga prostrated himself at the feet of the monarch and implored him not to abandon
the Philippines.75 Philip was deeply moved and promised that he would
not abandon the Christians in the Philippines even if there were just one
hermitage there. This was despite the fact that his Junta de Guerra had
already voted that the Philippines should be abandoned. The king added,
“. . . so that it shall not be said of me that I abandoned what my father
gained for me and left me.”76
Then, in early November 1619, returning from Portugal, Philip III suffered from a dangerously high fever in Casarrubios. If he died, Sor Jerónima’s plan to leave Spain might be thwarted. When describing this event
most historical accounts cite two important details. First, that the whole
Spanish court was brought to the king in this small town (approximately 50
kilometers from Madrid) during his convalescence; and second, that Philip
supposedly made a miraculous recovery after touching the incorrupt body of
St. Isidore, brought to Casarrubios from Madrid for that purpose. Sor Ana
and other biographers cite another version of events: first, that Sor Jerónima
said she received a vision from the Lord telling her of the king’s grave state,
and second, she immediately summoned some of her fellow nuns, who were
sleeping in the dormitory, to pray for the king.77 Her motivation was clear:
the king needed to live to give permission for the nuns to leave Spain to
found the nunnery in Manila.78 The illness was severe enough for the king
to remain in Casarrubios for nearly a month. He then returned to Madrid
and reigned for another seventeen months until his death.
74. See Crossley, Hernando, pp. 150–53.
75. Crossley, Hernando, pp. 152–53.
76. “ . . . no se dirá de mi, que abandoné, lo que me gano, y dexó mi Padre.” See Juan
de la Concepción, ORSA, Historia general de Philipinas. Conquistas espirituales y temporales de
estos Españoles Dominios, establecimientos Progresos, y Decadencias, 14 vols. (Manila, 1788–92),
4:476.
77. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 67; Letona, Perfecta religiosa, fol. 52v.
78. Lorenzo Pérez, Compendio de la vida de la venerable Madre Sor Gerónima de la Asunción de la Orden de Sta. Clara, Fundadora del monasterio de la Inmaculada Concepción de esta
ciudad de Manila, Philipinas (Makati, 1963) at p. 46. There are several editions of this short
text. The references are to the St. Paul Publications edition of 1963.

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Also in 1619, Fray José arrived back in Spain from the Philippines.79
Like de los Ríos, his initial efforts to meet the king were fruitless, and he
retired to his home province of Aragon.80 On October 21, 1619, de los
Ríos wrote a letter to Sor Jerónima. He told her that he had come as procurator general of Manila, and his primary item of business was to transport
her to Manila, for which he had received special jurisdiction from the city
and letters from Chávez and his wife, Ana de Vera.81
When de los Ríos finally met Jerónima face to face sometime in late
fall 1619, she was so ill that two nuns had to help her walk to the convent’s
visiting parlor. De los Ríos told her “he had come for her from Manila and
that she would be taken, even if it were just her bones.”82 Apparently, his
determination to secure her imminent departure to the Philippines boosted
her spirits, and shortly thereafter she made a remarkable recovery.
Surely de los Ríos would have augmented Sor Jerónima’s knowledge
of Manila and the Philippines at that time. He might have sung the
praises of Manila to her just as he had done in a letter that he wrote to the
king.83 In that missive he described how the “noble city, which none in
Europe surpasses,”84 was laid out in standard Spanish checkerboard fashion with some fine stone houses, not to mention a number of churches
and monasteries. Likewise, he must have conveyed at least some of the
details of the route to the nuns. The journey was a massive undertaking,
but in addition to having made the journey twice, de los Ríos was also a
trained pilot and knew the vagaries of the crossing. In 1597 he had drawn
a map of the whole of Luzon, the first of its kind.85 He had sailed around
many of the other Philippine Islands and had advocated sailing round the
west coast of Luzon rather than navigating the treacherous Embocadero

79. See Ruano for a description of Fray José de Santa María’s religious career and
chronology of these events, Jerónima de la Asunción, p. 29.
80. According to Sor Ana, Fray José de Santa María was told by the Consejo de Indias
“that if he wanted to take nuns, they should come from Mexico [and not Spain].” “… qué se
llevasen de México si querían monjas.” AMSIRT, fol. 54v.
81. Letona, Perfecta religiosa, fol. 38v. Regarding the date, Letona only says it was the
feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. (The feast day of St. Ursula and her 11,000 companions is October 21.)
82. “Que iba por ella de Manila y que aunque fueran sus huesos había de llevar.” Sor
Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 55.
83. AGI, Filipinas, 5, N.213. The date is unclear—sometime between 1617 and 1620.
84. “tan ilustre en edificios que ninguna en europa lo es mas porporzionada.” AGI, Filipinas, 5, N.213.
85. AGI, MP-Filipinas, 6.

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(San Bernardino Strait).86 He had witnessed firsthand the hardships:
principally the destructive force of typhoons but also the cramped quarters
on the galleon and the fact that many people routinely died on the
voyage—Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas lost more than 100 soldiers on the
journey when he went to the Philippines. Again, the fact that Jerónima
and her companions knew full well the dangers of their endeavor is a testament to their bravery.
The news that de los Ríos had met Sor Jerónima was sent to Fray José,
who then joined de los Ríos in Toledo. Subsequently, the two men went
together to Madrid. It was already February or March of 1620 when they
obtained permission from the king and the Council of the Indies for Sor
Jerónima and a small cohort of nuns to travel to the Philippines.87 Unlike
others before them, they achieved this within a remarkably short period of
time: “. . . negotiating in one hour [with the president of the Council of
the Indies, Alonso Carillo] what had not been able to be negotiated in
more than twenty years.”88 Sor Ana adds that the “intercession” of Alonso
Carillo’s wife helped in de los Ríos obtaining the necessary permissions
from Carillo.89 Once again, Sor Ana’s description of these events speaks to
Sor Jerónima’s extensive web of admirers.
De los Ríos and Fray José quickly made all the travel arrangements.
Fray José traveled to the Convent of Santa María de la Cruz in Cubas (near
Madrid) to pick up two of the founding nuns and brought them back to the
Convent of Santa Isabel in Toledo.90 Soon thereafter, on April 27, 1620,
Sor Jerónima was officially appointed abbess of the new convent in
86. Crossley, Hernando, p. 106.
87. Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 53.
88. “Y así hizo negociando en una hora lo que en más de veinte años no había tenido
efecto.” Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 55. The exact dates for these permissions are somewhat confusing. According to Ruano, on February 29, 1620, Fray José Santa María had his permission
to take the nuns in the fleet of New Spain. Ruano, Jerónima de la Asunción, p. 80, AGI, Filipinas, 5, N.213. There is also a petition from Fray José apparently dated March 23, 1620,
asking to take the nuns (see AGI, Filipinas, 85, N.40), but already on March 6, 1620, there
had been issued a Real decree to the Audiencia of Manila, giving a license to found a nunnery
there; see AGI, Indiferente, 450, L.A6, fols. 37–37v. Sánchez Fuertes also reviews these dates
and documents; see “Los monasterios,” pp. 53, 78–79.
89. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 55r.
90. These two nuns were chosen for their connection to their spiritual foremother,
Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534), also known as “Santa Juana,” although she was never canonized. See Sarah E. Owens, “El legado del rosario milagroso en los escritos de viaje de sor Ana
de Cristo hacia Filipinas,” El Boletín de Monumentos Históricos, Tercera época, no. 30 (January–April 2014), 22–35.

JOHN N. CROSSLEY AND SARAH E. OWENS

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Manila.91 The following day the nuns left the cloistered walls of their home
community in Toledo to start their journey south to Seville—where
Velázquez painted Sor Jerónima’s portrait—and then on to Cadiz.92 En
route, de los Ríos met the women in Mora, three leagues (about 16 kilometers) from Toledo. At this point, de los Ríos said with great sadness that he
could not escort them further, although “he loved our mother very much.”93
He still needed to complete the business entrusted to his charge and therefore had to return to court.94 Instead, Fray José, along with another friar and
two servants, were to accompany the nuns to the Philippines.95
The nuns’ odyssey from Toledo to Manila took approximately fifteen
months. The small travel party faced many difficulties on land and at sea.
They forded swollen rivers, rode mules on treacherous mountain paths, battled relentless mosquitos, suffered from intermittent fevers, weathered the
tossing of the seas, and faced the looming threat of enemy vessels. The
women also lived cheek by jowl with death: one of the nuns died after setting sail from the port of Acapulco. The founding nuns—now a total of
nine, including Sor Jerónima—made landfall at the port of Bolinao on the
west coast of Luzon on July 24, 1621. Their ship had avoided the dangerous
Embocadero (which they would have been warned about by de los Ríos),
but instead of sailing the rest of the way round Luzon to Manila, the nuns
made a land and water crossing to Manila, arriving on August 5, 1621.96
Despite overcoming huge obstacles—first in obtaining the necessary
financing, approval, and licenses to found the nunnery, and second in actually traversing two major oceans and hemispheres to reach the Philippines—once the nuns arrived in Manila, they faced many more difficulties.
The women had to move their small community several times. Ana de
Vera had second thoughts about her bequest, influenced by a nephew
91. González Zymla, “La fundación,” p. 218.
92. For an excellent analysis of the portrait (Velázquez painted three of them), see
Tiffany, Diego Velázquez’s Early Paintings, pp. 49–76.
93. “Amaba mucho a nuestra madre.” Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 79v.
94. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 79v. Ruano, on the other hand, claims de los Ríos was ill,
but we have found no supporting evidence for this; see Jerónima de la Asunción, p. 29. The subsequent activities of de los Ríos at court were numerous, and he was successful in securing
royal decrees for a large proportion of the requests that he made. See Crossley, Hernando, pp.
153–58.
95. Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 53.
96. See González Zymla for a discussion on the different reasons for making the land
crossing from Bolinao, “La fundación,” p. 227. Perhaps the date of arrival in Manila was
August 7 (rather than August 5). See Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios,” p. 55.

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THE FIRST NUNNERY IN MANILA

recently arrived from Spain.97 For the nuns themselves, it was always a
struggle to follow the First Rule of St. Clare as Sor Jerónima wished. Sor
Ana makes several allusions to a divided convent, even with some nuns
turning against the abbess. Sor Jerónima’s superiors accused her of disobedience, and she was, for a time, deposed as abbess in 1623, only to be exonerated in 1626.98 She then held that position until her death in 1630. Further, Manila’s leading families protested that there were no daughters for
their sons to marry, since they were entering the convent.99 Others who did
allow their daughters to take the veil did not want them mixing with poor
Spanish women and mestizas (women of Spanish and indigenous blood).100
The interplay between Sor Jerónima’s austere lifestyle, one that gave her
currency as a potential saint, and her insistence that the convent in Manila
follow the First Rule of St. Clare, ultimately caused contention that was
not resolved in her lifetime. The convent did open its doors to several nontraditional nuns such as a Japanese convert, but she died shortly after profession. Very few native Filipina women, however, took vows before the
nineteenth century. The community also eventually had to relax some of
the austere measures of the First Rule regarding rents and dowries.101
After Sor Jerónima’s death in 1630, Sor Ana became the new abbess.
Under her mandate she continued Sor Jerónima’s missionary dream and in
1633 sent a group of women to Macao to found another convent.102 They,
too, suffered their fair share of problems: convent factions, power struggles
between Jesuits and Franciscans, and international politics ultimately culminated in the expulsion of three nuns and their confessor from the Portuguese colony in 1644. The community of nuns in Manila continued for
more than 300 years, surviving several devastating earthquakes and the ravages of the Spanish American War of 1898, until the convent was com-

97. Sor Ana, AMSIRT, fol. 96v.
98. Ruano, Jerónima de la Asunción, pp. 42–43.
99. In 1635 the new procurator general, Grau y Monfalcon. complained: “los hijos de
los vecinos no tienen con quien casarse” (“the sons of citizens have no one they can marry”).
AGI, Filipinas, 27, N.198.
100. Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes, OFM, “La Madre Jeronima de la Asunción y su Fundación del Monasterio de Santa Clara de Manila. Incidencias y Consecuencias,” Verdad y
Vida, 52 (1994), 379–400, here 396–98.
101. Sánchez Fuertes, “Los monasterios de Santa Clara,” pp. 67, 68.
102. They were six founding nuns, one novice, and two pupils. See Elsa Penalva,
“Women in Macao 1633–1644,” in Macau during the Ming Dynasty, ed. Luís Filipe Barreto
(Lisbon, 2009), pp. 177–208, here pp. 184–85. For detailed information on the subject, see
Penalva’s Mulheres em Macau. Donas Honradas, Mulheres Libres e Escravas (Séculos XVI e XVII)
(Lisbon, 2011).

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491

pletely destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. Nevertheless,
the fact that the community still exists today, although now relocated in
Quezon City, is a testament to the many people who came together to
enable the founding of the first nunnery in the Far East. One of many
involved in the process, de los Ríos, was a man who straddled both continents. He had important contacts in Spain and the Philippines. Not only
did he serve as an intermediary between Manila and Madrid but also,
through his drive and experience, he overcame the bureaucratic hurdles
emanating from the king and the Council of the Indies. As a secular priest
who was not a friar, he would not have been seen as a rival to any particular
order—especially not to the Franciscans, who wanted to transport a possible saint to Asia. As procurator general, he apprised the king of the people
of Manila’s wish to found a nunnery, and he transmitted Doña Ana’s
important desire to become the convent’s main patron. He knew that the
advancement of charitable institutions like this convent would help cement
the nascent colony. Simply put, without de los Ríos as the linchpin in the
process, Sor Jerónima de la Asunción might never have arrived in the
Philippines.

What the People Want: Popular Support for
Catholic Reform in the Veneto
CELESTE MCNAMARA*
Through examination of the unusually rich sources produced by a lateseventeenth-century bishop of Padua, the author argues that investigating voluntary devotional practices can demonstrate the spiritual
priorities of early-modern laypeople. Seventeenth-century rural
Paduan parishes experienced both an increase in interest in various
devotions and a shift in their focus that reflect the priorities of Catholic
Reform. Parishioners eagerly participated in the catechism schools promoted by the Council of Trent (1545–63) and enthusiastically adopted
saints promoted by the post-Tridentine Church, demonstrated by their
pious bequests, dedication of altars, and membership in confraternities.
At the same time, traditional devotions also flourished. Although gauging lay interest in reforms in general is difficult and contentious, the
author demonstrates that at least when it came to their voluntary practices, rural Paduans were engaged in Catholic Reform and supported a
vibrant Catholic culture.
Keywords: Catholic Reform, parishes, confraternities, devotions,
catechism

T

he reforms of Catholicism implemented in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had widespread and significant effects on the lives of
early-modern Catholics, but in most cases we know very little about how
non-elites reacted to these changes.1 Records produced in rural parishes are
rare, whereas the documentation produced by reforming bishops generally

*Dr. McNamara is assistant professor of history at the University of Warwick, email:
C.McNamara@warwick.ac.uk. Research for this article was funded by the Gladys Krieble
Delmas Foundation, the University of Padua, and Northwestern University. The author
thanks Lu Ann Homza and Ross Carroll for their comments and suggestions.
1. The exception is the impact of and reaction to Tridentine marriage reforms. See
Jutta Sperling, “Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent,” Journal of Early Modern History, 8 (2004), 67–108; Suppliche al pontefiche: Diocesi di Trento, 1566–1605, ed. Cristina Belloni (Bologna, 2007); and Joanne Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford,
2001).

492

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493

has little to say about the experiences of rural laypeople. Typical visitation
records provide the bishop’s impression of the church and other parochial
structures, sometimes an estimation of the priest’s abilities, and occasionally a conversation with one or more members of the clergy about their
church and flock, observed over a very short time span.2 It is therefore difficult to gauge what parishioners thought of the reforms the Catholic
Church hoped to enforce.
Several historians of Catholic Reform have used what little evidence is
available to demonstrate that reform was a negotiated process, in which the
bishop presented and incentivized what he wanted to see and, sometimes
in more or less overt ways, the parochial community chose what they were
willing to do and what they preferred to ignore.3 Evidence of this negotiation can be found either in the occasional parish records or, more commonly, in the bishop’s next visitation, when he discovered which changes
had or had not persisted. But with these cases, it is nearly impossible to
argue how the laity felt about most of these reforms; when they cooperated
with the bishop, was it because they felt coerced or because they truly
wanted that particular change? To get a sense of lay enthusiasm for reform,
we must look at particular alterations to devotional practices, those that
were both voluntary and quotidian. During the early-modern period, particularly after the Council of Trent, there was a renewal of corporate and
public religious devotions, tied to an understanding of the sacred as something immanent and palpable, sometimes described as baroque Catholicism.
Whereas Protestants typically promoted greater interiority and personal
devotion, the Catholic Church “emphasized community in Christ through
charity and collective devotions,” encouraging laypeople to participate in
voluntary activities like donating alms, assisting and attending catechism
classes, sponsoring altars, and joining confraternities.4 When ordinary
laypeople gave their time and money to participate in or fund particular

2. In France visitations typically lasted a few hours, suggesting that bishops were visiting several parishes per day; in the Spanish Diocese of Ourense, visitations rarely lasted more
than a day. See Joseph Bergin, Church, Society and Religious Change in France, 1580–1730
(New Haven, 2009), p. 177; and Allyson Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden, 1998), p. 52.
3. See Marc Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in
Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, UK, 2001), p. 12; Keith Luria, Territories of
Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 15,
57; and Angelo Torre, “Politics Cloaked in Worship: State, Church and Local Power in
Piedmont 1570–1770,” Past and Present, 134 (1992), 42–92, here 43–44.
4. Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God (Albuquerque, 2010), p. 94. For a thorough
discussion of baroque Catholicism, see the introduction and part I of Larkin’s book.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

devotions, they demonstrated support and even passion for certain elements of Catholic Reform, helping baroque Catholicism to flourish.
As Simon Ditchfield has argued, the historiography of Catholic
Reform needs to focus on “local knowledge” rather than large-scale arguments about confessionalization or control.5 His call for more anthropological methods and for abandoning the idea that power is a simple
binary—that in a struggle between center and periphery, the latter is weakened while the former grows stronger—requires historians of Catholic
Reform (and of center-periphery connections in early-modern Europe
more broadly) to have a nuanced understanding of power relations and
look closely not only at cities, as many have done, but also at rural areas.6
By combining Ditchfield’s proposed method with a focus on voluntary
devotional activities, historians can gain a better understanding of the reality of Catholic Reform as implemented on the ground as well as trace lay
enthusiasm for early-modern Catholicism, both traditional and reformed.
Laypeople participated in and spoke up about the devotions they wanted
while quietly resisting those they did not.
Within a decade after the end of the Council of Trent (1545–63),
Padua had its first reform-minded bishop, Niccolò Ormaneto, who had
previously served under Carlo Borromeo. He was bishop from 1570 to
1577 and was the first to attempt Tridentine Reform in Padua.7 His term
was short, however, and his pastoral visitation records only cover 1571–
72.8 His records are not overly detailed, but they are better than those kept
by pre-Tridentine bishops. In addition to information regarding the state
of church property and the clergy, they provide a list of all the altars and
confraternities in the diocese. As the visitation occurred early in his episcopacy, the records he created essentially show a pre-reform diocese. Thus
the lists of altar dedications and confraternities written during Ormaneto’s
visitation can be used to assess Padua’s pre-Tridentine state.
To gauge the effects of Tridentine reform in Padua, it is necessary to
look a century later. From 1577 to 1664, Padua experienced an ebb and
5. Simon Ditchfield, “‘In Search of Local Knowledge’: Rewriting Early Modern Italian
Religious History,” Cristianesimo nella storia, 19 (1998), 255–96, here 256.
6. Ditchfield, “Search,” p. 259.
7. Paolo Preto, “Un aspetto della riforma cattolica nel Veneto: l’episcopato padovano di
Niccolò Ormaneto,” Studi Veneziani, XI (1969), 325–63.
8. Padua, Italy, Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Padova (henceforth ACVP), Visitationes, buste 7–8.

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495

flow in reforms. Although the diocese did not generally suffer from financial difficulties as many others did, it did have its share of worldly bishops,
punctuated by the occasional reformer.9 But in 1664, a new bishop was
appointed to the Diocese of Padua who would strongly push reform forward. Gregorio Barbarigo was a deeply devout and dedicated reformer who
spent the final three decades of his life attempting to implement Catholic
Reform according to the ideals discussed at the Council of Trent. Even
though he found some evidence of the work of his predecessors, there was
still plenty to be done, particularly in rural communities.
What is unusual about this case is the documentation and Barbarigo’s
commitment to detail. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Barbarigo was
interested in speaking with the laity, setting aside time in every parish for
open audiences and calling laypeople and clergy alike as witnesses in his
episcopal inquisitions. His visitation records, which only provide an occasional glimpse of parishes for a few days at a time, still give us a picture of
what the laypeople wanted.10 Particularly when they appeared at his open
audiences with unprompted complaints and requests, we see narratives
crafted by the laity, rather than those directed or shaped by the priorities
of the central authority. This allows historians to access the rarely heard
voices of the laity. However, there is still no guarantee that they were not
simply telling the bishop what they thought he wanted to hear so that
some other end could be achieved. Although their complaints are not necessarily straightforward, their participation in various activities, when well
recorded, is much less problematic.
Fortunately for historians, Barbarigo also required parochial clergy to
prepare relazioni—detailed records of the state of their churches and
parishioners that provided specific information about altar dedications,
confraternity dedications and membership, lay catechism instructors, and
pious bequests, among other things.11 The printed form he provided in
9. Aldo Stella, “L’età postridentina,” in Diocesi di Padova, ed. Pierantonio Gios
(Padua, 1996), pp. 215–44.
10. These records are found in ACVP, Visitationes, buste 30–66; Inquisitiones, buste
84–87.
11. The relazioni are collected in Barbarigo’s visitation records, and constitute several
thousand folios. They include information about parochial property; the local clergy; the existence and suitability of doctors, teachers, and midwives; and the existence of heretics, sinners,
and other problems in the Church. The form provided by Barbarigo to all priests is reprinted
in Liliana Billanovich, “Per uno studio delle visite pastorali. Note introduttive alla prima visita
(1664–1671),” Contributi alla storia della Chiesa padovana nell’età moderna e contemporanea, 1
(1982), 33–85, here 65–66.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

advance was specific enough to discourage much narrative; stories were
more likely to come out in interviews. At the same time, it was also
detailed enough to give both Barbarigo and historians a survey of the
parish’s general state, including lay devotions. In their acceptance of certain
devotions and enthusiasm for certain activities, we can see what parts of
Catholic Reform resonated with the laity, and when compared to the lists
of altar and confraternity dedications provided by Ormaneto’s visitations,
we can see the change in devotional priorities in the century after Trent.
Although the testimonies heard by Barbarigo from laypeople and the
documents provided to him by the priests are problematic sources, if read
carefully they still give us the best chance of understanding quotidian religious experience in the Paduan countryside in the late-seventeenth century. In many cases, neither the priest nor the parishioners would have had
much incentive to fabricate stories about the funding, membership, and
leadership of confraternities or the amount and dedication of pious
bequests. The identity of the altars was unambiguous: Barbarigo inspected
the entire church, so an altar misidentified in writing would be discovered.
Priests might have had reason to lie about catechism teachers, as a lack of
teachers could put them in violation of Barbarigo’s rules, but enough
priests openly complained about their parishioners’ unwillingness to volunteer for the task that this, too, seems unlikely. Moreover, a lack of volunteers reflected poorly on the people more than the priest; in some complaints, one gets the sense of the martyr-priest bemoaning an excessive
amount of work, as when the priest of Terranegra complained in 1685 that
the teachers did not come reliably, “thus often it is necessary for only the
parish priest to teach everything to everyone.”12 Both priests and laity had
reasons to lie to Barbarigo at various points in his visit, whether to avoid
the detection of some flaw in the parish or to use the bishop to gain ground
in an unrelated dispute, but neither of these motivations seems likely for
the details under discussion here.
Instead, the greatest weakness of these sources is their sometimes fragmentary nature. Barbarigo demanded that each parish priest complete the
relazione for every visit; most did, but some did not. Complete refusal was
unusual; however, laziness was common. Barbarigo sent each priest a
printed formula for the relazione, which left small blank spaces indicating
where he should include the details of his parish. To complete this docu-

12. “Onde molte volte convien al Parocho solo insegnarla tutta a tutti”: ACVP, Visitationes, busta 53, fol. 229r.

CELESTE MCNAMARA

497

ment properly, the priest had to copy the model and insert the details as
appropriate; there was not sufficient room on the printed sheet. Those who
completed detailed reports filled several folios with their responses. Many,
however, cut corners, either by including very little detail or even by trying
to fill in the original printed form, thus providing only a cursory report. At
minimum, even the most perfunctory relazione contains a list of the altars
and confraternities but may not include details about confraternity membership or leadership, pious bequests, or the catechism school (beyond the
simple statement that one existed, as this was required in the form). The
addition of relevant information from witness testimonies, open audiences,
letters, and other documents generated during the visit helps to fill in some
gaps, but ultimately the evidence regarding certain elements of lay participation remains less extensive than that regarding the devotions of altars
and confraternities.13
In addition to the participation required of laypeople such as regular
church attendance as well as annual confession and communication, there
were myriad activities available for devout Catholics who wanted more
involvement. Some forms of participation demanded more commitment
than others, but in general they all required a dedication of time, money,
or both. For the elite, one might argue that these actions are not very significant, as they generally had both resources in abundance. But for the
rural laity, primarily farmers and craftspeople, the donation of any of these
precious resources is much more meaningful. For people of limited means
with demanding labor obligations, choosing to spend more time in devotional activities or to fund them suggests that they felt very strongly about
that particular opportunity.
Devoting time by volunteering to teach catechism classes, donating
money through pious bequests or by sponsoring altars, or giving both by
joining a confraternity were not new activities after the Council of Trent.
Most Catholics made some donations to the church or local devotional
groups via their wills, churches always had altars sponsored by local notables
or the parish community, and confraternities enjoyed popularity throughout
the medieval and early-modern periods. Catechism classes also predated the
Council of Trent, although they were not widespread until after the Decrees

13. The data used in this article was collected by the author from Ormaneto’s 259 visitation records, the roughly 20,000 folios of Barbarigo’s visitation records, and the 951
relazioni provided by priests to Barbarigo. The information in all of these reports was parsed
in a spreadsheet and then quantified, allowing for the figuring of totals, averages, medians,
and percentages.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

were published in 1563 and mandated their promotion in all dioceses.14 The
Church continued to promote these practices to help “ensure the community’s and the individual’s proper relationship with God,” and the devotions
continued to be popular with laypeople who accepted that these practices
brought them into closer contact with the divine.15
Although the general activity of devoting time or money is a longstanding tradition and does not inherently tell us anything about how
laypeople reacted to Catholic Reform, shifts in the kinds of devotions
laity chose to support can demonstrate their responses to the changes. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Catholic Church and reforming bishops promoted the institution of catechism schools in every parish
and began encouraging certain devotional practices and specific saints
who were best suited to help carry the Church’s new image to the people.
Although these changes were promoted by the central authority (and in
the case of catechism, required), it is unlikely that coercive force played a
large role in the laity’s adoption of these new practices and devotions. As
several historians have shown, enforcement was difficult when bishops
and regulars spent little time in parishes. The laity had plenty of opportunity to negotiate, alter, and reject certain reforms, and local and traditional devotions persisted alongside the new, reformed alternatives.16
When laity shifted their interest to these particular saints and away from
more traditional options and when they eagerly donated their Sunday
afternoons to teaching catechism, their own enthusiasm for Catholic
Reform becomes evident.
For laypeople who preferred or were able only to donate time, the best
option for involvement was volunteering to help with catechism classes.
Catechism was widely promoted in the Diocese of Padua—as in many dioceses with diligent bishops—and most schools were well staffed with lay
instructors, officials, and assistants. Regardless of an individual’s education
level, there was a suitable role for anyone who wanted to join: the literate
14. See Paul Grendler, “The Schools of Christian Doctrine in Sixteenth-Century
Italy,” Church History, 53 (1984), 319–31, here pp. 319–21; and Council of Trent, Session 24:
Reform, Chapter VII. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (St.
Louis, 1941), pp. 197–98.
15. Larkin, Very Nature, pp. 32, 97.
16. On enforcement, see Forster, Catholic Revival, p. 40. On lay ability to negotiate,
reject, or manipulate reforms, see Forster, Catholic Revival, p. 12. See also Torre, “Politics,”
pp. 43–44; and Luria, Territories, pp. 15, 55. On the persistence of traditional devotions, see
William Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981), p. 177. See
also Forster, Catholic Revival, p. 3; and Luria, Territories, p. 20.

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499

could teach or work as administrators, whereas the illiterate could help
escort the children to and from class and maintain a controlled atmosphere
during instruction. Although this activity required giving up several hours
every feast day, it did not typically require any personal financial contribution. In many dioceses, catechism classes were organized by the Company
of Christian Doctrine, a confraternity that, like all such groups, had minor
financial obligations for members.17 In Padua, however, these confraternities were exceptionally rare. Instead, laypeople volunteered to teach or
assist without the overarching structure—and cost—of a confraternity.
Although catechism schools existed in limited numbers before the
Council of Trent, it was the Council that set the expectation that all
Catholics would attend.18 The first Christian Doctrine classes were established in 1536 by Castellino da Castello, a layman who gathered other
parishioners to educate children in basic church doctrine and formed a
confraternity in 1539.19 Recognizing the value of this instruction, the
reformers at Trent demanded that bishops endorse and support the creation of schools across their dioceses, to be overseen and administered by
the local clergy.
Catechism schools were organized in a way that fostered the easy participation of children and adults. Classes were held on Sundays and feast
days, when no one was supposed to work. Instruction typically lasted about
two hours, striking a balance between a reasonable amount of instruction
and the students’ need for some time to rest. Prior to the start of classes,
lay assistants designated as pescatori (fishermen) walked the streets ringing
bells and calling the children to follow them. In most dioceses, boys and
girls from about age six to fourteen were expected to attend and were
divided into classes by gender and ability. Boys were to be taught by priests
or laymen, whereas the girls typically had female teachers, although a priest
could also lead their classes. Students learned prayers and basic matters of

17. For more on the Company of Christian Doctrine in various locales, see Michela
Catto, Un panopticon catechistico: l’arciconfraternita della Dottrina Cristiana a Roma in età moderna (Rome, 2003). See also Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge, UK, 1989), p. 64; Christopher Black, “Confraternities and the Parish in the
Context of Italian Catholic Reform,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France,
and Spain, ed. John Patrick Donnelly and Michael Maher (Kirksville, MO, 1999), pp. 1–26,
here p. 10; and Maureen Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain,
1400–1700 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), p. 124.
18. See Council of Trent, Session 24: Reform, Chapter VII. Canons and Decrees, pp.
197–98.
19. See Grendler, “Schools,” p. 320.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

Catholic doctrine required for confirmation. In the best of cases, they were
also instructed in reading and writing.20
In the Diocese of Padua, Barbarigo had high hopes for the hundreds
of catechism schools across his diocese. He expected them to conform to
the requirements set out in The Catechism of the Council of Trent, the
reformers’ teaching manual for priests.21 His parishes ideally were to have
fourteen classes each: six different levels for boys and girls aged four to sixteen plus classes for men and women who had not attended as children.22
They were expected to use Roberto Bellarmino’s small catechism, which he
provided to poorer parishes.23 Barbarigo supported the establishment or
continuance of the Company of Christian Doctrine and mandated that all
priests with cura animarum act as instructors.24 This drive was fairly successful: by 1697, when Barbarigo died, all but six parishes had their own
schools, and children in those very small parishes simply went to a nearby
town’s classes, so all children had the opportunity to receive basic instruction.25 Although there were problems in some parishes, in most communities the majority of parents sent their children, the majority of priests
accepted teaching as one of their duties, sufficient adults volunteered to
teach, and both clergy and laity voiced their displeasure when issues arose.
Staffing all of these classes required a significant amount of lay assistance. No parish would have sufficient numbers of clergy to teach all of
these classes, particularly as the ideal class size was around eight to ten students; even in large towns with many priests, the clergy would quickly
become overwhelmed by the number of children.26 They thus needed a
20. See Grendler, “Schools,” pp. 322–24; and Karen Carter, Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France (Notre Dame, 2011), pp. 4–8.
21. See Liliana Billanovich, “Intorno al governo pastorale di Gregorio Barbarigo,”
Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa, 46 (1994), 77–94, here 87.
22. See Billanovich, “Intorno,” p. 87. Barbarigo’s requirements were more strenuous
than those of many of his contemporaries. In most dioceses, attendance was expected from
age five or six to fourteen, and classes were divided into two or three levels. See Grendler,
“Schools,” p. 323; and Carter, Creating Catholics, pp. 73, 87. This also seems to be what happened in Padua, although some larger towns complied with Barbarigo’s demands.
23. Bellarmino’s small catechism was approved by Pope Clement VIII in 1598 and
reprinted all over Europe, including Padua. Barbarigo had thousands of copies printed for
distribution in 1676. See Ireneo Daniele, “S. Gregorio Barbarigo,” in Diocesi di Padova, pp.
245–70, here p. 264. A modern edition is available: Roberto Bellarmino, Dottrina Cristiana
breve (Chieti Scalo, 2009).
24. Daniele, “Barbarigo,” p. 263.
25. Daniele, “Barbarigo,” p. 265.
26. See Grendler, “Schools,” p. 323.

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substantial number of lay teachers and other assistants to instruct and
maintain control over sometimes hundreds of children. In the relazioni
that priests were expected to prepare for the bishop’s visit, one of the sections focused on catechism. During each visit, about 85 percent of priests
mentioned something about their schools, although the level of detail
varied greatly.27 Across all three visitations, only 167 of 951 reports contained detailed information, representing 140 distinct parishes, about half
of the rural parishes in the diocese. Of these 140 parishes, 132 had lay
assistance of some kind; only eight complained of no help. At least among
parishes with priests who provided details, laypeople were volunteering at
an impressive rate.
Having volunteers, however, was only half the battle; the volunteers
had to be reliable and capable for the classes to run smoothly. In most
cases, it seems that they were. Among all the visitation reports that mention catechism, fewer than 20 percent in each visitation described problems to Barbarigo.28 Most of these problems, moreover, were related to
the attendance of the students, most frequently attributable to either
weather problems or agricultural seasons. Students who lacked appropriate outerwear or who were needed to help with crops or livestock were frequently absent, something that the priests understood but struggled to
address.29 In the village of Canove in 1665, the priest and lay assistants
taught those who could attend, whereas the chaplain went out to the pastures to hold classes with students who tended to livestock, but in most
villages the priest and his helpers simply waited for the seasons to
change.30 In addition, of course, there were always children who simply
did not attend, most commonly those over the age of twelve or fourteen.
Particularly if they had already received confirmation, it was often difficult
to convince these young men and women that they should still attend
classes with the village children.31

27. Eighty percent (246 of 307 parishes) reported in the first visitation, 87 percent (261
of 304 parishes) in the second, and 88 percent (303 of 340 parishes) in the third. See ACVP,
Visitationes, buste 31–66.
28. Fifty-six parishes (18 percent) reported problems in the first visitation, forty-four (14.5
percent) had problems in the second, and by the third only thirty-two (9.4 percent) had issues.
29. ACVP, Visitationes, busta 33, fol. 427v; busta 41, fol. 185r; busta 50, fol. 83v; busta
61, fol. 210r; busta 65, fol. 259r. Rural France had similar problems; see Carter, Creating
Catholics, p. 131.
30. ACVP, Visitationes, busta 32, fol. 113r. Seventy-three reports across the three visitations (11 percent of records in the first visit, 6.9 percent in the second, and 5.6 percent in
the third) mention attendance problems.
31. ACVP, Visitationes, busta 47, fols. 151v, 204r; busta 64, fol. 295r.

502

WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

There were also sporadic complaints about the quality of the teachers.
Occasionally the priest claimed the parishioners were disinterested, but
more often he cited a lack of educated people; one priest complained in
1664 that his people were “illiterate and ignorant,” whereas several had
problems finding literate women to teach the girls.32 Even these complaints only occur in 7 percent of the records. In 4 percent of the records,
there are complaints that the lay volunteers were not always diligent about
attending classes—a significant problem for the individual parish but,
again, a very rare occurrence.33 Finally, fewer than 2 percent of records
complain about illiterate or poorly educated volunteers, mostly women.34
This, along with the complaint about ignorant parishioners, says more
about the educational opportunities for rural residents, however, than
about their dedication to catechism. These reports may not completely
reflect the reality in each parish (particularly as 141 reports across the three
visits are missing, and many more lacked details). Out of the 951 reports
Barbarigo collected in 1664–97, 677 of them claimed that their catechism
schools were completely in order. Although this positive state of affairs is
not impossible, it seems probable that at least some priests were painting a
rosy picture for the bishop to avoid scrutiny.
In most of the reporting parishes, however, there were plenty of catechism instructors. Roughly equal numbers of men and women volunteered
their time. Not all priests provided a count of instructors, but numbers were
included in about 160 reports. They mention more than 5000 lay assistants,
an average of about seventeen men and seventeen women per parish (and a
median of twelve of each gender).35 Parish sizes ranged from about fifty to
more than 4000 adults, with an average population of 520 and a median
population of 400 adults.36 Although most priests did not include a number
of children who were regularly in attendance at catechism, 803 reports did
provide the number of souls in the parish and the number of adult, confirmed parishioners; the remainder would thus mostly be composed of children who were expected to attend catechism. Using this number, the aver32. “Esservi nella Cura persone idiote e ignoranti, non vi sono operari di sorte alcuna”:
ACVP, Visitationes, busta 31, fol. 13v. See also ACVP, Visitationes, busta 43, fol. 459r.
33. ACVP, Visitationes, busta 49, fol. 143r; busta 59, fol. 238v; busta 65, fol. 60v.
34. ACVP, Visitationes, busta 38, fols. 112r, 180v; busta 46, fol. 328v; busta 50, fol.
233r.
35. Participation per parish ranged from one to ninety-three men, two to eighty-six
women, and two to 132 parishioners whose gender was not specified.
36. The adult population of villages comes from 813 reports that include the number
of communicating parishioners; the rest either provided no demographic data or gave the total
number of souls.

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age student-adult ratio was eleven to one in parishes with lay instructors,
whereas the median ratio was just under seven to one.37 Often the priests
did not differentiate between teachers and lay assistants in general, so the
actual student-teacher ratio is probably higher, as some laypeople served as
pescatori, doormen (portinari), and classroom management (silentieri); larger
parishes also frequently appointed a few laypeople as administrators. At
least in the sense of maintaining order, however, there were sufficient adults
to control large groups of children in most parishes.
Typically, there was also significant interest in supporting the catechism schools. The majority of laypeople did not volunteer to teach the
classes, whether because of a lack of ability, time, or interest; on average,
just under 9 percent of the adult population volunteered, and the median
participation rate was just over 6 percent.38 Many more laypeople voiced
their support (and, in fourteen parishes where catechism classes were not
going well, their fear and complaints about it) to Barbarigo during his visitations. Although some historians have noted that catechism classes were
unpopular or infrequently offered, Barbarigo did not face resistance on catechism from the majority of his parishioners.39 Joseph Bergin has noted a
generational jump in catechism attendance, arguing that once a critical
mass of catechized children grew up and had children of their own, the
bishop had an easier time promoting the classes, as parents who had
attended in their youth were more willing to send their own children regularly.40 Perhaps this explains the ardor with which Paduan parents advo-

37. Including those parishes with only clergy as instructors, the ratio increases to
twenty-three to one, as many of those priests were—at least theoretically—attempting to
teach between fifty and 450 students.
38. Participation ranged from a mere 0.8 percent to a staggering 45.9 percent, but the
average over 134 records was 8.9 percent, and the median was 6.3 percent. In thirteen
parishes, more than 20 percent of adult parishioners participated. None were big parishes;
their adult populations ranged from 115 to 480. None had a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and there are no other obvious similarities between them.
39. See Marc Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp.
28, 30–31, and Henry Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame (New Haven, 1993), pp. 348–49.
Kathleen Comerford has noted that, in Tuscany, catechism instruction was infrequent and,
when attempted, of limited success, although the reason for that struggle is not clear; see
Comerford, Reforming Priests and Parishes: Tuscan Dioceses in the First Century of Seminary
Education (Leiden, 2006), pp. 42–44.
40. Bergin, Church, p. 303. Marc Forster has also argued that in the baroque period,
catechism classes gradually became an expected part of weekly services; see Forster, Catholic
Revival, p. 126. Phillip Hoffman notes that although catechism was exceedingly rare in
1613–14, by 1719, it seems that every parish was offering classes. See Hoffman, Church, pp.
50, 100.

504

WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

cated for their children’s spiritual education: in one parish, for example,
several laypeople complained in 1695 that catechism was not offered in
winter, “so the poor children cannot learn the road to paradise and live in
total ignorance.”41 Overall, it seems that this part of the Church’s reform
plan found passionate support among the laypeople, some of whom
devoted considerable time to assisting, and many of whom diligently sent
their children and valued the education they received on feast days.
Although some rural Paduans generously gave up their Sunday and
feast-day afternoons, others found this obligation less appealing. For those
who preferred a less time and labor-intensive way to participate in the
parish community and demonstrate their dedication to God, providing
financial support was a better option. In the rural parishes, lay financial contributions tended to come in two forms: pious bequests, usually written into
a will, and donations to altars, usually provided in life rather than posthumously. The first was in many ways the easiest method of participation, as
it cost the donor nothing and presumably carried spiritual benefits. The
second cost the donor something during life and therefore may have been
more difficult for some, but when communities banded together to sponsor
an altar, it is reasonable to assume that individual contributors putting
money in alms boxes were not impoverishing themselves in the process.
In both cases, either the individual or the parish community chose
how to spend the money. For pious bequests, the testator could designate
any altar, confraternity, or other destination for the money. With altars,
the decision might be made by the priest, a local notable, or the community
at large, although individual donors still had the opportunity to choose
where to direct their money. Although altar dedications were the purview
of the wealthy elite in many urban areas, this was not the case in Padua.
Elite sponsors elsewhere donated all the money required to build and
maintain the altar as a sign of their prominence and devotion. But in the
nearly 2500 individual reports made by priests (representing more than
1700 individual altars), only sixty-four altars in rural Paduan churches were
sponsored by noblemen with nearby estates. These patricians typically had
little to do with the local community, preferring to hire a chaplain to say
Mass in their private chapels, while presumably giving charitable donations
to urban parishes. Most of the altars in the rural parts of the diocese were
sponsored by the parish community. In forty-seven reports, priests explic-

41. “Così le povere creature non possono imparare la strada del paradiso, e vivono in un
ignoranza totale”: ACVP, Visitationes, busta 61, fol. 393v.

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itly stated that the altar was funded by the community at large; twenty-one
more were maintained by elected officials with alms donated by the parishioners. Only sixty-six were sponsored by local individuals or families,
whereas the vast majority (more than 1500) were maintained by the confraternities.42 In other words, the saints to whom they dedicated their altars
indicate the interests of the parish community, not the local elite.43
To gauge interest in reformed Catholicism, highlighted here is the
prevalence of saints and devotions that were promoted by the Church most
fervently after the Council of Trent (although many predated the Council). The Church was most supportive of a few categories of saints and
devotions in this period: Christ and those saints most closely connected to
him, those devotions that emphasized the Church’s authority and power,
and a group of new saints relevant to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
reform efforts.44 The first group of devotions included those focused on
Christ, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, St.
Anne, and—perhaps most important—the Eucharist. In the post-Tridentine period, as other historians have found, these flourished across
Europe.45 Not all cults within these categories received equal promotion,
however; the Holy Sacrament was favored over Corpus Christi, whereas
the Nativity, Rosary, Holy Belt (Madonna della Cintura), Madonna del
Carmine, Madonna of Loreto, and Immaculate Conception were preferred
by the post-Tridentine Church to other Marian cults that enjoyed popularity in medieval Europe.46 These promoted the power of the Church as
42. In the first and third visitations, Barbarigo collected information on 2474 altars. In
30 percent of these reports (728), priests gave no information about who maintained or sponsored the altars. The remaining few altars were sponsored by specific groups (two), the parish
priest (two), or a local monastery (one). See ACVP, Visitationes, buste 31–41, 53–66.
43. Beyond their statistical insignificance, the altars sponsored by nobles (3.6 percent
of the 1746 reports with details) include only two of reform relevance: one Madonna del
Carmine, and one San Carlo Borromeo (mentioned twice). For the 3.8 percent sponsored by
local individuals or families, the situation is similar, although sixteen were relevant to reform.
Their sponsored altars included one Madonna del Carmine, nine San Carlo, two Rosary, one
Crucifix, one Holy Spirit, one Conception, and one Name of Jesus. Still, the overwhelming
majority of individual sponsors chose traditional devotions, and the overwhelming majority of
reform-relevant devotions were chosen by the community.
44. Luria, Territories, pp. 126, 129–30.
45. See Luria, Territories, pp. 127–32; Flynn, Sacred Charity, pp. 122–24; Hoffman,
Church, pp. 105–06, 118; Black, Italian Confraternities, p. 64; and Forster, Counter-Reformation, p. 71.
46. Although in theory the Corpus Christi and Holy Sacrament are the same, in practice the switch signified a change in the nature of devotion. In Padua, as in Genoa and other
places, Corpus Christi groups were transformed to Holy Sacrament, although in other

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

well as of the saints, as did those dedicated to the Name of God and Name
of Jesus and other similar devotions in the second group.47 Many of these
devotions, particularly the confraternities under their names, promoted
strict orthodoxy, catechism, and moral policing, and emphasized the
Church’s priorities and power to assert them.48 Finally, among the new
cohort of saints, the Church promoted Carlo Borromeo, Francis de Sales,
Filippo Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Theresa of Ávila, and Gaetano Thiene,
among others.49 As major reformers and founders of new religious orders,
these saints promoted the preferred mode of Catholicism, at least in
theory; it is much more difficult to know what exactly they meant to the
parish communities.50
Any layperson could leave a pious bequest in his or her will, giving
money for a particular devotional use. These bequests might be substantial
or exceptionally small, based on the wealth of the giver and his or her level
of interest, both of which are hard to gauge without copies of wills. For the
most part, these documents are lost, as few rural churches still have records
from this period, but when Barbarigo solicited information from his priests
about their parishes, he wanted to know how the church and confraternities were funded and particularly asked about pious bequests. As was the
dioceses such as Milan, Holy Sacrament groups transitioned to Corpus Christi. Typically, the
earlier iterations focused their festivities on the Feast of the Corpus Christi. Newer groups
organized the celebrations for all feast days related to Christ and the Eucharist, held monthly
processions, accompanied the priest taking the sacrament to the sick, performed forty hours’
devotions, and often took on the maintenance of other altars in the church. See the confraternity statutes for Holy Sacrament groups in ACVP, Confraternitatum, busta 10, fols. 15r–
17r, 480r–482r; busta 11, fols. 74v–75r, 111r–112r. For Genoa, see Claudio Bernardi,
“Corpus Domini: Ritual Metamorphoses and Social Changes in Sixteenth and SeventeenthCentury Genoa,” in The Politics of Ritual Kinship, pp. 228–42, here pp. 231–32. For Milan,
see Danilo Zardin, “Relaunching Confraternities in the Tridentine Era: Shaping Conscience
and Christianizing Society in Milan and Lombardy,” in The Politics of Ritual Kinship, pp.
190–209, here pp. 195, 203. On preferences for certain Marian cults over others, see Maureen
Flynn, “Baroque Piety and Spanish Confraternities,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in
Italy, France, and Spain, pp. 233–45, here p. 236. See also Luria, Territories, pp. 127–29.
47. See Flynn, “Baroque Piety,” p. 241. Name of God and Name of Jesus confraternities were often tied to anti-blasphemy campaigns, but there is no mention of such campaigns
in the Paduan records. Thus these groups may or may not reflect such activities but are certainly in line with the overall priorities of the Church and of Barbarigo.
48. See Christopher Black, “Confraternities Under Suspicion in the Early Modern
Period: A Venetian Case Study,” in Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas,
ed. Christopher Black and Pamela Gravestock (Aldershot, UK, 2006), pp. 171–86, here p.
172. See also Black, “Confraternities and the Parish,” p. 10.
49. Luria, Territories, p. 155.
50. Luria, Territories, p. 204.

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TABLE 1. Pious Bequests
Devotion
Holy Sacrament
Rosary
Marian
Other reform related
Non–reform related

1664–70

1685–97

58%
21%
8%
1%
12%

46.5%
31.5%
14.5%
1%
6.5%

case with all of the questions asked by Barbarigo in the relazione instructions, many priests failed to answer. During the first visit of 1664–70, just
over sixty priests included information about nearly 300 pious bequests.51
During the third visit of 1685–97, Barbarigo was given information about
270 bequests in thirty-five parishes.52 Although this data is far from complete, it does yield interesting information about where many parishioners
were directing their money posthumously.
Overwhelmingly, the money went to the same sorts of reform-related
devotions previously mentioned, particularly the Holy Sacrament, the
rosary, and particular reformed Marian devotions, most commonly the
Madonna del Carmine and the Holy Belt. Occasional donations were also
given to Christocentric devotions, an altar for Carlo Borromeo, the schools
of Christian Doctrine, and an altar for St. John the Baptist (see table 1). In
total, the reported bequests donated to specific saints, devotions, or the
parish church amounted to just over 2430 ducats during the first visit and
just over 1960 ducats in the third.53 Of these, just over ninety ducats in
each visitation were for annual bequests, rather than single gifts. For comparison, Francesco Caffagni has speculated that a priest could live decorously with a benefice of seventy or eighty ducats per year in the Diocese
of Padua under Barbarigo.54 Within this overall number, the vast majority
of bequests went to reform-related devotions and confraternities. Eightyeight percent of the donations in the first visit and 93 percent in the third
51. ACVP, Visitationes, buste 31–41.
52. ACVP, Visitationes, buste 53–66.
53. In the first visit, thirty-nine people gave money for Masses; thirty-four did the same
during the third visit; these are not included in the calculations. All the bequests were given
in Venetian currency. One ducat equals six lire and four soldi; one lira (also called a trono in
some documents) equals twenty soldi; and one soldo equals twelve denarii.
54. Francesco Caffagni, “Clero curato e benefici parrocchiali nella diocesi di Padova:
quadri statistici e linee di tendenza nel XVII secolo,” in Gregorio Barbarigo: Patrizio veneto,
vescovo e cardinale nella tarda controriforma, ed. Liliana Billanovich and Pierantonio Gios
(Padua, 1999), pp. 703–22, here p. 719.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

visit went to these saints and devotions. Only 12 percent in the first visitation and 6.5 percent in the second went to saints with no connection to
reform, or to the church fabric fund or to buy specific ornaments for the
church. As a rule, it seems that most of the donors described in the
relazioni were primarily interested in supporting the newer devotions promoted by the Church than the more traditional devotions still active in
their communities.
In particular, the majority of donors gave to the Holy Sacrament and
the rosary, either detailing that their money was to go to support those particular altars or that it was to be given to their confraternities in return for
Masses for their souls. In the first visit, 172 people gave more than 770
ducats to the Holy Sacrament altars and confraternities, with an average
bequest of just over four ducats. Some bequests were as small as six soldi,
whereas others were as large as 100 ducats or 12,400 soldi. In the third visit,
Holy Sacrament altars and confraternities received 126 bequests totaling
more than 900 ducats, with an average bequest of more than seven ducats.
During this visitation, the smallest reported bequest was two lire, whereas
the largest was again 100 ducats. In other words, devotion to the Holy
Sacrament was high at the start of Barbarigo’s episcopacy and only went up
in the size of the donations during his tenure. A similar pattern arises in
the donations to rosary devotions: during the first visitation, sixty-three
donors gave more than 720 ducats, for an average donation of more than
eleven ducats. Donations ranged from five soldi to more than eighty-eight
ducats. During the third visitation, eighty-five donors gave just over 718
ducats, for an average donation of just over eight ducats. Donations in this
later period ranged from one lira, five soldi to sixty ducats. Donations to
the rosary were slightly down in the third visitation, suggesting that more
people gained an interest in donating to the Holy Sacrament, but the
rosary was still a popular choice.
Giving bequests of these types was common for early-modern Catholics
but was not required. Even if many people felt social pressure to donate,
where they chose to direct their money was a more personal matter.55 Rather
than simply handing over money to the priest for Masses or donating to
local, traditional saints, the vast majority of donors for whom information
55. People cultivated special relationships with saints for a variety of reasons: the saint
once helped them; was the patron of some group with whom they identified; was the focus of
their confraternity; was a traditional focus for their family, neighborhood, or guild; and so
forth. These are all socially influenced, but this does not negate the fact that laypeople had
choices.

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TABLE 2. Rural Paduan Altars, 1571–72
Devotion
Marian
Corpus Christi
San Rocco
St. Sebastian
Holy Spirit
St. Anthony
St. Peter
Saints with fewer than 20 altars
Unnamed

No. of Altars
178
95
35
29
26
24
20
295
172

exists were giving money to the devotions they found most appealing or
powerful. As people expected that their donation would help their souls in
the afterlife, whether through the Masses said or simply because God would
look favorably on their generosity, they likely considered their options carefully and chose the devotion they thought would be best.
In the Diocese of Padua, there was a significant shift in altar devotions
between the 1570s and the 1660s that mirrors the prevalence of popular
targets of pious bequests. Not all local preferences were dropped, nor were
all of the reform-relevant saints adopted. Instead, we see a bit of what
Ditchfield argues the Catholic Church hoped to accomplish: the mix of
local devotions and traditions with those most actively promoted by the
Church.56 In the 1570s, there was almost no trace of any reformed devotions57 (see table 2). The most prominent altar devotion was to the Virgin
Mary, a popular choice before and after the Council of Trent, but only a
few were designated for particular Marian devotions. For example, there
was only one Immaculate Conception and one Rosary altar among the 258
rural parishes visited by Ormaneto. The Corpus Christi was also popular,
whereas the Holy Sacrament was not particularly prevalent. Moreover, out
of a total of 874 altars, fewer than twenty-five were dedicated to anything
that might be considered indicative of reform.
A century later, the situation appeared quite different. At the start of
Barbarigo’s episcopacy, these devotions were flourishing, particularly those
dedicated to the rosary and the Eucharist.58 By the end of his episcopacy
56. Ditchfield, “Search,” pp. 295–96.
57. ACVP, Visitationes, buste 7–8.
58. ACVP, Visitationes, buste 31–41.

WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

510

TABLE 3. Rural Paduan Altars under Gregorio Barbarigo
Devotion
Marian
Holy Sacrament
Rosary
San Carlo Borromeo
St. Anthony of Padua
Crucifix
St. Anthony the Great
San Rocco
Santa Lucia
Ss. Rocco and Sebastian
Name of God
Holy Spirit
St. John the Baptist
St. Anthony (unspecified)
Name of Jesus
Other devotions with fewer than 15 altars

No. of Altars,
1664–70

No. of Altars,
1685–97

334
247
180
40
35
22
21
19
18
17
17
17
15
8
8
353

414
265
225
46
66
29
30
22
16
18
24
14
30
29
19
460

thirty-three years later, the situation is even clearer (see table 3). Across
332 parishes, Barbarigo was given information about 1702 altars in total
during his first and third visitations.59 Almost every parish (92 percent) had
an altar dedicated to the Holy Sacrament, whereas there was only one altar
remaining dedicated to the Corpus Christi. Nearly half were dedicated to
Marian altars, including 281 dedicated to the rosary. Rural Paduans supported thirty-five different types of Marian altars in the diocese. Many
were present in only one or a few parishes, but several were overwhelmingly
popular. These included the Madonna del Carmine, the Madonna of the
Conception, the Annunciation, the Holy Belt, the Assumption, and the
Blessed Virgin of Consolation, all devotions that either stressed Mary’s
connection to Christ or that were related to a religious order.60 Other
reform-relevant devotions were not as widespread but had still gained
59. ACVP, Visitationes, buste 31–41, 53–66.
60. There were thirty-five altars dedicated to the Madonna del Carmine, twenty-two
to the Madonna of the Conception, eleven to the Annunciation, nine to the Madonna della
Cintura and to the Assumption, and five to the Blessed Virgin of Consolation. It is plausible
that many of these devotions were actively promoted in rural Padua, as elsewhere, by the religious orders associated with them, but unfortunately the author found no records to demonstrate this. Barbarigo mentioned the activities of regular clergy infrequently except in cases
where they directly served him—for example, as Lenten preachers or curates.

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ground: San Carlo Borromeo and the Name of God each had fifty-three
altars, whereas devotions to the Holy Spirit, Crucifix, St. John the Baptist,
and Name of Jesus each had between eighteen and thirty-three altar dedications across the diocese.
At the same time, however, local devotions continued to flourish. Certain saints important in the Veneto, including St. Anthony of Padua, St.
Anthony the Great, and Santa Lucia, remained prevalent, as did Ss. Rocco
and Sebastian, popular for their presumed protection from plague.61 Furthermore, more than 250 saints had only one to fifteen altars dedicated to
them across the diocese. Rural Paduans adopted many of the devotions
promoted by their reforming bishops and the Church overall, but they did
not do so at the complete expense of local traditions. Certain devotions
were completely swapped such as the replacement of the Corpus Christi
with the Holy Sacrament, and others were made more specific (as in the
increased diversity of Marian altars), but Padua also maintained its traditional landscape, in many cases simply by adding new altars rather than
replacing old ones. Building new altars required both a desire for a new
devotion and sufficient funding; those parishes that expanded their altars
in the seventeenth century had a vibrant devotional life. As with pious
bequests, how laypeople chose to spend what little money they had reveals
their priorities and interests, signaling in this case a particular enthusiasm
for certain reform-related devotions that the Church hoped to promote.
For rural parishioners who wanted to give both money and time as a
part of an active devotional life, the most popular option was to join a confraternity. Although it might seem a tall order for many rural laypeople, the
confraternities in the Diocese of Padua were generally large, relatively
inexpensive to join, and often explicitly open to all good Catholics regardless of gender or social standing. The devotional foci of these confraternities, like those of the altars previously discussed, were chosen by the members of the community who wanted to start the group. Most villages had
several confraternities from which to choose, allowing interested parishioners to choose a confraternity based on its devotion, its activities, or its
61. St. Anthony of Padua is an obvious choice for the region; St. Anthony the Great’s
popularity is likely explained by his patronage of rural laborers, domestic animals and livestock, and sufferers of skin diseases (including ergotism)—all aspects more common in rural
communities. Santa Lucia demonstrates the diocese’s connection to Venice, where her relics
were located. Finally, the continued popularity of Ss. Rocco and Sebastian is unsurprising in
a region that continued to be hit by plague and had experienced a particularly virulent epidemic in 1630.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

obligations. The importance of confraternities, and their social, economic,
and spiritual benefits to members and the communities at large, have been
well documented by many historians of the topic.62 Given that membership was completely voluntary and most parishioners could select from
among several options, they also give insight into the spiritual interests of
the laity.
As with helping to sponsor an altar dedication or leaving a pious
bequest, joining a confraternity required a financial contribution. Unlike
the first two actions, the contribution often was ongoing and could not be
taken from an estate postmortem. Overall, however, the confraternities
were affordable for most people. In the relazioni Barbarigo collected in
1664–70 and 1685–97, nearly 1150 confraternities were listed, with varying degrees of detail. Approximately one quarter of these reports included
information about cost and membership. From this sample, the average
yearly cost of confraternity membership was a mere nine soldi; to put this
figure into perspective, a wage laborer in early-seventeenth-century Venice
was paid an average of forty-five soldi per day.63 Even if rural laborers had
not yet caught up to their urban counterparts half a century later, nine soldi
per year would not put a significant strain on most parishioners; even the
most expensive confraternities with a twenty-soldi price tag would not have
been impossible for too many. Some confraternities charged members fees
for funerals and Masses when another member died in lieu of annual fees.
These were generally around four soldi per death, although they could
range from one soldo to seventy soldi—the latter a hefty price for poorer
parishioners. However, as most towns had multiple confraternities, those
who could not afford to pay seventy soldi when someone died could choose
another confraternity.
Most rural parishioners could afford to join a confraternity, but this
does not negate other obstacles to their membership. In many ways, the
Church tried to limit female participation in confraternities after the
Council of Trent, wanting to keep closer control over women, and thus
denying them leadership roles and opportunities to participate in more
public activities. At the same time, certain groups, particularly rosary con62. For more on Italian confraternities, see the work of Konrad Eisenbichler, John
Henderson, Richard Mackenney, and Brian Pullan.
63. See Caffagni, “Clero,” p. 719.; and Brian Pullan, “Wage-Earners and the Venetian
Economy, 1550–1630,” in Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Brian Pullan (London, 1968), pp. 146–74, here p. 174. The range of
yearly dues was two soldi to twenty soldi.

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513

fraternities, actively encouraged female membership, and Catholic women
responded enthusiastically. Moreover, by the seventeenth century, most of
the confraternities in Padua that provided information about members
accepted women, thus providing counter-evidence to instances of the
exclusion of women.64 It is important to remember, however, that “female
presence does not guarantee meaningful participation” and that in most
confraternities, women were excluded from leadership positions.65 In
Paduan confraternities, women could only hold administrative positions in
female-only confraternities and in some confraternities dedicated to catechism, which often had parallel administrative structures to oversee the
instruction of boys and girls. All other confraternities were run by the men,
although women were invited to join and participate in the confraternity’s
rituals. Priests noted the gender of members in just under 300 reports; of
these, 264 welcomed men and women, eight were exclusively female, and
fourteen were exclusively male. If this is a representative sample, women
were not excluded from confraternal piety.
Finally, even if the majority of confraternities were both affordable
and open to all, most had a limit to how many members they wanted or
could handle. Thus it is necessary to consider whether some people may
have been cut out of participation simply for lack of open spots. In Padua,
however, this was not the case: there were nearly as many spaces in confraternities as there were adult parishioners, and in some towns, spaces outnumbered residents. So although a parishioner may have found his preferred group was full, it is almost certain that no one would have been cut
out entirely. The average membership size of a confraternity was 175
people, although they ranged from forty to 800 members, and the average
ratio of adults to confraternities in a given town was 200 to 1. Most towns
of a decent size had between two and four confraternities, so all interested
adults should have been able to find a group that suited their preferences
or budget.66 Complete data for all the confraternities in a given village are
64. See Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna
(Cambridge, UK, 1995), p. 123; Black, Italian Confraternities, p. 38; Ronald Weissman,
Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), pp. 212–13; and Natalie Zemon
Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), p. 75.
65. Giovanna Casagrande, “Confraternities and Lay Female Religiosity in Late
Medieval and Renaissance Umbria,” in The Politics of Ritual Kinship, ed. Nicholas Terpstra
(Cambridge, UK, 2000), pp. 48–66, here p. 51.
66. Demographic data for total population was provided in 802 reports. These parishes
ranged from seventy to more than 4000 parishioners (adults and children), with an average
population of just under 800 and a median population of just over 600 people. For communicating adults, see note 36 and the associated discussion.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT
TABLE 4. Rural Paduan Confraternities, 1571–72

Devotion
Marian
Corpus Christi
Holy Spirit
Holy Sacrament
Ss. Rocco and Sebastian
St. Sebastian
Other devotions, fewer than six dedications

No. of Confraternities
74
72
13
12
12
11
51

only available for seven parishes, but in these seven the average ratio was
thirteen spaces per ten adults in the community.
Most Paduans, then, could join a confraternity, and many did. So
which confraternities did they choose? To gauge their interest in church
reforms, highlighted here is the prevalence of the same reform-related
devotions previously discussed, again looking at the change from the episcopacy of Ormaneto to that of Barbarigo. Under Ormaneto, there was
almost no trace of these devotions (see table 4). The Blessed Virgin Mary
(with almost no particular devotions specified) and the Corpus Christi
were overwhelmingly popular, but evidence of any reform was thin. Confraternities dedicated to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Sacrament were few
in number, and overall, of 245 confraternities in 259 reports, fewer than
fifteen were devoted to any other reform-relevant cults. Under Ormaneto,
confraternities were not very numerous and showed little to no influence of
Catholic Reform.
Under Barbarigo, the situation was quite different—there was an
explosion of confraternities in general and a significant increase in certain
reforms, particularly the rosary and the Holy Sacrament (see table 5). In 281
parishes, Barbarigo received information about more than 750 confraternities, a nearly three-fold increase from Ormaneto’s visit a century earlier.67
The most popular by far was the Holy Sacrament, and about 92 percent of

67. Although some increase may be attributable to demographics, it is not plausible to
attribute this drastic change to population increase alone. Ormaneto did not provide demographic data. In the Venetian terraferma in general, the 1630 plague killed approximately 20
percent of the population, and in the late-seventeenth century, the population was likely still
recovering from this. Overall, however, the population increased by 44 percent between 1548
and 1766. See Michael Knapton, “The Terraferma State,” in A Companion to Venetian History,
1400–1797, ed. Eric Dursteler (Leiden, 2013), pp. 85–124, here p. 108.

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515

TABLE 5. Rural Paduan Confraternities under Gregorio Barbarigo
Devotion
Holy Sacrament
Rosary
Marian
Name of God
Souls in Purgatory
Christian Doctrine
San Carlo Borromeo
Name of Jesus
St. Anthony of Padua
San Filippo Neri
Other devotions, fewer than 10 dedications

1664–70

1685–97

267
174
161
16
10
10
7
7
5
2
167

323
231
175
21
34
17
9
15
15
0
175

parishes had one of these groups.68 Close behind were those devoted to the
rosary or Madonna of the Rosary, and a number of other Marian devotions
were also quite popular. Others relevant to reform were present, including
the Name of Jesus, Name of God, Christian Doctrine, and San Filippo
Neri, although not yet in significant numbers. As was common across
Europe, the laity had eagerly adopted the Rosary and Holy Sacrament confraternities, and were slowly and selectively adopting some of the others
promoted by the Church. Although they may not have joined these devotions for the reasons promoted by the Church, they were still enthusiastic
about these new options and the spiritual outlets they provided.
A few decades later, the evidence of reform was even stronger. The
numbers of reform-relevant confraternities grew across the board, with the
Rosary, Christian Doctrine, and Name of Jesus experiencing the most significant increases. The Holy Sacrament confraternities, already in most
parishes in the 1660s, were in 98.5 percent of parishes by the end of Barbarigo’s episcopacy, whereas the Rosary was a popular devotion in nearly
80 percent of parishes. At the same time, it is important to recognize the
continued variety in the diocese, for although large numbers of laypeople
were clearly eager to adopt these new devotions, plenty of people continued
to prefer St. Anthony of Padua and many other traditional devotions. Individual parishes supported a wide variety of unique saints important only to
them or perhaps to a small group of villages—more than 100 saints had
68. See note 46 for a discussion of the transition from Corpus Christi to Holy Sacrament confraternities.

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WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

fewer than ten groups dedicated to them. Many Paduans supported
reform, becoming active members of new confraternities and happily turning over their yearly dues and other fees, whereas others chose to engage in
similar activities but remain loyal to older devotions. Yet what is clear,
regardless of the group chosen, is that rural Paduans were not deterred by
the Church’s efforts to reform confraternities; they did not simply walk
away as many did in Bologna when the confraternities were brought under
parochial control.69 Although the period between Ormaneto and Barbarigo may well have been difficult for some members who did not care for
the changes, the damage was not lasting; in fact, Barbarigo’s parishioners
were much more active than their ancestors a century earlier, fully embracing baroque Catholicism.
This activity and enthusiasm for participating in parish life is seen
across rural Padua, and both the prevalence and specifics of lay participation demonstrate the areas within the parochial sphere that captured the
hearts of rural laypeople. Rural laity evinced enthusiasm for devotions to
the Holy Sacrament, the rosary, and a variety of other devotions connected
to reform—particularly those of a Marian or Christocentric nature. They
were also eager to support the spread of catechism and the Catholic education of village children. At the same time, they maintained their interest
in time-honored traditions, continuing to support local devotions and their
parish church itself. Lay spirituality in rural parishes, the same kind of
places often bemoaned by reformers as “our Indies,” was vibrant, active,
and orthodox rather than repressed, lackluster, or tinged with heterodoxy.
Some of this was simply continuity from the pre-Reformation era, but as
the comparison between Ormaneto’s and Barbarigo’s records demonstrates, the seventeenth century saw not only a shift in devotions but also a
general flourishing of both reformed and traditional spiritual practices.
The precise causes of this shift are difficult to determine based on available
sources, but it seems that a combination of sporadic reform efforts beginning with Ormaneto and the concentrated efforts of Barbarigo in the lateseventeenth century coalesced with lay desires for increased participation in
the baroque Church. Although perhaps this did not conform exactly to the
Catholic utopia envisioned by Tridentine reformers, this was what the
laypeople wanted.

69. Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, p. 223.

Marching in Step:
Patriotism and the
Southern Catholic Cadet Movement
R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING*
According to historians, nineteenth-century sons of American Southerners were willful and in need of discipline. For college administrators, the solution was strict military training. Existing college cadet
literature includes examples of non-Catholic institutions but omits
Catholic colleges altogether. Historically, several Southern Catholic
colleges maintained cadet corps. As the authors illustrate, the assimilation of military cadet training in Southern Catholic higher education
increased public support via mirrored practices at non-Catholic institutions and repudiated a perceived absence of patriotism. Through
public cadet competitions, parades, and military band performances,
Southern Catholic colleges created an image of being both “Catholic”
and “American.”
Keywords: Anti-Catholicism, Catholic education, civic participation, military training, Southern Catholics

R

od Andrew Jr. explains that nineteenth-century American Southerners perceived their sons as indolent, willful, and in need of discipline.
To address this concern, college administrators attempted to implement
strict military cadet training rooted in religion and patriotism. Andrew’s
argument focuses on college military training as a tool used to enhance
scholastic order, improve civic engagement, and promote Southern patriotism. Within this larger argument, Andrew also contends that aside from
discipline, military training in Southern colleges reflected religious and
patriotic ideals by attempting to transform students into good upright citizens and respectable Christians.1 Similar to Andrew, Jennifer Green discusses military training in Southern colleges and universities as a disciplinary tool and opportunity for social mobility via a fostered sense of

*Dr. Platt (email: eric.platt@usm.edu) is an assistant professor, Ms. McGee (email:
melandie.mcgee@eagles.usm.edu) is a graduate assistant, and Dr. King (email:
amanda.king@usm.edu) is a recent doctoral graduate in the Department of Educational Studies and Research at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
1. Rod Andrew Jr., Long Gray Lines: The Southern Military School Tradition, 1839–1915
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), pp. 5, 51, 52.

517

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MARCHING IN STEP

networked professionalism as a result of self-discipline, perseverance, and
social distinction.2 Such cadet instruction and military training practices
lasted well into the twentieth century.3
Despite the clear presentation of facts in both Andrew’s and Green’s
theses, their narratives rely on examples drawn from non-Catholic institutions such as secular institutions or colleges and universities founded on
Protestant values (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist) but
omits Catholic institutions.4 Thus, a pertinent question has been ignored:
What particular significance did similar systems of cadet training have in
Catholic colleges in the American South? Although scholarship regarding
cadet corps and military training in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Southern higher education is intermittent, there is a need to expand
this body of knowledge to include Catholic colleges and universities. To fill
this gap, this article focuses on the implementation and objectives of military cadet training at Catholic colleges in the southern United States
during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (see figure 1).
Historically, several existing and defunct Southern Catholic colleges
and universities provided military training. Institutions such as St. Mary’s
Jefferson College in Convent, Louisiana; St. Charles College in Grand
Coteau, Louisiana; St. Mary’s University in Galveston, Texas; the College
of the Sacred Heart in Augusta, Georgia; and Spring Hill College in
Mobile, Alabama, all had cadet corps. Likewise, the College of the
Immaculate Conception in New Orleans boasted a cadet corps that rivaled
the long-standing military cadet battalions at Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge.5 These Southern Catholic colleges fostered military programs that mirrored non-Catholic college cadet regimes; however, Southern Catholic institutions already provided overtly religious instruction with
internally reliant, rigid disciplinary systems.6 For example, the priests and
brothers at St. Mary’s University in Galveston
. . . had . . . taken hold of the Texan youth to mold them into some shape
. . . It was a hard task, for the boys were wild, indeed. . . . They knew

2. Jennifer Green, Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old South
(New York, 2008), pp. 11, 125.
3. Ibid., p. 118.
4. Ibid.
5. “New Orleans Mission. Immaculate Conception College,” Woodstock Letters, 35
(1906), 162–63.
6. James Aloysius Burns, Catholic Education: A Study of Conditions (New York, 1917),
pp. 153–55.

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

519

FIGURE 1. Cadet officers and instructor, College of the Immaculate Conception,
New Orleans, Immaculate Conception College Bulletin, 1900. Image courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, J. Edgar & Louis S. Monroe Library, Loyola University, New Orleans.

little or nothing of discipline, and it was with the greatest difficulty they
were controlled. The good brothers came with their click signals to
attract the attention of the boys and with their straps to inspire fear and
enforce discipline. These weapons of law and order brought not a little
into line. Besides these weapons the Brothers had others, and they were
those of religion. They were very strict with regard to Catechism, Confession, Holy Communion and a faithful attendance at Mass. . . . Punishments were well given, and the Brothers ever insisted on strict order
and discipline.7

7. University of St. Mary, Galveston, Texas: Souvenir Volume of the Silver Jubilee of the
College Under Jesuit Administration, 1884–1909 (Galveston, 1909), pp. 35–37; New Orleans,
Archives of the New Orleans Province, Society of Jesus (hereafter ANOP), Section: Galveston—St. Mary’s University, Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans (hereafter
LUNO).

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MARCHING IN STEP

Southern students at Catholic institutions were perhaps equally “wild” as
those at non-Catholic institutions. Certainly, the Jesuit priests of antebellum Spring Hill College experienced less than enthusiastic student dispositions toward hard work and academic rigor. The priests felt that these
student attitudes were a
consequence of their [the students’] belief that they can succeed in life
and get rich without work; the weakness of parents, who tolerate and
encourage everything . . . disciplinarians in those ante-bellum [sic] times
had difficulties and discouragements, of which their successors now a
days have no idea.8

Catholic educators responded to such attitudes with a disciplinary system
that relied, according to James Burns, on group responsibility, student
cohabitation, intercollegiate competition, and prohibition of student activities with non-Catholic institutions.9 According to Edward Power, discipline typified student life in Catholic colleges. Like their non-Catholic
counterparts, Catholic students were supervised by prefects and could not
leave campus without permission. Pocket money was often limited, and use
of tobacco, alcohol, and unauthorized firearms were grounds for expulsion.
Playing cards, attending local theaters, dancing, and using inappropriate
language also were considered taboo.10
If such disciplinary systems rooted in religion were in place, why did
Catholic educators institute cadet training? As this article will illustrate, the
assimilation of cadet training addressed two important issues: first, the need
to increase public support via mirrored instructional practices performed at
non-Catholic colleges and universities, and, second, to repudiate a perceived lack of patriotism in Southern Catholic higher education. In addition
to combating American nativism—the fear of individuals born outside the
United States—and enhancing the public perception of patriotism, Southern Catholic colleges founded various cadet corps as a means of dealing with
issues of student discipline.11 Even so, their origin, like the origin of cadet
corps at antebellum non-Catholic institutions, was not tied to the need for

8. C. M. Widman, “Springhill College,” Woodstock Letters, 27 (1898), 267–76, here
272.
9. Burns, Catholic Education: A Study of Conditions, pp. 149–55.
10. Edward John Power, A History of Catholic Education in the United States (Milwaukee, 1958), pp. 121, 124; Green, Military Education and the Emerging Middle Class in the Old
South, pp. 4, 120.
11. Michael O’Brien, Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860 (Chapel Hill,
NC, 2010), pp. 29, 243.

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

521

trained officers to stock the Confederate army.12 John Napier and Rod
Andrew argue that many Southern cadet corps did not come into existence
until after the Civil War.13 Such was the case with many cadet corps at
Southern Catholic colleges. Cadet corps at Catholic institutions, like nonCatholic colleges and universities, were labeled as student organizations.
Cadets were clothed in military dress, armed, drilled, publicly paraded, and
assigned regiments that promoted adherence to structure and loyalty to
country. This need to enforce discipline and match military training offered
at peer institutions was imperative to attract parents wishing to enroll their
sons in colleges that provided military instruction. However, the need to
promote patriotic zeal to address larger issues of nativism and anti-Catholicism may have been even more important.
Anti-Catholicism and Church Support
According to Robert Schwickerath, the Catholic Church and its educational institutions had been accused of being antipatriotic throughout
the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries.14 Moreover, anti-Catholic
sentiment had been etched into the American consciousness through the
efforts of such organizations as the Know-Nothing Party, the Ku Klux
Klan, and the American Protective Association.15 The Know-Nothing
Party, via professors at Centenary College in Jackson, Louisiana, promoted lectures to students that portrayed the rise of Catholicism in the
South as harmful and encouraged the destruction of Catholic churches in
New Orleans.16 As well, anti-Catholic literature such as The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk contributed to negative Protestant perceptions of
Catholic educational and religious institutions. First printed in 1836,
Monk’s book describes scenes of physical abuse, lechery, rape, and
chained imprisonment at the hands of Catholic priests. A quote from the
revised text makes clear that the publishers hoped that widespread readership would continue to fuel extreme dislike and suspicion of Catholics
in the minds of U.S. citizens:

12. Power, A History of Catholic Education in the United States, p. 139.
13. John Hawkins Napier III and Rod Andrew Jr., “Military Schools,” in The New
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Education, Vol. 17, ed. Clarence L. Mohr (Chapel Hill, NC,
2011), pp. 81–86, here pp. 82, 85.
14. Robert Schwickerath, Jesuit Education: Its History and Principles Viewed in Light of
Modern Educational Practices (St. Louis, 1904), p. 255.
15. William P. Leahy, Adapting to America: Catholics, Jesuits, and Higher Education in the
Twentieth Century (Washington, DC, 1991), p. 3.
16. Roger Baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1939), 379–80.

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MARCHING IN STEP
Hoping that “Maria Monk” will still continue to inspire a wholesome
and practical hatred of Popery and all that it means today in our very midst,
no less than what it meant forty years ago in Canada, we commend this
little volume to all lovers of true American liberty, without distinction of
sex, creed, sect, or previous nationality.17

Even though the events described in Monk’s book were later disproven by
a series of investigations, its ideological impact was lasting in the minds of
American Protestants.18 As a direct result, American Catholics and
Catholic immigrants faced religious discrimination across the United
States, particularly in regions with considerable Protestant populations.
The well-known historian on the Catholic Church in Louisiana,
Roger Baudier, indicates that negative sentiment against immigrants from
Europe developed throughout the South, particularly along the seacoast
and in New Orleans where immigrants, many of them Catholic, settled.
Baudier illustrates this prejudice:
Because of Irish and Italian immigrants being involved, nearly all
Catholics, and Germans also, many also being Catholics, it was to be
expected that the religious question would be thrust into the affair. And
so it was. A violent anti-Catholic sentiment developed, including, during
the fervor of native Americanism enthusiasm and demands that America
be governed by Americans, all the old nonsense of Papal domination,
Church interference in political affairs, Jesuitism, the baneful influence of
Bishops and clergy, allegiance to a foreign potentate and similar ranting.19

This general negativity toward Catholic immigrants was only worsened by
its proliferation via political and Protestant groups.20 As Baudier makes
clear, Protestant Southerners were afraid of internal corruption by transatlantic regimes of Catholic hegemony dictated by the pope in Rome.
Accordingly, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Southern
Protestants perceived Southern Catholicism as a religion filled with foreigners who had pledged their allegiance to a European power.21 Likewise,

17. Maria Monk, The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, rev. ed. (New York, 1878), pp.
iii–vii. Emphasis in original.
18. Ray Allen Billington, “Maria Monk and Her Influence,” The Catholic Historical
Review, 22 (1936), 283–96, here 289, 292.
19. Baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana, p. 379.
20. Ibid.
21. Randall M. Miller, “The Failed Mission: The Catholic Church and Black
Catholics in the Old South,” in Catholics in the Old South, ed. Randall Miller and Jon Wakelyn
(Macon, GA, 1999), pp. 149–70, here p. 155.

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

523

Catholic educational institutions had been heralded as advocating undemocratic principles, lacking patriotic values, and serving as seats for papist
expansion.22 Andrew Stern explains that, in response, Southern Catholic
colleges performed patriotic dramas, celebrated national holidays, and
allowed their students and faculty members to attend patriotic parades and
banquets. In so doing, these religious colleges “became advertisements for
Catholic patriotism.”23 Southern Catholics, in general, demonstrated government loyalties with particular allegiance to the American South. Many
Catholics supported the Confederate cause and served in the armies of the
South during the Civil War. Following the war, Catholics “participated in
the memorialization and remembrance of the Lost Cause.”24
As Charles Reagan Wilson explains, Southern Catholics engaged in
various rituals that symbolized a religious commemoration and celebration
of the Confederacy. Common rituals that harkened back to and venerated
the Confederacy consisted of the celebration of Memorial Day, in which
the custom was, and remains in some regions of the South, to decorate the
graves of fallen Confederate heroes. Participation in funeral processions of
Confederate veterans also was a common ritual practice. Veterans attending these funerals wore their gray uniforms, served as active or honorary
pallbearers, and performed military ceremonies. Memorial Day and veteran funeral observances often were conducted in church buildings in
which Catholic priests joined former Confederate soldiers in remembrance
and honor of the Lost Cause.25 Still, these accounts of patriotism, including Confederate patriotism, do not include the attempts of Catholic colleges to implement military training as a means to enhance perceptions of
patriotism. Through public drill displays, cadet competitions, presidential
parades, and military band performances, Catholic colleges created an
image of themselves as both “Catholic” and “American.”
Such visible “American” military training practices were important, as
Southern Catholic institutions were administered by immigrant priests
22. Kathleen Mahoney, Catholic Higher Education in Protestant America: The Jesuits and
Harvard in the Age of the University (Baltimore, 2003), pp. 235–36.
23. Andrew H. M. Stern, Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross: Catholic-Protestant Relations in the Old South (Tuscaloosa, 2012), p. 105.
24. Michael Pasquier, “Catholic Southerners, Catholic Soldiers: White Creoles, the
Civil War, and the Lost Cause in New Orleans” (Master’s thesis, Florida State University,
2003), p. 19.
25. Charles Reagan Wilson, “The Religion of the Lost Cause: Ritual and Organization of the Southern Civil Religion, 1865–1920,” The Journal of Southern History, 46 (1980),
224–34.

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MARCHING IN STEP

from countries such as France, Ireland, and Germany.26 The influx of
Catholic immigrants prior to the Civil War increased fears that Catholics
eventually would outnumber Protestants. After the Civil War, antiCatholic sentiment remained along with nativism, and the terms Catholic
and immigrant became synonymous for Protestants.27 Protestant Southerners, leery of papist uprisings, questioned the loyalty of foreign Catholics
and, as Randall Miller states, “. . . wondered if Catholics would put the flag
before their faith.”28
With the implementation of organized cadet corps, Southern
Catholic educational institutions had a tool to combat anti-Catholicism
and nativism. Despite religious and immigrant distrust, Catholic colleges
and universities attracted Protestant, as well as Catholic, students
because of their reputation for providing quality education with a sound
teaching methodology.29 Such varied denominational enrollments were
welcomed, as Southern Catholic institutions, unlike several Northern
counterparts, did not receive state funds. Instead, they relied on tuition
dollars to fund operations.30 Thus, there was a need to attain larger
enrollments and garner additional tuition dollars despite the denominational background of students. Southern Catholic colleges advertised that
students, regardless of religion, would be welcomed.31 According to the
catalogs of Loyola College in New Orleans, “non-Catholics will be
admitted and their religious opinions scrupulously respected, nor shall
they be debarred from any College honors or distinctions because of their
religious tenets.”32 In light of this evidence, Raymond Schmandt’s argument that “the decisive factor determining [Catholic college] survival was

26. Thomas Clancey, List of Jesuits Whose Names Appear in the Jesuit Catalogs 1837–1861
as Serving in the New Orleans Province, n.d., Clancey Papers, File: Province, ANOP, Monroe
Library, LUNO..
27. Richard R. Duncan, “Catholics and the Church in the Antebellum Upper South,”
in Catholics in the Old South, ed. Miller and Wakelyn, pp. 77–98, here p. 92; Ray Allen
Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (Chicago, 1964), pp. 32–38; Clement Eaton,
The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (New York, 1964), p. 238.
28. Randall M. Miller, “A Church in Cultural Captivity: Some Speculations on
Catholic Identity in the Old South,” in Catholics in the Old South, ed. Miller and Wakelyn,
pp. 11–52, here p. 17.
29. Stern, Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross, p. 105.
30. Miller, “A Church in Cultural Captivity,” pp. 19, 20.
31. Stern, Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross, p. 97.
32. Loyola College [Catalog]: St. Charles Avenue Opposite Audubon Park New Orleans
Louisiana, 1905–1906 (New Orleans, 1905), p. 7, Box: Loyola University New Orleans Varia,
ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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always the growth or the stagnation of the local Catholic population”33 is
not necessarily supported, considering the potential for Protestant enrollments in Catholic institutions. Stern contends that, despite suspicions of
an eventual Catholic uprising, many Protestants enrolled their sons in
Southern Catholic colleges and schools as a result of the pedagogical
prowess of these institutions.34
Despite a lack of religious segregation, there was still a need to promote events and student organizations that publicly demonstrated patriotism, American values, and military imagery similar to neighboring nonCatholic colleges and universities. Southern Catholic cadet corps, as a
result, became a visible advertisement of Catholic American patriotism and
encompassed instructional characteristics comparable to non-Catholic
cadet systems. Such an example existed in Augusta at the College of the
Sacred Heart. The constitution and by-laws of the Sacred Heart cadet
corps required all members to “conduct themselves in a gentlemanly and
soldier like manner.”35 Cadets were to perform weekly drills, compose
themselves in “uniform rank,” and maintain the discipline of the corps.36
Originally, the Sacred Heart Cadets were named the Total Abstinence
Society; however, the name was not an alluring recruitment tool for a military organization. The change to the Sacred Heart Cadets emphasized a
masculine, military style admired by young men. According to an unpublished history of the Sacred Heart cadet corps, they were one of the first
cadet regiments in Georgia and sought to employ an experienced military
officer to oversee all military training.37 Although the College of the
Sacred Heart provided military training for young men, the Catholic cadet
corps in Augusta came under scrutiny and criticism from public officials for
allegedly creating a militant group more supportive of the hierarchy of the
Catholic Church than the U.S. government.

33. Raymond H. Schmandt, “An Overview of Institutional Establishments in the
Antebellum Southern Church,” in Catholics in the Old South, ed. Miller and Wakelyn, pp. 53–
76 here p. 72.
34. Stern, Southern Crucifix, Southern Cross, 105.
35. Constitution and By-Laws of the Sacred Heart Cadets: Adopted February 19th, 1895, p.
5, Box: Sacred Heart, Augusta, Folder: Sacred Heart Cadets, ANOP, Monroe Library,
LUNO.
36. Felicitas Powers, “Prejudice, Journalism, and the Catholic Laymen’s Association of
Georgia,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 8, no. 3 (1989), 200–12, here 201.
37. History of Sacred Heart Cadets of the Sacred Heart Parish, Augusta, GA, unpublished
manuscript, 1–6, Box: Sacred Heart, Augusta, Folder: Sacred Heart, Augusta: Sacred Heart
Cadets, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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Occasionally, the implementation of cadet training by Catholic colleges as a means of decreasing anti-Catholic sentiment proved to be counterproductive and, as seen in the case of the College of the Sacred Heart,
served to produce negative rather than positive outcomes. After affiliating
the Sacred Heart Cadets with the College of the Sacred Heart in Augusta
(1900–15), Senator Tom Watson (D–GA), an agrarian populist and promoter of the anti-Catholic Veazey Bill, attacked the college and claimed
“the drill team was actually being trained for militant Catholic action.”38
According to Edward J. Cashin, “Watson alleged that Jesuits had sworn an
oath to overthrow the government and the Sacred Heart Cadets were
drilling and storing rifles in preparation for the revolution. The story was
ridiculous but it was believed by many.”39 Fueled by anti-Catholic literature such as Monk’s book and backed by the Veazey Bill, Watson
appointed committees to visit Catholic orphanages, convents, schools, and
colleges to ensure that no students or residents were “illegally deprived of
his or her liberty” as characters in The Awful Disclosures had been.40 Due in
part to Watson and the Veazey Bill, Protestants in Georgia became
increasingly wary of Catholics. In response to the tenuous situation in
Georgia, Bishop Benjamin Keiley of Savannah, a proponent of the College
of the Sacred Heart, encouraged Catholics in the state to oppose “grossly
malicious” accusations hurled against the Church and reason with local
Protestants to decrease anti-Catholic sentiment.41
Similarly to the Sacred Heart Cadet Corps, Bishop Nicholas Aloysius
Gallagher of Galveston supported military instruction at St. Mary’s University. In 1893 students of the Galveston college could join a new cadet
corps administered by the Society of Jesus.42 Gallagher, an ardent supporter of the student cadets, blessed the corps’ banners and presented them
to the young men as a sign of his favor.43 Such sentiment was a positive
indicator of the degree to which the Catholic Church encouraged college
military instruction. Another instance of the Catholic Church’s approval of
cadet training included a papal delegate’s visit to the United States at the
end of the nineteenth century. In 1896 Cardinal Francesco Satolli, apos-

38. Rose Margaret Scheers, “On Tom Watson and the Veazey Bill,” Letter to the
Editor, The Southern Cross [Savannah, GA] March 18, 1999, 4.
39. Edward J. Cashin, The Story of the Sacred Heart (Augusta, GA, 1987), p. 15.
40. Powers, “Prejudice, Journalism, and the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia,” p. 205.
41. Ibid.
42. University of St. Mary, Galveston, Texas: Souvenir Volume, p. 19.
43. “Galveston,” Woodstock Letters, 23 (1894), 187–88.

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tolic delegate to the United States, visited St. Mary’s University. As a distinctive visitor to the institution, “he was tendered a grand reception by the
university Cadets and the young gentlemen of the University Club. He
supped with the Jesuit Fathers and their invited guests.”44 To further honor
Satolli, Galveston mayor Ashley W. Fly permitted the St. Mary’s University cadets to fire a welcoming salute of six shots. It was discovered, however, that blank rounds could not be obtained. To protect local citizenry
and property, it was decided to gather the cadets at the center of the
campus yard, uniformly aim their rifles at the ground, and fire on command. The cardinal was so pleased by the salute that he cried out, “Good,
go it again!” More live rounds were fired, and, according to the St. Mary’s
University silver jubilee publication: “The campus looked like a plowed
field next day.”45
In Galveston, cadets did not seem to suffer the same ostracism as did
the Catholic cadet corps in Augusta. Mayoral and papal powers consented
and praised the Texas cadets, whereas in Georgia, Watson criticized the
Sacred Heart cadets and labeled such military instruction as organized
Catholic rebellion. Although Southern Catholic colleges met with both
praise and criticism, religious administrators eventually found an ally in the
War Department of the United States.
Government Ties and Public Perception
Prior to the establishment of the Reserve Officers Training Corps
(R.O.T.C.) via the National Defense Act of 1916, the War Department
had already affiliated with several Southern Catholic colleges. The War
Department supplied trained military officers to facilitate instruction and
ensure that cadets adhered to aspects of official military training. The College of the Immaculate Conception Cadet Corps Ledger included correspondence from the War Department regarding recent inspections and
expectations that the Jesuit Cadet Corps’ uniforms and supplies needed to
mirror other military schools.46 General orders to the New Orleans headquarters of the Immaculate Conception corps instructed cadets on proper
military protocol of raising and lowering the American flag and physical

44. University of St. Mary, Galveston, Texas: Souvenir Volume, p. 20.
45. University of St. Mary, p. 42.
46. Gene M. Lyons and John W. Masland, “The Origins of the ROTC,” Military
Affairs, 23, no. 1 (1959), 1–12, here 3; Immaculate Conception Cadet Corps Ledger, March 24,
1903, and December 24, 1904; Section: New Orleans—College of the Immaculate Conception, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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training times during the week.47 It can be hypothesized that, as a result of
such instruction, government ties enhanced the perception of patriotism of
Catholic colleges that possessed cadet corps managed by U.S. officers and
affiliated with the War Department.
Even though priests transported cadets to and from activities such as
rifle training, military officers were hired to govern and instruct cadet corps
at various Southern Catholic colleges.48 “Hired” laymen were rare in
Catholic colleges of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries.
Employed only as a last resort, laymen were considered ill fitted to connect
religious ideals to nonreligious curriculum. Also, they had to be paid.49
Religious orders such as the Society of Jesus, however, observed constitutional rules that determined the courses that laymen could teach. Such
courses included law; medicine; and, apparently, military training.50 At
Spring Hill College in Alabama, Lieutenants Braund, Curren, and Rice
(first names not recorded) were employed to govern all cadet corps training
at the Mobile institute.51 Likewise, the cadet instructor at St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, from 1918 to 1920 was Captain Charles
L. Steal, Infantry, U.S.A., professor of military science and tactics. He was
assisted by Sergeant James W. Melton, Infantry, Unassigned, U.S.A., and
later by Sergeant William S. Reese, Infantry, Unassigned, U.S.A.52 The
presence of official military officers may have helped promote the public
perception of Southern Catholic colleges as patriotic and religious strongholds (see figure 2).
Ensuring that the public perceived Southern Catholic higher education as patriotic was important to religious administrations. The War
Department also deemed patriotism as important; however, a larger con-

47. W. M. Williams, Brevet Major, Capt. U.S. Army, Commandant, General Orders
[to] Headquarters Jesuit Cadet Corps, College of the Immaculate Conception, Cor. Baronne and
Common Sts., New Orleans, March 20, 1903, Box: Jesuit High–New Orleans, Folder: Correspondence–War Dept., ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.
48. “New Orleans Mission. Immaculate Conception College” [1906], p. 163.
49. Schmandt, “An Overview of Institutional Establishments in the Antebellum
Southern Church,” p. 72.
50. Ignatius Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans. George E. Ganss (St.
Louis, 1970), p. 215.
51. Michael Kenny, The Torch on the Hill: Centenary Story of Spring Hill College, 1830–
1930 (New York, 1931), p. 350.
52. St. Charles College [Catalog]: Grand Coteau, La., 1918-1919 (Grand Coteau, 1918),
47, Section: Grand Coteau—St. Charles College, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO; St.
Charles College [Catalog]: Grand Coteau, La., 1919-1920 (Grand Coteau, 1919), 63, Section:
Grand Coteau—St. Charles College, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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FIGURE 2. Cadet noncommissioned officers, R.O.T.C., St. Charles College,
Grand Coteau, Louisiana, The Borromean: Commencement 1919, 4 no. 2, n.p. Image
courtesy of the Louisiana Room, Dupré Library, University of Louisiana at
Lafayette.

cern to the War Department was ensuring that each Catholic cadet corps
followed official military instruction and discipline. At the College of
Immaculate Conception in New Orleans, representatives from the War
Department evaluated cadet instruction and provided recommendations
for improvement to the commanding lieutenant.53 By 1907, the Jesuit
fathers reported that the College of the Immaculate Conception was doing
very well with 346 students; however, despite grand support from New
Orleans officials, citizens, and the clergy, the college’s religious administration decided to disband all cadet organizations because “[i]t was found that
time given to drilling could be spent more advantageously in study.”54 Perhaps the college’s religious administration felt secure in the patriotic perception of the Catholic institution and deemed cadet instruction as an

53. Immaculate Conception Cadet Corps Ledger, April 15, 1903.
54. “New Orleans Province,” Woodstock Letters, 36 (1907), 405–08, here 408.

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obsolete hindrance to liberal arts instruction that typified Southern
Catholic higher education. Regardless of the decision to terminate the
cadet corps at the New Orleans College of the Immaculate Conception,
other Southern Catholic colleges enhanced their cadet corps offerings and
further aligned themselves with the War Department.
Aside from enhancing discipline and communicating patriotism to the
public, the cadet corps at Southern Catholic colleges and universities had
another purpose. The 1919–20 academic catalog of St. Charles College
indicated that the intention of having an R.O.T.C. cadet unit was to provide military and civil training to qualify college students “as reserve officers in the military forces of the United States.”55 College catalogs indicate
that cadet training was meant to instill hygienic habits, an increased sense
of patriotic duty and active citizenship, and the “utilization of elements of
military training and instruction for the development of physique, discipline, manliness, teamwork and leadership.”56 In addition, affiliation with
such military programs as the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.)
and later R.O.T.C. provided financial aid for all college students who
enrolled in cadet instruction. Such financial rewards encouraged college
attendance and enhanced enrollments.
In 1918 S.A.T.C. was established at St. Mary’s Jefferson College, in
Convent, Louisiana, thus expanding the already existing college cadet
companies. As World War I was in progress, the U. S. government
decided to fund training programs at colleges for students interested in
military instruction and sent invitations to host these programs to colleges
across the country. Nonetheless, St. Mary’s Jefferson College did not join
until President Frazer Smith of the Society of Mary realized that many of
Louisiana’s colleges and universities had cadet corps. Smith worried that
the lack of an S.A.T.C.-affiliated cadet corps could hinder public support
and student enrollments. Smith acted quickly and contacted the War
Department. As a result, St. Mary’s Jefferson College was registered as an
S.A.T.C. institution. Smith fully backed the program and invited military
officers to train the student cadets. As the program grew, the officers sent
positive reports to the War Department about the St. Mary’s Jefferson
College program. The cadet program attracted a greater number of students, and the college’s enrollment swelled. According to the priest Phillip
Dagneau, “The school was well recomposed by the government which
promptly paid all the outstanding bills. Much prestige accrued to the
55. St. Charles College [Catalog]: Grand Coteau, La., 1919–1920, p. 63.
56. Ibid.

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school in the eyes of the public and the government.”57 As S.A.T.C. programs were replaced by R.O.T.C. regiments, new requirements were
enforced for all cadet corps.
According to R.O.T.C. guidelines, students at St. Charles College in
Grand Coteau, Louisiana, had to be both physically fit and U.S. citizens to
enroll in the cadet corps. Seeing a benefit in connecting St. Charles College to the R.O.T.C. program, the religious administrators made it compulsory for all male students aged fourteen and older to participate in military instruction and don the requisite uniform.58 R.O.T.C. cadets at St.
Charles College were issued one military uniform per year free of charge,
which included a “hat and hat cord, coat, shirts, breeches, leggings and
shoes.”59 Field equipment also was issued to each R.O.T.C. member. In
addition, 10 percent of the cadet unit was afforded the opportunity to participate in an R.O.T.C. summer camp sponsored by the U.S. military. The
camp lasted six weeks, and the government paid all traveling expenses
including meals, camp uniform, as well as room and board expenses.60 Furthered by the support of the U.S. War Department, Catholic institutions
such as St. Mary’s Jefferson College and St. Charles College witnessed the
growth and continued success of their cadet programs. For example:
In the Inter-Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Victory Loan campaign,
the St. Charles College R.O.T.C. unit won fourth place among all the
R.O.T.C. units of the United States, and first place among those units
that comprise the Tenth Military District, R.O.T.C., of Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas and Oklahoma. It was the only unit from among the couple of
hundred that was established in States south of Tennessee that was mentioned by the United States War Department on the honor roll for especially patriotic work performed during the recent Victory Loan Drive.
Also, with the exception of one other college unit, that of St. Charles was
the only one west of Chicago, Ill., that was included in the roll.61

Such public competitions potentially increased patriotic perceptions and
decreased nativism. Consequently, many Southern Catholic colleges and

57. P. H. Dagneau, Memoirs of Seventy-five Years for the Centenary of the Marist Fathers
in America (Atlanta, 1963), pp. 65–67.
58. St. Charles College [Catalog]: Grand Coteau, La., 1919–1920, p. 64.
59. Ibid.
60. St. Charles College [Catalog], pp. 64–65.
61. “New Orleans: Grand Coteau—St. Charles College Wins High Honor in Victory Loan
Drive—R.O.T.C. Wins Fourth Place Among All Other Units in the United States,” Woodstock
Letters, 48 (1919), 434–35, here 434.

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universities continued to participate in public military drills, competitions,
parades, and national holiday festivities. Despite a significant amount of
archival documentation that addresses patriotism as it relates to cadet corps
in Southern Catholic educational institutions, the events at three Catholic
colleges in particular (St. Mary’s Jefferson College, the College of the
Immaculate Conception, and Spring Hill College) illustrate how Southern
Catholic higher education mirrored the cadet training activities of nonCatholic colleges while promoting an image of patriotism.
St. Mary’s Jefferson College
Attempts to decrease anti-Catholicism and nativism relied on portraying Catholic cadet corps as similar to those in non-Catholic colleges and
universities. As previously noted, college cadet corps, at both Catholic and
non-Catholic institutions, were listed as “student organizations.” At St.
Mary’s Jefferson College there existed three separate cadet corps: A, B, and
C. These three cadet units were listed in catalogs along with organizations
such as the college orchestra; athletic teams of baseball, polo, tennis, and
football; the French literary and dramatic clubs; and the college brass
band.62 In fact, this particular college brass band was referred to as the “Jefferson College Cadet Band” and was considered part of the student corps of
cadets.63 Members of the brass band—including members of the St. Mary’s
Jefferson College symphony—wore matching hats and uniforms that
resembled those of the college cadet corps as well as those of West Point.64
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the cadet band performed patriotic tunes and marches such as “Red, White, and Blue” for important college visitors, including former Louisiana governor Francis Tillou Nicholls
and Archbishop Placide-Louis Chapelle of New Orleans. To student members of the St. Mary’s Brass Band, “Marches are combat a la gloire.”65
The cadet corps, in combination with the cadet band and symphony,
was highly popular among students, instructors, and locals. Several sons of

62. Catalogue of Jefferson College (St. Mary’s.) 1901–1902 (New Orleans, 1891), p. 26.
Louisiana State University Special Collections (hereafter LSUSC), Hill Memorial Library,
Baton Rouge.
63. “The Trip to Baton Rouge,” The Jefferson College Record, Convent, Louisiana (Convent, LA, 1905), p. 237, LSUSC.
64. Catalogue of Jefferson College (St. Mary’s.) 1901–1902, p. 9.
65. Atlanta, Provincial Archives of the Society of Mary (hereafter PASM), St. Mary’s
Brass Band, Jefferson College, La., record book, “History of St. Mary’s B[ras] B[and],” n.d.,
“Visitant Francis T. Nichols,” November 3, 1887, “The Archbishop’s Visit,” May 2, 1898 &,
Box: American Province Jefferson College 3, Marist School.

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wealthy Louisiana planter families attended St. Mary’s Jefferson College
and were members of the cadet corps and band. James Fortier, a descendant of noted Louisiana historian Alcée Fortier, participated in the cadet
corps and was a bugler for cadet company C.66 Due in large part to the success of the cadet corps at St. Mary’s Jefferson College, enrollment—around
ninety students before the addition of cadet instruction—increased to 175
at the end of the nineteenth century.67 The popularity of the student cadet
corps at St. Mary’s Jefferson College led the religious administration to
expand the military program. On May 21, 1905, a competitive drill of the
college’s three cadet companies was held. Judges, including Captain W. D.
Gardiner of the Washington Artillery, were invited to take stock of the
cadet corps as they performed military maneuvers on the college’s front
lawn. The competition was said to have been particularly difficult to judge
due to the high-quality performance of all cadets.68
The decisions of religious administrations to place cadet instruction
under lay-military governance also proved beneficial. At St. Mary’s Jefferson College:
The military organizations of the college, under the very able direction of
Capt. Jos. Kantz[,] are attaining a high degree of proficiency. These
companies are not so numerous as last year, as it was thought best to
exempt the forty members of the Brass Band from the regular drill. The
companies are now more easily handled, however, and Capt. Kantz will
be able to get even better results than in the past. The captain is quite
proud of the showing the boys make, and expects great things of them
before the end of the year.69

Although military instruction was relegated to two hours of weekly practice, the college’s administration communicated to the public that the strict
cadet training “does not interfere in any way with the course of studies.”70
Similarly, several Southern Catholic colleges reported in their catalogs that
military instruction did not overshadow the academic curriculum (see
figure 3).

66. Catalogue of Jefferson College (St. Mary’s) 1901–1902, p. 26.
67. Edwin Whitfield Fay, The History of Education in Louisiana (Washington, DC ,
1898), p. 142.
68. “The Competitive Drill,” The Jefferson College Record, Convent, Louisiana, January
1905, 240–41, LSUSC.
69. “Capt. Kantz,” The Jefferson College Record, Convent, Louisiana, March 1905, 97,
LSUSC.
70. Catalogue of Jefferson College (St. Mary’s) 1901–1902, p. 8.

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FIGURE 3. St. Mary’s Jefferson College Cadets, Graduating Class—Commercial
Course ’03, Catalogue of Jefferson College (St. Mary’s), 1902–03. Image courtesy of
Louisiana State University Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Baton
Rouge.

Even though cadet training was not given precedence over academics,
military instruction was still very much a part of the student experience at
St. Mary’s Jefferson College well into the early-twentieth century. Southern Catholic colleges that had established cadet corps during this period
were even more effective in dispelling the belief that Catholics were not
patriotic. This was due, in part, to the support that the U.S. government
rendered to colleges with organized cadet corps during World War I. For
instance, in 1921, the certificate below was presented to St. Mary’s for their
“spirit of patriotism and devotion to the country”:

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535

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To all who shall see these presents, greeting:
This is to certify that
Jefferson College
in a spirit of patriotism and of devotion to country rendered efficient and loyal
service in connection with The World War through the establishment and
operation at that institution of a unit of
THE STUDENT ARMY TRAINING CORPS
Given at the War Department, District of Columbia this twenty-second
day of November, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one.
The Adjutant General’s Office.71

Such gratitude expressed by the U.S. government reinforced the notion
that Southern Catholic colleges where loyal to their country. During periods of anti-Catholic sentiment, recognition and support given by the U.S.
government for instituting cadet corps at Southern Catholic colleges was a
fruitful means of displaying the institutions’ patriotism and devotion to the
United States.
The College of the Immaculate Conception
Along with government support, leading U.S. officials honored
Catholic college cadets. During a 1901 visit from President William
McKinley, the American League of the Sacred Heart presented the College of the Immaculate Conception cadet corps with two large silk American flags with the words “[t]he flag of our fathers, the hope of the world,
Liberty’s emblem by freedom unfurled.” The presentation took place in the
courtyard of the College of the Immaculate Conception. The crowd that
accompanied the students and college cadet corps was “well representing
the character, the culture, the wealth, and the great public heart of the
community.” The college cadets led McKinley’s parade, followed by a
detachment from the Louisiana Field Artillery. Members of New Orleans’
civic and military divisions also “participated in the patriotic ceremony”
that featured the college cadets.72 Later, in 1903, to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, a vast parade was organized by city officials.

71. Certificate of Service, the World War, 1921, Box: American Province Jefferson
College 2, Folder: Certificate of Service W.W.I., 1921, Marist School, PASM.
72. Albert Biever, The Jesuits in New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley: Jubilee Memorial
(New Orleans, 1924), p. 136.

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At the request of said officials, the cadet corps of the New Orleans’ College
of the Immaculate Conception marched alongside U.S. soldiers.73
As the corps grew in size and recognition, it was determined that a military officer should take charge of the student cadets to improve their performance by aligning them with U.S. military training standards. In 1903 it
was reported that the cadet corps of the College of the Immaculate Conception were under the instruction of the U.S. government. The college
cadets had won various medals and awards issued by the U.S. army and navy
for marksmanship and drilling. These performances and awards were presented in front of a host of local Louisianans.74 In addition to awarding certificates, governmental support also was demonstrated through the implementation of cadet training guidelines set forth by the War Department.
Southern Catholic colleges seemed to value accordance with the War
Department’s suggestions for cadet training as college catalogs and ledgers
echoed training strategies issued by the U.S. government.75
In March 1903, the cadets of the College of the Immaculate Conception marched to receive their new instructor, Major William M. Williams.
“Major Williams expressed himself as greatly pleased with the showing
made by the cadets, and said that he hoped they would keep up the high
standard.”76 Under Williams’s instruction, the cadet corps grew and honed
their skills:
In the beginning of April [1906], a Major Dickman was sent from
Washington on an extensive tour of military inspection in the Southwest
and West, starting with our college [College of the Immaculate Conception] and the State University in Baton Rouge [Louisiana State University]. The inspector expressed himself as highly pleased with the results
shown by the boys.77

73. “New Orleans Mission, New Orleans,” Woodstock Letters, 32 (1903), 278.
74. “Jesuit Cadets Make a Fine Fight for the Febiger Medals, Abram Lurin Leading
the Officers, and Frank P. Burns the Gallant Ranks,” The Daily Picayune, June 10, 1903, 9.
75. H. C. Corbun, Adjutant General, Major General, U.S. Army to Capt. W. M.
Williams, U.S. Army, Professor of Military Science and Tactics, College of the Immaculate
Conception, New Orleans, Louisiana, June 1, 1903, Box: Jesuit High—New Orleans, Folder:
Correspondence—War Dept., ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO; General Orders: Headquarters Jesuit Cadet Corps, College of the Immaculate Conception, Cor. Baronne and Common Sts. New
Orleans, March 20th, 1903, Box: Jesuit High—New Orleans, Folder: Correspondence—War
Dept., ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.
76. “Major Williams Installed as Military Instructor, and the Jesuit College Cadets
Pass in Review to Celebrate the Important Event,” The Daily Picayune, March 17, 1903, 13.
77. “New Orleans Mission. Immaculate Conception College” [1906], 162–63.

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Even though Williams remained at the New Orleans college only for one
year, the Jesuit priests and brothers of the College of the Immaculate Conception indicated in letters to their superiors that their military department
was flourishing under the “painstaking care of the new commandant, a
young lieutenant of the regular army, retired from active service in the
Philippines on account of ill health.”78
Not only did the cadets of the College of the Immaculate Conception
have experienced military instructors, the religious administration made
sure to supply all field provisions (rifles, uniforms, and ammunition) suggested by the War Department. Like the military corps of the United
States, the Jesuit student cadet corps took part in daily rifle practice and
performed a bi-monthly parade with public review at the city park. As a
result, the student cadet corps rose in popularity with the citizens of New
Orleans.7 Such public display was important, as it illustrated that Catholic
college cadet corps were bastions of patriotic zeal (see figure 4).
In 1905 and 1906, the Immaculate Conception cadet corps were
invited to march in the Rex Parade during Mardi Gras:80
By order of his majesty, The King of the Carnival [Rex],
Greetings:—
The Household of His Majesty . . . extends a cordial invitation to
yourself and command[s that you] participate in the ceremonies attending the arrival of His Majesty Monday March 6th, 1905.81

In 1909 President William Howard Taft reviewed a city parade held in his
honor. Taft was visiting New Orleans to speak in favor of national river
improvements at the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Waterways Convention. From his
balcony at the St. Charles Hotel, Taft watched as the parade, led by the
cadet corps of the College of the Immaculate Conception, passed by. After
lunch with Archbishop James H. Blenk of New Orleans, Taft traveled to
the College of the Immaculate Conception and addressed the cadet corps,
students, and faculty members from a terrace draped in the American flag.
As priest Albert Biever explains:

78. “New Orleans Mission. College of the Immaculate Conception,” Woodstock Letters,
33, (1904), 408–09, here 408.
79. Ibid.
80. “New Orleans Mission. Immaculate Conception College” [1906], p. 162.
81. Earl Marshall to Major St. John Perett, Commanding 1st Battalion Jesuit College
Cadets, February 8th 1905, Box: Jesuit High—New Orleans, Folder: Correspondence—War
Dept., ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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MARCHING IN STEP

FIGURE 4. College of the Immaculate Conception cadets, c. 1900. College of the
Immaculate Conception, Baronne St., New Orleans photograph drawer. Image
courtesy of the Archives of the New Orleans Province, Society of Jesus. J. Edgar &
Louis S. Monroe Library, Loyola University, New Orleans.

Never before, in all its [the College of the Immaculate Conception] history,
had the old courtyard echoed to such outbursts of enthusiastic cheers and
deafening applause as when the President of the United States appeared
beneath the waving folds of the glorious flag of our country, whose chief
executive he was. The President’s face, wreathed in smiles, showed evident
satisfaction at the magnificent outburst of college patriotism.82

Taft, from the flag-draped terrace, spoke directly to the cadets: “My boys,
I am glad to be with you. I congratulate you on being where you are.”83
Unlike Watson in Augusta, city officials in New Orleans seemed to support the Catholic cadet corps. This support was perhaps due to the large
Catholic population of New Orleans and the association of the cadets with
festival and presidential parades.
82. Biever, The Jesuits in New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley: Jubilee Memorial, p. 153.
83. Ned Hémard, “Taft Visits New Orleans,” New Orleans Nostalgia, 2009,
hrrp://www.neworleansbar.org/documents/TaftVisitsNewOrleansArticle.11-4.pdf (accessed
October 16, 2012).

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

539

The cadet corps of the College of the Immaculate Conception had
become such a popular fixture in New Orleans that the Jesuit priests and
brothers, in a confident letter to their superiors, stated:
The daily spectacle of 450 uniformed student cadets on the streets of the
Queen city of the South, and the sight of the star-spangled banner floating daily, by military rule, in the most conspicuous part of the city, goes
far towards forcing on non-believers the conviction that Catholics are
Uncle Sam’s best friends.84

Perhaps the Jesuits felt they had reached a level of security between
their college and the surrounding populous. Certainly, the city seemed to
approve of the cadet corps. Likewise, church officials approved of the Jesuit
college cadet corps and allowed them to perform military activities in
honor of religious services. For example,
On Saturday the 3rd, the cadets assisted at a solemn Military Mass celebrated by Vicar-General, Fr. [Jean] Laval. The ceremony was most
impressive and hearts were filled with emotions as the strains of bugle
and rattle of drum saluted our Eucharistic Lord at the elevation.85

Such support from the city’s populace, as well as church officials, aided the
growth of the cadets at the College of the Immaculate Conception; however, parades and social events had been a common occurrence at other
Catholic colleges long before the New Orleans cadet corps had come into
existence. Even so, in 1907, the College of the Immaculate Conception
decided to disband its cadet corps, as there was a perception that more time
was being spent on military drill than on academic pursuits.86
Spring Hill College
Like the College of Immaculate Conception, Spring Hill College in
Alabama housed a cadet corps. In 1835 Bishop Michael Portier of Mobile
invited Pierre Mauvernay, a priest and former military officer, to become
president of Spring Hill College:87

84. “New Orleans Mission. College of the Immaculate Conception” [1904], p. 409.
85. “New Orleans Mission. College of the Immaculate Conception, New Orleans,”
Woodstock Letters, 34 (1905), 108–09, here 108.
86. “Burning of St. Charles’ College,” Woodstock Letters, 36 (1907), 408.
87. “Short Sketch of the Presidents of Spring Hill College,” in Spring Hill College,
Mobile, Ala.: 1830–1905 (Mobile, 1906), p. 60.

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MARCHING IN STEP
Father Mauvernay had himself served as a soldier under Napoleon Bonaparte, hence it was quite natural to expect that he should give his sanction
to the formation of a military corps among the students, and that on certain festive occasions he had no particular objection to this corps enlivening the streets of Mobile with a parade.

Indeed, Mauvernay formed a cadet corps that was often featured in Independence Day parades and other celebrations of national events throughout the city.88
They [the French immigrant priests of Spring Hill College] deemed it
good Catholic and good American education, to do public honor to the
festivals that symbolized their right to teach and preach in freedom, and
perform all other religious and educational functions not only without
the interference but under the supporting authority of their [US] Government; and especially the Declaration of Independence that definitely
expressed it.89

According to priest Michael Kenny,
. . . armed at first with wooden guns and later with the implements that
their company title of “Spring Hill Lancers” implies . . . they helped to
make the College an integral part of public life and so to promote its
[Spring Hill College’s] progress.90

Following Maurvernay’s death in 1839, the religious administration of
Spring Hill College became interested in strengthening the cadet corps
under a military officer, Colonel R. S. Sands.91
By the start of the 1860s, the Spring Hill College cadets had become
a noted fixture in Mobile representing both patriotism and Catholicism. It
was not uncommon for the cadets to be seen carrying “guidons [flags] of
red and blue” and leading parades for patriotic or religious festivals.92 “On
St. Joseph’s Day, 1860, there was a grand parade before Bishop John Quinlan, led by the Spring Hill Cadets.” Such a visible display of militarism was
88. Mobile, AL, Archives and Special Collections, Spring Hill College, Annals of
Spring Hill College: Mobile, Alabama, 1830–1914, unpublished manuscript, 4, Section: College
History, Spring Hill College, Burke Library.
89. Kenny, The Torch on the Hill, p. 163.
90. Ibid., p. 90.
91. “Short Sketch of the Presidents of Spring Hill College,” p. 60; Annals of Spring Hill
College: Mobile, Alabama, 1830–1914, p. 7.
92. Charles J. Boyle, ed., Twice Remembered: Moments in the History of Spring Hill College (Mobile, AL, 1993), p. 10.

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

541

coupled with increased patriotism on the college campus. According to
Kenny, “Southern Patriotism is the dominate note” at Spring Hill College
in the year preceding the Civil War.93 As war broke out across the South,
loyalty lines shifted, and students who supported the secessionist cause celebrated the Confederate siege of Fort Sumter by drilling and firing their
weapons.94 When federal troops entered Mobile on April 12, 1865, the
students were “admonished not to show exteriorly any opposition to the
Federal government.”95
By the end of the Civil War, student cadets, long cut off from communication with their families, proper food supplies, and tired of having their
campus surrounded by federal troops, indicated that they no longer wanted
to participate in the defense of Mobile and wished for the return of their
college to health and prosperity.96 When news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination reached Spring Hill College on April 23, the college cadets were
ordered to fire their arms “on the hill for the murder of President Lincoln.”
It can be assumed that this was done in memory and not in celebration, as
the college was then hosting approximately 2000 Union soldiers.97
As Spring Hill College emerged from Reconstruction and entered the
twentieth century, the cadet corps was accompanied by a brass band. As
Mobile was slowly rebuilt, the cadet corps and band performed for the
public as well as their fellow college students. The Spring Hill cadets led
large campus processions for the Blessed Sacrament and fired salutes
before the sacrament was placed in campus chapels and other repositories.98 Even though the cadets and brass band performed for a Southern
region that had become, once more, a part of the Union, they harkened
back to the Confederacy as they honored elected Alabama officials and
military officers. “On Sunday afternoon, April 26th 1903, Spring Hill was
honored by a visit from Senator John C. Morgan.” Three officers, listed as
“Major Hannon, Col. Rapier and Capt. Quill,” accompanied the senator.
As Morgan and the three officers approached the college, the cadet band
“struck up ‘Dixie’ as the barouche which contained the venerable senator
entered the college grounds.”99 The cadets and their coordinate band
93. Kenny, The Torch on the Hill, p. 212.
94. Raymond H. Schmandt and Josephine H. Schulte, eds., A Civil War Diary: The
Diary of Spring Hill College between the Years 1860–1865 (Mobile, AL, 1982), p. 5.
95. Ibid.
96. Schmandt and Schulte, Civil War Diary, p. 20.
97. Ibid.
98. Schmandt and Schulte, Civil War Diary, p. 212.
99. Annals of Spring Hill College: Mobile, Alabama, 1830–1914, p. 22.

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MARCHING IN STEP

became so popular in Mobile that, in 1912, they were featured as the central performing group in the city’s bicentennial parade.100
Like other Southern Catholic colleges, Spring Hill College was honored for the quality of its cadets. Drill exhibitions were held before large
concourses of locals “under the direction of three military officers, who
awarded medals and distinctions, and pronounced the Spring Hill Training Corps exceptionally efficient.”101 By 1919, R.O.T.C. was instituted at
Spring Hill College, thus replacing the former cadet training model
enforced by the S.A.T.C. That same year,
[a] touching incident recalling other war memories was the visit of the
Raphael Semmes Chapter of the United Confederate Veterans. An
honor guard of Spring Hill Cadets met the grizzled warriors of the [eighteen] sixties at the front entrance [of the college] and escorted them to
the Senior campus; and Captain Daly, having recalled Spring Hill’s services during the Civil War and the devotion to the College of Admiral
Raphael Semmes and of his descendants for three generations, pinned a
commemorative medallion on young Raphael Semmes, great grandson of
the Admiral and then student at Spring Hill.102

Such commemoration and celebration of Confederate veterans reinforce
Michael Pasquier’s assertion that Catholics “participated in the memorialization and remembrance of the Lost Cause.”103 Well into the twentieth
century, Spring Hill College and its cadet corps actively displayed their
support for the Lost Cause by engaging in activities that honored Civil
War veterans.
Although these rituals appear to have been well received at Spring Hill
College, the existence of the cadet corps was nearing an end. In 1920 military instruction was discontinued, as it was believed that cadet training was
detracting for the college’s liberal arts core.104 Despite the decline in cadet
training at Spring Hill College, large crowds attended military displays, and
the cadet corps participated in parades marking national holidays. These
activities demonstrate that the Spring Hill College cadets were appreciated
and accepted as an American portion of the local community.

100. Annals of Spring Hill College, p. 29.
101. Kenny, The Torch on the Hill, p. 350.
102. Kenny, The Torch on the Hill, p. 351.
103. Pasquier, “Catholic Southerners, Catholic Solders: White Creoles, the Civil War,
and the Lost Cause in New Orleans,” p. 6.
104. Kenny, The Torch on the Hill, p. 350.

R. ERIC PLATT, MELANDIE MCGEE, AND AMANDA KING

543

Conclusions
Despite the benefits gleaned from military training, interest in cadet
corps at Catholic colleges and universities in the American South began to
wane in the early-twentieth century.105 As has been noted, the cadet corps
of the College of the Immaculate Conception had been phased out by
1907.106 Likewise, R.O.T.C. instruction at Spring Hill College significantly decreased and was terminated in the early-twentieth century. Both
the New Orleans and Mobile college administrations chose to refocus educational efforts on academics and dispense with any form of instruction not
central to the liberal arts core. Despite large cadet enrollments at St.
Charles College and St. Mary’s Jefferson College, each college shut down
before the subsequent regiments could weaken. St. Charles College was
closed in 1921 as a result of Jesuit province reorganization, and St. Mary’s
Jefferson College (situated on the banks of the Mississippi River) shut
down due to the devastating flood of 1927.107 Similarly, St. Mary’s University in Galveston was terribly damaged by the hurricane of 1900. Although
St. Mary’s reopened after the storm, it did not reinstate the cadet corps.108
Low enrollments rather than natural disaster or reorganization led to the
demise of the College of the Sacred Heart in Augusta. Despite efforts to
invigorate the Augusta college with battalions of student cadet corps, antiCatholic sentiment and inadequate local support had taken its toll, causing
the closure of the college in 1915.109 Although it cannot be supported that
cadet training alone was an attempt to keep these colleges and universities
alive, it was certainly an attempt to enhance the success of the Catholic
institutions detailed in this article.
In light of archival evidence representing various Southern Catholic
educational institutions, it can be concluded that the implementation of
military instruction in Catholic colleges and universities helped to enhance
student enrollments via similar military instructional trends at non-

105. Power, A History of Catholic Education in the United States, p. 139.
106. “New Orleans Province” [1907], p. 408.
107. Thomas Clancey to Mike Alchediak, March 29, 1978, Clancey Papers, File:
1962–1981, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO; Rodney Cline, “Early Colleges and Schools in
Louisiana,” in Education in Louisiana, ed. Michael G. Wade, [Louisiana Bicentennial Series
in Louisiana History, vol. XVII], (Lafayette, LA, 1999), pp. 230–35, here p. 235.
108. John A. Hogan, “Reminiscences of the Galveston Storm,” Woodstock Letters, 29
(1900), 428–47, here 430.
109. J. M. Salter, August 15, 1915, Account of the Closing of Augusta College, AR
Files, Folder: 248, ANOP, Monroe Library, LUNO.

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MARCHING IN STEP

Catholic institutions, improved public perceptions of patriotism, and
potentially decreased nativism. Based upon invitations to march in parades,
perform at significant government and religious events, and participate in
inspections by the War Department, military instruction grew to become
an accepted portion of Southern Catholic higher education. These Southern Catholic college cadet corps not only had the potential to transform
willful students into good soldiers, upright citizens, and respectable Christians but also were influential in communicating that Southern Catholic
higher education was indeed “American.”

James Molloy and Sales of
Recusant Books to the United States
NICOLAS K. KIESSLING*
This essay explains how James Molloy assembled some 19,850 mainly
Catholic items in the British Isles and sold them to five different American libraries from 1968 to 1984, the year of his death. The most
important portion in these sales was 7500 recusant items—that is,
those written for English Catholic audiences from 1558 to 1829 (the
penal period). This transference of recusant books filled a void in the
holdings of American libraries, where, before Molloy’s sales began, only
1550 different publications existed, according to a 1964 study by Lois
Byrns.
Keywords: Catholic books; Molloy, James; recusant books; recusant libraries; recusant collections

T

his essay explains how James Molloy assembled Catholic printed
books and manuscripts from a score of Catholic religious houses in the
British Isles and sold 19,850 of them to five different American libraries
from 1968 to 1984. The most important portion in these sales was 7500
recusant items—that is, those written for English Catholic audiences from
1558 to 1829 (the penal period). At times Molloy sold books and manuscripts that were given to him, on loan, for an altogether different purpose.
That purpose was to create, as he wrote a lady abbess, an “official centre of
recusant studies for the whole south of England” (see tables 1 and 2).1

*Dr. Kiessling is emeritus professor of English at Washington State University in Pullman, email: kiesslin@yahoo.com. A Mellon Foundation grant provided the author with the
opportunity to study recusant books at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. For
extraordinary help, the author thanks the reference librarians at the Harry Ransom Center
(HRC), the Newberry Library, the Folger Library, the Pitts Theology Library, and the Pius
XII Library; as well as Abbot Geoffrey Scott of Douai Abbey, Father Gerard Boylan (Oscott
College), Mark Leslie, Father Duncan Gallie, and Father Peter Harris (St. Edmund’s College, Ware), John Bevan, Brian Carter, Jennifer Lowe, Michael Questier, S. Damberger, A.
von Frank, and most of all, the late Thomas A. Birrell.
1. There were seven sales by Molloy to five libraries. After Molloy’s death, the remainder of his library was sold through Brian Carter in Witney, Oxford. Most of the 1000
Jansenist items sold to the Newberry Library were printed on the Continent for non-English

545

JAMES MOLLOY AND SALES OF RECUSANT BOOKS TO THE U.S.

546

TABLE 1. List of Molloy’s Sales of Recusant Books and Manuscripts
to U.S. Libraries after 1966
Year Name and Location of
of Sale American Library

Printed Recusant
Items
Books Manuscripts

1968
1970
1970
1972
1974

University of Texas, Austin, TX
University of Texas, Austin, TX
Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Newberry Library, Jansenist books
Pius XII Library, St. Louis, MO

4313
235
2100
1000
5100

3343
100
1500
0
1600

1984

Pitts Theology Library, Atlanta,
GA

7000

898

19,807

7500

Totals

27
0
35
0
8, including
several large
collections
16 “Collections”
60, including
several
“Collections”

Molloy’s collecting of recusant books was in progress in 1963 when he
was the curator of the Douay Museum at St. Edmund’s College in Ware,
Hertfordshire, then the seminary of the Westminster Diocese. The new
archbishop of Westminster, John Carmel Heenan (1905–75, see figure 1),
took special interest in the Douay Museum and in the seminary, which was
to celebrate its quadricentennial anniversary in 1968. Molloy recalled in a
brief autobiography written in 1984 that
Cardinal Heenan had authorized me to restore the fabric of the library
(which was in a deplorable state). . . . Heenan had told me to travel
around to other seminaries and religious houses, to take on permanent
loan, or exchange, or buy, books needed.2

Molloy had a long history with St. Edmund’s. He attended the college from
1941 to 1947 and was ordained as a priest in 1947 at Westminster. Sent to
audiences. They are, therefore, not counted here among the recusant items. They are
described in a February 8, 1972, memorandum from J. M. Wells to L. W. Towner in the
Newberry Library Archives. Details appear later in this article on how Molloy obtained items
from St. Mary’s Abbey, Haslemere (the letter to M. Philomena Holcroft [1874–1972, abbess
March 23, 1923–February 4, 1972] is dated July 29, 1964), and from Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, County Galway, that he later sold for his own profit.
2. Details of Molloy’s life are found is several places; the most important is Molloy’s
seven-page autobiography dated October 10, 1984, in which he explains to the librarians at
Pitts Theology Library how he acquired his collections. For an abbreviated version, see
http://www.pitts.emory.edu/archives/text/mss034.html (accessed September 24, 2013). See
also The Edmundian Magazine, Winter 1971, and upon his death, 1984–85.

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

547

TABLE 2. List of Abbreviations Pertinent to the Molloy Sales
Abbreviation

Comments

Allison and Rogers/
A&R

A[ntony]. F[rancis]. Allison and D[avid]. M[orrison].
Rogers, authors of A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English
Printed Abroad or Secretly in England 1558–1640 (Bognor
Regis, UK, 1956), a major bibliographical study of
recusant books.

Archbishop’s House

Westminster Abbey Library in London.

Ashley

Robert Ashley, founder of the Middle Temple Library in
London, who bequeathed his books to the library. Some
were sold to Molloy.

Cary Library

Books originally owned by Edward Cary that were housed
at Tor Abbey, Devon, before moving to Cotton College in
Staffordshire. Some of these books may have gone to Lord
Clifford’s library in Ugbrooke in 1858.

Haslemere

St. Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere.

HRC/TEX

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX.

Jones and Wilds

Harley Street priests John Jones (1778–1850) and William
Wilds (1768–1854), who sold books to John Maguire.

Kylemore/K

Kylemore Abbey in County Galway; originally located in
Ypres.

Maguire/M

Priest John Maguire (1801–65). Vice president at St.
Edmund’s (1836–38); vicar-general in the Westminster
Diocese until 1859. Bequeathed his books to St.
Edmund’s College.

O.H.G.

Old Hall Green, a Catholic academy founded north of
Ware in Hertfordshire.

Stonyhurst/ST

Originally the Jesuits’ college of St. Omers in Artois;
became Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

Towneley library

Richardi Towneley (1629–1707); some of his books were
purchased by John Maguire.

Woodchester

Dominican Priory of the Annunciation at Woodchester,
Gloucester.

the English College in Rome, he read philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University and in 1952 returned to St. Edmund’s as a lecturer in philosophy. Nine years later he was made the curator of the Douay Museum.
He seemed to be a good choice because he was knowledgeable about bibliography. The cardinal was impressed by Molloy to the extent that he

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JAMES MOLLOY AND SALES OF RECUSANT BOOKS TO THE U.S.

FIGURE 1. Portrait of Cardinal James Carmel Heenan, archbishop of Westminster.
Reproduced by permission of the Diocese of Westminster.

appointed a committee that met at Westminster in June 1964 to discuss the
“[t]ransfer of important documents, books etc. at Archbishops House to St.
Edmund’s College,” and Molloy was in charge of the transfers. As Molloy
remembered, “I collected all the old books from his [the archbishop’s] house
in Westminster and brought them to St Edmunds.” Molloy even took a
large glass-enclosed bookcase from the archbishop’s house. His work on the
restoration of the museum included the acquisition of other bookcases and
exhibition cases, as well as the preparation of a card catalog. All this work
ended in 1966 when Molloy’s plans changed. He left St. Edmund’s and the
priesthood because, as he stated in his brief autobiography, “I was frequently
ill and unable, not merely to give my lectures, but even to say Mass.” The
outcome, for St. Edmund’s, was a library of between 1000 and 1200 recusant books housed in three large cabinets in its Douay Museum and, for
Molloy, the possession of several thousand Catholic books for his “own collection” and eventually for sale to U.S. libraries.3
3. Molloy published “The Devotional Writings of Matthew Kellison” in Recusant History, 9 (1967), 159–63, and discovered two fragments of an Anglo-Saxon homily “attached to

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

549

Recusant Items: What Are They, and Who Were Their Readers?
The recusant printed items and manuscripts sold by Molloy to U.S.
libraries were written mainly in English and Latin, and ranged through
the spectrum of Catholic interests: bibles, biblical commentaries, catechisms, church-year meditations, confessional treatises, controversial theological books, guides to conversion, manuals of conduct and devotion,
spiritual/mystical works, and translations of the Fathers. Because these
recusant texts were regarded as subversive during the penal period, many
were printed at secret presses in England or at presses in Douai and St.
Omer; and title pages did not often list the true names of authors, printers, or publishers. The first audiences were Catholics who lived in England and clandestinely collected their Catholic texts, and the thousands of
English-speaking Catholic men and women who left England to join reli-

a binding board in a pile of rubbish” in a lumber room near the old presbytery library at Winchester. The fragments were sold at Sotheby’s in 1965 and are now in Yale’s Beinecke Library,
Osborn MS fa. 26. See Rowland L. Collins and Peter Clemoes, “The Common Origin of the
Ælfric fragments at New Haven, Oxford, Cambridge, and Bloomington,” in Old English
Studies in Honour of James Collins Pope, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving Jr.
(Toronto, 1974), pp. 285–326, here p. 288. The HRC Web site refers to “Father James
Molloy, a Jesuit priest,” although he was a secular priest, not a Jesuit; see http://www
.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/books/holdings/recusant/ (accessed September 24, 2013). On this
same Web page, there is a statement that Boston College and Georgetown University also
purchased books from Molloy, but I have not been able to verify these purchases. (Elsewhere,
in his autobiography, Molloy stated that before he left St. Edmund’s, “a duplicate collection
was picked out and sold [to UCLA] and the money was used to restore the libary [sic] fabric,”
p. 4. This sale is confirmed both by a record of a “buying trip to Europe” by David Esplin, a
UCLA librarian and a member of the William Andrews Clark Library subcommittee on
acquisitions, and by the presence in the Clark Library of books once in St. Edmund’s College.
See the University of California . . . William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Report of the
Director . . . 1965/66, p. 7, where the number of volumes is given as 350; see UCLA University
Archives, Record Series #377, Box 138. Details of the books are given below.) Documentation of the proposed transfer from the Archbishop’s House is found in the Westminster
Diocesan Archives, file HE[ENAN] 1/52, dated “6th June 1964.” The “Action Taken” is followed by “Discussion with Father Fisher to take place soon.” The cross reference for the file
is “St. Edmund’s College” and for the correspondence, “ARCHIVES.” Peter Harris, present
curator of the Douay Museum, told me of the former location of the main bookcase now in
the museum. In 1968 Heenan had second thoughts about the continuation of Allen Hall, St.
Edmund’s College, as the diocesan seminary and “had decided for the seminary to move” to
London. This move of the seminary of the diocese occurred two years after the cardinal’s
death in 1973, and in 1975 the working library at St. Edmund’s, not including the recusant
books, was transferred to Allen Hall, Chelsea. For the recollections of Bishop James O’Brien,
“Moving from Ware to Chelsea—1975” originally published in The Mulberry, 14 (2005–06),
see the Web site http://www.allenhall.org.uk/history/chelseamove.html (accessed May 15,
2012). The two quotations from Molloy’s autobiography are found on p. 4.

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J AMES M OLLOY AND S ALES OF R ECUSANT B OOKS TO THE U.S.

gious houses in or near Bornem, Brugge, Brussels, Cambrai, Dieppe,
Douai, Dunkirk, Ghent, Hoogstraten, Liège, Louvain, Paris, and Ypres.4
Until the latter half of the eighteenth century the books in the monastic
libraries were relatively safe, but after 1760 the political climate in northern France and Flanders became unstable, and some governments were
not hospitable to certain Catholic orders. What had been places of refuge
for English Catholics became places of great danger. The Jesuit situation
is a good example. In 1762 the French government began the appropriation of all Jesuit colleges, and this action forced the college of St. Omers
in Artois to move across the border to Brugge. In 1773 a hostile Austrian
Netherlandish government in Brugge made inevitable another move, this
time to Liège. In summer 1794 the French army threatened Liège and
forced the college to move to Stonyhurst in Lancashire, England. In the
decade of the 1790s other religious houses in Flanders were closed, and
the nuns and monks were often forced to find new homes. It was fortuitous that the political climate was changing in England. The penal laws
that had made life precarious were lessened by relief acts of 1774 and 1791
and especially by the Catholic Relief Act of 1829. In the best of circumstances, the members of religious houses were able to take books and documents with them when they left for England, but the books were sometimes destroyed or dispersed.5
Recusant Books in England after 1950
After 1950, there was a striking dichotomy in the handling of these
recusant libraries. They were becoming of interest to scholars, yet many
religious houses were less inclined or unable to protect their collections.
Molloy was able to take advantage of both phenomena. In 1956 A. F.
Allison and D. M. Rogers published a major bibliographical study of
recusant books—A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad
or Secretly in England 1558–1640 (Bognor Regis, UK; henceforth
A&R)—that listed 932 printed items and their locations.6 For Molloy,
4. Thomas H. Clancy gave the estimate of those men and women who “entered religious life abroad between 1598 and 1642” as 5000; see English Catholic Books 1641–1700: A
Bibliography, 2nd ed. (Brookfield, VT, 1996), p. x.
5. Maurice Whitehead, English Jesuit Education: . . . 1762–1803 (Burlington, VT,
2013), especially 1–4, 31, 41, 138, 165–67, 170–74, 189–89. Not all Catholic religious houses
returned at this time. The Irish nuns at Ypres remained until 1914, when they left for Ireland
and eventually settled at Kylemore Abbey in County Galway.
6. The impact of this bibliography was wide ranging and led to a second, almost definitive, edition: A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the
English Counter-Reformation in two volumes (Aldershot, UK, 1989 and 1994); henceforth

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

551

the first edition of A&R was a basic tool, and he was able to find the
current locations of recusant books in his mission to create a great recusant library at St. Edmund’s. At the same time that scholars were carrying out studies of the recusant printed items, the existence of these
religious houses was again threatened, now by the lack of finances and
of persons willing to commit to religious life. Mergers and closures were
common, and all too often the libraries were marginalized—the caretakers allowed the books to be sent elsewhere, sold, or given away. Molloy
was able to, as he wrote, take “on permanent loan, or exchange, or buy,
books needed,” or “I bought the residue of old Catholic books from . .
.,” or “gathered from . . . libraries of the English Jesuits . . . the mission
houses, Dominican Fathers . . . the Augustinian nuns.”7 In this situation, with scholars becoming more interested in recusant literature and
making available lists of books published by Catholics for English
Catholics during the penal period, and religious houses that hosted
these libraries paying less attention to them, Molloy was both able to
increase the holding of recusant books at the Douay Museum and to
assemble a large collection of his own that would stand him in good
stead when he left St. Edmund’s.

abbreviated as A&R 1 and A&R 2). The first volume, subtitled Works in Languages other than
English, lists 1619 items; and the second, subtitled Works in English, a major rewriting of the
1956 volume, lists 932 items. Three further bibliographies of English Catholic books followed the initial work of Allison and Rogers. Thomas Clancy continued the study with English Catholic Books 1641–1700 (Chicago, 1974), listing 1139 items, and issued a revised edition
(Brookfield, VT, 1996), with 1333 items. Frans Blom and colleagues further extended the
documentation with English Catholic Books, 1701–1800: A Bibliography (Aldershot, UK,
1996), listing 2960 items. Thus we have details of some 6844 printed recusant items as well
as listings of libraries in which these books can be seen.
7. Allison and Rogers were well aware of this movement of books away from their
homes and in their second edition (1989 and 1994) entered, after many libraries in their
“Symbols and Libraries” sections, “(dispersed),” “(partly dispersed),” or “(deposited at DE)”
or elsewhere. For example, a number of entries of books listed in 1956 as being in HAS
(Haslemere), K (Kylemore Abbey), or ST (Stonyhurst) may in 1989 or 1994 be absent altogether or at libraries to which Molloy sold these books: N (Newberry Library, Chicago),
SLU (Pius XII Library at Saint Louis University), or TEX (HRC, Texas). See Allison and
Rogers’s note after p. 116 regarding Thomas Campion, Campion Englished, in 1994: “ST
(1956),” followed by its new location “TEX” (HRC); or after p. 259, regarding Luis de la
Puente, Meditations, in 1994, which omits K altogether (present in 1956, item 699) but
adds “TEX” because the Kylemore item was loaned in 1964 and then sold in 1968 to the
HRC; or after p. 292 regarding John Floyd, An Apolagy [sic], in 1994: “ST (2, 1956)” with
their new locations “N” and “TEX”; or after p. 359 regarding Alexia Gray, Rule of . . . Benedict, in 1994: “HAS. (1956)” with new locations “N” and “TEX,” the former holds the
Haslemere item.

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Molloy’s First Customer: The University of Texas at Austin
Shortly after Molloy left St. Edmund’s, he married (in 1967), had two
sons, and engaged the prominent bookseller Bertram Rota Ltd. (then
based in London) to look for a buyer for a portion of his large collection.
In May 1968 Bertram Rota’s son, Anthony (see figure 2), sold more than
4300 Catholic books and manuscripts, without disclosing his source, to the
University of Texas Humanities Research Center, later the Harry Ransom
Center (HRC), in Austin, Texas. The librarian, June Moll, apparently
asked the origin of the books, and seven months after the sale, on January
15, 1969, Rota was able to give her the name of the seller: “Yes, I can certainly identify the former owner of the Catholic Library for you now. He
is Dr James Molloy. During the years when he formed the collection he
was a Roman Catholic Priest.” Rota and Molloy had casual and informal
conversations, and in this same letter Rota felt no hesitation about including personal details about Molloy such as how he acquired his knowledge
of rare book collections, why he left the priesthood (giving Rota a somewhat different version from what he later wrote in his autobiography),
when he turned to Rota for the sale, what he intended to do with the
money from the sale, and his future vocation:
I understand that he had no parish duties, but that his Cardinal
[Heenan] charged him with the task of examining and reporting on rare
book collections in Catholic colleges, monastries [sic] and convents in
this country. The object was to arrange some sort of rationalization of
their holdings. Thus, when his catalogue notes speak of relative rarities,
I think you will find he can be relied upon.
It might interest you to know that a couple of years ago Dr Molloy began
to have doubts about his vocation and, I think, about the need for the
celibacy of the Priesthood. He finally resigned Holy Orders and got married. This was about the time that we first began to negotiate the sale of
the collection. I think he lived for a year or two on expectation of the proceeds, spending his time preparing those very detailed catalogue cards. He
seems to have acquired a taste for selling books, since my latest information
is that he has become some sort of consultant to and director of Weinreb’s.8

8. In his autobiography (1984), p. 6, he stated that his sons were “aged 15 and . . .
approaching 14,” so that they were born c. 1969 and 1970. Much on these pages supplements
Beth M. Russell, “The Recusant Collection at the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin,” Recusant History, 23 (1997), 281–84. For the date of the sale, see
the record in the HRC, “Collection File / Recusant Collection,” a carbon-copy titled
CATHOLIC RECUSANTS and typed at top (not carbon) “Purchased from Bertram Rota
Ltd. (5/24/68) Order # 1097 Reg # 3623.” For the relationship between the HRC and Rota,

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553

FIGURE 2. Bookseller Anthony Rota, left, with his father, Bertram, c. 1957. Image
courtesy of Bertram Rota Ltd., Kintbury, UK.

Molloy’s association with Benjamin Weinreb, another well-known
London bookseller, dated from before the collection went from Rota to the
HRC, for the books were described in a flier sent at the time of the sale to
the HRC with a stamp at the top, “B. Weinreb Ltd,” and titled “The
Catholics in Britain.” The bibliographical expertise in the brief descriptions reveals that it was written by Molloy himself. For example, he divided
the 620 books printed before 1640 into three parts: “Catholic books in
English printed abroad or secretly in England (including some not known
to Allison & Rogers),” “Other English books in the Short Title Cat.,” and
works in other languages “which relate to British Catholic thought or history.” He similarly described the 900 books printed in 1641–1700, the
1200 books printed in 1701–1829, and the 900 books printed in 1830 and
onward, and concluded with “[t]here are also various manuscripts most of
see the Rota obituary released by HRC on April 6, 2010: “Over a succession of five Ransom
Center directors, the firm sold more than 500 collections to the Center,” in
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/culturalcompass/2010/04/06/anthony-bertram-rotaslegacy-at-the-ransom-center/ (accessed September 24, 2013). For Rota’s letter to Moll, the
librarian of the Miriam Lutcher Stark Library where the Humanities Research Center was
then located, see HRC, Archives, Directory’s Files, Recusant Collection, file 548.23.

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JAMES MOLLOY AND SALES OF RECUSANT BOOKS TO THE U.S.

which are unpublished dating from the 16th to the 18th century.” On one
copy of this flier a librarian at the HRC wrote, “3620 vols. of which 620
before 1640 £50,000.”9
When the shipment of books and manuscripts came to the HRC in
Austin, it was accompanied by an unsigned, one-page, typewritten note,
most certainly authored by Molloy, with explanations of the content on
accompanying index cards. These cards, now lost, “had bibliographical
details and references about each item” and “have been arranged in four
chronological periods”; in each period, they “follow[ed] an alphabetical
sequence.” Also, “a ‘finding number’ has been penciled” on each card that
corresponded to a similar number on the flyleaf of each item. Many of
these numbers still survive on the rectos of the initial flyleaves. He now
gave the contents as: 670 items printed before 1641; 1100 items printed
from 1641 to 1700 (this group included 27 manuscripts); 1600 items
printed from 1701 to 1829; and 970 items printed from 1830 onward. He
concluded the note with “[t]he Collection comprises 4340 items, compared with the original approximate estimate of 3620.” The librarian at the
HRC who had written the price of “£50,000” for 720 fewer items must
have been pleased with this new estimate.10
Molloy was not finished with selling to Texas. In a personal letter of
August 1, 1969, addressed to Harry Ransom, then the chancellor of the
University of Texas, he offered a collection “additional to those supplied”
for £5,000 or $14,000 (both figures were added to one copy of the letter).
Ransom passed the letter to Moll, the librarian. She again asked for details
about how these books were acquired, but this time from Weinreb, with
whom Molloy now associated himself. Weinreb turned to Molloy for an
explanation, and Molloy responded with a “Dear Ben” letter that Weinreb
then forwarded to Texas, where it was “Rec’d 1-27-70.” In this letter
Molloy noted that he kept duplicate index cards of books already sold to
the University of Texas, and by doing this he would “keep in touch with
my collection, by knowing what books it contained and what were lack9. For Weinreb, see the obituary, by Nicolas Barker, in The Independent, April 7, 1999
(some of Barker’s anecdotes are not to be trusted). The Weinreb flier is in the HRC,
Archives, Directory’s Files, Recusant Collection, file 548.23, Register no. 3623, with the
heading “B. Weinreb LTD.” The cost figure is slightly cropped at the bottom of the page.
Molloy used A&R (1956) and Alfred W. Pollard and Gilbert R. Redgrave, A Short Title Catalogue (London, 1926). The price in U.S. dollars was $120,000 with an average exchange rate
in 1968 of £1 to US$2.40.
10. See the first paper folder in the HRC, Archives, Directory’s Files, Recusant Collection, file 548.23, which begins, “The Card Index gives . . .”

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ing.” In answer to the query about his sources, he wrote that he had
acquired the “original collection chiefly by my personal contacts with religious houses and convents in the British Isles.” He retained these contacts
and stated,
I have been able to acquire more books of this kind. So, for example, I
bought the residue of the old Catholic books from the Irish nuns at Kylemore . . . and from Newton Abbot . . . as well as from other places. In
particular, I have had first option on all the duplicate books in the great
Jesuit library at Heythrop . . .

There followed a list of the authors, short titles, and years of publication
of the 235 items “which were not in my original collection.” These
included thirty-seven printed before 1641, thirty-three printed from 1641
to 1700, 115 printed after 1700, and fifty “books by and about Thomas
More.” He concluded with a statement about the “rarity of the books
listed.” The HRC received this collection in 1970. Taken together, these
sales were monumental. Lois Byrns listed less than a score of recusant
books in the library of the University of Texas before 1964. When the
bibliographer of Catholic books, Thomas H. Clancy, first visited the
Humanities Research Center in 1971, he wrote that “Texas has become
with one fell swoop one of the leading depositories of early English
Catholic books in the world.”11
Although the former locations of most of these 4500 recusant items
obtained from Molloy are unknown, mainly because evidence has been
removed, 600 printed items show earlier owners, mainly Catholic religious
houses in England. These locations are discovered by a search of prove-

11. HRC Recusant Collection, File 548.23, includes a loose copy of the letter to
Ransom and, in a second paper folder, a photocopy of Molloy’s typed letter to Weinreb with
the price added in a handwritten note and the list of items. The photocopy of the letter from
Molloy to Weinreb exists in three states in the HRC: in the folder, Recusant Collection
548.23, the letter has the signature of Molloy at the end; another version in the same folder
has no signature but the price of the more recent collection. A third photocopy, in the file
“Recusant Collection” in the “Manuscript Finding Aids” in the Reading Room, has “Rec’d 127-70,” but the signature of Molloy is blotted out. At the time of the 1970 purchase, the
pound was apparently worth $2.80. For Byrns, see Recusant Books in America (New York,
1959—64), 4 vols. According to Byrns, before Molloy’s sales began in 1968, there existed
only 1550 different recusant publications in the United States. For the Thomas H. Clancy—
June Moll correspondence, September 10, 1970, to February 8, 1971, see HRC Recusant
Collection, File 548.23. Clancy visited the library in Austin briefly in January 1971 and was
able to incorporate some details into his first edition of English Catholic Books 1641–1700: A
Bibliography (Chicago, 1974).

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nance information in the HRC catalog entries.12 Of these 600, 397 printed
items and one manuscript come from the Dominican Priory of the Annunciation at Woodchester, Gloucester; more than 115 come from Molloy’s
former home of St. Edmund’s; twenty-five have a bookplate or book-label
from St. Augustine’s Priory in Newton Abbot, Devon (several of these
have marks of their earlier convent home, St. Monica’s Priory in Spetisbury, Dorset); twenty-one printed items and one manuscript are from
Kylemore Abbey, County Galway; sixteen printed items and three manuscripts have marks showing that they are from St. Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere, Surrey; twelve have some form of the stamp “Ex Bibl. Domus Cong.
Obl. S. Caroli Bayswater,” the library of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles,
Bayswater;13 a dozen have inscriptions that disclose that they were once in
St. Peter’s House at Winton/Winchester; ten have marks such as
“[b]elonging to the English Carmelites of Hoogstraet” that ended up in
Chichester; four are from Stonyhurst College; three are from the Domini12. The HRC numbers the “collection of recusant literature” as “close to forty-five
hundred,” (close to Molloy’s own figures of 4340 and 235, a total of 4575 items sold in 1968
and 1970); see its Web site, http://www.HRC.utexas.edu/collections/guide/religion (accessed
September 24, 2013). But if the search is restricted to books published within the inclusive
years 1558–1829, the number of items comes to 2469, still a sizable number. Molloy himself
wrote that 970 items in his sales dated from 1830 onward. These figures are found in searches
at http://catalog.lib.utexas.edu/search (accessed 2011–13).
13. The history of the books in the library of the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles in
Bayswater is not well known. They were in storage since the beginning of World War II.
Over the years, limited numbers were acquired by various persons, including Molloy, who
inserted about a score into the collection of the Douay Museum at St. Edmund’s College and
sold a dozen to the HRC in 1968. The Bodleian obtained a selection chosen by D. M.
Rogers, and the British Library obtained some fifty-seven. Two large sales took place in 1974
and 1979. Brian Carter, prompted by a telephone call from a friend who suggested to him
that he look at some old books from Bayswater, saw some value in them and arranged a sale
of 800 items to the Pitts Theology Library. Included were 150 items associated with Cardinal
Henry E. Manning and “one or two books from his undergraduate days at Oxford” with his
notes (Pitts Theology Archives, 1973–74). The price was an astonishingly low $4900,
although many of the books were in poor condition (author’s telephone conversation with
Brian Carter, Witney, May 2012). The second sale, of 1500 manuscripts and 3500 printed
items, was sold via Benjamin Weinreb and Anthony Garnett of St. Louis. Although Garnett
wished to sell to a Catholic institution, he finally sold the collection to the Pitts Theology
Library in 1979 for £30,000 or $63,190 (Pitts Theology Library Archives, 1979–80, and conversation with Anthony Garnett, St. Louis, June 6, 2012). Molloy did not participate in either
of these later two sales, although he gives information about the latter sale in his autobiography, p. 5: Weinreb “acquired a garage-full of old books from another London dealer, and sent
them to me for investigation. . . . The books were in a very poor physical condition, . . .”
Molloy recognized that these were “the residue of the library of the Oblates . . . also the personal books of Cardinal Manning.” Molloy did not know where the books ended up until
Carter told him in 1984 (according to his autobiography, p. 4).

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557

can Hawkesyard Priory in Rugeley, Staffordshire; two have the book label
“A[d]. M[aiorem]. D[ei]. G[loriam]. Resid. S. Georgii, Vigor[nia].,” the
Jesuit college at Worcester; two are from Heythrop College Library; one is
from E. bibl. Coll. Sti. Stanislai, Beaumont; and one is from the Archbishop’s House with the splendid bookplate with “Ex Bibliotheca Ecclesiae
Metropolitanae Westmonasteriensis.” Twenty are from a group of convents: the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Chislehurst, Kent; the Convent of Mercy in Bermondsey; St. Mildred’s Convent, Minster in Thanet;
and St. Edward’s Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in London. Finally, there
are three with the book slip of a Rev. H. Campbell, and twenty-seven with
the stamp of the Middle Temple Library (a secular institution in London
that once had a fine collection of recusant books).14
Molloy’s Sales to the Newberry, Pius XII, Folger, and Pitts Libraries
The Newberry Library acquired a portion of the Molloy recusant collection in 1970, mainly through the efforts of Weinreb. Weinreb was in
Chicago in summer 1969, at about the time that Molloy proposed the
second sale to the HRC and before Molloy wrote his letter explaining the
origin of the books in that second sale. While in Chicago, Weinreb called
James Wells, then the associate director of the Newberry, to meet with
him. As Wells remembered the conversation, Weinreb mentioned a
“Recusant Collection—my ears pricked up—I said ‘Whenever you’re ready
to price it, Ben, let me know.’” The price was a sizable $100,000, and that
led to a flurry of letters between Weinreb and Wells as well as exhaustive
fund-raising on the part of the Newberry. There were two complications
for Wells. The first was that both the Huntington (mentioned by Weinreb
in a phone conversation with Wells) and the Folger were interested (the
Folger’s new director, O. B. Hardison Jr., allowed the Newberry the first
option to buy, but he was prepared to take the whole collection). The
second was that the collection was unseen. Fortunately a friend of the
Newberry and a scholar of early-modern Catholicism, William R. Trimble, was in England and could visit the Weinreb establishment in London

14. Each online catalog entry at the HRC includes provenance information. The bookplate of the Archbishop’s House in London is sometimes assumed to be that of the Westminster Abbey Library. In my limited searches in other libraries I found no other books from the
Archbishop’s House. A number of them are still in the Douay Museum at St. Edmund’s (e.g.,
A. 2e. 20; T. 4. 3; and T. 5. 29). For the Middle Temple, see the text below. Rev. Henry
Campbell was associated with Stonyhurst as a teacher of rhetoric during the first decade of
the nineteenth century. Two books with his printed book slip, one at the Newberry and one
in the University of Toronto Library, also have stamps of Stonyhurst College.

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on February 7, 1970. He advised the purchase. Less than a month later,
Paul Banks, the Newberry conservator and an internationally known
scholar on conservation, took time to visit the Weinreb shop and described
the state of the collection in a letter to Trimble: “Perhaps a third of the
books have needed restoration or rebinding, and in most cases Weinreb is
having or has had them so treated. This is a decidedly mixed blessing.” He
then mentioned some quality problems—“the work does not come close to
our (my) standard”—and Weinreb planned to
furbish the volumes before they come over. The process he [Weinreb]
described is hair-curling (not to mention leather-curling) if that is what
they really do to them, which I doubt. He mentioned oxalic acid, which
is sometimes used as a bleach on leather with disasterous [sic] results. I
suspect that he meant potassium lactate, however.

Banks was unable to dissuade Weinreb from leaving “bindings which were
of interest in themselves” for the Newberry to handle because Weinreb
“interpreted this to mean that I thought they would ‘falsify evidence.’”
That was a mystery to Banks, but he believed he could not argue further
and allowed the rebinding to continue—with, no doubt, the loss of provenance information.15
Weinreb, in a letter to Wells of February 24, 1970, described the collection as having 335 STC volumes, 566 Wing volumes, 577 volumes
dating from 1701 to 1829, 590 volumes printed from 1830 to 1950, and
thirty-five manuscripts. The complete list of recusant printed items was
recorded by Bernard E. Wilson in Recusant Books in the Newberry Library:
A Catalog of a Collection of Some 1500 Titles Acquired in 1970 (Chicago,
1990). Although the Newberry does not include provenance records in this
catalog, it is clear from my limited search of 175 items that included all the
A&R items that Molloy had drawn most of these books from the same
pool as those sold to the HRC. Among the 175 were twelve from Stonyhurst College; ten from the Middle Temple; six from the Augustinian
Priory in Newton Abbot; five from Kylemore Abbey; four from St.

15. Newberry Library Archives, Weinreb/Molloy, and Towner, Lawrence W., Papers.
Administrative Subj. File-Collections. Recusant Collection (Weinreb). 03/06/02. Box 15,
Folders 213 and 216, correspondence and notes from January to December 1970. For Paul
Banks’s letter to “Bill” Trimble, see p. 2; letter received “Mar 6 1970” at the Newberry. Potassium lactate, a leather preservative, is now rarely used. The books arrived at the Newberry
loading dock on April 10, although Weinreb had to wait for his final payment from the cashstrapped Newberry until January 1971.

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

559

Edmund’s College; four from the Dominican Priory in Woodchester; four
from the Rev. H. Campbell; four, as well as one important manuscript,
from St. Mary’s Abbey, Haslemere; and one or two printed items from
Heythrop College, Bayswater, and the Jesuit college at Worcester. Sources
in addition to those, and not found in the HRC, are a former Jesuit novitiate, Domus Probationis Roehampton (two); and the Cary Library in Tor
Abbey, Devon (two).16
In April 1974 the Pius XII Library at Saint Louis University purchased a large collection of Catholic books from Weinreb, with Anthony
Garnett, a St. Louis dealer in antiquarian books, acting as the broker. The
price for the collection was $75,000. In a “[d]escription and provenance” of
the collection, Molloy numbered the books as follows: “The period 1534–
1829 contains approximately 1,600 manuscripts, books, and pamphlets,
and the period 1830–1950 contains approximately 3,500,” and described
the sources:
The books have been gathered from . . . the libraries of the English
Jesuits, from Stonyhurst, Beaumont, Roehampton, Heythrop; the mission houses, such as Worcester which the Jesuits founded in penal times
[St. George’s]; the English Dominican Fathers from Hawkesyard (originating with Cardinal [Philip] Howard’s convent at Bornem, near
Antwerp); the Augustinian nuns from Newton Abbot (from the ancient
convent of St. Monica’s in Louvain). . . . Special interest attaches to the
Cary Library, from which many of the rarer and more important books
have come.

The Cary Library of more than 600 volumes was sold in a local auction in
1858 in or near Tor Abbey and may have become available in 1972 when a
subsequent owner sold them. Molloy then gives three new sources, the most
important of which is Cotton College in north Staffordshire. Cotton College was in decline in the 1970s, and 400 pamphlets were made available to
Molloy. Other new sources for books that Molloy mentioned were “the
Irish Dominicans from Tallaght and Saint Saviour’s, Dublin.” Three new

16. For the February letter, ibid., box 15, folders 213 and 216. The cataloger at the
Newberry noticed that one of the books in the purchase was a single known copy formerly at
Stonyhurst. Wells then wrote to Weinreb that if Stonyhurst had owned the single copy, “we
probably ought to return it to them”; letter, August 11, 1970 (I have not identified that
Stonyhurst item either at the Newberry or at Stonyhurst Library). The Newberry online catalog has almost no provenance information. One Cary book has the initials of “E. C.” (Case
3A 1530, A&R 2.715), and the other has “Edw. Cary” (Case 3A 1470, A&R 2.838); the
latter may have come to Molloy via St. Augustine’s Priory, Newton Abbot.

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sources that he did not mention were the Bibliothèque Congregation de
Notre Dame Maison des Oiseaux (ten); “Bib, S. Joannis, Wigan,” meaning
St. John’s Library in Wigan, Lancashire (four); and O. K. Pastorie Oudewater, Eigendom (four). The assemblage was shipped from Milton, near
Abingdon in England, where Molloy resided and kept his inventory.17
A trawl through 250 printed items and several manuscripts confirmed
Molloy’s description of sources. Books from the Cary Library are the most
prominent among those I examined. These are identified by the inscribed
“Cl[erus]: Ang[licus],” referring to the former owner, Edward Cary.
Among the thirty Cary items is one by Edward Cary himself, The Catechist
Catechiz’d, with his name written on the title page. There are twenty-nine
with Hawkesyard Priory stamps; eight with Stonyhurst stamps and shelfmarks; eight with stamps of St. George’s at Worcester; six with stamps of
Heythrop College, several marked with “dup”; two are from “E. Bibl. Coll.
Sti. Stanislai, Beaumont”; two are from St. Augustine’s Priory in Newton
Abbot; and one is from Roehampton. There is also one item from St.
Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere, and two items from St. Edmund’s College.
Books from many of these sources are also found in the HRC, although
the pool of books acquired by Molloy before 1970 was becoming smaller.18

17. In 1858 portions of the Cary Library may have gone to library of Charles Hugh Clifford, 8th Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, in nearby Ugbrooke. If so, those books may have been
sold in 1972–74, with the major portion of the collection going to the National Library of Australia. The librarian at Cotton College was downsizing at the time Molloy probably obtained
the pamphlets; see The Cottonian, no. 122 (1973–74), 16: “On June 7 [1974] there was a book
sale in the library. At a previous sale a year or so ago, one of the assistant librarians who should
make a lot of money in business in later life issued an edict that boys could take as many books
as they could carry for a shilling. This was at the end of the sale when there was nothing left
but rubbish.” Perhaps the 1973 sale included several hundred old pamphlets, rubbish that went
for a shilling a bundle. The college closed in 1987. Books at one time at the Maison des
Oiseaux were dispersed over several years after the mid-twentieth century. The HRC owns five
with its bookplate, none of which came with Molloy’s recusant collection.
18. In the papers at the Pius XII Library describing the recusant collection, “The English Catholics [/] I [/] Books and Manuscripts [/] Introduction–Manuscripts,” p. [5], David
Rogers is credited with interpreting “CL: Ang:” as “Clerus Anglicanus” and making the association with Edward Cary. I have been unable to find information, either from Tor Abbey or
from curator emeritus Michael Rhodes as to how Molloy acquired books from the Cary
Library. Michael Travers acquired one inscribed Cary item through Bernard Quaritch
(Sotheby sale, February 25, 1972, lot 254, and presented it to the University of Sussex Library
in 1978; see Catalogue of the Travers Collection, compiled by J. M. Potter [Brighton, 1990],
item 75). This indicates that Molloy may have acquired similar items before 1972. In the Catechist Catechiz’d (Pius XII, 1681.2 Cary), the inscribed “The Revd. Edw: Cary” may not be a
signature; it was written beside the printed name of the pseudonymous author, “Adolphus
Brontius, a Roman-Catholick.”

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From August 1974 to 1977 Molloy sold fifty-nine mainly recusant
items to the Folger Library. Correspondence regarding these sales survives
at the Folger, as do marks of provenance in forty of the books. Only two
are from the original pool: one from Stonybrook College (with an earlier
stamp of St. Beuno’s College House Library) and one from Hawkesyard
Priory. Twenty-four of the remainder came from one source, the library of
the Dominican Priory in Haverstock Hill, London, from which Molloy
had “just bought,” as he wrote in a letter of August 3, 1974, to K. Pantzer,
“a large quantity of early books.” After the sales to the Folger, the market
in America for large assemblages of recusant books seems to have dried up.
In these gap years before Molloy’s final major sale to the Pitts Theology
Library, he turned to issuing catalogs “mostly of Continental theology,
church history and the like,” as he described them in his autobiography.19
In 1984 Molloy sold his personal collection to the Pitts Theology
Library in Atlanta, Georgia. These are described in the annual report of
the library for the 1983–84 fiscal year:
The library acquired another significant group of materials during the past
year, a collection of approximately 7,000 volumes and 16 manuscript collections relating to English Roman Catholic history and theology. These
materials were the private library of Dr. James Molloy of Abingdon.

The library’s electronic catalog lists 898 books in this collection published between 1532 and 1829. Although most are Catholic or recusant
19. For the correspondence between Molloy and Elizabeth Niemyer dated Aug. 14,
Sept. 16, Oct. 16, Nov. 27, 1974, and Nov. 7, 1975, see C 7209, C 7240, and C 8009, and
Acquisitions Files, 1977, in the Folger Library. Almost half of the Folger acquisitions came
from, as the bookplates attest, the “Library of the Dominican Fathers, Haverstock Hill,
London.” The August 3, 1974, letter from Molloy to K. Pantzer is in the Dealer’s Files,
Houghton Library, Harvard University. Molloy also asked Pantzer if the Houghton librarian
would be interested in seeing what would be available before he issued a catalog. The
Houghton librarian, Roger Stoddard, asked to see the list, but there is no record that he made
any purchase. Molloy still had in his possession at least thirty Dominican books until 1984
when he sold them to the Pitts Theology Library. Of the Haverhill Dominican Priory books
in the Folger, ten have marks of previous European locations and owners. A response to my
inquiry about records of the dispersal of these books from the Haverhill priory indicated that
there are none. Also, no one presently at the priory has any knowledge of the removal, according to an email from Friar Timothy Calvert, February 22, 2012: “Most of the books if they
were theology history or philosophy would have been preserved [sic].” Molloy issued nine
undated catalogs. I found Catalogue Two (c. 1975), Three (c. 1976), Six (c. 1980), and Nine (c.
1982) in the British Library; and Catalogue Four (c. 1978) and Five (c. 1979) in the Grolier
Club Library. Most books advertised are in Latin. For example, Catalogue Four and Catalogue
Five respectively have only four and seven in English.

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books, Molloy also collected any publications having to do with Catholicism, including polemical works by Protestants, and a few literary editions
from Catholic sources. Some correspondence survives, as well as his sevenpage autobiography. I have examined the 420 items published between
1532 and 1715; well over 100 have identifiable provenances, and almost
half of these were from sources from which Molloy obtained printed items
before 1974, such as Stonyhurst College (nine), Saint George’s in Worcester (nine), and St. Edmund’s College (five).20 Acquisitions during and after
1974 for this sale included thirty printed items from the Dominican Priory
in Haverstock Hill, London; nineteen from “The Hope Trust, 31 Moray
Place, Edinburgh” (referring to John Hope, 1807–93); and ten from the
bishops of Clifton, Cathedral Church of SS. Peter and Paul in Bristol.21

20. See the annual report, Archives portion. The collection was acquired “through the
agency of Brian Carter of Oxford, England for £45,000.” For the catalog, visit
http://chivs01aleph02.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com:8991/F (accessed June 9, 2012). The search
words “Catholic Collection of Dr. James Molloy” will retrieve 1519 records. The search can
be narrowed by using the filter for the years 1558 to 1829 (898 records). Others acquired by
Molloy before 1974 are Hawkesyard Priory (eight); Heythrop College (eight, all marked as
duplicates); “Dom. Prob. Roehampton” (four); St. Joseph’s Presbytery in Leigh, Lancashire
(three); St. John’s Library in Wigan (two); St. Augustine’s in Newton Abbot (two); the Cary
Library (two, Anderton, A&R 2.22; and Pickford, A&R 2.642); and one each from St.
Mary’s Abbey at Haslemere (Teresa, Clancy, 941), Kylemore Abbey (Talbot, Clancy, 938),
the Dominican Priory at Woodchester, and Beaumont.
21. Hope was a reformer and an ardent anti-Catholic, and many of the Hope Trust
books were sold at a Sotheby sale in September 1979. The Clifton bishops in this context are
Matthew Pritchard (1669–1750) and George Ambrose Burton (1856–1902). Molloy
described briefly in his autobiography (p. 6) his purchase of Clifton books—“many of whose
[Burton’s] books were bought by me from the present Bishop who had been a fellow-student
with me in Rome.” Others are: seven, from St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden, Clwyd (i.e.,
William E. Gladstone’s library; six of these are inscribed by “Revd. Thomas Cassidy” of
Harold’s Cross, Dublin); and four, from “The Inner Library [Hassop] bequeathed by the will
of Thomas Eyre,” the first president of Ushaw. For the Inner Library, see A. I. Doyle, in
Festschrift [for T.A. Birrell], Studies in Seventeenth-century English Literature, History, and Bibliography (Amsterdam, 1984), “The Library of Thomas Tempest,” pp. 92–93. The Inner
Library was sold at Sotheby’s in New Bond Street, London, catalog, October 7, 1974. Former
owners of more than one printed item are Ely Cathedral; “Coll. S. Ignatii Stamford Hill”; St.
John’s in Wigan; John Corse in Southampton; Elizabeth Dacres (2 parts of Burnet, History,
1679, 1681); Rev. Thomas Canon Luck (1835–1902) from the Portsmouth Diocese (Luck
also inscribed a Folger item); Father Vincent McNabb (1868–1943), who also owned a Folger
item; Rev. Charles Parfitt (died in 1860) from Midford Castle near Bath; and Elizabeth
Rogers. Molloy found in the market one book from the [John] Virtue and [John Baptist]
Cahill Library, initially dispersed via auction sales in 1967. It has the following on the bookplate: “Virtue and Cahill Library. The Founders of this library earnestly request their successors in the See of Portsmouth to keep this library intact and never to sell or dispose of any
book for any reason whatsoever.”

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Molloy’s Methods for Obtaining Printed Items and Manuscripts
The documentation for Molloy’s book activities throughout the
British Isles at this time is scanty. The bookplates, book-labels, bookstamps, and annotations in the books and manuscripts that he sold reveal
where he acquired many of them, but they offer little information about
how he acquired them. Fortunately some records survive. The most complete are from St. Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere and Kylemore Abbey. The
relevant records of the Haslemere abbey, now at the Douai Abbey Library
in Woolhampton, show in detail how a number of items originally in this
Benedictine abbey ended up, through his sales, in American libraries.
These are sixteen printed items and three manuscripts sold to the HRC in
1968, at least four printed items and one manuscript sold to the Newberry
in 1970, one printed item sold to the Pius XII Library in 1974, and one
printed item sold to the Pitts Theology Library in 1984. Many of the
books and the four manuscripts were in the possession of Benedictine sisters in their convent at Brussels and came with the sisters to Winchester in
1794. Some books have marks of their first English home in Winchester.
In 1857 the sisters moved to St. Mary’s Abbey in East Bergholt, Suffolk,
which closed in 1940; in 1945, they found a new home in Haslemere,
which closed in 1975. We know the total number of books that Molloy
took from Haslemere to St. Edmund’s College, for on July 18, 1965, he
responded to an inquiry from the librarian, Dame Dorothea Payton, with
the assurance that “[t]he Haslemere books are kept in safety [at St.
Edmund’s] under lock and key. In all there are 136 books.”22 He did not
mention the manuscripts.
22. Earlier records of St. Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere are at Downside Abbey. The letters from Molloy to Haslemere and copies of those from Haslemere to Molloy are in the
Haslemere file at Douai Abbey Library. The documents are numbered by sheet, and these
numbers are used here; for example, the letter of July 18, 1965, is in the Haslemere file, p. 10.
The sixteen printed items in the HRC are:
1. Luis de Granada, A Memoriall of a Christian life (Rouen, 1586).
2. The New Testament of Iesus Christ (1600).
3. Johannes Lansperger, An Epistle or Exhortation of Iesvs Christ (St. Omer, 1610).
4. Luca Pinelli, The Mirrour of Religious Perfection (St. Omer, 1618).
5. Cresacre More, The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore [sic] (Douai, 1631?).
6. St. Ambrose, Christian Offices Crystall Glasse (London, 1637).
7. Gregory I, The Second Booke of the Dialogues (Douai, 1638). A note on the title page
shows the following earlier location: “belonging to the Benedictans [sic] at Winchester given
by Revd Mr Le Marsis [a French priest in 1803 in Winchester] June ye. 24 1802.” This item
is bound with 8. Antonie Batt, A Poore Mans mite (Douai, 1639); and with 9. Antonie Batt,
A Short Treatise Tovching the Confraternitie of the Scapular of St. Benedicts Order (Douai, 1639).
10. John Wilson, The Roman Martyrologe (St. Omer, 1667).

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Molloy’s first surviving letter to the lady abbess at Haslemere was
dated July 29, 1964. In this letter Molloy gave a three-page, single-spaced
introduction to himself and to the creation of an “official centre of recusant
studies for the whole of the south of England” that Heenan regarded as
“his own special project.” The archbishop, he asserted, appointed him to
make the current collection at St. Edmund’s as complete as possible. He
was “to write in his [the archbishop’s] name, to you [at Haslemere] and to
all the other religious communities where some of these books still survive.” Molloy had learned “[f]rom the catalogue of recusant books (Allison
& Rogers)” that the convent possesses books “which we would very much
like to have, because it would otherwise be completely impossible to obtain
these works.” Molloy could offer them duplicates in exchange
[i]f you feel able to part with them, . . . Or, if you would prefer, you could
simply entrust them to us on loan, and in that case they would be carefully identified and returned whenever you would require them.

He then supported his request with descriptions of the Douay Museum, the
religious functions held there in the past, what was planned for the future,
and specific relics it had already obtained from old Catholic families: “small
pyxes, pieces of embroidered vestments, relics of penal times . . . .” The nuns
were more than willing to help, and Molloy acknowledged in a letter of
May 22, 1965, that he received a shipment of books and provided the abbey
with a

11. John Davies, The Ancient Rites, . . . of Durham (London, 1672).
12. Dominique Bouhours, The Life of St. Ignatius (London, 1686).
13. N. B., A Journal of Meditations (London, 1687).
14. Henry Spelman, The History and Fate of Sacrilege (London, 1698).
15–16. Caryll, The Psalmes of David (St. Germains, 1700), 2 copies.
The three Newberry Library items are: N1. A. Gray, The Rule of the Most Blissed . . .
Benedict [1632] (this item has new pastedowns, but it can be identified as a Haslemere book
by the shelfmark “Top over 104” and a Winchester annotation: “Belonging to the Abbess
given for the use of the Cellarier”); N2. J. Cross, Contemplations on the Life & Glory of Holy
Mary (1685); and N3 Jean D. Bonilla, A Short Treatise (1700). The Pius XII Library item is
Edward Scarisbrike, The life of the Lady Warner, 2nd ed. (1692); and the Pitts Theology
Library item is Tobie Matthew, The flaming hart, or, The life of the glorious S. Teresa . . . (1642).
The manuscripts are discussed below. For the move from Brussels to Winchester in 1794, see
Aidan Bellenger, “The Brussels Nuns at Winchester 1794–1857,” English Benedictine Congregation History Commission Symposium 1999, http://www.plantata.org.uk/papers/ebch/
1999bellenger.pdf (accessed July 2012). From 1940 to 1945 when there was a threat of invasion, the nuns dispersed and left their possessions at East Bergholt until they moved to Haslemere in 1945.

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565

receipt of 26 books pertaining to devotions, written by English Catholics
in Penal times. The books are listed on the sheets attached. They are the
property of St. Mary’s Abbey at Haslemere and are on loan to this College for examination, collation and identification.23

A short time after Molloy wrote this letter of May 22, he again visited
the abbey and met with the librarian, Dame M. Dorothea Payton. The
result was, as the librarian recorded in an undated letter given to her
abbess, M. Philomena Holcroft (see figure 3), that Molloy took with him
“a few of the smaller editions of the ancient books and it is understood
that they are on a ‘long loan.’” The librarian was pleased to help; she had
spent with Molloy “a most interesting afternoon, . . . and talked ‘shop’ all
the time.” Molloy suggested to her that “in exchange for the long loan of
the books he has taken and the others he may ask for—that he GIVE [sic]
you a goodly number of books . . . all of a modern date of printing” (the
number of these modern books was forty-two). Dame Dorothea may have
been responding to some question about the propriety of releasing printed
items when she added,
I do not think Father Molloy is a grabber or a Bibliomaniac, . . . This
Library he is forming at Ware is to become an English Memorial to the
Martyrs and Bp. [Richard] Challoner. . . . The Bodlein, [sic] Oxford
Cambridge, [sic] Rymans (Manchester) [sic] etc. have all sent their representatives down to Ware.

She closed with “[t]hank you for allowing me to see the Father. Indeed we
DID [sic]—as he said—talk the same language.”24 Before Dame Dorothea
wrote this letter, Molloy may have taken all 136 items.

23. Letter, July 29, 1964, Haslemere file, pp. 1–3. Letter, May 22, 1965, ibid., pp. 4–7
(the list is on pp. 6–7). In a “P.S.,” Molloy mentioned the support for his “Archbishop’s project” from two others: Archbishop John Henry King, the former chair of the Catholic Record
Society, and Abbot Christopher Butler of Downside Abbey. Lady Abbess M. Philomena
Holcroft acknowledged this loan on May 24, 1965: “I give permission for these & any other
books Rev. J. Molloy may wish to have on loan,” ibid., p. 26. Molloy actually listed twentyeight printed items in twenty-six volumes. Eight of these arrived at the HRC in 1968, and at
least two arrived at the Newberry in 1970. Seven on the list are in the HRC but show no conclusive evidence of their origin.
24. Letter from M. Dorothea to her abbess, undated, ibid., p. 12. This letter has the
penciled “Before July 20, 1965” at the top; it was written after May 22, 1965, when Molloy
sent a letter and a receipt for the loan of twenty-six books, ibid., pp. 4–7, and before M.
Dorothea sent her July 12 letter to M. Philomela Holcroft (ibid., p. 12). The list of forty-two
volumes “given” in “June 1965” by Molloy include twelve volumes in a set of Aristotle and
thirty other modern philosophical, theological, and classical volumes, ibid., p. 14.

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JAMES MOLLOY AND SALES OF RECUSANT BOOKS TO THE U.S.

FIGURE 3. Portrait of Lady Abbess M. Philomena Holcroft of Haslemere, n.d.
Image courtesy of the Downside Abbey General Trust, Bath, UK.

The removal of an unknown number of unknown books prompted the
lady abbess to direct Dame Dorothea to ask Molloy for a list of the specific
items. In her letter to Molloy of July 12, 1965, Dame Dorothea requested
such “a complete list” for “there are so many books missing for which I
cannot give an account, that I look like losing my job!” Molloy’s response
of July 16 was that he was too busy doing “jobs” for Heenan and making
“countless journeys to and from London.” Also, he was planning to explore
the libraries in Kinnoul, Fort Augustus, and Blairs. He hoped to begin
work on the list before he left for Scotland and to visit Haslemere before
he left for Scotland. Two days later, in a letter of July 18, he cancelled his
planned visit to Haslemere because of a number of pressing demands that
he described in detail, but he assured Dame Dorothea that “[t]he Haslemere books are kept in safety under lock and key. In all there are 136
books.” Instead of providing a list of all the items he had taken, he provided a list of eighteen Haslemere books (actually twenty, with one composite volume holding three printed items), of which St. Edmund’s already
had copies, that he wanted for his personal collection, “if the Lady Abbess
would be so kind as to agree to let me have these in exchange for the 42
books left by me.” Of the 118 remaining books now at St. Edmund’s,

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Molloy asked if he might “be allowed to list these books after my return
from Scotland.” The exchange of forty-two modern books for twenty recusant items was more than satisfactory to the lady abbess. She sent a warm
letter to Molloy on July 20 agreeing to the terms. Indeed,
considering the poor condition of the books you have selected, I think it
is a very generous exchange you have made of your 42 vols from your own
Library. A better selection could never have been made by us. . . . The
list of the remainder of the books on loan to the Douai Library [sic] will
do any time you find convenient.25

The lady abbess never heard from Molloy again.
Almost five years later, the lady abbess asked Dame M. Mechtilde,
then the librarian at Haslemere, to write a letter to Molloy, for she wished,
as Dame Mechtilde mentioned in this letter of February 23, 1970, to
“settle affairs before Our Lord takes her to Himself.” She had the list of
the eighteen books given in exchange for the forty-two, and the abbess
now wanted “a list of the 118 books” that Molloy still had, and she “intends
to ask for all the books of St. Mary’s Abbey at St. Edmund’s College to be
returned soon.” There were several books and manuscripts that she especially wanted:
“St. Benedict—The rule of the most blissed father Saint Benedict—4 pts
. . . 1632 Tr. Alexia Gray.” Also, any Rule, Statutes, Declarations, etc.,
in relation to St. Benedict, printed or in Mss., the property of St. Mary’s
Abbey, Haslemere, in your keeping at St. Edmund’s College.

Dame Mechtilde concluded her letter with the astonishing fact that “we do
not possess a list of the remaining 118 books mentioned above.” Nor did
she know that Molloy had left his position of archivist at St. Edmund’s,
and the priesthood, in 1966 and had sold at the very least twenty of the
books and four manuscripts before or close to the date of this letter to two

25. Letters, July 12, 1965, ibid., p. 8; July 16, 1965, p. 9; July 18, 1965, pp. 10–11; the
list of eighteen books, p. 13. For the one composite volume, see items 7, 8, and 9 in note 22.
Of Molloy’s list of eighteen (twenty including three in one composite volume) all in English
and printed before 1700, twelve are now in the HRC; three are in the Newberry; one is in the
Pius XII Library, and one is in the Pitts Theology Library. The remaining three are unlocated. Numbers 6, 11, and 16 (see the numbers in note 22) are not on Molloy’s personal list,
nor are any of the four manuscripts. In the Newberry, another Haslemere book—J. Bonilla,
A Short Treatise (1700)—is not on his list. The books that Molloy gave in “exchange” had
already been “given” to the abbey in June 1965; see note 24. Later they were referred to as
those “left with Dame Margaret Mary last time you visited us”; letter, July 12, 1965, ibid., p.
8. For the “generous exchange” letter, see ibid., p. 15.

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libraries on another continent. All that now remains of the Haslemere
books are notes on catalog cards of the few books that the nuns believed
were missing and “Now at Ware Semin.” or “? At Ware 6/65” or “1 copy
at “W” June 65.”26
Several subsequent letters written by Dame Mechtilde to St.
Edmund’s raised expectations. Michael Richards, a priest and the new
archivist at St. Edmund’s, responded on March 2, 1970, with the erroneous assurance that
[w]e have already identified most of them, but not the full 118. Unfortunately Dr. Molloy, who left a year or two ago [actually four years earlier],
did not leave a list in the archives, but I am writing to ask him about them.

If he wrote Molloy, no response survives. He assigned the task of locating
the books to a seminarian who came up with fourteen that he brought back
to the abbey on “April 1, 1970.” Seven of these are recusant books, and the
remaining books were published from 1832 to 1903. But there were other
treasures that the lady abbess and abbey librarian had in mind. In a typescript prepared, according to a manuscript note, “About, Nov. 1970,” the
typist, probably Dame Mechtilde, listed fourteen printed books and one
manuscript (1–15) followed by eight manuscripts (1–8) “possibly at the
Archives of St Edmund’s College.” At this date, seven of the fourteen
books on her list were in the HRC or the Newberry Library, as were four
of the manuscripts. If this list reached St. Edmund’s, no response exists in
the Haslemere archives. The last letter from the seminarian, who had
moved from Ware to Heythrop College in London, is dated November 23,
1970, and includes the affirmation, “I have found them all out,” and the
hope that his successor at St. Edmund’s would send them on.27 Of course

26. Letter, February 23. 1970, ibid., pp. 16–17. The Haslemere card catalog is now at
Douai Abbey. A printed item from St. Mary’s Abbey in Haslemere, now at the Pitts Theology Library, is Tobie Matthew, The flaming hart, or, The life of the glorious S. Teresa . . . 1642,
and is signed, “Elizabeth Joseph [Collingridge] With leave 1793”; it has an entry in the card
catalog as “Now at ‘W[are]’ 6/65.” Elizabeth Joseph was the last Benedictine nun to profess
at Brussels in 1793, before the move to Winchester. For three other cards with notes of their
possible presence at Ware, all now at the HRC, see J. Davies, Ancient Rites (1672); Dame
Romana Foxe, Retreat (ms.); Nathaniel Bacon and E. Mico, Journal of Meditations “used at
Brussels & Winchester” (1678).
27. Letter, March 2, 1970, ibid., p. 18. On March 9 the abbess sent three lists of
books—the 18 (in exchange to Molloy), 42 (in exchange to Haslemere), and 26 (taken initially by Molloy)—that the archivist asked for and responded apparently to archivist’s statement, “We have already identified most of them,” with “[i]t is a relief to know our books are
in good hands”; ibid., p. 19. The seminarian, Terence Ravensdale, wrote on March 24 that

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569

he had no idea of the location of the manuscripts, which were extremely
valuable to the abbey.28 The most important of these is now in the New-

he had found fourteen books (ibid., p. 20) and supplied the list on April 1 (unnumbered,
after p. 20). On November 23, 1970, in the last letter concerning the books, the seminarian
reported from his new location at the University of London, “I found them all out,” but that
is certainly not true; ibid., 23r–v. For the list of fourteen printed items and a single manuscript (no. 15), plus a list of eight manuscripts dated “About, Nov. 1970,” listed below ms.
item no. 15, see ibid., p. 24. The nun’s descriptions of the fourteen books were sometimes
vague such as “[v]ery ancient book of Pictures of the Dialogues, (large brown book),” and
her descriptions of the manuscripts she knew they had lost include some repetition. Where
are the ninety or so other Haslemere books? They are not at the Douay Museum at St.
Edmund’s where I looked at about one third of the institution’s recusant books and found
not a single one indicating that it was from Haslemere. The seminarian may have returned
more than the fourteen to Haslemere; however, without the names of the items, it is impossible to determine if that were the case. Some may be at American libraries with all marks
of provenance removed.
28. The four manuscripts are described briefly in this note and in the following note.
1. HRC MS. B896. An eight days retreat for religious. 1782. Quarto. 72 leaves. Binding,
calf, with gold-stamp decoration on the spine. On the upper flyleaf, verso: “Dame Romana
Foxe given by Lady Ursula Pigot. 2o of Decbr 1782.” The manuscript seems to be written in
the hand of Ursula Pigott. Pigott and Foxe were Benedictine nuns at Brussels. The bookplate
of St. Mary’s Abbey in East Bergholt is covered with a paper slip on which is written “Haslemere.” On the bookplate is “MSS. Copy No. 11 Ist Vol.” and the former shelfmark “MSS.
LIBRARY. Shelf 127.”
2. HRC MS. B897. John Mabillon, The Christian death after the pattern of that of our Lord
Jesus Christ and several saints and eminent persons of antiquity. Collected in French from authentick
originals. Trans. by I. L., Monk of the Charter-house at Newport. 18th century. Pp. vii, 217.
Binding, speckled calf with gold-stamp decoration on the covers and spine. On the upper
pastedown is a small bookplate: “Infirmary. St. Mary’s Abbey East Bergholt Suffolk.” On the
bookplate is the former shelfmark “MSS.LIBRARY Shelf 127 No. 13.” On the title page there
is a blue ink stamp, “ABBAT-S-MARIAE.E-HASLEMERE BIBLIOTHECA.”
3. HRC MS. B898. First day. First meditation. On the end of the retreat [to the “Eighth
Day. Consideration”]. Brussels, 1752–1791. Quarto. Pp. 122. Binding, speckled calf; on the
spine, gold-stamp decoration. Romana Foxe signed the manuscript, and the manuscript is
probably in her hand. The bookplate of St. Mary’s Abbey in East Bergholt is covered with a
paper slip on which is written “Haslemere.” On the bookplate is “MSS. No. 12 2nd Vol.” and
the former shelfmark “MSS. LIB. Shelf 127.” On the upper flyleaf, recto, is a blue ink stamp,
“ABBAT-S-MARIAE.E-HASLEMERE BIBLIOTHECA.” For both nuns, see “Registers of the English Benedictine Nuns, Brussels . . . 1598–1856,” contributed by the Lady
Abbess of East Bergholt and ed. J. S. Hansom, [Catholic Record Society, Misc. IX, Vol. 14],
(London, 1914): p. 196: “Dame Ursula Pigott, daughter of Ralph Pigott of Whitten in the
County of Middlesex, . . . made her Profession 23rd October 1742 in the 19th Year of her
Age. Died 1796”; p. 197: “Dame Romana Foxe, daughter of Henry Foxe of Rheleskin in the
County of Mountgomory, . . . made her Profession 15th January 1754 in the 22nd Year of
her Age. She died 1791.” See the Web site http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/wwtn/pdfs/ Registers%20of%20the%20English%20Benedictine%20Nuns,%20Brussels%201598-1856
(accessed June 22, 2012).

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berry Library.29 The seminarian’s letter in the Douai Abbey Library is the
last in the correspondence between Haslemere and Ware.
A second abbey that has some documentation of how Molloy obtained
books is Kylemore Abbey, formerly a Benedictine abbey in Ypres. This
abbey was founded in 1665, and these items went with the nuns from
Ypres to England in 1914, then to Wexford, and finally, in 1920, to Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland. The HRC holds twenty-one printed
books and one manuscript with the bookplate “Appartenant au Monastêre
des Dames Bénédictines Irlandoises a Ipres” or a note of similar ownership.
There are at least five printed items with the same bookplates at the Newberry and one at the Pitts Theology Library. Several books have signatures
of various members of the house at Ypres, including that of Mary Butler
(1641–1723), the third abbess, and of Dalas Stamford—that is, Ignatius
William Dalas (alias Stamford), S.J., who was confessor, director, and
Superior at the convent from 1767 to his death at age seventy-four in 1807.
The Ypres manuscript in the HRC, a Jesuit handbook for meditation, has
also the signature of Dalas Stamford on the upper pastedown. Two printed
items also have important manuscript material: 55 leaves of devotional
material bound at the end of one volume, and a version of “Stabat Mater
dolorosa” on the end papers of another.30

29. Newberry Library, VAULT Case MS 4A 10: “Brussels. Our Blessed Lady the Perpetuall Virgin Mary (Abbey of Benedictine nuns).” Title, leaf 1: “Of Such thinges as those
which are Schollers & Novices in this our Congregation, are to observe.” Quarto, [134]
leaves. Binding, seventeenth-century calf. The text was slightly cropped with the loss of some
numbers, passim; some headlines and catchwords were cut off; and some pages were torn out.
On the bookplate “Abbess’ Library, Saint Mary’s Abbey East Bergholt” is the former shelfmark “MSS. No. 14” and “Shelf 127.” Below the bookplate, there is the inscribed “Manuscript Library.” On the recto of the title leaf is a circular stamp, “ABBOT-S-MARIAE-EHASLEMERE” and “BI[/]LIOTHE[/]CA.” Some manuscript entries are: 5v, “This Booke
belongeth to the Schoole for Perpetuite”; 6r, title, “The Rule of our Holye Father Sainct
Benedict ye preface”; different writings end with signatures of “Str Joyce La[ngdale],” “Elizabeth G[age],” and “Anno Dni 1601” with “Yours in Christ. R.C.” The last item, “The Confirmation of the Statutes,” was dated “in Bruxelles, the 27 of Julie. 1612” and signed “Mathias
[Hovius] Archiepiscopus Mechliniensis.” Because of cropping and removals of leaves, the
page numbers are difficult to determine. Caroline Bowen informed me that “Eliz. G.” is Elizabeth Gage, in religion Columba. She professed Sept. 28, 1616, and died Jan. 9, 1641, in
Brussels, aged seventy-six. See http://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/search/details.php?uid=
BB079 (accessed June 22, 2012). Joyce Langdale professed Oct. 25, 1620, became prioress in
1652 and died Feb. 10, 1672, in Brussels, aged about 72. See http://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/
search/details.php?uid=BB108 (accessed June 22, 2012). M. Hovius was archbishop of
Mechlin from 1596 to 1620.
30. See also Patrick Nolan, Irish Dames of Ypres (Dublin, 1908), pp. 312–33 (and p. 524,
where the inscription on the grave of Dalas gives his age as eighty-four). The Jesuit handbook

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The removal of materials from Kylemore Abbey follows the same pattern as Molloy’s dealings with Haslemere. Molloy, when asked by the
HRC to explain the origin of his collection, told of how he acquired “by
my personal contacts with religious houses and convents,” mentioning
specifically that “I bought the residue of the old Catholic books from the
Irish nuns at Kylemore.” He had first visited Kylemore in summer 1963.
He was looking for old books. Notes concerning the removal of the books
in 1964 survive at the abbey. They record that Molloy asked for a number
of books “on permanent loan” for a museum at St. Edmund’s College, an
enterprise that had the backing of Heenan. The community agreed to the
request of a “permanent loan” and allowed him to take the books. Molloy
had not “bought” these books. A letter in the abbey archives sent by the
president of St. Edmund’s, M[aurice] J. Kelleher, to Lady Abbess Agnes
Finnegan, dated December 31, 1964, gives further details. The president
mentioned that “Doctor Molloy” had told him about the
decision to entrust to our care some of the recusant books which belong
to Kylemore Abbey. . . . [and] I am very grateful to you and I know that
his Grace Archbishop Heenan is also deeply appreciative. . . . The books
which you give on loan to us will, of course, remain the property of Kylemore Abbey.

Molloy, along with Antony Allison, would give a value for insurance purposes and “[w]hen the valuation has been worked out, it will be submitted
to you for approval.” The letter of valuation has not been found, and,
unfortunately, Kelleher did not include a list of items taken on loan. There
seems to be no other document either at St. Edmund’s College or Kylemore Abbey with further information. In addition to the twenty-seven
printed items and one manuscript now in American libraries, at least five
printed items once at Kylemore Abbey remain in the Douay Museum.31
is HRC MS. 1052. Documenta et regulae ad actionum quotidianarum rectam compositionem ex
variis auctoribus. Ca. 1750–1800. p. 165. The devotional material is in Thomas Lawson, The
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesu (Bruges, 1767); and the “Stabat Mater” is in The Office of
the Holy Week, 6th ed. (London, 1766). Why did Molloy retain until 1984 one Kylemore
item—John Wilson (i.e., Peter Talbot), A treatise of religion and government (London,
1670)—and not sell it earlier to either the HRC or the Newberry? Perhaps he did so because
it is a handsome, contemporary calf quarto with gold-stamp decoration on the spine. The
Newberry already owned a copy, but the HRC still does not.
31. Until recently the library was not a high priority at the abbey, and in the 1980s a
number were removed and sold by Kenny’s Bookstore in Galway, where some twenty with
the Ypres bookplate were purchased in 1988 by Robert K. O’Neill, Burns Librarian at Boston
College. The Boston College Quest Catalog includes provenances of the Ypres books. Maire
Hickey, mother abbess at Kylemore Abbey, wrote in an email of May 30, 2011: “I have

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A large trove of printed items, more than 115, came to the HRC in
1968 and 1970 from the collection at the Douay Museum at St. Edmund’s
College. Sixty-five are in volumes with the inscribed “Bib. Theol. O.H.G.”
or “O.H.G.” “O.H.G.” (unidentified at the HRC) stood for Old Hall
Green, which was the name of the Catholic academy founded north of
Ware in Hertfordshire in 1769. This site was chosen for a new English
college of St. Edmund by those who were forced to leave Douay in 1793,
and the vestigial O.H.G. was used to identify ownership on title pages of
books at the college until about 1855 when other forms of identification
became the norm. In the HRC only one of the books in the recusant collection has the inscription “Col. St. Edm.,” and only one has the St.
Edmund’s College bookplate.32
Among these printed items were thirty-five that arrived at St.
Edmund’s after 1855, after the librarians ended the use of the initials
“O.H.G.” These thirty-five are linked by certain peculiar shelfmarks such
as F 4 over N 980, or K 176 over N 1884.33 These shelfmarks preceded
their arrival at St. Edmund’s and indicate that they were in the possession

checked our notes about the removal of books in 1964. It is recorded that a Dr. James Molloy
from St. Edmund College, Ware, who had been here the previous summer looking for old
books, had come back and asked to have old books ‘on permanent loan.’ He needed them for
a Museum and had the backing of Archbishop Heenan. The community agreed to give him
the books. There are no more details, and nothing more was ever heard of Dr. Molloy or the
books.” The Kelleher letter is in the Kylemore Abbey archives. The five items in the Douay
Museum are R. 3. 22 (A&R 2.160); R. 4. 41 (Evangelina (Gandavi, 1574), not in A&R); S.
2. 24 (A&R 2.531, with annotation by Anne Fleming, at Ypres 1779–80); S. 2. 25 (A&R
2.145); and T. 1. 8 (A&R 2.130).
32. The more than 115 items are forty-four inscribed O.H.G. volumes, among which
are four composite volumes with twenty-one additional printed items. The composite volumes, all bound before or while at St. Edmund’s, are: Samuel Rowe, Epitome (London, 1824),
five items with only the first and last inscribed with “Bib. Theol. OHG”; Alban Butler,
Remarks (Douay, 1754), twelve items, with only five having the “O.H.G.”; John Gother, nine
tracts, with only two having “O.H.G.”; and Guida angelica (Rome, 1649), a Towneley
volume, five items with only the first having “Bibl Theol. O.H.G.” The St. Edmund’s College
bookplate, effaced, is in John Keynes, Regula credendorum (Liège, 1684). The inscribed “Col.
S. Edm.” (also a Jones/Wilds book) is in Edward Hawarden, The True Church of Christ, vol.
1 (London, 1714; see also Joseph Kimbell, below). Included in the count are those items with
signatures of former presidents of St. Edmund’s: William Poynter (president, 1801–13),
three; Joseph Kimbell, (“Kimbell Col. S. Edm[?]”) (1813–17), one; Thomas Griffith (1818–
34), a composite volume with ten printed items (the HRC catalog lists only one printed item
owned by Griffith—C. M. Baggs, Sulla stato odierno [1845]—but this is bound with nine
other, mainly Italian, items); and Edwin Burton (1916–18), one.
33. A book label, “Maguire Library,” and a shelfmark beginning with an M. [no doubt,
Maguire], such as M. XII. E. 1 or M. XII. E. 15, were often added after 1865 to Maguire books.

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

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of John Maguire (1801–65). Maguire had been vice president at St.
Edmund’s (1836–38) and later was the vicar-general in the Westminster
Diocese until 1859 when a struggle between Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman
and the archdiocesan chapter of Westminster led to the dismissal of
Maguire. He retreated to his valuable library and died in 1865, leaving his
books to St. Edmund’s College.34 Seven of these books have the bookplates
of two Harley Street priests, John Jones (1778–1850) and William Wilds
(1768–1854), from whom Maguire acquired many books.35
Edwin Hubert Burton (1870–1925), the bibliographer, scholar, and
administrator at St. Edmund’s College, knew that books with these shelfmarks and books with Jones/Wilds bookplates came from the library of
Maguire. In his Catalogue of Books in the Libraries at St. Edmund ’s College,
Old Hall, Printed in England and of Books Written by Englishmen Printed
Abroad to the Year 1640 (Ware, UK, 1902),36 he listed 235 books of which

34. For a summary of the controversy and a reference to Maguire’s books, see Wilfrid
Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1897), 2:278; Bernard Ward, History
of St. Edmund’s College, Old Hall (London, 1893), p. 230; and Richard J. Schiefen, “Some
Aspects of the Controversy between Cardinal Wiseman and the Westminster Chapter,” Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, 21 (1970), 125–48. The controversy revolved around the rights of the
chapter versus those of the cardinal. The particular issue concerned the role of (future cardinal)
Henry Edward Manning and the Oblates of St. Charles in the government of St. Edmund’s.
35. Both Jones and Wilds, before their deaths respectively in 1850 and 1854, had long
but difficult associations with the college before they became famous preachers on Harley
Street. Jones had been a London agent of the college before he resigned during a controversy,
and Wilds had been on the faculty of the English College at Douay and continued at St.
Edmund’s when the school relocated in 1793. The two assembled a large number of books and
pasted their joint bookplate on the upper pastedowns. Books with these plates are found in various research libraries, but most are at St. Edmund’s College and the HRC. The cataloger of
the recusant collection at the HRC suggested that the twenty-eight remaining books, without
the bookplate but with the peculiar shelfmarks, were once in the possession of Jones and Wilds
and entered in the provenance line, “With shelf mark thought to be that of the library of Rev.
John Jones and the Rev. William Wilds.” That suggestion is incorrect. For a Jones book in the
HRC with a torn-out bookplate, see Jocelyn, The Life and Acts of Saint Patrick (Dublin, 1809),
the upper pastedown. It has the shelfmark G 398 over N 1466. On the frontispiece sheet,
recto, there is an erased M and some numbers. On the title page is the signature of “Revd: John
Jones.” The HRC has one Jones/Wilds book that came by a different route: from J. Frank
Dobie in 1961; it has a second and later bookplate of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus in
London (Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry [London, 1812]). Another
example of a book with these same two bookplates was on sale in June 2011 at Powell’s Books
Cedar Hills Crossing, Portland, OR (Mark Aloysius Tierney, The History and Antiquities of the
Castle and Town of Arundel [London, 1834]). Neither has the distinctive shelfmark.
36. There is no published catalog that succeeds the specialized one published in 1902
by Burton. A recent census of Elizabethan STC books is by Paul J. Voss, “Catholics in Print:
Tudor Books in the Douay College Museum,” The Ben Jonson Journal, 16 (2009), 168–96.

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twenty-seven were noted as “Maguire Bequest, 1865.” Ten of these
Maguire books have, since 1902, been removed. Of the sixteen remaining
books that I have examined, all have either the Jones/Wilds bookplate or
the shelfmark.37 Printed items from Maguire are also present among post1640 books in the Douay Museum, and in the HRC, and can be identified
by the presence of the peculiar shelfmark or the presence of the Jones/
Wilds bookplate.38

Voss lists 112 books, 1558–1604. A subsequent article would be helpful for several reasons,
with the most important being the stabilization of the library’s holdings that, as Burton noted
in 1902, had “undergone many vicissitudes.”
37. In Burton’s pre-1641 catalog, entries often included more than one copy. Molloy
removed several of these duplicates from the Douay Museum and sold them to the HRC.
One was a Maguire item, identified as such by Burton: no. 172, John Clare, The Converted
Jew (Douay, 1630; A&R 2.137), with the peculiar shelfmark K 62 over N 1769 (a book slip
or bookplate, probably showing the Burton number, was removed). Other duplicates, not
Maguire books, are no. 134, Smith (1619) (A&R 1.1092), and no. 197, Symson (1634) (STC
[2nd ed.] 23598.5). These two have Towneley bookplates (although both were present in the
library before 1855, and both are inscribed with “Bib: Theol: O.H.G.”, they were not
recorded as second copies by Burton). In one case there were four copies in 1902 (no. 73,
Robert Parsons, The Third Part [St. Omer, 1604], A&R 2.638), and one copy, inscribed “Bib.
Theol. O. H. G.,” is now in the HRC. Four others listed in Burton, which are now in the
HRC, were apparently not duplicates, for they are not listed in the current Douay Museum
card catalog: Burton no. 60, Gerolamo Franchi di Conestaggio, Historie (London, 1600); no.
131, Lucan, Pharsalia (London, 1618); no. 177, William Camden, Historie (London, 1630);
and no. 219, Richard Hooker, Lawes (London, 1639). Finally, Burton no. 198, J. K[eynes],
Regula credendorum (Liège, 1684), is also in the HRC, with “Bib. Cleri[?] Soc.” Burton
entered it in his catalog (he mistakenly gave the publication date of 1634) and recorded its
origin as “[f]rom the Library of the Secular Clergy. Acquired 1857.” The Conestaggio,
Lucan, Camden, and Hooker items in the HRC are inscribed “Bib: Theol: O.H.G.” (some
were rubbed out but are still legible). Molloy may have removed these because they were nonrecusant books. The Burton items numbers noted as part of the “Maguire Bequest, 1865” are
(followed by modern Douay Museum shelfmarks): 2 (S. 5. 26), 20 (R. 3. 24), 21 (replaced),
33 (not seen), 38 (replaced), 48 (T. 6. 12, without a Jones/Wilds bookplate), 49 (T. 6. 5-6,
without Maguire’s shelfmark), 50 (T. 6. 7, without Maguire’s shelfmark), 54 (R. 2. 18, mutilated, with a Maguire book slip, only), 61 (T. 6. 2), 72 (T. 1. 20), 73 (T. 1. 21-2, Parsons),
94 (missing on shelf), 111 (S. 1. 30, without a Jones/Wilds bookplate), 115 (R. 5. 3, pages
removed, no evidence of provenance), 140 (R. 2. 4, without a Jones/Wilds bookplate), 142 (S.
1. 6), 144 (missing on shelf), 150 (T. 4. 4), 165 (S. 2. 30), 169 (replaced by a Stanfield copy),
172 (Clare, 1630; the Maguire copy now in the HRC), 196 (S. 4. 27), 207 (missing and probably not the HRC copy), 213 (missing), 214 (missing), 215 (S. 2. 15). The shelfmarks mentioned in note 33 often occur in these items.
38. In the Douay Museum, see A. 2c. 19 (M. Pool, A dialogue between a popish priest
and an English protestant, [London 1687]), which has a Maguire Library slip, the Jones/Wilds
bookplate, the peculiar shelfmark, and M. shelfmark (see note 33); and also: A. 2e. 15; B. 2a.
5; B. 2a. 14; B. 2a. 20; B. 2c. 16; B. 2c. 22; and B. 2d. 20. For an example in the HRC, see
Victorinus Bythner, Lingua eruditorum (London, 1675), with Maguire’s signature and the

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575

Twenty printed items once in the Towneley library also went from St.
Edmund’s College to the HRC in 1968. Most have the armorial bookplate
“Ex libris Bibliothecae Domesticae Richardi Towneley [1629–1707] de
Towneley, 1702.” One item—Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Vita P. Iacobi Laynis
(1604)—has the shelfmark of Maguire; hence it came to St. Edmund’s in
1865. There were several Towneley book and manuscript sales over more
than a century, and a number of these came to St. Edmund’s at various
times and from various sources.39
There are four Douay Museum items among the 175 that I have
examined at the Newberry Library (two of the four have the inscribed
“O.H.G.,” and three have a St. Edmund’s classification stamp on the verso
of the title page); two Douay Museum items among the 250 I have examined at the Pius XII Library (both with the inscribed “O.H.G”); and five
Douay Museum items among the 420 that I examined in the Pitts Theology Library (two have the inscribed “O.H.G.”; two have the inscribed
name of the benefactor, Raymund Stanfield; three include the classification stamp on the verso of the title page; and three are stamped with “S[t].
E[dmund’s]. C[ollege]. DUPLICATE.”) Molloy left no papers or documentation about additions or removals while he was the curator of the
Douay Museum from 1961 to 1966, and as of 2013, no one on the campus
knew which books were added or removed or when these events occurred.
Molloy may have been given leave to do what he wanted with duplicates,
damaged books, or those he determined to be irrelevant to the college and
not needed.40 In any case, more than 125 printed items went from the
peculiar shelfmark but has no indication that Jones or Wilds owned the book. Thirty-five
Maguire items in the HRC can be found in a “special collection” or “keyword” search of
“Jones, John, ca. 1778–1850, former owner” or “Wilds, William, 1768–1854, former owner”
at http://catalog.lib.utexas.edu/ (accessed June 25, 2012).
39. Three other Towneley items are in the HRC, but they did not come with the Recusant Collection. For Towneley books “from various sources,” see Burton, Catalogue, p. iv.
Burton had noted in his introduction that books were often placed in obscure locations:
“stowed away in so many holes and corners, that there seems no end to our researches in
lumber-rooms of a hundred years.” He did not give shelfmarks because “an entire rearrangement of all the books” was necessary. Since Burton’s time, there have been additions and
removals of books. The libraries of Raymond Stanfield and the archbishop of Westminster,
among others, went to St. Edmund’s after 1902, and that compounded the problem of multiple uncataloged books with various kinds of shelfmarks.
40. There is a probable fifth item in the Newberry; it has an inscribed “Bib. Theol.” and
a Towneley (1702) bookplate. In the Pitts Theology Library, another volume has an
“O.H.G.” inscription on an inserted title page that supplements a defective title page (Knott
[1634], A&R 2.821). For the Stanfield library, willed in 1918 (“his books and 50 pounds for
removing and fixing them to St. Edmund’s College,” see The Tablet. The International

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Douay Museum to Molloy’s personal collection and from there to American libraries from 1968 to 1984.41 He found places where they were, for a
good price, relevant and needed.
The largest identifiable collection of recusant items at the HRC—
397 books and one liturgical manuscript—is that from the Dominican
Priory at Woodchester in Gloucestershire. All have the bookplate, or
some label, of “Ex Libris FF[ratrum] Praed[icatorum] de Woodchester.”
The Newberry also holds at least four with similar bookplates, the Pius
XII holds at least one printed item and one manuscript, and the Pitts
Theology Library holds at least one printed item. Books from the Woodchester library were made available when the priory was at the point of
closure in about 1966. The monastery was demolished in 1970. There
seem to be no surviving records of the library itself but a novice at the
time the books were removed has some memory of the event: “Godfrey
Anstruther OP . . . 1965/66 let Weinreb’s man in [no doubt Molloy] to
take away enough to pay for the machinery needed to produce the seminary priests volumes.” He added a comment: “Great irony . . . the recusant historian [Anstruther published at least three books on recusant
topics] alienated all this recusant stuff.” Molloy may have visited the
priory before he associated himself with Weinreb, for there is one Woodchester printed item at the Douay Museum, probably obtained before
1966 when he left St. Edmund’s. Some of the items he later bought were
of historical importance to the order. Eight at the HRC have marks or
indications that they were at the former mother house and British headquarters of the Dominican Order of Preachers in Hinckley before they
were transferred to the new priory in 1850. Four others have the signaCatholic News Weekly, Nov. 9, 1918, p. 24), and for remarks on the Douay Museum library in
general, see Voss, “Catholics in Print,” p. 171. Molloy did not sell all the books he gathered
from religious houses, and there remain in the Douay Museum some from the Blackfriars at
Oxford, the Dominican Priory at Woodchester, Hoogstraet, Kylemore Abbey (Aipres/
Ipres/Ypres), the Oblate Fathers at Bayswater, Ratcliffe College, St Augustine’s Priory at
Newton Abbot, St. George’s Worcester, and the Archbishop’s House (Ex Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Metropolitanae Westmonasteriensis).
41. There is still leakage from the Douay Library. In April 2011 I bought a Jansenist
book, with a college bookplate on the upper pastedown and an inscribed “O.H.G.” on the
title page, from St. Philip’s Books in Oxford. The proprietor had “within the last year or two”
purchased a number of such books from St. Edmund’s College. Another example is Tobias
Matthew, Of the Loue of our only Lord and Sauiour Iesus Christ (St. Omer, 1622). The volume
has on its upper pastedown a slip with the Burton number: “St. Edmund’s College Catalogue
of Early Printed Books No. 147”; and on the title page, “Bib Theol OHG.” The Folger
Library bought this from Samuel Gedge in 2008 (Norwich, Cat. V, no. 84). A&R 2.529 lists,
in 1994, a location at St. Edmund’s, Ware, but that copy is now in the Folger.

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ture of James Ambrose Dominic Aylward (1813–72) who was at Hinckley and later became the first prior of Woodchester. The liturgical manuscript Rituale Romanum seu ordo administrandi sacramenta baptismi. &c
pro Anglia Scotia et Hibernia (1698), apparently came to Hinckley with
English Dominicans who, in 1794, had left the college at Bornem for
England because of threats from the French Revolutionary army in the
Flanders Campaign.42
Documentation of Molloy’s acquisitions from St. Augustine’s Abbey
at Ramsgate and the Middle Temple exist, and in both situations Molloy
borrowed or purchased items legitimately.
Correspondence between Molloy and the Benedictine abbey at Ramsgate began on February 23, 1966, when Molloy wrote a letter addressed to
“Father Abbot” (that is, Abbot David Parry) in which he asked to “visit your
library in the near future.” He declared his authority as twofold: “I am a
member of the archives Commission at Westminster,” and this visit would
be “in connection with a project which Cardinal Heenan has asked me to
undertake. In the same breath, almost, the Cardinal has told me to go to
Washington in the near future, on his behalf.” The abbot responded graciously to this request from an obviously very busy person, promising to “give
you all the help we can in connection with the work you are doing.” Molloy
selected five recusant books and on May 23, 1966, sent a “form of a receipt”
to the abbot. In a letter of June 21, 2011, the archivist at the Bergh Memorial
Library, St. Augustine’s, requested the return of the five books, and four of
the five that could be found in St. Edmund’s were returned.43

42. Fergus Kerr, O.P., is the author of the comments about Godfrey Anstruther; he
was a novice at Woodchester at the time, and his comments were forwarded to me in an email
of August 13, 2013, by Friar John Farrell. Other present-day Dominicans are shocked to
learn of the removal of the volumes from Woodchester and sales to American libraries, as can
be seen in this comment: “The whole business seems fairly criminal” (email from Friar John
Aidan Nichols, August 17, 2013). The manuscript at the HRC, MS. 6A 12, is a duodecimo
with thirty leaves bound with and preceding a printed work by Juan-Alphonso de Polanco,
Methodus (Liège, 1579) (HRC BX 2261 P66 1579), which in turn is followed by three more
leaves of the Rituale with the heading “Benedictio” and a first line, “Mulieris post partum.”
The Woodchester ms. in the Pius XII Library was not available during my visit: “Invitatoria
. . . iuxta ritum & cantum sacri ordinis Praedicatorum” (1719), pp. (12)+52+(4).
43. Copies of the correspondence, with relevant photographs of the books, are at St.
Edmund’s College. The archivist at St. Augustine’s Abbey (the abbey has moved to
Chilworth, Surrey) was John Seddon, O.S.B. The missing item is R[ichard] S[trange], The
life and gests of S. Thomas Cantilupe, . . . Collected by R.S. S.I (Gant, 1674). The abbey sold
almost immediately at least two of the books, and they are now in the Huntington Library in
San Marino, CA, which purchased them from Christopher Edwards’s (Wallingford, Oxford-

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Molloy knew of the recusant books at the Middle Temple, since Allison and Rogers entered many of them in their 1956 catalog. Molloy went
to the Middle Temple to select and purchase eighty-five books between
April 5, 1965, and June 16, 1966. All but seven of the eighty-five are in the
Allison and Rogers catalog. At least eighteen of these, with the purple
and/or orange stamp of the “Middle Temple” on the title page or preliminary pages, are now in the Douay Museum. Twenty-seven are now in the
recusant collection at the HRC, and at least ten are at the Newberry
Library. Invoices of the first three sales, now at the Middle Temple, show
that the books were “wanted for the Douai Library, St. Edmund’s College.” They were expensive at the time: the first purchase, of December 1,
1965, came to £108.17.6 for eight printed items; the second, of December
20, 1965, came to £458 for nineteen items; and the third, of April 5, 1966,
came to £350 for fourteen items. Most of these forty-one books are probably still in the Douay Museum; one is in the HRC. Molloy’s last two purchases were of books for his own collection at a time very close to his
departure from St. Edmund’s. The first was a “[r]evised list of theological
books in the Middle Temple Library required by Dr. Molloy for his personal collection” and “sold to Father Molloy May 19, 1966” (the record of
price does not survive), and the second was a “Second List of books bought
by Fr. Molloy” sold for a rather large sum: “20 books at £25 each £500”
and “16/6/66.” The total number on these two “personal” lists is forty-four;
twenty-six ended up in the HRC and at least ten in the Newberry
Library.44 Even though Molloy’s purchases were clearly in order, current

shire) List #49 (email from L. Stalker, May 21, 2012): [Matthew Kellison], Paraphrasticall
and devout discourses ([Douai], 1635); and [Sylvester Norris], The Pseudo-scripturist ([St.
Omer], 1623). The latter was first sold at a Dominic Winter Book Sale, Nov. 10, 2011, lot
968, est. £150–200. The other two are unlocated: Jean-Pierre Camus, The Loving Enemy
(London, 1667), with annotation by Job Lousley (1790–1855), Hampstead Norrys, Berkshire; and Alonso de Villegas, The lives of Saints ([Rouen], 1628).
44. Renae Satterley provided me with digital images and pdf files of records at the
Middle Temple. The five sales are the following:
1. Dec. 1, 1965, 8 books, £108.17.6 (“damaged” books).
2. Dec. 20, 1965, 19 books, £458.
3. April 5, 1966, 14 books, £350.
4. May 19, 1966, 14 books “sold to F. Molloy.”
5. June 16, 1966, 20 books, £500.
The shelfmarks of the eighteen that I saw in the Douay Museum are R. 1. 32, R. 2. 24/5, R.
3. 3, R. 3. 40, R. 3. 41, R. 3. 44, R. 4. 38, R. 5. 13, S. 5. 23, S. 5. 24, S. 5. 24 (2nd pt.), T.
2. 26, T. 2. 27, T. 2. 28, T. 3. 18, T. 3. 32, T. 4. 34, and T. 4. 35. One book purchased for
the Douay Museum escaped to the HRC: Robert Parsons, A quiet and sober reckoning (St.
Omer, 1609), A&R 2.633. Of the forty-four sold to Molloy for his personal collection, all but
eight are in English, and most include their Short Title Catalogue and/or A&R numbers.

NICOLAS K. KIESSLING

579

librarians at the Middle Temple are horrified at the removal, but in the sixties, the librarian at the time allowed, apparently without any concern, the
decimation of the recusant holdings in the library and destroyed the continuity of the collection. Since the vast majority of Molloy’s acquisitions
were published before 1640, it is very likely that a number of these printed
items were once owned by the library’s founder, Robert Ashley, who died
in 1641. Ashley bequeathed his collection of some 3700 volumes to the
Middle Temple, and his library had, until this sale to Molloy, remained
“practically intact” since 1641. Ashley annotated many of his books; one of
these may be Thomas Heskyns, The Parliament of Chryste (Antwerp,
1566), in the Newberry Library, since the Molloy sale occurred in 1970. A
librarian at the Middle Temple, Renae Satterley, suspects that these are in
the hand of Ashley. She plans to examine photocopies of the annotations
in this book and in several other Middle Temple books now in America.45
The movement of printed items from a private collection to a religious
house or library, or from one house or library to another, was common in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The larger Catholic abbeys,
schools, and seminaries such as Douai, Downside, Heythrop, Oscott,
Ushaw (the library is now associated with Durham University), St.
Edmund’s, and Stonyhurst still receive large collections upon the deaths of
alumni and friends, and from closures of small religious houses. In the best
of circumstances the larger individual collections are kept separate and are
so noted in the catalogs. It should be axiomatic that a book within a large
collection is far more valuable than a book in isolation. Even “duplicates”
should be retained because each copy in a single printing of a book, especially in the hand-press era, has variations due to proof-reading corrections; each has a different binding; each had different owners who read the
books differently and may have made their own annotations; and each
forms a coherent part of the total collection. Thus “duplicates,” with these
variations, are unique.
Two stages characterize Molloy’s collecting of recusant printed items
from, for example, the Cary Library (formerly at Tor Abbey, Cotton College), the Dominican Priory at Haverstock Hill, the Dominican Priory at
Woodchester, the Carmelites at Hoogstraet/Chichester, Hawkesyard
Priory, Heythrop College, Kylemore Abbey, Ratcliffe College, St. Augustine’s at Newton Abbot, St. Charles at Bayswater, St. George’s at Worcester,
St. Mary’s Abbey at Haslemere, St. Peter’s at Winchester, and Stonyhurst

45. The description of the library as “intact” is used by Satterley in a forthcoming article. The book by Heskyns awaits examination by Satterley.

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JAMES MOLLOY AND SALES OF RECUSANT BOOKS TO THE U.S.

College. In the first stage (1962–66) he sought materials for the Douay
Museum with the grand objective of making it a center for recusant studies
in Southern England. In the second stage (beginning in 1966), his primary
focus shifted from advancing the college’s goals to gaining an income for
himself and his future family. When he left St. Edmund’s, he took what he
determined to be unneeded books and manuscripts from the Douay
Museum. Shortly after he left St. Edmund’s and began to deal with London
booksellers, he had a collection of several thousand Catholic, and recusant,
items. In the first sale in 1968 he sold, via Rota, 4340 items to the HRC.
What was he thinking when he included books that were clearly on loan to
the Douay Museum such as those he took from the nuns at St. Mary’s Abbey
at Haslemere and Kylemore Abbey? No answer to that question exonerates
his actions. It is a pity that he took many historically important printed items
from the Douay Museum such as those marked with “O.H.G.,” those
belonging to the benefactor John Maguire, or those received from the
Towneley collections. Molloy visited and acquired important printed items
from institutions such as the priory at Woodchester, the Middle Temple,
and Stonyhurst College. The results are now, almost fifty years later, distressing to Dominicans, to librarians at the Middle Temple, and to the
Jesuits at Stonyhurst.46 Molloy’s collecting led to sales of books and manuscripts to another continent. If in such actions there can be a positive, it is
that the books and manuscripts are now well-protected, well-described, and
available to scholars. The transplanted recusant books and manuscripts now
in American libraries are valuable where they are, but most would have been
more valuable if they had remained at their original locations.

46. Stonyhurst Library, for example, has no records of removals. Molloy sold, in all,
thirty-four printed items that he obtained from this library. The current archivist, David
Knight, worked with the librarian in charge in the 1960s, the priest F. J. Turner. Knight
remembers that Turner told him, “a small number of books [were] sold under unsatisfactory circumstances in the mid-1960s”; e-mail from Knight, March 17, 2014. From the beginning, even
while Molloy was at St. Edmund’s College, he had no interest in retaining books with significant provenances. This is apparent from the sale of 350 recusant items to UCLA while Molloy
was still in charge of the Douay Museum. Those not sold as duplicates went to UCLA’s
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library from and after “01/1966,” but are hidden in its collections—that is, integrated without comment. I examined 100 that might have been from St.
Edmund’s (those by prominent Catholic authors or those printed at St. Omers and Douai) and
found forty that show that they are from St. Edmund’s. Of these forty, thirteen have the pre1856 library inscriptions of “Bib. Theol.” and some form of O[ld] H[all] G[reen]. Ten have
slips indicating that they were the very items entered by Edwin H. Burton in his 1902 catalog
(including one given by Burton himself and one Jones/Wilds/Maguire item), eleven were given
by Raymond Stanfield in 1918, and three have the Towneley bookplate in addition to other
marks that indicate they were once at St. Edmund’s College (see notes 36–38 and 40).

Book Reviews
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Dissolving Royal Marriages: A Documentary History, 860–1600. By D. L. d’Avray.
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 312. $95.00. ISBN
978-1-107-06250-4.)
Students of medieval marriage have struggled with the difficult Latin found in
papal correspondence and with the proper contextualization and interpretation of
legal documents for many years. By presenting sensitive and elegant English translations of important documents in twenty Western European royal divorce cases,
beginning with the ninth-century divorce between Lothar and Theutberga and
ending with the sixteenth-century divorce of Henri IV of France and Marguerite
of Valois, David d’Avray shows how a collection of translated sources can be made
accessible to a broad modern audience. The geographical coverage of his collection
is impressive: from Spain in the south to Scotland and Denmark in the north. The
intended audience is wide, ranging from those beginning to learn about medieval
marriage to seasoned researchers in the field.
In this selection, d’Avray makes the important point that one cannot comprehend the record of a medieval royal marriage dispute without understanding that
papal authority rested on the need for individual popes to be seen as both stern
upholders of the common received understanding of the law and merciful arbiters
between estranged spouses. Eloquently illustrating this point, d’Avray prefaces each
of his twenty cases with an overview of the legal issues raised, the persons involved
in pursuing the case, and the wider political implications of the disputes when
appropriate. Each historical introduction is followed by a discussion of the historiography and the most important studies of each case. D’Avray’s incisive discussions
not only give a strong indication of the quality of the scholarship that has gone
before but also engage with significant questions raised by previous historians and,
in many cases, propose new ways of understanding the application of medieval
marriage law.
By their very nature, the texts provided are not always for the faint-hearted,
and the English translations can be challenging. To describe his translation practice, d’Avray takes Edward Ullendorff’s maxim “as near to the original as possible
and as far from it as necessary” as his motto, but adds that he does “not count as
‘bad English’ very long and complex syntactical structures . . . which mirror the
Latin” (p. 10). Though one may quibble with this approach, which does produce
some very minor discrepancies between the Latin text and its translation, it is a
fruitful approach. The linguistic diversity of the sources is reflected by the transla581

582

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tions and allows even relative newcomers a taste of their variety, complexity, and
rhetorical impact. A case in point is Nicolas I’s 867 letter to King Lothar. Although
it is long, complex, and filled with difficult English sentences, the result of
d’Avray’s conscious decision is exhilarating. A modern reader cannot help but be
impressed by Nicolas I’s linguistic tour de force, which in its choice of adjectives and
use of biblical quotations conveys the full force of Nicolas’s fury and learning.
D’Avray’s selection of texts encompasses a diversity of genres: annals and
chronicles, papal and episcopal letters, procedural documents, recorded witness
accounts, and entire notarized transcriptions of case files. In many instances it
would have been valuable to see more extensive selections, but d’Avray has chosen
wisely among the documents to provide a compilation that does not stray from its
main purpose: to illustrate that individual popes responded to individual circumstances in individual marriage cases and that papal decisions were the outcome of a
complex dynamic among the papacy, individual kings and their spouses, and representatives of the European polity in general. By maintaining his focus, d’Avray
shows how the need for consensus concerning the papacy’s power to mediate royal
marriage disputes shaped papal decisions during the medieval period in subtle and
sometimes surprising ways.
With this collection of sources, d’Arvray has made it easy for students of all
levels of sophistication to examine his sources and come to their own conclusions
about these twenty cases. This reviewer looks forward with relish to the discussion
that this will engender.
University of Aberdeen

FREDERIK PEDERSEN

Man, Values and the Dynamics of Medieval Society: Anthropological Concepts of the
Middle Ages in a Transcultural Perspective. By Tomas Petráček. Translated by
David Livingstone. (Lublin, Poland: EL-Press. 2014. Pp. 126. Paperback.
ISBN 978-8-386-96939-8.)
Church, Society and Change: Christianity Impaired by Conflicting Elites. By Tomas
Petráček. Translated by Derek and Marzia Paton. (Lublin, Poland: EL-Press.
2014. Pp. 124. Paperback. ISBN 978-8-386-86935-00.)
In the Maelstrom of Secularization, Collaboration, and Persecution: Roman Catholicism
in Modern Czech Society and the State. By Tomas Petráček. Translated by
Derek and Marzia Paton. (Lublin, Poland: EL-Press. 2014. Pp. 129. Paperback. ISBN 978-83-86869-40-4.)
Tomas Petráček is a leading historian of the Czech Republic, teaching in the
Department of Cultural and Religious Studies in the Faculty of Education of the
University of Hradec Králove. Here he publishes three matching volumes covering
the sweep of Czech church history. The first—Man, Values and the Dynamics of
Medieval Society: Church Society and Change—is rooted in the contemporary problem of globalization and wonders whether the past, specifically the medieval experience of diversity and solidarity, can provide any guidance for the problems we now

BOOK REVIEWS

583

face. The book explores medieval anthropology and the relation between Church
and society, with further chapters on such subjects as the medieval Inquisition.
Medieval civilization becomes a starting point for meditation on categories such as
culture, tradition, identity, and multiculturalism (defined as “a plurality of noncommunicating ghettos” [p. 10]). The goal is a Christian universalism in which the
various cultural traditions are stripped of any ultimacy they might claim, finding
rather legitimacy within a family of cultures. Throughout the volumes, translation
into English, if less than elegant, sometimes can be amusing, as when, also on page
10, we are told, “The individual does not escape into new cultures in Christianity,
but steps up into it with one foot while the other foot remains firmly planted.” The
second chapter of this volume describes the influence of Christianity on medieval
culture. The third chapter focuses on a cluster of themes ordered around the question of the perception of human fate. The fourth and fifth chapters use St. Thomas
Aquinas to explore the relation between norms and society, and the sixth turns to
the medieval Inquisition. This chapter does a particularly good job of explaining
the differences between the social necessities bearing on medieval and modern societies that led to, in the medieval case, one way of setting boundaries, and in the
modern, other ways. The seventh chapter considers medieval poverty and social
assistance. Especially a number of linguistic matters such as the unending variety of
language, varying from village to village, are very well put.
The second volume of this trilogy—Church Society and Change: Christianity
Impaired by Conflicting Elites—traces Western Christianity through the Peace of
Westphalia. The analysis, with the repetitiveness also found in the other volumes,
centers on the ability of the Catholic Church to come to terms with the change
brought by the Protestant Reformation leading, it is claimed, to the ultimate secularization of society. We find such characterizations as “a neurotic . . . society” (p. 34).
The third volume of the trilogy—In the Maelstrom of Secularization, Collaboration, and Persecution: Roman Catholicism in Modern Czech Society and the State—
treats the often traumatic modern history of the Bohemian Lands (Bohemia,
Moravia, and Austrian Silesia) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It aims
to provide general reflections on the secularization of these Lands, by which is
meant “a mass departure from religious practice in organized churches in this country compared with all its central European neighbours . . . with the possible exception of the former German Democratic Republic” (p. 7). Then occurs a summary
chapter on medieval and early-modern times, looking for the roots of current
Czech atheism, and two chapters on the nineteenth century. Chapter 4 takes up the
religious orders of women from an unusual perspective, their contribution to the
development of the Czech nation. The following chapter reflects on the attempt to
set up the Czechoslovak Church in 1920, a new national “church for the times,”
synthesizing the ideology of the fifteenth-century Bohemian Reformation and certain modern trends in Catholicism. The final chapters describe all the twentiethcentury persecutions.
University of Utah

GLENN W. OLSEN

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BOOK REVIEWS

Mission and Ecstasy: Contemplative Women and Salvation in Colonial Spanish America and the Philippines. By Magnus Lundberg. [Studia Missionalia Svecana
CV.] (Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary Research. 2015. Pp. 270.
ISBN 978-91-506-2443-4.)
At the center of this book is an intriguing paradox: how can contemplative
women assume apostolic roles? Aren’t the cloister and the mission fields absolutely
separate physical spaces? Yes, but as the author convinces us, this is only if we
understand missionary work in a very literal way. If we join him in understanding
mission “more inclusively as acts made by a person perceived to be in favor of the
salvation of others” (p. 16), we can immediately grasp how Spanish American nuns
and beatas, enmeshed in a social world in which “heathens” and “bad Christians”
abounded, could find ways to participate in the urgent efforts to convert them.
Using an impressive corpus of hagiographies, funeral sermons, spiritual autobiographies, and commissioned diaries (that is to say, both male- and female-generated
texts) Lundberg identifies five ways that religious women acted to try to save others’
souls. These are love, prayer, suffering, teaching, and flight, to each of which a
chapter is devoted. Each begins with a brief and accessible discussion of the theology around these concepts, and then follows with multiple interesting, well-presented case studies from throughout the Americas and the Philippines.
The “love” chapter departs from the idea that there are two sides to charity: love
of God and love of neighbor, each impossible without the other. Thus religious
women who “burned” with the love of God often also burned with the desire to contribute to others’ salvation. In Spanish America, these women often expressed frustration that they could not die in the mission fields, wishing they were men so that
martyrdom would be possible. The bulk of the chapter thus concerns the surprisingly vividly-expressed preoccupation in the texts with what cloistered women
couldn’t do, despite their love for their neighbors and, of course, for God.
This leads to the second chapter, on prayer, which is focused on the intercessory role of religious women—in other words, not on their frustrations but with the
actions they could take to advance conversion. Women or their hagiographers wrote
of visiting purgatory and even hell to intercede for the dead. Of course, they also
prayed for the living, both the missionaries themselves and the unconverted.
Although the case studies are excellent, there was a bit of a letdown from the exciting “love” chapter, in the sense that these women burning with apostolic zeal could
“only” pray for conversion. Prayer is, after all, what we already understand to be at
the center of religious women’s lives. The third chapter, on suffering, emphasizes
that women could become “manly” through pain and torture of the body, but it still
seemed to be mainly about things we already know about religious women and
therefore to take us farther away from the unique story of the apostolic desires of
religious women.
The chapters on teaching and flight, however, bring us squarely back to the
central theme of the book. Both are about active efforts to reach the mission fields.

BOOK REVIEWS

585

Nuns, from the cloister, could advise missionaries and others who needed their help
to save their own souls or the souls of others. Beatas, who could be less restricted in
their movements, could actually catechize among the indigenous people and thus
participate directly in a mission. The nuns who took spiritual flight to the mission
fields were in obvious ways providing edifying and inspiring accounts that advanced
the missionary effort.
In sum, the paradox proves not to be irreconcilable; nuns and beatas not only
wished to advance the missionary effort but also found ways to do so. This book,
through wonderful case studies, tells us not only how, but in the process, gives us
another way to think about the experience of religious women in colonial Spanish
America as distinct from that of religious women in Europe.
University of California, Berkeley

MARGARET CHOWNING

Religion, Nation, and Secularization in Ukraine. Edited by Martin Schulze Wessel
and Frank E. Sysyn. (Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.
2015. Pp. xii, 174. $24.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-189-4865-38-8. )
Proceeding from a 2010 international conference held in Munich under the
same title, this book covers a range of topics on the history of religious culture in
Ukraine, its interaction with national identity, and its encounters with secularizing
trends in three episodes from the Union of Brest (1595–96) to the 1930s.
The first two papers treat religious and national cross-fertilization between
Poland and Ukraine. Kerstin Jobst’s brilliant study analyzes the veneration of St.
Josaphat Kuntsevych, the murdered champion of the Union of Brest, whose cult is
a transnational phenomenon shared by Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Polish
Roman Catholics. Burkhard Wöller compares Polish and Ukrainian historiographies of the Union of Brest. Rather than a conflict between two monolithic lines
of interpretation, Wöller demonstrates that each side had its own internal diversity
as it assessed the religious, political, and geo-cultural dimensions of the Unia.
The next group of papers considers the role of clergy and religious functionaries in modernization and in forging relations between their religious communities
and the secular world. Michael Moser outlines the creation of the Modern Standard Ukrainian language and argues that the role of nineteenth-century Galician
Greek Catholic clerics was no less important than that of Ukrainian laity in the
Russian empire. Tobias Grill offers a fascinating exploration of how rabbis in nineteenth-century Ukraine contributed to the modernization and secularization of
Judaism in religious life, education, philanthropy, and politics. Frank Sysyn gives a
portrait of priest Mykhailo Zubrytsky and considers his role in the transformation
of religious identity into national identity among the Greek Catholics of Galicia.
The final section covers conflict, controversy, and contrasts in the first half of
the twentieth century and in various settings, from the Ukrainian village to the inter-

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BOOK REVIEWS

national context. Liliana Hentosz studies Vatican policy on the Polish-Ukrainian
war of 1918–19 and its efforts to balance justice and equal rights for all nations in a
conflict where Catholics took up arms against each another. Oleh Pavlyshyn focuses
on the calendar reform controversy as it affected Ukrainian Greek Catholic relations
with other denominations and their sense of identity between Polish Roman
Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy. He extends his survey to the end of the twentieth century with a fascinating overview of the issue in the diaspora.
Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak draws on archival sources to study conflicts
between Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops and their politicized clergy and faithful.
In fact, hot-button issues like clerical celibacy, Latinization, and support for
Ukrainian patriotism were so divisive that even bishops found themselves on opposite sides. Bohachevsky-Chomiak’s insight, that the church and its laity suffered
from an inability to understand their disagreements, uncovers an Achilles’ heel that
would continue to plague the church in later years. Leonid Heretz’s oral history
project on the Boiko region in the interwar period provides rich sources on the
introduction of secular ideas and values into the traditional Ukrainian village.
Through the prism of a reconstructed semantic dichotomy (“enlightened/ignorant”), Heretz sheds light on striking contrasts between generations, secular/religious outlooks, and official/popular beliefs and practices.
This deceptively slim, yet very rich, collection provides accessible, informative,
and cutting-edge historical research on a neglected area of East European studies.
It will be of interest to students and specialists of Eastern Europe who wish to
know more about Ukraine’s diverse religious history, both on the homefront and in
its contacts and interactions with Poland, Austria, and Russia.
University of Sudbury
Sudbury, Canada

ANDRII KRAWCHUK

The Long Shadow of Vatican II: Living Faith and Negotiating Authority since the
Second Vatican Council. Edited by Lucas Van Rompay, Sam Miglarese, and
David Morgan. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2015. Pp.
xii, 165. $24.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-4696-2529-4.)
In the decades since the Second Vatican Council, scholarship has generally
focused on diachronic and synchronic studies of the council texts. This volume,
originating in a Duke University-sponsored lecture series, contributes to a growing
body of Council literature exploring its ongoing reception.
Catherine Clifford’s essay stands at the thematic center of the volume, sketching out the Council’s shift from a centralized and juridical understanding of authority to a biblical vision of authority as service. At the same time, she demonstrates a
key theme running through the essays in this volume, arguing that the postconciliar
period has seen a markedly inconsistent implementation of the council’s ecclesial
vision. Several other essays in this volume will demonstrate the postconciliar ten-

BOOK REVIEWS

587

sion that has existed between the hierarchy’s own understanding of its authority
and the liberating vision of authority embraced by theologians and laity.
Leo Lefebure maps out a parallel shift in the Council’s attitude toward nonChristian religions, marking a movement from suspicion and prejudice to a fundamentally positive attitude toward those religious traditions. He outlines the textual
history and import of Nostra aetate and Dignitatis humanae, while also noting textual support for this shift in other council texts. Yet, as with Clifford’s account on
authority, Lefebure recounts an uneven reception of this shift in postconciliar
Catholicism. One must acknowledge important advances in the Vatican document
Dialogue and Proclamation and key papal gestures (such as John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s groundbreaking visits to mosques in Damascus and Istanbul) without
overlooking the missteps reflected in the CDF document Dominus Iesus and Benedict’s regrettable anti-Islamic gaffe in his 2006 Regensburg address.
The three remaining essays in this volume offer a welcome complexification
of postconciliar reception. The church historian Leslie Woodcock Tentler notes
the series of crises that afflicted the American Catholic Church after the Council.
Yet she exposes the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of commentators who would
blame these crises directly on the council. Tentler insists that the destabilizing
shifts in the postconciliar period were largely inevitable, due to the social forces in
the post–World War II period that were breaking down the Catholic subculture.
More educated laypersons were bound to become more active agents in the construction of their Catholic identity, leading to predictable ambiguities in the appropriation of council teaching. That the interpretation and reception of the Council
texts would take on a life of its own is evident in Jill Peterfeso’s essay. She recounts
how the postconciliar movements for the ordination of women often took inspiration from select conciliar texts, such as Gaudium et spes’ condemnation of sexism,
while drawing conclusions often at odds with those of the bishops charged as the
Council’s official interpreters. The volume concludes with a fascinating study of
conciliar reception in material culture. Hillary Kaell reports on the changing meanings and associations attached to the wayside crosses that can be found along the
thoroughfares of Quebec today. These crosses have their origins in a traditional
French Canadian Catholic devotionalism. Yet many contemporary Quebec
Catholics still cherish and care for these crosses while now attaching to them
Council-inspired meanings. These new meanings privilege a personal relationship
with God and the enduring value of being Catholic even when that Catholic identity is estranged from institutional Catholic affiliation and sacramental practice.
Taken together, these five essays, accompanied by a helpfully contextualizing
introduction and conclusion, add much to a thicker account of the reception of the
Council. They combine conventional theological scholarship with more empirical
and ethnographic sources to demonstrate the ambiguity and promise of the Council for the Church today.
Boston College

RICHARD GAILLARDETZ

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MEDIEVAL
Medieval Christianity: A New History. By Kevin Madigan. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2015. Pp. xxiv, 487. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-300-1587-24.
Over the last fifty years or so, the study of medieval Christianity has broadened considerably beyond strictly institutional or theological approaches to include
studies of parochial religion, mysticism, and heresy. In recent years scholars have
endeavored to uncover the beliefs and religious practices of the ordinary laity and
the extent to which clerical elites and laypeople were part of a shared religious culture. Contemporary concerns, too, have raised new questions and inspired interest
in religious dissidents, interfaith relationships, and the role of women in medieval
Christianity, resulting in a stream of publications on communities and groups that
are rarely, if ever, considered in more traditional histories.
Given the explosion of scholarly interest in medieval religion and the recognition of its importance for understanding medieval history in general, Kevin Madigan’s book, Medieval Christianity: A New History fulfills an evident need for a new
synthesis. Noting that the last major synthesis was Richard Southern’s Western
Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmonsworth, UK,1970), Madigan’s
stated goal is to provide a new survey for undergraduate students with little to no
knowledge of the topic or time period. Defining “medieval Christianity” broadly,
the author presents a narrative history of Western Christendom that integrates the
research of the last several decades, particularly studies on mysticism, lay religion,
and parish life.
In all of these objectives, Madigan succeeds admirably. Well written and
broadly accessible, this book would indeed serve as a useful textbook in courses on
the history of Christianity. The chapters are well organized, highly focused, and
provide broad coverage of major historical developments while addressing historiographical debates in a fluid, engaging manner with plenty of clear, illustrative
examples. As Madigan suggests in the introduction, these debates—presented
throughout the book with a light, engaging touch—could serve as research topics
in undergraduate courses. Madigan helpfully provides bibliographical information
for each chapter in the notes section at the end of the book as well as a glossary of
relevant terms.
Following the customary chronological divisions of the Middle Ages (early,
high, and late), Madigan begins with a succinct overview of “Pivotal Moments in
Early Christianity,” effectively sketching the importance of creeds, councils, and
clergy in “the emergence of normative Christianity” (p. 11). Part 2 focuses on cultures of conversion in the early Middle Ages while introducing central themes in
the history of medieval Christianity such as the relationship between imperial
power and the papacy. Two chapters on Jews and Muslims, respectively, round out
part 2, laying out the context for increasingly tense and often tragic interfaith relations in the later Middle Ages.

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Part 3 on the High Middle Ages begins with the reform movement of the
eleventh-century church, presenting a comprehensive narrative covering monastic
culture, heresy, the rise of the mendicant orders, scholasticism, religious education,
popular religion, papal monarchy, and Jewish/Christian relations. Throughout,
Madigan engages with the influential and much-critiqued “two-tiered model” of
medieval religious history, using vivid examples to show that medieval society was
hardly composed of “two distinct cultures” (p. 91)—that is, educated, Christianized
clerics on the one hand and superstitious, folkloric laypeople on the other. Rather,
medieval culture was characterized by “dynamic interaction” (p. 94) between clergy
and laity.
Part 4, “Later Medieval Christianity,” addresses the calamities of the fourteenth century, the decline of papal power, and the rise of religious reformers.
Here, Madigan’s efforts to integrate new research on women and mysticism is perhaps most evident. In a sweeping discussion of influential mystical writers from
Hildegard of Bingen to Catherine of Siena, Madigan illustrates the important role
played by women in shaping late-medieval spirituality as visionaries and writers.
Overall, this is an excellent textbook that is wholeheartedly recommended for
undergraduate courses on medieval Christianity.
Loyola University Chicago

TANYA STABLER MILLER

Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome. By George E. Demacopoulos. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2015. Pp. viii, 236.
$28.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-02621-9.)
Pope Gregory the Great has warranted an explosion of historical attention in
the past three decades. Recent scholarship has focused on questions of continuity—
was Gregory a late-antique leader or a medieval one? A Roman bishop or Byzantine patriarch? A classical scholar or Christian exegete? A spiritual teacher or pragmatic ecclesiastical manager? This volume is a welcome addition to the mix and
represents George Demacopoulos’s third major publication on Gregory. In his
well-received Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church (Notre Dame,
1977), Gregory’s activity as spiritual guide of clergy in the Pastoral Rule was the
fifth model under consideration. Demacopoulos’s second major book, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia,
2013), offered a critical rereading of claims for papal primacy by three bishops of
Rome: Leo the Great (440–61), Gelasius (492–96), and Gregory (590–604).
The most recent volume appraises the questions posed above as false binaries
(p. 11), in much the same way as did the authors of the recent Brill publication, A
Companion to Gregory the Great, edited by Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo
(Leiden, 2013), to which Demacopoulos made a valuable contribution. Eschewing
a traditional narrative history (as in, for example, Barbara Müller, Führung im
Denken und Handeln Gregors des Grossen [Tübingen, 2009]), Demacopoulos opts
here for a historical theological approach that garners evidence equally from Gre-

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gory’s vast register of letters (the largest surviving from late antiquity) and his pastoral, homiletic, exegetical, and hagiographical works. This gives a rich and variegated picture of the administrative rigors of the Roman episcopacy at the end of the
sixth century and beginning of the seventh, as well as reflecting the more existential
problems that Rome’s dwindling power raised for its church, its inhabitants, and its
leaders. Demacopoulos approaches these problems with sympathy and nuance, and
provides an excellent account of three aspects of Gregory’s pontificate: his ascetic,
pastoral, and civic roles. In part 1, Gregory’s own brand of asceticism, which valued
public service rather than detached spiritual progress, is shown as central to his theology. In part 2, Demacopoulos demonstrates that
Gregory’s pastoral theology was inextricably linked to an ascetic outlook
that both measured the worthiness of a potential candidate for spiritual
leadership in terms of his ascetic credentials and encouraged a type of
spiritual instruction that emphasized moral reform through ascetic
means. (p. 81)
It is argued in the third part, not unexpectedly, that Gregory’s ascetic formation
and pastoral concerns informed every aspect of his response to the civic problems
of Rome (p. 157).
The introduction (pp. 1–11) presents a useful overview of the history of scholarship, from the opposing camps of Erich Caspar and Walter Ullmann, to more
recent debates in European and North American scholarship. Perhaps the only
shortcoming for this reader was the infrequency of lengthy quotations from Gregory’s own writings. Short snippets abound such as in the discussion of Gregory’s
use of ascetic idioms in his exegetical treatments of the Fall (p. 22). This is a handy
synthesis but was a little surprising, given that Demacopoulos professes to employ
the tools of discourse analysis, where literary context, precedents and rhetorical
devices are all brought under the historical microscope. It is an approach to the text
that can be very illuminating and would have been strengthened by more citations
of the Latin in translation.
This is only a minor quibble, however, and need not detract from the enjoyment
and profit to be gained from a well-presented and tightly argued account of a multifaceted bishop, whose legacy still has much to contribute to discussions of best practice in spiritual leadership, not least in the current Roman ecclesiological context.
Australian Catholic University

BRONWEN NEIL

The Cult of St Edmund in Medieval East Anglia. By Rebecca Pinner. (Rochester,
NY: Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer. 2015. Pp. xii, 276.
$95.00. ISBN 978-1-78327-035-4.)
Both the cult of St. Edmund and the monastic community in which his “riche
shrine” was housed have been subject to extensive historical and archaeological
scrutiny for many years. Since the publication of Thomas Arnold’s Memorials
(London, 1890) the works of historians such as Antonia Gransden, Dorothy

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Whitelock, and (more recently) Tom Licence have sought to shed light on the cult
of the Anglo-Saxon royal martyr saint and the activities of his custodians at the
Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. Despite this proliferation of academic writing on the
subject, Rebecca Pinner’s account is a timely and important book. Previous publications on the subject have certainly achieved great depth in the construction of
coherent narratives of particular aspects of the cult or the intellectual life at the
abbey, but Pinner takes a very wide-reaching and holistic approach, and attempts
to embed and contextualize the wealth of material relating to this topic in her
ambitious narrative, which attempts to draw a continuous line from the death of
the last king of the East Angles in 869 to the dissolution of the abbey of Bury St.
Edmunds in 1539. As such, this book should hold significant appeal for the general
reader wishing to become acquainted with this very popular, but ultimately rather
enigmatic, early-medieval saint.
The hagiographic tradition of St. Edmund in its fully fledged late-medieval
form depicts him as a tripartite personage bearing the epithets of king, martyr, and
virgin; Pinner appears to have taken inspiration from her subject in this regard and
likewise structures her narrative as three distinct sections. The first introduces us to
the evolving hagiography of St. Edmund, beginning with Abbo of Fleury’s tenthcentury Passio and continuing via the curiously punitive miracles recorded by
Herman the Archdeacon in his De Miraculis in the late-eleventh century, and the
entirely spurious additions (from a historical perspective) made to the tradition by
Geoffrey of Wells in the mid-twelfth century before alighting on John Lydgate’s
fifteenth-century English verse life of St. Edmund, which represents the final flowering of his cult. Other authors have written about these manuscripts in greater
detail, but as previously noted, the value of this book lies in its discussion of all the
extant hagiographical material in an integrated context.
Section 2 of the book focuses on the shrine of St. Edmund and seeks to contextualize it in its devotional and iconographical context. Once again, Pinner’s holistic
approach bears fruit, and her attempts to integrate the physical and spiritual aspects
of the shrine into one seamless narrative are laudable and create a very vivid impression of how medieval pilgrims may have experienced the shrine and its environs.
The last part of the book leaves Bury St. Edmunds behind and seeks to fix St.
Edmund in the wider landscape, drawing on a multitude of different evidence bases
from textual sources to archaeology and iconography. This allows the reader to gain
an insight into the importance and reach of the cult throughout East Anglia and
finally embeds this saint into the entirety of his ancient domain and not just his
own banleuca.
In summary, Pinner’s book achieves the difficult feat of drawing together different kinds of evidence and strands of narrative associated with St. Edmund into one
cohesive whole, which makes for a lively, engaging, and thought-provoking read.
University of East Anglia

MICHAEL SCHMOELZ

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Offertorium: Das mittelalterliche Meßopfer. By Arnold Angenendt. [Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen, Band 101.] (Münster: Aschendorf
Verlag. 2014. Pp. xvi, 562. ISBN 978-3-402-11264-9.)
For centuries, the Sacrament of the Altar has been the heart of Christian worship. Many books have been written to help us understand this great mystery of faith
and to depict its outer manifestation in the history of the Church. A new book on
this subject is Offertorium, written by Arnold Angenendt, professor emeritus of the
Department of Catholic Theology of Münster University and a trendsetter in the
debate on the Christian Middle Ages. Angenendt’s book focuses on the celebration
of the Eucharist that became, over the course of centuries, the execution of a sacrifice. From the Eucharistic prayer of the Early Church it can be deduced that the
faithful together prayed that an angel would transport the gifts of bread and wine to
the celestial altar, where these gifts were then presented by God to the faithful as the
Body and Blood of the Son. From this perspective the priest is not consecrating, nor
is he offering something. However, in the Carolingian Age the role of the congregation was taken over by the priest alone. Henceforth he was not just presenting the
bread and the wine but offering the Body and Blood of Christ to God the Father.
This new perspective had many consequences: thus, the faithful were now no longer
co-executors of the ritual but just interested bystanders. The celebration of the
Eucharist became the Sacrifice of the Mass, an affair between priest and God for the
benefit of the congregation. Such far-reaching interpretative swings may be one
result of liturgical books circulating between Roman and German-speaking areas
(from Rome to France, from France to Germany, from Germany back to Rome).
This led to misinterpretations of key words such as offertorium or offerrimus.
During the later Middle Ages many faithful focused more on Holy Communion than on the Sacrifice of the Mass. They experienced Communion as an inner
union with Christ. Yet, another kind of sacrifice became important, the donation
by the faithful of themselves (Selbstopfer) to God, as an act of pure devotion.
According to Hugo of St. Victor (d. 1141), followed by later generations, “he who
believes and loves, even if he is not able to receive the Sacrament, will fare better
than he who does receive the Sacrament, but does not believe or love.” Two ritual
acts received a central place in the religious experience of the ordinary believers: the
elevation of the Host during Mass and the transport of the Host (viaticum) to the
house of a sick or dying person. Both acts were considered as the most appropriate
occasions to adore Christ and to communicate spiritually—that is, without eating
the Eucharistic bread or drinking the Eucharistic wine.
Offertorium is an interesting read for scholars and others. Because of that, and
because Angenendt discusses many themes in connection with the Eucharist in a
masterly way, the book deserves to be translated into English. An expansion of the
fifth and last chapter (“Rückblick und Ausblick”) on the actual dogmatic and liturgical discourse would be welcome, as the author addresses theologians of only
German-speaking countries (Angenendt criticizes the views of Joseph Andreas
Jungmann and Joseph Ratzinger, and joins the ranks of Otto Pesch and others).

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This expansion is particularly desirable because Angenendt wants not only to write
for historians but also to provide impetus for liturgical renewal.
Titus Brandsma Institute
Nijmegen, The Netherlands

CHARLES CASPERS

Seven Myths of the Crusades. Edited with introduction and epilogue by Alfred J.
Andrea and Andrew Holt. [Myths of History: A Hackett Series.] (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. 2015. Pp. xxxvi, 163. $19.00 paperback. ISBN 9781-62466-403-8.)
Modern democratization of information has not been accompanied by an
equivalent extension of learning. That, at least, is the implied premise of this book,
which takes as its target the contrast between popular perception and academic
understanding of the nature and significance of medieval crusades. Given the active
and potentially toxic recruitment of the crusades in current international public and
political debate, the peddling of myth and untruth may appear to possess more serious consequences than the ruffled egos of the ignored professoriat.
The stated aim of this collection of essays is to correct seven prominent popular misconceptions: that the First Crusade (1095–99) was unprovoked, the first
military conflict between Christendom and Islam (Paul Crawford); that crusading
demonstrated a form of irrational religious madness (James Muldoon); that the
crusades initiated and defined European anti-Judaism (Daniel Franke); that crusaders were proto-colonists, motivated by material greed (Corliss Slack); that the
Children’s Crusade of 1212 was a genuine story of corrupted innocence (David
Sheffler); that there is any connection at all between Freemasonry and the military
order of the Templars (Jace Stuckey); that the crusades have been a constant historic source of Muslim grievance (Mona Hammad and Edward Peters). The aim
may seem laudable enough. However, despite its solid scholarly virtues and intellectual caliber, it is hard to see how the book serves its purpose. On the one hand,
most contributions are to varying degrees self-referentially academic, weighted
with long (and, for the insider, very useful) footnotes that will hardly attract the
uninitiated. Most spend time, much of it repetitive, detailing current historiographical matters perhaps of interest to fellow historians but of no interest for an
audience from the misinformed public. Perhaps the idea is for the book to be used
like a thirteenth-century preacher’s manual, to help fellow professionals trounce the
distortions of the ignorant. Professional solipsism pervades the de haut en bas editorial identification of wisdom in “the mainstream of today’s scholarly interpretation—a general consensus built upon decades of research, reflection and debate” (p.
viii). Such ex cathedra pronouncements insisting on the primacy of the “mainstream” and “consensus” should alarm self-respecting critical historians. As is later
conceded, skepticism and doubt lie at the center of any attempt to make sense of
the evidence from the past. Acknowledgment of complexity is precisely what alienates promoters of meretricious untruths based on seductive symmetry and bogus
clarity of definition. If Seven Myths is intended to provide dinner table, seminar

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room, or soapbox ammunition, rather than to appeal directly to a supposed general
readership, this explains why much of the material is very familiar to anyone working in this historical area. The nature of the project constrains fresh insight,
although some contributors appear to be implicitly defending the reputation of the
crusades, thus falling into the same unhistorical trap in which they rightly locate
those they seek to refute. Particular icons of myth get repeated bashing such as
Terry Jones’s TV documentary (2006) and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven
(2005), even though the former has been forgotten in its country of origin (the
United Kingdom), whereas the latter, dire as it is as drama, is just fiction. As such,
Scott legitimately can do what he likes with plot and character. It is not historical
error that needs to be asserted here but genre category confusion. Occasionally,
myth intrudes, as in Crawford’s undifferentiated typology of “Muslim” political
power and his apparent assumption that frontier conflicts were ipso facto religious—
another oversimplified, Manichean falsehood inviting challenge. Apart from the
lucid introduction, the best contribution is that by Hammad and Peters on the
development of the crusades as a totem of insult and oppression across what they
call the Islamicate, a term embracing the religious, geographic, political, chronological, and cultural diversity of Islamic societies and polities that contradicts facile
confrontational binaries such as Crawford’s, its contingency and subtlety both truly
historical and indicating the best way to outface corrosive myths.
University of Oxford

CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN

Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture. Edited by Naoë Kukita
Yoshikawa. [Gender in the Middle Ages, Vol. 11.] (Rochester, NY: D. S.
Brewer. 2015. Pp. xvi, 293. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-84384-401-3.)
An English mystic in her revelations rejoices in the blood streaming from
Christ’s wounded body that threatens to make her own bed and sickroom a veritable bloodbath; a Flemish lady, threatened by her parents with marriage, cuts off her
own nose; a Hungarian princess immediately on receiving the religious habit
founds a hospital where she herself serves as a humble caregiver for the sick men
there; female inmates in mixed leprosaria in northern France get pregnant and are
permanently expelled from such quasi-monastic institutions: in all four cases their
own bodies, or bodily functions and images, are a platform to express religious
devotion, approaching a spiritual union with God, or proving or disproving their
commitment to chastity. These are only a partial selection of vignettes from this
collection of eleven essays (elegantly introduced by the editor and seamed together
in an afterword by Denis Renevey) on the religion–medicine nexus from c. 1100 to
c. 1500, with special reference to gender and emphasis on medieval English literary
sources and intellectual contexts. The collection is a welcome contribution to our
growing library, highlighting the pivotal role of bodily medicine, disease, disability,
physicians, care and cure, and the body in general, in promoting both real and
metaphorical transumptions to the spiritual and in creating crucial opportunities
for spiritual contemplation. Medical and spiritual knowledge is seen to form a
hybrid, occasionally blurring boundaries between physical and spiritual ailments

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and healing. At a time when female medicine was increasingly becoming masculine, a gendered filtering of such texts is particularly welcome, adding important
nuances to this common view.
The two opening essays on the idea of Mary the Physician (Maria Medica), who
practices medicine alongside her more widely recognized role as intercessory healer
and her natural association with childbirth, highlight the female as healer in hagiographical/mystical and secular traditions of medieval English women (particularly
The Life of Christina of Markyate, The Book of Margery Kempe, and the letters of the
Paston women [Dianne Watt] and Geoffrey Chaucer [Roberta Magnani]). Such
use of the concept, Watt claims, was closely linked to and validated the role of
women as healers in society. Regarding Chaucer’s Doctour of Phisik’s Tale, Magnani
maintains that the author queries the dominance of male-clerical authority, presenting Mary as an alternative form of incarnated authority assuming an equal healing or salvific potency in relation to the Trinity.
Three essays show the peculiar emphasis female mystics placed on metaphors
of physical and spiritual illness. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa unfolds the layers of medical allusions (particularly those related to the cult of the Sacred Heart) in the revelations of Mechtild of Hackerborn, translated in the fifteenth century into Middle
English, and the delicate interplay of Eucharistic symbolism, popular piety, and the
discourse of medicine. Liz Herbert McAvoy reviews the development of anchoritic
medical discourse (in the revelations of Julian of Norwich especially) and the “medicinal” role of penance and contemplation in anchoritic life, regulating the spiritual
health of the anchorite and the prescribed cure for Christians’ spiritual ills. Deeply
familiar with the religious, mystical, and literary traditions of narrating visions and
revelation, Juliette Vuille describes Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe ecstatically encountering the divine—conceiving, presenting, and transmitting their
visions and mental condition as perfectly sane “divine,” “heavenly,” or “holy insanity.” This became a source of authority and expertise in their community, to judge
expertly whether a mystical vision came from God or the devil (performing a discretio spirituum), and help and teach others similarly affected. Vuille highlights the
limits and fallacies of a simplistic psychological and psychiatric (hence ahistorical)
analysis of such religious behavior, often pathologized and labeled a form of lobe
epilepsy, hallucinations, hysteria, neurosis, Tourette’s syndrome, or other mental
disorders, with little sensitivity to the larger context of the medieval sources.
Two essays concern the cultural force of medical tropology in fifteenth-century religious poetry and prose. Takami Matsuda analyzes the medical tropes in
John Audelay’s poems (c. 1430), saturated with spiritual illness and its cure and
transforming penance into a healing medical treatment starting in this life as an
earthly purgatory. Louise Bishop explores meditative reading as cure and medicine,
focusing on organic metaphors in late-medieval Middle English prose (Bishop
Reginald Pecock’s writings from c. 1450). At the center is the metaphor of the heart
and its role as the foremost organ, the seat of being and understanding on which
the reading is imprinted.

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The last four essays explore the merging discourse of spiritual and physical
health among physicians, theologians, and natural philosophers: congenital physical and mental disability (Irina Metzler); medieval responses to women’s facial disfigurement (Patricia Skinner); responses to blindness (Joy Hawkins); and the intersection between bodily and spiritual care inside and outside leprosaria in England
and northern France (Elma Brenner). Medieval notions of disability were gendered
and tended to mark some failing in the mother as the primary cause for the birth
of an imperfect child. In a secular world that saw facial mutilation as a sign of
wrongdoing, the male hagiographers writing the lives of three holy women (Oda of
Brabant, a Premonstratensian, d. 1158; St. Margaret of Hungary, a Dominican, d.
1270; and St. Margaret of Cortona, a Franciscan Tertiary, d. 1297) made facial disfigurement (to the nose especially) a powerful motif of bodily marking, indicating
spiritual devotion and a commitment to chastity and virginity. Like other forms of
physical impairment, blindness was not automatically connected to sin or necessarily prescribed marginalization and exclusion. Complexity, ambivalence, and reflectivity characterized the medieval response to blindness, which could be considered
a gift. Through the filter of gender, intriguing insights emerge about the regulation
of sex in leprosaria and the dedication to meeting the lepers’ long-term bodily and
spiritual needs.
Anyone intrigued by the peculiar body-centered, corporeal spirituality of
medieval female mystics, and interested in the history of popular Christian devotion before 1500, in the evolution of penitential rhetoric and of premodern tropological style in religious writings, in the interweaving of religious and other discourses (medical in particular), will find in this rich collection food for thought and
a plethora of enlightening examples.
University of Haifa

JOSEPH ZIEGLER

Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the
Twelfth Century. By Chris Wickham. [Lawrence Stone Lectures.] (Princeton:
Princeton University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 305. ISBN 978-0-691-14828-1.)
Based on Chris Wickham’s May 2013 Lawrence Stone Lectures, this volume
is a study of how the commune—as a new and fundamentally autonomous form of
government focused on annually changed consuls—came into existence in northern
and central Italy in the twelfth century. This form of government seemed radically
innovative to outsiders. One difficult issue confronted by Wickham is the definition of a commune, particularly because of the extreme variety of cases in central
and northern Italy. Wickham defines an ideal type based on the following elements: a conscious urban collectivity, a regularly rotating set of magistracies, and a
de facto autonomy of action for the city and its magistrates. Wickham’s approach
to this theme is path-breaking in a number of ways. He specifically considers
whether the development of this new form of government had programmatic and
conscious aspects; as he writes, “what did they think they were doing?” (p. 6, emphasis in original). Wickham has a deep knowledge of the previous literature in the

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topic and an awareness of how this is linked to debates with broad ideological
implications, such as the origins of Renaissance and of Republican forms of government and values (e.g., Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political
Thought [New York, 1978]). It is worth noting that the three cases he chooses are
Milan, Pisa, and Rome. Whereas the first two cities are usually taken into account
in the general narratives of the history of the Italian communes, the inclusion of
Rome in the comparison is rather innovative. Rome also represents a clear case in
which the new form of administration was developed as conscious opposition to
previous forms of political hegemony in the city. Wickham’s work connects in particular to two important contributions to the origins of communes: Hagen Keller’s
Adelsherrschaft und städtische Gesellschaft in Oberitalien, 9. bis 12. Jahrhundert
(Tübingen, 1979), and Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur’s Cavaliers et citoyens (Paris,
2003). These two volumes have been crucial to the discussion of the nature of the
ruling elites of the early communes. Based in particular on the evidence of Milan,
Keller had argued that this elite was divided into defined strata (ordines) led by the
military aristocracy (pp. 11–12). Vigueur subsequently argued that the political core
of the commune was the collectivity of mounted knights of every city, which
extended beyond a small group of feudo-vassallic aristocrats (p. 13). Wickham
refers instead to three levels of elites: a richer and usually more signorial first level,
a second level that was prosperous but did not own castles, and a third level of
“medium elite” with fewer properties (p. 191). This second level was more clearly
associated with the consuls, the main magistracy of the communes, which would
have also formed the core of Vigueur’s militia.
Wickham links the development of the early commune to the vacuum of
power created by the decline of the public role of the Kingdom of Italy, in particular
of the tradition of placita that was connected to it (p. 28). A similar vacuum can be
found also in Rome, with the decline of Roman bureaucracy and public government (pp. 122–25). This argument connects thematically to previous works by
Wickham, including his Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400–
1000 (London, 1980), in which he stressed the public function of the Kingdom of
Italy. This tradition was discontinued, but it also represented a model for later polities. The early assemblies of citizens that marked the early commune period were
also, to a certain extent, a form of defensive reaction against the crisis of the kingdom (p. 195). Other factors contributed to the creation of political cohesion in different areas, such as the presence of common land to manage, or the necessity of
creating a common organization for war. The long process that had led to this new
form of government was to a large extent a “sequence of chances” (p. 203), a “sleepwalking into a new world.”
University of York

MICHELE CAMPOPIANO

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Die Collectio Cheltenhamensis: eine englische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend
auf Vorarbeitung von Walther Holtzmann (†). Edited by Gisela Drossbach.
[Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B: Corpus Collectionum, vol. 10.] (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 2014. Pp.304. €60,00. ISBN 97888-210-0925-9.)
Papal decretals, in every case “a response from the centre to a consultation or
appeal,”1 were the most important element in the formation of the new law, the ius
novum, that next to Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) dominated the teaching and practice of law at universities and courts prior to 1234, when Pope Gregory IX issued
the Liber Extra. The process of collecting these papal decretal letters began in the
form of appendices to the Decretum but quickly evolved into what seems myriad
individual, independent collections. The impetus to analyze and/or edit many of
the almost ninety decretal collections is linked primarily with the names of Walther
Holtzmann (†1963), Stephan Kuttner (†1996), Charles Duggan (†1999), and
Peter Landau. Gisela Drossbach, who recently coedited with Landau an analysis of
the French collection known as Collectio Francofurtana,2 now presents the analysis
of the English Collectio Cheltenhamensis, a name derived from the castle of Cheltenham—the home of Sir Thomas Phillipps, who owned the manuscript that is
preserved today at the British Library with the signature Egerton 2819. The analysis includes, as usual, incipit and explicit of a text, its identification (where possible),
calendar entries (if available), as well as the place of publication of the decretal (p.
25). As in the case of the Francofurtana, Drossbach has also included references to
other decretal collections that contained the same decretal, as well as notes and
comments whenever applicable, including references to secondary literature.
The Cheltenhamensis is particularly noteworthy because it combines English
and continental influences, deriving its original nucleus from a source also used by
the “Worcester” tradition, but also adding in different stages material from the
French Bamberg and Frankfurt collections (p. 19). Drossbach suggests, quoting
Charles Duggan, that the Cistercian abbot Baldwin of Ford, in 1180 bishop of
Worcester and in 1185 archbishop of Canterbury (†1190), could have inspired the
collection (p. 21) and that the Egerton manuscript actually belonged to Ford or his
circle, adding that “it was probably written in a monastery in the vicinity” (p. 22).
According to Drossbach, the manuscript was completed in its final form in the two
decades after 1193 (p. 12). Evidently, the archbishop cannot have owned the extant
copy of the Cheltenhamensis.

1. Charles Duggan, “Decretal Collections from Gratian’s Decretum to the Compilationes
antiquae: The Making of the New Case Law,” in The History of Medieval Canon Law in the
Classical Period, 1140–1234, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington,
DC, 2008), pp. 246–92, here p. 247.
2. Die Collectio Francofurtana, eine französische Decretalensammlung. Analyse beruhend auf
Vorarbeiten von Walther Holtzmann, ed. Peter Landau and Gisela Drossbach, [Monumenta
Iuris Canonici. Series B. 9], (Vatican City, 2007).

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Given the limitations of an analysis, designed to precede an eventual edition
and still less than complete in some respects, a user will not necessarily be bothered
by a certain vagueness in the introduction that leaves room for later precision. It
should be noted, however, that the author concluded surprisingly and without convincing proof that the text of the canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179,
found on folios 11ra–16rb of the Egerton manuscript as well as in many other decretal collections, were not part of the Collectio Cheltenhamensis (p. 28). The connection between the Third Lateran and the decretal collections is an intriguing issue.
Based on Holtzmann’s notes and following Kuttner, Landau insisted that the
canons from 1179 cannot be considered an independent section “but instead constitute the first title of the collection.”3 As proof for this assertion, Landau cites a
contemporary gloss he edited to c.7 of Lateran III = Chelt. 1.11. This gloss—in the
same hand C as other glosses found in the codex—refers to five later sections of
Chelt. with a simple infra. Drossbach, who referred to Landau’s respective article,
seems to have arrived at her contrasting conclusion simply because the hand of the
relevant fascicle differed from that of the scribes A, B, and C whom she identified
in other sections of the Egerton codex with the assistance of Michael Gullick and
Martin Brett (p. 11n14). She concluded that the compilers must have decided to
acquire the 1179 texts from another scriptorium and to “place the quire in front of
the Cheltenhamensis” (p. 21). No reasons are given, and since the pitfalls of palaeography are well known, it is difficult to accept her argument, in particular in light of
Landau’s remarks. Readers will, in any case, be grateful that Drossbach maintained
the customary numbering of 1 to 19 for the titles or books of Chelt. Her careful
analysis concludes with a bibliography, a list of initia, and several valuable concordances. Despite the misgivings expressed here, it should be emphasized that Die
Collectio Cheltenhamensis on the whole is an excellent, very welcome continuation
and expansion of the study of twelfth-century papal decretals.
The Catholic University of America (Emerita)

UTA-RENATE BLUMENTHAL

Jacques de Vitry (1175/1180–1240) entre l’Orient et l’Occident: L’évêque aux trois visages. By Jean Donnadieu. [Témoins de notre histoire.] (Turnhout, Belgium:
Brepols. 2015. Pp. 283. €60,00. ISBN 978-2-503-55418-1.)
Jacques de Vitry was an exceptional figure within the medieval Church. Born
in the late 1170s, Jacques spent his formative years at the University of Paris under
the influence of Peter the Chanter and his circle, which included many leading
churchmen and theologians of the time, such as the later Pope Innocent III. After
Paris, he became a canon at St. Nicholas at Oignies, where he met Marie de Nivelles, and later became a preacher for the Albigensian Crusade and the Fifth Crusade, which he also accompanied to Egypt. By then, he had been elected bishop
of Acre (1216–29) and finally crowned his career as cardinal of Tusculum (1229–

3. Peter Landau, “Die Glossen der Collectio Cheltenhamensis,” Bulletin of Medieval
Canon Law, n.s., 11 (1981), 9–28, here 11.

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40), spending his final years as a key member of the papal curia under Pope Gregory IX.
Jean Donnadieu is particularly well suited to tell Jacques’s life, having previously edited his Historia Orientalis (Turnhout, Belgium, 2008). He is well aware
that we are not in a position to write a proper biography of Jacques. We primarily
know him through his own writings, and there is very little outside information
about his life or personality. Jacques left a great number of writings: two grand
chronicles, a number of letters, a large collection of sermons, and a life of Marie (de
Nivelles) of Oignies. In them, directly or serendipitously, Jacques describes and
comments on the great changes occurring—particularly in the Church—during his
lifetime. What Donnadieu does is to look at Jacques through his writings, using
them as commentaries on the historical contexts that ruled Jacques’s life. The subtitle, “l’éveque aux trois visages,” refers to Jacques’s roles as preacher, prelate, and
writer, as these were the key aspects of his impact as a historical figure.
Donnadieu starts off with a survey of Jacques’s œuvre followed by a short summary of previous biographies and a bibliography containing editions of Jacques’s
writings, medieval sources about his life and times, and a selection of modern studies. For scholars interested in Jacques, this is an extremely useful section, even
though minor mistakes have crept into the bibliographical details. After the introductory section, Donnadieu follows Jacques’s life chronologically with individual
chapters devoted to the stages of his life and career from his youth to his final years
as a cardinal. Although the story of Jacques’s life cannot really be told in any detail
because of a lack of information, Donnadieu still manages to paint a fascinating
picture of one man’s world and his endeavors through quoting and commenting on
numerous passages from his writings. This format is not only entertaining because
it provides particular windows into Jacques’s works but also proves highly rewarding because it focusses the text on Jacques’s individual voice, thus creating a sense
of immediacy of the historical context.
The richness of the historical portrait accruing from Donnadieu’s technique is
pleasing also because he has a fine sensorium for the issues and concerns that mattered to Jacques and the people around him. What is perhaps missing is a more systematic engagement with other research. Even if Donnadieu provides the points of
departure, the reader has to make his or her own connections to current scholarly
discourses that are concerned with the wider history of the period. Nevertheless,
anyone interested in Jacques and his times is well advised to read this book.
University of Zurich

CHRISTOPH T. MAIER

From Giotto to Botticelli: The Artistic Patronage of the Humiliati in Florence. By Julia
I. Miller and Laurie Taylor-Mitchell. (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press. 2015. Pp. xiv, 244. $74.95. ISBN 978-0-271-06503-8.)
The authors provide a study of the Florentine church of Ognissanti, the leading house of the Humiliati in Tuscany and one of the largest belonging to that reli-

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gious order. The authors present the artistic decoration of the church as an example
of Humiliati patronage in the long Italian Renaissance and offer their analyses of
specific works made for the Humiliati by prominent artists from Giotto to Botticelli and beyond.
The authors pursue a dual purpose—to trace the history and development of
the Order of the Humiliati from their origins in northern Italy in the late-twelfth
century to the suppression of the male branch of the order in the sixteenth century
and, at the same time, to show the history and development of the order as it
appears in works of art commissioned for the church of Ognissanti in Florence. It
is the authors’ thesis that because the Humiliati lacked a charismatic founder or
saints from the order with whom the members could identify, they crafted and
expressed a spiritual identity in art through the representation of specific virtues
or themes but variously over the course of their history. In early works commissioned for the church, artists such as Giotto and Giovanni da Milano expressed
Humiliati ideals of humility and charity through composition, color, and certain
significant motifs, and included in their works particular saints from other religious orders who might be venerated by the Humiliati for having valued these
same ideals. In their later history, the members of the order abandoned their primary devotion to humility and hard labor, and sought to remake themselves as
scholars and intellectuals, following the model of their brethren in the Dominican
order. The authors place Donatello’s Reliquary Bust of Saint Rossore, Ghirlandaio’s
St. Jerome, and Botticelli’s St. Augustine in the context of this later period in
Humiliati history, which saw a decline in the number of members in the order, but
also saw extensive renovation and new programs of decoration in the church of
Ognissanti, itself.
It is perhaps the nature of the study, perhaps the manner in which the authors
construct and develop their thesis, that the volume is more successful in its entirety
than would be any of its individual parts presented independently. Thus, for example, their study of Giotto’s Ognissanti Madonna is not entirely convincing on its
own, relying heavily on suggestion and possibility. Nevertheless, when their observations and analyses are viewed within the greater context of Humiliati patronage—when they have shown that saints appear in similar places, with similar poses,
or in the same color of habit in other works subsequently produced for display in
the same church—the authors are able to construct an argument that is ultimately
more sure and certain than their conditional language might convey.
To a certain degree, the scope and focus of the volume seem arbitrarily constrained. The church of Ognissanti is important and the works made for its decoration rank among the finest of the Renaissance period. One wonders, however,
whether the history of Humiliati patronage might have been told differently if
more attention were given to other significant churches and their decoration. As
example, the authors devote a portion of chapter 3 to the decorative program of the
Humiliati church in Viboldone, but, as they admit, their discussion here “is limited
to aspects of Humiliati ideology that also appear in Ognissanti” (p. 75). The story

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of Humiliati patronage is here told through a single monument and its history of
decoration, and although that story is compelling, it is perhaps not as complete as
it might otherwise have been.
Temple University

JONATHAN KLINE

The Last Crusade in the West. Castile and the Conquest of Granada. By Joseph F.
O’Callaghan. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014. Pp. xiv, 364. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-8122-4587-5.)
With this book Joseph F. O’Callaghan closes his trilogy on the Reconquest
and Crusade in Spain, which examines a Castilian history marked by the struggle
with Muslim Al-Andalus. This work is, mainly, a narrative account of the fight
from 1350 to 1492 between the Christian kingdom of Castile and Leon, and
Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula. It is a struggle that
O’Callaghan rightly considers a crusade—as the popes and the rest of their contemporaries believed—and that is the reason for the title chosen. The book is
divided into eight chapters. Only the last two present an analytical but very succinct
approach (full of interesting subjects, both ideological and practical, in a mere fiftyfive pages). The core of the work (pp. 122–96) is dedicated to the last twenty years
of that century-long struggle, until the final conquest of Granada by the Catholic
monarchs Isabel and Fernando (1474–92), but overall the book is well balanced.
With the book focused on the crusade against Granada led by Castile, Aragon and
Portugal only appear in a tangential way, and other interesting subjects such as the
“dynastic crusades” between Christians within the framework of the Avignon
papacy of the middle and late-fourteenth century are covered in only two pages.
There also are scattered references to Muslim jihad.
O’Callaghan knows the Iberian context very well, but, although this is a good
book, there are some minor drawbacks. The bibliography covers works up to 2012,
but there are only four entries for 2011–12. There are some omissions of works by
Mario Lafuente on the war between Aragon and Castile and by Fernando Gómez
Redondo on the historiography of that period. The author could have profited
from the works by Roser Salicru on the presence of Castilian mercenaries in
Morocco and foreign crusaders in Castile or papers in Las Actas de la Frontera. The
readings for some discussions are a bit outdated (for example, on the debate on the
Orden de la Banda and the Islamofilia of Peter I). Furthermore, a deep reading of
some of the works cited by the author could have been much more profitable (such
as Ana Echevarría’s Knights on the Frontier [Boston, 2009]).
In so narrative a history we can barely see an evolution of the crusading ideal
and practice throughout those 150 years; very little is said about the external vision
of the Iberian campaigns and almost nothing about the modern historiographical
debate on Reconquista and crusade in Spanish academia.
These criticisms aside, O’Callaghan´s Last Crusade is a must for anyone interested in the history of medieval Spain, especially for those focused on the relation-

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ship between Castile and Granada in the late Middle Ages. It is a meritorious end
for the author’s trilogy on the Reconquest and Crusade in Spain.
Universidad Nacional de Educatión a Distancia,
Madrid

JOSÉ MANUEL RODRÍGUEZ

The Saint between Manuscript and Print: Italy 1400–1600. Edited by Alison K. Frazier. [Essays and Studies, 37.] (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2015. Pp. 495. $49.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-7727-2182-5.)
This publication has been in the making for some time. It originates from a
2008 seminar at the American Academy in Rome; however, the result is a well
thought-out, very coherent, exceedingly useful reference work on saints’ cults in
Italy from 1400 to 1600—a period of changing, multiple media. A number of these
essays should be recommended reading for undergraduate and graduate students,
and not just for students and scholars of hagiography. Unlike many books with
meaningless, wide-embracing titles, this volume offers more than the parts it sets
out to explore.
This collection contains new evidence on the use of different media for the
spread of the cults of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Alberto of Trapani, St. Filippo
Benizzi, St. Nicholas of Tolentino, St. Bernardino of Siena, St. Vincent Ferrer, St.
Lucy, St. Roch, Simon of Trent, Honoratus of Lérins, Girolamo Savonarola, St.
Caterina Vigri, St. Veronica da Binasco, Arcangela Panigarola, and Blessed Lucia of
Narni, as well as an exceptionally lucid approach to the study of printed martyrologies
and a look at the market for inexpensive hagiographical prints. Above all, this is a
methodologically important volume: some essays are exemplary for the study of the
transmission of texts through different periods. The authors’ evidence encompasses
manuscripts, prints, artworks, documents, texts, images, and bookseller inventories
and prices—official and popular, true and believed to be. They have approached their
sources systematically and have drawn solid, important conclusions.
The traditional contrasts between the supremacy of print and the continuous
practice of manuscript, as well as between standardization and variation of the texts,
are proven superficial and are set aside in favor of solid evidence, which, as ever,
brings to light a more interesting, faceted, and inclusive reality. In the introduction
Alison K. Frazier does her best to offer a picture of the transition to early printing
that is up to date. The only partial success of the overview is due not to any lack of
knowledge on the editor’s part but rather to the fact that it is premature to draw conclusions. We certainly need to revise what has been written in the past with far too
little and too geographically limited evidence (and too many assumptions). But to
succeed, much more work on the transmission and reception of our written heritage,
in manuscript and in print, is needed of the kind outlined in this volume.
In addition to the editor, contributors include Roberto Cobianchi, Barbara
Wisch, Pierre Bolle, Stephen Bowd, Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, Cécile Caby,

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Laura Ackerman Smoller, Stefano Dall’Aglio, Serena Spanò Martinelli, Irene
Graziani, John Gagné, Gabriella Zarri, and Kevin M. Stevens. A bibliography follows each essay, and there are some good color and black-and-white reproductions.
Lincoln College Oxford

CRISTINA DONDI

Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance.
By Anthony F. D’Elia. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2016.
Pp. xii, 355. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-674-08851-1.)
A boon for period scholars and anyone interested in Malatesta history, Pagan
Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance offers
a structured approach to the works of the humanists at the court of Sigismondo
Malatesta as well as a comprehensive and impartial representation of a crucial intellectual period. Through Anthony D’Elia’s extensive research, friends, enemies,
poets, and artists appear on the court stage—not simply in terms of their functions
in relation to Malatesta but on their own terms, as individual scholars. Sigismondo
surfaces as the unabashed champion of a resurrected classicism imbued with neoPlatonic philosophy in the burgeoning style of other contemporary intellectual circles, including that of Cosimo de’ Medici. The result was a surprisingly sophisticated environment that pushed the boundaries of philosophy and theology ahead
of its time, offering an outstanding target for Pope Pius II’s indignation with an
intellectual trend that possibly threatened the Christian faith. Condemned to eternal damnation by Pius in what D’Elia calls a “reverse canonization” (p. 1), Sigismondo’s downfall was made an example for a whole world to behold.
The title is indicative of the underlying question: was Sigismondo truly a
pagan, or was he a devout Christian whose faith was simply cloaked in classical
equivalents? D’Elia integrates an analysis of the notorious artwork of the Tempio
Malatestiano with a thorough inquiry of the lesser known court literature, which
sheds new light on the purpose of both. With comparisons to Odysseus and
Achilles, Sigismondo assumes a superhuman character in the works of his poets
Porcellio and Basinio, whereas Valturio, the chronicler Broglio, and even the friar
de’ Cocchi depict a man immersed in pagan thought and religion, who loved to discuss platonic philosophy and the nature of the soul.
Famous for his daring courage, handsome looks, and intellectual curiosity, the
real Sigismondo was indeed a larger-than-life character, who could inspire both
terror and worship. The move from man to god, or at least to extraordinary fiend,
was therefore not out of reach, and Pius’s reaction can be understood, if not
explained. As D’Elia concedes, Pius II was right in the sense that “much of the literature at Sigismondo’s court was so contaminated with paganism and implicated
in his military exploits that it could be deemed heretical” (p. 183).
The authority allowed by a pagan morality, which validates all actions for the
sake of immortal fame, justifies Sigismondo in ways impossible within a Christian

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viewpoint. In this context, the violent heroes of the battlefield and the reckless pursuers of knowledge are equally destined for the Elysian Fields and Apollo’s
wreath—and Sigismondo doubly so, as he represents both virtues. Indeed, behind
the pagan image cultivated by court poets lurks a progressive political idea: Sigismondo is the ante litteram figure of the Prince: terrible, grand, and godlike in his
divine task to save Italy from foreign invaders. As D’Elia explains, “Basinio’s Hesperis is outlandishly nationalistic. Its very name, Hesperis, is an ancient word for
Italy” (p. 117).
Paganism also justifies the relationship between Sigismondo and the young
Isotta, whose beauty was celebrated in medals and poems even while Sigismondo’s
second wife was still living. The poems by Basinio and Porcellio elevate the girl to
goddess through the device of an imaginary death, which should, but does not,
lessen the sexually charged character of the relationship. Her very tomb, D’Elia
notes, was inscribed with the date of the consummation of their affair.
Rooted in the foundation of humanistic paideia, Sigismondo emerges as the
mind behind the cultural plan that brought together a revival of classical art, poetry,
and philosophy. But although the contamination of Christian ideas allowed a
pagan culture to flourish, the agents of such transformation did not necessarily view
themselves as pagans. And yet, although twentieth-century scholarship undermined the notion of a Renaissance pagan revival, the intended ferocity of the punishment inflicted by the pope on Sigismondo raises questions about the true scope
of pagan contamination. As D’Elia clearly proves, “the idea of a pagan Renaissance
has certainly returned to scholarly debate” (p. 278).
Saint Mary’s College of California

COSTANZA GISLON DOPFEL

EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN
The Cult of St Clare of Assisi in Early Modern Italy. By Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby.
[Visual Culture in Early Modernity.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
2014. Pp. xiv, 169. $104.95. ISBN 978-1-4724-2057-2.)
The parts of the book that deal with the subject indicated in the title are generally good. However, when Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby looks at the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, she is on shakier ground, and it shows. Although the author
appears to be well read in that early period, there are mistakes and overstatements.
For example, she takes for granted that Thomas of Celano composed the first vita
of Clare, although at best that is just a possibility. She says that Clare holds a “reliquary casket” (p. 26) in the earliest images of Clare’s miracle at San Damiano, but
surely it is a pyx. At one point, she mentions the archbishop of Assisi, when Assisi
is a diocese.
The book has a clear thesis about the ups and downs of the popularity of Clare
and the shift of emphasis in her various revivals. In particular, Debby shows how

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Clare’s popularity increased in the Renaissance in part because of her Eucharistic
miracle and in part because of her “defeat” of the Saracens, both of which refer to
the miracle at San Damiano. This is well argued. The Eucharist was an obvious
focus of devotion in art long before the Protestant Reformation, yet it becomes still
more important in the Tridentine Church. Just as the story of St. Francis’s meeting
with the sultan becomes more confrontational as the story is retold and the Sultan
al-Malik al-Kamil begins to look like a Turk, so Clare driving away the Muslim
mercenaries looks increasingly like a defeat of the Turks. Debby’s focus on St.
Bernardino of Siena as an important figure in the revival of the cult of Clare in the
first half of the fifteenth century is convincing.
However, it seems that Debby was not as thorough as she could have been
when surveying the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century images of Clare. She also is
not clear enough about the origin of images of Clare from that period—predominantly from convents of Clares and rarely from churches of the First Order. Even
her analysis of images of Clare in the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi is somewhat narrow and not fully informed.
The book is clearly organized, and the purpose and argument are laid out carefully at the beginning. The chapters are thoroughly footnoted, and there is a useful
bibliography. The book is well illustrated. However, nine of the ten color photographs also appear in the book in black and white. It would have been better to provide more illustrations of works that are discussed but not presented visually. Poor
proofreading—including errors in apostrophes and wording, as well as this reviewer
credited with editing a book that he, in fact, did not edit (p. 54n39)—mars the
presentation.
This is a useful book, especially its central chapters. The early chapters, however, provide a less than thorough look at the early period of images of Clare.
Debby makes a real, although ultimately modest, contribution to early-modern
scholarship and the iconography of Clare of Assisi.
State University of New York at Geneseo

WILLIAM R. COOK

Enemies in the Plaza: Urban Spectacle and the End of Spanish Frontier Culture, 1460–
1492. By Thomas Devaney. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2015. Pp. x, 246. $59.95. ISBN 978-0812204713-8.)
Thomas Devaney’s Enemies in the Plaza provides fresh and well-researched
insight into a critical era of transition in Spanish history. For most of the past century, historians of the late-medieval and early-modern Spanish kingdoms have
remained vexed by persistent and apparently contradictory patterns of both religious/ethnic intolerance and violence on the one hand and ongoing cultural admiration and acculturation among Christians, Muslims, and Jews (as well as Jewish
and Muslim converts to Christianity) on the other. In the past two decades, the

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studies of David Nirenberg, Barbara Fuchs, and Stuart Schwartz—among dozens
of others—have made clear the deficiencies of older interpretive simplifications
centered on the supposed erosion of so-called medieval convivencia and its replacement through the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a society of exclusion
and rigorous Catholic uniformity. Yet we still grope for conceptual clarity in
explaining the complexities of late-medieval and early-modern Spanish society.
Devaney addresses such complexity head-on via a richly articulated engagement of sources concerning urban spectacles and pageantry in the cities of the
southern reaches of the late-fifteenth-century Crown of Castile’s “frontier” border
with Granada in the three decades immediately preceding the final Spanish emirate’s fall to Isabel and Fernando in 1492. In the process, he proposes some innovative conceptual tools to help make sense of the transitions at the heart of latemedieval Spanish society. Above all, he offers the self-consciously oxymoronic
concept of “amiable enmity” (p. 9) that appears to him to lie at the heart of public
spectacles and festivities in late-fifteenth-century Jaen, Córdoba, and Murcia that
are the principal objects of his detailed investigations. In all three locales, he contends, Christian elites and popular classes alike deployed expressions of hostility
and/or accommodation with Muslims, Jews, and/or converts in ways that reflected
specific political goals of both local and “national” origin. While Devaney is firm
that the 1460s–90s was indeed an era of rapidly narrowing possibilities for Muslims
and especially Jews as well as increasing pressures on judeoconversos in the crown of
Castile, the “amiable enmity” of frontier culture left a legacy that continued to
undergird various expressions of “maurophilia” and cross-cultural fascination even
long after Castile’s victory in the Granada War.
The book begins in chapters 1 and 2 with an overview of the contexts of public
spectacle in late-medieval Spanish cities, noting always that the messages intended
by the elites who designed and paid for such spectacles were reinterpreted and used
in myriad ways by audiences and participants from various social classes. Chapter 3
focuses specifically on the city of Jaen—where Constable of Castile and local
power-broker Miguel Lucas de Iranzo sponsored festivities in the 1460s and early
1470s that Devaney argues cast a vision of a coming Castilian victory over Granada
as one which would result in the conversion of the vanquished to Christianity and
subsequent peace and prosperity. Perceptions of his too-close alliance with the
increasingly unpopular Enrique IV and with local judeoconversos, however, fueled
opposition both outside and inside Jaen that led to Iranzo’s assassination in 1473
and a subsequent wave of anti-converso violence. Chapter 4 turns to Córdoba,
where Devaney examines in great detail the geo-spatial, socioeconomic, political,
and religious dimensions of attacks against that frontier city’s judeoconversos in the
1470s. Chapter 5 shifts to Murcia, where Devaney finds that Corpus Christi celebrations, especially in the wake of the conquest of Málaga in 1487 shifted in
response to both local and national trends toward Christian triumphalism.
In the end, Devaney argues strongly that the changes of the fifteenth century’s
closing decades fundamentally transformed Castilian society in ways most readily

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apparent in the “frontier cities” of the south. As that frontier character faded, however, the legacies of what he calls the “amiable enmity” of the late-medieval period
continued to influence Spanish culture well into the early-modern era and beyond.
Eastern Kentucky University

DAVID COLEMAN

Unwritten Verities: The Making of England’s Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463–1549.
By Sebastian Sobecki. [ReFormations Medieval and Early Modern.] (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2015. Pp. x, 257. $38.00 paperback.
ISBN 978-0-268-04145-8)
The title of Sebastian Sobecki’s thoughtful and ambitiously interdisciplinary
study is designed to pinpoint a paradox in English legal and political culture after
the turn of the sixteenth century. Unwritten Verities was the disparaging—indeed,
sarcastic—term employed by Protestants to refer to beliefs and practices of traditional religion that lacked grounding in scripture, practices that were at best unnecessary and at worst damnable. A reliance on authorized text was a wellspring of the
cultural transformations effected by the Protestant Reformation, as it was of the
humanist movement that preceded and—perhaps—inspired it.
Yet the English common-law tradition, which, in the political dimension of
the Reformation struggle, triumphed over its canon law rival, was itself stubbornly
reliant on unwritten custom and remembered precedent, rather than on any kind
of textual positivism. The problem of its nonvulnerability to Protestant critique,
and eventual apotheosis as an icon of insular Protestant tradition, is an intriguing
one, which has not properly been framed as a problem before.
Sobecki’s account of how English common-law culture evolved to surmount
the challenge of the Reformation is one in which vernacularity (encompassing Law
French) plays a crucial transitional role. A central actor is the common-law theorist, Christopher St. German, often regarded as an intellectual architect of the
Henrician Reformation, whose influential textbook, Doctor and Student (1528–30),
stressed the textual witness of statutes, yearbooks, and law reports, and who
invoked reason as a kind of “inner book” validating the antiquity of the law.
Another key player is the printer and polemicist John Rastell, who produced a
number of legal texts, including editions of statutes and a law dictionary.
These endeavors were not only commercially motivated but also consciously
sought, Sobecki argues, to reach out to a “horizontal readership” and to widen
social participation in legal thought. Here Sobecki detaches Rastell and other early
Tudor common law advocates from the mainstream of humanist thinking (exemplified by Rastell’s brother-in-law, Thomas More), which was much more socially
elitist in its prescriptions for the improved health of the common weal. A longer
trajectory connects them to the much-discussed Lancastrian theorist Sir John
Fortescue, whom Sobecki seeks to rescue from Whiggish lionizing but nonetheless
regards as a powerful advocate of wider political participation. The proof of the

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pudding is in the rebellions of 1549, which Sobecki, drawing on recent historical
scholarship, convincingly portrays as characterized by popular legal awareness to a
quite remarkable extent.
None of this makes for particularly easy reading. Sobecki has a fondness for
modish literary-critical jargon, and the structure of the book is at times unhelpfully
labyrinthine. Nevertheless, he is to be lauded for encouraging both cultural and literary historians to think harder about the law as a barometer of change and for challenging the still entrenched periodization either side of the arbitrary date of 1500.
University of Warwick

PETER MARSHALL

Il papa guerriero. Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo. By Massimo Rospocher.
[Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento, Monografie, 65.]
(Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2015. Pp. 392. €32,00 paperback. ISBN
978-88-15-25350-7.)
In writing this book, Massimo Rospocher aimed to provide not just a study of
the representations of the policies and the personality of Pope Julius II in Italy and
elsewhere in Europe but also a study of the dissemination of political news and
opinions during a period of transition, when the printing press was coming into its
own as an important medium of mass communication. He has succeeded in both
his aims. Based on wide-ranging research, his book is also well written, with
admirably clear exposition of the texts and the arguments based on them, mercifully
free from jargon, and enhanced by many illustrations.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Rospocher’s demonstration
of the common themes to be found in both learned Latin treatises and sermons, and
in the ballads and cheap broadsheets sold in the streets. Themes of the golden age
revived by the triumphant pope, and the identification of Julius II with Julius
Caesar, for instance, appeared in humanist tracts and in doggerel verses that would
have been sung and sold by street performers. The Roman Curia, he argues, actively
participated in the promotion of the ideal of the “renovatio Imperii” (renewal of the
empire) of the Roman Church as heir to the Roman Empire, recovering its rightful
political and religious authority under Julius II. He sees this as “auto-promozione
papale” (papal self-promotion, p. 106), assuming that Julius approved, even instigated, such propaganda. Although there were clear instances of Julius appealing to
public opinion, as when he ordered hundreds of copies of his anathema against
Venice to be printed, it is harder to prove that he knew and approved of the contents
of street ballads, even if they did laud him as “Papa Iulio secondo che redriza tuto el
mondo” (Pope Julius II who puts all the world to rights, p. 160).
What emerges clearly from the many texts discussed here and the contexts in
which they appeared is the essentially political nature of the praise or criticism of
the pope, even if it was expressed in ecclesiastical or theological terms. Propaganda
in Venice, Bologna, and Ferrara, when these cities were threatened by papal troops,

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blamed Julius’s alleged thirst for power, for increased temporal dominions, and for
war, as being incompatible with the pope’s role as the vicar of Christ. In France,
the same authors who justified war against Venice in 1509 as being in defense of
the Church, condemning Venetian contempt for the papacy, shortly afterward
became fiercely critical of Julius and his authority as pope. In England, when Henry
VIII was striking a pose as the defender of the papacy at the beginning of his reign,
war against France was presented as a holy war and Louis XII as a rebel against the
authority of the pope. The arguments of a learned treatise by James Whytstons, De
iusticia et sanctitate belli per Iulium pontificem secundum, which refuted criticisms of
Julius by Italian and French authors, were turned into allegorical verses in English,
The Gardyners Passetaunce: Touching the outrage of Fraunce, aimed at a broader
public that needed to be encouraged to support and pay for the war.
This valuable book is concerned with the content of propaganda and the
means of its diffusion and communication, rather than its reception, but the wealth
of material it provides raises questions about how far the broader public in Europe
distinguished between criticisms of an individual pope and of the papacy as an
institution, between the political and the religious implications of the propaganda
that was so widely disseminated.
University of Oxford

CHRISTINE SHAW

Thomas More: Why Patron of Statesmen? Edited by Travis Curtwright. (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield. 2015. Pp. xii,
221. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-4985-2226-7.)
In 2000 Pope John Paul II proclaimed St. Thomas More to be the patron of
statesmen and people in public life. And yet scholarly investigations of More’s principles of statesmanship are still relatively few. In commissioning and editing this
often stimulating collection of essays, Travis Curtwright seeks to fill the gap. He
and his fellow contributors, several connected to the Center for Thomas More
Studies at the University of Dallas, aim to revive interest in More by distilling from
his writings and life experiences the very essence of this subtle, steely individual
who began as a commercial lawyer and moral philosopher and ended up as Henry
VIII’s only honest councillor. It is an approach that in the wrong hands could
become clumsily instrumentalist and teleological. Fortunately, these contributors
know the pitfalls and largely avoid them.
Of the ten essays, the most suggestive are those dealing with More’s most
famous book, Utopia (Louvain, 1516), with his declamation in response to Lucian’s
The Tyrannicide, with his wider understanding of the values of law, liberty, duty,
and justice (drawing not least on his relatively neglected Latin poems), and with his
continuing commitment to political leadership, meaning his opposition to Henry
VIII’s first divorce and break with Rome after resigning as lord chancellor. For
Carson Holloway, analyzing the response to Lucian, More’s point was that a politician needs an accurate diagnosis of the true roots of political disease before he can

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begin to cure it. The argument here is nicely shaded. For Gerard Wegemer writing
on liberty and justice, however, it is starker. More, he believes, was a fully-fledged
Ciceronian and so determined to bring philosophic insight to bear in public life
within the limits of the practical—this even though James R. Stoner, writing on
images of the statesman in Utopia, explains that Ciceronian statesmanship can
never be the last word, given the prominence in book II of Utopia of Hythloday’s
descriptions of the Utopians. Wegemer succumbs to a temptation to link More the
author to an understanding of the choices of his political career that may be flawed.
According to Wegemer, More did for Tudor England what Cicero did for the
Romans. A reading first proposed by one of More’s earliest biographers, Nicholas
Harpsfield, this interpretation was massively reinforced in the twentieth century by
the dazzling scholarship on Utopia of Quentin Skinner. And yet it was said of More
that he could always see both sides of the question. Some superlative recent journal
articles, notably by Eric Nelson and John Michael Parrish, suggest that Utopia is
more likely to represent, at the very least, the conflicting sides of More’s divided
consciousness. No one today, except perhaps the novelist Hilary Mantel, whose
bestselling Wolf Hall (London, 2009) is considered along with Robert Bolt’s A Man
for All Seasons (London, 1954) in an essay by Louis Karlin, would agree with Sir
Geoffrey Elton that More was driven into a political career chiefly by ambition, and
that he lied about it to Erasmus. Elton, on that occasion, got his facts awry. Where
Stoner hits the nail on the head is in characterizing More as a literary statesman as
much as a practical politician. As a real-life politician, More got his head chopped
off, as Hythloday (and Machiavelli) had already predicted would happen to scrupulous idealists serving a king rather (just perhaps) than a well-founded republic. By
writing Utopia, More created an entirely new literary genre, one that has continued
to rekindle the perennially central issues of social and political thinking ever since.
And for that, his statesmanship should be honored.
Clare College, Cambridge

JOHN GUY

Luther’s Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation under Siege. By James Reston
Jr. (New York: Basic Books. 2015. Pp. xii, 260. $27.00. ISBN 978-0-46506393-2.)
Good history writing needs both a clear topic and careful execution. To grasp
the complexities of Martin Luther’s thought and life, independent scholar and writer
James Reston Jr. admirably chose to focus on a single year: Luther’s sojourn in the
Wartburg Castle (1521–22), when Luther was in the protective custody of his prince,
the Elector Frederick the Wise. From here Luther penned many influential works
and, most important, translated the New Testament from Greek into German.
Reston’s execution, however, fails completely. First, the text is riddled with
factual errors. Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg, was fourteen (not seventeen) years Luther’s junior; his father did not change his name to
“Melanchthon” (p. 54f.). Luther did not eat potatoes for his Christmas dinner in
1521 at the Wartburg (not introduced until the 1570s; p. 152), nor did he frequent

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a bar in Wittenberg (or use drinking songs for melodies of his hymns; pp. 112, 156,
231f.). In Reston’s description of Luther’s addition of the term “faith alone” to the
text of Romans, he gets the verses wrong and thus incorrectly compares the Vulgate
and King James Version on Romans 3:23–24 with Luther’s on Romans 3:28 (p.
168). Regarding Frederick the Wise, Reston misdates the founding of the University of Wittenberg and imagines that the prince personally recruited Luther, was
impressed by Luther’s Latin lectures on the Psalms, and raised Luther’s salary to
keep him at the university (as a monk, Luther had taken a vow of poverty; raises
came with Frederick’s death and Luther’s marriage in 1525). Reston confuses the
two Johann Ecks from this time—one Luther’s opponent at the Leipzig Debates
of 1519 and the other his prosecutor at the Diet of Worms (pp. 35, 72).
Far worse is the inaccurate impression the author leaves of all parts of this
drama: with Pope Leo X as debauched and Luther as a proto-Puritan (p. 31); with
no clue as to how indulgences functioned in the late-medieval theology (p. 7f.); and
little understanding of late-medieval Christianity and its influence on Luther.
Instead, the reader is subjected to an old-time “Protestant” Luther and an evil
papacy, not surprising given that the greatest percentage of books in the bibliography come from 1970 or earlier—one third before 1945. All of the old saws about
Luther and the Reformation are on display. For example, Luther’s advice to
Melanchthon to “sin boldly” has nothing to do with any imagined issues over sexuality (p. 108, cf. p. 223). Throughout the book lurks the specter of anti-Roman
Catholic history writing more at home in the nineteenth century. Given the careless mistakes and false assumptions, this book has little or nothing to offer anyone
who seriously wishes to learn more about Luther, the Reformation, or the latemedieval Church out of which both emerged.
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (Emeritus)

TIMOTHY WENGERT

Collaboration, Conflict, and Continuity in the Reformation: Essays in Honour of James
M. Estes on His Eightieth Birthday. Edited by Konrad Eisenbichler. [Essays
and Studies, Vol. 34.] (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance
Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto. 2014. Pp. 431.
$49.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-7727-2174-7.)
Scholars of the German Reformation know the name James M. Estes. He is
perhaps best recognized for his book Christian Magistrate and State Church: The
Reforming Career of Johannes Brenz (Toronto, 1982), revised twenty-five years later as
Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation (Toronto, 2007). In this seminal study, Estes brought to light the vitally important contributions of German Reformer Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) in the spread
of evangelical reform and its relationship to political power in the Holy Roman
Empire. In so doing, Estes helped German Reformation scholarship move its focus
beyond Martin Luther to consider how other major leaders influenced the Reformation. In particular, Estes highlighted Brenz’s thinking on magisterial oversight of
evangelical churches (which, in Estes’s account, significantly differed from Luther’s).

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Two published volumes of Brenz’s texts were edited and translated into English for
the first time by Estes, and a wealth of his articles speak to the time and care he has
taken to study the hitherto neglected German reformer. Perhaps less well known to
scholars is Estes’s career-long impact upon the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, which has helped to make it into one of
the world’s leading research institutions of the period. Estes has also supplied integral
leadership in the University of Toronto’s Collected Works of Erasmus project over the
years, including his scholarly annotations of many volumes, with several more to
come. In short, it is fitting that a Festschrift be published for Estes, and the contributions to this volume are an appropriate dedication to his notable career.
There is no single topical focus to this edited volume: essays range from personal accounts of working with Estes to an analysis of the famous Luther and
Desiderius Erasmus debate over free will and its aftermath. Yet there is an underlying unity to the collection: like Estes’s own work, each chapter demonstrates that
careful scholarship, sometimes on a one-time event or on reform in a particular
locale, can have major implications on how we see the Reformation in general.
The essays are divided into six sections. The first section provides two brief
personal accounts of Estes as a scholar and teacher. The second section, “Friendship and Collaboration,” features studies of Brenz, Philipp Melanchthon, Wolfgang Capito, and Erasmus. The third section, “Reforming the People and the
Church,” includes studies of reform in France, the Rhineland, Italy, and Brenz’s
Württemberg. A collection of essays on Reformation polemics follows, including a
study of the thought of Simon Musaeus, Luther’s student, and one of Erasmus’s
contributions to early Eucharistic controversies in the Reformation. The fifth section, “Catholic Opponents of Erasmus and Luther,” examines the reaction of the
Augustinians, the Jesuits, and the Paris theologians to church reform. The final
section, “The Search for Religious Peace,” features a comparative essay on religious
peace agreements of the early-modern period. The contributors form an impressive
list of scholars, and their fine chapters do not disappoint. Several essays will certainly be recognized as significant contributions to the field. In all, the volume is a
proper Festschrift for a prominent scholar.
Concordia University

JARRETT A. CARTY

Sin and Salvation in Reformation England. Edited by Jonathan Willis. [St Andrews
Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2015.
Pp. xii, 282. $124.95. ISBN 978-1-4724-3736-5.
This collection of fourteen essays, the introduction explains, explores the
reconfigurations of sin and salvation attendant upon the English Reformation.
Moreover, unlike much recent scholarship, which foregrounds the material and
marginal, it focuses on the “theological mainstream” (p. 11) yet, in contrast to older
studies, expands its field of vision beyond “elite theological discourses” to consider
the “social and communal process[es]” of theological change (p. 3).

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This is a laudable project, but problems surface early on. The introduction
itself seems unsure as to the character of the Protestant mainstream: was there a
Calvinist consensus, the godly being merely “hotter” Protestants, or was Calvinism
a single current within a mainstream that included various theologies of sin and salvation? The introduction seems to favor the second option, yet, as Alexandra Walsham’s learned and generous afterword notes, the essays by and large assume the
Calvinist-consensus model. Indeed, they often seem to assume that the official formularies of the English Church were Calvinist, which, if one is trying to understand lay piety, seems a rather fundamental mistake.1
A second and deeper problem runs through the entire volume: namely, a failure to grasp the distinctive Protestant conception of sin. The introduction offers
what looks like almost a tautological definition—sin being that which endangers
salvation (p. 6)—but then what is one to make of the entry in the immensely successful Puritan book of devotions, Crumms of Comfort (1623), significantly titled “A
Godly Prayer,” which includes the following self-description:
I am prone and apt to all badness, dull and heavy to all goodness; my thoughts
wicked, my deeds damnable, my life impious, my sayings deceitful, my heart
hollow. I say one thing and do another; I run from sin to sin, from drunkenness to lust, from lust to greater sins, from one bad deed to another, from one
ill thought to another.

A medieval Catholic might have thought this an ungodly prayer. However, for
Protestants—Lutheran as well as Reformed—an acute sense of sin becomes inseparable from Christian inwardness because the Reformation’s Law/Gospel dialectic
requires one to feel oneself as a sinner, desperately in need of grace, of salvation. To
gain assurance of one’s election, the pre-eminent late-Elizabethan Calvinist
William Perkins writes in A Golden Chain (1591), one should examine one’s life for
evidence of sanctification, such as, he continues, “I. To feel our wants, & in the bitterness of heart, to bewail the offence of God in every sin. II. To strive against the
flesh; that is, to resist & hate the ungodly motions thereof, & with grief to think
them burthenous & troublesome.” Sin endangers salvation, but a deep sense of personal sinfulness identifies the saints. It is the godly who groan under the burden of
guilt, while the reprobates whoop it up in the alehouse.
Since, however, good Christians do not, as a rule, commit barn-door sins
(murder, theft, perjury, etc.), they can only feel this guilt, and the terror of God’s
avenging justice by what one essay elegantly calls “the exponential multiplication of
offences” (p. 81). For the godly theologian in Dent’s best-selling Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven (1602), to say “rats” when a brick falls on his toe makes an idol of
the rat and thus violates the Third Commandment.2
1. Had the Prayer Book and 39 Articles been Calvinist, why would Calvinists have
pressed for their supplementation or replacement by the Lambeth Articles, the Book of Discipline, and the Directory of Public Worship?
2. Dent’s actual expletive was “mousefoot”; “rats” is this reviewer’s rhetorical substitution.

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None of the essays grasps this imbrication of sin and salvation. The footnotes
suggest the reason, for these—excepting a single omnibus note in the introduction—consistently fail to cite the magisterial scholarship of the late twentieth century on Tudor-Stuart theology: Patrick Collinson’s Elizabethan Puritan Movement
(Berkeley, 1967) and Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1982), Peter Lake’s Moderate
Puritans (New York, 1982) and Anglicans and Puritans (Boston, 1988), Nicholas
Tyacke’s Anti-Calvinists (New York, 1987), R. T. Kendall’s Calvin and English
Calvinism (Oxford, 1979), John Bossy’s Peace in the Post-Reformation (New York,
1998), Anthony Milton’s Catholic and Reformed (New York, 1995). The footnotes
display considerable scholarship but an astonishing unfamiliarity with the fundamental studies in the field.
University of California, Los Angeles

DEBORA SHUGER

Il paradigma tridentino: Un’epoca della storia della Chiesa. By Paolo Prodi. (Brescia:
Morcelliana. 2010. Pp. 232. €18,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-372-2462-2.)
During a long and eminent career Paolo Prodi has published copiously on the
history of the Church in its broadest sense. He has arguably become the most influential of Italian historians writing on the subject at the present day, certainly as far
as the early-modern period is concerned. Because the evolution of the papacy is
central to his research, his vision of ecclesiastical history is not confined to that
within the Italian peninsula; and this wider perspective is fortified, via his association with Trent as well as Bologna, by his awareness of German scholarship in particular. So, too, his early studies under Hubert Jedin have left a positive legacy,
adjusting in his own case the tradition among Italian historians of using legal history as at least a common starting point for their arguments. In this elegant volume
he effectively reviews in the light of the most recent research, often by much
younger scholars in Italy and elsewhere, some of the topics on which he has published earlier or later in his own career. These include, in addition to the history of
the papacy, Catholic reform and Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent and
the experience of postconciliar bishops, Church-state relations, the relationship
between law and religious morality, lay religious culture, religious orders, and overseas missions. Where his own views have been modified to a degree, as over the relative importance of the early-modern papacy’s temporal government of the Papal
States with respect to the other roles performed by popes, he here confirms such
modification. On all topics addressed here he otherwise summarizes his present
interpretations, from the vantage point of his long years of research, in ways with
which the present reviewer, from a much less advantageous position, finds himself
in full agreement. A constant theme in these summaries is that the Tridentine era
should not be narrowly conceived as simply the history of the Western Catholic
Church from the Council of Trent until either the First or Second Vatican Council. For Prodi, historical conditions were changing in any case by the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and both the Protestant Reformations and the CounterReformation or Catholic reforms were among responses reflecting such change, not
least in response to the development of the modern State in Western Europe.

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Because the historical context has again so clearly changed by the start of the
twenty-first century, he sees in one way any supposedly Tridentine era as now concluded. But from the perspective of Catholic Italy, he is well aware of those ways
in which the central authorities of the Western Catholic Church have failed to
make a corresponding evolution, even in the present and immediately previous
pontificates. However he urges attention to a properly historical understanding, as
a counter to polemic positions which treat either the Tridentine or the Second Vatican Council as absolute watersheds in the Church’s history to be venerated or
deplored. His closing remarks thus suggest some sympathy with views expressed by
Pope Benedict XVI but also some hope that Rome might yet find new ways to
embody global Christian leadership.
University of Leeds

A. D. WRIGHT

The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe. By Geert H. Janssen.
(New York: Cambridge University Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 218. $95.00.
ISBN 978-1-1-07-05503-2.)
Although, in the past decades, several books have been devoted to Protestant refugees from the Low Countries and their “refugee churches” in England
and the Holy Roman Empire, the history of their Catholic counterparts has gone
by largely unnoticed. For sure, Catholic exiles were far less numerous (Janssen
estimates a total of 10,000 to 15,000), and, also in contrast with Protestant exiles,
they were often able to return to their homes after only a few years. Thus, in comparison to a total of between 80,000 and 100,000 people that left the Southern
Netherlands after 1585, the number of Catholic exiles seems almost negligible.
Yet, in his concise but well thought-out book, Janssen argues that, during their
rather brief period of exile, a new form of Catholic militancy took shape, which
consequently became one of the pillars of the process of Counter-Reformation in
the Habsburg Netherlands and sealed the cleavage between North and South
after 1585.
In fact, with regard to Catholic exiles in the Dutch Revolt, Janssen distinguishes three periods. First, in the early 1570s clergy and royal officials fled their
home towns in Holland and Zealand to escape the attacks of the so-called “beggars.” They found refuge in nearby Catholic strongholds such as Amsterdam and
Utrecht. Second, from the mid-1570s Calvinist town governments took power in
major Flemish and Brabant towns such as Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels.
Some Catholic inhabitants of these towns, clergy as well as lay, were put to flight
or exiled. They found refuge in the more peaceful southern towns of Douai and
Saint-Omer or, outside the borders of the Low Countries, in Liège and Cologne.
Most could return after only a few years, thanks to Alexander Farnese’s successful
military campaigns. Immediately many of them obtained important positions
within the Church and the town governments. Finally, between 1585 and 1609 a
group of some hundreds of Catholics from the Northern provinces migrated to the
Catholic south, which remained under Habsburg control.

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Janssen has deliberately adopted a cross-confessional perspective. As such, he
contends that not only Protestant but also Catholic refugee movements “effectively
sealed the cultural cleavage of the two Netherlands at the end of the sixteenth century” (p. 6). In line with Heiko Oberman’s concept of the “Reformation of the
Refugee,” Janssen points to the existence of a “Counter-Reformation of the
Refugee” as well. He demonstrates how Catholic exiles, too, went through a
process of religious radicalization that would have a formative impact on their identities. During their exile, influenced by the Jesuit order and contacts especially with
English Catholic refugees, Catholics changed their rather passive attitude (pointed
to by Judith Pollmann in Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands [New
York, 2011]) for a more militant strand of Catholicism. Finally, the history of exile
also points to the existence of a movement of “International Catholicism.” Janssen’s
book thus not only addresses problems specific to the history of the Low Countries
but also engages in more general questions regarding the history of Catholicism
and Catholic renewal in the later sixteenth century.
Especially in the fifth chapter, a number of inaccuracies are evident. On pages
109–10, for instance, Janssen suggests that the contacts between Catholic exiles
from Flanders and Brabant and their English counterparts might have been facilitated by the presence of English convents in the Low Countries. However, the first
of these convents was not erected until 1597–98. For sure, there had been a college
for the instruction of English secular clergy in Douai since 1568, but this institution was itself in exile in Reims between 1578 and 1593. So, although exiles such
as Johannes Costerius, a priest from Oudenaarde in exile in Douai, compared their
situation to that of the English in their writings and most certainly had contact
with English Catholics, it is rather doubtful that in the early 1580s English institutions were helpful in establishing these connections. Elsewhere, the book points
to a printing press operating in the town of Saint-Omer that, along with presses in
Paris, Douai, and Cologne, would have produced political tracts. Although some
booksellers were active in Saint-Omer in these years, no printing press functioned
there before 1601.
These smaller problems, of course, do not change the fact that Janssen’s book
is well written and an extremely valuable contribution that brings to light a largely
unknown history of Catholic diaspora during the Dutch Revolt and successfully
removes the history of religious exile from its usual Protestant contexts.
Catholic University of Leuven

ALEXANDER SOETAERT

Federico Barocci and the Oratorians: Corporate Patronage and Style in the CounterReformation. By Ian F. Verstegen. [Early Modern Studies, 14.] (Kirksville,
MO: Truman State University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 172. $60.00. ISBN 9781-61248-132-6.)
Ian Verstegen has made important contributions to Barocci scholarship. The
2008 article with John Marciari on scale relationships between Barocci’s drawings

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and paintings is among the most frequently cited studies in the Barocci literature.
The 2007 volume he edited on the della Rovere dukes provided insights into
Barocci’s primary patrons, and his 2003 article enriched our knowledge of Barocci’s
most important Roman altarpieces.6 Therefore, one turns to his new publication
with high expectations. Although there is some new material in the present
volume, Federico Barocci and the Oratorians is, by and large, disappointing.
The core of the book reprises the 2003 article. This is acknowledged in the
book’s preface, although the extent of overlap, with some passages reprinted virtually unchanged, is not really made clear. Verstegen has added an introductory section that lays out the theoretical and methodological framework for evaluating
style. Any but the most theoretically adept scholars will find the terminology and
opaque conceptualizations less helpful than they are obscuring. The book, therefore, has limited usefulness for teaching, and would have benefited from attentive
editing to serve a wider readership. Furthermore, since Verstegen’s interest is stylistic rather than iconographic, those looking for discussions that elucidate the theological issues in Barocci’s paintings should turn elsewhere.
There are several interesting contributions that Verstegen puts forth. As he
himself acknowledges, the inclusion of a high-quality photograph of Barocci’s
Ambrosiana Nativity (1597) helps buttress the argument from his 2003 article that
the Milan painting rather than the Prado version is the primary and finer picture.
He is correct on this point, although he does not adequately argue the case for
attributing the Prado painting entirely to Barocci’s pupil, Vitali.
Verstegen expands his earlier discussion regarding Barocci’s possible involvement in the main altar at the Chiesa Nuova. He explores the possibility that
Alessandro Vitali’s Nativity of the Virgin (1588–1603; now in S. Sempliciano,
Milan) may represent Barocci’s ideas that were never executed. That picture, however, is composed entirely of rote adaptations of previous Barocci elements with
little evidence of Barocci’s design, in spite of Verstegen’s identification of an autograph chalk sketch in Düsseldorf as an early study. That sheet, a type that Barocci
used only one other time, represents a topic worthy of further investigation. Verstegen also publishes a new pastel head for the Circumcision, and although this
reviewer is skeptical that it represents Filippo Neri as the author claims, it is a beautiful addition to the oeuvre.
In multiple small ways, however, the book seems hastily prepared and carelessly edited. Typos and errors abound—two examples make the point: On page

6. John Marciari and Ian Verstegen, “‘Grande quanto l’opera’: Size and Scale in
Barocci’s Drawings,” Master Drawings, 46 (2008), 291–321; Ian Verstegen, Patronage and
Dynasty: The Rise of the della Rovere in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville, MO, 2007); Ian Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo, and the Oratorian Orbit,” Renaissance Quarterly,
56 (2003), 56–87.

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68, Barocci is identified as being from Rome rather than Urbino; on page 82 his
Last Supper in the cathedral in Urbino is titled a Last Judgment.
Illustrations are confusingly labeled, and there is no consistency in the manner
in which drawings are identified. The sheet from Düsseldorf (p. 105) is labeled
with the inventory number, a standard, whereas on pages 74–75, the captions for
sheets from Copenhagen, the Fondation Custodia in Paris, and Stockholm include
not a single inventory number among them. Their identifying information has been
jumbled and would confuse a reader who has not dealt with this material before and
would be unable to trace the source of the drawings.
All of this makes it seem as if the volume was never carefully edited and certainly not proofread, lessening its value as a contribution to Barocci studies. It is
also unfortunate that the press has adopted a style where footnotes do not always
include page numbers.
Saint Louis Art Museum

JUDITH W. MANN

Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets. By Mark A. Waddell. (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate Publishing. 2015. Pp. x, 214. $119.95. ISBN 978-1-4724-4972-6.)
When the French Catholic philosopher and priest Pierre Gassendi declared in
1629 that all natural philosophy was either “a magnet or a remora” (p. 53), he
defined the intellectual terrain that preoccupied an emerging generation of Jesuit
natural philosophers. Both were wondrous preternatural phenomena whose puzzling properties made them intensely fascinating yet difficult to know. The lodestone became a subject of a considerable corpus of Jesuit natural philosophy,
embodied especially by the work of Niccolò Cabeo and Athanasius Kircher.
Instead, by 1662 Kircher’s disciple and collaborator, Kaspar Schott, dismissed the
remora, a legendary small fish believed to be capable of stopping ships by attaching
itself to the hull, as a fabulous product of the human imagination. Its occult qualities were not spiritually dangerous, unlike the weapon-salve, a magnetic unguent
allegedly able to heal wounds at a distance. After fiercely debating its existence for
a few decades, the Society of Jesus prohibited any teaching on this subject in 1651.
These singular episodes frame the subject of Mark Waddell’s study of Jesuit
science and the demise of occult qualities in the seventeenth century. Focusing
especially on the works of Cabeo, Kircher, and Schott, he encourages us to take
Jesuit natural philosophy seriously in order to come to a better understanding of the
nature of their probabilism. What issues occupied Jesuits who saw themselves as
the pre-eminent Catholic interpreters of nature? How did they approach their subject and to what degree did they gradually alter the Aristotelian worldview that lay
at the heart of the Thomist synthesis, and became the core of Jesuit pedagogy?
The magnet proved to be an essential secret of nature. In 1600 the English
physician William Gilbert made it a cosmological principle that one could know
and test experientially, and ultimately a proof of heliocentrism. Instead, Jesuit nat-

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ural philosophers believed that the magnet creatively reconfigured Aristotelian
arguments about the relationship between the visible and the invisible in their own
explanations. Cabeo’s Philosophia magnetica (1629) responded to Gilbert by restoring this subject to the realm of traditional natural philosophy. A little over a decade
later, Kircher made the study of magnetism a demonstrative science, producing
pages of lavishly illustrated descriptions of machines he would ultimately display in
the Roman College museum but already showed visitors in his quarters in Rome.
The magnet was no mere spectacle for gawking observers but a means of experiencing those “secret knots,” that bound the world together. Inspired by Stuart
Clark’s work on the meaning of vision in the seventeenth century, Waddell argues,
rightfully in this reviewer’s opinion, that Kircher was teaching people how to see,
emphasizing probabilities instead of certainties. The magnet, much like his uses of
lenses and mirrors to study light and shadow, was a contemplative and spiritual
object whose action in the world illuminated divine presence.
If by the 1660s Schott no longer probed nature’s secrets with the same conviction as his predecessors, he instead demonstrated how both ideas and machines were
a product of human artifice and therefore deserving of explanation, or even revelation. Fundamentally, Waddell argues for a coherence to this Jesuit intellectual tradition, emerging from Christoph Clavius’s advocacy of mathematics as foundational
knowledge and Martín Del Rio’s meditations on how to distinguish artificial from
demonic magic at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At times, the reader
wants him to do more to explain how the Jesuits constructed a compelling natural
theology (a term he does not use) for early-modern Catholics that indeed had little
to do with those Baconian “matters of fact” proclaimed so forcefully by members of
the early Royal Society. Greater acknowledgment would have been welcome of the
pioneering work of Martha Baldwin on the Jesuits and their magnetic philosophy
mentioned in his bibliography. Fundamentally, this is a close intellectual history of
selected works by these authors (for instance, there is no analysis of the considerable
manuscript materials that Jesuit natural philosophers left behind). Waddell wants us
to read these texts with his guidance, in part, because there is so much to study
within them, and he does this well. Although his book could have potentially benefited from greater engagement with the contextual dimensions of Jesuit natural
philosophy, during the century in which the Society of Jesus fully realized its mission
of mobility, it is a thoughtful intervention that indeed encourages us to see this project as an important expression of spiritual action in the world.
Stanford University

PAULA FINDLEN

Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo. By Christopher M. Graney. (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press. 2015. Pp. xv, 270. $29.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-26802988-3.)
The “Copernican Revolution” is the transition from the ancient worldview,
claiming that the earth stands still at the center of the universe, to the modern

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worldview asserting that the earth is a planet rotating daily around its own axis and
revolving annually around the sun. The transition was a long and difficult process
taking about 150 years, roughly from Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543) to Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
(1687). The difficulties stemmed from the fact that there were many strong arguments against the earth’s motion: they were not merely biblical and religious, philosophical and epistemological, but also observational, astronomical, and mechanical.
For example, if the earth revolved, then we should observe an annual parallax in the
apparent position of fixed stars, but no one could; and if the earth rotated, then
freely falling bodies should deviate from the vertical, and gunshots in opposite
directions should not behave equally. The transition was also gradual insofar as
such objections had to be answered piecemeal and new confirming evidence had to
be found piecemeal. A significant step was the invention of the telescope and
Galileo’s discovery by its means of the moon’s mountains, Jupiter’s satellites,
Venus’s phases, and sunspots (in 1609–13). However, these telescopic discoveries
did not resolve the issue; they merely refuted some anti-Copernican arguments and
confirmed some aspects of Copernicanism. Another important step was Galileo’s
Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632), which
provided a critical examination of all arguments on both sides (save the religious
ones), including a critique of the mechanical objections; this book showed that the
scientific and philosophical evidence favored the earth’s motion, which thus
became more probable than the geostatic alternative; but, as Galileo realized, the
case for the earth’s motion was still not conclusive, since, for example, the stellar
parallax objection could not be refuted.
The sketch just given represents a consensus of recent scholarship. However,
despite such scholarly consensus, there is at least one popular myth about the
Copernican revolution that continues to be widespread: that conclusive proof of the
earth’s motion was provided by Copernicus himself, or the telescope, or Galileo’s
Dialogue, and that only religious superstition or ecclesiastic authoritarianism prevented the acceptance of Copernicanism.
The aim of this book is to criticize this popular myth. It does so by examining
the writings of the leading anti-Copernicans of the period and showing that they
contained many good scientific arguments against the earth’s motion. The principal author is, as the book’s subtitle indicates, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, an Italian
Jesuit who published the ambitious Almagestum novum (1651); a key topic was the
critical examination of 126 arguments on both sides. Riccioli was building on the
work of an earlier anti-Copernican, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who,
before the telescope, collected a mass of observational data that were unprecedented in quantity and quality; moreover, Tycho devised a “hybrid” worldview
according to which the planets revolve around the sun, but the whole solar system
and the fixed stars move around the central, motionless earth. A third author discussed by Graney is the Italian priest Francesco Ingoli, who in 1616 compiled an
essay summarizing the astronomical, mechanical, and theological arguments
against the earth’s motion; this essay provided the basis for a decree by the Con-

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gregation of the Index declaring the earth’s motion scientifically false and theologically contrary to scripture, and prohibiting Copernicus’s book.
Insofar as Graney criticizes the above-mentioned myth, his book has merit.
Unfortunately, however, its worth does not extend much beyond that; indeed, it is
seriously flawed. To begin with, Graney makes it sound as if the untenability of the
popular pro-Copernican myth were his novel contribution, whereas it is well
known among scholars. Moreover, Graney elaborates the opposite thesis: that as
late as 1651, the anti-Copernican arguments were not only stronger than the proCopernican ones but also included some that were conclusive, thus “demonstrating” the geostatic geocentric thesis to be “absolutely true” and the heliocentric geokinetic idea to be “absolutely false” (pp. 5–6, 162); but this thesis is as mythological
and untenable as the pro-Copernican myth. In fact, Graney’s justification of his
alternative myth is mostly a series of omissions, distortions, exaggerations, superficialities, sophistries, biases, equivocations, inconsistencies, false dilemmas, strawman fallacies, and so forth.
For example, consider the so-called star-size objection to Copernicanism,
which was a good and strong argument, but not decisive or unanswerable (as Graney
claims). Tycho, later echoed by Ingoli and then elaborated further by Riccioli,
argued as follows: (1) if the earth revolves around the sun, we should observe an
annual parallax in the apparent position of fixed stars; but (2) no annual parallax can
be observed; therefore, (3) if the earth revolves, the stellar distances must be so large
compared to the earth’s orbit that the resulting parallax is below the threshold of
available observational power; (4) such stellar distance can be calculated as being of
the order of 7000 times the earth-sun distance (p. 37); but (5) stars can be observed
to have measurable apparent diameters—for example, 2 minutes of arc for a firstmagnitude star; thus, (6) if a star is that far away and shows such an apparent diameter, its actual size must be extremely large; (7) this actual size can be calculated to
be of the order of the whole earth’s orbit, i.e., the star’s radius would be roughly
equal to the earth-sun distance, or about 500 times the sun’s radius (pp. 34–37); but
(8) this is an absurdly large size—namely, it is absurd that a star could be as big as
the earth’s orbit; therefore (9) the earth does not revolve around the sun.
As Graney says (p. 37), this is logically impeccable, mathematically correct,
and observationally accurate. However, he fails to appreciate that the difficulty is
with the alleged truth of premise no. 8 above. He does not seem to realize that, as
usual, when someone advances an argument, the burden of proof is on the antiCopernicans to tell us why such stellar size is absurd. Graney does mention (pp.
79–85) that some Copernicans criticized this star-size objection by attacking the
absurdity claim of this premise. For example, Christoph Rothmann and Philips
Lansbergen appealed to the power of God, arguing that there is nothing absurd
about such large stellar sizes since God is omnipotent and could have easily created
them. Graney makes fun of such a Copernican reply, by portraying Copernicans as
being the ones who appeal to religious considerations when faced with purely scientific objections from the anti-Copernicans. However, here the anti-Copernicans

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are abiding by the principle of “setting aside all authority” (sloganized in this book’s
title) only by failing to discharge their burden of poof, or refusing to justify one of
their key premises. Moreover, this reviewer would point out that here the Copernican appeal to divine omnipotence is a philosophical or metaphysical consideration rather than a religious one; it merely illustrates the principle that sometimes
scientific inquiry presupposes metaphysical ideas and needs to get involved in
metaphysical thinking. Finally, Graney ignores the fact that Copernicans also used
common-sense arguments to criticize the absurdity premise of the star-size objection. For example, both in his “Reply to Ingoli” and in the Dialogue, Galileo argues
as follows: there is no absurdity in a Copernican universe with some stars being
(roughly) 500 times bigger (in radius) than our nearest star (the sun), any more that
it is absurd and impossible in the animal kingdom for a whale to be (about) that
much bigger than a tadpole.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO

Henri de Maupas du Tour: The Funeral Oration for Vincent de Paul, 23 November
1660. Introduction, Translation, and Annotation by Edward R. Udovic, C.M.
(Chicago: Vincentian Studies Institute, De Paul University. 2015. Pp. 223.
$29.99 paperback. ISBN 978-1-936696-07-9.)
To the undergraduate, it may seem extravagant to devote an entire book to a
single speech. But Udovic’s attention in this elegant volume warrants the labor, and
not simply because St. Vincent de Paul’s career remains an intriguing chapter of
early-modern French Catholicism. Scholars are only just now beginning to submit
the life of Vincent and the ministries of his followers to more heightened scrutiny,
and justly so. The bolder accomplishments of Vincent’s life are now well publicized:
for instance, his foundation of the Congregation of the Mission in 1625 and his
establishment, along with St. Louise de Marillac, of the Daughters of Charity in
1633. Yet historians have much work to do in measuring his exact influence in
French dévot circles, the extent of his collaboration with lay patrons, and the cumulative effects on the French Church of his lengthy career. Udovic begins here with
an essential part of this task: probing the utterances, myths, and assertions advanced
by contemporary commentators like Henri de Maupas du Tour. Starting with the
work by Maupas du Tour (1606–80) is eminently sensible: he was a seasoned disciple and collaborator of Vincent, he was prominent among dévot circles in his own
right, and he was the first to publicly comment on Vincent’s life and merits.
The reader would do well to approach this work with two observations in mind.
The first is that Vincent remains a difficult subject to the scientific biographer, and
second that Maupas du Tour’s eulogy is not a scientific biography. Vincent was notoriously restrained in his correspondence and sometimes cryptic; so interpreting his life
makes acute demands on the analyst. Moreover, when he wrote his oration, Maupas
du Tour assuredly did not consult the more than 30,000 letters Vincent bequeathed
to historians. As well as remembering the enormous scope of this particular subject’s
activity, Maupas du Tour’s text must also be foregrounded with the special exigencies

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placed on the eulogist in composing a life prior to Vincent’s canonization in 1737,
added with the tailored literary demands of the seventeenth century.
In recognition of these requirements, this work cannot simply be a transliteration and translation of a primary document, however welcome such a labor would be.
In fact, Udovic not only translates the text but also excavates far beneath it to give
rich context and depth to the eulogy’s many biblical, literary, and historical components. Succeeding an opening chapter that helpfully provides new information on the
author of the eulogy (and which usefully highlights Maupas du Tour’s own reforming
credentials in the French Catholic Church), Udovic then uses particular passages
from the panegyric to elucidate the eulogist’s precise methods and objectives. This is
highly beneficial, for the reader is then well prepared to tackle the oration with a
better understanding of the core ingredients of saintliness and sainthood to observers
in the early-modern era. A final preambular chapter furnishes a cogent analysis of
Vincent’s cause of canonization, reminding the observer that Maupas du Tour’s
eulogy was the initial step in lengthy investigations (1660–1737) into Vincent’s virtue
and his broader contributions to the French, and universal, Catholic Church.
This book is to be heartily recommended to all scholars of early-modern
Europe and especially students of its cultural and religious heritage. Because it provides close textual analysis of a primary document from the early-modern period,
this volume will be an excellent edition to any history syllabus, and will prove
extremely useful as a teaching tool in the classroom. Finally, the text is accompanied by an array of impressive contemporary images and portraits drawn from the
ever-growing Vincentian Studies Collection at DePaul University, testifying to the
steady investments in Vincentian history of which Udovic’s work as a whole constitutes another significant addition.
University College Dublin

SEÁN ALEXANDER SMITH

Anglican Confirmation, 1662–1820. By Phillip Tovey. [Liturgy, Worship, and Society Series.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2014. Pp. xiii, 201.
$149.95. ISBN 978-1-4724-2217-0.)
Scholars of Anglican liturgical history have characterized the eighteenth century as a time of laxity in the practice of confirmation, both on the part of bishops
who confirmed and on the part of parish clergy who were required to prepare
people for confirmation. Phillip Tovey challenges this prevailing narrative with a
fresh exploration of theology and practice during this period. His parameters are
what he terms “the long eighteenth century” (p. 2), beginning with the 1662
restoration of the Book of Common Prayer and concluding in 1820, a decade and
a half before the beginning of the Tractarian movement that introduced a major
shift in Anglican understanding and practice of confirmation.
Tovey begins by examining theologies of confirmation, found not only in theological treatises but also in commentaries on the Book of Common Prayer and in
catechetical works, including commentaries on the Prayer Book catechism. Confir-

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625

mation sermons merit a separate chapter. Tovey concludes that the primary theme
for both baptism and confirmation during this period was that of a covenant into
which candidates entered at baptism and reaffirmed in confirmation. Within that
broad understanding, theologians debated both the nature of baptismal regeneration and the role of the Spirit in baptism and confirmation.
A chapter on the liturgy of confirmation begins with a discussion of the development of the 1662 rite, which introduced a question asking candidates to ratify
the promises made on their behalf at baptism. In the remainder of the chapter,
Tovey reviews proposals made during the period of his study, none of which were
implemented at the time.
Official liturgical texts offer some indication of how a rite is intended to be
enacted, but they cannot tell a researcher what was actually happening in parishes
and dioceses. It is here that Tovey makes his distinctive contribution. Drawing
from canon law, pastoral manuals for clergy, documents from episcopal visitations,
biographies, diaries, newspapers, and magazines, Tovey situates confirmation in its
historical and social contexts and shows that most parish clergy were diligent in catechizing their congregations and preparing them for confirmation, most bishops
fulfilled their responsibilities to confirm, and many laity eagerly presented themselves for confirmation, some even seeking to be confirmed more than once.
Tovey finds multiple records of hundreds or even thousands of people confirmed at a single service. But he does not consider these numbers in the context of
the overall population, although he asks whether these large numbers were sufficient to keep up with the growth in population during the eighteenth century (p.
137). His claim that confirmation was diligently practiced and widely sought
during this period would be strengthened by comparing the number of confirmands with estimates of the population.
Tovey rounds out his study with a chapter on confirmation in North America
during this period. Bishops were absent until the last decade of the eighteenth century, and Tovey concludes, as other scholars have already shown, that the first Episcopalian bishops in the United States did not give high priority to confirmation.
With his extensive use of a wide array of primary sources, Tovey makes an
important contribution to a largely neglected period of Anglican liturgical history,
providing a more positive assessment of the practice of confirmation than historians have heretofore proposed.
Church Divinity School of the Pacific

RUTH A. MEYERS

The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment. By Christopher M. S. Johns. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2015. Pp. xxii, 413. $89.95.
ISBN 978-0-271-06208-2.)
Among the discrete Enlightenments now abounding, the “Catholic Enlightenment” is one descriptive that commands widespread recognition and endorse-

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ment. The effort that Christopher Johns has put here into depicting its visual culture can only enhance its currency. As one might have suspected from his previous
publications, Johns is actually dealing exclusively with Rome and the papacy
between the mid-1720s and the 1760s so that his subject matter is more confined
than the title suggests. He can, however, be forgiven that omission after producing
a sumpuously illustrated volume that convincingly ties in his art object examples
with those wider trends within the Church that constitute the Catholic Enlightenment: Christocentric, antibaroque, intellectually open, and socially aware. In chapter 2 Johns points out the declining supernatural presence in the paintings commissioned to glorify new saints (what Johns wittily calls the “sanctification industry,“
p. 82); visions were outré, good works the mark of true holiness, with the supernatural elements in imagery downplayed in favor of social utility. Benedict XIV (1740–
58), the enlightened pontiff par excellence, created only five new saints in his long
reign. One of them, St. Camillus de Lellis, was painted by his favorite artist, Pierre
Subleyras, and the portrait was presented to him by the Camillian order. He is
shown amid hospital patients, aiding the helpless.
This was a papacy proud of its cultural inheritance and hanging on to it when
foreign buyers wanted to buy much of it up. During the 1730s Clement XII issued
anti-export decrees, restored the Arch of Constantine, and opened the Capitoline
Museum in the Palazzo Nuovo (with the Albani Collection as its centerpiece) to
the public and young artists. The museum was largely paid for by the re-establishment of the lottery in 1732. In chapter 4 Johns considers the museum’s expansion
in subsequent decades, with Benedict XIV again emerging foremost as a pope at
the center of many artistic and patronage networks, most of them converging on
his retreat in the Quirinal gardens where the Caffeaus, his garden casino and
“coffee house,” became a foremost place of homosocial exchange in the city. Benedict’s predecessor, Clement XII, had, in his own right, set the pace as a patron. His
family—the Corsini—were known for their refined taste and largesse, and his classical preferences, fine library, and splendid commissions made Clement able to
merge the magnificent Roman gentleman in the supreme pontiff. From these private spaces, Johns goes on to write about accessible ones in the city—churches and
public works—such as Clement XII’s new façade for St. Giovanni dei Fiorentini,
home of a confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, commissioned in the 1730s, and
a precedent for his successors to imitate. The last themed chapter considers each
pope’s use of personal gifts and endowments of pictures, statuary, and sacred
objects to individual churches (especially former sees) as a Borromean reminder of
prelatical good behavior that the Lateran Council of 1725 (the most important
since Trent) had recently reaffirmed. Thus Benedict XIV made annual gifts to San
Pietro in Bologna (he continued as archbishop after his election as pope until 1754)
and bequeathed his library to his natal city.
Historians may be assured that Johns is under no illusions about the underlying instability of enlightened Catholicism. It had what he calls a “hybrid agenda”
(p. 187) of tradition and contemporaneity that was not always easy to reconcile in
such areas as the miraculous and the scientific. Nevertheless, the attempt was made

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with art and iconography used to promote it. Johns’s historical judgment is generally sure except, perhaps, in his rather compressed treatment of how the Catholic
Enlightenment ends. His claim that the Portuguese earthquake of 1755 “vitiated
belief in the Church as a guardian of a rational religion” (p. 318) is only partially
persuasive, and his classification of Clement XIII as an enlightened pope and
Clement XIV as unenlightened one (the latter is omitted from this volume) will
strike many scholars as less than appropriate. The debate will go on, but, meanwhile, Johns has provided a magnificent example of how to draw on visual evidence
to illustrate the nature of religious culture in a manner that is at once sophisticated,
accessible, and plausible. His range and his handling of the sources that underpin
his scholarship is exemplary, and it is now for others to imitate his example and see
how Catholic art and Catholic Enlightenment could be mutually supportive outside Italy.
University of Leicester

NIGEL ASTON

The Way of the Wesleys: A Short Introduction. By John R. Tyson. (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2014. Pp. ix, 202. $18.00 paperback. ISBN
978-0-8028-6954-8.)
In The Way of the Wesleys, John Tyson has drawn on decades of research, writing, and teaching on the Wesleys to provide a concise and readable introduction to
their theology. His focus is on providing a concise explication of the Wesleys’ theology. In fourteen chapters, Tyson covers the topics of the Bible, sin, the new birth,
holiness, grace, the Holy Spirit, Christ, Christian perfection, atonement, Trinity,
the means of grace, the Lord’s Supper, life in the world, and ecumenism. The
nature of a short introduction necessitates a selection of subjects. However, some
explanation of the author’s choice of chapter topics and structuring of the book
would have been of interest to this reviewer. Why is baptism omitted? Why does
the chapter on sin appear before the chapter on grace?
One of the central virtues of this book is its inclusion of Charles Wesley.
Although the wider range of writings by John Wesley lead to him being allotted
more space than Charles, the writings of the younger Wesley feature extensively in
the book, especially his hymns, which shed much light on the topics discussed in
the book and remain an underutilized and underappreciated source for Wesleyan
theology. Tyson stresses the commonalities between the brothers while not
neglecting to point out their differences.
As an introduction to the Wesleys and their writings and thought, The Way of
the Wesleys might be read alongside other recent and related publications such as
Paul Wesley Chilcote’s John & Charles Wesley: Selections from Their Writings and
Hymns—Annotated & Explained (Woodstock, VT, 2011) and Jonathan Dean’s A
Heart Strangely Warmed: John and Charles Wesley and their Writings (Norwich, UK,
2014). In comparison, Tyson supplies less biographical material but more explanation in his own words of the Wesleys’ theology than the more anthological works

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of Chilcote and Dean. At the same time Tyson quotes extensively from the writings of the Wesleys that gives the reader a good sense of their views, in their own
words, on each topic.
Tyson has provided an accessible introduction to the wide-ranging and
dynamic lived theology of the Wesleys. The Way of the Wesleys can serve as a solid
starting point for anyone wanting an overview of their theology. It could be used
in introductory courses on the theology of the Wesleys, but, unfortunately, the
omission of footnotes diminishes its usefulness as an academic text, although the
inclusion of suggested readings and a bibliography somewhat compensate for
this absence.
Aberystwyth University;
Manchester Wesley Research Centre;
Nazarene Theological College

GEORDAN HAMMOND

A Time of Sifting: Mystical Marriage and the Crisis of Moravian Piety in the Eighteenth Century. By Paul Peucker. [Pietist, Moravian, and Anabaptist Studies.]
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2015. Pp. xvi, 248.
$84.95. ISBN 978-0-271-06643-1.)
In early 1749, the charismatic founding leader of the radical Pietistic Moravian Church, Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, was shocked to discover that some
influential members had carried his innovative theology too far into territory he
called “Sifting” after Luke 22:31—“Satan has desired to have you, that he may
sift you as wheat.” Since then, historians of the Moravian Church have almost
always skirted the Sifting as irrelevant or embarrassing. At best historians have
reinterpreted the Sifting according to their own sensibilities. In these retellings,
religious practices of the Sifting focused on Blood-and-Wounds theology and
were a brief diversion in the early history of the barely twenty-year-old Moravian
Church. Paul Peucker is the first to focus squarely on the Sifting in a superbly
researched, forthright study of every imaginable source, from every possible
angle, especially emphasizing the perspectives of contemporaries, quite different
from those of later historians.
Much of this study is about the sources. In the aftermath, Moravian leaders
tried to destroy any sources documenting Sifting practices. Peucker discusses what
survives in chapter 10. This reviewer read this chapter first, because destruction of
sources is an important part of the story and shapes what Peucker can do. Given
how much was destroyed, it is amazing how much he was able to uncover. Thankfully, it was impossible to eliminate every remnant, and through masterful detective
work, Peucker is able to create a remarkably complete picture of the Sifting. He
compares surviving Moravian sources with each other and with the vehement antiMoravian publications that soon proliferated. Written either by outsiders or apostates, their credibility has generally been questioned by scholars, but Peucker’s
comparative analysis proves these antagonistic writings to be accurate.

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Peucker argues that practices during the Sifting were extensions of Zinzendorf’s theology, which encouraged playfulness and adoption of feminine traits to
achieve childlike and womanly submission toward Christ, worship of Christ’s
wounds as sources of nurture, and bridal union with Christ, whereby the believer’s
feminine soul (“die Seele” in German) joined mystically with Christ as bridegroom.
In Zinzendorf’s teachings, mystical marriage could be experienced between husband and wife during intercourse. Both were to feel union solely with Christ as a
sacrament, rather than as lust.
Leaders of the Sifting found it natural to extend mystical bridal union to single
members as well. Principally under the leadership of Christel, Zinzendorf’s charismatic son, Single Brothers began worshipping Christ’s corpse to deaden their own
bodies, thus rendering themselves beyond sin. In late 1748 Christel introduced
gender-changing ceremonies to enable Single Brothers to experience mystical
bridal union with Christ in ritualized sex with each other. News of these new practices soon reached Zinzendorf, who reacted with stunned swiftness to try to repair
the public damage they had caused. He stopped rituals of gender change and extramarital sex, but defended the mystical theology that had motivated them. Leaders
after Zinzendorf’s death in 1760 attacked the theology as well, publishing carefully
censored versions of Zinzendorf’s writings and a detailed compendium of Moravian beliefs that made Moravian theology virtually indistinguishable from that of
Lutherans around them.
Peucker accepts Zinzendorf’s insistence that the Sifting was a time or a
moment in Moravian history, not a period, but Zinzendorf’s claim can be seen as
part of his attempt to distance himself from the Sifting and diminish its significance. The evidence and argument presented by Peucker suggest quite strongly that
it was, in fact, a period with importance not just for the few years of the 1740s. It
was the culmination of the twenty years leading to it and an upheaval whose effects
long outlasted Zinzendorf’s attempts to quash it.
But this is a small quibble for such a monumental study as this. Future histories of any topic and any part of the eighteenth-century Moravian Church will
surely have to take Peucker’s book into account.
BEVERLY SMABY

Tacoma, WA

LATE MODERN EUROPEAN
Newman on Vatican II. By Ian Ker. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2014. Pp.
xii, 167. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-19-871752-2.)
Ian Ker’s Newman on Vatican II maintains that, had Cardinal John Henry
Newman taken part in it, he would have aligned himself with the reformist party
at the Council. Reformers, Ker then adds, “sooner or later divide into moderate and
extreme factions” (p. 159). In the case of the latest council, there were those who

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wished to interpret its decrees in the light of Tradition and those who embraced a
hermeneutic of discontinuity with the past, championing radical change in doctrine
and practice.
Newman, the great proponent of doctrinal development, would have defended
a “hermeneutic of reform in continuity” (p. 159), in which true developments continually build on Tradition, clarifying and enriching it. The first two chapters introduce Newman as a “conservative-radical” (p. 6), proposing change in continuity—
a continuity defined by the notes of a true development that he delineated in the
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845): that the development retain the same type and principles as the original idea, that its beginnings
anticipate its subsequent phases, that the later phenomena protect and subserve the
earlier, and so on. In the following chapters Ker applies the notes to the doctrines
of the Second Vatican Council, particularly those on the nature of the Church, the
action of the Holy Spirit within it, Evangelization, and conscience. He sees them
not only in continuity with Tradition but also with Newman’s own ideas on those
subjects. Ker considers that the cardinal had already advanced some conciliar doctrines; pointed in the direction of others; and, in some cases, gone beyond what the
Council actually promulgated. A case in point of the latter, according to Ker, is
evangelization. He expresses the opinion that Vatican II did not explicitly deal with
the topic of evangelization. This is open to question. Apostolicam Actuositatem, on
the apostolate of the laity, was the Council’s clarion call to a capillary evangelization; a call that has not yet perhaps produced all the fruits intended by the Council.
Newman’s theory of development is central to Newman and Vatican II. Ker
uses the book to comment briefly on different interpretations of the Essay’s origins
and value. Among other points made, he disagrees with the author of this review
about the genesis of Newman’s theory of development. This reviewer responded to
Ker’s comments in a more recent book; let the arguments rest there. Newman on
Vatican II is written with Ker’s usual verve and thorough knowledge of his subject.
It is a short book, but it takes the reader through a considerable part of the
Newman corpus and of his fundamental ideas. In length and style it might be said
to be in line with the Oxford Movement’s Tracts for the Times: short, passionate,
and addressing important questions of the moment.
University of Navarra

JAMES PEREIRO

Protestant Missionaries in Spain, 1869–1936: “Shall the Papists Prevail?” By Kent
Eaton. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2015. Pp. xvii, 363. $110.00. ISBN 978-0-7391-9409-6.)
This solidly researched study covers the period between the revolution of 1868,
the most progressive and democratic of Spain’s nineteenth-century political
upheavals, and the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936. The author has used a rich
variety of sources, including church archives, the letters and diaries of missionaries, as
well as the Spanish and British press, both religious and secular. One merit of this

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study is that it is placed within the wider context of the cultural and religious milieu
of Victorian Britain. The proliferation of evangelical churches and movements in
nineteenth-century England and the association of Christianity with imperial expansion stimulated a surge in missionary activity in the British Empire and beyond.
Within this context, there emerged the Plymouth Brethren, evangelical dissenters
from the Church of England, who attached particular importance to the Pauline
example of missionary work among those whom they believed needed to be converted
to a pure form of Christianity based on the Bible alone. They were attracted to Spain
because the revolutionary constitution of 1869 introduced religious liberty for the first
time in the nation’s history. Although the constitution of 1876 prohibited any public
manifestations of religion other than the Catholic, it provided, at least, the slim and
inadequate protection that no one could be persecuted for his personal beliefs. In
these circumstances, the Brethren managed to survive to become the most active of
the foreign missionary groups working in the country.
In addition to literal interpretation of the Bible, the Brethren were committed
to a decentralized organization evident in their rejection of any overarching ecclesiastical structure. They refused to use the word church, favoring assembly instead.
They were also firmly anti-Roman. Indeed, they saw Catholicism’s dominance in
Spain as a fundamental cause of the country’s spiritual, social, and economic decline.
In addition, they attached importance to charitable and educational work among the
poor. But they faced formidable obstacles, save for the years between 1869–73 and
1931–36, in the form of periodic harassment and constant attacks by Catholic clergy
and press representatives who developed an obsession with the extent of the Protestant threat in spite of the minuscule size of the dissenting population.
This study examines in depth many important themes—the identities of the
missionaries, the evolution of their pastoral strategies, the areas where they were
most successful (Madrid, Barcelona, and rural Galicia), and the social composition
of their converts—largely the poor. In the end, the efforts of the Brethren proved
disappointing, but the personal stories in this volume make abundantly clear that
the missionaries were undaunted in their religious quest. The author also offers a
convincing explanation of some of the reasons behind the meager results of the
Brethren’s work, particularly the failure to develop native missionaries and a lack of
appreciation for aspects of Spanish popular culture.
There are few minor reservations. The narrative is, at times, overwhelmed by
the numerous and long quotations in the text. It also would have been helpful to
have had some analysis of the different opinions on religious liberty of the major
political parties of liberal Spain, the Progressives and Moderates until 1868, and
the Liberals and Conservatives after 1874. The Progressives and the Liberals took
a much more tolerant line than their opponents on this question and did their best
to ameliorate the harsher approach of their opponents. These minor reservations
aside, this study makes a major contribution the religious history of modern Spain.
University of Toronto (Emeritus)

WILLIAM J. CALLAHAN

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Sant’Anselmo in Rome: College and University. From the Beginnings to the Present
Day. By Pius Engelbert, O.S.B. Translated by Henry O’Shea, O.S.B. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 319. $39.95. ISBN 978-08146-3713-5.)
Pius Engelbert, former abbot of Gerleve Abbey and longtime professor of
ecclesiastical history at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, has rendered a
service in writing this book. Liturgical Press also merits gratitude from the reader
for providing Henry Shea’s translation of the German original and packaging it in
a durable, elegant edition. The work was first published in 1988 for the centennial
observance of Sant’Anselmo and was given an update in 2012.
Capable historian that he is, Engelbert situates the origin of Sant’Anselmo in
the context of the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. He adroitly uses the founding
charter of 1887 to point out the pope’s desire to see Sant’Anselmo serve as an ecumenical lifeline to the Eastern Churches, even as it was to provide for an appropriately Benedictine school of higher studies. All of this coincided with the intent of
Leo XIII to centralize the organization of the Benedictine Confederation under the
auspices of the Vatican. The first years of the project were precarious ones, and this
is where the author provides some valuable research. Property for the buildings of
the school was purchased only in 1890, on Rome’s Aventine Hill, a site that had
roots of monasticism going back to Cluny and early abbeys of the twelfth century.
Professors and students, after spending several years in various sites in Rome,
moved into the residence on the Aventine in October 1896.
It is striking for the American reader to see that some of the most avid supporters of this venture were from the United States. In particular, Abbot Boniface
Wimmer of St. Vincent’s in Pennsylvania saw the prospect of an international
school and community as the renewed vision of his own house of St. Elizabeth in
Rome, established several decades earlier. St. Vincent’s would soon send two professors, three students, and a generous financial donation for the new Sant’Anselmo.
The American presence at Sant’Anselmo in these early years is notable. Adalbert
Miller of St. Vincent was the prefect of studies and the first prior. Thomas Weikert
of St. Meinrad, appointed one of the first members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, was an instructor. Unfortunately, both of these men died suddenly in 1906.
Another American, Patrick Cummins of Conception Abbey, was named rector in
1920 and provided five years of leadership. His confrere at Conception Abbey,
Augustine Bachofen, was a renowned professor in that same era.
The dominant shape of the administration and faculty in the early years at
Sant’Anselmo, however, was German. This was especially through the Beuronese
Congregation. The first two abbot primates, Hildebrand de Hemptinne and
Fidelis von Stozingen, were Beuronese. The Beuronese also contributed the core of
lay brothers who helped in the maintenance of the school in its formative years.
This German presence was to grow even in the face of the challenges of World
War I and World War II. The only time in its history when the entire academic

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life ceased to exist were the years 1915–18 as a result of the war. Even as the fledgling entity was facing its challenges from world events, Engelbert notes the emergence of a number of questions that were to recur throughout Sant’Anselmo’s history: the need to recruit a sizable number of professors from monasteries to staff
the faculty, the need to provide a model of monastic observance and formation for
the younger monks of the House, and the need to find a mode of governance that
best suited the institution.
For Engelbert, the decades of the 1930s and 1950s were seen as a type of
golden age. Enrollment increased, and influential professors held sway. He rightly
points out how indispensable the financial donations of the American monasteries
were in keeping Sant’Anselmo above water during World War II and its aftermath.
The role of another American, Ulrich Beste of St. John’s Abbey, is also given a
deserved credit. Beste was not only a teacher in canon law but also the rector of
Sant’Anselmo from 1939 to 1949. It was Beste who persuaded Allied troops not to
intern the German priests and brothers at Sant’Anselmo when Rome was liberated.
Augustine Mayer was a key figure in the postwar period. As rector from 1949,
he helped to start the Liturgical and the Monastic Institutes. In this time some
noteworthy figures were attracted to the Athenaeum. They included Salvatore
Marsili, Burkhard Neunheuser, and Cipriano Vagaggini, as part of the Liturgical
Institute, and Basilius Steidle, Jean Leclercq, and Kassius Hallinger as professors in
the Monastic Institute. The decade of the 1950s, with its increasing numbers of
students from abroad, also witnessed the first resistance to some of the traditional
teaching methods and curriculum. These were voiced by two Americans in residence at Sant’Anselmo during these years, Virgil O’Neill of St. John’s Abbey,
master of clerics, and Polycarp Sherwood of St. Meinrad, a professor of biblical
Greek and patristics. A memorandum of Sherwood that detailed some of the grievances prompted a favorable response from American abbots. It in turn resulted in
a visit to the United States by Mayer and eventually to the departure of Sherwood
and O’Neill from Sant’Anselmo. The Congress of Abbots in 1959 represented a
high-water mark of Mayer’s influence. Abbot Benno Gut’s election as primate in
that year solidified the traditional understanding of Sant’Anselmo’s mission.
The years during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council were a
watershed for Sant’Anselmo. Twenty-four of the Benedictine Council fathers
(bishops and abbots) lived there during the time of the Council. In the Congress
of Abbots in 1966, the year after the Council’s close, a tide of change was evident.
A Commission on Sant’Anselmo was established, and in an unprecedented decision the abbots agreed to meet again in 1967. In that interim Mayer was elected
abbot of Metten, and Gut was made a cardinal, leaving openings for the key leadership positions of rector and abbot primate. At the 1967 Congress, the commission submitted a statement of principles that was to change the structure radically.
Driving forces behind these changes came from the United States and England, as
well as Belgium. The election of Rembert Weakland, an American, as the new
abbot primate was yet another indicator that the forces for change were in the

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ascendancy. Among the trends noted in the next ten years of Weakland’s leadership
were the replacement of Latin with Italian as the language of teaching, more Benedictines who were residing at Sant’Anselmo taking classes in other Roman schools,
and the admittance of women into the student body.
The narrative of Engelbert loses its force after 1977 and the election of Viktor
Dammertz as the new abbot primate. Part of this is due to the long series of biographical summaries interspersed throughout the text that cause the narrative
chronology to suffer. Given the fact that Engelbert had served as a professor and
procurator residing at Sant’Anselmo from 1981 to 1999 and had previously been a
student there in the 1950s and 1960s, he knows whereof he speaks. But he also
seems to have a decided bias regarding the arc of Sant’Anselmo’s story. His criticism of Weakland is harsh and one-sided. There is a similar discordant note in the
omission or passing treatment of such figures as Dominic Milroy as prior and
Anscar Chupungo as head of the Liturgical Institute and rector.
Engelbert has certainly given us the historical groundwork for an institution
that until this book has lacked a scholarly and synthetic treatment. One can only
hope that perhaps in the present generation a scholar from a third-world country
could continue the narrative begun by Engelbert and give it a perspective that is both
more diverse and more attentive to the complex and layered story of Sant’Anselmo
in the last half century.
Marmion Abbey
Aurora, IL

JOEL RIPPINGER, O.S.B.

The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958. By John Pollard. [Oxford History of the Christian Church. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2014. Pp.
xvi, 544. $140.00. ISBN 978-0-19-920856-2.]
John Pollard is already well known for his work on the Vatican. Now he
enhances that reputation with a sweeping narrative of the evolution of the papacy
from World War I through the controversial role of Pope Pius XII in World War
II to the cold war. It was a period of great change for the Vatican, as it recovered
from the loss of temporal power in 1870 and began carving out a new—and more
powerful—role in international diplomacy.
World War I represented the nadir of Vatican influence. In 1915 the Allies
signed the treaty of London that excluded the Holy See from taking part in any
peace negotiations because of the Italian fear that it might bring up the Roman
Question, the situation of the Holy See between the Italian occupation of Rome in
1870 and the Lateran Treaties in 1929. In the nineteenth century, the Holy See had
to contend with the aftermath of the French Revolution. In the twentieth century,
it faced new enemies: fascism, with which it had to preserve some semblance of
accord in Italy; Nazism; and communism. After the Great War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a sometime ally to the Holy See, was dismembered, and a new world
power took its first steps in European affairs. Despite the hostility of the American

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President Woodrow Wilson toward Catholics and hyphenated Americans, he did,
under pressure, visit Pope Benedict XV on his way to Versailles, but then his own
government‘s veto of U.S. membership in the League of Nations meant a return to
American isolationism. But the seeds were sown, and the Holy See began slowly to
appreciate the particular type of republican government practiced by the religiously
pluralistic country across the Atlantic. This is one of several important themes that
Pollard traces in his monumental contribution to the subject.
Relying heavily on the Vatican Archives, open to February 1939, and on a vast
array of secondary works, Pollard traces the adaptation of the Vatican to the new
realities of the twentieth century. He sees more continuity than discontinuity from
Benedict XV through Pius XI to Pius XII. Although he vividly portrays these pontiffs, he does not neglect the important roles of subordinates such as Domenico
Tardini, who served in the Vatican until the 1960s, and Giovanni Battista Montini,
the later Pope Paul VI.
Contrary to the charge that Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state
from 1929 to his election as Pius XII in 1939, agreed to the dissolution of the
German Center party as a pay-off to Hitler for the 1933 concordat with the Third
Reich, Pollard shows that the Vatican Archives make it clear that the disbanding
of the party left Pacelli “less room for manoeuvre in his negotiations with the
Nazis” (p. 252). Pius XI’s condemnation of the Italian build-up to war with
Ethiopia, however, fell on deaf ears as leading Italian bishops proved to be more
motivated by Italian nationalism than by Christian principles. Failure to prevent
the Italian aggression was a low point in the Holy See’s efforts to be impartial in
international affairs. But it also provided the backdrop for the Vatican to make its
presence felt around the world. In the fall of 1936, Pacelli visited the United States
and travelled across the country. Earlier that year, he had visited Lourdes and
would later attend the Budapest Eucharistic Congress. Pollard analyzes Pius XI’s
encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in 1937 to show that it virtually condemned every
aspect of Nazism, although some historians argue that, because the pope did not
explicitly name Nazism, he did not condemn it. The difficulty is the practice of
popes until recently of speaking in generalities to provide an arsenal of condemnatory language for any similar situations. In Germany, moreover, anyone found in
possession of the encyclical could be arrested for treason. Later that year, Cardinal
George Mundelein of Chicago publicly condemned Hitler, but Pacelli ignored the
German demands for a reprimand. A year later, however, Pacelli sharply rebuked
Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna for welcoming Hitler and calling on the Austrian people to vote for the Anschluss. Yet, the Vatican was not represented that
summer at the Evian conference on Jewish refugees.
Pollard’s treatment of Pius XII during the war is balanced. He defends the
Vatican’s accepting a diplomatic mission from Japan in February 1942, because of
the Church’s concern for missions in conquered territory and the equilibrium by
new missions to the Holy See from China and the Dutch government in exile. He
is harsher in his evaluation of the pope’s silence in regard to the Ustasha atrocities

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in Croatia, nominally a “Catholic state.” But another of the “silences” of the pope
was a surprising one—he never criticized the Soviet Union until after the Allied
victory. Unfortunately, in the early postwar years, the developing relationship
between the United States and the Holy See came under strain, despite the
common concern about communism. Warmer relations between the two would
have to wait for another generation.
This masterful account of the papacy during such a crucial period is marred
not by the author’s work but by careless proofreading that leaves words out of order
or omitted and misspells proper names.
University of Virginia

GERALD P. FOGARTY, S.J.

Edith Stein: Self-Portrait in Letters—Letters to Roman Ingarden. Translated by
Hugh Candler Hunt; editing and comments by Maria Amata Neyer, O.C.D.
[The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 12.] (Washington, DC: Institute
for Carmelite Studies Publications. 2015. Pp. xxvi, 362. $22.95 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-939272-25-6.)
This volume gives us 162 letters and postcards written by Edith Stein (or St.
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) to Roman Ingarden between 1917 and 1938 (the
responses of Ingarden have been lost). Stein and Ingarden both belonged to the
inner circle around Edmund Husserl (she was, in fact, Husserl’s assistant between
1916 and 1918), and this was the setting in which their friendship began and grew.
She mentions Husserl frequently in the letters, always reverently as der Meister, but
she also speaks about the particular difficulties of working with him. From these
letters we learn more about the exact focus of her work for him—that is, we hear
about which manuscripts she ordered and prepared for publication.
In one letter she reveals her strong sense of Prussian identity (she was born
and raised in Breslau), and she surprises us when she describes a moment in 1917
when “it suddenly became quite clear to me: today my individual life ceased and
everything I am belongs to the [German] state” (letter 7). We also learn about her
political activities in Breslau after World War I with the newly formed German
Democratic Party.
Of particular interest in this correspondence is the collision between her and
Ingarden over Catholicism (she had converted to the Catholic Church in 1922).
Ingarden had apparently in one of his 1924 letters spoken of the Church exercising
“control of the masses through a body of made-up dogma,” to which she responded
(letter 85), asking him how he, who knew how to investigate issues with the greatest care, could bring himself to speak in such half-baked slogans and stereotypes
about such momentous matters. She also challenged him to explain how he could
be so dismissive of the thought and faith of intellectual giants such as Ss. Augustine
and Thomas Aquinas. On the occasion of her entrance into religious life as a
Carmelite in 1933 she received from him a message that she calls his “very sour

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substitute ‘congratulations,’” and she expresses to him her regret that he cannot
enter into her happiness (letter 160).
But what will perhaps engage the reader of this correspondence most of all,
especially the reader looking for new insight into Stein as personality and as
woman, is the fact that she clearly loved Ingarden with an unrequited love. In letter
25 she addresses him as “Darling” and says “Du” to him. Then she pulls back, sensing his reserve, and resumes her practice of calling him “Mr. Ingarden” and saying
“Sie” to him. She often felt that he wrote to her more out of duty than inclination
(letter 10), and she once explained a long silence on her part by saying, “you see …
all of your letters are curiously void of any sense of involvement” (letter 32). She
found it difficult to adapt to his “distance”: “For my part, indeed, I have always had
to strongly resist writing [to you] from the perspective of my whole personality”
(letter 32). But the correspondence was able to be sustained on the basis of their
shared interest in phenomenology and their shared veneration for the person of its
founder. In fact, we learn that in 1930 she invested considerable time and effort in
helping Ingarden prepare for publication his important work, The Literary Work of
Art (Halle, 1931).
The book is very competently introduced by Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz
and is well translated (but not fehlerfrei) by Hugh Candler Hunt.
Franciscan University of Steubenville

JOHN F. CROSBY

AMERICAN
Inspiration and Innovation: Religion in the American West. By Todd M. Kerstetter.
[The Western History Series.] (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2015. Pp. xi,
275. $26.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-118-84833-3.)
In this first comprehensive survey of religion in the American West, Todd
Kerstetter appraises the complex history of the region, arguing that “religion
inspired people who lived in and who came to the West” and that “the region’s historical development shaped religious innovations” (p. 3). Seven chapters examine
the roles of religion in the West in specific eras and contexts: indigenous religions
precontact; colonial expansions of non–North American nations into the West,
nineteenth-century migrations and westward expansion, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the West’s late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century development as
a “colony” to the rest of the nation, the cold war era, and the region’s post-1965
emergence as a hub for immigrants and new religious movements.
Religious studies scholars will appreciate Kerstetter’s attention to the diversity
of religious expression in the West. Likewise, historians will welcome the chronological structure as well as the grounding of regional developments in national history. Although his treatment of Judaism and Asian religions is brief, Kerstetter
attends carefully to the Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, and Native American reli-

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gions that shaped and continue to shape the region. Chapter 1 could even be
assigned as a standalone introduction to indigenous American religions in the
West, as it outlines cultural and oral traditions from each of the West’s eight culture areas.
Regional historians might appreciate more elaboration on why Kerstetter
defined the West as the United States west of the Mississippi River. Although a
commonly accepted definition of the region, it includes areas such as Arkansas and
Louisiana that factor minimally into his analysis. But overall, the book is an engaging assessment of religion’s many roles in shaping the region’s development, useful
both for graduate and undergraduate classrooms, and for scholarly reference. It
conclusively establishes the West’s uniqueness as a region and the significance of its
diverse range of religious traditions.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY

FAY BOTHAM

A Sense of the Heart: Christian Religious Experience in the United States. By Bill J.
Leonard. (Nashville: Abingdon Press. 2014. Pp. xii, 380. $45.00 paperback.
ISBN 978-1-4267-5490-6).
In A Sense of the Heart: Christian Religious Experience in the United States Bill
Leonard offers a broad historical narrative that seeks “to define, describe, and analyze various elements of religious experience across a wide spectrum of religious
communities where varying expressions of religious liberty and pluralism exist” (p.
3). Traversing the Atlantic Ocean, the book begins in sixteenth-century Europe
and ends with the spiritual seekers of twenty-first-century America. Leonard provides a readable and approachable overview that will make an excellent read for
those interested in learning about Christianity in America and will work well in an
undergraduate classroom. Readers who are well versed in American Christian history will recognize all the usual suspects and key players, but they likely will learn
some new, interesting details along the way.
The first chapter outlines what Leonard means by the term religious experience
with nods to William James, Mircea Eliade, Ann Taves, Rudolph Otto, and
others. In short, Leonard is not interested in doctrine and dogma; rather, he
focuses on what Christians did and how they felt. With such an aim, it is no surprise that the book’s title comes from Jonathan Edwards’s 1746 work A Treatise on
Religious Affections (and Leonard references Edwards throughout the book). The
chapters that follow take the reader through American Christian history and cover
a wide range of individuals and communities. Chapters are both thematic and
chronological, and they center on topics like colonial America, revivalism, liberal
or esoteric Christian experience (transcendentalism and spiritualism), communitarianism, African American Christianity, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, and
modern-day America. This is a wide range of American Christians and experiences, and Leonard brings them together in a narrative that reads and flows with

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ease. Readers of The Catholic Historical Review will be particularly interested in
chapter 9, which describes the development of American Catholicism, including
John Gother’s colonial “Garden of the Soul” devotions, nineteenth-century immigration, Dorothy Day and Catholic social justice, the Second Vatican Council,
and Thomas Merton.
Despite the book’s attention to Christian diversity, it is still a traditional narrative of American Christianity. Although there is reference to colonial missions to
Indians, Native Christian voices are noticeably lacking in A Sense of the Heart. At
the close of the book’s first chapter, Leonard notes that his narrative will examine
“the nature and diversity of religious experience in light of such distinct religiocultural issues as pluralism, voluntarism, religious freedom, democratic idealism, and
Protestant privilege in the US” (p. 22). In light of the missing Indian experiences
and the single chapter on black Christians, it might have been more accurate to
write “white Protestant privilege.” Although it is a traditional story of American
Christianity, with supplemental readings the book will work well in an undergraduate classroom. It provides a solid base narrative and introduces students to various
theoretical ideas about religious experience. Leonard’s clear distillation of James,
Taves, and others in chapter 1 provides a primer for reading and analyzing the religious experiences that abound in the following chapters.
Gonzaga University

EMILY SUZANNE CLARK

American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History.
Edited by Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson. (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 518. $66.00. ISBN
978-0-268-03842-7; e-ISBN 978-0-268-08988-7.)
George Marsden, the topic and inspiration of this book of essays, is one of the
most accomplished and influential historians in America. Over a teaching career
that spanned forty-three years, Marsden’s work has reshaped American religious
history. Marsden first made waves when he published Fundamentalism in American
Culture (Oxford, 1980). This study came just in time to help observers puzzle out
the religious commitments and cultural outlook that mobilized the Religious
Right. Marsden’s next work, Reforming Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, 1987),
was a history of Fuller Theological Seminary, which became one of the most influential evangelical institutions. It is an elegant, witty, and finely nuanced account of
how fundamentalists and other evangelical Protestants were shaping and being
shaped by postwar American culture.
For many historians these accomplishments would be enough to provide a
solid reputation and career. Marsden’s intellectual curiosity was winding up, however, not down. His abiding interest in American higher education, the intellectual
life it harbored, and what religion had to do with them yielded a trio of books, most
notably The Soul of the American University (Oxford, 1994). Marsden’s longtime
quest to understand Jonathan Edwards and his times finally bore fruit in Jonathan

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Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), a multiple prize-winner in the profession and
beyond. Even in retirement Marsden continues to ruminate over aspects of American life and thought, notably The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The
1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (New York, 2014), and a forthcoming study of
the American impact of C. S. Lewis’s classic, Mere Christianity (New York, 1952).
Not the least of Marsden’s accomplishments has been his mentoring of doctoral students, first at Duke University and then at Notre Dame. Three of his protégés—Darren Dochuk of Notre Dame, Thomas Kidd of Baylor, and Kurt Peterson of Loyola University—organized this book. It might look like a Festschrift,
they admit, but they aim to do more than memorialize their professor and show off
their skills. So they structured the book to address a “wider discussion about . . . the
history of evangelicalism and American religion, the challenges and opportunities
facing the next wave of religious historians, and the unchanging virtues of good historical writing” (p. 9). Each section represents one of Marsden’s major works and
provides readers with three features: a guide to the topic’s historical literature and
arguments, a reckoning with Marsden’s accomplishments, and some “new directions” that build on or contest Marsden’s approach.
This book needs to be on the reading list of anyone who has an interest in this
field. It is tailor-made for a seminar in the history of American evangelicalism. It
includes some of the best historiographic chapters that one can find in American religious history, notably Douglass Sweeney on religion in colonial America, Margaret
Bendroth on “The Evangelical Mind and the Historians” since the nineteenth century,
and Barry Hankins on historians’ debates over fundamentalism and evangelicalism.
Likewise, the “new directions” essays are a remarkable display of talent and
interpretive verve. They include Jay Case’s arresting account of an “African American Great Awakening” following the Civil War, Kristin Kobes DuMez’s case
study of how world Christianity should be “reorienting” American religious history,
Timothy Gloege on the liberal theologians in fundamentalist Reuben Torrey’s
mental closet, John Turner on the impact of evangelical campus ministries,
Kathryn Long on the impact of evangelical missionaries on 1950s popular culture,
and David Swartz on the rise and dissipation of the Evangelical Left in the 1970s.
If the quality of scholarship on display in this book is any indication of George
Marsden’s influence, it has been powerful indeed.
Nagel Institute, Calvin College
Grand Rapids, MI

JOEL CARPENTER

The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather. By Rick Kennedy.
[Library of Religious Biography.] (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. Pp. xiv, 162. $17.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-7211-1.)
A biography of Cotton Mather has not appeared since Kenneth Silverman’s
award-winning study, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York, 1984). The

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Mathers were a topic of interest at the time, as evidenced also in Robert Middlekauff’s earlier work, The Mathers (New York, 1971), a multigenerational study
of Richard, Increase, and Cotton, followed by Michael G. Hall’s biography of
Increase Mather, The Last American Puritan (Middletown, CT, 1988). After a
hiatus in Puritan studies in the 1990s, the gyre has turned, and interest in the
Mathers—especially Cotton—is growing, helped in part by the work of a team of
editors and students under the leadership of Reiner Smolinski to make available
some of his manuscript corpus, including the massive “Biblia Americana.” Smolinski himself will be publishing a more detailed intellectual biography of Mather in
the near future.
Thus Rick Kennedy’s lively take on Cotton Mather’s extraordinary life is very
welcome. Kennedy’s biography is not merely a placeholder to satisfy Matherphiles
until Smolinski’s book appears; rather, it reflects and advances the revisions of this
seemingly ubiquitous individual that are underway. It does so in the brief, popular,
annotation-free format that characterizes Eerdman’s Library of Religious Biography, of which this is the latest installment, steered for decades by Mark Noll. What
is provided here, in other words, is not your grandfather’s Mather.
Although there is recognition of Mather’s role in prosecuting the Salem witch
trials, Kennedy points to ways in which Mather anticipated and provided a basis for
modern evangelicalism, including his innovative educational psychology; his adherence to “social learning,” in which phenomena reported by credible witnesses were
accepted as true (“knowledge, like politics, was a fellowship” [p. 22]); his appeal to
“reasonableness” in religion; his role in the study and exposition of scripture reflecting his participation in the “biblical enlightenment”; his “catholicity” and ecumenism rather than espousal of doctrinaire Calvinism.
Mather was an incredibly erudite if not wholly original thinker who had a
mastery of the world of learning. He was an accomplished historian, particularly of
his native New England. Yet he was also a mystic, recording ecstatic experiences
and encounters with angels in his study, affirming that creation was charged with
spiritual meaning and messages. In this blend of intellect and piety—a blend that
scholars such as Noll and Owen Strahan have called upon modern evangelicals to
recapture—Mather utilized a holistic approach to heal the human person, using, as
in his advocacy of inoculation, modern medicine and science along with traditional
religious precepts.
Furthermore, Mather was a “populist-style pastor” (p. 52), shepherding in
Boston what in effect was America’s first megachurch. He tirelessly preached at
other area churches, attracting large crowds—“extraordinary auditories” (p. 90)—
wherever he went. Deeply involved in provincial politics, he advocated a brand of
libertarianism that he called “eleutherian,” meaning “freedom lover” (p. 28), which
for him was an essential component of what he called “the evangelical interest” (p.
x), a cause to which he devoted his life. He led the Massachusetts version of the
Glorious Revolution and identified a republican strain in the Bible, a godly consti-

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tution that modeled limited government based on the consent of the governed. In
these ways, Mather, “trying to negotiate a way of cultural accommodation, intellectual sophistication, and personal holiness that was biblically authorized” (p. 80),
contributed to the formation of modern American evangelicalism.
Yale Divinity School

KENNETH P. MINKEMA

Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursing. Edited
by Betty Ann McNeil, D.C. (Chicago: Vincentian Studies Institute, DePaul
University. 2015. Pp. lxiv, 557. $30.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-936696-08-6.)
Jane Austen once wrote, “. . . Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. . . .
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men
all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”1 Those as disinterested in
military history as Austen was or bewildered in the search for historical accounts of
war that focus on women and the good that can come from such acts of violence
will welcome this book. Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to
Civil War Nursing is a compilation of military hospital notes, “recollections and
accounts,” and correspondence that detail the service of the American Daughters
of Charity of Vincent de Paul, women whose lives were dedicated to charity and
who achieved the trusted sociocultural position of being able to provide spiritual
and physical comfort and care for Union and Confederate soldiers alike. It is edited
by Sister Betty Ann McNeil, archivist of the order, who also assisted this reviewer
with a book about the nurses among the confraternity of the Daughters of Charity.
The American Daughters’ contributions during the War Between the States were
ones of diplomacy and kindness defined as the “remedy of remedies” by Sister
Matilda Coskery in her 1840s book, Advices on the Care of the Sick.
In Balm of Hope, McNeil has painstakingly amassed approximately 146 documents and organized them into three parts preceded by an introduction by Janet
Leigh Bucklew. Each part includes a brief note as to the historical significance of
the documents that follow, and a number of the letters include editorial comment.
Although the introduction and commentaries lack historical rigor and context most
notably in terms of nursing history, the compilation as a whole is a valuable contribution that can be used by historians in future works. However, the index does little
to aid the health care or nurse historian who has a specific focus. For example, general headings such as “wounded” are listed with medical terms such as “wounds.”
Political gems such as presidential acknowledgments of the Daughters’ contributions are easy to locate; however, scholarly nursing history will have to be constructed from this work by carefully mining the 506 pages of transcribed manuscripts. The work includes footnotes but does not include a bibliography, making
it a challenge to trace historical sources partially cited in subsequent footnotes.
1. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (London, 1818), https://gutenberg.org/files/121/
121-h/121-h.htm (accessed February 4, 2016).

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Appendix G, “Selected Resources for the Study of Catholic Sister Nurses,” fails to
include some of the most noted scholarly American Catholic nursing histories of
the period.
These points aside, this book provides an important archive of the Daughters’
service to humanity that can now impel historians to illuminate further the nuances
of women religious’ contributions to nursing and the gentler side of history—creating caring community.
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

MARTHA MATHEWS LIBSTER

After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History. By
David A. Hollinger. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2013. Pp. xvi,
228. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-15842-6.)
Intellectual historian David Hollinger gathers together his previously published
essays on Protestant liberalism in the twentieth century to fashion After Cloven
Tongues of Fire. Whereas declining membership roles, dwindling financial resources,
and diminishing social authority often become the fodder for assessing the liberal
Protestant movement that once held sway over large swaths of the nation’s faithful
and enjoyed even greater cultural capital in the mid-twentieth century, Hollinger
offers a more nuanced picture. He simultaneously recognizes that “liberalizers did
lose the institutional control of Protestantism they once had, but in return they furthered the causes in the national arena to which they were the most deeply connected,” particularly pluralism, tolerance, civil rights, and rational inquiry (pp. xii, 14).
Although the term liberalism carries a set of contested definitions in relation to
Protestantism, Hollinger identifies it most closely with “ecumenical” as evident in
the movement’s creation of trans-denominational partnerships such as the World
Council of Churches and in championing theological pluralism and social activism
(p. xiii). Some of Hollinger’s most intriguing analysis appears in the middle chapters
devoted first to the Realist-Pacifist summit meeting in 1942 in which these two
competing groups allied with a confidence in their capacity and cultural authority to
articulate a public agenda for the postwar years deeply rooted in their own liberalizing understanding of Christian principles. The cultural influence reflected in this
meeting manifests itself in a very different form in the following chapter as
Hollinger identifies a deeply Protestant “mentality” among the champions of science
in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Hollinger then digs more
deeply into the important relation between Protestant liberalism and science with
two chapters that give prominent attention to William James’s shift from seeking
more delimited domains for science and religion to a commitment to weigh religious
belief more strictly within the bounds of scientific inquiry (p. 103).
The interplay between Protestant liberalism and American culture that looms
large in the book takes a more current turn in the final chapters. Hollinger’s epilogue, the only new content other than introductions to each of the chapters, offers
an analysis of Reinhold Niebuhr as a way “to explore some of the complexities of

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. . . secularization” (p. xii) that liberal Protestants face in the “post-Protestant”
period that characterizes the United States since the second half of the twentieth
century. What follows ties much of the final few chapters of the book together, particularly Hollinger’s reflections on the role of religion in the public sphere.
Hollinger takes to task those who at once assert the right to insert religious ideas
into the public sphere and then claim that those ideas are exempt from the same
analytical and critical scrutiny that applies to nonreligious ideas. Hollinger relies
upon a distinction between motive and warrant to accept that religious adherents’
public proposals might arise out of a religious conviction but the public warrant justifying them must be open to critique. Hollinger finds his model for such an
approach in a quotation from President Barack Obama and nod to Abraham Lincoln that, although insightful, misses an opportunity to engage more recent and
sophisticated treatments of religion’s constructive place in public life by scholars
such as Linell Cady, Jeffrey Stout, and David Tracy.
Despite this relatively minor matter of how best to critique and construct religion’s participation in public life, After Cloven Tongues of Fire succeeds in offering
a nuanced and compelling interpretation of liberal Protestantism’s engagement
with the increasingly complex and diverse cultural and intellectual climate of the
twentieth century. Hollinger’s work offers much to historians and students of this
era as well as to the study of Protestantism in the United States.
Brite Divinity School

JEFFREY WILLIAMS

An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians. By Paul
Moses. (New York: New York University Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 381. $35.00.
ISBN 978-1-4798-7130-8.)
Jay P. Dolan’s well-received social history of New York Catholicism, The
Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865 (Baltimore,
1975), led a number of historians to adopt his approach to the study of American
Catholic history. One of the most recent and successful examples of this genre is
Paul Moses’s An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians.
The author is professor of journalism at Brooklyn College–CUNY; former
city editor of Newsday; and author of The Saint and the Sultan (New York, 2009),
which won the award of the Catholic Press Association for the best history book in
2010. In this book he draws upon his own background as a native New Yorker of
Jewish, Irish, and Italian ancestry to trace in convincing detail the process whereby
the Italians replaced the Irish as the dominant ethnic group in the Catholic community in New York City after the turn of the twentieth century.
In the 1890s the Italian-born population of Manhattan increased from 39,951
to 178,886, and it grew rapidly thereafter. However, even as the number of Italian
immigrants mushroomed and Irish-Catholic immigration experienced a steady
decline, the local Irish American hierarchy kept firm control of the levers of power.
When the Archdiocese of New York observed its centenary in 1908, it was almost

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exclusively an Irish-American celebration, presided over by Michael Logue, archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. On the parish level the situation was
more complex, and Moses is commendably even-handed in discussing the cultural
clashes between straight-laced Irish pastors and Italian immigrants who were
accustomed to a more exuberant expression of their Catholic faith.
The Catholic Church was not the only theater of conflict between the Irish and
the Italians. One of the most revealing chapters in this book describes the discrimination experienced by young Italian Americans in the police departments of New
York City and Brooklyn (a separate city until 1898). Although these idealistic young
men were often motivated by a desire to combat crime in their own neighborhoods
and were admirably equipped to do so because of their fluency in Italian, they found
it almost impossible to gain the confidence of their Irish American superiors.
Another source of conflict between the Irish and the Italians was competition
for jobs on the waterfront. The turf war was settled when the Irish reluctantly conceded control of the Brooklyn docks to the Italians while retaining control of the
Manhattan waterfront. The Irish and Italians were competitors in other areas as
well, which included politics, sports, show business, and organized crime, especially
in the era of Prohibition.
When Fiorello LaGuardia (whose mother was Jewish) ran on the Republican
ticket and was elected as mayor of New York City in 1933, it marked the coming of
age of Italians in New York politics. The Catholic Church was slow to read the
demographic tea leaves. Not until 1968 was a Brooklyn-born priest of Italian ancestry (Francis Mugavero) appointed the bishop of his heavily Italian home diocese.
This is an informative and entertaining book that is thoroughly researched and
beautifully written. The author notes that the rivalry between the Italians and the
Irish in New York City has had a happy ending in recent years with their embrace
of one another. However, he also notes that these erstwhile rivals now often find
themselves at odds politically with African Americans and Latinos. He ends his fine
study with a pertinent and practical question: “Can the rumbles-to-romance story of
New York’s Irish and Italians suggest some ways to overcome the ethnic and racial
divisions that have been so much a part of the city’s history?” (p. 326).
Fordham University (Emeritus)

THOMAS J. SHELLEY

The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton. Edited and annotated by Patrick
Samway, S.J. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2015. Pp. x,
397. $29.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-01786-6.)
The books and journals of Thomas Merton are wonderful, but his letters, particularly with friends, are a genre all their own. Joining the set of letters between
Merton and editor Jay Laughlin, who published substantial Merton material with
New Directions Publishing, is Patrick Samway’s edition of the letters between
editor-publisher Robert Giroux and Merton.

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This book, however, is special, as Giroux was Merton’s editor for many of his
major works, most notably Giroux and Merton’s most successful collaboration: The
Seven Storey Mountain (New York, 1948). Giroux also was Merton’s editor for five
other major subsequent works published by Harcourt Brace and twenty published
by Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy/Giroux.
The book contains not only the letters but also a foreword by Jonathan Montaldo and an introduction that helps the reader place both men in context.
Although most know Merton’s history, Giroux’s is not as familiar. Giroux came
from solid New Jersey Catholic stock, unlike the more traveled and urbane Merton,
who converted to Catholicism while at Columbia. The two met at Columbia and
shared friends and teachers, most notably Mark Van Doren, although neither realized when they were students what their relationship would become over time. The
book also contains a chronological list of the Merton books for which Giroux
served as general editor and an epilogue about Giroux, clearly Samway’s friend.
The most interesting material in the book shows how Giroux served as a “working” editor for Merton’s writing. One of the best illustrations of this phenomenon is
his naming of several of Merton’s books when Merton struggled for a title. The Ascent
to Truth (New York, 1951) and The Sign of Jonas (New York, 1953) are two such
illustrations in the book. It is also interesting to watch the interplay of letters reflecting efforts to make a book as coherent and well written as possible. Giroux’s suggestions in letters as he and Merton develop a book demonstrate a gentle but thoughtful
guidance in the development of many of Merton’s finest works. Giroux’s masterful
efforts at forming a series of Merton’s essays into a coherent whole is also a beautiful
illustration of the fine work of a master editor. Giroux did Merton a tremendous service in helping him reach his potential as a writer. Giroux’s guidance and suggestions
invariably improved Merton’s literary efforts and helped form him as a writer through
the iterations of his material, from his early focus on monastic issues to the peace and
social justice issues that occupied his later work.
The letters also give the reader an insight into some of the problems experienced by Merton in understanding commercial publication. It was apparent that he
was a writer, not a businessman. A few examples that enliven the book include his
trouble with censors, his approach to foreign rights for his books, his dependence
on Naomi Burton Stone for the business side of his work, and his lack of understanding of the financial and legal side of the publishing industry. The last, along
with a lost letter, almost destroyed Merton’s relationship with Giroux. Luckily, the
lost letter did arrive, and the two men did not lose their friendship over the matter
of the rights to publish Merton’s next book.
To those familiar with Merton’s work, this book provides a valuable insight
into the commercial publication of his writing, which will be interesting to confirmed Merton scholars and a good addition to their library.
University of Kentucky

F. DOUGLAS SCUTCHFIELD

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647

Tapestry in Time: The Story of the Dominican Sisters, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1966–
2012. Edited by Mary Navarre, O.P. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing. 2015. Pp. xxii, 314. $20.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-9028-7255-5.)
Anyone interested in peering back through time to the heady days following
the Second Vatican Council should read Tapestry in Time. The title is inspired by
an artwork produced by a congregation of Dominican sisters for the renovation of
their motherhouse chapel in 1965. Consisting of several tapestries stitched collectively by members of the congregation, the multicolored wall hangings change with
the liturgical season and have come to symbolize the many personalities and roles
that have characterized the congregation since the first Dominican sisters arrived
in Michigan in 1877.
Like the tapestries in the chapel, Tapestry in Time is a collective composition
that picks up where Sister Mona Schwind’s earlier history, Period Pieces (Grand
Rapids, 1991), leaves off. The new book begins with the story of the sisters in 1966,
when Sister Mary Aquinas Weber was elected prioress and charged with leading the
congregation through the transitions in religious life urged by the Council’s Perfectae
Caritatis. Tapestry in Time lets us live through the extraordinary process of modernization and renewal with the sisters, seeing the difficult soul-searching that led to the
congregation’s current way of life. Modernism was not embraced by all the sisters, but
this extraordinary group of women was committed, above all, to God and one
another, and promised to work through the changes in a spirit of true sisterhood.
The resulting story takes us on a journey that traces how they embraced the
Council’s spirit of openness and expansiveness, transforming themselves from a
rather inward-looking order of teachers staffing Catholic grade schools, high
schools, and one college in Michigan to an outward-looking congregation that took
seriously the Church’s call to social justice. (Disclosure: this reviewer teaches at
Aquinas College, founded by the sisters.) In the process, many of the “monastic”
qualities of the congregation’s common life waned to allow the sisters to pursue
callings that would include work among the poor and sick in the United States,
South America, Central America, and other parts of the world while retaining their
roots in the training they received at Marywood, their Grand Rapids motherhouse.
The complexity of the spiritual and psychological transitions undergone by
this community is beautifully captured in the various chapters. We see how the
changes in superficial things like the habit and substantial matters like the sisters’
place in the world were not undertaken whimsically but were based on careful reading of Dominican and church traditions and documents, the “signs of the times,”
and the directives of the Council. Many group histories like this are laundry lists of
new buildings and projects, or they become short biographies of as many individuals as possible. This book, however, is something different. Individual stories are
told, but this is a biography of a congregation as its members discern, grow, and
change together. The particular difficulty of writing this kind of history is that its
events and characters are not separated by a long span of time from the present.

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Many of the sisters who wrote the text lived through the changes they describe.
Rather remarkably, therefore, what emerges is something like a unified narrative
about an entire group of women who took the Council’s call to aggiornamento seriously. Tapestry in Time is a good book for anyone who wants to understand, fifty
years later, what the legacy of the Council was or could have been.
GARY M. EBERLE

Aquinas College

LATIN AMERICAN
Searching for Madre Matiana: Prophecy and Popular Culture in Modern Mexico. By
Edward Wright-Rios. [Diálogos Series.] (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press. 2014. Pp. xiv, 390. $34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-82634659-9.)
Edward Wright-Rios’s monograph traces the cultural history of Madre
Matiana, an (almost certainly) fictional prophetic nun from her invention shortly
after Independence by Catholic activists to the 1960s, by which time she had
become a stock figure of popular culture exemplifying the beata—a “dowdy and
puritanical” matron (p. 1). The book is organized chronologically, with its first four
chapters examining Madre Matiana’s nineteenth-century existence. The “real”
Matiana was an exceptionally pious nun cast out of her convent by post–Independence War upheavals. She foretold the doom that awaited Mexico should the
nation continue down the path of secularism and liberalism. Although largely
ignored at first, her prophecies found a broad audience when a Catholic press
closely aligned with the Conservative Party reprinted them in 1847, during the cataclysmic U.S. invasion. They became a staple of best-selling almanacs churned out
during the War of the Reform. She enjoyed a second act, as it were, during the Porfiriato, when the accelerating pace of change seemed to threaten once again supposedly timeless Catholic values. By the end of the century, however, liberal male
intellectuals were rhetorically feminizing Mexico’s alleged backwardness and superstitiousness; they found in a caricatured version of la Madre Matiana a useful “gendered insult” (p. 120) to hurl at foes.
The Revolution, an event that marks the beginning of the book’s second half,
intensified this trend. As builders of the postrevolutionary state crafted a notion of
the modern nation, the beata joined the Indian and the bandit as potentially disruptive figures that had to be discursively subordinated (p. 157). Madre Matiana,
already regarded by liberal men as the “quintessence of popular fanaticism and
female irrationality” (p. 152), became a risible symbol of the undesirable elements of
religion. A satirical newspaper was named after her that ran (with interruptions)
from 1917 to 1924. She played a similar role as a prop in a series of largely unpublished photographs of decontextualized religious objects shot by Lola Álvarez Bravo
in the 1930s. However, in Agustín Yáñez’s Las tierras flacas (Mexico City, 1962), a
largely overlooked novel of modernization in a small traditional town, she is a more
sympathetic character. Here, Madre Matiana is a backward, embarrassing figure,

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but one whose skills as a folk healer seek to mend a wounded nation, only to be slain
by a rapacious local cacique. Wright-Rios’s analysis of Yáñez is especially impressive,
revealing the novelist’s contradictory attitudes toward the ruling party and Catholics
of his native Jalisco state. Indeed, the reader comes away feeling that Yáñez deserves
to be mentioned in the same breath as Juan Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes.
There is much more to admire in Wright-Rios’s book. The absorbing text is
complemented by an impressive number of carefully chosen visual images: lithographs, photographs, costumbrista prints, and cartoons. The press deserves credit for
giving the author sufficient length to tease out all of his subject’s many nuances.
Wright-Rios makes a convincing case that the changing significance of Madre
Matiana reflects evolving and highly gendered notions of nationalism, modernity,
and religion. To this reviewer, the analysis of the nineteenth century seemed a bit
more persuasive mainly because of the author’s remarkably sharp understanding of
print capitalism and popular religious culture of the era. In the twentieth century,
the history of Mexico’s postrevolutionary press has yet to be written for the most
part, and more political as well as cultural historical research is required to understand fully the revolutionaries’ aversion to female religiosity.
That said, Wright-Rios’s painstaking analysis of la Madre Matiana as a
favorite trope for (largely) male revolutionaries to mock Catholicism makes an
extremely valuable contribution to understanding modern anticlericalism in
Mexico. Students of the Church and its enemies in Mexican history will learn
much from the book.
Colby College

BEN FALLAW

Historia del Catolicismo en Argentina entre el siglo XIX y el XX. By Miranda Lida.
[Historia y Cultura.] (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. 2015. Pp. 269.
$23.32 paperback. ISBN 978-9-87-629-595-6.)
Miranda Lida explores the history of the cultural life in Argentina’s Entresiglo,
the time period that runs around the1880s and 1920s—the transition to the twentieth century. She wants to know how the Church reacted to the social transformation of Argentina’s landscape in those years.
The main point of the book is that Catholicism had an ambiguous relationship
with the modernization process. The Church did not understand or even resisted
many aspects of modernization. Bishops and priests did not know what to do with
the growing process of urbanization or with the migrants coming from Europe and
the countryside. The Catholic elites feared social change, ignored social class divisions, and distrusted liberal democracy. However, at the same time, Buenos Aires
Catholicism became a modern religious institution—that is, it centralized its
authority; developed a bureaucratic, rational use of its resources; standardized the
training of its officials; normalized the ritual life; and used mass media without hesitation. Buenos Aires’ Catholicism became cosmopolitan, receiving immigrants not
so willingly and engaging in a dialogue with the European Belle Époque.

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What Lida shows us is a Catholicism that suffered the social transformations
within the institution. There were class struggles and political battles within the
Church. Argentinean Catholicism was not alien to Argentina’s social and political
turmoil.
She chooses to tell us the story from the perspective of the porteño elites, as we
call in Argentina the people who were born in the “port” city of Buenos Aires. She
uses primary sources such as official documents, association newsletters, Catholic
newspapers, and magazine articles. This is one of the strengths of the book; it is
well documented, detailed in such a way that it becomes a source for future
researchers.
One of the many ways of describing modernity is that it brought about the
distinction of different spheres of life; politics, economy, and science became
autonomous “spheres of values,” not subjected to any kind of supervision from outside of their own realms. It meant, in Argentina, that the state, businesses, and universities challenged the authority of the Church in their own realms—authority
that had remained unchallenged until the Entresiglo. To the different spheres of
values that modernity brought about, the Church answered with its own “Catholic
spheres”: to industrialization and workers’ unions, with Catholic Workers’ Circles;
to modern democracy, with a Christian Democratic party; to mass culture, with
Catholic books, magazines, publishing houses, and newspapers; to scientific development, with Catholic universities and academic organizations; to transformations
in the domestic sphere, with Catholic initiatives for children and women.
That modern Catholicism, modernized in spite of its own wish, is what Lida
names “Catolicismo de masas,” or mass Catholicism. Her call to link Catholicism
with mass culture is a great insight. Mass Catholicism was a reaction to a problem:
“What should we do with mass society and its politics, culture, economy, poverty,
recreation, and transportation transformations?” The book brings light to the
process in which Catholicism of the little town—Catholicism for the few—was
going away. The world was changing, and so was Catholicism.
Social transformations modified the Catholic world, making it diverse and
plural. However, one thing did not change: Catholicism of the masses was always
a public one. Social claims were always present. As Lida asks in her introduction:
Does it make sense still to use the category of secularization when we talk about
religion in Latin America? Her answer is clear: The “Catholicism from the end of
the world” was never a privatized religion.
Boston College

GUSTAVO MORELLO, S.J.

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AFRICAN
The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo. By Cécile
Fromont. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2014. Published
for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, VA. Pp. xx, 283. $45.00. ISBN 978-1-4696-1871-5.)
In 1491, only eight years after the Portuguese first visited the Kingdom of
Kongo in 1483, Kongo King Nzinga a Nkuwu (r. 1470–1509) converted to Christianity, changing his name to João I. With his conversion, a centuries-long relationship commenced among the Kingdom of Kongo, the Iberian Peninsula, and
the Catholic Church. João’s son Afonso I Mvemba a Nzinga (r. 1509–42) strengthened these close connections when he made Christianity Kongo’s state religion.
Christianity continued to be an important part of Kongolese religious, social, and
political life until it slowly began to decline in the nineteenth century due to European colonization in the region.
In her book The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of
Kongo, Cécile Fromont argues that the Kongolese elite did not just adopt Christianity; instead, they made it distinctly Kongolese, which Fromont calls Kongo Christianity. Fromont reveals how Kongo Christianity manifested itself in swords,
crosses, clothing, regalia, architecture, rituals, and celebrations. Through examination of these cultural objects, Fromont shows that Kongolese engagement with
Christianity transformed their beliefs, political discourses, and social organizations.
She argues that these cultural objects became “spaces of correlation” (p. 1) in which
deliberate cross-cultural interactions were mutually transformative for both Christendom and the Kongo worldview.
Due to the Kongo elite’s close connections with Europeans and the frequent
visits of missionaries, such as Jesuits and Capuchin Friars, to the region, a large
body of written sources describes precolonial Kongo. Over the years, several scholars, including John Thornton, James Sweet, and Richard Gray, have used these
documents to examine Christianity in the Kongo Kingdom, but thus far scholars
had not thoroughly examined Kongo’s material and visual culture. Through analysis of these materials, Fromont provides new insights into the development of
Kongo Christianity. In particular, her examination of Kongo-produced art and
material culture shows how Kongolese elite reshaped Christianity to fit their religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms. She further demonstrates that
Kongo Christianity permeated all parts of society.
Although Fromont centers her analysis on the Kingdom of Kongo, she shows
that Kongo Christianity extended its influence far beyond West Central Africa.
Due to its involvement in Atlantic commerce and politics, the Kingdom of Kongo
and the Kongolese people became important participants in the Atlantic world.
Enslaved Kongolese who were brought to Europe and the Americas exported their
Christian beliefs, imagery, symbolism, and rituals, which reappeared in celebrations

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such as the Pinkster festival in New York and congadas in Brazil. But free Kongolese
people, including Kongolese ambassadors, also traveled throughout the Atlantic,
displaying Kongo Christianity in, for example, their clothing and regalia.
The Art of Conversion is divided into five chapters, each of which focuses on
different cultural objects, from the central African ritual of sangamento to the
Kongo crucifix. The chapters include multiple illustrations of the various objects of
analysis, including drawings of Kongolese rituals by Capuchin Friars; European
paintings of Kongolese ambassadors; and images of Nkisi, Kongo crucifixes,
swords, and mpu caps. The Art of Conversion includes ninety-three illustrations,
which makes it a valuable reference work for anyone interested in religious, Christian, and precolonial African art and material culture.
The Art of Conversion is published at a time of great interest in Kongo material
and visual culture. In 2014–15 “The Kongo Across the Waters” exhibition brought
Kongo artifacts usually housed in Belgian’s Royal Museum for Central Africa in
Tervuren to several museums across the United States. In 2015–16 the exhibition
“Kongo: Power and Majesty” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
further highlighted Kongo arts and culture. Like those exhibitions, The Art of Conversion draws attention to the rich cultural heritage of this Central African kingdom and reveals how much of it had been influenced by Kongo Christianity.
University of New Orleans

ANDREA MOSTERMAN

Into Africa: A Transnational History of Catholic Medical Missions and Social Change.
By Barbra Mann Wall. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2015.
Pp. xx, 230. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8135-6622-1.)
No historian of Christian missions can ignore the place of medical care in missionary self-understanding and self-presentation. Like schools, clinics have long
featured at missions, and churches still provide substantial health care across the
world. By exploring Catholic sisters from both international and indigenous religious communities who delivered health services in Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania
after World War II until 1985, Barbra Mann Wall sheds light on important
episodes and issues, illuminating women’s experiences otherwise unknown. Her
analysis draws on these groups’ archives and some interviews, supplemented with
relevant historical and anthropological literature, to highlight the transnational
nature of their work.
Several themes emerge. First, sisters’ clinics often struggled with training and
employing local people. Organizing courses for nurses, settling labor disputes, and
overcoming cultural barriers consumed considerable time and energy. Second, nuns
often negotiated their roles vis-à-vis mostly male colonial and church authorities
who strove to stifle their autonomy. Third, providing sophisticated medical care
grew in nuns’ self-understanding as missionaries, and they gained cultural appreciation of varying local approaches to health and healing over time. In turn, they

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directed their efforts toward primary care and structural issues rather than only on
curative biomedicine, and this drew them into transnational conversations about
global health.
At its best, this book examine episodes and individuals for which Wall’s archival
research provides close description. These include the Biafran War in late 1960s
Nigeria, when Catholic sisters observed the conflict firsthand, and the late 1970s war
that overthrew Idi Amin in Uganda. Equally rich are her portraits of nuns trained as
medical doctors who provided heretofore unknown medical relief to peoples far from
other health services. She is judicious in assessing the sisters’ work, questioning the
value of missionary medicine in improving health at times, but admitting that missionary-recommended oral rehydration therapy, for example, was better than local
approaches to dehydration like the “red pepper and ginger enema, which often caused
seizures” (p. 132). Her subjects, she admits, participated in trends that drove down
infant and maternal mortality, among other measurable advances.
Wall makes historical mistakes. For example, she misrepresents the role of
Propaganda Fide (or “the Vatican”) in assigning nationalities to mission territories
(p. 94; it assigns religious congregations); wrongly attributes the founding of a
group of Ugandan sisters to Vincent McCauley, C.S.C., an American priest who
arrived two decades later (p. 13); serially misspells the name of a famous hospital in
Uganda (Kitovu, not “Kituvo”); and asserts that the Catholic Church teaches that
“anything beyond abstinence in the form of family planning is morally wrong” (p.
164; it encourages the rhythm method). She also makes problematic generalizations that evince limited historiographical awareness such as about Catholic
women’s religious life (for example, stating that sisters only in the 1950s “began to
see themselves as individuals with human dignity instead of pawns of local bishops”
[p. 17]; saying that sisters “held the Feast of the Holy Family” one January, when
they simply followed the liturgical calendar [p. 42]; and taking as representative the
view of one African nun that the vow of poverty has no value in Africa [pp. 168–
69]). She also makes dubious statements about Catholic approaches to missionary
medical provision, which she presents as instrumentally focused only on conversion
until the latter twentieth century and naïve about how prayer affected healing,
instead of appreciating a more nuanced approach always in play (pp. 42, 72). She
also mistakenly asserts a unanimity about missionary denigrations of African cultures prior to World War II, when there was considerable diversity in opinions and
practices (p. 19).
Despite these shortcomings, this book is a valuable step in advancing a better
understanding of the work done by these women, and so many others, through
missionary medicine.
University of Notre Dame

PAUL KOLLMAN, C.S.C.

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FAR EASTERN
Jesuit Mapmaking in China: D’Anville’s Nouvelle Atlas de la Chine (1737). Edited
by Roberto M. Ribeiro, with John W. O’Malley. [Early Modern Catholicism
and the Visual Arts, Vol. 11.] (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press.
2014. Pp. vi, 172. $70.00. ISBN 978-0-916101-181-7.)
Virtually all historians of Asia are familiar with the long history of Jesuit cartography in China, most famously the world map produced by the Jesuit polymath
Matteo Ricci. This welcome study and facsimiles of the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste du
Halde’s famous Nouvel atlas de la Chine (1737) provides a comprehensive outline of
the context and historical production of what was in 1737, “the world’s most precise and most authoritative China maps before the 20th century” (p. 29). Edited by
Roberto Ribeiro, Jesuit Mapmaking in China consists of an introduction by Ribeiro
and three scholarly essays by R. Po-chia Hsia, Mario Cams, and Han Qi, followed
by two-page facsimiles of the forty-two maps prepared for du Halde by the French
cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville. Whereas Jesuit mapmaking in
China is briefly discussed in previous books such as Florence Hsia’s Sojourners in a
Strange Land (Chicago, 2009), Benjamin Elman’s On Their Own Terms (Cambridge, MA, 2005), and Anthony Grafton’s edited volume Rome Reborn (Washington, DC, 1993), this work delivers a concentrated analysis of the single most ambitious Jesuit geodetic project in history.
Following Ribeiro’s introduction are three chapters that contextualize and
describe the prodigious Nouvel atlas de la Chine. The first essay by Hsia recounts
the footsteps of early Jesuits in China, reframing information communicated in
numerous other works. Regardless of Hsia’s rearticulation of now commonplace
information, his sketch of important Jesuit events in China such as the “Calendar
Case” (p. 28) in 1646 and the rites controversies during the late-seventeenth century provide a framework within which to examine the cartographic efforts of the
Jesuits under Kangxi’s patronage. The second essay by Mario Cams centers on
Jean-Baptiste d’Anville, who was commissioned by du Halde in 1728 to produce a
more detailed and accurate series of maps based on an earlier atlas completed by
Jesuits of the China mission in 1718. Cams traces communications between du
Halde and d’Anville as the Nouvel atlas de la Chine was researched, refined,
redrawn, engraved, and finally published at Paris in 1735. Among the manifest
qualities of this essay is Cams’s meticulous comparison of d’Anville’s original
sources and the maps finally printed, highlighting d’Anville’s methods of producing
more accurate renderings of China’s provinces and other areas such as Korea and
Tibet. D’Anville’s atlas, as Cams notes, reached Beijing two years after its publication and received critical appraisals from the Jesuits there. Among the strongest
critics of the atlas was Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla, who complained
that “the orthography of geographic names . . . were drawn after consulting different sources of data” and were thus inconsistent compared to the original Chinese
atlas (p. 45).

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The final essay by Qi relies on Chinese sources to place the Jesuit mapmaking
enterprise within a more collaborative setting, demonstrating that the European
Jesuits were not alone as they surveyed China to produce the 1718 atlas. They, in
fact, worked with other Chinese experts and even a French Augustinian missionary
as they traveled through China from 1708 to 1717. The majority of this attractive
volume consists of color illustrations of Jesuit publications, and high-resolution facsimiles of all the maps included in the Nouvel atlas de la Chine. It is hoped that this
significant contribution to Jesuit studies is an inaugural effort preceding more
expansive studies that will include other important Jesuit cartography such as the
maps of Guilio Aleni and Adam Schall von Bell, whose contributions do not
appear in this volume.
Whitworth University

ANTHONY E. CLARK

The Catholic Invasion of China: Remaking Chinese Christianity. By D. E. Mungello.
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2015. Pp. xviii, 175. $40.00. ISBN
978-1-4422-5084-2.)
D. E. Mungello is a distinguished scholar of China who has written or edited
several books as well as important articles, mainly about Christianity in that country. Here he presents a nuanced argument about how the modern history of
Catholicism in China (that is, from 1800) should be evaluated. Although he is critical of an earlier generation of Western interpretations of Catholic missions for
judging the whole effort a failure, he readily acknowledges the errors and damages
incurred, as suggested by his use of invasion in the title. From the beginning, however, he states his position that the ultimate achievement of an indigenous form of
Catholicism, after centuries of European local management, was more important
than the deleterious short-term effects of “this invasion” (p. 1).
He pursues this position through a series of essays on selected aspects of the
modern history of the Chinese Catholic Church. He provides brief sketches of the
larger narrative but offers considerable detail about a few limited topics. Among
these essays is an engaging account of the contested return of the Jesuits in 1842,
after a sixty-nine-year absence, to the Yangzi delta area, centering on Shanghai. He
also closely examines charges in recent Chinese official diatribes of sexual malfeasance by three Catholic missionaries who were killed locally at widely separated
moments and were beatified as martyrs in 2000. A particularly meticulous account
is given of the case of the priest Auguste Chapdelaine, whose execution in 1856
became the justification for France joining Britain in a war with the Chinese government. Mungello is evidently skeptical of the charges against Chapdelaine but
judiciously accepts that such misbehavior (although not in the extravagant manner
in the hostile Chinese accounts) cannot be excluded in all cases. One might add
that missionaries occasionally made charges of this sort against their own confreres.
Catholic missions were often accused of abuse of the children in their orphanages and even of exploiting their moribund bodies for outrageous purposes. The

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communist government revived these accusations in the 1950s. As an illustrative
case of this and of the role of the female religious in the missions, Mungello elaborates the history of the Canossian Sisters in Shaanxi province from 1891. He notes
that the suspicion of mistreatment of children was an ineluctable by-product of the
frequently weak health of the abandoned children taken in by the charitable
orphanages, with resulting high death rates. Perhaps he does not make enough of
the practices of purchasing children for the orphanages and of seeking, quite apart
from the orphanages, to baptize non-Catholic babies on the point of death.
Under the heading of critiques from within the Catholic Church of the form
of the “invasion,” the book focuses especially on two prominent Chinese Catholics,
Ma Xiangbo and Ying Lianzhi. Ma’s career is narrated fully, including his role in
founding various major educational institutions. Ying, who launched an important
newspaper, joined Ma in the campaign for better Catholic schools. They both had
moments of conflict with the European Catholic hierarchy in China. Mungello
holds that Ying’s writing influenced Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic letter of 1919,
which rededicated the Vatican to the ultimate indigenization of the Chinese
Church.
A section is devoted to the tribulation of the Chinese Church after the Communist Party came to power in 1949. The author selects Shanghai as a case. It was
a dramatic one, including mass arrests and some heroic leaders. But Catholics reemerged and increased in numbers when politics relaxed somewhat after Mao
Zedong’s death. The 3.5 million Catholics of 1949 nationally became 12 million
Catholics in 2012. The Protestants had grown much more in those same years,
from about 500,000 to 23 million (estimates vary widely). One factor in the disparity, writes Mungello, was “the consequences of the Catholic invasion of China from
1834 to 2000...” (p. 14). Still, he emphasizes the positive features of the experience,
notably the long-term transformation of a mission church into an indigenous religion, enriching Chinese culture and making Catholicism more universal. He anticipates the election of a Chinese pope.
University of Michigan

ERNEST P. YOUNG

Fathers of Botany: The Discovery of Chinese Plants by European Missionaries. By Jane
Kilpatrick. (Kew Publishing, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Distrib. University of Chicago Press. 2015. Pp. x, 254. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-226-20670-7.)
Every Western garden derives at least some—and perhaps most—of its plants
from the extraordinary natural diversity of China. Their very names remind us of
this—innumerable sinensis or chinensis epithets, and plenty of geographical locations, have been rendered into Latinate orthography: yunnanensis, szechuanica,
hongkongensis. But gardeners also are aware of the plethora of Chinese plants
known by epithets commemorating Westerners: henryi, wilsonii, forrestii, davidii,
delavayi, fargesii, souliei, and many others. All played some part, great or small, in
revealing the riches of the Chinese flora to Western science and horticulture.

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To an Anglophone gardener the stories of the first three—Augustine Henry,
Ernest Wilson, and George Forrest—are well known. The narratives of their travels in China, easily available in English, have led to their being accorded special
status as horticultural heroes. But they were not the only botanists and seed collectors to be active in (especially) western China from c. 1860 to 1930; there are others
whose achievements are recorded principally in French.
In Fathers of Botany Jane Kilpatrick particularly explores the extraordinary
contributions to plant science made by some of the dedicated priests of the French
Missions Etrangères de Paris. However culturally arrogant the missionary movement now appears to be, there is no doubt of the courage and devotion of these men
as they went to China to bear witness to their faith. Often leaving France when
comparatively young—the earnest, bearded faces in their formal photographs have
a remarkably contemporary appearance—they expected never to return, living their
lives in poverty in isolated mission stations, often several days’ travel from their
nearest confrères and separated from other Europeans for years on end. Evangelical
success was scanty, trials and tribulations numerous. Despite this, many of the
fathers took up botanizing as a hobby and worked their patches with the intensity
that only prolonged residence in an area can achieve.
Among them were Père Armand David, whose discoveries in Sichuan
included the Giant Panda, the common Butterfly Bush Buddleja davidii, and
Handkerchief Tree Davidia involucrata. Père Jean Marie Delavay, who went to
China in 1867, became the pre-eminent missionary botanist, immensely fortunate
to have been based in the botanical wonderland of Yunnan. He died peacefully in
1895, under European care at Kunming, but many other missionaries were brutally
murdered after seeing their churches and works put to the torch. In 1904 Yellow
Hat lamas attacked the missions in the Tibetan borderlands, and several missionaries were tortured and killed such as the botanical Jean Soulié, whereas the elderly
Pères Pierre Bourdonnec and Jules Dubernard were captured and killed while
attempting to escape in the company of Scottish plant hunter Forrest. The fitter
Forrest managed to evade the lamas; his journey through extreme danger became
part of the British legend of glorious plant-hunting endeavors.
One theme explored here is the botanical competition between French and
British interests—both were very keen to outdo the other in the number and quality of their discoveries, supported by the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Edinburgh respectively. For Anglophones,
the British narrative has prevailed, but now the French voice can be heard through
this book, and the balance is somewhat redressed. A summary of the careers of the
dramatis personae would have been useful, but this beautifully produced and illustrated book is heartily recommended to anyone interested in the history of plant
discovery or that of the Missions Etrangères and its brave men.
The Yorkshire Arboretum

JOHN GRIMSHAW

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Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Māori, and the Question of the Body. By Tony
Ballantyne. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2014. Pp. xiv, 360. $26.95
paperback. ISBN 978-0-5826-8.)
In December 2014, New Zealand celebrated the bicentenary of the first
Christian (Protestant) mission, also the first permanent European settlement in
New Zealand. Established at Hohi in northern New Zealand by three missionary
families, this was the inspiration of Samuel Marsden, chaplain to the penal colony
of New South Wales, who had formed close ties with several Māori chiefs of high
mana (prestige) in the early years of the nineteenth century. As Ballantyne points
out, Marsden was heir to a “set of imperial discourses” that envisioned New
Zealand as valuable to the British Empire and a potential “future colony”; Marsden
brought with him a “tightly bound cultural package” (p. 64) that wrapped Christianity, commerce, and colonization together, suggesting that colonization was
always an implicit part of missionization. So began the “entanglements of empire,”
linking New Zealand to Britain, Māori to European, that eminent New Zealand
historian Tony Ballantyne skillfully unravels in this book. These entanglements led
to British annexation in 1840—and to cultural misunderstandings, some of which
still persist. Ballantyne’s analysis gives a secular discussion of the exchange between
Māori and missionary, focusing in particular on the evangelical Church Missionary
Society missions in the Bay of Islands, northern New Zealand.
The mission, only tolerated due to the support of influential chiefs, was
“entirely dependent on Māori patronage, material support, and protection” (p. 57),
even after mission numbers expanded. This immersion in the Māori world was significant to the development of the mission, but also provided obstacles to its
growth. Ballantyne uses the trope of the body to analyze the cultural transformations—or exchanges—that took place in early-nineteenth-century New Zealand.
Missionaries began the process, or perhaps the attempt, to transform the Māori
“body” into the likeness of the evangelical Christian ideal. Ballantyne analyzes this
through a number of lenses: evangelical preconceptions; concepts of time and
space, work and labor, and sexuality and marriage; and death customs.
By the 1830s, missionary observations of traditional Māori practices formed a
body of literature, a “print culture” (p. 15) sent back to Britain, including reports to
the “metropolitan government,” which ultimately contributed to the British government’s decision to annex New Zealand. Although Māori had some agency over
missionary encounters “on the ground,” they had little control over such representations of themselves, painted perhaps as “poor heathen” in need of rescuing by a
benevolent empire.
Ballantyne’s construct of the body as a method of analyzing “entanglement”’ is
a novel approach to a well-versed discussion of Māori and missionary, but the concept of entanglement itself is well covered in the international literature of historical
archaeology and “culture contact,” beginning with its application to material culture, and has been used in New Zealand. A wider reference to this concept would

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have been welcome. The discussion of the two-way impact on the body—both missionary and Māori—could have been taken further, leading to “ethnogenesis” as
those first Europeans became “Pākehā”—Europeans of New Zealand identity.
Some small, particular issues need to be mentioned. Ballantyne’s use of “Missionary Society” (pp. 53, 177) can be annoying, at times possibly conflating the
three evangelical societies: the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary
Society, and the Wesleyan Missionary Society. Corrections of minor details should
be noted, such as the following: the Waimate mission station was never a successful
“farm” in the manner hoped for by Marsden; the Kendall house at Hohi (demolished in 1824) was described as a “hovel” and was not comparative with the Waimate mission house; and missionaries at Te Puna and Hohi appeared reluctant to
consume local resources such as seafood. The last was not recovered in “significant
amounts” (p. 94) from archaeological contexts.
As Ballantyne concludes, missionaries “neither destroyed Māori culture nor
left it untouched” (p. 257). Māori culture and identity has endured, despite marginalization and “calcifying inequality” (p. 258) that developed under colonial government, as the incoming settler society engulfed and ignored the Māori world.
Missionaries played the role of intercultural translators, inadvertently creating
those first, tangled “webs of empire” (p. 252), which led to colonization.
University of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand

ANGELA MIDDLETON

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BRIEF NOTICE
Smither, Edward F. (Ed.). Rethinking Constantine: History, Theology, and Legacy.
(Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock. 2014.
Pp. x, 168. $20.00 paperback. ISBN 978-1-62032-188-1.)
With the avalanche of books and articles accompanying the 1700th anniversary of the traditional date for Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312, one
would think there was little left to be said. This volume, however, addresses the
concerns of a strongly underrepresented group—evangelical Christians. The six
chapters (plus a brief but charming epilogue by Bruce Liftin) include such neglected topics as Constantine’s effect on missionary activity by Edward Smither and
on the growth of a Sunday sabbath by Paul Herzog. In a leadoff chapter, Glen
Thompson surveys scholarship on the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion and
suggests that St. Augustine and Martin Luther’s shared vision of Christians as
simultaneously saints and sinners reveals a more consistent policy. Brian Shelton
follows with a chapter on the influence of Lactantius on Constantine, in which he
sees the rhetor’s writings as a blueprint for the emperor’s policies.
The most arresting chapter is Jonathan Armstrong’s redating of Eusebius of
Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah to a period after Constantine’s death in 337,
which he combines with an argument for a fully Trinitarian reading of Eusebius
that would add weight to his usefulness as a source for the Council of Nicaea. Fully
one-third of the volume is devoted to a Donatism chapter by David Alexander that
uses the schism to study Constantine’s own religious development. Alexander
argues that Constantine’s decision to postpone baptism until his deathbed prevented him from developing the “doctrinal antennae” (p. 75) that an insider would
have had.
Although their focus is theology, the authors base their studies in history and
strive to be even-handed, even when the results contradict standard evangelical
positions. That makes this a useful volume for all readers. H. A. DRAKE (University
of California, Santa Barbara)

Notes and Comments
CAUSES OF SAINTS
In a ceremony on June 5, 2016, two saints were canonized: Stanislaus of Jesus
and Mary (Jan Papczyński, 1631–1701), a Polish Piarist priest who founded the
Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception; and Maria Elizabeth Hesselblad of
Sweden (1870–1957), who converted from Lutheranism, founded a branch of the
Bridgettine Sisters, and worked to save Jewish Holocaust victims. On September
4, 2016, Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta; born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, 1910–97) will
be canonized. She founded the Missionaries of Charity. On October 16, 2016,
seven saints will be canonized: Solomon (baptized Guillaume Nicolas Louis)
Leclercq (1745–92), French brother of the Christian Schools, martyred by the Revolutionary government; Lodovico Pavoni (1784–1849), a priest of Brescia who
founded the Congregation of the Sons of Mary Immaculate to work for the formation of youth; Alfonso Maria Fusco (1839–1910), a priest who founded the Sisters
of St. John the Baptist to work with adolescents, especially the poor and abandoned; José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero (1840–1914), an Argentinian priest and
member of the Third Order of the Dominicans who labored among the poor and
sick, and died of leprosy; Manuel González García (1877–1940), bishop of Palencia and founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Eucharistic Sisters of
Nazareth, of the Disciples of Saint John, and of the Children of Reparation; Elizabeth of the Most Holy Trinity (born Elizabeth Catez, 1880–1906), French Discalced Carmelite, mystic, and spiritual writer; and José Luis Sánchez del Rio
(1913–28), a Cristero who was executed by the Mexican government for refusing
to renounce the Catholic faith.

AMERICANA
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament have announced the sale of two properties. The forty-four acre estate in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, that contains its motherhouse and the shrine honoring its founder, St. Katharine Drexel; and the 2220acre Belmead property near Richmond, Virginia, that once housed two schools for
African American students. The sales were necessitated by various factors. The ten
buildings at Belmead were no longer used, and the order had difficulty staffing its
facilities. Its membership has declined from more than 600 to just over 100 and
most of its current members are now retired. The retired sisters will be moved to
other residences. The order’s archives will be taken over by the Archdiocese of
Philadelphia, and the remains of St. Katharine will be moved to the Cathedral of
Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, near the altar honoring her. The proceeds
from the sales will be used to support the retired sisters; to combat racism; and to
serve the most vulnerable peoples of the United States, Haiti, and Jamaica.
661

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

SEMINAR/WORKSHOP
The Folger Shakespeare Institute’s 2016–17 scholarly programs include two
topics of potential interest to historians of Catholicism. The fall-semester seminar
“Convent Culture,” directed by Nancy Bradley Warren of Texas A&M University,
will explore writings by, for, and about early-modern women religious in continental Europe and the Americas. It will meet on Friday afternoons from September 30
to December 9, 2016. The fall symposium on “Early Modern Theatre and Conversion,” meeting November 17–19, 2016, will investigate how dramatists treated religious conversion. The deadline for admission and grants-in-aid for both programs
is September 6. For application information, email institute@folger.edu. For more
information, visit http://www.folger.edu/2016-2017-institute-scholarly-programs.

CONFERENCES
On June 23–24, 2016, an international conference was held in the ancient
refectory of the Dominican convent of S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Order of Preachers. The
introductory lecture was given by John W. O’Malley, followed by Viliam Stefan
Dóci on “I domenicani e la Chiesa: sollicitudo pro salute animarum—sollicitudo
pro Ecclesa”; Gert Melville on “Domenico e il Conciiio lateranense IV”; Roberto
Lambertini on “L’ecclesiologia domenicana nella disputa con il clero secolare”;
Pierantonio Piatti on “Il contributo dei domenicani ai Concili lionese I e lionese
II”; Florent Cygler on “I domenicani e il Concilio di Vienne”; Josep Ignasi
Saranyana Closa on “La discussione sul conciliarismo: Juan de Torquemada OP”;
Luciano Cinelli on “I domenicani da Pisa a Costanza”; Thomas Izbicki on
“Dominican Ecclesiology, the Council of Basel and the Hussites”; Alberto Cadili
on “I domenicani e il Concilio di Basilea-Ferrara”; Frédéric Gabriel on “Una totalità relativa: la persona della Chiesa e la rappresentazione conciliare nell’ecclesiologia domenicana (secoli XVI–XVII)”; Nelson H. Minnich on “A volte si vince, a
volte si perde, sempre fedeli servitori del Papa: Il ruolo dei Domenicani al Concilio
Laterano V (1512–1517)”; Matteo Al. Kalak, “I domenicani al Concilio di Trento”;
“Riccardo Burigana on “Ecclesiologia domenicana nell’età contemporanea”; Carlo
Pioppi, “I domenicani al Concilio Vaticano I”; Philippe Chenaux, “I domenicani al
Concilio Vaticano II”; Alessandro Cortesi, “Prospettive per un contributo teologico
domenicano sulla Chiesa oggi”; and concluding comments by Cosimo Damiano
Fonseca and Giancarlo Andenna. A concert by the Gallus Ensemble of the University “Mozarteum” of Salzburg was presented in the Sacristy of the Basilica of S.
Maria sopra Minerva.
On September 15–17, 2016, the Gesellschaft für Konzilienforschung and the
Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Lehrstuhl Mittelalterliche Geschichte II, will sponsor in Berlin the international conference “Konzil und Frieden.” The program
includes the following scholars and papers: Richard Price, “The Aim of the Early
Ecumenical Councils: Repression or Reconciliation?”; Manuel Mira, “Il sinodo di
Alessandria e la riconciliazione tra niceni e omeusiani”; Giulio Maspero, “Peace at

NOTES AND COMMENTS

663

Ephesus: Christ and the Scapegoat in the Cyrill’s Letter to Acacius”; Luise Marion
Frenkel, “Peace and Harmony at Church Councils and in the Roman Empire
under Theodosius II”; Thomas Graumann, “Frieden schließen auf Konzilien? Ein
Beispiel aus dem vierten Jahrhundert”; Heinz Ohme, “Die Lateransynode von 649
als Quelle des Unfriedens”; Josef Rist, “Friedensinstrumente unter Kaiser Justinian”; Erich Lamberz, “Das 7. Ökumenische Konzil als Friedensprojekt des Patriarchen Tarasios”; Alberto Ferreiro, “Restoring the Peace through the Third Council of Toledo (589)”; Uta-Renate Blumenthal, “Die Friedensbestimmungen Leos
IX. und Paschalis II. auf den Konzilien von Reims und Benevento”; Petar Vrankić,
“Konzilien und die Synoden Kataloniens und Südfrankreichs vom 8.-12. Jahrhundert und deren Friedensnormen”: Johannes Helmrath, “Das IV. Lateranum 1215
in der Stadt Rom: Organisation—Oratorik—Bilder”; Andrea Riedl,”Kircheneinheit und Friedensverhandlungen auf den Konzilien von Lyon 1245 und 1274”;
Ansgar Frenken, “Das Konstanzer Konzil ein Friedenskongress—Sigmund ein
Friedensfürst? Überlegungen zu Handlungsspielräumen und Sachzwängen”;
Johannes Grohe, “Der Frieden von Valencia zwischen Alfons V. und Martin V.
und das daran anschließende Konzil von Tortosa 1429”; Thomas Prügl, “Die
Basler Verhandlungen mit den Hussiten und die Prager Kompaktaten als
Friedensvertrag”; Nelson H. Minnich, “Lateran V and Peace among Christian
Princes”; Peter Tusor,”The Hungarian National Synod 1638: Conflicts and Solutions between Prelates and Nobles”; Carlo Pioppi, “Gli inviti personali ai vescovi
ortodossi della Grecia a partecipare al Concilio Vaticano I”; Carmen Alejos
Grau,”La paz en los documentos del Concilio Vaticano II”; Agostino Marchetto,
“La libertà religiosa al Concilio Vaticano II.” For further information on this conference, contact Thomas Woelki at woelkith@geschichte.hu-berlin.de or Thomas
Prügl at thomas.pruegl@univie.ac.at.
On October 12–14, 2016, the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences
will sponsor at the Pontificia Università Lateranense and the Lateran Basilica the
international conference “Alla ricerca di soluzioni: Nuova luce sul V Concilio Lateranense” to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Fifth Lateran Council
(1512–17). The cultural setting of the council will be explored in a talk by Arnold
Nesselrath on “Imagery of the Fifth Lateran Council,” by a guided tour of the
Basilica conducted by Nelson H. Minnich to help imagine its proceedings there,
and by a lecture by Gaetano Magarelli on “La musica sacra al Lateranense V” that
will be followed by a concert featuring this music. A session dedicated to the conciliar reform of the central administration of the Church will include talks by
Jürgen Dendorfer on “Reform of the Curia on the Eve of the Reformation: The
Bulls of the Fifth Lateran Council—Traditions and Topics”; Anna Esposito on “Il
problema dei giudaizzanti al Concilio Lateranense V”; and Marco Pellegrini on
“The Bishops’ Alternative: Episcopalism against Curialism in Church Government.” A session on the relations of the Church with Christian rulers will feature
Bernard Barbiche, “ Angeli pacis: les légats pour la paix, agents de la diplomatie
pontificale, du cinquième concile du Latran au concile de Trente”; Kenneth Pennington, “Ecclesiastical Liberties on the Eve of the Reformation”; Bernard Ardura,
“Le Monitorium contre le Parlement de Provence’; and Benoît Schmitz, “L’appro-

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

bation du Concordat de Bologne au concile de Latran V, au prisme des enjeux
théologiques, canoniques et politiques.” The session on various reforms includes
presentations by Gabriela Zarri on “Per evitare il naufragio: il Lateranense V e la
riforma di monache e religiose”; Agostino Borromeo on “La repressione della blasfemia al Concilio Lateranense V: precedenti e contenuto della normativa conciliare”; Ugo Baldini on“La fallita riforma del Calendario”; and Andreas Rehberg on
“Il retroscena del decreto Temerariorum quorumdam contro i saccheggi dei palazzi
dei cardinali durante i conclavi.” The session treating doctrinal issues contains talks
by Charles Morerod, O.P. on “Tommaso di Vio (Cajetan) et la bulle Pastor Aeternus : la suprématie du Pape sur les conciles”; Paul Grendler on “Apostolici regiminis
sollicitudo: Italian Preachers Defend the Immortality of the Soul”; Antonin Kalous
on “The Conciliar Legation of Cardinal Tamás Bakóc to Central Europe”; Maria
Giuseppina Muzzarelli on “Cosa possibile e cosa più perfetta et santa: le condizioni di
prestito dei Monti di Pietà”; and Onorato Bucci on “La Chiesa Maronita al Concilio Lateranense V.” In conclusion Alberto Melloni will speak on “L’Edizione dei
Decreti conciliari” and Nelson H. Minnich on “The Significance of Lateran V after
500 Years” to be followed by discussion. For more information on the conference,
contact presidente@historia.va or addetto@historia.va.
In May 2017 the Mount Tabor Ecumenical Centre for Art and Spirituality
will sponsor Reformanda 2017, a three-week exploration of ecumenism, art, and
architecture in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy under the direction of
Timothy Verdon, Jérôme Cottin, and Denis Villepelet. On three weekends, the
group will tour museums, sites, and studios connected with the Reformation and
hold symposia to investigate the Roman Catholic and Protestant visions of sacred
art. For more information, see www.artsandecumenism.org or contact the organizers at events@mounttabor.it or telephone Ellen Ortolani at 508-240-7090.
On June 6–7, 2017, a conference organized by Kathleen Sprows Cummings
and Luca Codignola will be held in Rome sponsored by the Cushwa Center of the
University of Notre Dame on the theme “North Atlantic Catholic Communities
in Rome, 1622–1939.” The conference will examine the transnational network in
Rome of individuals and communities originating from present-day England,
Wales, Scotland, Ireland, English- and French-speaking Canada, and the United
States, who saw Rome as their spiritual metropole and intellectual point of reference. The papers will address such questions as Romanization; the export of
Roman devotions, practices, and preoccupations to the periphery; efforts to gain
advantage with the central bureaucracy of the Church; the Holy See’s exercise of
influence, choice of favorites, and reconciliation of rivalries; key persons in the
English-speaking communities in Rome; the impact of the Roman experience on
those who corresponded with, visited, or settled in Rome; the ways that language
differences (Latin, Italian, English, and so forth) affected the national communities; and the question of whether a shared English language created a North
American community in Rome. Those wishing to present a paper should send a
proposal (including a 150- to 200-word abstract and a one-page CV) to
cushwa@nd.edu by December 30, 2016. Papers may be in English, French, or

NOTES AND COMMENTS

665

Italian, and the presentation may last up to twenty minutes. Expenses are the
responsibility of the participants.
On July 12–15, 2017, the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University
will sponsor the international conference “Frater, Magister, Minister, et Episcopus:
The Works and World of Saint Bonaventure.” The themes to be investigated
include among others: St. Bonaventure’s theological legacy, his use of philosophical
and theological sources; his relationship to and leadership of the Franciscan order;
his preaching; his ministry and spirituality; and his relationship to Paris and
medieval France. Proposals for papers should be emailed by November 18, 2016,
to David Couturier, OFMCap., at dcouturi@sbu.edu.

PUBLICATIONS
The papers presented at a January 2011 roundtable organized by the École
française de Rome have been published in the Mélanges de l’École française de Rome,
Moyen Âge (vol. 126, no. 1, 2014) under the title “Le culte de Sainte Agnès à Place
Navone entre antiquité et moyen âge.” Following an “Introduction” by Claire
Sotinel (pp. 5–16), eight archaeologists and historians have contributed articles:
Cécile Lanéry, “La légende de sainte Agnès: quelques réflexions sur la genèse d’un
dossier hagiographique (IVe–VIe s.)” (pp. 17–26); François-Xavier Romanacce, “La
condamnation au bordel dans les sources antiques” (pp. 27–46); Lucrezia Spera,
“Trasformazioni e riassetti del tessuto urbano nel Campo Marzio centrale tra Antichità e Medioevo” (pp. 47–74); Jean-François Bernard and Paola Ciancio Rossetto,
“Le stade de Domitien: situation topographique, étude architecturale et réflexions
concernant la localisation de l’église Sainte Agnès” (pp. 75–92); Kim Bowes,
“Christians in the amphitheater? The «Christianization» of spectacle buildings and
martyrial memory” (pp. 93–114); Caroline Goodson, “Archaeology and the cult of
saints in the early Middle Ages: accessing the sacred” (pp. 115–24); Eckard Wierbelauer, “Agnès et les évêques de Rome jusqu’au VIIe siècle: un plaidoyer pour une
relecture historico-critique du Liber pontificalis” (pp. 125–36); and Alan Thacker,
“The origin and early development of Rome’s intramural cults: a context for the
cult of Sant’Agnese in Agone” (pp. 137–46).
To mark the quincentenary of the birth of St. Teresa of Ávila Hispania Sacra
has presented several articles in volume 67 (2015): Ángela Atienza López, “En
torno a santa Teresa y su proyección. Historia y memoria en 2015” (pp. 391–99);
Teófanes Egido, “Santa Teresa y sus cartas, historia de los sentimientos” (pp. 401–
28); José Martínez Millán, “La reforma espiritual de santa Teresa de Jesús y su
relación con las facciones cortesanas de la monarquía hispana” (pp. 429–66); Sara
Cabibbo and Elisabetta Marchetti, “Le teresiane in Italia: istituzioni, vite vissute,
autorappresentazioni” (pp. 467–503); Asunción Lavrin, “Santa Teresa en los conventos de monjas de Nueva España” (pp. 505–29); Ofelia Rey Castelao, “Teresa,
patrona de España” (pp. 531–73); and Ángela Atienza López, “En permanente
construcción. La recreación de la figura de santa Teresa en las semblanzas biográficas de sus hijas: (pp. 575–612).

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

The “Second special section on religion and territorial politics in southern
Europe,” edited by Alberta Giorgi and Xabier Itçaina, appears in Religion, State &
Society (vol. 44, no. 1, 2016). It consists of two articles: “The governance of religious
diversity in stateless nations: the case of Catalonia” by Mar Griera (pp. 13–31) and
“The impact of the crisis on the Orthodox Church of Greece: a moment of challenge and opportunity?” by Lina Molokotos-Liederman (pp. 32–50).
A study day of the Société d’histoire religieuse de la France, held in Paris on
November 22, 2014, on the occasion of the centenary of the beginning of World War
I, was devoted to the theme “Les églises chrétiennes dans la Grande Guerre: Expériences historiographiques européennes.” The papers presented on that occasion have
now been published in the society’s journal, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France (vol.
102, January–June 2016), as follows: Nadine-Josette Chaline, “L’Église et la Grande
Guerre” (pp. 7–17); Xavier Boniface, “L’histoire religieuse de la France durant la
Grande Guerre: un état de recherches” (pp. 19–35); Pierre-Yves Kirschleger, “Une
minorité religieuse dans la Grande Guerre: les protestants français” (pp. 37–56);
Emiel Lamberts, “Historiographie de la vie religieuse en Belgique pendant la Grande
Guerre” (pp. 57–67); Maria Paiano, “L’Italie, le pays qui abrite le pape” (pp. 69–88);
Catherine Maurer, “Vingt ans d’histoire religieuse de la première guerre mondiale en
Allemagne: où en est l’histoire des forms de piété?” (pp. 89–100); Umberto Mazzone,
“Èglises et monarchie austro-hongroise” (pp. 101–20); Michael Snape, “The Christian Churches and the Great War: England, Scotland and Wales” (pp. 121–38); and
Jean-Dominique Durand, “Conclusions” (pp. 139–42).
The papers presented at the U.S. Catholic China Bureau’s biennial national
conference, which was held in Burlingame, California, on October 9–11, 2015,
have been published in the U.S. Catholic Historian (vol. 34, no. 2, spring 2016).
Following an introduction by Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P. (pp. 1–2) are “Shifting
Landscapes: Sino-American Catholic Identities, 1900–Present” by Anthony E.
Clark (pp. 3–25); “China through the Magic Lantern: Passionist Father Theophane Maguire and American Catholic Missionary Images of China in the Early
Twentieth Century” by Margaret Kuo (pp. 27–42); “An American Adventure: The
United States Vincentians in Jiangxi before 1949” by John J. Harney (pp. 43–68);
“Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and the Image of China and Chinese Catholicism in
Worldmission Magazine, 1950–1966,” by Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P. (pp. 69–91);
“Cameras and Conversions: Crossing Boundaries in American Catholic Missionary Experience and Photography in Modern China” by Joseph W. Ho (pp. 93–
120); and “Richard Madsen, China Scholar and Public Sociologist” by Michael
Agliardo, S.J. (pp. 121–46).

PERSONALS
John W. O’Malley, S.J., was awarded the Centennial Medal by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The medal, which recognizes
alumni who have made extraordinary contributions, is the school’s highest honor
and was first awarded in 1989 on the 100th anniversary of the school’s founding.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

667

OBITUARY
The Reverend Paul Liston
(1932–2016)

Washington-native Paul Liston, a beloved priest and teacher, passed away on
March 23 at age eighty-four.
Ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington in 1958, Father Liston
served the Church for nearly six decades in a variety of roles reflective of his gifts
and interests.
In addition to his parish work, Father Liston, who had earned a bachelor’s
degree in English from The Catholic University of America and a graduate degree
from Georgetown University, served as a faculty member at the high school seminary for the archdiocese (Cathedral Latin High School) and as a chaplain at American University.
As a board member and one-time president of the Catholic Historical Society
of Washington and as a coeditor and writer for the society’s journal, Potomac
Catholic Heritage, Father Liston helped to chronicle the history of the Archdiocese
of Washington. He coauthored The Plundering Time: The Hardships of Southern
Maryland Catholics in Colonial Times (Washington, DC, 1989), which addressed
the period of religious and political unrest that occurred in colonial Maryland
between 1644 and 1646.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the principal celebrant at the funeral Mass held at
the chapel of Carroll Manor Nursing Home in Washington, DC, praised Father
Liston’s work on the journal, saying, [it] “tells the story of Christ’s Church at work

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

in this part of the world. We celebrate the life of a priest who proclaimed that story
and made it present here.”
Father Liston also had musical gifts. He not only played the piano and
recorder; he had a love of classical music and served as chair of the Archdiocesan
Music Commission. Those who knew Father Liston personally attest to his warm
pastoral care and holiness of life.
Over the years Father Liston served in many parishes in the Archdiocese of
Washington, notably St. Hugh Parish (Greenbelt, MD), the Shrine of the Most
Blessed Sacrament (Washington), Annunciation Parish (Washington), Holy
Face Parish (Great Mills, MD), St. Francis Xavier Parish (Washington), St.
Matthias Parish (Lanham, MD), and finally as a senior priest at St. Patrick
Parish (Washington).
After his retirement in 2001, he moved into the Cardinal O’Boyle Residence
for retired priests and most recently resided at the Carroll Manor Nursing Home,
where he struggled with a long illness.
Father Liston was interred at the historic Mount Olivet Cemetery in the
nation’s capital.
Bryantown, MD

RORY CONLEY

Periodical Literature
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Primat und Kollegialität. Der römische Bischof und seine Synoden im 1.
Jahrtausend. Andreas Weckwerth. Römische Quartalschrift, 110 (3–4, 2015),
175–99.
Embodied Eschatology: The Council of Nicaea’s Regulation of Kneeling and Its
Reception across Liturgical Traditions (Part 1). Gabriel Radle. Worship, 90
(July, 2016), 345–71.
Ist die päpstliche Heiligsprechung ein Ausdruck des unfehlbaren Lehramtes?
Geschichtlichte und theologische Erörterungen. Helmut Moll. Forum
Katholische Theologie, 32 (1, 2016), 56–74.
The Role of the Observers During the Second Vatican Council. Peter De Mey. St
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 60 (1–2, 2016), 33–51.
Time, History, and Tradition in the Fundamentalist Imagination. Margaret Bendroth. Church History, 85 (June, 2016), 328–42.
Modernity and the Problem of Its Christian Past: The Geistesgeschichten of Blumenberg, Berger, and Gauchet. Sjoerd Griffioen. History and Theory, 55
(May, 2016), 185–209.
Religiosidade Popular e suas práticas em torno a Santo António de Lisboa. Álvaro
da Cruz Silva, OFM. Itinerarium, LXI (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 577–601.
Studying the ecclesiology of a national church: the Danish context. Peter Lodberg.
International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 16 (2, 2016), 126–36.
An Afro-German Microhistory: Gender, Religion, and the Challenges of Diasporic
Dwelling. Julia Roos. Central European History, 49 (June, 2016), 240–60.
Scholarship on Quaker Missionaries in China: a Sparse Past but a Rich Future?
Olivia D. Rauss. Quaker History, 105 (Spring, 2016), 48–64.

ANCIENT
La “sucesión episcopal” en la Iglesia de Esmirna. Mauricio Saavedra. Estudio Agustiniano, 51 ( Jan.–Apr., 2016), 37–80.
Divine or Human Images? Neoplatonic and Christian Views on Works of Art and
Aesthetics. Arja Karivieri. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 196–209.
Byzantine Visual Culture: Conditions of “Right” Belief and Some Platonic Outlooks. Anne Karahan. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 210–44.
669

670

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Ideólogo ou testemunha? Duas avaliações contemporâneas da pessoa e da obra de
Eusébio de Cesareia. Aldredo Bronzato da Costa Cruz. Coletânea, XIV (Jan.–
June, 2015), 13–43.
Where to Find Christian Philosophy? Spatiality in John Chrysostom’s Counter to
Greek Paideia. Jan R. Stenger. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 24 (Summer,
2016), 173–98.
Landscape, Space, and Presence in the Cult of Thekla at Meriamlik. Troels Myrup
Kristensen. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 24 (Summer, 2016), 229–63.
Restauratio in De civitate Dei. The Role of the Restoration Motif in Understanding
Augustine’s Theology of History. Jimmy Chan and Anthony Dupont. La
Ciudad de Dios, CCXXIX (Jan.–Apr., 2016), 55–78.
“Laudate Dominum de caelis”. Die Lobpsalmen-Darstellung im Triclinium des
Erzbischofs Neon in Ravenna. Günter Paulus Schiemenz. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 127 (1, 2016), 1–18.

MEDIEVAL
When Did Augustine of Canterbury Die? Richard Shaw. Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 67 (July, 2016), 473–91.
Death in the Monasteries: Jonas of Bobbio and the Dialogues of Gregory the Great.
Adalbert De Vogüé, O.S.B. American Benedictine Review, 67 (June, 2016),
191–216.
Bede’s sources for his references to ‘hides’ in the Ecclesiastical History and the History of the Abbots. Richard Shaw. Historical Research, 89 (Aug., 2016), 412–34.
‘Those same cursed Saracens’: Charlemagne’s campaign in the Iberian Peninsula as
religious warfare. Samuel Ottewill-Soulsby. Journal of Medieval History, 42 (4,
2016), 405–28.
Christianity’s Content: (Neo)Platonism in the Middle Ages, Its Theoretical and
Theological Appeal. Willemien Otten. Numen, 63 (2–3, 2016), 245–70.
Visions in a Ninth-Century Village: An Early Medieval Microhistory. Charles
West. History Workshop Journal, 81 (Spring, 2016), 1–16.
Knowledge of the past and the judgement of history in tenth-century Trier: Regino
of Prüm and the last manuscript of Bishop Adventius of Metz. Charles West.
Early Medieval Europe, 24 (May, 2016), 137–59.
Retour sur la fondation de l’Abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel et le rôle du duc
Richard Ier de Normandie. George M. Gandy. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays
de l’Ouest, 123 (1, 2016), 7–33.
Saints, rulers and communities in Southern Italy: the Vitae of the Italo-Greek
saints (tenth to eleventh centuries) and their audiences. Eleni Tounta. Journal
of Medieval History, 42 (4, 2016), 429–55.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

671

Eine neue Perspektive auf das Selbstverständnis mittelalterlicher Kompilatoren?
Birgit Kynast. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 127 (1, 2016), 19–35.
Un acte inédit de Guy, archevêque de Reims, en faveur de l’abbaye Saint-Vincent
de Laon (vers 1048). Paul Chaffenet. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 93
(3–4, 2015), 619–44.
Zynische Empfehlungen für einen Besuch der Päpstlichen Kurie: Der Dialog De
quattuor saccis romanam curiam deportandis und die Briefe des Petrus Damiani.
Thomas Haye. Classica et Medievalia, 65 (2016).
The Cult of St Nicholas of Myra in Norman Bari, c. 1071– c. 1111. Dawn Marie
Hayes. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 ( July, 2016), 492–512.
Alexandre 1er de Liège et Raoul de Saint-Trond: une alliance de circonstance?
Kevin Schmidt. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 93 (3–4, 2015), 647–66.
Should We Abstain? Spousal Equality in Twelfth-Century Byzantine Canon Law.
Maroula Perisanidi. Gender & History, 28 (Aug., 2016), 422–37.
Thomas Becket and the Royal Abbey of Reading. Rachel Koopmans. English Historical Review, CXXXI (Feb., 2016), 1–30.
Let sacred buildings speak: Durham Cathedral and the Jerusalem Temple. David
Brown. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 16 (2, 2016),
93–107.
Il Tractatus in expositionem vite et regule beati Benedicti di Gioacchino da Fiore.
Problemi di datazione. Guido Cariboni. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia,
LXIX ( Jan.–June, 2015), 3–20.
The festival of Saint Demetrios, the Timarion, and the Aithiopika. Bryon MacDougall. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 40 (Apr., 2016), 136–50.
A literary self-portrait of Nikolaos Mesarites. Beatrice Daskas. Byzantine and
Modern Greek Stusies, 40 (Apr., 2016), 151–69.
Antecedentes del clericalismo y anticlericalismo en España (De Nerón a Carlos
III). Una introducción (VII). Diezmos, Señoríos y el Cisma de Occidente.
Victor Manuel Arbeloa. Lumen, LXIV ( July–Dec., 2015), 295–319.
Franciscus: Inter minores minimus. Regis J. Armstrong. Collectanea Franciscana, 85
(3–4, 2015), 401–26.
Ordem dos Frades Menores Conventuais (Ofm Conv.). Henrique Pinto Rema,
OFM. Itinerarium, LXI (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 488–99.
Le fondazioni francescane femminili in Abruzzo nel XIII secolo. Marco Espositi.
Collectanea Franciscana, 85 (3–4, 2015), 631–664.
The 1240–1 Accounts of the Vicar Peter Ferrer and a Heretic Hunt around
Barcelona. Stefano M. Cingolani and Damian J. Smith. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 124 (1, 2016), 26–52.
Bildung im Mittelalter: Albertus Magnus und Meister Eckhart. Paul D.
Hellmeier. Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 67 (1, 2016), 67–82.

672

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Franciscan Bachelors and Masters of Theology in the Custody of York (1250–
1350). Michael J. P. Robson. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 (Jan.–June
2016), 5–32.
Individualisation et maîtrise d’ouvrage. Autour de quelques dignitaires de L’Hôpital dans le Midi de la France (v. 1250–1350). Damien Carraz. Revue d’histoire
ecclésiastique, 111 (Jan.–June 2016), 34–60.
La pensée visuelle des Templiers et des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem au
XIIIe siècle, réflexions à partir du décor de quelques édifices du royaume de
France. Cécile Voyer. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 59 (Jan.–Mar., 2016),
47–71.
Annihilation and Authorship: Three Women Mystics of the 1290s. Barbara
Newman. Speculum, 91 (July, 2016), 591–630.
Una raccolta giuridica dei Frati Minori nel codice Ottoboniano Latino 15. Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea Franciscana, 85 (3–4, 2015), 427–86.
Two Weddings and a Lawsuit: Marriage Litigation in Fourteenth-Century Portugal. André Vitória. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 ( July, 2016), 513–67.
“Choirs of Angels”? The Visitation of Montpellier’s Collège Saint-Benoît-SaintGerman in 1369. Thomas Sullivan, O.S.B. American Benedictine Review, 67
(June, 2016), 125–57.
Spiritual Suffering and Physical Protection in Childbirth in the South English Legendary Lives of Saint Margaret. Allison Adair Alberts. Journal of Medieval and
Early Modern Studies, 46 (May, 2016), 289–314.
Fighting Words: Vengeance, Jews, and Saint Vincent Ferrer in Late-Medieval
Valencia. Katherine Lindeman. Speculum, 91 ( July, 2016), 690–723.
Virtù e Vizi nella Cappella degli Scrovegni: nuovi tituli recuperati. Giulia Ammannati. Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, series 5, 7 (2, 2015), 445–71.
Treason, felony and Lollardy: a common petition in the hand of Richard Osbarn,
clerk of the chamber of the Guildhall, 1400–c. 1437. Helen Killick. Historical
Research, LXXXIX (May, 2016), 227–45.
Via concilii. Il decreto Haec sancta e il conciliarismo del concilio de Costanza. Jürgen
Miethke. Cristianesimo nella storia, 37 (1, 2016), 55–85.
Visite pastorali e riforma a Bologna durante l’episcopato di Niccolò Albergati
(1417–1443). Riccardo Parmeggiani. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia,
LXIX ( Jan.–June, 2015), 21–47.
Making Manuscripts as Political Engagement by Women in the Fifteenth-Century Observant Reform Movement. Anne Winston-Allen. Journal of Medieval
Religious Cultures, 42 (2, 2016), 224–47.
Community regulation and its effects: the aggressive actions of parishioners against
priests and women in Paris, 1483–1505. Tiffany D. Vann Sprechen. Journal of
Medieval Studies, 42 (4, 2016), 494–510.

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El Hospital de Santa Marta de Sevilla: actividades y gestión económica (siglos XV
a XVII). José Julián Hernández Borreguero. Hispania Sacra, 67 (No. 136,
2015), 613–33.

SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Les évêques à la cour du roi sous Manuel Ier et Jean III du Portugal (1495–1557).
José Pedro Paiva. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 ( Jan.–June 2016), 61–78.
Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles Tapestries for Leo X: Sight, Sound, and Space in the
Sistine Chapel. Lisa Pon. Art Bulletin, XCVII (Dec., 2015), 388–408.
Titian’s Christ with the Coin: Recovering the Spiritual Currency of Numismatics in
Renaissance Ferrara. Christopher J. Nygren. Renaissance Quarterly, 69
(Summer, 2016), 449–88.
Reliquienverehrung unter Albrecht von Brandenburg am Neuen Stift zu Halle.
Matthias Hamann. Liturgisches Jahrbuch, 66 (1, 2016), 25–40.
Burying Money? Monetary Origins and Afterlives of Luther’s Reformation.
Philipp Rössner. History of Political Economy, 48 ( June, 2016), 225–63.
Visualizing Sacred History: Peter Dell’s Resurrection and Lutheran Image Theology. Jennifer Nelson. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 46 (May,
2016), 339–79.
Erasmus of Rotterdam and his Influence on the Development of the Protestant
Reformation in the Southern Netherlands. Guido Marnef. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 36 (1, 2016), 35–52.
Rethinking “Catholic Reform” and “Counter-Reformation”. What Happened in
Early Modern Catholicism—a View from Italy. Massimo Firpo. Journal of
Early Modern History, 20 (3, 2016), 292–312.
I contrasti tra Vergerio e Mainardo circa un catechismo riformato per la Valtellina
(1553). Federico Zuliani. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LXIX ( Jan.–
June, 2015), 49–78.
Church, Chapter and Parishioners in the Aftermath of Religious Turmoil. The
Case of St James and St Pharahild in Ghent, 1566–1614. Michal Bauwens
and Annelies Somers. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 93 (3–4, 2015),
669–90.
La forme de la prédication à Berne au XVIe siècle. Max Engammare. Revue Historique, 678 (Apr., 2016), 297–321.
A criação da Congregação beneditina luso-brasileira no século XVI. D. Mauro
Maia Fragoso, OSB. Coletânea, XIV ( Jan.–June, 2015), 177–92.
Les textes liturgiques des saints martyrs dans le bréviaire et le missel de saint Pie V:
Les fêtes de septembre à novembre. Philippe Beitia. Ephermerides Liturgicae,
CXXX ( Jan.–Mar., 2016), 3–41.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Incidente entre Domingo de Guzmán y fray Luis de León en la Oposición de la
Cátedra de Biblia (1579). José Barrientos García. La Ciudad de Dios,
CCXXIX ( Jan.–Apr., 2016), 115–55.
Asceticism, Dissent, and the Tudor State: Richard Whitford’s Rule for Lay
Householders. Amy Appleford. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,
46 (May, 2016), 381–404.
Persuading the queen’s majesty’s subjects from their allegiance: treason, reconciliation and confessional identity in Elizabethan England. Lucy Underwood.
Historical Research, 89 (May, 2016), 246–67.
Orazio Diola traduttore delle “Croniche de gli Ordini instituiti da Padre san
Francesco” di Marcos de Lisboa (1581–1591) e la sua biblioteca. Federica
Dallasta. Collectanea Franciscana, 85 (3–4, 2015), 523–93.
San Agustín en el “Entierro del Conde de Orgaz”. Guillermo Pons Pons. La
Ciudad de Dios, CCXXIX (Jan.–Apr., 2016), 95–114.
Confession de foi poétique et affiliation religieuse chez Jean-Baptiste Chassignet.
Etude du geste de publication de 1592 à 1613. Audrey Duru. Bibliothèque
d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXXVIII (1, 2016), 45–65.
The Wayward Priest of Atondo: Clerical Misbehavior, Local Community, and the
Limits of Tridentine Reform. Amanda L. Scott. Sixteenth Century Journal,
XLVII (Spring, 2016), 75–98.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
Domesticating the Reformation: Material Culture, Memory, and Confessional
Identity in Early Modern England. Alexandra Walsham. Renaissance Quarterly, 69 (Summer, 2016), 566–616.
Visiting Old Libraries: Scientific Books in the Religious Institutions of Early
Modern Portugal. Luana Giurgevich. Early Science and Medicine, 21 (2/3,
2016), 252–72.
Combatter coi tribunali dell’impero. Zum Konlifkt um Jurisdiktion und Rechtsprechung zwischen römischer Kurie und Reich in der Frühen Neuzeit (Teil
III). Burkhard Roberg. Römische Quartalschrift, 110 (3–4, 2015), 200–17.
Rivalry and Reformation Politics: Reflections on Andrew Battell’s Jaga Materials
Printed by Samuel Purchas from 1613 to 1625. Jared Staller. History in Africa,
43 (2016), 7–28.
Les Carmélites Rebelles de Bordeaux et de Saints, d’après leurs écrits. Danielle
Metz. XVII e Siècle, 68 ( Jan.–Mar., 2016), 133–56.
Perception and the Mulatto Body in Inquisitorial Spain: A Neurohistory. Cristian
Becco. Past & Present, No. 231 (May, 2016), 33–60.
Los jesuitas y la Monarquía Hispánica en el contexto de la guerra de los treinta años
(1625–1635). Fernando Negredo del Cerro and Enrique Villalba Pérez. Hispania Sacra, 67 (No. 136, 2015), 635–72.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

675

Slippery Listening: Anxious Clergy and Lay Listeners’ Power in Early Modern
England. Laura Feitzinger Brown. Sixteenth Century Journal, XLVII (Spring,
2016), 3–23.
Dogs and Dogma: Perception and Revelation in Rembrandt’s Presentation in the
Temple, c. 1640. Elizabeth Sutton. Art History, 30 (June, 2016), 466–85.
Qualified Toleration: Bermuda and the English Revolution. Rachel N. Schnepper.
Parliamentary History, 35 (June, 2016), 132–51.
Medical Care in Early Modern Venice. Alexandra Bamji. Journal of Social History,
49 (Spring, 2016), 483–509.
Un Nouvel An chez les jésuites. Étude du manuscrit emblématique conçu à l’occasion de la visite de Léopold-Guillaume le 1er janvier 1650 au collège bruxellois
de la Compagnie de Jésus. Grégory Ems. Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire,
93 (3–4, 2015), 693–722.
Thomas Hobbes, D. D: Theology, Orthodoxy, and History. Jonathan Sheehan.
Journal of Modern History, 88 ( June, 2016), 249–74.
Teaching Ignatian Spirituality to Rich and Poor Girls Through Dramatic Performance in Seventeenth-Century Florence. Jennifer Haraguchi. Sixteenth
Century Journal, XLVII (Spring, 2016), 25–51.
The Quakers and the Politics of the Army in the Crisis of 1659. Kate Peters. Past
& Present, No. 231 (May, 2016), 97–128.
True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in
the Restored Church of Ireland. Kathryn Rose Sawyer. Church History, 85
(June, 2016), 219–45.
Protestantism, Colonization, and the New England Company in Restoration Politics. Gabriel Glickman. Historical Journal, 59 ( June, 2016), 365–91.
Singularidad del proceso de canonización de Fernando III el Santo. Ulpiano Pacho
Sardón. Isidorianum, XXIV (47–48, 2015), 227–52.
“El dia más deseado que contó jamás esta república.” Beatificación de Fernando III, rey
de Castilla y León. El trono de España en la gloria del altar. 1671. José Gámez
Martín. Isidorianum, XXIV (47–48, 2015), 253–305.
Collecting copper plates between Venice and Rome in the seventeenth century:
Cardinal Alessandro Orsini, the Old Masters and the sciences. Adriano
Amendola. Journal of the History of Collections, 28 ( July, 2016), 161–73.
Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri and his picture collection in the
Palazzo Altieri: the evidence of the 1698 death inventory: part I. Lisa Beaven
and Karen J. Lloyd. Journal of the History of Collections, 28 (July, 2016), 175–
90.
Enlightened Piety during the Age of Benevolence: The Christian Knowledge
Movement in the British Atlantic World. Rusty Roberson. Church History, 85
(June, 2016), 246–74.

676

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Autour de la saisie des pièces jansénistes à Bruxelles (1703). Bilan et perspectives.
Michel Van Meerbeeck. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 (Jan.–June 2016),
80–90.
“Nicht sogleich wiederum zurück, sondern weiter und weiter!” Die “InspirationsReisen” des Johann Friedrich Rock nach Württemberg und in südwestdeutsche Reichsstädte. Eberhard Fritz. Blätter für württembergische
Kirchengeschichte, 115 (2015), 35–70.
La comunità cattolica e la cappella dell’ambasciata sabauda nella Londra del Settecento. Paolo Cozzo. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LXIX ( Jan.–June,
2015), 79–94.
Le accuse di “eresia” nelle polemiche intracattoliche (Italia, secolo XVIII). †Paola
Vismara. Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, LXIX (Jan.–June, 2015), 95–
111.
Poor relief systems in rural Italy: the territory of the diocese of Tortona in the eighteenth century. Luciano Maffi and Marco Rochini. Continuity and Change, 39
(Aug., 2016), 211–39.
The Abbé [Edme] Mallet’s Unsigned Contribution to the Encyclopédie. Reginald
McGinnis. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 28 (Summer, 2016), 691–712.
“A Plague of the State and the Church”: A Local Response to the Moravian Enterprise. Christina Petterson. Journal of Moravian History, 16 (1, 2016), 45–60.

NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Les archevêques de Bordeaux: le seigneur et le pasteur. Les représentations aux
XIXe–XXe siècles. Marc Agostino. Annales du Midi, 127 (Oct.–Dec. 2015),
489–97.
Gran expolio artístico del Real Monasterio del Excorial durante la invasión francesa
(1808–1814). Segunda parte. José Rodríguez Díez, O.S.A. La Ciudad de Dios,
CCXXIX ( Jan.–Apr., 2016), 157–88.
The People, the Priests and the Protestants: Catholic Responses to Evangelical
Missionaries in the Early Nineteenth-Century Scottish Highlands. Elizabeth
Ritchie. Church History, 85 ( June, 2016), 275–301.
Mission und Sprachsforschung in Ostafrika im 19. Jahrhundert. Das Beispiel des
Gerlinger Missionars Johannes Rebmann. Louise Hoffmann. Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte, 115 (2015), 117–38.
El obispo Pedro Cirilo Úriz y Labayru en la encrucijada del concordato del 1851.
Francesc Closa Salinas. Hispania Sacra, 67 (No. 136, 2015), 673–715.
Felix Freiherr von Loë-Terporten, Comes romanus. Von der Papsttreue des
rheinischen Adels. Hartmut Benz. Römische Quartalschrift, 110 (3–4, 2015),
218–50.

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677

The 1859 revival and its enemies: opposition to religious revivalism within Ulster
Presbyterianism. Daniel Ritchie. Irish Historical Studies, 40 (May, 2016), 66–
91.
La Chiesa siciliana dopo l’impresa dei Mille. Gaetano Zito. Rivista di Storia della
Chiesa in Italia, LXIX (Jan.–June, 2015), 113–41.
Gender and fertility within the free churches in the Sundsvall region, Sweden,
1860–1921. Johan Junkka. History of the Family, 21 (June, 2016), 243–66.
À la recherche du suaire perdu de Besançon. Enquête patrimoniale, enjeux identitaires. Vincent Petit. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 ( Jan.–June 2016), 92–
114.
Des zouaves pontificaux aux zouaves du Sacré Cœur. Un exemple de la fidelité à
Rome de catholiques français sous la IIIe République. Laurent Gruaz and
Patrick Nouaille-Degorce. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 (Jan.–June 2016),
115–45.
Il quadro storico-politico dei rapporti tra stato e chiesa. La “questione romana”
dalla legge delle guarentigie (1871) alla firma dei patti lateranensi (1929).
Michelangelo De Donà. Studia Patavina, LXIII (Jan.–Apr., 2016), 91–105.
Miracoli, propaganda e devozione popolare: nostra Signora di Lourdes in Italia
(1872–1900). Alessandro Di Marco. Cristianesimo nella storia, 37 (1, 2016),
87–120.
Franz Overbecks Religionsverständnis im Kontext der europäischen Religionsgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Ein kursorischer Blick ins nachgelassene
Kirchenlexicon. Jürgen Mohn. Theologische Zeitschrift, 72 (1, 2016), 16–41.
Transformations of the Sacred in East Timor. Judith Bovensiepen and Federico
Delgado Rosa. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58 (July, 2016),
664–93.
‘Nel campo della lotta’. Organizzazioni femminili evangeliche e movimento delle
donne in Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento. Liviana Gazzetta. Cristianesimo
nella storia, 37 (1, 2016), 121–45.
Théologiser selon l’induction: Chenu et la réforme du langage de la foi (1909–
1937) ou analyses des textes au sujet de l’histoire d’un renversement méthodologique. Marco La Loggia. Cristianesimo nella storia, 37 (1, 2016), 147–202.
Ordenshistoriographie aus protestantischer Perspektive. Christian Volkmar Witt.
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 127 (1, 2016), 37–64.
Christian Empire and National Crusade: The Rhetoric of Anglican Clergy in the
First World War. Aimee E. Barbeau. Anglican and Episcopal History, 85 (Mar,
2016), 24–62.
From Cowl to Khaki: Benedictine Experiences on the Western Front 1914–1918.
James Hagerty. Downside Review, No. 469 (July, 2015), 234–51.

678

P ERIODICAL L ITERATURE

Local Intermediaries? The Missionising and Governing of Colonial Subjects in
South Dutch New Guinea, 1920–42. Maaike Derksen. Journal of Pacific History, 51 (2, 2016), 111–42.
Das Mittelalter: Modell für eine neue Christenheit? Nikolaj A. Berdjaev und die
Wirkung seiner Forschung bis ins 2. Vatikanische Konzil. Gianmaria Zamagni. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 127 (1, 2016), 65–83.
Die Gesellschaft Jesu und die Rassendebatte in den 1920er 1930er Jahren. Philippe
Chenaux. Römische Quartalschrift, 110 (3–4, 2015), 251–61.
Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Glaube. Dr. Karl Steger: Pfarrer in
Friedrichshafen und prominenter Vertreter der Deutschen Christen in Württemberg. Hans-Eberhard Dietrich. Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte, 115 (2015), 11–34.
Mit brennendem Herz für Kreuz und Hakenkreuz. Wilhelm Rehm—ein Deutscher
Christ. Otto Haug and Franka Rössner. Blätter für württembergische
Kirchengeschichte, 115 (2015), 71–116.
“Fictional, but Truthful.” Nicholas Belina-Podgaetsky, A Soveit Journalist at the
Service of Catholic Anti-Communism in Belgium. Wim Coudenys. Revue
d’histoire ecclésiastique, 111 ( Jan.–June 2016), 148–79.
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 (II). Silvio Hermann De Franceschi. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique,
111 ( Jan.–June 2016), 181–201.
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft im “Dritten Reich.” Stefan Michel. Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 127 (1, 2016), 84–103.
On the Confessing Church’s June 1936 Memorandum to Hitler. Matthew D.
Hockenos. Contemporary Church History Quarterly, 22 ( June, 2016).
International and Modern Ideals in Irish Female Medical Missionary Activity,
1937–1962. Ailish Veale. Women’s History Review, 25 (Aug., 2016), 602–18.
La politica ecclesiastica italiana dal diritto alla storiografia: Stefano Jacini e Arturo
Carlo Jemolo. Federico Mazzei. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXIV (II, 2016),
281–316.
Prayers and Patriotism in Nazi-Occupied Russia: The Pskov Orthodox Mission
and Religious Revival, 1941–1944. Johannes Due Enstad. Slavonic and East
European Review, 94 (July, 2016), 468–96.
Catholic Modernity and the Italian Constitution. Bjørn Thomassen and Rosario
Forlenza. History Workshop Journal, 81 (Spring, 2016), 231–51.
El P. José María López Riocerezo. Agustino, penalista y hombre de infinita
bondad. Juan-Ramón Rodríguez Llamosí. La Ciudad de Dios, CCXXIX
(Jan.–Apr., 2016), 189–211.

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679

Pontificado Ovetense 1949–1964. D. Francisco Javier Lauzurica y Torralba.
Miguel Ángel Cadrecha Caparrós. Studium Ovetense, XLII (2014), 7–64.
Francisco Rodrigues Macedo. Sacerdote e franciscano. Manuel Pereira Gonçalves,
OFM. Itinerarium, LXI (Sept.–Dec., 2015), 429–87.
De Lubac al Vaticano II. Elio Guerriero. Gregorianum, 97 (2, 2016), 247–66.
Mourned Choices and Grievable Lives: The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Influence
in Defining Abortion Experience in Australia Since the 1960s. Erica Millar.
Gender & History, 28 (Aug., 2016), 501–19.
Champion of the Gaeilgeoirí: John Charles McQuaid and the Irish-language mass.
James P. Bruce. Irish Historical Studies, 40 (May, 2016), 110–30.
When The Zionist Idea came to Beirut: Judaism, Christianity, and the Palestine
Liberation Organization’s translation of Zionism. Jonathan Marc Gribetz.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 48 (May, 2016), 243–66.
Ökonomie und Ökumene. Westdeutsche und südafrikanische Kirchen und das
Apartheid-System in den 1970er- und 1980er Jahren. Sebastian Justke and
Sebastian Tripp. Zeithistorische Forschungen, (2, 2016).
O Desencantamento do Munso e o Advento da Autonomia: 30 anos da Historía
Política da Religião de Marcel Gauchet. André Magnelli. Coletânea, XIV
(Jan.–June, 2015), 44–71.
Studying ecclesiology in ecumenical perspective: the Finnish context: what does it
mean to be ‘the same church in all directions’? Elina Hellqvist. International
Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 16 (2, 2016), 137–48.
Christian Capital: Singapore, Evangelical Flows and Religious Hubs. Robbie B. H.
Goh. Asian Studies Review, 40 ( June, 2016), 250–67.

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN
Brébeuf Was Never Martyred: Reimagining the Life and Death of Canada’s First
Saint. James Taylor Carson. Canadian Historical Review, 97 (June, 2016),
222–43.
Quieting Mary Dyer: Edward Burrough and Dyer’s Letter to the Massachusetts
General Court, 26 October 1659. Johan Winsser. Quaker History, 105
(Spring, 2016), 22–47.
‘Declension comes home’: Cotton Mather, male youth rebellion, and the hope of
providential affliction in Puritan New England. David P. Setran. Religion and
American Culture, 26 (Winter, 2016), 31–73.
“Swarms of Negroes Comeing about My Door”: Black Christianity in Early Dutch
and English North America. Patricia U. Bonomi. Journal of American History,
103 ( June, 2016), 34–58.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Dangerous Spirits: How the Indian Critique of Alcohol Shaped Eighteenth-Century Quaker Revivalism. Michael Goode. Early American Studies, 14 (Spring,
2016), 258–83.
The Anabaptists of Juniata County: A Historical Profile. Betty Ann Landis. Pennsylvania History, 83 (Spring, 2016), 231–45.
The Religious and the Secular in the Early American Republic. Christopher
Grasso. Journal of the Early Republic, 36 (Summer, 2016), 359–88.
The Traveling Life of John Littlejohn: Methodism, Mobility, and Social Exchange
from Revolutionary Virginia to Early Republican Kentucky. Hunter Price.
Journal of Southern History, LXXXII (May, 2016), 237–68.
’Mid Tumult of Her War: The Doctrine of the Church and the Office of Holy
Ministry Following the 1841 Altenburg Debate. Jack D. Ferguson. Concordia
Historical Institute Quarterly, 89 (Spring, 2016), 7–34.
The Minims of Notre Dame: Underpinnings of Sorin’s University, 1842–1929.
Marion T. Casey. American Catholic Studies, 127 (Spring, 2016), 45–72.
The Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1844: Contest oover the Rights of Citizens.
Amanda Beyer-Purvis. Pennsylvania History, 83 (Summer, 2016), 366–93.
Letters from Lebanon: Carl Ludwig Geyer in the Wisconsin Wilderness. William
R. Wangelin. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 89 (Spring, 2016), 35–
50.
Pastor J. A. F. W. Mueller: A Faithful Shepherd of Souls. Joel Heckmann. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 89 (Spring, 2016), 51–62.
Political Violence, Violent Politics: Protestant Democrats and Republicans at War
in Virginia, 1862. John H. Matsui. History, 101 (July, 2016), 379–95.
Orestes Brownson and the Unwritten Foundation of American Constitutionalism.
Peter Augustine Lawler and Richard M. Reinsch II. Modern Age, 58 (Spring,
2016), 31–41.
“A Home Without Walls”: WMU [Woman’s Missionary Union] and the Reinterpretation of Gender Ideology. Carol Crawford Holcomb. Baptist History and
Heritage, 51 (Spring, 2016), 37–69.
Henry Boynton Smith and Church History in Nineteenth-Century America.
Annette G. Aubert. Church History, 85 ( June, 2016), 302–27.
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.
“How Newness Enters the World”: Cultural Creolization in Swedish-American
Hymnals Published at Augustana College, 1901–1925. Peter Ellertsen. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 109 (Spring, 2016), 9–45.
Morality, Miscegenation, and Limitations on Marital Status: The 1907 Louisiana
Supreme Court Case Succession of Gabisso. Bambra (Barb) Pitman. Louisiana
History, LVII (Spring, 2016), 133–83.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

681

“A Seed-Sowing Time”: M. M. Pinson’s Pentecostal Paths in Alabama. Scott E.
Hill. Alabama Review, 69 (Apr., 2016), 132–63.
“Truly Radical, Non-violent, Friendly Approaches”: Challenges to the American
Friends Service Committee. H. Larry Ingle. Quaker History, 105 (Spring,
2016), 1–21.
Evolution and voices of progressive Catholicism in the age of the Scopes trial.
Alexander Pavuk. Religion and American Culture, 26 (Winter, 2016), 101–37.
“That Word ‘Liturgy’ Is So Unfortunate”: Learning the Mystical Body and Practicing Catholic Action in the U.S. Liturgical Movement (c. 1926–1955).
Katharine E. Harmon. American Catholic Studies, 127 (Spring, 2016), 25–44.
H. A. Reinhold: Liturgical Prophet, Hero, and Pickerel. Julia Upton, RSM. Worship, 90 (July, 2016), 300–18.
The YWCA’s Y-Chapel of Song and the Central Plate. Patrick H. Salkeld. Chronicles of Oklahoma, XCIV (Spring, 2016), 58–79.
“I know my way around a little bit”: Bishop Joseph Donnelly and American Labor,
1941–1977. Ronald W. Schatz. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the
Americas, 13 (May, 2016), 33–61.
The Creation of a Controversial Anti-Communist Martyr in Early Cold War
America. Reactions to the Arrest and Show Trial of Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty of Hungary, 1948–1949. Eric Jarvis. The Historian, 78 (Summer,
2016), 277–308.
Descandalizing Multiple Religious Identity with Help from Nicholas Black Elk
and His Spirituality: An Exercise in Interreligious Learning. Hans Stefan
Gustafson. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 51 (Winter, 2016), 80–113.
Moral Imperatives and Political Realities: Edward Marciniak and the Fight to End
Chicago’s Dual Housing Market. Charles Schanabruch. Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society, 109 (Spring, 2016), 71–101.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the long social gospel movement. Vanessa Cook.
Religion and American Culture, 26 (Winter, 2016), 74–100.
Changing hands: the practice of ordaining Baptist women. Eileen R. CampbellReed. Baptist History and Heritage, 51 (Spring, 2016), 18–26.
Reagan’s Real Catholics vs. Tip O’Neill’s Maryknoll Nuns: Gender, Intra-Catholic
Conflict, and the Contras. Theresa Keeley. Diplomatic History, 40 (June,
2016), 530–58.
The Formal Act of Defection and U.S. Catholic Deconversion. J. Patrick Hornbeck, II. American Catholic Studies, 127 (Spring, 2016), 1–23.
A Mighty Fortress is Our Battle Hymn of the Republic: Episcopal Liturgy and
American Civil Religion in the National Prayer Service on 14 September
2001. Mary Sanders. Anglican and Episcopal History, 85 (Mar., 2016), 63–86.

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PERIODICAL LITERATURE

‘Prayer is the answer’: apocalypticism, Our Lady, and Catholic identity. Jill Krebs.
Religion and American Culture, 26 (Winter, 2016), 1–30.

LATIN AMERICAN
Las Casas remembered: the 500th Anniversary of the Struggle for the Human
Rights of the Native Peoples of the Americas. David M. Traboulay. Zeitschrift
für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, 99 (3–4, 2015), 232–49.
Historicidade e geograficidade do Pateo do Collegio, coração do centro histórico
de São Paulo. Ivan Fortunato. Coletânea, XIV ( Jan.–June, 2015), 109–33.
Frailes y evangelización en el Nuevo Reino de Granada (s. XVI. Vicisitudes de un
proceso conflictivo y no muy exitoso. William Elvis Plata. Franciscanum,
LVIII ( Jan–June, 2016), 263–302.
“El Yndio Mas Venturoso”: A Spanish Guadalupan Drama of the Early Nineteenth
Century. Stafford Poole. The Americas, 73 (Apr., 2016), 171–84.
The Revolution on Trial: Assassination, Christianity, and the Rule of Law in
1920s Mexico. Robert Weis. Hispanican American Historical Review, 96 (May,
2016), 319–53.
Pious Delinquents, Anticlericalism and Crime in Postrevolutionary Mexico.
Robert Weis. The Americas, 73 (Apr., 2016), 185–210.
Monsignor Ivan Illich’s Critique of the Institutional Church, 1960–1966. Rosa
Bruno-Jofré and Jon Igelmo Zaldívar. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 67 (July,
2016), 568–86.

Other Books Received
Agamben, Giorgio (Auth.); Adam Kotsko (Trans.). The Use of Bodies. [Meridian
Crossing Aesthetics. Homo Sacer IV, 2.] (Stanford: Stanford University
Press. 2016. Pp. xxii, 291. $25.95 paperback.)
Aquinas, Thomas (Auth.); Robert Miner (Ed. and Trans). Questions on Love and
Charity: Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, Questions 23–46. [Rethinking the Western Tradition.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2016. Pp.
xiv, 400. $25.00 paperback.)
Bellabarba, Marco, Hannes Obermair, and Hitomi Sato (Eds.). Communities and
Conflict in the Alps from the Late Middle Ages to Modernity. [Annali dell’Istituto
storico italo-germanico in Trento, Contributi 30.] (Bologna: Società editrice
il Mulino; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 2015. Pp. 251. €22,00 paperback.)
Among the fourteen essays published in this volume are “Alpine Village Communities, Ecclesiastic Institutions, and Clergy in Conflict: The Late Middle
Ages” by Emanuele Curzel (pp. 91–100); “How to Record a Conflict? The
Communities of the German Part of the Diocese of Trent during the Late
Middle Ages” by Hannes Obermair (pp. 101–18); and “Ritual Surveys: Conflict, Articulation, and Composition of Local Societies within the Sacred
Sphere in the Lombardy Alps during the Late Middle Ages” by Massimo
Della Misericordia (pp. 127–50).
Boobbyer, Philip. The Spiritual Vision of Frank Buchman. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2013. Pp. xii, 217. $61.95.)
Brown, Raymond E., S. S. (Auth.); Marion L. Soards (Ed. and Abridg.). An Introduction to the New Testament. Abridged Ed. [Anchor Yale Bible Reference
Library.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2016. Pp. xxx, 346. $28.00
paperback.)
Butticci, Annalisa. African Pentecostals in Catholic Europe: The Politics of Presence in
the Twenty-First Century. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2016.
Pp. viii, 189. $39.95.)
Byrne, Julie. The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion. (New York:
Columbia University Press. 2016. Pp. xx, 412. $29.95.)
Campanella, Tommaso (Auth.); Maurizio Erto (Ed.). Libro Apologetico contro gli
Avversari dell’Istituto delle Scuole Pie. Liber apologeticus contra impugnantes
Institutum Scholarum Piarum. (Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore. 2015.
Pp. 64. €28,00 paperback.) An extract from Bruniana & Campanelliana, Supplementi, XL, Materiali 8. Vol. XXI (1, 2015), 255–319.
683

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OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Grasmück, Oliver. Eine Marienerscheinung in Zeiten der Diktatur. Der Konflikt um
Peñablanca, Chile: Religion und Manipulation unter Pinochet. [Religionsgeschichte, Versuche und Vorarbeiten, Band 56.] (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
2009. Pp. xxxiv, 709. $293.00.)
Heft, James L., S.M., and Una M. Cadegan (Eds.). In the Lógos of Love: Promise
and Predicament in Catholic Intellectual Life. (New York: Oxford University
Press. 2016. Pp. xii, 219. $35.00 paperback.)
Hsia, R. Po-Chia. Matteo Ricci and the Catholic Mission to China. A Short History
with Documents. [Passages: Key Moments in History.] (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing. 2016. Pp. xviii, 146. $18.00 paperback.) A forty-page “Introduction” is followed by thirty documents and a “Select Bibliography.”
Malzaire, Gabriel. Christ and Caribbean Culture(s): A Collection of Essays on
Caribbean Christology and its Pastoral Implications. (Bloomington: AuthorHouse. 2015. Pp. xx, 106. $14.95 paperback.)
McKenna, Mary Frances. Innovation within Tradition: Joseph Ratzinger and Reading the Women of Scripture. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 261.
$44.00 paperback.)
Meszaros, Julia T. Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch. [Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2016. Pp. viii, 248. $110.00.)
Newman, John Henry, Cardinal (Auth.); Sheridan Gilley (Ed. and Introd.). Loss
and Gain: The Story of a Convert. [The Works of Cardinal John Henry
Newman. Birmingham Oratory Millennium Ed., vol. XI.] (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press. 2014. Pp. xxxiv, 456. $48.00.) First published in 1848.
Ruth, Lester. Longing for Jesus: Worship at a Black Holiness Church in Mississippi,
1895–1913. [The Church at Worship: Case Studies from Christian History.]
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2013. Pp. xiv, 173.
$24.00 paperback.)
Rutler, George William. Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat, 1942–1943.
(South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press. 2013. Pp. x, 172. $24.00.)
Sherlock, Richard. Nature’s End: The Theological Meaning of the New Genetics.
[Religion and Contemporary Culture.] (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate
Studies Institute Books. 2010. Pp. xiv, 230. $15.00 paperback.)
Sparks, Elicka Peterson. The Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2016. Pp.
320 $27.00.)
Tedeschi, John, with Anne C. Tedeschi. Italian Jews Under Fascism, 1938–1945. A
Personal and Historical Narrative. (Madison, WI: Parallel Press. 2015. Pp. xx,
443. $55.00.) A combined political and family history.

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

685

Tremayne, Peter [Peter Berresford Ellis]. The Second Death: A Mystery of Ancient
Ireland. (New York: Minotaur. 2015. Pp. xiv, 337. $26.99.)
Weston, Victoria (Ed.). Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly
Goods. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2013. Pp. 147. $60.00 paperback.) A lavish catalog for an exhibition organized by the McMullen Museum
of Art at Boston College in 2013.