Kathleen Sprows Cummings
President
The American Catholic Historical Association
2017
(Photo credit: Department of American Studies, University of Notre Dame)

THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 104

WINTER 2018

NO. 1

Frances Cabrini, American Exceptionalism,
and Returning to Rome
KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS*
By analyzing Frances Cabrini as a canonized saint, a U.S. citizen, and
an immigrant, this essay shows that American exceptionalism has
shaped U.S. Catholic historiography as well as hagiography, and suggests that emphasizing the centrality of the Holy See to the American
Catholic story can help historians consider U.S. Catholicism in local,
national, and transnational registers. This essay also suggests that
Cabrini’s story can inspire a new generation of historians to integrate
the approaches of several previous generations, by adopting a more
expansive vision of the institutional Church that also includes the ordinary people who had little or no direct engagement with its structures.
Keywords: Frances Cabrini, saints, American Catholicism, canonization, women, missionary, Holy See

D

ecember 22, 2017, marked the centenary of the death of Frances
Cabrini, a native of northern Italy, founder of the Missionary Sisters
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (M.S.C.), and the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint. The milestone inspired commemorations in the United
States and in Italy, where Pope Francis was particularly effusive, praising
Cabrini’s courageous efforts to bring the love of Christ to those who had
traveled far from home.1 Francis’ admiration for Cabrini predates his eleva*Kathleen Cummings is Director of the William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Center for
the Study of American Catholicism and Associate Professor of American Studies and History, University of Notre Dame, email: kcumming@nd.edu. This article was delivered as the
outgoing Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical
Association, January 6, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
1. During his Angelus on World Day for Migrants and Refugees on January 15, 2017,
Pope Francis remembered “the example of Saint Francesca Cabrini, patron of migrants, the

1

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

tion to the papacy, and, in fact, the former Cardinal Bergoglio’s familiarity
with Cabrini’s congregation in Buenos Aires was one reason its members
anticipated that he would include Cabrini’s shrine in northern Manhattan
on his itinerary during his 2015 trip to the United States.2 The primary purpose of every papal trip is to “confirm the sisters and brothers in the faith,”
and the pope often seeks to accomplish this goal by referencing historical
figures who combined a reputation for holiness with a resonance in the local
culture.3 Though Cabrini may have seemed a logical person for him to
highlight, Francis did not visit her shrine, even though he was nearby; neither did he mention Cabrini at all during his sojourn in the United States.
Far from a slight, this omission is instead a reminder of the importance of
vantage points: like most Catholics born outside the United States, Pope
Francis does not regard Cabrini as particularly “American.”
Pope Francis may be correct in offering Cabrini as a model for confronting migration crises of the present. It is also true that Cabrini’s life and
“afterlife” can raise new questions about the past, especially that of the
United States, the nation whose citizens have long claimed a special share
in her saintly glory. Using three categories commonly assigned to Cabrini—
canonized saint, U.S. citizen, and immigrant—this essay argues that American exceptionalism has shaped U.S. Catholic historiography as well as
hagiography, and makes a case for contemporary historians to remedy this
by recognizing, as the first historians of the U.S. church did reflexively, the
centrality of the Holy See to the American Catholic story. Finally, in considering Cabrini as a Catholic woman, this essay suggests that her story can
inspire a new generation of historians writing about U.S. Catholicism to

centenary of whose death occurs this year. This courageous Sister dedicated her life to bringing the love of Christ to those who were far from their native land and family. Her witness
helps us to take care of the stranger, in whom Jesus is present, often suffering, rejected and
humiliated.” Pope Francis, “Angelus, 15 gennaio 2017,” Vatican website, January 15, 2017.
Retrieved on September 22, 2017, from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/angelus/
2017/documents/papa-francesco_angelus_20170115.html; Hannah Brockhaus, “Mother
Cabrini’s care for immigrants remains relevant, Pope Francis says,” Catholic News Agency,
September 19, 2017. Retrieved on September 22, 2017, from http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/mother-cabrinis-care-for-immigrants-remains-relevant-popefrancis-says-59416.
2. Michael T. Luongo, “In Upper Manhattan, Restoring the Golden Halo of Mother
Cabrini,” New York Times, February 8, 2015. Retrieved on September 22, 2017, from
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/in-upper-manhattan-restoring-the-goldenhalo-of-mother-cabrini.html.
3. John L. Allen Jr, “What Pope Francis is up to in Armenia over the weekend,” Crux,
June 22, 2016. Retrieved on September 22, 2017 from https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/
06/22/what-pope-francis-is-up-to-in-armenia-over-the-weekend/.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

3

integrate the approaches of several previous generations, by adopting a more
expansive vision of the institutional Church that also includes the ordinary
people who had little or no direct engagement with its formal structures.
We begin with the most exclusive of the categories into which Cabrini
falls, that of a canonized saint. In the eyes of Catholic believers, this distinction reflects a truth about Cabrini’s afterlife in a literal sense: by raising
a candidate to the “honors of the altar,” the church affirms that the saint,
having practiced certain virtues to a heroic degree, passed immediately
upon death into the company of God and all the saints. For historians,
canonized saints also have figurative afterlives. Because holy men and
women emerge in specific contexts, a study of canonization can reveal as
much about the priorities and interests of the candidates’ promoters as it
does about the lives of the prospective saints themselves. Whereas scholars
of early modern Europe have long appreciated saints’ interpretive potential,
historians of the modern period, and especially those of the Americas, have
only recently begun to harness that potential—or, to borrow Simon Ditchfield’s phrase, to “think with the saints.”4 While canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, and in the United
States, it was often about the ways in which Catholics defined, defended,
and celebrated their identities as Americans. Though this essay primarily
considers Cabrini’s saintly story, it also references, albeit briefly, those
attached to the five other U.S. causes for canonization that succeeded in
the twentieth century. The collective afterlives of the first American saints
reveal that, for the U.S. Catholic faithful, saints served as mediators not
only between heaven and earth, but also between religion and American
culture, and between the U.S. Church and the Holy See.
An excellent point of departure for a discussion of American exceptionalism and Cabrini’s afterlife is the map of Cabrini’s travels designed by
4. For examples of European studies, see Simon Ditchfield, “Thinking with the Saints:
Sanctity and Society in Early Modern Europe,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 3 (Spring 2009), 552–
84, and Peter Burke, “How to Be a Counter-Reformation Saint,” in The Reformation: Critical
Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 4, ed. Andrew Pettegree (London, 2004), 153–64, here 162.
There have been several excellent studies of devotion to non-American saints in the United
States, including Robert Orsi’s Thank You St. Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of
Hopeless Causes (New Haven, 1996) and Margaret McCormack’s edited collection, Saints and
Their Cults in the Atlantic World (Columbia, SC, 2007). There have also been several excellent
studies of single causes for canonization, notably Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine
Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (New York, 2005); Celia Cussen, Black Saint of the Americas (New
York, 2014); and Emma Anderson, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs
(Cambridge, MA, 2013).

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

FIGURE 1. Mother Antoinetta Della Casa, Carta geographica, “Distanze percorse
dalla Serva di Dio F.S. Cabrini nei suoi viaggi di terra e di mare,” 271–72, in Frances
Cabrini’s Ordinary Process in Chicago on Fame of Sanctity, 1928, 5636, Cong. Riti,
ASV. Credit: Vatican Secret Archives

her successor, Mother Antonietta della Casa (Figure 1). Della Casa submitted the map to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the Vatican dicastery
charged with overseeing canonization, for the purpose of introducing
Cabrini’s cause in 1928. Gold-embossed dots mark the sixty-seven foundations Cabrini established on three continents between her first Atlantic
crossing in 1889 and her final one in 1912.5 According to all accounts of
5. M. Antonietta Della Cassa, Sup. Generale Missionarie del S. Cuore [Superior General of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart], Carta geographica [map], “Distanze percorse
dalla Serva di Dio F.S. Cabrini nei suoi viaggi di terra e di mare,” 5636, Vatican Secret

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

5

Cabrini’s life, those golden dots appeared in places very different from
those she had envisioned during her childhood in northern Italy, when,
having learned from visiting missionaries about the unevangelized peoples
of Asia, she had dreamed of bringing the gospel to them. After founding
the M.S.C.s, she had knelt at the altar of St. Francis Xavier at Rome’s
Church of the Gesù and vowed to travel with her sisters to China (Figure
2). By the late 1880s, however, at the urging of Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza in Northern Italy, Cabrini began to consider
going instead to the United States to serve the rapidly growing population
of Italians living there. New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan also prevailed upon Cabrini to help alleviate the desperate working and living conditions of Italian immigrants, who suffered from a shortage of Italianspeaking priests and nuns to staff parishes and schools.
On the tenth anniversary of Cabrini’s death, Monsignor Carlo Salotti,
a lawyer at the Sacred Congregation of Rites, offered a standard account of
what happened next. Cabrini, Salotti maintained, found Scalabrini’s and
Corrigan’s arguments compelling, but felt torn. Wondering whether she
should abandon her plan to go to East Asia, “where millions of infidels
awaited the light of redemption,” Cabrini appealed to Pope Leo XIII for
guidance. The pope, moved by “the sad picture of a vast multitude of abandoned Italians” in America, spoke plainly: “Not to the East, but to the
West!” According to Salotti, the moment Cabrini heard these words, she
“hesitated no more.” The pope’s command would later find its way into
most biographical sketches of Cabrini, with authors imparting varying
degrees of reluctance or resignation to Cabrini when it came to letting go
of her China dreams.6
Ubiquitous as this vignette has become, it controverts considerable
evidence that by the time Cabrini met with Pope Leo, she had already
made a firm decision in favor of New York. She had begun taking instruction in English earlier that fall and had even booked her passage. She later
recounted that her answer had come after a second moment of private
Archives, Sacred Congregation of Rites, Vatican City. Map is in full color and inserted
between 271 and 272 of Processus Ordinaria Autoritate Chicagien, super fama sanctitatis virtutem Servae Dei Franciscae Xaverio Cabrini Anno 1928.
6. Salotti’s address was published as a preface to Mother Saverio De Maria, Madre
Francesca Cabrini (Turin, 1927). For other examples of accounts of Cabrini “abandoning” her
dreams of China, see To the Ends of the Earth: The Missionary Travels of Frances X. Cabrini,
trans. Philippa Provenzano, M.S.C. (New York, NY, 2001), xvii, and Edward V. Dailey, The
Citizen Saint: The Life and Miracles of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (Chicago, 1947), no pagination (Chapter III, “Expansion”).

6

FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

prayer in the Gesù. Cabrini, it appears, had sought Leo’s blessing rather
than his instruction.7
As with many other stories attached to Catholic saints, the point of
this one is not necessarily its veracity, but the frequency with which it is
told and the purposes it has served. The assertion that Leo himself had sent
her to the United States gave Cabrini an important source of authority in
her lifetime. When Cabrini arrived in New York City in 1889, for example, Corrigan ordered her to return to Italy, because the benefaction he had
promised her had not materialized. Cabrini refused, insisting that because
the Holy Father had sent her to New York, she would remain until he told
her otherwise. Apparently unaccustomed to being defied, the archbishop,
according to one witness of the exchange, “grew red in the face and then
became very quiet,” but he allowed her to stay.8 The story also became
extremely important in American historical memory, buttressing as it did
U.S. Catholics’ insistence that they had a unique connection to Cabrini. As
Chicago’s Catholic newspaper declared at the time of her beatification in
1938, this papally-mandated diversion had ensured that Cabrini would
“work out her destiny not among pagodas, but skyscrapers.”9
Jesuit John LaFarge, editor of America magazine, paid a number of
tributes to Cabrini in which he emphasized the strong bond between
Cabrini and U.S. Catholics. LaFarge had preached his first retreat to
Cabrini and her sisters at the congregation’s convent in West Park, New
York, in 1906, and delivered the English sermon during her funeral Mass
there on a frigid morning in early January 1918. On that occasion, LaFarge
and the other priests participating in the ritual had briefly considered forgoing the customary Requiem Mass in favor of a Mass of Thanksgiving, as
the mourners had been “overwhelmingly” convinced that there was no
need to pray that Cabrini would be taken to Heaven, so certain were they
7. Mary Louise Sullivan, Mother Cabrini: Italian Immigrant of the Century (New York,
1998), 45. Cabrini’s momentous audience with Leo did not take place during her first visit to
Rome in 1887, as Dailey suggests in Citizen Saint. In a letter written in October 1888 she
refers to not being able to get an audience with him despite all the support from various members of the hierarchy. She grew more confident by December of that year; the audience took
place in early January 1889. See Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, Epistolario di Santa
Francesca Saverio Cabrini [Letters of Saint Frances Cabrini] (1868–1917), October 1, 1888,
369; December 19, 1888, 398; December 21, 1888, 401; and January 17, 1889, 413, which
refers to the audience the week before. I am grateful to Maria Williams for helping me piece
this chronology together.
8. Quoted in Sullivan, Mother Cabrini, 79.
9. “Zeal for Souls Motivated Mother Cabrini’s Life Work,” Chicago New World,
November 18, 1938, 2.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

7

FIGURE 2. Photo of Frances Cabrini in 1880, the year in which she founded the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (M.S.C.). Cabrini appears in the
original habit of the Missionary Sisters. Photo provided courtesy of the Archives of
the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Radnor,
Pennsylvania.

that she was already there. Having been the first to acknowledge Cabrini
as a citizen of heaven, LaFarge later suggested, U.S. Catholics deserved “an
extra share” in her heavenly intercession.10
More than any other factor, however, it was Cabrini’s U.S. citizenship
that gave LaFarge and other U.S. Catholics license to celebrate both her
beatification and her canonization as their own national triumphs. Here
again, the facts are not at issue: Cabrini had indeed applied for and received
U.S. citizenship in Seattle in 1909. She herself never disclosed her reasons
for seeking naturalization. In all likelihood, she had been following the
advice of her lawyer, as U.S. citizenship not only helped Cabrini secure the
congregation’s property holdings but also facilitated her frequent border
10. John LaFarge, S.J., “Mother Cabrini’s Requiem,” America, July 6, 1946, 304; idem,
“Blessed Frances Cabrini: Citizen of the United States,” America, November 12, 1938, 124–25.

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

crossings.11 Cabrini’s admirers in the United States, however, readily
imputed other motives to Cabrini’s declaration of allegiance to the American
flag: having become “so enamored of America,” they insisted, she “fully realized how her work could identify itself with the great destinies of the new
world.”12 According to Chicago’s Cardinal George Mundelein, Cabrini had
viewed naturalization as a way “to link her institutions more firmly to the
country.”13 One biographer explained that while Cabrini “had from the
outset intended to seek naturalization,” the practical demands of running the
congregation had prevented her from doing so for two decades.”14
After 1933 Cabrini’s cause found an important champion in the
newly-appointed apostolic delegate to the United States, Amleto Cicognani. Although Cicognani acknowledged that some Europeans might view
it as “rather presumptuous that a young nation should seek to have its own
[causes] of beatification and canonization,” he considered it his mandate to
secure a saint from the United States.15 So eager was Cicognani to present
Cabrini as a U.S. saint that he occasionally stretched the truth to prove that
she “had reserved special love for the United States.” When he cited, for
example, the fact that she had spent the last five years of her life within
U.S. boundaries, he neglected to mention the practical factors—namely,
Cabrini’s ill health and the outbreak of World War I—that had kept her
from returning to Italy. In one of his first acts as apostolic delegate, Cicognani authorized Cabrini’s exhumation from West Park and reinterment at
the congregation’s convent in Upper Manhattan, a location both more visible and more accessible to pilgrims.16 It was also Cicognani who applied
on Cabrini’s behalf for a dispensation from the canonical stipulation that
the church allow fifty years to pass after a candidate’s death before beginning an official investigation into the candidate’s “heroic virtues.”17 This

11. Sullivan, Mother Cabrini, 246.
12. Ibid., 246.
13. ”Cardinal Mundelein’s Address,” New York Times, November 14, 1938, 9.
14. J.B. Lux, “Chicago’s First Saint,” Extension 33, no. 6 (1938), 13–14, 18, here 13;
Dailey, epilogue to Citizen Saint, no pagination; Theodore Maynard, Too Small a World: The
Life of Francesca Cabrini (Milwaukee, 1945), 298.
15. Amleto Cicognani, Sanctity in America (Paterson, 1939), 2.
16. “Account of Exhumation Cabrini’s body 10-3-1993 and newspaper clippings,” File
H, Folder 14(b), Cabrini University Archive, Cabriniana Room (hereafter CR-CU), Radnor,
PA; “Letter: Cicognani to Sisters about Exhumation of S.F.X. Cabrini 10-19-33—other correspondence,” File H, Folder 14(c), CR-CU, trans. by author.
17. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani to Rev ma. Antonietta Della Casa, “Letter: Cicognani
to Sisters,” in “Beatification & Canonization Process,” 10 giugno 1935, File H, Folder 14(c),
CR-CU, trans. by author.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

9

dispensation was one factor that allowed Cabrini’s beatification process to
break “all modern records” for speed.18
Nevertheless Cabrini’s cause had not moved quickly enough to overtake that of the North American martyrs, eight French missionaries who
had perished in New France in the 1640s and whose causes for canonization had been initiated before Cabrini had even arrived in the United
States. Meeting at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884, the
U.S. bishops had written a petition to Leo XIII “humbly begging” that the
causes of two of the men, René Goupil and Isaac Jogues, be considered so
as to “afford native patrons” for the United States. News of the “first step
ever” in proposing a U.S. cause had been welcomed by many of the faithful who, according to historian John Gilmary Shea, had longed for a canonized saint who “lived and labored and sanctified themselves in our land,
among circumstances familiar.”19 Shea and other North American
Catholics had begun to complain that by 1870, seventeen men and
women from Central and South America had been recognized as saints by
the Church, whereas not a single person from Canada or the United
States was even being considered for the honor. “Without monarchs or
wealthy communities to undertake the long and often expensive investigations demanded at Rome,” one American Catholic grumbled, it was no
wonder that “no servant of God who lived or labored . . . in any part of
our continent lying north of the Rio Grande” had ever even been proposed
for canonization.20
U.S. Catholics’ desire for a canonized saint of their own had reflected,
in part, a desire to strengthen the bonds of attachment between themselves
and the Holy See, and to move from their classification as a precarious
“mission territory” operating under Propaganda Fide to an organized, selfsustaining church on par with Catholicism in European countries. Pursuing a saint of their own helped reinforce this emerging national identity.
Practically, the quest proved that the Church had the necessary financial
and institutional wherewithal to sponsor a cause; symbolically, the effort
implied that uniquely American expressions of holiness were tantamount

18. Lux, “Chicago’s First Saint,” 4; Rev. Rupert Dorn, O.F.M., “New Missioner
Saint,” Catholic Mission Digest 4, no. 8 (1946), 14–16, here 16.
19. John Gilmary Shea, “Holy Personages of Canada and the United States whose
Canonization is Begun,” Ave Maria 30 (1890), 100-23, 129–32, 145–48, 179–83, here 100.
Emphasis added.
20. “The Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation,” Catholic World 27 (1878), 60826, here 608.

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

to those manifest in European countries where nationalism and sanctity
had long been intertwined.21
The relationship between saint-seeking and nation-building was less
straightforward in the United States, where Catholicism had long been a controversial minority religion, than it was in places such as Italy or France. AntiCatholic sentiment was particularly virulent in the 1880s. The increase in
migration from southern and eastern Europe that had created a pastoral crisis
for Corrigan and other U.S. bishops had also magnified the Catholic menace
in the minds of U.S. Protestants. These newcomers were suspect not only
because of their supposed allegiance to Rome, but also because of their overwhelming concentration in urban areas and industrial occupations. Shea and
other U.S. Catholics believed that opening causes for canonization of Goupil
and Jogues would help diminish anti-Catholicism by showing that their religious roots in North America stretched back into the colonial period. An
American saint, in other words, could potentially provide a double model, one
that would both convince the Holy See that holiness had flourished on U.S.
soil and persuade skeptical Protestants that Catholics, by virtue of their longstanding presence in North America, could be loyal American citizens.22
By the time of their canonization in 1930, however, Jogues and
Goupil were no longer perceived by U.S. Catholics as the most effective
symbols of Catholics’ Americanness. That the Jesuit martyrs “had offered
their lives for the Indians long before the United States was conceived,”
according to one U.S. priest, limited their national significance.23 Pointing
out that none of the martyred Jesuits had ever become “a naturalized citizen of the United States,” saint-seekers vowed to “do all we can to promote
the causes of those who have lived and died in our country.” As U.S.
Catholics redirected their search for a saint of their own, now focused on
holy people who had labored “under the stars and stripes,” Cabrini
emerged as the new preferred candidate.24
21. For one recent study, see Erin Rowe, Saint and Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Ávila,
and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (University Park, PA, 2011).
22. For an excellent analysis of how this dynamic applied in the case of Tekakwitha, see
Allan Greer, “Natives and Nationalism: The Americanization of Kateri Tekakwitha,” The
Catholic Historical Review 90, no. 2 (2004), 260–72. See also chapter one of my forthcoming
book, Citizen Saints: Catholics and Canonization in the United States.
23. Lux, “Chicago’s First Saint,” 18.
24. Michael Lyons, S.J., “Saints of the United States,” St. Anthony Messenger 35 (1927),
188-89, 201, here 188; Rev. Charles Souvay, “Cause,” RG 1-3-5-8, Archives of the Daughters of Charity, Emmitsburg, MD; “Word of Superiors,” The Echo of the Motherhouse, January
1935; M.E. Clemens, “On the Hill of the Martyrs,” America, October 17, 1925, 13–14, here
14; Lux, “Chicago’s First Saint,” 13.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

11

Cabrini was canonized in July 1946, again having moved with record
speed through the final stage of the process. Presiding at his first canonization Mass since before World War II, Pope Pius XII urged “nations and
peoples” to learn from the new saint “that they are called to constitute a
single family, which must not be divided in ambiguous and stormy rivalry
nor dissolve itself in eternal hostilities.”25 U.S. Catholics ignored the pontiff and celebrated Cabrini’s canonization with an exuberance that appalled
some overseas observers. One Irish priest, for instance, chided U.S.
Catholics for trying to Americanize a woman who had just been affirmed
as a citizen of heaven. “Chicago and New York boast that she was their citizen,” he wrote, but Americans had forgotten that “she sought for a city
that is to come.”26 Some U.S. Catholics did gesture to the primacy of
Cabrini’s heavenly citizenship. Commonweal’s editors, for example,
reminded readers that dwelling on the glory that Cabrini’s canonization
bestowed on the American flag would be “a back-front approach”: the
achievement honored God, not the United States. Yet even they could not
contain their jubilation: the same editorial described Cabrini’s canonization as the “most honorable event in American history.” Although other
saints and blesseds of “what is now the United States may have sanctified
our soil,” Cabrini was “an American citizen and so an American saint of a
new kind.”27 The following week, Commonweal published a review of a
new biography of Cabrini that criticized the book for, among other flaws,
containing “no account—indeed no mention—of her naturalization, or of
the reasons that prompted her to take this step.”28
Cabrini’s interpreters outside the United States, by contrast, regarded
American citizenship as ancillary to her story. To Carlo Salotti, the lawyer
from the Sacred Congregation who had become its prefect by the time of
Cabrini’s beatification, Cabrini had been an “illustrious daughter” of Italy
who happened to have died in the United States.29 Cabrini’s first biographer, an Italian member of her congregation, never even mentioned her
naturalization as a U.S. citizen, and many others remembered her primarily
25. Pope Pius XII, “Homilia Sanctissimi Domini Nostri,” in “In Sollemni Canonizatione Beatae Franciscae Cabrini, Virginis, In Basilica Vaticana die VII mensis Iulii a. MDCCCCXXXXVI Peracta,” (August 1, 1946), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 38 (1946), 269–73, here 273.
26. Donal O’Sullivan, “St. Frances Xavier Cabrini: Canonised July 7 [sic] 1946,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 35, no. 139 (1946), 351–56, here 351.
27. “St. Frances Xavier Cabrini,” Commonweal, July 19, 1946, 325.
28. Anne Fremantle, “Sacred and Profane Success,” Commonweal, July 27, 1945, 360–
62, here 361.
29. Salotti, “Preface,” in Mother Saverio de Maria, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini,
trans. Rose Basile Green (Chicago, 1983), 15–19, here 18.

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

as “una grande italiana.”30 And then, of course, there is Mother Antonietta’s map. In depicting the United States as but one part of a triangle, it
presents a different perspective than the mental map of U.S. Catholics, in
which Cabrini is firmly oriented to a U.S. center.
Cabrini’s real center of gravity—the most pivotal gold dot on that map,
as it were—was Rome, the place she deliberately returned to again and
again. Cabrini explained her reasons for doing so in a 1912 meeting with
Philadelphia’s Mother Katharine Drexel, who had established a religious
congregation of sisters in 1891 but was having difficulty obtaining approval
from the Holy See. Drexel would also become a candidate for canonization,
and her hagiographers would later imagine the visit as a union of two “kindred spirits . . . on fire with zeal for souls.”31 At the time, though, the meeting must have seemed to Drexel less an ethereal encounter than a practical
opportunity to learn from a seasoned superior. Explaining how things
worked at the Holy See, Cabrini told Drexel: “You see, it is like this. You
get a lot of mail every day. Some of it you must take care of immediately.
Other items are important but you put them on the shelf to take care of
tomorrow. Then tomorrow, something else demanding attention comes in
and you leave the other letter still on the shelf. Before you know it, there are
a lot of other items before it. It is like that in Rome. Things get shelved even
though they are important. If you want to get your Rule approved, you go
yourself to Rome and take it with you.”32 Drexel followed Cabrini’s advice,
went to Rome, and gained approval the next year.
Over the course of her own extended stays in Rome, Cabrini had
acquired influential allies at the Holy See. Monsignor Giacomo della
Chiesa, for example, had been working at the Holy See’s Secretariat of
State in 1889 when he supplied Cabrini with crucial letters of introduction
to U.S. bishops. They would maintain sporadic contact until 1914, when
30. See, for examples, her obituaries titled “Una grande italiana,” by A. Grossi-Grondi
in L’Osservatore Romano and by Maddelena Patrizi in Il Bollettino dell’Unione fra le Donne Cattoliche d’Italia, reprinted in In Memoria della Rev.ma Madre Francesca Saverio Cabrini, Fondatrice e Superiora Generale delle Missionarie del S. Cuore di Gesù, volata al Cielo in Chicago, il 22
Diciembre 1917 [In Memory of Reverend Mother Frances Saverio Cabrini, Founder and
Superior General of the Missonaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, gone to Heaven in Chicago
December 22, 1917] (New York, 1918).
31. Canonizationis Servae Dei Catharinae Mariae Drexel, Fundatricis Congregationis,
Sororum AAS. Sacramento Pro Indis et Colorata Gente (1858–1955) Vol. I: Exposito Historica et
Documenta (Rome, 1986), 733, Saint Katharine Drexel Canonization Files, 1992.013,
Philadelphien. Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (hereafter CHRCAP), Germantown, PA.
32. Ibid., 733–34.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

13

della Chiesa was elected to succeed Pope Pius X. Cabrini was “most happy”
to hear of her friend’s election, and her congregation received “many benefits” from the man now called Pope Benedict XV.33 The pontiff was
merely the highest-ranking among the hundreds of church leaders who
sent condolences after Cabrini’s death. As Seattle’s Archbishop Edward
John O’Dea observed, Cabrini had “counted among her friends [the]
members of the highest hierarchy of the Church, the most eminent Cardinals, and the best known prelates.”34
Though Cabrini’s Roman connections, and her ability to use them for
the benefit of her congregation, were often cited as testaments to her ingenuity, they did occasionally engender resentment. Rev. Henry Malak, for
example, developed a grudge against Cabrini while he was promoting the
cause for canonization of the Polish-born Mother Theresa (née Josephine)
Dudzik, a contemporary of Cabrini in Chicago. Unlike Dudzik, who,
Malak pointed out, had arrived on American soil as “an unknown immigrant girl” and relied on God alone to build her congregation in the United
States, Cabrini had come to the United States “wearing a religious habit,
in company with a group of Sisters, armed with the personal recommendations from Pope Leo XIII, from Cardinals and Bishops” that had
“opened doors and loosened diocesan purse strings for her.”35
Malak’s observation is not atypical in causes for canonization, which
often incite a decidedly unsaintly spirit of competition among petitioners. But he had a point. Traveling as a missionary is arguably quite different from traveling as an immigrant, and Cabrini had been a missionary, according to canon law and her own self-understanding. In fact,
Cabrini had struggled mightily to get canonical approval to use the feminine form of “missionary” (missionarie) in her congregation’s name, as
only one female congregation had so incorporated it before.”36 By the

33. Quoted in Mother Saverio de Maria, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, 241.
34. Pope Benedict XV’s and O’Dea’s eulogies were among those included in a remarkable, 478-page, multi-lingual volume published by della Casa. The ostensible purpose of the
commemorative book was to comfort Cabrini’s daughters and to testify to the legacy she had
left around the world, but it was also likely that della Casa was laying the foundation for a
cause for canonization on Cabrini’s behalf. In Memoria della Rev.ma Madre Francesca Saverio
Cabrini, Fondatrice e Superiora Generale delle Missionarie del S. Cuore di Gesù, volata al Cielo in
Chicago, il 22 Diciembre 1917 [In Memory of Reverend Mother Frances Saverio Cabrini,
Founder and Superior General of the Missonaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, gone to
Heaven in Chicago December 22, 1917] (New York, 1918).
35. Rev. Henry Malak, Theresa of Chicago (Lemont, IL, 1975), 113.
36. Cited in Sullivan, Mother Cabrini, 36.

14

FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

1930s, however, any distinction between those two categories disappeared in accounts of Cabrini’s life as U.S. Catholics hailed her as an
appropriate “national heroine” for a country filled with “immigrants or
children of immigrants” and began to publish biographies of her under
the title of “Immigrant Saint.”37 In 1952, the American Committee on
Italian Migration proclaimed Cabrini the “Italian immigrant of the century,” and her most recent U.S. biographer, Mary Louise Sullivan,
M.S.C., adopted that phrase as the subtitle of the book. In her appendix,
Sullivan translated the 1950 papal brief that declared Cabrini “la patrona
degli emigranti” into “patroness of immigrants.” This mistranslation,
which is common in U.S., though not British, English, was not a mistake—Sullivan was fluent in Italian—but another reflection of the ways
in which the lens of American exceptionalism has shaped the way
Cabrini’s story is told in the United States.38
The question of whether Cabrini is best labeled as an immigrant or an
emigrant has been rendered moot by the now-preferred use of “migrant” as
an umbrella term. A much more provocative question is the extent to which
her assigned immigrant status contributed to Cabrini’s widespread appeal in
the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. An instructive contrast, for example, can be made between Cabrini’s beatification and one that occurred two
years after hers: that of Philippine Duchesne, a French-born member of the
Society of the Sacred Heart who had worked as a missionary in Missouri
from 1818 until her death in 1852. Like Goupil and Jogues, Duchesne had
emerged in the 1880s as one of the first prospective U.S. saints. As had been
the case with the Jesuit martyrs, Duchesne’s candidacy arose out of U.S.
Catholics’ desire to resolve what they saw as a disparity between their own
saint-deprived culture and a saint-saturated culture to their south. Hailing
Duchesne as the putative “St. Rose of Missouri for these United States,”
Susan Emery presented the French missionary as a rejoinder to Rose of
Lima, who had been canonized in 1671 as the first saint from the Americas.
Considering that the Rose of Missouri and the Rose of Lima had met the
same “European standards of sanctity,” Emery argued, it was no longer justifiable for the former to languish as an “uncanonized saint.”39

37. E.g. Pietro Donato, Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini (New York, 1960).
38. Sullivan, Mother Cabrini, 285–86. For an example of a British use of title, see Maria
Williams, “Mobilising Mother Cabrini’s educational practice: the transnational context of the
London school of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 1898–1911,” Journal of
the History of Education Society 44, no. 5 (2015), 631–50.
39. S. L. Emery, “Mother Duchesne, R.S.H., An Uncanonized American Saint,”
Catholic World, August 1897, 687–94.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

15

Duchesne’s cause had proceeded at a more predictable pace than
Cabrini’s had done, and as a result both women’s causes were being evaluated in Rome in the 1930s. This coincidence invited frequent comparisons
between the two women, which invariably emphasized that they had
undertaken “different kinds of work in the New World” against remarkably
different backdrops. Whereas Duchesne had inhabited “a log cabin” in a
“crude village,” Cabrini’s hagiographical keywords were city and skyscraper.40 Duchesne’s admirers praised her as “frontierswoman” who had
willingly become an exile in “a far-off country to be a light bearer to savage
races who dwelt in darkness.”41 Cabrini, by contrast, had been “mother and
solace” to immigrants in the United States, the country which she had
embraced wholeheartedly.42
As an urban, immigrant saint, Cabrini evoked a sense of proximity
among U.S. Catholics in a way Duchesne did not. Chronologically, Duchesne may have belonged to the nineteenth century, but figuratively she was
best understood as a peer of the seventeenth-century North American martyrs. As a result U.S. Catholics responded to Duchesne’s beatification with a
detached nonchalance that prompted an Irish Jesuit to upbraid U.S.
Catholics for their lack of interest in “the splendid heroism of Philippine
Duchesne.” In what was undoubtedly wishful thinking, he urged them to put
aside the bestselling Gone with the Wind and pick up a new history of the
Society of the Sacred Heart. Duchesne’s adventures, he insisted, were comparable to Scarlet O’Hara’s in their “elements of romance and heroism.”43
Much like the Jesuit martyrs, Duchesne had first been proposed for
canonization in the 1880s, when missionaries were indisputably the heroes
of the American Catholic story. But by the time she and Cabrini were
beatified, urban immigrants occupied center stage (Figure 3). Few statements expressed more clearly the vicissitudes in U.S. Catholics’ saintly
expectations over the course of half a century than Rev. Joseph Code’s

40. “Two Americans May Be Added to Catholic Saints,” The Springfield Sunday Union
and Republican, March 6, 1938, 6A; “Sainthood Urged for 2 Nuns Who Worked Long in
America: Mothers Duchesne and Cabrini Proclaimed Worthy of Veneration in Catholic
Church,” Daily Boston Globe, March 6, 1938, B40; “Causes of Mother Cabrini, Mother
Duchesne Advance,” Catholic Action of the South, June 23, 1938, 1, 5.
41. John J. Glennon, “Introduction,” in Marjory Erskine, Mother Philippine Duchesne,
(New York, 1926), vii; Gilbert J. Garraghan, “Holiness on the Frontier,” Thought 15, no. 2
(1940), 203–5, here 203.
42. Maynard, Too Small a World, 298.
43. Francis Shaw, S.J., “Some Heroines: Fact and Fiction,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly
Review 27 (1938), 623–36, here 627.

16

FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

FIGURE 3. Robert Smith, “Saint among the Skyscrapers,” oil painting. Image used
with permission of Cabrini University.

1946 assessment of “the American contribution to universal holiness,” in
which he characterized the Church in the United States as “an extension
of Old World Catholicism.” Code distinguished the U.S. Church from its
counterparts in Africa and Asia, in which, he argued, the Church had
sprung from the conversion of native people. In the United States, by contrast, the indigenous population had been almost incidental to the church’s
progress. “Even if every Red Man had been converted and had remained
faithful,” Code observed, “the effect would have been meager in the face of
the millions of Catholics who came from Europe.”44 By the time Cabrini
was canonized, in other words, urban Catholic immigrants were no longer
the unsavory element that had alarmed Catholics and Protestants alike.
They had become the linchpin of the American church.
44. Code, “The Contribution of Europe to Holiness in America,” in Miscellanea historica in honorem Alberti de Meyer Universitatis catholicae oppido lovaniensi iam annos XXV professoris (Leuven, 1946), 1217–36, here 1218.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

17

The tendency to foreground immigrants over missionaries in American hagiography was replicated in historiography. Cabrini’s canonization
coincided with the beginning of a trend in which historians of the U.S.
Church began to adopt nationalist frames. Unlike members of previous
scholarly generations, who had usually been clerics or members of religious
congregations who had studied in Europe or had close connections there,
these historians were not conversant in multiple languages, less interested
in the transatlantic flows of people, ideas, devotions, and beliefs, and more
inclined to limit their subjects to what transpired within U.S. boundaries.
By the 1960s and 70s, U.S. Catholic historians were, in the main, much
less interested in exploring the relationship between the U.S. Church and
the Holy See and therefore less inclined to consult Roman archival repositories. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule. Foremost among
them was Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J., who provided an enduring model of how
to use Roman archives to illuminate the American Catholic experience.45
A more representative example, however, was Jay P. Dolan. The preeminent historian of his generation, Dolan emphasized the autonomy of the
U.S. Church both in his pioneering study of New York’s Irish and German
Catholics and in his survey of the American Catholic experience. In the
latter, Dolan allowed that “every generation of historians seeks to rediscover
the past in a new and enlightening manner,” and explained that his questions
arose from both the “new understanding of the church” proclaimed at the
Second Vatican Council and the emergence of the new social history.
Dolan’s emphasis “on the people and not just the prelates” led to an ingenious retelling of the American Catholic experience narrated “from the
bottom up.” But this approach left little room for exploration of the Vatican’s
influence on the American story. As for the men and women who traveled
to the United States under the aegis of the Holy See before 1908, when the
Holy See ceased classifying it as “mission territory,” they largely disappeared
as protagonists in a story organized around “the immigrant church.”46
Cabrini’s life story prompts us to acknowledge that the European missionaries who traveled to the United States in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries were not merely a subset of immigrants, but an alto45. See, for example, Fogarty’s The Vatican and the American Hierarchy (Stuttgart,
1982). There were other scholars, many of whom were also ordained or members of a religious community, who consulted Roman sources.
46. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the
Present (Notre Dame, IN, 1992, originally published Garden City, New York, 1985), 9, 10;
Jay P. Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865
(Notre Dame, IN, 1975).

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FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

gether different category. Recognizing the difference as substantive rather
than semantic would require historians to reclassify not only prominent historical figures like Cabrini and John Neumann (another missionary-turnedimmigrant American saint) but the thousands of men and women who left
Ireland, Poland, Germany, or elsewhere either already members of religious
communities or for the purpose of joining them. Such an endeavor might
well result in a re-mapping of nineteenth-century U.S. Catholicism, in
which diocesan boundaries might appear more prominently than state lines.
Such maps, which would replicate those that often appeared in Catholic
almanacs of the period, would reflect more accurately the experience of
Catholic missionaries, for whom the diocesan see mattered far more than
the state capital.47 Re-imagining the geography of U.S. Catholicism with
diocesan boundaries as an organizing principle would not only shift its epicenter further away from the urban northeast, a region that continues to be
overrepresented in historical scholarship, but would also mandate greater
attention to the entity responsible for doing the organizing, the Holy See.
As such, it would be of a piece with an emerging body of scholarship that
emphasizes the importance of Roman sources for the study of Catholicism
in the United States and throughout the world.48
Distinguishing between immigrants and missionaries would also help
historians to consider U.S. Catholicism in local, national, Roman, and
transnational registers. Like immigrants, missionaries may have also traveled from one country to another, but traveling under the auspices of Propaganda Fide meant that their stories unfolded not along an axis, but a triangle. As one of three vertices on that triangle, the Holy See was always
present and must always be included in their stories—even if the missionaries did not go there themselves as often as Cabrini did, or indeed ever, as
most did not, especially if they were women. This observation points to
one potential danger in re-integrating Rome into the American Catholic
story.

47. I am very grateful to Steven Avella for sharing with me his research-in-progress on
Catholicism in the West, including the maps he has created of diocesan boundaries. Avella is
another exception among U.S. Catholic historians in that he has long utilized Roman sources.
48. See, for example, Peter D’Agostino, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill, 2004); John T. McGreevy, American Jesuits
and the World: How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global (Princeton,
2016); Colin Barr, Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking World,
1830–1914 (New York, forthcoming); Matteo Binasco, Roman Sources for the Study of American Catholicism, 1763–1939, ed. Kathleen Sprows Cummings, (Notre Dame, IN, forthcoming). The guide contains inventories of fifty-nine archival repositories at the Vatican and
throughout Rome that have relevant sources for the study of U.S. Catholicism.

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

19

During the initial phase of Katharine Drexel’s cause for canonization,
one U.S. bishop testified that the Philadelphia founder had been obedient
to church authority, unlike Cabrini, who had “fought with every bishop
along the line.”49 Cabrini certainly had been a force to be reckoned with,
as Corrigan and others discovered, but the exceptional power she had as a
woman in the Church derived less from her personality than from the
access she had at the Vatican. Even when Drexel went to Rome, as Cabrini
had urged her to do, she had had to work through a Redemptorist priest.
And when Drexel’s cause for canonization was opened in 1964, it was the
Philadelphia Redemptorists sponsoring John Neumann’s cause, rather
than Drexel’s own spiritual daughters, who presented it to the Sacred Congregation, as canon law stipulated that women could not serve as petitioners but needed to work through male proxies.50
This unexamined provision in the history of sanctity very nearly derailed
the cause for canonization of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton. Born in 1774 into
an Episcopal family in New York, Seton converted to Catholicism as a widowed mother of five and later founded the Sisters of Charity, the first
Catholic women’s religious community established in the United States without formal ties to a European congregation. Seton, who died in Emmitsburg,
Maryland, in 1821, is today the only U.S. Catholic saint who can rival Cabrini
in terms of prominence on the contemporary American landscape. Pope
Francis’ 2015 visit, in fact, arguably cemented Seton’s status as an iconic
American. Not only did Pope Francis reference Seton in his homily at St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, but President Obama also presented the pope with the
key to Seton’s Emmitsburg home as the official welcoming gift.51

49. Testimony of Most Reverend Joseph McShea, (retired bishop of Allentown), May
4, 1981, Saint Katharine Drexel Canonization Files, 1992.013, CHRCAP, Philadelphia,
reprinted in Philadelphien. Canonizationis Servae Daie Catharinae Mariae Drexel, Fundatricis
Congregationis, Sororum A SS. Sacramento Pro Indis et Colorata Gente (1858–1955) Vol. II Summarium Depositionum Testium (Rome, 1986), 228.
50. Canon law had made this prohibition explicit, stipulating that petitioners could “act
personally or through a procurator legitimately constituted for this; women [cannot act]
except through a procurator.” Edward N. Peters, curator, The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of
Canon Law, in English translation with extensive Scholarly Apparatus (San Francisco, 2001),
no. 2004, 648.
51. Dee Gallo, “Unlocking the archival legalities of donating the Seton key,” Daughters
of Charity Archives, September 28, 2015. Retrieved on September 22, 2017 from https://
dcarchives.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/unlocking-the-archival-legalities-of-donating-theseton-key/; “Homily of his Holiness Pope Francis,” Vatican website, September 24, 2015.
Retrieved on September 26, 2016 from https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150924_usa-omelia-vespri-nyc.html. Pope Francis
also mentioned John Neumann in the same homily.

20

FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Seton’s cause for canonization was the first one shepherded exclusively
by U.S. Catholics. Like the North American martyrs and Philippine
Duchesne, Seton had first been nominated for sainthood in the 1880s.
U.S. saint-seeking inexperience, however, delayed progress on her cause,
and it was not officially introduced in Rome until 1940. Just when Seton’s
cause began to advance at the Holy See, however, a more serious obstacle
arose when the Sacred Congregation of Rites, at the urging of Philadelphia’s Cardinal Denis Dougherty, appointed an imperious Vincentian
priest to serve as Seton’s vice-postulator. His long-running feud with
Seton’s spiritual daughters required repeated diplomatic interventions from
Amleto Cicognani, New York’s Cardinal Francis Spellman, and eventually
from the Holy See, as the members of Seton’s congregation maintained
that they, not their clerical proxy, should be recognized as the primary
arbiters of Seton’s afterlife. According to a canon lawyer charged by Spellman to investigate the matter in 1948, the conflict “threatened to silence”
Seton’s cause forever.52 In the end, it was only the death of the priest that
allowed the cause to move forward, paving the way for Seton’s canonization in 1975—almost a century after her cause had first been proposed.53
John Neumann, who had also emerged as a candidate for canonization
in the 1880s, was canonized two years after Seton. The pace of U.S. canonizations would quicken after that, in part because Pope John Paul II
streamlined the saint-making procedures, famously permitting him to canonize an astonishing 482 people. (Only two of these, as it happens, had a
U.S. connection: Katharine Drexel and Philippine Duchesne.)54 Though
the new norms did not include any prohibition against women serving as
petitioners, the fact that Catholic women had for so long been obliged to
work through male mediators, not only in causes for canonization but in
all official business at the Holy See, has historiographical implications. In
seeking to recover the importance of Rome in histories of the U.S. church,
scholars run the serious risk of overemphasizing the bishops, cardinals, and
priests who actually went there, to the near exclusion of not only women
but also the majority of the Catholic faithful.

52. “Rev. Damien J. Blaher, O.F.M., to His Eminence Cardinal Spellman Pro Memoria on the Cause of Elizabeth Ann Seton,” September 7, 1948, S/C-71, Folder 5, Archives of
the Archdiocese of New York, Yonkers, NY.
53. For an account of this conflict, see chapter 4 of my forthcoming Citizen Saints
(Chapel Hill, 2019).
54. For more information on Drexel’s and Duchesne’s causes for canonization, as well
as John Paul II’s approach to naming saints, see chapter 6 of my forthcoming Citizen Saints
(Chapel Hill, 2019).

KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS

21

As a new generation of historians seeks to rediscover the Catholic past,
the questions they ask of it reflect their experience of an increasingly interconnected world and an understanding of the Church as “the world’s most
successful global institution.”55 At the same time, these scholars are indelibly influenced not only by the advances in social history that galvanized
Dolan, but also by the rich body of scholarship that has appeared in the
three decades since he published The American Catholic Experience, much of
it focused on the religious practices of women and members of other understudied groups. The insights generated by what Thomas Tweed has called
the “quotidian turn” in American religious history—the preponderance of
studies that consider ordinary people in everyday life—pose an important
question to those who would argue for a greater emphasis on the Holy See
and its representatives throughout the world. Is it possible to write narratives that acknowledge the Church’s institutional structures at the diocesan,
national, and Vatican levels, and incorporate as subjects the ordinary
Catholics who did not exercise visible power within those structures?
Tweed offered a compelling model for such scholarship in America’s Church,
in which he used the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in
Washington, D.C. “as a vantage from which to combine the insights generated by the quotidian turn and the fruits of the scholarship that preceded
it.”56 Leslie Woodcock Tentler’s brilliant Catholics and Contraception offers
another model for merging the perspectives of institutional elites and the
people in the pews, and for juxtaposing ecclesiastical and secular spaces.57
The life and afterlife of the first U.S. citizen saint also suggests possibilities for crafting historical narratives that both foreground Rome and
attend to the daily experience of ordinary Catholics. Cabrini may have
been exceptional in many ways, but she was typical of many Catholic men
and women religious who grasped that their mission extended beyond
national boundaries, even if they spent their lives within U.S. borders.
Cabrini shared far more in common with a Missionary Sister of the Sacred
55. David A. Bell, “This is What Happens When Historians Overuse the Idea of the
Network,” The New Republic, October 25, 2013. Retrieved September 22, 2017 from
https://newrepublic.com/article/114709/world-connecting-reviewed-historians-overuse-network-metaphor.
56. Thomas A. Tweed, America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in
the Nation’s Capital (Oxford, 2011); Tweed, “Catholic Studies after the Quotidian Turn: A
Response,” American Catholic Studies, vol. 122, no. 4 (2011): 82–7, here 83. Tweed, “After the
Quotidian Turn: Interpretive Categories and Scholarly Trajectories in the Study of Religion
since the 1960s,” The Journal of Religion, vol. 95, no. 3 (2015), 361–85, here 379, 384.
57. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca,
NY, 2004).

22

FRANCES CABRINI AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Heart in Buenos Aires or London or Rome than she did with her neighbor
in Chicago, Jane Addams, and she envisioned herself neither as “una
grande italiana” nor as a citizen of the United States, but as a citizen of a
world that was much “too small” to contain her religious zeal. As Mother
Antonietta’s map shows, Cabrini did physically return to Rome multiple
times between 1888 and 1912. But what the map cannot capture are the
metaphorical pathways Cabrini followed to Rome in her life of prayer and
practice. Such roads were also open to many of the U.S. Catholic faithful,
even those who were not members of global religious organizations. They
also regularly journeyed to Rome, when they professed loyalty to the pope,
or when they joined the effort to open a shrine in the nation’s capital, or
when they nominated one of their own for the church’s highest honor.
Rome came home to them, too, when they measured papal pronouncements in the context of their everyday choices, or celebrated wildly when
the Holy See confirmed, at last, that a U.S. citizen had indeed become a
citizen of heaven.
It may not be feasible for all researchers to “go themselves to Rome”
and mine the rich archival sources available in the Vatican archives and
throughout the Eternal City. Even so, by tracing the myriad ways in which
ordinary U.S. Catholics mapped their relationships to the Holy See, the
present generation of historians can “rediscover the past in a new and
enlightening manner,” and develop creative approaches that transcend categorical binaries of ecclesiastical and lived religious history.

Vernacular Bible Reading in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe:
The “Catholic” Position Revisited
WIM FRANÇOIS*
On the eve of the Council of Trent, there was no outright ban on vernacular Bible reading in the Catholic world, but only regionally diversified positions. In Germany, the Low Countries, Bohemia, Poland,
and Italy, vernacular Bibles circulated and were widely read since the
Middle Ages. Censorship measures, however, existed in England and
Spain, where the official Church had to deal with what it considered
erroneous “Bible-based” faith-systems. In France, it was the advent of
l’évangélisme in the 1520s that gave cause to more restrictive measures. In all cases, however, the question should be asked to which degree
such censorship measures were effective or whether the laity anyway
continued to read their Bibles.
Keywords: Medieval and Early Modern Church History, Bible
Translation, Vernacular Bible Reading, Censorship

O

n March 22, 1546, the papal legates at the Council of Trent, Giovanni Maria del Monte, Marcello Cervini, and Reginald Pole sent
the secretary Angelo Massarelli to the residency of the Spanish Cardinal
Pedro Pacheco with a delicate mission. Only a few days earlier, Pacheco
had made a plea before the Council fathers to have a general prohibition
placed upon Bible reading in the vernacular. The proposal, however, had
met with fierce opposition from others, not the least from Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, Prince-Bishop of Trent and host of the Council, so that a
painful division manifested itself among the Council fathers. Masserelli
was sent to Pacheco, in order to convince him to drop his hotly-contested
proposition. On this occasion, the secretary drew a picture of how differ-

*Wim François is Research Professor of the History of Church and Theology in the
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the KU Leuven, focusing on the Early Modern
Era. Special thanks are due to Jennifer Besselsen-Dunachie, Luke Murray, and Sean
O’Dubhghaill for checking the English of this text, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers for their very useful observations on an earlier draft of this essay.

23

24

THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

ently the issue of vernacular Bible reading was treated in the various countries or regions of Catholic Europe:
And, would the realms of the Spanish and French ever receive the Sacred
Books translated in the vernacular? Surely not, since such a translation
has been prohibited by royal edicts under the threat of severe punishments, these people would let themselves be guided more by the secular
power than by conciliar permission. Moreover, the people in this area
have long since learned through experience what kind of scandal,
damage, impiousness, and evil such translation has brought in their
realms. And would the Germans, Italians, Polish, and other nations be
prepared to accept a negative decision? Surely not, since, by contrast, they
have seen in several parts of their territory what kind of edification and
instruction may result from such a version.1

That Massarelli’s depiction has not received the same resonance as Martin
Luther’s bold assertion, that the Bible was largely unavailable to the
medieval faithful (which implied that he and his coreligionists had finally
made the Word accessible to the common people), is an understatement.
Although Luther’s dictum has been the foundation for a paradigm—evident in Protestant circles, both popular and scholarly, for centuries2—
Massarelli’s words represent a more nuanced representation of the place
vernacular Bible reading held in late medieval and early modern Europe.
This study will use Massarelli’s account as a starting point—after
having first referred to recent scholarly attempts to deconstruct the aforementioned “Protestant paradigm”—to give an overview of the regionally
diversified positions regarding vernacular Bible reading, which existed in
late medieval Europe. Furthermore, it will show how these positions
inevitably influenced the attitudes which Catholic authorities adopted
towards the manifold “new” translations which were published, following
the advent of humanism and Protestant Reformation. These two decades

1. Massarelli Diarium III, in: Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, actorum, epistularum,
tractatuum, vol. 1, ed. Sebastian Merkle (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1901), page 519, lines 10–17
(translation ours).
2. See, e.g., Luther’s table talk of February 22, 1538, in Martin Luther, Tischrede 3767,
in: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Tischreden, vol. 3 (Weimar, 1914), page
598, lines 9–15, taken from Anton Lauterbach’s diary of 1538; see also Luther’s 1543 pamphlet Von den Juden und ihren Lügen, in: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe.
Werke, vol. 53 (Weimar, 1920), page 523, lines 18–21. For further documentation regarding
Luther, see Andrew C. Gow, “The Contested History of a Book: The German Bible of the
Later Middle Ages and Reformation in Legend, Ideology, and Scholarship,” Journal of
Hebrew Scriptures, 9 (2009), 2–37, here 19–20.

WIM FRANÇOIS

25

of extraordinary prolific Bible production, which Max Engammare has
rightly qualified as the “vingt glorieuses,”3 would eventually drive the
prelates and theologians present at the Council to reflect upon the desirability of a comprehensive “Catholic” attitude regarding vernacular Bible
production and reading, and they did so in the lead-up to the Council of
Trent’s fourth session, in the period between March 1 and April 8, 1546.
And although it is not the aim of this essay to embark on an interpretation
of the Fathers’ debates, it has the ambition of offering a reconstruction of
the puzzle of diversified viewpoints that eventually would resound through
the positions taken at the Council. In this reconstruction, this study will
bring together the conclusions of recent, but often detailed studies regarding vernacular Bible reading in various European regions during the
Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, by framing them in a broad-European picture (including such Central-European countries as Poland and
Bohemia), and offering a longue durée perspective, hence bridging the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era.
Deconstructing the “Protestant Paradigm”
Recent scholarship has re-emphasized that the late medieval Catholic
Church did not forbid the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, and that
there was simply no central Roman policy pertaining to Bible reading in
the vernacular—let alone an outright ban—that could have been in force
everywhere in Western Europe, and that biblical books circulated in most
of late medieval Western Europe’s linguistic regions. The manifold copies
containing (parts of) the Bible, both in manuscript and in print form that
are still preserved in libraries and archives everywhere in Europe are testament to this historical fact.4 The most interesting copies show traces of
intensive use, names of owners, and marginal annotations (next to sporadic

3. Max Engammare, “Un siècle de publication de la Bible en Europe: la langue des éditions des Textes sacrés (1455–1555),” Histoire et Civilisation du Livre, 4 (2008), 47–91, here
48: “Jamais avant les deux décennies 1522–1541, que l’on peut qualifier de vingt glorieuses
pour toute l’histoire de la Bible, autant de traductions en langues vernaculaires n’avaient paru.”
4. For general overviews on the dissemination of vernacular Bibles in medieval Europe,
see Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter, eds., The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol.
2: From 600 to 1450 (Cambridge, UK, 2012), as well as Frans van Liere, An Introduction to
the Medieval Bible (New York, 2014) and Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, eds., The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (New York, 2011). To include the Central- and Eastern-European traditions, these
overviews need to be supplemented with Jože Krašovec, ed., The Interpretation of the Bible: The
International Symposium in Slovenia, [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement series, 289], (Sheffield, 1998).

26

THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

interventions of censorship). Taken together with book lists, found in the
inventories of libraries, wills, and estate recordings, as well as other testimonies, both archival and printed, the picture emerges of a community of
readers, consisting of (lay) members of religious orders, Beguines and tertiaries, in addition to lay people in the medieval towns, who took an interest in the Bible for their spiritual edification. And although the practice of
silent reading became more and more prevalent with the emergence of late
medieval spiritual reform movements, which precisely promoted personal
Bible reading, one should not lose sight of the continued practice of reading aloud in (smaller) groups, so that the “illiterate” could also hear and
profit from this reading. In this sense, one copy of a book usually reached
multiple “listeners” or “passive readers.”
Recent scholarship has also prompted a reflection on what the notion
of “Bible” might include. Since the Reformation Era (and modern research
dealing with this period), there is a tendency to consider the Bible in the
strict sense as a complete collection of canonical books of the Old and/or
New Testament. It should, however, be observed that the Middle Ages
leave us with a broader understanding about what the notion of the “Bible”
might include. Apart from separate books (the Gospels, the Apocalypse
etc.), the notion “Bible” also relates to collections containing the Epistle
and Gospel readings from the Mass—sometimes accompanied with short
explanations—and Psalters, viz. books that were destined to prepare or to
follow the liturgy in the church. In addition, History Bibles should be
mentioned, which contain mainly the narrative matter of the Bible, albeit
supplemented with extra-biblical and even apocryphal material. Apart
from “Bibles,” in which the “canonical” text of the Scriptures is dominant,
“Bible-based material” also circulated widely in the Middle Ages, such as
Gospel harmonies, Lives of Jesus—containing either a text that was close
to the canonical Scriptures as well as clear-cut retellings—next to postils in
which the extensive explanations and glosses overshadowed, to a certain
extent, the biblical text itself.5
Several of the aforementioned issues have been re-positioned on the
research agenda by the Canadian scholar Andrew C. Gow, who made this
point with respect to the German situation especially.6 This has been fur5. Compare Sabrina Corbellini et al., “Challenging the Paradigms: Holy Writ and Lay
Readers in Late Medieval Europe,” Church History and Religious Culture, 93 (2013), 171–88,
here 177–78.
6. Apart from the aforementioned article by Andrew C. Gow, “The Contested History of a Book,” see also Id., “Une histoire de Geschichtsklitterungen protestantes: Les Bibles

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ther elaborated by a Groningen group of scholars, led by Sabrina Corbellini, who concentrated on similar situations in Italy, France, and in the
Low Countries.7 This scholarship has led to the deconstruction of several
established “paradigms” regarding Bible reading in the Middle Ages and
Early Modern Era, of which the “Protestant paradigm” was the most tenacious in its assertion that the Bible was a closed book prior to the Reformation and that it was only opened to the masses with Luther’s arrival
upon the scene—a statement that at least partially can be traced back to the
reformer of Wittenberg himself. The paradigm belongs to the kind of
“myths” or “legends” that contributed to the construction of confessional
identities since the Early Modern Era.
However, the legitimate enthusiasm about having restored a sociohistorical truth to honor should not cause us to lose sight of other evidence,
viz., that in most regions of late medieval Europe, the practice of vernacular Bible reading by the laity was debated and was even treated with suspicion in those areas in which popular religious dissidence challenged church
authorities by its boasting to have the Bible on its side. In these cases,
church authorities tended to condemn idiosyncratic readings of the Scriptures as a breeding ground of errors and even heresies. The concomitant
censorship measures taken against vernacular Bible editions did have an
effect in some areas—as the history of censorship has particularly demonstrated8—but they were not able to end the people’s appetite for Bible
médiévales,” in: Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform in the Middle Ages and Early Modern
Era, eds. Wim François and August den Hollander, [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 287], (Leuven, 2017), 29–52; Gow, “Challenging the Protestant Paradigm: Bible Reading in Lay and Urban Contexts of the Later Middle Ages,” in: Scripture
and Pluralism. Reading the Bible in the Religiously Plural Worlds of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds. Thomas J. Heffernan and Thomas Burman, [Studies in the History of Christian
Traditions, 123], (Leiden, 2005), 161–91.
7. Apart from the aforementioned article by Sabrina Corbellini et al., “Challenging the
Paradigms,” see also Corbellini, “Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit and Awakening the
Passion: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Medieval Europe,” in: Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, eds. Bruce Gordon and
Matthew McLean, [Library of the Written Word, 20], (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 15–39.
8. Philipp Hofmeister, “Bibellesen und Bibelverbot,” Österreichisches Archiv für Kirchenrecht, 17 (1966), 298–355, here 313–28; Robert E. Lerner, “Les communautés hérétiques,” in
Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, eds. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon, [Bible de tous les temps, 4],
(Paris, 1984), 597–614; Klaus Schreiner, “Volkstümliche Bibelmagie und volkssprachliche
Bibellektüre. Theologische und soziale Probleme mittelalterlicher Laienfrömmigkeit,” in:
Volksreligion in hohen und späten Mittelalter, eds. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter R. Bauer,
[Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, N.F. 13], (Paderborn et al.,
1990), 329–73, here 360–64; Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, “La Bible française au Moyen Âge.
Des premières traductions aux débuts de l’imprimerie,” in: Les Bibles en français. Histoire illus-

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

reading in other areas. The complex “dynamic” between Bible reading and
censorship was already fully recognized by authors of a bygone generation,
as Jean Leclercq formulates it: “It seems as though they [the series of prohibitions] were never completely absolute and, in any case, they were never
totally efficient.”9 Up until today, a tension is tangible between social historians, emphasizing that the laity read the Bible anyway, and historians of
ecclesiastical institutions, who point to the effective results of ecclesiastical
censorship measures. Whatever the case may be, the map of Bible reading
in late medieval Europe is multicolored and complex.10
Local Traditions Related to Vernacular Bible Reading
in the Late Middle Ages
The overview starts in France, especially since the aforementioned
issues concerning the definition of what a Bible is, as well as the relation
between censorship measures and actual Bible reading, amongst other
topics, continue to evoke debate among scholars dealing with the French
situation. Of lasting importance in this regard are the Waldensians. Being
active from the last quarter of the twelfth century onwards, they emphasized the simplicity and poverty of the apostolic lifestyle and declared that
they based their views upon the Gospel, which was read and commented
upon in secret “conventicles” and preached by itinerant preachers. The
Waldensians, also referred to as the “Poor of Lyons,” recruited adherents
not only in their region of origin, but also expanded their influence as far
as northeastern France—to Germany’s borderlands—in northern Italy,
and in the southwestern “Occitan” language area. When Bishop Bertram
of Metz complained to Pope Innocent III of the so-called heretical groups
thought to be active in his diocese, and who convened, discussed, and
preached from French translations of the Bible, the pope replied with a
renowned letter entitled Cum ex iniuncto (1199), as well as with other documents. The pope did not denounce vernacular Bible reading in itself, but
trée du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. Pierre-Maurice Bogaert (Turnhout, 1991), 13–46, here 41–
43; Marie-Elisabeth Henneau and Jean-Pierre Massaut, “Lire la Bible: un privilège, un droit
ou un devoir?,” in: Homo religious: autour de Jean Delumeau (Paris, 1997), 415–24.
9. Jean Leclercq, “Les traductions de la Bible et la Spiritualité médiévale,” in: The Bible
and Medieval Culture, eds. Willem Lourdaux and Daniel Verhelst, [Mediaevalia Lovaniensia;
series 1, studia 7], (Leuven, 1979), 263–77, here 275: “Il semble bien qu’elles [les séries de
prohibitions] ne furent jamais tout à fait absolues et, en tout état de cause, elles ne furent
jamais tout à fait efficaces” (translation ours).
10. An earlier version of the subsequent overview has been published in Wim François,
“La Iglesia Católica y la lectura de la Biblia en lengua vernácula, antes y después del Concilio
de Trento,” Mayéutica, 39 (2013), 245–73, here 246–56.

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29

instead opposed secret conventicles in which the Bible was freely discussed,
as well as the practice of the ministry of preaching without having received
any prior ecclesiastical approval. Innocent III’s Cum ex iniuncto has been
included among the Decretals of Gregory IX in 1234 and, as such, has
become part of the Western Church’s canon law.11 Adversaries of Bible
reading in the vernacular have invoked Cum ex iniuncto as an official
(papal) ban on vernacular Bible reading on more than one occasion, thus
ascribing it a validity extending to the entire Western Church. However,
this was never the pope’s intention, as the defenders of vernacular Bible
reading, and historians in their wake, do not hesitate to emphasize.12
In the southern part of what is now France,13 Occitan-language biblical material circulated in both orthodox and heterodox milieus, viz.,
Waldensian and Cathar, as is evidenced by the surviving manuscripts.
Measures taken against the Waldensians, and against the Cathars or Albigensians also included some serious reservations being expressed relating to
Bible reading in the vernacular. This was the case, for instance, with the
pronouncements made at the provincial councils of Toulouse in 1229 and
1246.14 If the production of vernacular biblical material was slowed down
by these measures, it was revived with gusto in the fourteenth century,
when “Catholic normality” was “fully resumed.”15
France, north of the Loire, saw the production of large quantities of
manuscripts containing (parts of) the Bible, including the Old French Bible
11. See in this regard: Decretales Gregorii IX Lib. V Tit. VII De Haereticis c. XII, in: Emil
Ludwig Richter, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, vol. 2: Decretalium Collectiones, ed. Emil Friedberg
(Leipzig, 1881), cols. 784–87.
12. For a discussion of this text, see Leonard E. Boyle, “Innocent III and Vernacular
Versions of Scripture,” in: The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley,
eds. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, [Studies in Church History: Subsidia, 4], (Oxford,
1985), 97–107. See also Van Liere, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible, 190–94.
13. For a general introduction to late medieval Bible translations in French, see Clive
R. Sneddon, “The Bible in French,” in: The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 2, eds.
Marsden and Matter, 251–67; Pierre Nobel, “La Traduction biblique,” in: Translations médiévales. Cinq siècles de traductions en français au Moyen Âge (XI e–XV e siècles): Étude et répertoire,
vol. 1: De la translatio studii à l’étude de la translatio, eds. Claudio Galderisi and Vladimir
Agrigoroaei (Turnhout, 2011), 207–23. An important reference continues to be that of
Bogaert, “La Bible française au Moyen Âge,” 13–46.
14. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, eds. Ioannes Dominicus Mansi et al.,
vol. 23 (Florence, 1779; 2nd ed., Paris, 1903; anastatic repr., Graz, 1961), cols. 197 and 724.
15. Margriet Hoogvliet, “Questioning the ‘Republican Paradigm’: Scripture-Based
Reform in France before the Reformation,” in: Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform, eds.
François and Den Hollander, 75–106, here 83–89; Sneddon, “The Bible in French,” 263.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

or the Bible (française) du XIII e siècle (ca. 1220–60)—“the first complete
vernacular Bible translation in Western Europe”16—Guiart des Moulins’s
Bible Historiale (1291–95),17 in addition to separate Bible books, such as
the Books of Salomon, the Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass,
and Bible-based texts such as the Life of Jesus and the Passion story. A
combination of materials from the Old French Bible as well as Des
Moulins’s Bible Historiale led in the first decade of the fourteenth century
to the creation of the Bible Historiale complétée, the most important French
Bible text of the late Middle Ages and whose manuscripts circulated in
large quantities from then onwards. Close examination of the original
manuscripts has revealed that these biblical books were actually used and
read by lay people across all social strata and that they were never far out
of reach for the middle and lower classes living in urban settings.18
An abridged version of this text containing only the biblical history,
was produced by the Lyonese Augustinian friars Julien Macho and Pierre
Farget, and printed in 1473–74. This Bible abrégée eventually went through
fourteen editions. Two New Testaments, containing a text by the same
Augustinian friars, were printed in Lyons in ca. 1476–78 and ca. 1478–80.
A version of the Bible Historiale complétée, revised by Jean de Rély, King
Charles VIII’s confessor, was eventually printed ca. 1496–99, seeing about
ten reprints prior to the beginning of the Reformation era.19 In addition,
printed versions of the Life of Jesus, as well as Passion narratives, circulated
in large quantities. Interesting materials also include the biblical texts of
the liturgy, accompanied by the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra, that
16. Sneddon, “The Bible in French,” 256, and Id, “The Old French Bible: The First
Complete Vernacular Bible in Western Europe,” in: The Practice of the Bible in the Middle
Ages, eds. Boynton and Reilly, 296–314.
17. The term “Bible Historiale” or “History Bible” may be misleading, since all manuscripts of Des Moulins’s translation also contain (parts of) the Prophetical Books.
18. See especially Margriet Hoogvliet, “Encouraging Lay People to Read the Bible in
the French Vernaculars: New Groups of Readers and Textual Communities,” Church History
and Religious Culture, 93 (2013), 237–72, here 250–71. Compare with Nobel, “La traduction
biblique,” 222–23.
19. Bettye Chambers, Bibliography of French Bibles, vol. 1: Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury French-Language Editions of the Scriptures, [Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance,
192], (Geneva, 1983), and Martine Delaveau and Denise Hillard, eds., Bibles imprimées du
XV e au XVIII e siècle conservées à Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Bibliothèque de la Société de
l’histoire du protestantisme français, Bibliothèque de la Société biblique. Catalogue collectif (Paris,
2002). See also Denise Hillard, “Les éditions de la Bible en France au XV e siècle,” in: La
Bible imprimée dans l’Europe moderne, ed. Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach (Paris, 1999), 68–
82, here 74–82.

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31

were translated by Pierre Desrey of Troyes. Apart from his Latin-French
Psaultier, published in 1492, his postilles et exposicions des epistres et evangiles
went through about eight editions between 1492–93 until 1521 (with further editions and adaptations until 1551).20 Desrey’s postilles are a good
case to explore the limits of what a Bible for the laity may include. They
contain the Latin text of the Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass
on Sundays and Feast days. The extensive expositions, said to be based
upon the comments of Nicholas of Lyra, are in French. As Desrey wrote
in the prologue, the postilles were designed as a pulpit help for priests and
preachers who had not received a thorough education and should preach to
their flock.21 Also of interest is the format, since the majority of the books
are folios that made them more useful as reference and study books and less
appropriate for private devotional reading. Further research is necessary to
figure out whether Desrey’s postilles found their way to a broader readership of lay readers, as the distinguished Groningen scholar Margriet
Hoogvliet is inclined to assume.22 In 1511, Desrey extended his edition
project, including expositions on the lessons of the Lenten Fast, to which
in an even further stage explanations to the lessons of the saints’ days were
added. His so-called grandes postilles also provided marginal cross references in Latin, confirming the impression that they were designed first for
priests and preachers, and not for the laity.
A landmark in the history of Bible reading and censorship was set out
in England, where vernacular biblical material circulated at the end of the
Middle Ages, mostly, but not exclusively, as paraphrases on parts of the
Bible. However, these paraphrases did not lead to any prohibitory measures being taken.23 The ecclesiastical authorities did take measures, however, when John Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, engaged in a
project of translating the “naked” text of the complete Bible from the 1370s
onwards and whose purpose was to give it a broad readership. At the same
time, they sought to promote the ideas of the self-sufficiency of the Scrip20. Hoogvliet, “Encouraging Lay People,” 249–50.
21. Les postilles et expositions des epitres et evangiles dominicales, ed. Pierre Desrey
(Troyes: Guillaume Le Rouge, 1492 [=1493 n.s.]), sig. Aiii r–v.
22. Hoogvliet, “Encouraging Lay People,” 264, compare with 269.
23. For a general introduction to the vernacular Bible in English, see the overviews by
Richard Marsden, “The Bible in English,” in: The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 2,
eds. Marsden and Matter, 217–38, and “The Bible in English in the Middle Ages,” in: The
Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages, eds. Boynton and Reilly, 272–95. See also the overview,
even though it is written from a Protestant “Tyndalian” point of view: David Daniell, The
Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven, CT and London, 2003). In addition,
see Van Liere, The Medieval Bible, 199–203.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

tures as well as other “heretical” ideas.24 In the wake of the Oxford Synod
of 1407–09, which was convened by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, the socalled Oxford Constitutions were issued, forbidding any (new) translation
of the Bible into English or any other vernacular language without prior
approval from the local bishop or by a provincial council.25 Discussion still
prevails as to the degree to which this ban was effectively enforced, especially given the large number of manuscripts—over 250—containing the
Wycliffite or Lollard texts that are known to have survived and are still preserved in libraries and archives.26 It has, moreover, been demonstrated that
changes to the layout, such as the removal of Wycliffite paratextual material (the Great Prologue and marginal glosses particularly), the addition of
the Old Testament readings from the Mass to New Testament manuscripts, and a table of contents facilitating the retrieval of the liturgical
readings made the copies also acceptable to an orthodox—both clerical and
lay—readership.27 Even the categorization of “heterodox” and “orthodox”
is called into question, and careful attention needs to be paid to “the ‘grey
areas’ between orthodox and heterodox theology in late medieval England.”28 Whatever the case may be, for about 130 years, from 1409
onwards, in principle, the mere possession of English books relating to the
Bible by ordinary lay people could result in a charge of heresy. The ban on
vernacular Bible production resulted in no editions being printed in England and the printing industry lacking any significant development in the

24. On John Wycliffe and the so-called “Lollard” Bibles, see the works of Anne
Hudson, especially: Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard
History (Oxford, 1988), 228–77, here 228–47, and Mary Dove, The First English Bible: The
Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions, [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 66],
(Cambridge, UK, 2007).
25. For a discussion of the censura, see, for example, Anne Hudson, Lollards and their
Books, [Literature series, 3], (London and Ronceverte, 1985), 67–84 and 147–48; Nicholas
Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology,
the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum, 70 (1995),
822–64; and Kantik Gosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts,
[Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 45], (Cambridge, UK, 2002), 86–111.
26. See especially Dove, First English Bible, 46–58; also Hudson, Premature Reformation, 232–34.
27. See, amongst others, Eyal Poleg, “Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy,” in: Cultures of
Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit and Awakening
the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, [Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 25], (Turnhout,
2013), 71–91.
28. Michael G. Sargent, “Censorship or Cultural Change? Reformation and Renaissance in the Spirituality of Late Medieval England,” in: After Arundel: Religious Writing in
Fifteenth-Century England, eds. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Gosh, [Medieval Church Studies, 21], (Turnhout, 2011), 55–72, here 60–61 and 71–72.

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country. This was different from other European countries, where the
printing of Bible books contributed an important boost to the development
of the new industry.29
Influenced by the Bible-based “heresy” of Wycliffe, and as part of his
efforts to promote the Czech national character, Jan Hus likewise came
forward as a defender of Bible translations in the vernacular. The Bible had
already been entirely translated in Czech in the 1350s and 1360s (to be
found in the Dresden or Leskovecká Bible); its origin may be due to a movement of spiritual resourcement, eventually resulting in the Devotio Moderna,
which caused interest in Bible reading among (semi-)religious women.
Three further “redactions” of the Czech Bible followed, and it is thought
that the second and third redaction, both from the early fifteenth century,
may have had their origin in milieus close to Jan Hus (although it remains
highly debatable whether Hus himself actually contributed to these translations).30 Vernacular Bible reading became a characteristic element of all
strands in the Czech Church, be they Roman-Catholic, Utraquist—the
Czech national confession tolerated by Rome—or Hussite. The most
iconic of these were the Hussite or Taborite women who were wellschooled in the Bible and who sometimes even served as preachers. The
fact that the said women were able to compete with Catholic clergy, when
it came to their knowledge of the Bible, was later to be used with some frequency as an argument in the pleas against the introduction of vernacular
Bibles.31 A further reworked version of the Czech Bible, known as the
“fourth” redaction, was eventually put into print, the first being the Prague
Bible (1488) and, soon after, the Kutná hora Bible (1489).

29. Compare with Gow, “Contested History of a Book,” 21; and Susan Powell, “After
Arundel and before Luther: The First Half-Century of Print,” in: After Arundel, eds. Gillespie
and Gosh, 523–41, here 534.
30. For an introduction to the Bible in the Czech language, see Jaroslava Pečírková,
“Czech Translations of the Bible,” in: The Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Krašovec, 1167–1200,
here 1169–75; Vladimír Kyas, Česká bible v dějinách národního písemnictví (Prague, 1997) [in
Czech language]; compare with Jaroslav Kadlec, “Die Bibel im Mittelalterlichen Böhmen,”
Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 39 (1964), 89–109, here 91–98. For the
older view about the implication of Hus in vernacular Bible translation, see, amongst others,
Matthew Spinka, John Hus: A Biography (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 77–79.
31. Compare with Thomas A. Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in
Hussite Bohemia, [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History], (Aldershot, 1998), 171–72;
Kadlec, “Die Bibel im Mittelalterlichen Böhmen,” 97–98. Often quoted is the testimony of
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II, who during a journey in Bohemia in 1451
noticed that simple Taborite women were superior to Italian priests in the field of biblical
knowledge.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

The confrontation with the Bible-based “heresies” of the Wycliffites
and Hussites led Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the Paris Faculty and one
of the most influential theologians of his time, to implore the Council
fathers at Constance in 1417 to issue a prohibition on Bible reading in the
vernacular that would extend to the entire Church. He maintained his
warning with a reference to previous heterodox movements that he knew
from his native France, such as the Poor of Lyons and the Beghards. Their
eagerness for a free reading of religious literature in the vernacular, including Bibles, had burdened them with the suspicion of heresy.32 The Council
of Constance did not issue this general prohibition, but Gerson’s negative
standpoint was taken up by his colleagues at the Faculty of Theology in
Paris, who would invoke it as a reference stance when confronted with the
“new” translations issued under the impulse of biblical humanism.
An ambiguous picture regarding Bible reading in the vernacular can
also be observed in Spanish and Catalan-speaking regions.33 Gemma
Avenoza, the author of the article in the New Cambridge History of the
Bible, waxes lyrical about the possibilities of Bible reading in the multicultural context of late medieval Spain: “. . . Hispanic peoples of diverse languages and nations read, handled, adapted and translated the Bible: Christians, Jews, Albigenses, Waldensians or other sects. . . .”34 Given the
presence of Jews in Leon and Castile, a large group of biblical, viz., Old
Testament texts were translated from the Masoretic Hebrew, for use by

32. See especially Jean Gerson, De necessaria communione laicorum sub utraque specie, in:
Œuvres complètes, vol. 10: L’Œuvre polémique (492–530), ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris, 1973),
57–58. It was possible, as a result of his confrontation in Constance with the Bible-based
“heresies” of the Wycliffites and Hussites, that Gerson became far more restrictive regarding
Bible reading in the vernacular. Earlier statements ascribed to him are more nuanced. See
Hoogvliet, “Questioning the ‘Republican Paradigm’,” 89–97; Guillaume H.M. Posthumus
Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity: His Church Politics and Ecclesiology, trans. J.C. Grayson,
[Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 94], (Leiden, 1999), 335–39; and Bogaert, “La
Bible française au Moyen Âge,” 42–43.
33. See Gemma Avenoza, “The Bible in Spanish and Catalan,” in: The New Cambridge
History of the Bible, vol. 2, eds. Marsden and Matter, 288–306, and Avenoza, “Las traducciones de la Biblia en castellano en la Edad Media y sus comentarios,” in: La Biblia en la Literatura Española, vol. 1: Edad Media, 1/2 El texto: fuente y autoridad, eds. Gregorio del Olmo
Lete and María Isabel Toro Pascua (Madrid, 2008), 13–75; and Emily C. Francomano,
“Castilian Vernacular Bibles in Iberia, c. 1250–1500,” in: The Practice of the Bible in the Middle
Ages, eds. Boynton and Reilly, 315–37. See also Sergio Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición
de la Biblia en lengua vulgar: defensores y detractores (León, 2003) and Klaus Reinhardt, Die biblischen Autoren Spaniens bis zum Konzil von Trient, [Corpus scriptorum sacrorum Hispaniae;
Subsidia, 7], (Salamanca, 1976).
34. Avenoza, “The Bible in Spanish and Catalan,” 288.

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35

Catholic—often noble—readers, and probably also by members of the
Jewish community, while other biblical texts were translated from the
Latin Vulgate. However, the lines between Jews and Christians in
medieval Spain were not always obvious, with conversions and reconversions occurring on both sides, whereas the Castilian language (“romance”)
provided all groups with a common forum language.35 Among the most
famous Castilian translations of biblical passages were those incorporated
in the Fazienda de Ultramar, an itinerary to and description of the Holy
Land, mostly translated from the Hebrew (ca. 1230), the Salterio bilingüe
discovered by Pedro Cátedra, and the numerous passages included in King
Alfonso X’s General estoria, a kind of world history, based upon the Vulgate
(ca. 1270–84). A prestigious enterprise, too, was the Alba Bible, a Castilian
translation of the Hebrew Bible, which includes glosses and points to
diverging interpretations between Christians and Jews (ca. 1430).
Although the Alba Bible and comparable books were only within the reach
of wealthy people, manuscripts containing the Psalms or the Epistle and
Gospel readings from the Catholic Mass, translated in Castilian, found
their way to a broader devout readership—as was the case in other cultural
areas of Europe. These were the kind of texts that were eventually offered
in print, starting with Las Epístolas y Evangelios by Gonzalo García de
Santa María—published in 1484-85 and therefore to be considered the
first printed edition of a biblical text in Castilian—and including also the
Epistolas y evangelios con los sermones y doctrinas por todo el año, made by an
anonymous author and published in 1506.
Moving now to Catalan Bibles, we should notice that little manuscript
material has been preserved. Noteworthy, then, is the so-called Fifteenth
Century Bible that has its origin in the Portacoeli Charterhouse in Valencia
and has—incorrectly36—been ascribed to Bonifacio Ferrer. It was the basis
for the first printed Bible, the Valencia Bible of 1478, as well as for a separate edition containing the Psalms, ca. 1480 (Barcelona). No complete
copies of the Valencia Bible or even of the aforementioned Las Epístolas y
Evangelios by Gonzalo García de Santa María are known to exist. This
confronts us with another aspect of the Spanish vernacular Bible milieu:
the harsh treatment and even active destruction of copies of the Bible.37
35. Francomano, “Castilian Vernacular Bibles in Iberia,” 327–32.
36. Avenoza, “The Bible in Spanish and Catalan,” 298.
37. Avenoza, “The Bible in Spanish and Catalan,” 293–305; Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición, 27–44; also Luis Gil Fernández, “Los Studia Humanitatis en España
durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos,” Península. Revista de Estudos Ibéricos, 2 (2005),
45–68, here 50.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

In northern Aragon, the Synod of Tarragona in 1233 first issued
measures against vernacular Bible reading that were part of a broader
reaction against the Waldensians and Cathars (or Albigensians) who
were active in the region adjacent to the aforementioned “Occitania.”38
Another synod in Tarragona, targeting the Beguine movement specifically, issued a prohibition on the possession of vernacular books in
1317.39 More important, however, was the “second” wave of opposition
that the Spanish Inquisition unleashed against vernacular Bibles from the
fifteenth century onwards. This opposition formed part of a reaction
against the remaining Jews in Spain, or against the conversos, Jews who
had converted to Catholicism, but whose loyalty to the faith was questioned. The prohibitions were intended to prevent Jews and conversos
from continuing their Jewish worship clandestinely, from interpreting
the Scriptures according to their former Hebrew traditions and, thus,
from secretly initiating their children in the Mosaic Law. Massive burnings of Bibles in both Catalonia and Castile have been recorded from the
middle of the fifteenth century onwards. These actions culminated in the
strict prohibition of vernacular Bibles, probably issued by the Inquisition
in 1492, with the consent of the so-called Catholic monarchs Ferdinand
and Isabella. The measures taken by the Inquisition are believed to
account for the scarcity of extant copies of the complete Bible, both in
manuscript and in print.40 The Spanish measures against vernacular
Bibles would even become one of the key arguments cited by adversaries
of free Bible reading.
It should be noted, however, that other editions were published with
the explicit consent of the Catholic monarchs. These were published in
order to provide orthodox versions that could be linked with the liturgy.
This was particularly true of the Epístolas y Evangelios by Ambrosio de
Montesinos, which were in fact a revision of those by Gonzalo García de
Santa María, first published in 1512, and which went through several
reprints in Antwerp and elsewhere.41
Whereas Bible censorship was largely successful in Spain, and was able
to exert influence upon Bible printing in England, as well as leave its mark
in France—although whether it was actually able to slow down Bible pro38. Sacrorum Conciliorum, eds. Mansi et al., vol. 23, col. 329.
39. Ibid., vol. 25, cols. 628–29; see also Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición, 89–96.
40. Avenoza, “The Bible in Spanish and Catalan,” 289–90; Fernández López, Lectura
y prohibición, 96-111.
41. Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición, 45–46.

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37

duction and Bible reading remains debatable—a very different picture
arises when considering the situation in Germany.42 Building upon a centuries-old manuscript tradition, about seventy German vernacular Bible
texts were printed between 1466 and 1522, prior to the Reformation.
Eighteen of them were pandects or complete Bibles, the first being the
Mentellin Bible of 1466.43 True, there were efforts to prevent the vernacular
Bible from falling into the hands of the uneducated—let alone “heretical”—people,44 such as Charles IV’s imperial prohibition of 1369, aimed at
the Beguines, or Archbishop Berthold von Henneberg’s attempts to stop
the printing of vernacular religious works (Bibles especially) in Mainz in
1486, to mention only the most famous examples. But none of them were
able to impede effectively the interest generated in vernacular versions of
the Scriptures in Germany among clerics, nobles, and literate townspeople
alike, as has been observed by Andrew C. Gow:
In the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Biblical material was
widespread, popular and well known among literate townspeople, clerics
and nobles alike, especially in the Empire. Full Bible translations usually
belonged to wealthy burghers, the gentry/nobility and religious houses
(Brethren of the Common Life, etc.), with relatively large numbers of
German Bibles showing up in inventories especially for the period 1500
to the Reformation. Translations of particular sections of Scripture were
even more common and widespread.45

A similar situation can be found in the Low Countries. By the end of the
Middle Ages, several parts of the Bible, such as History Bibles, Psalters,
translations of the New Testament, Gospel harmonies, as well as books
42. See Andrew C. Gow, “The Bible in Germanic,” in: The New Cambridge History of
the Bible, vol. 2, eds. Marsden and Matter, 198–216, and the aforementioned essay by Gow,
“The Contested History of a Book.” See also Rudolf Bentzinger, “Zur spätmittelalterlichen
deutschen Bibelübersetzung. Versuch eines Überblicks,” in: “Ik lerde kunst dor lust.” Ältere
Sprache und Literatur in Forschung und Lehre. FS Christa Baufeld, ed. Irmtraud Rösler, [Rostocker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 7], (Rostock, 1999), 29–42, and Thomas Kaufmann,
“Vorreformatorische Laienbibel und reformatorische Evangelium,” Zeitschrift für Theologie
und Kirche, 101 (2004), 138–74.
43. Compare with John L. Flood, “Les premières Bibles allemandes dans le contexte de
la typographie européenne des XV e et XVI e siècles,” in: La Bible imprimée dans l’Europe
moderne, ed. Schwarzbach, 144–65.
44. A synod held at Trier in 1231 noticed that a heretical group had access to Bible
translations in German. Obviously the Waldensians are who are meant (Sacrorum Conciliorum, eds. Mansi et al., vol. 23, col. 241).
45. Gow, “The Contested History of a Book,” 11, compare with 18–19 (on the
unequalled work of Erich Zimmermann in the field of late medieval German Bible ownership) and 27–32.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

containing the Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass, were widespread.46 One of the most influential texts proved to be the Herne Bible, a
translation requested by a rich lay patrician, Jan Taye, and made by a
monk from the Carthusian monastery of Herne (near Brussels) between
1359–84, notwithstanding clerical opposition against vernacular Bible
translations referred to by the monk in his prologues. Very influential
were also the Northern Dutch Translation of the New Testament also called
the New Testament of the Devotio Moderna (ca. 1387–99), and the Psalter
of the Devotio Moderna (ca. 1415). The Devotio Moderna or Modern
Devotion was a spiritual reform movement that had its origins in the same
period as those led by Wycliffe and Hus but, in contrast to these two,
remained within the Church. It is said to have given an important impetus
to the origin as well as to the spread of vernacular biblical material in the
Low Countries—even as far as Bohemia! But also in this case, it should
be observed that the modern devotees had to stand up for their right to
read (parts of) the Bible, against detractors who sought to prohibit such
reading. Whereas the Herne Bible, in the tradition of the History Bibles,
may have been destined mainly for continuous reading, manuscripts containing the Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass and the Psalms
(according to the translation of the Devotio Moderna) were conceived of as
being a vernacular aid to following the Latin liturgical services in the
church. The books were mainly read by (semi-)religious women, such as
canonesses regular, tertiaries of St. Francis, and Beguines, but were also
not out of the reach of lay people living in the world. The Passion narrative was also quite a popular text. Part of the material was printed, beginning, in 1477, with the Delft Bible which was an Old Testament version
without the Psalms and which was based largely upon the text of the
Herne Bible. This edition was immediately followed by the supplementary
printing of the Epistles and Gospel readings from the Mass, as well as by
Psalters, and would go through several reprints in Gouda, Utrecht, Delft,
and other towns in the northern part of the Low Countries. The availability of the texts in print “and the advantages of high output and low price”

46. For an introduction to the late medieval Dutch Bible, see the first part (ed. Youri
Desplenter) of Paul Gillaerts et al., eds., De Bijbel in de Lage Landen. Elf eeuwen van vertalen
(Heerenveen, 2015), 31–202; see also August den Hollander, “Late Medieval Vernacular
Bible Production in the Low Countries,” in: Basel 1516. Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament, eds. Martin Wallraff, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Kaspar von Greyerz, [Spätmittelalter,
Humanismus, Reformation. Studies in the Late Middle Ages, Humanism and Reformation,
91], (Tübingen, 2016), 43–58; and Suzan Volkerts, “Reading the Bible Lessons at Home:
Holy Writ and Lay Readers in the Low Countries,” Church History and Religious Culture, 93
(2013), 217–37.

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39

FIGURE 1. [Delft Bible,] Delft: Jacob Jacobszoon van der Meer and Mauricius
Yemantszoon van Middelborch, 1477 (Leiden, UB, 1498 B 11–12. Reproduced by
permission). Provenance: Sum Petri Scriverij [Petrus Scriverius (1576–1660)] / B.
Huydecoper 4 Febr. 1728. ex Bibliotheca Simonis Schijnvoet [1652–1727] (see
Van Duijn, De Delftse Bijbel, 231).

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

contributed demonstrably to the further opening up of vernacular biblical
material to a lay, urban audience.47
Regarding Italy,48 it may be concluded that biblical texts in the vernacular also played a fairly important role in the devotional life of late medieval
burghers, merchants, and craftsmen, especially in Tuscan Florence and
Siena, but also in Bologna and other towns in northern Italy. Many of these
burghers may have been members of the religious confraternities which
flourished in the wealthy towns of late medieval Tuscany (and, by extension, in other regions of northern Italy). These burghers ordered, copied,
and collected manuscripts containing biblical texts to read them in the privacy of their houses and to nourish their spiritual life. Networks were created in which burghers exchanged religious books, bequeathed Bibles to
convents, or, inversely, borrowed such texts from the monasteries.49 Tertiaries of St. Francis as well as other (semi-)religious women in Italy—
whether influenced by Devotio Moderna or not—were also very keen on
devotional books in the vernacular, which included biblical materials.50 In
this case, church authorities had no fundamental objections to lay people
reading the Bible in the vernacular. Building upon an important manuscript
tradition, the Italian Bible translated by the Camaldolese monk Nicolò
Malerbi, was first printed in 1471, eventually going through at least fifteen
47. Mart van Duijn, “Printing, Public, and Power: Shaping the First Printed Bible in
Dutch (1477),” Church History and Religious Culture, 93 (2013), 275–99, here 289; compare
with Id., “Targeting the Masses: The Delft Bible (1477) as Printed Product,” in: “Wading
Lambs and Swimming Elephants”: The Bible for the Laity and Theologians in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Era, eds. Wim François and August den Hollander, [Bibliotheca
Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 257], (Leuven, 2012), 1–19. See also Mart van
Duijn, De Delftse Bijbel. Een sociale geschiedenis 1477–circa 1550 (Zutphen, 2017).
48. Lino Leonardi, “The Bible in Italian,” in: The New Cambridge History of the Bible,
vol. 2, eds. Marsden and Matter, 268–87 and Edoardo Barbieri, “Éditeurs et imprimeurs de
la Bible en italien (1471–1600),” in: La Bible imprimée dans l’Europe moderne, ed.
Schwarzbach, 246–59.
49. Among the many publications by Sabrina Corbellini, see “Looking in the Mirror of
the Scriptures: Reading the Bible in Medieval Italy,” in: “Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants,” eds. François and Den Hollander, 21–40; “« Se le scienze e la scrittura sacra fussino
in volgare tu le intenderesti. » Traduzioni bibliche tra Medioevo e Rinascimento in manoscritti e testi a stampa,” in: La Traduzione del Moderno nel Cinquecento Europeo. Dynamic
Translations in the European Renaissance. Atti del Convegno internazionale Università di Groningen, 21–22 Ottobre 2010, eds. Philiep Bossier, Harald Hendrix, and Paolo Procaccioli
(Manziana [Rome], 2011), 1–21; and “Reading, Writing and Collecting: Cultural Dynamics
and Italian Vernacular Bible Translations,” Church History and Religious Culture, 93 (2013),
189–216.
50. See amongst others, Gabriella Zarri, Libri di spirito: editoria religiosa in volgare nei
secoli XV–XVII (Turin, 2009), 63–67, 89, and 150–53.

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41

editions prior to the Reformation. In addition, other important texts that
were published prior to the Reformation include innumerable editions of
the Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass and about three complete
editions of the Psalter (not counting books containing the penitential
psalms), alongside editions of separate Bible books (such as two editions of
the Gospels with commentary by Simone Fidati da Cascia and five editions
with translations of the Apocalypse, amongst others).51
The presence of Bibles, vernacular and otherwise, has also been
attested to in medieval Sicily and other regions of southern Italy.52 However, in the late Middle Ages, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Kingdom of Naples
were added to the Aragonese Crown, which even managed to introduce
the Spanish Inquisition to Sicily and Sardinia in 1487 and 1492 respectively (something that never succeeded in the Kingdom of Naples).
Whether bringing this part of Italy into the Spanish religious-cultural
sphere had negative consequences for the diffusion and reading of vernacular Bibles has not been sufficiently examined, but the developments confront us once more with the diversified regional traditions regarding Bible
reading in the vernacular on the eve of the Reformation.
Returning to the words that secretary Massarelli addressed to Cardinal
Pacheco, we can also notice a reference to the appreciation of vernacular
Bible books by the Polish people. Therefore, this study shall conclude this
section with some remarks regarding Bibles in that language. Polish vernacular Bible production was not that impressive in the Middle Ages. One
reason for this may have been the existence of New Testament translations
in Czech, a language quite close to Polish.53 It was the Psalter primarily
51. Franco Pierno, “In nostro vulgare dice. Le glosse lessicali della Bibbia di Nicolò
Malerbi (Venezia, 1471): tra lingua del quotidiano, tradizione lessicografica e Parola di Dio,”
Studium, 2 (2015), 176–97. For the various editions, see Edoardo Barbieri, Le Bibbie italiane
del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento: storia e bibliografia ragionata delle edizione in lingua italiana
dal 1471 al 1600, vol. 1, [Grandi opere, 4], (Milan, 1991), 185–236; Anne Jacobson Schutte,
Printed Italian Vernacular Books, 1465–1550: A Finding List, [Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance, 194], (Geneva, 1983), 82–94 and 243–47.
52. Henri Bresc, Livre et société en Sicile (1299–1499), [Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani. Bollettino. Supplementi, 3], (Palermo, 1971), s.v. Biblica and Psalterium.
53. For an overview see Bernard Wodecki, “Polish Translations of the Bible,” in: The
Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Krašovec, 1201–33, here 1201–05; see also Rajmund
Pietkiewicz, “Tradycja rękopiśmienna polskich przekładów biblijnych od XIII do XVI
wieku,” [“Polish Biblical Translations in the Tradition of Written Manuscripts since the 13th
to 16th Centuries,”] Wrocławski Przegląd Teologiczny, 21 (2013), 29–50; Id., Biblia Polonorum.
Historia Biblii w języku polskim, vol. 1: Od początku do 1638 roku [The History of the Bible in
the Polish Language, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to 1638] (Poznań, 2016), 149–74 (678–79

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

that was translated into Polish and was widely circulated from the thirteenth century onwards. In this regard, mention should be made of the
Psalterium Florianum or Psałterz Floriański (fourteenth/fifteenth century,
Latin, German, and Polish), the Psalterium Pulaviense or Psałterz Puławski
(end of the fifteenth century, offering the Psalms according to their biblical
order but with liturgical notes), and the Psalms found in the Modlitwy
Wacława (the Prayers of Wenceslas), dating from ca. 1470-80. It has been
assumed that the translation of the four Gospels, and very probably the
whole New Testament, existed in the 14th century. More important still is
the Queen Sophia Bible or Biblia królowej Zofii, commissioned by Sophia of
Halshany, the fourth wife of the Polish King Ladislas Jagiełło, which was
finished ca. 1455. Although only fragments remain, the two-volume Bible
contained both the Old and the New Testament. Apart from the important Polish Psalter tradition and the Queen Sophia Bible, fragmentary texts
of separate Old and New Testament books (fifteenth century) and from a
New Testament translation (early sixteenth century) have been preserved.
A Gospel Harmony in Polish from the end of the fifteenth century or the
beginning of the sixteenth century has also been completely retained.54
The printing industry followed the tendencies that were already present in the manuscript tradition, as it had elsewhere in Europe. In this case
it should also be noticed that vernacular Bibles were only sparsely put into
print. A Polish version of Ecclesiastes (1522) as well as 66 excerpts from
the Gospels, supplemented with fragments from Genesis, Exodus, and
Deuteronomy (1527/28, the so-called Gospel Book of Ungler), are known to
have been printed, but most prints concern the Psalms: the Psalterium Cracoviense or Cracow Psalter (1532), which offers the text of the aforementioned manuscript text of 1470–80, the Psalter of Walenty Wróbel (manuscript from 1528 but first printed in 1539),55 and the Psalter of Mikołaj
Rej (first edition 1546).56

for an English summary). Consult for further literature. I thank my colleague Prof. Rajmund
Pietkiewicz for giving his extremely useful comments on an earlier draft of these paragraphs.
54. A list of Polish manuscript Bibles can be found in Pietkiewicz, Biblia Polonorum,
vol. 1, 619–20.
55. See Rajmund Pietkiewicz, “Zoharz proroka Dawida w przekładzie Studium bibliograficzno-bibliologiczne,” in: Ex Oriente Lux: Księga Pamiątkosra dla Księdza Profesora
Antoniego Tioniny w 65. rocznicę urodzin, ed. Waldemar Chrostowski (Warsaw, 2010),
378–98.
56. Pietkiewicz, Biblia Polonorum, vol. 1, 175–253, 625–48 (list of printed Polish
Bibles), and 680–99 (English summary); see also Wodecki, “Polish Translations of the Bible,”
1205–06.

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Vernacular Bible Reading, Humanism, and Reformation
Biblical humanists,57 among whom Erasmus is the most important,
emphasized the need for a thorough reform of Church and theology, as
well as the laity’s spiritual life, which should be maintained by a return ad
fontes scripturarum. Erasmus himself published his revised version of the
Latin New Testament, based upon the “original” Greek (Novum Instrumentum 1516), which was actually conceived as a very appropriate starting
point for vernacular versions to be based upon. In one of the introductory
writings to the Novum Instrumentum, the so-called Paraclesis, Erasmus
appealed to the laity to read the Bible (in the vernacular), an appeal that
was further elaborated upon in the introduction to his Paraphrases to the
Gospel of Matthew (1522).58
Martin Luther, as well as the Protestant reformers in his wake, considered the Bible to be the only sufficient and reliable source of theological
truth and the only thing necessary for the laity’s life of faith (sola scriptura),
positioning it against the traditions of the Catholic Church, both in regard
to doctrine and (liturgical and disciplinary) customs. When Martin Luther
published the first vernacular version of his New Testament in 1522 and
his complete Bible in 1534, he mainly based it upon the novel source texts
published by Erasmus (especially the second edition of 1519) and other
biblical humanists—as has frequently been emphasized in (Protestant) historiography—but he also used the Vulgate and was inevitably influenced
by the German Bible language that had developed in the course of a centuries-long translation tradition.59 Luther’s version became in its turn an
57. See Engammare, “Un siècle de publication de la Bible en Europe” and the same
author’s overview of the literature until the end of the 1990s: Max Engammare, “De la chaire
au bûcher, la Bible dans l’Europe de la Renaissance. Pour rendre compte d’une production
récente abondante,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 61 (1999), 737–61.
58. Wim François, “La condamnation par les théologiens Parisiens du plaidoyer
d’Érasme pour la traduction de la Bible dans la langue vernaculaire,” Augustiniana, 55 (2005),
357–405, here 357–77.
59. Gow, “The Contested History of a Book,” 23–27. Among the manifold introductions to Luther’s Bible translations, see Euan Cameron, “The Luther Bible,” in: The New
Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3: From 1450 to 1750, ed. Euan Cameron (Cambridge,
UK, 2016), 217–38; Stephan Füssel, Das Buch der Bücher. Die Luther-Bibel von 1534: Eine
kulturhistorische Einführung (Cologne et al., 2002)—this very useful scholarly brochure has
been translated in various languages, including both English and French; John L. Flood,
“Martin Luther’s Bible Translation in its German and European Context,” in: The Bible in
the Renaissance: Essays on Biblical Commentary and Translation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries, ed. Richard Griffiths, [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History], (Aldershot,
2001), 45–70 and Heinz Blanke, “Die Abteilung ‘Die deutsche Bibel’ in der Weimarer

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

important “source” for the manifold translations of the Reformation Era.
Confronted with Luther’s new translation, the Catholic Church in Germany did not react by imposing a strict ban on vernacular Bible editions,
but by putting “good” Bibles into the people’s hands, viz., Bibles in which
confessionnally sensitive passages from Luther’s Bible had been corrected
on the basis of the Vulgate. Indeed, where the “heretics” claimed to be in
the right, with the Bible on their side, the Catholic authorities had to fight
them with the same arms and allow for “good” Catholic vernacular Bibles
to counter Protestant versions. The best known of these German Catholic
Korrekturbibeln are the New Testament of Jerome Emser (1527), and the
Bibles of John Dietenberger (1534) and John Eck (1537).60
Again, the situation in the Low Countries was very similar to that
found in Germany. When the first editions appeared, based upon the text
of Erasmus and/or Luther,61 the authorities did not react with a general
ban on vernacular Bibles. Instead, the only Bible editions that were prohibited were those containing prologues, marginal glosses, summaries above
the chapters, and other “paratextual” elements that might influence the
interpretation of the reader in a heterodox direction. The discussion of the
Bible’s interpretation, which took place in semi-clandestine gatherings or
conventicles, was also forbidden.62 Just as in Germany, the authorities were
Lutherausgabe,” in: D. Martin Luthers Werke. Sonderedition der kritischen Weimarer Ausgabe.
Begleitheft zur Deutschen Bibel (Weimar, 2000), 25–60.
60. Not that much scholarly literature has been devoted to these Catholic Korrekturbibeln. There is the recent summary of Roman Fischer and Jourden Travis Moger, “Johannes
Dietenberger and his Counter-Reformation German Bible,” The Journal of the Bible and its
Reception, 3 (2016), 279–302. More elaborate studies are to be found in Katharina Tummuseit, Gesamtsatzstrukturen, ihre Aufbauprinzipien und Textfunktionen in der Offenbarung des
Johannes von anno 1522 bis anno 1545 in den Übersetzungen von Luther, Emser, Zwingli, Dietenberger und Eck, [Berliner sprachwissenschaftliche Studien, 16], (Berlin, 2009) and KarlHeinz Musseleck, Untersuchungen zur Sprache katholischer Bibelübersetzungen der Reformationszeit, [Studien zum Frühneuhochdeutschen, 6], (Heidelberg, 1981). These studies are,
however, not widely available outside Germany.
61. For the early modern Bible production and censorship in the Low Countries, see
the second part (ed. Wim François) in: Gillaerts et al., eds., De Bijbel in de Lage Landen, 203–
388; Wim François, “Die volkssprachliche Bibel in den Niederlanden des 16. Jahrhunderts.
Zwischen Antwerpener Buchdruckern und Löwener Buchzensoren,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 120 (2009), 187–214; and A.A. den Hollander, De Nederlandse bijbelvertalingen.
Dutch Translations of the Bible 1522–1545, [Bibliotheca Bibliographica Neerlandica, 33],
(Nieuwkoop, 1997). An important reference work continues to be Cebus Cornelis de Bruin,
De Statenbijbel en zijn voorgangers. Nederlandse bijbelvertalingen vanaf de Reformatie tot 1637,
rev. Frits G.M. Broeyer (Haarlem, 1993).
62. On Bible reading and Bible censorship, see also Wim François, “Die ‘Ketzerplakate’
Kaiser Karls in den Niederlanden und ihre Bedeutung für Bibelübersetzungen in den Volks-

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FIGURE 2. Den Bibel. Tgeheele Oude ende Nieuwe Testament. . . , Antwerp: Willem
Vorsterman, 1532 (KU Leuven, Maurits Sabbe Library, P22.055.1/Fo BIJB.
Reproduced by permission). According to the provenance data, the Bible was in the
first part of the seventeenth century in the possession of some Premonstratensians
belonging to the Abbey of Parc, near Louvain: Ad usum fr. francisci wennen Rel.
parcensis Anno 1626 / Ad usum fr. frederici holman Rellig. Parcensis, Pastoris in
Wingen S.Georgij 1635.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

keen to provide the population with a trustworthy translation, based upon
the Vulgate and devoid of all interpretative glosses. This was, for example,
the aim of the Dutch Vorsterman Bible, named after the printer who published this Bible for the first time in 1528, as well as the French Bible by
the humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, which was printed by Martin
Lempereur in 1530 (Separate editions of Lefèvre’s New Testament had
been published from 1525 onwards, his Old Testament from 1528
onwards).63 These versions were published with the explicit consent of the
Louvain theologians, whereas their colleagues in Paris had forbidden
Lefèvre’s translations.
Indeed, Martin Lempereur’s emigration to the Low Countries to print
Lefèvre’s versions there was precisely dictated by the fact that these texts
were forbidden in Paris, even though they were based largely upon the Vulgate. The Paris Faculty of Theology had already shown opposition to
Lefèvre’s versions immediately after their publication in Paris, from the
summer of 1523 onwards, but managed to issue an official condemnation in
August 1525, which was immediately confirmed by the Parlement de Paris,
and reissued by the latter in February, 1526.64 In several documents stemming from the Paris theological milieu, this prohibition was justified with
reference to the Poor of Lyons, the Beguines, and Beghards, as well as to
the “Bohemians,” and with mentioning the stance the theologians’ historic
leader, Jean Gerson, had taken against them.65 The aforementioned Bible
sprache: Der ‘Proto-Index’ von 1529 als vorläufiger Endpunkt,” Dutch Review of Church History, 84 (2004), 198–247; A.A. den Hollander, Verboden bijbels: Bijbelcensuur in de Nederlanden in de eerste helft van de zestiende eeuw, [Oratiereeks], (Amsterdam, 2003), 6-10. In addition, see Wim François, “Vernacular Bible Reading and Censorship in Early Sixteenth
Century. The Position of the Louvain Theologians,” in: Lay Bibles in Europe. 1450–1800, eds.
A.A. den Hollander and Mathijs Lamberigts, [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum
Lovaniensium, 198], (Leuven, 2006), 69-96, here 79–89.
63. Still important to the study of Lefèvre’s translation is Alfred Laune, “Lefèvre
d’Étaples et la traduction française de la Bible,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, 32 (1895), 56–
72. See also: Guy Bedouelle, Lefèvre d’Étaples et l’Intelligence des Écritures, [Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance, 152], (Geneva, 1976), 112–20; and Pierre-Maurice Bogaert and JeanFrançois Gilmont, “De Lefèvre d’Étaples à la fin du XVI e siècle,” in: Les Bibles en français, ed.
Bogaert, 47–106, here 54–55.
64. Wim François, “The Condemnation of Vernacular Bible Reading by the Parisian
Theologians (1523–31),” in: Infant Milk or Hardy Nourishment? The Bible for Lay People and
Theologians in the Early Modern Period, eds. Wim François and A.A. den Hollander, [Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 221], (Leuven, 2009), 111–39, here
126–27. See there for additional literature.
65. See, e.g., the letter of the Faculty’s syndic, Noel Beda, to Desiderius Erasmus, May
21, 1525, in: Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, vol. 6, eds. Percy Stafford Allen et al.
(Oxford, 1906), nr. 1579, page 85 line 147–page 86 line 171, and the plea by the Faculty’s

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Historiale complétée and Bible abrégée were not affected by the Paris condemnation—which obviously took aim at “new” translations— but continued to
be printed (and read).66 Up until 1545–46, the former went through twenty
and the latter through seven additional editions. Also versions of the Life of
Jesus, and other Bible-based works, in addition to the (grandes) postilles of
Desrey (another nine editions until 1551) continued to appear, as mentioned before.67 It must, nevertheless, be admitted that the Paris theologians, supported by the Parlement de Paris, were able to put a halt to the
printing of “new” Bible translations, which they considered to be a spin-off
of the évangélisme, the French Bible-based reform-movement considered to
propagate erroneous teachings. The consequence was that the culture of
vernacular Bible reading in France did not receive the extra encouragement
from the humanist movement, as was the case elsewhere in Europe.
After the last late medieval translations had been published in 1545–
46, no further Bible versions stricto sensu were printed in Paris in the twenty
years that followed, nor in those parts of France that were under the Paris
authorities’ jurisdiction. However, Bible-based material with a link to the
official liturgy of the Church continued to be printed. For example, in
1545 the production of the postils began, authored by Gabriel Dupuylawyer Jean Bochard against the Reform-minded bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet, on
August 29, 1525 (Caesar Egassius Bulaeus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis. . . , vol. 6 [Paris:
Pierre de Bresche . . . et Jacob de Laize-de-Bresche. . . , 1673], 182).
66. In the Faculty’s condemnation of August 1525, taken over by the Parlement de
Paris, all translations of the Bible in the vernacular or even parts thereof seem to be targeted.
In the pronouncement of the Parlement of February 5, 1526, however, the prohibition was
meant for versions of the New Testament “de nouveau translatez de latin en françoys.” It is
unclear whether the Faculty and the Parlement had, already from the beginning, the intention
of prohibiting only the “new” translations and to leave the late medieval versions unaffected,
or whether this mitigation was only introduced in the course of the process. In the last case,
it is not known who or which lobby-group might have been responsible for the mitigation.
Whatever the case may be, late medieval translations, such as Bible Historiale complétée and
Bible abrégée continued to be printed in Paris. Compare François, “The Condemnation of
Vernacular Bible Reading by the Parisian Theologians,” 126–27; Francis M. Higman, Censorship and the Sorbonne: A Bibliographical Study of Books in French Censured by the Faculty of
Theology of the University of Paris, 1520–1551, [Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance, 172],
(Geneva, 1979), 25–77 and 77–78; and Registre des procès-verbaux de la Faculté de Théologie de
l’Université de Paris de janvier 1524 à novembre 1533, ed. James K. Farge, [Textes et documents sur l’histoire des universités], (Paris, 1990), nr. 63, pp. 105–06. In her publications
Margriet Hoogvliet has insisted upon the important nuance included in the words “de nouveau translatez de latin en françoys,” as well as upon the continuing publication of late
medieval versions. See her “Questioning the ‘Republican Paradigm’,” 101–04.
67. Compare Hoogvliet, “Encouraging Lay People,” 264. Discussion remains open about
the actual audience of the Latin-French postilles by Pierre Desrey. Compare with supra, 31.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

herbault, which offered the Epistle and Gospel readings of the liturgical
year and were followed by a long commentary, all in French. They were, in
a certain sense, the successor to Desrey’s postilles, the last edition of which
appeared in 1551. A French translation of the Psalms by Dupuyherbault
was also offered in print (1555). Most of these editions were in octavo- and
sextodecimo-format and were, therefore, conducive to personal reading.
Lefèvre’s French Bible translations, for their part, continued to be published beyond the reach of the Paris theologians, in centers such as Lyon,
Alençon, and Antwerp. Further research should reveal the degree to which
Lefèvre’s editions were “smuggled” from the periphery into the households
of France’s heartland. But whatever the case may be, the different attitudes
of the Paris and Louvain theologians regarding Lefèvre’s translation is a
strong indication that on the eve of Trent a univocal Catholic position
regarding vernacular Bible reading did not exist and that, instead, there
were only geographically diverse attitudes.
In addition to Lefèvre’s Bible editions, Erasmus’s plea for a vernacular
Bible, as included in the introduction to his Paraphrases to Matthew, was
subject to an examination by the Paris theologians. In a long epistolary
exchange with Noël Beda, the “syndic” of the Paris Faculty, Erasmus
noted, among other arguments, that during his youth in his native Low
Countries, the Bible was read in Dutch and French.68 Erasmus’s selfdefense was, however, to no avail; his plea for a vernacular Bible as found
in the introduction to his Paraphrases to Matthew eventually resulted in a
condemnation that was issued in 1527 by the Paris theologians, and published in 1531.69 This pronouncement by the influential theological Faculty of Paris should be considered a landmark in the controversy regarding
vernacular Bible reading that raged in the Catholic Church, since it was
repeatedly cited by opponents to such reading in the years that followed.
A situation comparable to that of France also occurred in England.
Given the Oxford Constitutions still in force, there was no chance that
William Tyndale would obtain a permission to publish his English translation of the New Testament, which was, moreover, largely indebted to
Erasmus’s Latin-Greek New Testament and was also based upon Luther’s
German translation. Tyndale’s New Testament was, therefore, published
on the Continent, first, in 1526, in Worms and subsequently in Antwerp.
However, it was immediately affected by prohibitory measures promul68. Desiderius Erasmus to Noel Beda, June 15, 1525, in: Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi
Roterodami, vol. 6, eds. Allen et al., nr. 1581, page 105 lines 733–42.
69. François, “La condamnation par les théologiens parisiens,” 377–88.

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FIGURE 3. Le premier (-second) volume des grandes postilles & expositions des Epistres &
Euangiles pour toute l’année, ed. Pierre Desrey, Paris: Oudin Petit, 1551 (KU Leuven,
Maurits Sabbe Library, P278.664.28/Fo GUIL Prem. Reproduced by permission).
According to the provenance data, the book was in the first part of the seventeenth
century in the possession of some members of the convent of the Friars Minor in
Lille, in today’s France: Ad usum fratris allardi de molendino ordinis fratrum minorum Conventus Insulensis. Ex consensu prelatorum suorum / Estievenart me possidet, more apostolico et superiorum consensu hic me poni iussit 1614.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

gated by the English authorities.70 Of these Reformation-minded New
Testaments, “hundreds or even thousands of copies were illicitly shipped to
London, hidden between the pages of more orthodox publications or
between the folds of bales of dried cloth, in spite of the efforts of the English authorities to stop the smuggling.”71 Further Bibles met the same
fate—e.g., Myles Coverdale’s 1535 complete Bible—until King Henry
VIII, having broken with the Church of Rome without, however, becoming a full-blooded Protestant, allowed in 1538 an English Bible to be
printed (the Great Bible of 1539, which was a revision of the so-called
Matthew Bible by Myles Coverdale). Given the importance of AngloSaxon historiography, the particular English situation was extrapolated to
the whole of Western Christianity more than once and contributed to the
spread of the ill-famed paradigm of the late medieval Catholic Church
prohibiting vernacular reading by the laity.72
In Spain, Charles V and his administration continued the same
restrictive Bible policy which the Inquisition had initiated decades earlier
to keep the conversos on a tight leash and which now was used to curb the
Alumbrados and Protestants in their eagerness to read and interpret the
Scriptures (although Charles V’s administration displayed far more biblical-humanist leanings in the Low Countries). Spanish Bible versions that
were aimed at following the official liturgy of the Church were, however,
tolerated.73 This was especially the case with the abovementioned Epístolas
y Evangelios by Ambrosio de Montesinos, which went through more than
25 editions from its first appearance in 1512 until deep in the 1550s. To a
70. On William Tyndale and his Bible translations, see, for example, Daniell, William
Tyndale, 108–11, 142–45, and 169; Id., The Bible in English, 140–59. A summary is to be
found in Id., “William Tyndale, the English Bible, and the English Language,” in: The Bible
as Book: The Reformation, eds. Orlaith O’Sullivan and Ellen N. Herron, [The Bible as Book,
2], (London, 2000), 39–50; Guido Latré, “William Tyndale: Reformer of a Culture, Preserver of a Language, Translator for the Ploughboy,” in: Tyndale’s Testament, eds. Paul
Arblaster, Gergely Juhász, and Guido Latré (Turnhout, 2002), 11–24; and also David
Norton, “English Bibles from c. 1520 to c. 1750,” in: The New Cambridge History of the Bible,
vol. 3, ed. Cameron, 305–44, here 305–15.
71. See W. François, “The Antwerp Printers Christoffel and Hans (I) van Ruremund,
Their Dutch and English Bibles, and the Intervention of the Authorities in the 1520/30’s,”
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History, 101 (2010), 7–28, here 16.
72. Compare Gow, “Contested History of a Book,” 21.
73. I am very grateful to Prof. Ignacio García Pinilla (Universidad de Castilla–La
Mancha) for sending me the text of his lecture entitled “The Debate on Bible Reading by Lay
People in Spain in the Sixteenth Century,” which he gave at the conference Lay Readings of
the Bible in Early Modern Europe (Le Studium Conferences, Tours, FR, September 24–26,
2015). Compare Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición, 45–54 and 112–16.

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lesser degree, also Psalters in the Castilian language were brought onto the
market, such as El salterio de David en lenguaje castellano probably made by
a certain Gomez Santa Fimia (first edition Lisbon, 1529), the Harpa de
David by Benito Villa (first edition 1538), and the Psalterio de David con
las paraphrases y breves declaraciones by Reinier Snoy (1546).74 The New
Testament in Castilian, made by the “Protestant humanist” Francesco de
Enzinas on the basis of both the Vulgate and Erasmus’s New Testament—
a work that he produced at least partially in Philipp Melanchthon’s Wittenberg house—was published in 1543 outside Spain, in Antwerp.75 For
the sake of completeness, it should be emphasized that both Tyndale’s
New Testament and Enzinas’s version, unlike Lefèvre’s French edition,
were published in Antwerp without any official consent being sought from
the authorities in the Low Countries.
The Italian Bible, translated by the Camaldolese monk Nicolò
Malerbi (1471), went through fifteen printed editions before the Reformation, as previously observed, and another twelve would follow, up until
1567. The printing of Epistle and Gospel readings from the Mass as well
as the Psalter (alongside other biblical editions) also continued.76 However,
humanism and the Reformation also acted in Italy as a stimulus to the production of New Testament translations and, by extension, to new Bible
versions. It was the Reform-minded Florentine layman Antonio Brucioli
who was the first to publish a New Testament (in 1530) and a complete
74. An interesting, but quite unknown project was a translation of the Gospels, accompanied with a commentary, compiled by the Benedictine monk Juan de Robles between
1545–58. His goal was to put the biblical text at everyone’s disposal. In this work, Robles
showed himself a proponent of vernacular Bible reading. Unfortunately, Robles was unable to
publish his work. See Hélène Rabaey, “La Nueva traslación y interpretación española de los
cuatro sacrosantos Evangelios de Jesu Christo de fray Juan de Robles, un alegato a favor de la lectura en lengua vulgar de los Evangelios y la concordia entre cristianos,” in: Humanismo y Pervivencia del Mundo Clásico V. Homenaje al profesor Juan Gil, eds. José María Maestre Maestre
et al., vol. 2 (Alcañiz and Madrid, 2015), 1037–53.
75. For further reading on Enzinas’s New Testament, see Els Agten, “Francisco de
Enzinas, a Reformation-minded Humanist with a Vernacular Dream: A Spanish Translation
of the New Testament,” Reformation and Renaissance Review, 14 (2013), 218–41; Victoria
Christman, “Coram imperatore. The Publication of Francisco de Enzinas’s Spanish New Testament (1543),” in: “Wading Lambs and Swimming Elephants,” eds. François and Den Hollander, 197–218; Jonathan L. Nelson, “‘Solo Saluador’: Printing the 1543 New Testament of
Francisco de Enzinas (Dryander),” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 50 (1999), 94–116. See also
the recent dissertation by Peter W. Hasbrouck, Enzinas to Valera: Motives, Methods and
Sources in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Bible Translation, [Doctoral Dissertation, Boston University, Philosophy], (Ann Arbor, MI, 2015).
76. See Edoardo Barbieri, Le Bibbie italiane del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento, 237–72;
Jacobson Schutte, Italian Religious Books, 82–94 and 243–47.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

Bible (in 1532) that were said to be based upon the original Greek and
Hebrew, but, more probably, went back to Santes Pagnino’s Latin translation of the Hebrew Old Testament and Erasmus’s translation of the Greek
New Testament (and even contained reminiscences of Malerbi’s earlier
version). But, this did not cause the authorities of the Catholic Church to
prohibit Bible printing and Bible reading; instead, the same mechanism
that had been in effect in Germany and in the Low Countries also arose in
Italy. Two Dominicans from the Florentine San Marco monastery provided a Catholic translation—a correction of Brucioli’s translation in
fact—viz., Fra Zaccaria of Florence in 1536 (the New Testament only) and
Sante Marmochino in 1538 (the complete Bible).77 In short, on the eve of
Trent, the Italian peninsula belonged to the regions were vernacular Bible
production flourished and found its way unhindered to an audience of lay,
religious, and clerical readers. It was only after 1567 that the situation
would change, when the last genuine Catholic vernacular Bible was
brought onto the market, and the Church, at the instigation of the Inquisition, managed to implement important restrictions on the production of
vernacular Bible editions, thus forcing the laity to find other avenues to
become familiar with the text and content of the Bible.
To conclude this part on vernacular Bibles in the early Reformation era,
one should refer to the rich Bible tradition in the Czech language that continued to be fostered in the early sixteenth-century Utraquist milieus (e.g. the
Venice Bible of 1506 and the editions which followed in its wake). The New
Testament of Klaudián (from 1518) and the New Testament of Lukáš (from
1525) stem from the Protestant Union of the Czech Brothers or Unitas Fratrum. The New Testament of Pilsen (1527) was a Catholic initiative.
Whereas the aforementioned editions were based largely upon the Vulgate,
the New Testament by Václav Beneš Optát from 1533 was the first to take
Erasmus’s Latin-Greek New Testament as its point of departure.78
77. See, amongst others, Élise Boillet, “Vernacular Biblical Literature in SixteenthCentury Italy: Universal Reading and Specific Readers,” in: Discovering the Riches of the Word,
eds. Corbellini, Hoogvliet, and Ramakers, 213–33; Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: la
censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605), [Saggi, 460], (Bologna,
1997), 23–74; Andrea Del Col, “Appunti per una indagine sulle traduzioni in volgare della
Bibbia nel Cinquecento italiano,” in: Libri, idee e sentimenti religiosi nel Cinquecento italiano:
3–5 aprile 1986, eds. Adriano Prosperi and Albano Biondi (Modena, 1987), 165–88. On Brucioli, see also Ivano Paccagnella, “La ‘Bibbia Brucioli’. Note linguistiche sulla traduzione del
‘Nuovo Testamento’ del 1530,” in: Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena, vol. 2 (Padua, 1993), 1075–
87; and Franco Giacone, “Du vulgaire illustre à l’illustration de la Parole: la Bible de Brucioli
(1532),” in: La Bible imprimée dans l’Europe moderne, ed. Schwarzbach, 260–87.
78. Pečírková, “Czech Translations of the Bible,” 1175–89.

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Where Poland is concerned, it was noted previously that it was mainly
the Psalters that were printed, according to late medieval texts. With a view
to the printing of the complete text of the New Testament, the initiative
was taken by Jan Seklucjan, a convinced Protestant (Lutheran) who commissioned the humanist Stanisław Murzynowski to translate the New Testament. The latter used an array of texts, such as Erasmus’s Novum Testamentum, the Vulgate, Luther’s German translation, as well as the Czech
New Testament, and old Polish manuscripts, obviously. The translation
was published in several parts in Köningsberg between 1551–53.79 The first
Catholic New Testament in Polish, a translation of the Vulgate, was only
printed in 1556 in Cracow (Szarffenberger’s New Testament) followed by
the entire Bible (Leopolita Bible) in 1561 (2nd edition in 1575/77).80
Concluding Remarks
From the aforementioned overview, it should be obvious that, on the
eve of the Council of Trent, there was no unequivocal Bible policy in the
Catholic Church, and instead there existed only local traditions that had
grown historically and were often very diverse. The general picture is that
in regions where the Church was confronted with other sets of beliefs, such
as in Spain, or had to challenge “heretical” movements, such as in England,
the authorities issued edicts with the general intention of stemming the
tide of production and reading of Bible translations in the vernacular—
which in the case of Spain may have been more efficacious than it was in
England. The reasoning was, after all, that an idiosyncratic reading of the
Bible may easily give rise to erroneous and even heretical viewpoints. In
France, which in the late Middle Ages saw the presence of heterodox
Bible-based movements such as Waldensians, Beguines, and Beghards, the
Church did not proclaim a general prohibition on vernacular Bible editions, until the powerful Paris Faculty of Theology together with the Parlement de Paris, issued a prohibition of that kind in the 1520s after having
79. Wodecki, “Polish Translations of the Bible,” 1122–23; also David A. Frick, Polish
Sacred Philology in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation: Chapters in the History of the
Controversies (1551–1632), [University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 123],
(Berkeley et al., 1989), 12–33; Pietkiewicz, Biblia Polonorum, vol. 1, 332–50. Another initiative from the Protestant side was the so-called New Testament of Jan (Sandecki-)Malecki
from 1552. It proved to be not the entire New Testament, but only two pages—Jan Malecki
printed his own translation of Matt. 1 to show to Albrecht Hohenzollern that he was able to
translate and to print the entire New Testament, but eventually he did not carry out his plans.
80. Wodecki, “Polish Translations of the Bible,” 1207–08; also Frick, Polish Sacred
Philology, 50–66; Pietkiewicz, Biblia Polonorum, vol. 1, 350–81, 625–48 (list of printed Polish
Bibles), and 680–99 (English summary).

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been confronted with the reform-minded évangélisme and the vernacular
Bibles issued in its wake. The question remains, however, as to how efficacious these prohibitory measures were, especially in those parts of France
that fell beyond the Faculty and Parlement’s sphere of influence. The situations in Germany, the Low Countries, Bohemia, Poland, and Italy were
very different, since in these regions vernacular Bible translations circulated
and were widely read in the late Middle Ages. The spread of vernacular
editions in the wake of the Reformation was not met with a general prohibition on all vernacular Bibles, but by a selective prohibition of Reformation-minded editions, while at the same time being countered by the production of “good” Catholic editions.
When the papal legates in Trent sent secretary Massarelli to Cardinal
Pedro Pacheco in order to convince him not to force through the proposition
prohibiting vernacular Bible reading, the depiction the secretary presented to
him of the sensibilities in the diverse local churches of the Catholic world
was not far from reality. On the one hand, the authorities in Pacheco’s Spain
and in France had already issued prohibitions against Bible reading, even
though many of the faithful may have continued to read vernacular translations, at least in France. On the other hand, in the Catholic Churches in
Germany—and by extension in the Low Countries and Bohemia—as well as
in (the northern part of) Italy and Poland, Bible reading in the vernacular
was traditionally seen as something edifying to the common people. In his
comments, Massarelli did not mention England, which had adopted restrictive legislation for about a century and a half, but which had experienced a
dramatic policy change under Henry VIII, and was in 1546, from the point
of view of the Catholic Church at least, going through a very complicated
religious situation. Massarelli also neglected to mention the Scandinavian
lands that had definitely opted for Lutheranism.81 To those countries in
favor of vernacular Bible reading, he may have added Dalmatia-Croatia,
amongst others. In Trent, the Council fathers, being engaged in long and
often hot-tempered debates in which the proponents and adversaries of vernacular Bible reading held each other in an equilibrium, decided not to take
any definitive decision in 1546, and continued to leave it in the hands of the
local (both civil and ecclesiastical) authorities.82 In this sense, the conciliar

81. See Jonatan Pettersson, “Nordic Bible Translations in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe,” in: Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform, eds. François and Den Hollander, 107–50.
82. On the issue of vernacular Bible reading at Trent, see, amongst others, Els Agten
and Wim François, “The Council of Trent and Vernacular Bible Reading: What Happened
in the Build-Up to and during the Fourth Session,” in: The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–1700), vol. 1: Between Trent, Rome and Wittenberg, eds.

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debates offered an excellent “state of the art,” but were by no means determinative for the further evolutions in the Church.
On considering further evolutions in the Catholic Church, reference
is often made to the first official and “universal” Roman Index of 1558–59,
by which Paul IV Carafa, former head of the Inquisition, forbade the reading of the Bible in all vernacular languages, unless explicit permission was
given by the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition. The influence of this
first Roman Index was actually very limited (although its impact is still
exaggerated in some scholarly literature). Due to its harshness and inapplicability, it found barely any reception in the Catholic world. Not even in
Carafa’s own Italy, where vernacular Bibles continued to be printed quite
undisturbed until 1567, was the Index enforced. It was precisely to offer an
alternative to Carafa’s Index that the Council fathers during Trent’s third
period (1562–63) started drafting a new Index that was eventually published in 1564 by Pius IV. Its so-called Regula Quarta or fourth rule, of ten,
was devoted to vernacular Bible reading: It had to admit that more harm
than good would arise from the indiscriminate reading of the Bible in the
vernacular, but it allowed lay people the opportunity to read the Bible if
they asked and obtained written permission from the local bishop or
inquisitor. This shows that by that period, the Catholic Church, due to its
confrontation with the Reformation, had become far more reluctant. An
even harsher Counter-reformational line would quickly gain the upper
hand in the Roman Curia, especially in the Congregation of the Inquisition, for whom the 1558–59 ban remained the guiding norm. It managed
to enforce a ban on vernacular Bibles by the very start of the 1570s in Italy
and later in the entire Church, eventually forcing Clement VIII to suspend
Trent’s Regula Quarta in his 1596 Index. But again, as regards the countries of Central and Western-Europe, a “general dispensation” had to be
granted in the early seventeenth century, so that Bible reading in the vernacular remained possible there. By that period a new “geography” of ver-

Wim François and Violet Soen, [Refo500 Academic Series, 35/1], (Göttingen, 2018), 101–
30; Fernández López, Lectura y prohibición, 161–78; Vittorio Coletti, L’éloquence de la chaire.
Victoires et défaites du latin entre Moyen Âge et Renaissance, trans. Silvano Serventi, [Cerf Histoire], (Paris, 1987), 199–224; Robert E. McNally, “The Council of Trent and Vernacular
Bibles,” Theological Studies, 27 (1966), 204–27; Leopold Lentner, Volkssprache und Sakralsprache: Geschichte einer Lebensfrage bis zum Ende des Konzils von Trient, [Wiener Beiträge zur
Theologie, 5], (Vienna, 1964), 237–64; and Ferdinand Cavallera, “La Bible en langue vulgaire au Concile de Trente (IV e Session),” in: Mélanges E. Podéchard. Études de sciences religieuses offertes pour son éméritat au doyen honoraire de la Faculté de Théologie de Lyon, [Bibliothèque de la faculté catholique de théologie de Lyon, 1], (Lyons, 1945), 37–56.

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THE “CATHOLIC” POSITION REVISITED

nacular Bible reading had become apparent in the Catholic Church,83 with
the Mediterranean countries Italy, Spain, and Portugal maintaining a prohibitory policy,84 and the nations of Central and Western-Europe seeing a
more tolerant policy.

83. See the essay by Gigliola Fragnito, “Per una geografia delle traduzioni bibliche
nell’Europa cattolica (sedicesimo e diciasettesimo secolo),” in: Papes, princes et savants dans
l’Europe moderne. Mélanges à la mémoire de Bruno Neveu, eds. Jean-Louis Quantin and JeanClaude Waquet, [Ecole pratique des hautes études. 4e section: Sciences historiques et philologiques, 5; Hautes études médiévales et modernes, 90], (Geneva, 2007), 51–77; compare
Fragnito, “Interdiction et tolérance des Écritures Saintes en langue vernaculaire dans l’Europe
catholique (XVI e–XVII e siècles),” in: Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform, eds. François and
Den Hollander, 205–20. For further reading, see, amongst others, François, “La Iglesia Católica y la lectura,” here 262–73; Vittorio Frajese, “La politica dell’Indice dal Tridentino al Clementino (1571–1596),” Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, 11 (1998), 269–345; Gigliola
Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo, 75–226; Jesús Martínez de Bujanda, René Davignon, and Ela
Stanek, Index de Rome 1557, 1559, 1564. Les premiers index romains et l’index du Concile de
Trente, [Index des livres interdits, 8], (Sherbrooke and Geneva, 1990); Jesús Martínez de
Bujanda, Ugo Rozzo, and Peter G. Bietenholz, Index de Rome 1590, 1593, 1596. Avec étude
des index de Parme 1580 et Munich 1582, [Index des livres interdits, 9], (Sherbrooke, 1994).
84. Recent scholarship, however, has emphasized that even in these circumstances, the
laity, especially in Italy, were able to remain familiar with the content of the Bible through
books containing the Epistles and Gospel readings from the Mass and poetic translations of
the biblical text, amongst others.

James Murray:
A Forgotten Champion of Religious Freedom
LAWRENCE A. UZZELL*
Too little studied is James Murray’s almost unprecedented breakthrough: A Protestant empire allowed broad religious liberties in a
Catholic province. London’s 1760 conquest of France’s colony in North
America could have become yet another case of Protestants persecuting
Catholics (or vice versa). As the first British governor of Quebec,
Murray did not have to choose tolerance; anti-Roman oppression
would have been personally easier for him. In fact he followed both
anti-Catholic and pro-Catholic policies, but on balance he was far
more pro-Catholic—or rather, pro-tolerance. Also novel: Protestant
monarchies de facto appointed Catholic bishops. The 1774 Quebec Act,
also too little studied, essentially codified Murray’s tolerant policies.
Keywords: Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand; British Empire; Guy Carleton; Hector Cramahé; William Mansfield; James Murray; Quebec;
religious freedom; Scottish aristocrats; Sulpicians; Ursulines.

I

n 1764 a Scottish soldier liberated the most intensively hated minority
in the English-speaking world. In a newly conquered colony alien in
culture, language, and religion, he pioneered tolerance in the British
Empire—and thus much of the planet. Histories about religious freedom
should mark his breakthrough. Instead his name is now almost unknown.
James Murray was a man of actions rather than of words; perhaps that
is one cause of his current obscurity. Moreover, his feat was in a polity too
little studied—one of the globe’s most successful and least messianic countries. That nation is Canada.

*Mr. Uzzell is an independent scholar, email: lauzzell@aol.com. The author wishes to
thank Lee Congdon, Stephen Galebach, Lea Halim, Patricia Hardesty, and his wife Lynn
Uzzell for their comments and assistance with the author’s post-stroke difficulties with language skills. He also wishes to thank the three anonymous, helpful referees for this article and
Mario Robert at the City of Montréal Archives, allowing the author to publish the image of
Bishop Briand in this article. The article’s author is solely responsible for any mistakes or misjudgments.

57

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

London’s 1760 conquest of France’s province in North America could
easily have become yet another case of Protestants brutally persecuting
Catholics (or vice versa). Instead, for almost the first time in history a
Protestant empire voluntarily allowed broad religious liberties in a large
Catholic province.1 As the first British governor of Quebec, Murray did
not have to choose tolerance; in fact, anti-Roman oppression would have
been personally easier for him.
For some readers it now takes an effort to recover historical memories
in order to understand the intensity of eighteenth-century England’s longnourished passions against Rome—in some ways resembling the antiSemitic passions in France or in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Cheap publications, including cartoons, inflamed the average
Englishman’s fears of Roman Catholics (Figure 1 and Figure 2).2 A specifically anti-Catholic holiday was still thriving, although many members of
the elite after 1750 were beginning to minimize Guy Fawkes Day’s lurid
elements.3 Anti-Roman hatred was actually growing during the middle of
the eighteenth century among New Englanders, long foes against the
neighboring French Canadians. The Yankees’ “Pope’s Day” included the
burning of papal effigies.4
In England believers loyal to the pope were forbidden to attend
Roman Catholic worship services, to send their children abroad for
Catholic education, or even to buy land. They had to pay higher taxes.5
London’s anti-Catholic penal laws were often ignored in practice by the

1. In 1763, Prussia guaranteed by treaty the religious status quo for Catholic Silesians.
Surprisingly, the example of Berlin’s tolerant behavior on Silesia does not appear to have concretely influenced London’s religious policy toward Quebec during the Murray years. British
sources from the 1760s mention Silesia merely as a piece on the diplomatic/military chessboard, not as a model of religious tolerance. There may have been oral conversations on that
topic among decision-makers in London, but they were not documented on paper. Murray
had no access to such discussions, having lived and worked in Canada continuously, never visiting Britain during his military/civilian years when he made his key decisions about religious
tolerance.
2. See Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80: A
Political and Social Study (Manchester, 1993), 37–47.
3. Ibid., 175–77.
4. Francis D. Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New
England (Westport, CT, 1995), 15–17 and 23–35.
5. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 47. Haydon mentions the
statutes of 3 Jac. I, c. 4 and 11 & 12 Will. III, c. 4. Haydon also cites A.C.F. Beales, Education
under Penalty: English Catholic Education from the Reformation to the Fall of James II, 1547–
1689 (London, 1963), 272–73.

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

59

FIGURE 1 (at left). Illustration in Samuel
Ireland’s ‘Graphic Illustrations of Hogarth’ (vol. 1, 1794, opposite p. 122) a
satirical etching and aquatint by
Richard Livesay, entitled “Transubstantiation Satirized.” It depicts the
Virgin Mary in the heavens, feeding a
naked Christ child into the hopper of a
windmill, churning out wafers falling
onto a paten held up by a robust
Catholic priest, giving the sacrament to
laypeople crowded around him.
FIGURE 2 (at bottom). Engraving by
William Hogarth, entitled “The Invasion: France,” 1756. In the foreground a
French monk sharpens his executioner’s
axe. In front of him are implements of
torture, a statue of St. Anthony and a
“Plan pour un Monastere dans Black
Friars à Londre.” With such items he is
preparing to convert the British to
Catholicism. Public domain, image
available at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art as https://metmuseum.org/art/
collection/search/400271.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

middle of the eighteenth century, but still threats were always looming.6
Roman Catholics were constantly reminded that they were second-class
citizens in England, and attempts to alleviate their legal penalties were vigorously contested.7
Especially striking is the case of Ireland. The anti-Catholic policies
there had become even more oppressive during most of the eighteenth century.8 In a series of measures beginning in the last decade of the seventeenth century, it became harder for an Irish Catholic to serve in a jury,
vote in parliamentary elections, work as a lawyer, or bear arms.9
The French Canadians suddenly transformed as British subjects had
every reason to fear their new masters. The debris of Quebec’s cathedral,
demolished by British artillery, was only one reminder of the atrocities
committed against Canadian civilians in the recent war between the British
and French empires. In 1759 the redcoats had been ordered to destroy all
of New France’s buildings, crops, and livestock in the British-occupied
south bank of the St. Lawrence River.10 Even before the war, neighboring
Nova Scotia had begun to expel thousands of Roman Catholic Acadians—
many of whose descendants became the Cajuns in Louisiana.11
The first milestone in British-ruled Quebec was the 1760 Articles of
Capitulation in Montreal. Victorious General Jeffrey Amherst largely
accepted the formal terms of the surrender, drafted by New France’s Governor Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil de Cavagnial, Marquis de Vaudreuil.12 Under the terms of the Articles, the Catholic clergy and laity in
6. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 48–49.
7. See Philip Lawson, The Imperial Challenge: Quebec and Britain in the Age of the
American Revolution (Montreal, 1989), 43–44.
8. Karen Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions: British Policy toward Catholics in
Eighteenth-Century Ireland and Quebec (Lanham, MD, 2003), 2. Stanbridge concludes that
the British Parliament’s 1774 Quebec Act, which, by giving a formal parliamentary imprimatur to Murray’s policies of the early 1760s, “was the first major piece of legislation to
extend concessions to Catholics in the British empire rather than repress them.”
9. Ibid., 58–59, 142.
10. See Margaret Conrad, Alvin Finkel, and Cornelius Jaenen, Beginnings to 1876, Vol 1
of History of the Canadian Peoples (Toronto, 1993), 242. For more details see Lucien Lemieux,
Histoire du catholicisme québécois, Tome 1, 1760–1839 (Montreal, 1989), 16; W. J. Eccles, The
French in North America 1500-1783 (East Lansing, MI, 1998), 225; and James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (Oxford, 1985), 38.
11. N.E.S. Griffiths, “Acadia,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James H. Marsh, 1
(Edmonton, 1985), 5. See also Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 170.
12. Under French rule, the label of “Quebec” covered only the city. France’s province in
North America was called “la Nouvelle France.” After the British conquest, London formally

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

61

Quebec were allowed to continue worshipping in their churches and
receiving the sacraments.13 Even Indians who had embraced Catholicism
could still keep their lands.14
Nevertheless, the British rejected important parts of Governor Vaudreuil’s text. As a loyal French aristocrat, Vaudreuil tried to continue the
French king’s role in choosing future bishops in Quebec. Not surprisingly,
the British refused.15 Both in Paris and in London in the mid-eighteenthcentury, bishops were part of the governmental structure, largely like legislators or judges. A French-appointed bishop in a British colony would
have been like laying out a chessboard with a white bishop among the black
side’s pieces.
Catholics in Quebec faced a potential crisis over episcopal appointments in 1760. France’s sole bishop in North America happened to die
during that difficult year. Who would name Quebec’s next bishop? Indeed,
would there even be any successor? Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church
could have been gradually strangled in Canada, with aging priests dying
over decades, without any means to ordain and install new priests.
If that counterfactual scenario seems an idle anti-Roman fantasy, consider what happened in late sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century
England. Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth forbade any Roman Catholic
labeled its new Canadian possession (which at that time extended from the tip of the Gaspé
Peninsula down through the Saint Lawrence River Valley to just south of the Ottawa River)
as “the province of Quebec,” until its boundaries were expanded by the Quebec Act of 1774.
13. Article 27 in the Articles of Capitulation, Montreal, September 8, 1760, stated:
“The free exercise of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, shall subsist entire, in such
manner that all the states and the people of the towns and countries, places and distant posts,
shall continue to assemble in the churches, and to frequent the sacraments as heretofore,
without being molested in any manner, directly or indirectly.” For the full text of the Articles
of Capitulation, see Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, eds., Documents Relating to the
Constitutional History of Canada, 1759–1791, 1 (Ottawa, 1918), p. 30 (hereafter cited as “S &
D) (hereafter cited as “S & D; also accessed November 7, 2102, http://english.republique
libre.org/Articles_of_Capitulation_of_Montreal.
14. See Article 40 in the September 1760 Capitulation of Montreal: “The Savages or
Indian allies of his most Christian Majesty, shall be maintained in the Lands they inhabit; if
they chuse to remain there; they shall not be molested on any pretence whatsoever, for having
carried arms, and served his most Christian Majesty; they shall have, as well as the French,
liberty of religion, and shall keep their missionaries,” S & D, 33. Also striking are later words
in a June 1762 report to London from Murray, Quebec’s new British governor: “The most
civilized of all the Indians in this part of the World are the Hurons. . . . These are called
Roman Catholicks and are a decent well behaved people.” See S & D, 73.
15. See Article 30 of the Articles of Capitulation.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

bishop to be installed in England. Catholic priests then faced precarious
lives, including arrest, torture, or murder—but at least they had many
Catholic resources just across the English Channel such as the Douai seminary that trained English clerics. Those institutions were far from Quebec.
Tens of thousands of faithful Catholics in England were deprived of the
sacrament of confirmation, which required a face-to-face encounter with a
bishop under Roman tradition. In the reign of James I a vicar apostolic,
William Bishop (1623–24) was appointed, but it was not until the reign of
James II that several Catholic vicars apostolic (essentially bishops without
dioceses) were instituted to provide minimal pastoral care. They were
finally able to serve their flock, and even then that privilege was precarious
after 1689. One Catholic Bishop of Quebec spent five years (1704–09)
under house arrest in England, having been captured by the Royal Navy
during one of the many wars between London and Paris, leaving New
France without any episcopal oversight in the interim.16 Full-fledged
Roman Catholic bishops returned to England only in 1850. The challenges for Catholics included important Anglo-Saxon and Celtic subcultures allergic to bishops since the sixteenth century, especially west of the
Atlantic. Strikingly, the British colonies in America did not have even one
Anglican bishop until the end of the eighteenth century.
Fortunately the key decision-makers in newly occupied Quebec turned
out to be open-minded aristocrats such as Murray and his successor Guy
Carleton—veteran military officers who had become colonial governors
with novel challenges. They wanted to balance the British Empire’s political interests with the humanitarian needs and embedded traditions of a
Catholic populace (indeed, significantly more Catholic than eighteenthcentury mainland France).17 During the eighteenth century, New France
had not received continuing large flows of new immigrants, unlike the
British colonies in America.18 Thus, New France’s farmers in their mentality were far from the eighteenth-century Paris intelligentsia.
Another threatened institution in Quebec was its Roman Catholic
seminaries, which were not specifically mentioned in the 1760 text. The
supply of future priests depended on those seminaries. The Jesuits were
16. The exiled prelate was Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier
(1653–1727), Quebec’s second bishop. See Terence J. Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics:
Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism (Montreal, 2002), 26.
17. See Paul R. Reynolds, Guy Carleton: A Biography (New York, 1980), 13, and Marcel
Trudel, Introduction to New France (Toronto, 1968), 257.
18. Eccles, The French in North America, 84–85.

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

63

especially unpopular in British circles (or, for that matter, even in many
Roman Catholic circles).19 Indeed, monastic orders overall were far from
popular in Protestant societies. What would be the status of the various
male and female orders in Quebec, or their energetic schools, missions, and
charities for the poor? Perhaps those institutions would be forcibly deCatholicized like Oxford by the Tudors, or suppressed like the Sorbonne
by France’s Jacobins?
Even Jeffrey Amherst, far from humane in his relations with the Indians, made a key distinction about Canada’s ascetic communities. Following
early-modern patriarchal principles, the 1760 text discriminated between
women and men—in this case favoring the female over the male orders.
Governor Vaudreuil proposed an article for protecting nuns such as the
Ursulines. Amherst agreed.20 The next draft article would have likewise
covered the Jesuits, Recollets, and Sulpicians—but Amherst postponed that
decision. Thus the male communities lacked any guarantee.21 Perhaps the
British saw the male orders as more threatening than parish priests. Native
Frenchmen, not native-born Canadians, dominated the male orders.22
In any case, both the female and the male orders—together with the
parishes—were about to lose significant subsidies from Paris.23 Ecclesiastical finances had also included involuntary tithes from parishioners as in
both Catholic and Protestant countries. Would a Protestant empire really
require its new subjects to finance Catholic institutions? Any such explicit
requirement would have been radical. In the 1760 Articles of Capitulation,
New France’s governor wanted to include a provision for continuing the
old tithes. It is interesting that Amherst did not reject that proposal;
instead, he again postponed a decision.24

19. The growing unpopularity of the Society of Jesus in key Catholic states would, in
fact, result in the formal suppression of the Society just thirteen years later—via Pope
Clement XIV’s brief Dominus ac Redemptor (July 21, 1773).
20. See Article 32. Governor Murray remembered his gratitude for the nuns’ impartial
nursing for wounded soldiers on both sides during the recent war. See G. P. Browne,
“Murray, James,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, vol. 4 (Toronto, 1979), 571–72,
accessed January 10, 2013, http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=2085.
21. See Article 33.
22. See Conrad, Finkel, and Jaenen, History of the Canadian Peoples, 147–48. Also see
Murray’s comments in his June 5, 1762 report to London in S & D, 67, 71.
23. Nive Voisine, T. Allan Smith, and Robert Choquette, “Catholicism,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 302; also last accessed January 10, 2013, http://www.thecanadian
encyclopedia.com/articles/catholicism.
24. See Article 27.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

FIGURE 3. James Murray (1721–1794), Project Gutenberg eText 16747. Public
Domain.

Despite the lack of an official requirement at first after 1760, many
French Canadians continued to pay their tithes to their Catholic
parishes—even though the parishioners were noted for their frequent complaints about financial disagreements.25 In any case the Catholic institutions’ new financial problems would have been huge even if every single
parishioner had continued to pay his own tithe. The end of grants from the
French crown meant that those institutions had suddenly lost as much as
one-third of their income.26
Surprisingly, a new source of subsidies came from Murray—first as
Quebec’s head under martial rule27 and then formally appointed as civilian
25. Cornelius J. Jaenen, The Role of the Church in New France (Ottawa, 1985), 17. See
also at General Murray’s Report of the State of the Government of Quebec in Canada, June
5, 1762, in S & D, 79; and Mary Louise Sanderson, “Our Own Catholic Countrymen”: Religion, Loyalism, and Subjecthood in Britain and its Empire, 1755–1829, Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, (Nashville, 2010), 140; also online via http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/
available/etd-04092010-192533/unrestricted/SandersonDissertationFINAL.pdf.
26. Conrad, Finkel and Jaenen, History of the Canadian Peoples, 147.
27. To be precise, Murray ruled as military governor only for the town of Quebec and
the immediate area from 1760 to 1763; two other British officers ruled the Montreal and

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

65

governor after the 1763 treaty. The treaty had ended the possibility of
Canada being restored to Paris in any territorial exchange, unlike several
islands in the West Indies temporarily occupied by London’s forces. The
treaty had also ended the planet’s first genuine “world war,” waged in
Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia—but its text had
failed to address specific issues postponed in the 1760 Montreal capitulation, e.g., the survival (or lack of survival) of Catholic bishops in Canada.
Both before and after the treaty the new governor enjoyed latitude wider
in practice than in theory. He could have followed an anti-Catholic policy
or a pro-Catholic policy. In fact he followed both policies on various issues,
but on balance he was far more pro-Catholic—or rather, pro-tolerance.
The nuns who ran the seventeenth-century hospitals in the towns of
Quebec and Montreal began to receive material support from Murray’s
new administration. (The Quebec hospital was the first in French North
America.) Some parish priests began to enjoy grants—especially those who
had seen their church buildings devastated by the recent war. An especially
important figure was Mgr. Jean-Olivier Briand, the vicar general of
Quebec—the city’s ecclesiastical head in the absence of a bishop. He, too,
began to receive stipends.28
On the other hand, Murray was still supporting the expulsion of Acadians from Quebec’s coast as late as 1765.29 The Scottish-born governor was
far from being a supporter of Catholicism. His words were typical among
British Protestants at that time, stating at first that he might not trust
Catholics when “the Conscience can be so easily quieted by the Absolution
of a Priest.”30 Nevertheless, his most consistent priority was defending the
British Empire’s military and political interests. He wrote in his June 1762
report to London’s Board of Trade (via Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the
British army in North America) that “The Canadians are very ignorant and
extremely tenacious of their Religion, nothing can contribute so much to
make them staunch subjects to his Majesty as the new Government giving
them every reason to imagine no alteration is to be attempted in that

Trois-Rivières areas. The name of “Quebec” began to apply to the entire province after 1763;
at that point, Murray became the civilian governor for the entire province.
28. Browne, “Murray, James,” 571. See also Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics, 31,
and Marcel Trudel, “La servitude de l’Église catholique du Canada français sous le régime
anglais,” Rapport—Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique, 30 (1963), 11–33, here 13,
accessed February 20 2014, http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1007353ar.
29. Browne, “Murray, James,” 571.
30. Ibid.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

point.”31 Murray as early as 1759 expressed worries about possible antiLondon secessions by the southern colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia.32 He tried to calm fears among the Catholic clergy and laity.
A key difference between Nova Scotia and Quebec was that the latter
had roughly 75,000 Catholic residents and just a few hundred Protestants.
Facing reality, Murray realized that the Roman Catholic Church was the
most important cultural and social institution in London’s newest possession. If any governor cared about educational, charitable and moral life,
including relatively humane relations with the Indians, he would have to
care about the Catholics both lay and clerical. He needed Catholic leaders
as pillars of order.
Murray would have welcomed the French Canadian Church to be voluntarily subsumed into the Church of England, but he did very little
actively to promote any such process. It is a mistake to see him as having a
strategy for Protestantism.33 Murray occasionally used the word “reformation” in his reports to London, but only quite vaguely. For example,
Murray’s June 1762 report wistfully expressed a scenario “enticing” the
Francophones “amidst a people sprung from the same origin, speaking the
same language, and following the same Customs. It may likewise be conducive towards bringing about a Reformation, by slow degrees and must at
least prove to the Canadians there is nothing in our Holy Religion repugnant to Virtue or Morality.”34 But nothing concrete came from those words.
He suggested one possible tactic of conversion: recruit a Huguenot pastor
and plant him in Quebec. Note his words: merely one “French Clergyman
of sound sense and good Character, with a tolerable salary. . . . ” The provision of one French Calvinist pastor with one church building would have
fallen short in any serious strategy for creating a Huguenot Quebec.
One passage especially encapsulates Murray’s vision. In a 1766 report
to Lord Shelburne (William Petty), London’s Secretary of State for the
Southern Department, Murray wrote about the French Canadians: “It is
natural to suppose they are Jealous of their Religion: they are very ignorant,
it was the policy of the French Government to keep them so; few or none
can read; Printing was never permitted in Canada ‘till we got possession of
31. S & D, 71.
32. Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 98.
33. For a contrasting judgment, see Peter M. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National
Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745–1795 (Madison, NJ, 2000), 95:
“Murray did have his own secret plans for a reformation.”
34. See Murray’s June 1762 report in S & D, 71–72.

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

67

it: their Veneration for the Priesthood is in proportion to that Ignorance;
it will probably decrease as they become more enlightened, for the Clergy
there are very illiterate and of mean birth; & as they are now debarr’d of
supplies of Ecclesiastics from France, that Order of Men will become more
& more contemptible, provided they are not expos’d to Persecution.”35
Complacently assuming that mass literacy would turn Catholics into exCatholics, Murray did not push French Canadians to embrace Janseniststyle ideas, to reject transubstantiation, to jettison celibacy, or to abandon
Latin for vernacular worship. He barely tried Anglican proselytism.
Samuel Bennet, an Anglican military chaplain in Montreal, reported
in 1764 that the entire province of Quebec had only two Protestant clerics
including himself, and that British soldiers often married with FrenchCanadian women “and for want of Protestant Clergymen” were “obliged to
have recourse to Romish Priests to baptize their children.”36 Even after a
decade, Anglophone merchants “complained that many Protestants still
had to send their children to be educated by Catholics, because there were
not enough Protestant schools to do the job.”37
Murray suggested the option of using London’s royal power vigorously
to administer Quebec’s Catholic clergy, e.g., assigning or transferring parish
priests. George III could use New France’s precedents: The priests “were
moved from their respective parishes at the Bishops pleasure, who thereby
always kept them in awe, it may not be perhaps improper to adopt the same
Method, in case His Majesty should think right, for the sake of keeping
them in proper subjection, to nominate them himself or by those who act
under his authority.”38 Perhaps the Catholic institutions in Canada could be
reshaped under London’s kings and queens, who long have insisted that
they were the supreme governors of the Church. London had suddenly
inherited the Bourbon kings’ practical authority over Canada’s Catholic
clergy, who turned out to be quite willing to obey their new sovereign. The
35. Cited by Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in
British North America, 121–22. Confusingly, at that time London had two Secretaries of State:
the Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the Secretary of State for the Northern Department. The former was responsible for the colonies in America. See James Stuart
Olson, Robert Shadle, Patricia Ashman, Pradip Bhaumik, and John Biles, editors, Historical
Dictionary of the British Empire, 1 (Westport, CT, 1996), 993.
36. C. F. Pascoe, S.P.G.: An Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701–1900 (London, 1901), 138.
37. Sanderson, “‘Our Own Catholic Countrymen’: Religion, Loyalism and Subjecthood in Britain and its Empire, 1755–1829,” 89.
38. S & D, 79. See also Trudel, Introduction to New France, 247.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Canadians had long been schooled by monarchist theologians under the
Bourbons, and Murray welcomed their habits of Gallicanism. However, at
a time of an increasingly feeble papacy, one can imagine Christian institutions in Canada losing their canonical status from Rome’s viewpoint—especially if the office of bishop were to remain vacant. That scenario could have
triggered yet another bitter schism in Christendom.
In fact Murray did indeed interfere in the Roman Catholic institutions, using his broad powers to transfer parish priests—especially before
1763 when London and Paris were still at war.39 Even more important, he
did not want a high-ranking cleric, such as the head of the Quebec seminary, to be appointed from Paris. Nevertheless, thanks to Murray Quebec
eventually had a Catholic bishop, who gave the governor an annual list of
proposed changes for parish priests; Murray’s successors usually adopted
these proposals without changes.40
The British governors did not try to change the diocese’s personnel in
order to encourage anti-Roman priests. Only two Catholic priests under
Murray and Carleton switched to Protestantism: one a renegade Jesuit
useful to the British military as an informer during the war. When the
renegade was about to announce his public conversion to Protestantism
after the war, Murray was far from pleased; instead the governor sent him
to England. The ex-Jesuit never returned to Canada.41 A parish priest who
converted to Protestantism in 1767 experienced chilly relations with
Murray and Carleton.42

39. Marcel Trudel, “Pourquoi Briand fut-il le candidat de Murray?” Revue d’histoire de
l’Amérique française, 8, no. 4 (1955), 463–95, here 467–72, last accessed February 21, 2014,
http://www.erudit.org/revue/haf/1955/v8/n4/301676ar.html.
40. See Lemieux, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, 137. The governor or lieutenantgovernor continued to influence assignments of parish priests, albeit infrequently—only four
such cases known from 1774 to 1800. See Trudel, “La servitude de l’Église,” 19–20.
41. For more details see also Auguste Vachon, “Roubaud, Pierre-Joseph-Antoine,”
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, 685–87, and Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National
Identity, 115–16. A nuance: Murray naively encouraged his London superiors to heed the exJesuit Pierre Roubaud, who turned out to a shameless liar (and forger), exaggerating the numbers of fellow ex-Catholic conversions in Canada. Roubaud tried to undermine the key
alliance between Murray and Briand. Murray’s June 26, 1764 letter to the Earl of Halifax
(George Montagu Dunk), Secretary of State for the Southern Department, about Roubaud
(see Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 111) again used the word “reformation,”
again without concrete action.
42. James Lambert, “Veyssière, Leger-Jean-Baptiste-Noël,” Dictionary of Canadian
Biography, vol. 4, 752–53, accessed February 22, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
veyssiere_leger_jean_baptiste_noel_4E.html.

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69

On the other hand Murray used parish priests for other purposes. He
found them useful in activities such as conducting a census, gathering agricultural statistics, or helping the French Canadians’ militia.43 He ordered
them to publish new ordinances and executive orders to parishioners.44 He
used church buildings for secular tasks; e.g., Quebec’s Jesuit college was
temporarily occupied as military barracks. In 1765 the college began new
classes emphasizing the humanities and philosophy, following the Jesuit
model in classical education.45 Neither Murray nor Carleton tried to
change the curriculum to suit Protestant indoctrination. Similarly, neither
was even accused of using his powers over the Church for the purpose of
financial corruption.46
Perhaps the most dubious case of Murray’s occasional heavy-handedness was his transmission of an order from London containing specifically
anti-Roman rhetoric. The text mentioned “the Errors of that Mistaken
Religion, which they Unhappily profess”; those words came from the Earl
of Egremont (Charles Wyndham), then Secretary of State for the Southern
Department, not personally from Murray. Nevertheless Murray personally
required that the document be published in his district’s parishes. Murray’s
fellow officer Ralph Burton was more flexible, amending the document for
Catholics in the Trois-Rivières district.47 Fortunately, the requirement of
widely publishing explicitly anti-Catholic words in an official document was
very much the exception, not the norm in British-ruled Quebec.
One twentieth-century Canadian historian emphasized the “servitude” of Catholic institutions in Quebec under the British Empire.48 Other
Canadian scholars have disagreed,49 and they are right. Given the historical

43. Trudel, “Pourquoi Briand fut-il le candidat de Murray?” 475–76.
44. Ibid., 476–77.
45. Nive Voisine and Christina Cameron, “Séminaire de Québec,” The Canadian
Encyclopedia, 3, p. 1675, also available online via http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/
article/seminaire-de-quebec/.
46. See Hilda Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 1760–1791 (Toronto, 1966), 36:
Murray “was not corrupt.”
47. Trudel, “Pourquoi Briand fut-il le candidat de Murray?” 478–79. At that point,
Murray was military ruler over only part of Canada during the war (see n. 27 ).
48. Trudel, “La servitude de l’Église catholique du Canada français sous le régime anglais,”
33. Overall, he concluded that the Churchwas “dépourvue de tout, condamnée à la stagnation,
humiliée sans cesse par le Gouvernement” under the first British governors in Quebec.
49. See Hilda Neatby, “Servitude de l’Église Catholique: a Reconsideration,” CCHA
Study Sessions, 36, (1969), 9–25, here 10–11, accessed February 24, 2014, http://www.ccha
history.ca/journal/CCHA1969/Neatby.pdf. See also a review of another Trudel book: Michel
Brunet, “Ouvrage recensé: Trudel, Marcel, L’Église canadienne sous le Régime militaire, 1759–

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context—all Roman Catholic worship forbidden in Boston in 1760 and all
Protestant worship forbidden in Quebec before 1760—Murray’s and Carleton’s policies gave the world a milestone in religious freedom.
It is too easy for many modern readers to categorize various activities as
either “secular” or “religious,” as if they had clear barriers; one should keep
in mind that modern France’s concept of laïcité would have been anachronistically alien for any eighteenth-century European government. Social
practices such as taxation, law, property, charity, education, and marriage
were thickly interwoven together by royal and ecclesiastical appointees.
Even the selection of a new bishop typically depended on the kingdom’s
monarch as the practical decision-maker. All the preceding bishops in
Quebec before 1760 had been selected by France’s kings—not by the
papacy. What was almost novel in Quebec beginning in 1766 was the practice of a Protestant monarchy de facto appointing Catholic bishops—awkward for both parties.50 That tacit arrangement was not much different
from the agreements which the papacy had negotiated in Europe’s various
concordats; all the major European powers had expanded their powers in
Gallican style in the eighteenth century.51 That movement definitely
included America’s Nouvelle France. In effect the French Church, including its Quebec diocese, had largely functioned as a royal agency.52
1764 : les problèmes, Les Études de l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française, ” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 11, no.1 (1957), 115–18, accessed February 24, 2014,
http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/301810ar. Neatby fair-mindedly concluded that “after 1760 no
one can be surprised that Britain imposed, in exchange for a large measure of protection and
patronage, some degree of subjection. The Church had, after all, been subject to a good deal
of authority from the King of France. The remarkable fact is that, in spite of threats and dangers, the Church did receive steady protection, a small measure of financial support, and government sanction if not for tithes, certainly for levies in support of church building even
before the Quebec Act.”
50. Prussia had already appointed a bishop in Silesia. See Tim Blanning, Frederick the
Great: King of Prussia (New York, 2016), 482.
51. See Owen Chadwick, The Popes and European Revolution (Oxford, 1981), 181–82,
298.
52. See Jean-Guy Lavalle, “L’Église dans l’État au Canada sous Mgr de SaintVallier
(1685/88–1727),” Sessions d’étude - Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique, 39 (1972),
29–40, here 19, available online at http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1007256ar. “Berthier de Sauvigny écrit: ‘( . . . ) dans la plupart des États catholiques, avant 1789, l’Église était soumise au bon
plaisir de monarques qui l’utilisaient parfois à de fins purement politiques.’ Un historien anglais,
C. R. Cragg, va jusqu’à, affirmer, parlant du gallicanisme: ‘( . . . ) in seventeenth-century France
the doctrine tended to be a decent cloak for the determination of an autocratic monarchy to treat
the [C]hurch as a department of state.’ Ces deux citations ne font que reprendre une opinion
qui réunit les historiens dans l’unanimité. Sous l’Ancien Régime, en effet, en France comme
ailleurs, l’Église est dans l’État, sous la tutelle de l’État. Et l’Église du Canada n’échappe pas à

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71

Already in his June 1762 report to the Board of Trade, Murray was
ready to recommend and even to subsidize a new Roman Catholic bishop
in Quebec. He reported to London: “Care was taken under the former
Government to keep up a great part of the Clergy French, especially the
dignified part: To prevent the further importation of these, it would be
necessary to encourage the natives to engage in the profession, which
cannot be so well-done, except the See is filled up, as without a Bishop
there can be no ordination: some difficulty will attend this, as it is unendow’d tho’ hereafter means may be found of making up this deficiency.”53
Sometimes Murray vacillated or backpedaled. In a 1763 report to
London, Murray opined of the French Canadians, “I verily believe, could
some means be devised to educate their youth, and to continue the Priesthood, they would without much Reluctance part with the Hierarchy”—in
other words, without a bishop in Quebec. However, he suggested that
young Canadians could continue to be trained in Quebec’s Catholic seminary “as heretofore”—and that “when fit for entering into orders, these
should be sent at the Publick Expence to the Dominions of the most
friendly Powers, to be there ordained, and to return here to exercise their
Functions.”54 Avoiding ordinations by Paris-controlled bishops, Quebec’s
young alumni would still be ordained by Roman Catholic bishops in other
lands—such as, perhaps, Savoy—but definitely not by Anglican bishops.
With or without a bishop, an immediate question had arisen: In the
new Quebec, would a Catholic believer be allowed to serve in a governmental post such as a juror, a justice of the peace, a militia officer, or a civil
servant? Following laws from sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century
England, the answer would seem to be “No” in the growing British
Empire. For example, London’s 1673 Test Act specifically stated that
anyone seeking a senior office must swear an oath denying the transubstantiation of the Eucharist.55 Any new British governor in Quebec would need
cette règle génerale: elle jouit de tous les avantages d’une Église d’État et souffre, dans la même
mesure, des inconvénients qui découlent nécessairement d’un tel statut.” See also Lionel Groulx,
“Le gallicanisme au Canada sous Louis XIV,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, vol. 1, no.
1 (July 1947), 54–90, available online at id.erudit.org/ideru dit/801346ar; and Cornelius Jaenen,
The Role of the Church in New France (Ottawa, 1985), 4–5.
53. From his detailed “Report of the State of the Government of Quebec in Canada,”
June 5th, 1762, in S & D, 71.
54. From a letter from Murray to Lord Egremont, Secretary of State, on October 23,
1763, For the full text, see “Watching the Canadian Clergy,” The American Catholic Historical
Researches, vol. 9, no. 1 (January 1892), 6.
55. An Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants, 1673,
25 Car. 2, c. 2, State Papers Online.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

fortitude to resist projecting England’s anti-Roman culture. By character
and temperament, Murray turned out to be equal to that challenge: He
largely ignored London’s anti-Catholic laws.56
Murray, in fact, seems to have fallen in love with the occupied French
Canadians. Even in 1762, when Paris and London were still at war, he
already expressed his admiration of them:
[T]he Peasantry . . . are a strong healthy race, plain in their dress, virtuous
in their morals and temperate in their living: They are in general
extremely ignorant, for the former government would never suffer a printing press in the Country, few can read or write, and all receive implicitly
for truth the many arrant falsehoods and atrocious lies, Industriously
handed among them by those who were in power. They took particular
pains to persuade them, the English were worse than brutes, and that if
they prevailed, the Canadians would be ruled with a rod of Iron, and be
exposed to every outrage, this most certainly did not a little contribute, to
make them so obstinate in their defence. However ever since the Conquest, I can with the greatest truth assert, that the Troops have lived with
the Inhabitants in a harmony unexampled even at home.57

In an October 1764 letter to the Board of Trade in London (a key
government agency overseeing imperial trade) Murray went even further,
insisting that the empire’s new subjects
are perhaps the bravest and the best race upon the Globe, a Race, who
cou’d they be indulged with a few priveledges which the Laws of England
deny to Roman Catholicks at home, would soon get the better of every
National Antipathy to their Conquerors and become the most faithful
and most useful set of Men in this American Empire.

Thus he firmly declared that French Canadians should be admitted into
juries.58
In his new role as civilian governor in 1763, Murray found that he
could still largely ignore instructions from London. The 1763 treaty provided only one vague provision about religious liberty—seemingly sweeping but with a huge loophole. The treaty stated that

56. See Browne, “Murray, James,” 573–74.
57. Murray’s June 1762 report in S & D, 79–80. Murray’s boast of “harmony” was not
hollow: According to Browne during Pontiac’s War in 1763, “Murray advocated the calling
of volunteers rather than a draft, [and] was able to fill his quota for the District of Quebec
without resorting to induction.” Browne, “Murray, James,” 575.
58. Murray’s letter to the Lords of Trade, October 29, 1764, in S & D, 231.

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

73

His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the
Catholick religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence,
give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman
Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to
the rites of the Romish church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit.59

The loophole, of course, is the last nine words. Once the French
crown’s last troops were to leave Quebec, one could expect that Quebec’s
new rulers likely would narrowly interpret “the liberty of the Catholick religion” while broadly interpreting London’s entrenched anti-Catholic laws.
Such an interpretation certainly would have been entirely within the mainstream of eighteenth-century governments’ practice. (For example,
French-ruled parts of North America had strictly minimized the rights of
Protestants.)60 Indeed, London soon gave Murray a specific anti-Catholic
warning even before his formal commission as the new civilian governor.
Charles Wyndham, the Second Earl of Egremont, the Secretary of State
for the Southern Department, in an August 13, 1763 letter to Murray,
emphasized the key phrase in the treaty:
. . . the condition . . . must always be remembered, viz: As far as the Laws
of Great Britain permit, which Laws prohibit absolutely all Popish Hierarchy in any of the Dominions belonging to the Crown of Great Britain,
and can only admit a Toleration of the Exercise of that Religion. . . .61

Would Murray maintain the courage to ignore concrete directions
from London? After a few months, he received an even more challenging
order from an even higher source: a royal proclamation. The October 1763
decree signed by George III envisioned that the empire’s newly acquired
four colonies (Grenada, East Florida, West Florida, and Quebec) would
have essentially the same institutions as in its older American colonies:
elected legislatures and courts “for hearing and determining all Causes, as
well Criminal as Civil, according to Law and Equity, and as near as may
be agreeable to the Laws of England, with Liberty to all Persons.”62
59. For the full text of the treaty, see “The Treaty of Paris 1763,” The Avalon Project:
Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, accessed February 25, 2014, http://avalon.law.
yale.edu/18th_century/paris763.asp. See also Albert Bushnell Hart and Edward Channing,
eds, “Extracts From the Treaty of Paris of 1763,” American History Leaflets: Colonial and Constitutional, No. 5 (New York, 1892), 6.
60. After the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenots lost religious freedom
both in mainland France and in New France. See Conrad, Finkel, and Jaenen, History of the
Canadian Peoples, 146. See also Trudel, Introduction to New France, 139–40.
61. For Egremont’s August 1763 letter, see S & D, 168–69.
62. S & D, 165.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Critics of that decree have called that 1763 proclamation naïve; but
one should recognize that George III’s ministers were only following the
experiences of other empires both ancient and modern. When an imperial
capital has found that its own system has worked reasonably well in its
existing colonies, it understandably introduces its template into its new
possessions. Moreover, many Europeans, including many Parisians, saw
parliamentary-dominated England in mid-eighteenth century as having
the planet’s most “enlightened” government. Nevertheless, one has to
wonder whether the decision-makers in London had really pondered the
implications of George III’s decree.63 Indeed, a decade after the 1763
proclamation, one royal official in London ruefully reflected that the
proclamation had perhaps been the result of inadvertence under haste,
having failed to consider the special conditions in Quebec.64
If Murray had slavishly followed the 1763 decree, he would have created a legislature consisting entirely of Protestants. The electorate selecting
the legislature’s members would also have been only Protestants. Thus, just
a few hundred Anglophone newcomers would have claimed the power to
rule some 75,000 Francophone Catholics whose families had lived there
for more than a century. The yawning gulf between the rulers and the ruled
would have been not only between two religious groups but also between
Anglophone merchants and Francophone farmers.65
In the judicial system the problem was not only personnel, such as
judges, lawyers, and jurors. Just as challenging was the task of grafting
together two different legal cultures. The nuances of real estate and family
wills had followed rules stemming from medieval Paris, modified by experience in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century New France. Would
it be really wise to uproot procedures familiar to Canadians? Perhaps a
solution might be to combine England’s criminal laws with France’s civil
laws—but such a compromise would contradict the 1763 proclamation,
stating that new courts were to cover “causes as well criminal as civil.”
In December of 1763 George III signed a much more detailed document specifically for Quebec, “Instructions” for Murray. That text gave the
governor some wiggle room about creating an elected legislature, recogniz63. See Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 36.
64. See the 1774 “Plan of a Code of the Laws for the Province of Quebec, Reported by
the Advocate-General, James Marriott,” in S & D, 449.
65. Lawson called that scenario “what would have been the most exclusive and vindictive representative body known to the British constitution.” See Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 40.

LAWRENCE A. UZZELL

75

ing that “it may be impracticable for the present to form” such a body.66
Temporarily the governor could use his appointed council as a semi-legislature, lacking some powers of a genuine assembly. Perhaps Murray’s new
government might levy taxes without an elected assembly—defying a core
eighteenth-century Whig principle. Overall, the 1763 “Instructions”
inevitably gave Quebec (in the words of two twentieth-century historians)
a “constitutional miscarriage.”67
The “Instructions” included a ten-paragraph section about religion.
Interestingly, that section’s first concrete paragraph emphasized the
importance of finding and exiling any suspected Jacobites. The 1746 battle
of Culloden had apparently crushed the old cause of the Stuart heirs with
their followers, but in 1763 the Hanoverian regime clearly still feared
threats to its legitimacy. Murray was ordered to summon Canadians and
require them explicitly to swear allegiance to the Hanoverians and
renounce the Stuarts. Moreover, “in case any of the said French Inhabitants shall refuse to take the said Oath, and make and subscribe the Declaration of Abjuration, as aforesaid. You are to cause them forthwith to
depart out of Our said Government.”68 Of course, not all Jacobites have
been Roman Catholics and not all Catholics have been Jacobites—but
given France’s long history of aiding the Stuarts, French Canadians easily
could have been seen as menacing.
Repeating a key provision from Egremont’s August 1763 letter, the
December “Instructions” signed by George III forbade any authority of the
papacy over Canadian clergy: “You are not to admit of any Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of the See of Rome. . . .”69 Strictly following those words, Murray
might have forbidden the activities of any priest recognizing the pope.
The next three paragraphs in the “Instructions” clearly envisioned
establishing Anglicanism as Quebec’s only state church. That text explicitly stated: “the Church of England may be established both in Principles
66. See “Instructions to Our Trusty and Wellbeloved James Murray, Esq., Our Captain
General and Governor in Chief in and over Our Province of Quebec in America, and of all
our Territories dependent thereupon. Given at Our Court at St. James’s the Seventh Day of
December 1763 in the Fourth of Our Reign,” S & D, 181.
67. A. L. Burt, Old Province of Quebec, vol. 1 (Toronto, 1968), 82; quoted by Lawson,
The Imperial Challenge, 39–41. Looking at the October 1763 Proclamation and the “Instructions” of December 1763 together, Lawson rightly judged that “. . . their contents reflected
assumptions at Westminster on policy for the province utterly removed from the reality of life
in Quebec.”
68. S & D, 191.
69. S & D, 191.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

and Practice, and that the said Inhabitants may by Degrees be induced to
embrace the Protestant Religion, and their Children be brought up in the
Principles of it.” Murray should maintain and encourage specifically
Protestant schools, Protestant schoolmasters, and Protestant ministers,
with real estate allotted for those purposes.70
The “Instructions” to Murray were compatible with the rules for other
British colonies. The typical instructions to governors of royal colonies
required all office-holders to swear anti-Catholic oaths, e.g., against transubstantiation. England’s attorney general declared in 1705 that in the
colonies any priest was to be imprisoned if he had been found to have celebrated a Mass, following an older legal decision applying within London’s
motherland. Even in Maryland, originally founded by an English Catholic
aristocrat, Roman believers were disenfranchised in 1718. Rhode Island,
originally without religious tests, came to forbid Catholics to occupy civil
or military offices.71
If George III’s text to Murray had been published widely among
Canadians, they would have had to wonder about the earlier assurance “to
grant the liberty of the Catholick religion” in Quebec. Would that promise
turn out to be hollow?
Examining Murray’s concrete actions rather than his reports to
London, it is clear that the Protestantization of Quebec was not a high priority for him. He continued to have excellent relations with the Roman
Catholic Church’s vicars general in the St. Lawrence Valley’s key towns—
Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal. He continued to assure the French
Canadians, who in his words were “uneasy on account of Apprehensions
for the Future existance [sic] of their Religion.”72 He continued to give
generous support to the nuns.73 In a 1764 report, “Thoughts upon the
Ecclesiastical Establishment in Canada,” the Anglican Archbishop of York
(Robert Hay Drummond) insisted that all Roman Catholic missionary
activities with the Indians should be “instantly” replaced by Anglican activities; Murray did not heed that recommendation.74
70. Ibid., 191–92.
71. Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 78. Albert B. West, “Rhode Island” in
The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, eds. Charles G. Herbermann, Edward A. Pace,
Condé B. Pallen, Thomas J. Shahan and John J. Wynne, vol. 13 (New York, 1912), 22–23,
accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13020a.htm.
72. Browne, “Murray, James,” 574.
73. See Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 1760–1791, 19.
74. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 102, 110.

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The governor boldly ignored the October 1763 royal proclamation
requiring the replacement of France’s judicial system with England’s.
Murray essentially maintained the French Canadians’ old legal procedures
in civil cases and in real estate.75
Historian Philip Lawson’s 1989 book provides a detailed study of
manuscripts from, to, and about Murray preserved in dozens of archives in
England, Scotland, Canada, and Michigan. Lawson’s verdict:
The traditional view of Murray’s role in the religious life of the province
. . . has not been flattering. He is frequently painted as an avid Protestant,
plotting the downfall of the Catholic [C]hurch in Quebec. There seems
little support for this view in the extant manuscripts. . . . Murray saw the
truth of the situation that would develop over the next decade: Britain
would have to adapt to the Canadians and their way of life or British
efforts at governing would fail miserably.76

Murray made clear to his superiors in London that he would prefer to
lose his office as governor rather than to oppress the Canadian Catholics.
His 1764 words:
If the popular clamours in England will not allow the humane Heart of
the King to follow its own dictates, and the Popish Laws must be exerted
with rigour in Canada, for God’s sake procure my retreat. . . . I cannot be
witness to the misery of a people I love and admire.77

In some ways, Murray was the ideal governor over a newly occupied
province—a man with genuine affection for his alien subjects. However, in
other ways he was far from the ideal. Like it or not, Quebec had a brandnew class, the Anglophone merchants. The ideal governor would not necessarily have admired those newcomers, often seen as coarse and greedy,
but at least he would have realized that the merchants had many highplaced allies in London. He would have avoided expressing that he
detested them. Largely Murray did not even try; in fact he called them as
“the most cruel, ignorant, rapacious fanatics who ever existed.”78 The
hatred between the aristocratic governor and the mercantile commoners
75. Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 119.
76. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 48.
77. Ibid. Murray used those words a letter to Lord Eglinton (Alexander Montgomerie),
Lord of the Bedchamber for George III, October 27, 1764, MG 123 | G2, series 1, vol. 1,
171, Library and Archives Canada. See also R. H. Mahon, Life of General the Hon. James
Murray: A Builder of Canada (London, 1921), 338.
78. Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 35.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

turned out to be almost immediate, mutual, fervent, and prolonged.79 On
the other hand, Murray’s actions toward the Anglophone merchants were
often milder than his words. He slowed the growth of capitalism in
Quebec, but only by a bit.80
In the summer of 1764, Murray chose a middle course when establishing new courts. Under the province’s supreme court, called the “King’s
Bench,” there would be an inferior “Court of Common Pleas.” The latter
body would allow “French Laws and Customs . . . between the Natives of
this Province,” unlike the superior King’s Bench. Similarly the inferior
court would allow traditional French Canadian advocates to practice in its
trials, not only English attorneys.81
The Anglophone merchants were outraged by Murray’s ordinance on
new courts. They especially denounced the provision that “all His
Majesty’s Subjects in this Colony to be admitted on Juries without Distinction”82; in other words, Roman Catholics could be jurors just like Protestants. Catholics in British-ruled Quebec thus were already enjoying better
rights than Catholics in England.

79. Ibid., 35. Also see Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 53–55.
80. A truly rounded judgment of Murray’s administration should note that he deserves
credit for several achievements for Canada’s dawning capitalist system. For example, he
helped to launch Quebec’s very first venture in advertising, a key institution for any freemarket economy. The province’s first newspaper began in 1764, the bilingual Quebec Gazette/
La Gazette de Quebec. The governor championed literacy and freedom of speech: unlike his
successor Carleton, Murray did not try to censor the newspaper’s contents. Jean-Francis Gervais, “Brown, William,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, 105–06, accessed January
17, 2018, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brown_william_4E.html.
Striking, perhaps above all, is the absence of revolts in New France (Benoît Grenier,
Brève histoire du régime seigneurial, Montréal, 2012, 168), unlike in old France, in England, or
even in Virginia (1676); however, Canada’s peasants often exhibited passive resistance and litigation. Although cordial relations between the peasants and seigneurs were not rare, it would
be a mistake to see the old seigneurial regime as a conflict-free idyll. On balance, Murray was
right in not waging a radical assault on New France’s embedded customs and laws. Its
seigneurial regime was not only an economic system but also a key component of the French
Canadians’ identity. Ibid., 212. Murray’s and Carleton’s defense of New France’s traditions
helped guarantee that Quebec would not be merely swallowed into an English monolith.
Burt’s verdict (The Old Province of Quebec, 127) seems correct: “Murray had done his work,
and it was a great work. To the French in Canada he had served as a buffer, softening the
shock they might have received on the establishment of civil government. Without this protection, the Canadian faith in British justice, born during the military regime, might not have
survived.”
81. S & D, 207.
82. Ibid., 206.

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Quebec’s new grand jury, dominated by the Anglophone merchants,
published a text called “Presentments” declaring Murray’s new ordinance
as “unconstitutional” in October.83 Within two weeks the Francophone
minority in the grand jury, despite their signatures on the “Presentments,”
accused the Anglophones of having tricked them. The Francophone jurors
stated that they had received only draft texts in English on loose sheets and
a deceptive summary, failing to include key points drafted by the Anglophones.84 The French Canadians had been railroaded.
For example, the text’s Article 7 stated:
We recommend the exertion of the Laws of the Mother Country for the
due observance of the Sabbath that the same may not longer be profaned,
by selling, buying keeping open shops. Balls, Routs, Gaming or any other
Idle Divertions, for the better accomplishing of which, a Learned Clergyman of a moral and exemplary Life, qualified to preach the Gospel in its
primative [sic] purity in both Languages would be absolutely necessary.85

The phrase of “primitive purity” was an old Protestant slogan.86 More
importantly, the article might threaten the status of the many Catholic
priests in Canada who did not know the English language. According to
the French jurors, they had been told that the “Presentments” would
encourage the observation of Sunday—but without any word of ministers
preaching in both languages.87
An explicitly anti-Catholic part of the “Presentments” was signed only
by the Anglophone jurors. That supplemental text declared that “persons
professing the Religion of the Church of Rome” should be “disabled from
holding any Office Trust or Power, more especially in a Judicial Capacity,”
including juries. Citing the words of an English statute from the first
decade of the seventeenth century, the Anglophone jurors wanted to

83. “Presentments of October Sessions made at a Continuance thereof by Adjournment held at the Sessions house in the City of Quebec the 16th October 1764 by the Grand
Jury in, and for the said District represent.” Ibid., 212.
84. “Statement by French Jurors in Reference to the Foregoing Presentments, October
26, 1764,” Ibid., 216.
85. S & D, 212.
86. For one of many examples, see Joseph Perkins, Christianity restored to its primitive
purity, or the mercenary church reform’d (London, 1699).
87. From the “Statement by French Jurors in Reference to the Foregoing Presentments,” S & D, 217: “Nous avons entendû cette Article en partie et seulement a l’occasion de
l’observation du Dimanche. Mais il ne nous a absolument point été expliqué la Proposition
d’avoir un Ministre pour precher dans les deux langues l’Evangile.”

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

decree that a Catholic may not practice civil law or to be an officer in any
court. The Anglophone jurors insisted that
the admitting persons of the Roman Religion, who own the authority,
supremacy and Jurisdiction or the Church of Rome, as Jurors, is an open
Violation of our most sacred Laws and Libertys, and tending to the utter
subversion of the protestant Religion and his Majesty’s power authority,
right, and possession of the province to which we belong.88

The Francophones retorted just as vigorously. They pointed out that
Catholic Canadian military officers had already fought for the British
crown against American Indians in a recent war. In their words,
cannot a man who exposes himself freely to shed his blood in the Service
of his King and of the Nation be admitted to positions where he can serve
the Nation and the Public as a Juror, since he is a subject? . . . The
Leniency of the existing Government has made us forget our losses, and
has attached us to H. M. and to the Government; our fellow citizens
make us feel our Condition to be that of Slaves. Can the faithful and
loyal Subjects of the King be reduced to this?89

Murray remained firm against the large majority of Anglophones.
Under pressure both in Quebec and in London, his new statute granting
rights for the French Canadians could easily have been repealed. AntiCatholic bigotry was thriving among English-speakers on both sides of the
Atlantic, especially among the lower classes. The pressures against
Murray’s toleration largely came from forces often labeled as “progressive,”
the urban commoners. The pioneers of religious freedom in England were
members of the elite, and hardly a majority even of that. One was another
Scot from a Jacobite family: Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield sided
with Murray and the French Canadians, posing his December 1764
rhetorical question: “Is it possible that we have abolished their laws, and
customs, and forms of judicature all at once? . . . The history of the world
don’t furnish an instance of so rash and unjust an act by any conqueror.”90
Those who disliked the British penal laws against the Catholics in England
were still unable to repeal them in the 1760s, even though the upper classes
were increasingly reluctant to enforce those laws in practice.91

88. Ibid., 214–15.
89. Ibid., 222–23.
90. Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 121.
91. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 173, 181.

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81

Another British colony, Grenada, temporarily reversed the growth of
toleration later in the eighteenth century. The Francophone planters in the
West Indies faced a struggle with Anglophone planters. By the end of the
1760s the Francophones were granted most of their demands, including the
right to have seats in the island’s new legislature. However, “those rights
were withdrawn in 1784 when anglicization of the colony began in earnest.”
The French Catholics lost their right to be members of Grenada’s assembly,
and the island’s Catholic churches were transferred either to Protestant
clergy or to the British crown. Even “all ‘popish emblems’—statues, altars,
etc.—were ordered put to flames.”92 The Grenada case shows that history
is rarely smooth or consistent, with many ebbs and detours.
Nevertheless, London’s elite by the end of the eighteenth century was
more and more drawn to toleration—emphasizing the elite, not the lower
classes. The kingdom’s first law giving limited relief for Catholics within
England triggered the country’s largest surge of mob violence in all of the
eighteenth century—the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780.93 England’s
executive and legislative branches under universal suffrage would have
crushed Murray’s tolerant policies. Fortunately for him, the very idea of
mass democracy would have been seen as bizarre in eighteenth-century
England’s political culture.
The Anglophone merchants disagreed with Murray on many topics,
not only the French Canadians’ rights. One of their key demands, an
elected legislature, was not unreasonable—echoing not only Whig slogans,
but also traditions venerated by almost all members of London’s House of
Commons. The crown-appointed governors in other British colonies in
North America, including Nova Scotia, already had to deal with elected
legislatures. Even Ireland had a parliament (its members being all Protestants). Without an elected assembly Quebec would continue to monopolize all government powers in the hands of one decision-maker. Both
Murray and his successor Guy Carleton were personally free of corruption,
but one shudders in imagining the temptations for Canada’s future executives without practical checks or balances.

92. Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 5, 7–8, 15 and Curtis Jacobs, “Revolutionary Priest: Pascal Mardel of Grenada,” Catholic Historical Review 104 (2015), 317–41,
here 321–24. On the other hand, one should recognize that English-speaking Grenada still
has a Roman Catholic majority after more than two centuries under British rule (1763–1974).
93. Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain, (Oxford, 1998),
152; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 204–44.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Nevertheless, the Anglophone merchants overplayed their hand. They
insisted on an ethnocracy, in order to monopolize the legislative and judicial institutions in their own hands and to maximize chances to transfer
real estate to themselves from the French Canadians.94 Neither Murray nor
the merchant lobby was ready to compromise. Eventually others found a
solution: an elected assembly with Catholics finally becoming voters and
legislators. But that compromise came only in 1791, the British Parliament’s Constitutional Act for Upper and Lower Canada.
Instead of concentrating on principles, such as taxation, the Anglophone
lobby launched a personal campaign against Murray. Generously using slander, they hoped that he would be fired. Their strategy partially worked.
The merchants in Quebec hired a London lawyer as their lobbyist.95
They accused Murray of a wide range of malpractices: arbitrarily billeting
troops, levying taxes,96 and detaining ships; allegedly obstructing a controversial trial97; issuing ordinances “calculated to serve private purposes.”98
Most of those charges were exaggerated or simply false, but like many systematic hatchet attacks over history, the campaign convinced the target’s
superiors to launch a formal investigation. The governor’s arrogant style
did not help himself.99 In April of 1766, Murray was ordered to London;
he boarded a ship in June. Nevertheless he continued to have his title as
Quebec’s governor while his superiors could consider his fate.100 Meanwhile, Quebec’s affairs were temporarily run by a lieutenant governor, not
full governor.101 Ultimately, an official committee in London concluded on
94. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 57.
95. Ibid.. 53. Also see Stanbridge, Toleration and State Institutions, 120.
96. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 72.
97. Ibid., 56.
98. One of the merchants’ accusations against Murray specifically was bolstering
Catholicism. See Browne, “Murray, James,” 576. Also see an undated petition from the merchants accusing “[t]his discountenancing the Protestant Religion by almost a Total Neglect
of Attendance upon the Service of the Church, leaving the Protestants to this Day destitute
of a place of Worship appropriated to themselves.” S&D, 234.
99. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 54: “A moderate view of his actions in 1764
described the governor as possessing ‘a rage and rudeness of language and demeanour, as dishonourable to the trust he holds of your Majesty as painful to those who suffer from it.’ Even
people Murray tried to help turned against him.”
100. Ibid., 73. “The governor’s critics had not triumphed or ensured that he returned
home in disgrace. . . . In these circumstances, bringing Murray home in the most protracted
manner possible, and without outward show of disgrace or demotion, appeared a sensible
compromise.”
101. Guy Carleton was later to become a hero in Canada’s history and a champion of
the French Canadians’ rights—strikingly continuing Murray’s policies.

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83

April 13, 1767 that the accusations against Murray were “groundless, scandalous and Derogatory to the Honor of the said Governor, who stood
before the Committee unimpeached.”102
However, Murray never returned to Canada; instead he resigned
from his governor’s post in 1768. Was his resignation perhaps part of an
unwritten pact? We simply do not know for sure; it is possible that his resignation was entirely voluntary. Two suggestive facts: His wife did not
want to live in Canada; London continued to trust him, further giving
him high posts and other honors.103 Almost always, he chose military life
rather than politics.104
Most important: London vindicated Murray’s key policies, including his
religious tolerance—so hated by the Anglophone merchants. Even during
Murray’s term, after his pioneering decisions, the crown’s legal officials produced a formal opinion in 1765 that Catholics in Canada under the 1763
treaty are not to be considered “to the incapacities, disabilities, and penalties,
102. Browne, “Murray, James,” 576–77. For more details, see Mahon, Life of General
the Hon. James Murray, 372, and Burt, Old Province of Quebec, 126: London’s Privy Council
explicitly vindicated Murray, as recorded in James Munro, ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England: Colonial Series, vol. 5 (London, 1912), 50–51.
103. Browne, “Murray, James,” 577–78; for example, Murray was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1772. See also Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, “Incorporating the King’s New
Subjects: Accommodation and Anti-Catholicism in the British Empire, 1763–1815,” Journal
of Religious History, 39, no. 2 (June 2015), 203–23, here 215–16: “Governor James Murray,
who had been appointed in part because of his experience governing Catholics in Canada,
took over the administration of Minorca in 1774 (the appointment provides further evidence
that the government was coming to think about governing Catholics in imperial terms).
While in Quebec Murray had been able to form alliances with French Canadian seigneurs
and churchmen, his relations with Minorcan leaders were confrontational and counterproductive. During his first years in office, he pleaded with London to institute widespread
reforms of the island’s legal and political structures. The time was obviously not right, however, for such changes, and Murray was forced to work with the status quo.”
104. In 1736, at the age of only 15, Murray enlisted as a cadet of the Scots Brigade for
the Netherlands—essentially a foreign legion fighting for the Dutch but cherishing its Scottish identity. See Mahon, Life of General the Hon. James Murray, 25–26. Then, in 1740, he
was commissioned as a lieutenant in London’s army, beginning his service as an active officer
in the British military almost continually until his retirement in 1783. His career’s sole nonmilitary interlude was his Quebec experience of being a civilian governor. During the 1776–
83 war, Murray’s duty was to defend Minorca, a key island in the western Mediterranean Sea
which the Royal Navy employed to annoy the French and Spanish fleets. A Franco-Spanish
force of 16,000 soldiers attacked Murray’s 2,000 troops; it took six months for the besiegers
to force his garrison to surrender. His valor earned him the proud title of “Old Minorca” for
the rest of his life. For more details see Browne, “Murray, James,” 577. Also see Mahon, Life
of General the Hon. James Murray, 338.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

to which Roman Catholicks in this Kingdom are subject.”105 The following
year, London sent formal “additional instructions” to Quebec backing
Murray’s judicial policies about Catholics as jurors.106 As a result, even if the
anti-Murray lobby won in the personal feud, they lost in the policy war.
Thanks to Murray’s steadfastness, the French Canadians triumphed.
Nevertheless, the most glorious breakthrough in the 1760s for Canadian Catholics was not any gubernatorial decree, despite their affection for
Murray. That breakthrough came on June 29, 1766, amid an explosion of
joy among all the layers of French society—including seigneurs, farmers,
trappers, hunters, traders, priests, and nuns. At dawn of that day all the
bells in the city of Quebec rang and people rushed outside, “congratulating
each other as they met in the street, and saying again and again, ‘It’s really
true, we have a bishop, God has had pity on us.’”107
On the previous evening Jean-Olivier Briand had disembarked from a
ship from England after an almost two-year trip. In 1764 Catholics had
remembered him as the city’s vicar general. In 1766, Quebecois could
finally celebrate his new status as their bishop. He and Murray had long
had excellent relations.108 The two men overcame London’s reluctance.
After six years without a bishop, most of their Catholic institutions could,
at last, enjoy normal operations.109
105. “Report of Atty. and Sol. Gen. re Status of Roman Catholic Subjects,” from
London’s Attorney General Fletcher Nortion (Baron Grantley) and Solicitor General
William De Grey, June 10, 1765, in S & D, 236.
106. All subjects in Canada were to be entitled as members of juries, both civil and
criminal, under a new ordinance passed on July 1, 1766, “to Alter and Amend Ordinance of
Sept. 17, 1764.” Ibid., 249.
107. Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 111.
108. Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 26. In 1760, “Briand began his association
with Murray and the English fearing, as the former Bishop Pontbriand [who had died in June
of 1760] had, the outrages of which this heretic army would be guilty. He soon changed his
mind. A kind of affectionate man himself, he soon observed and appreciated those qualities
in Murray. With his flock, he was prepared to thank God who had sent them not the horrors
that they heard of in devastated Germany, but a governor ‘moderate, just, humane, tender and
compassionate toward the poor and unfortunate.’” Murray wrote to Shelburne that a new
Roman Catholic bishop in Quebec was needed. He specifically recommended Briand, telling
London in Murray’s words that the vicar general had “in all circumstances acted with a Candour, Moderation, and a Delicacy. . . . None of his Gown in the Province [is] so justly deserving of the Royal Favour.” Pierre Tousignant and Madeleine Dionne-Tousignant, “Cramahé,
Hector Theophilus,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, 788, accessed March 5,
2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cramahe_hector_theophilus_4E.html.
109. The biggest exception was the male communities. The Sulpicians in Montreal
were revitalized only in 1794, receiving émigré priests fleeing Jacobin France; see Fournet,

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85

The 1766 breakthrough was radical in light of the Hanoverian
regime’s fundamental principles. The British Empire prided itself on being
the globe’s leading bastion of Protestantism. Its German-imported royal
family instinctively suspected anything pro-Rome or pro-Bourbon—as did
the parliament since 1689, and the simple “John Bull” commoner long
formed by stereotypes. The very idea of a Roman Catholic bishop in
British-ruled lands seemed to threaten England’s core identity. Even
worse, the vision of a French-speaking bishop in particular looked like
something from a Puritan’s nightmare.
At first, Murray had been ambivalent about a bishop, but at some point
later he decided that a bishop was indeed desirable. In 1764, Murray sent a
close aide to London as his own lobbyist for their policies including tolerance
for the Catholics.110 The aide, Hector Cramahé, emphasized the practical
advantages of granting a bishop. The two of them faced a delicate challenge.
Perhaps they might allow a Roman Catholic bishop in a British colony while
avoiding any formal recognition of the new post’s very existence.
Never forgetting the British Empire’s secular interests, Murray did not
want a bishop with close links to Paris. The two plausible nominees were
his friend and neighbor Briand in the city of Quebec and Etienne Montgolfier, the vicar general in Montreal. The first of the two was far more
attractive for Murray. Born from a peasant family in western France,
Briand was unassuming in his style. Montgolfier’s family was and is
famous with their old paper-manufacturing firm. (Especially famous are
the Montreal priest’s two nephews who invented the balloon.) Perhaps
even more importantly, he was head of the Canadian branch of the wellendowed, Paris-based Sulpicians, allied with France’s highest ranks.
Murray clearly mistrusted Montgolfier and vetoed his nomination.111
Pierre Auguste, “Society of Saint-Sulpice,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13, 379, accessed
March 5, 2014, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13378a.htm. The Jesuits recovered in
Canada only in the nineteenth century. During the first decades of British-ruled Quebec the
number of Recollet members gradually dwindled, having been forbidden like the Jesuits to
receive new brothers; their community died in Canada with the death of its last member in
1813. See Maurice Fleurent, “Demers, Louis,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online,
vol. 5, 245, accessed March 5, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=2363.
110. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 53. From a Huguenot family, Cramahé had spent
about two decades in the British military. With Murray he joined in the conquest of Quebec;
Murray then appointed him as the governor’s civil secretary.
111. See Lucien Lemieux, “Montgolfier, Étienne,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Online, vol. 4, 542–43, accessed March 5, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mont
golfier_etienne_4E.html; and also André Vachon, “Briand, Jean-Olivier,” Dictionary of

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Cramahé in a report to London’s Board of Trade in mid-1765 pointed
out that having a bishop would be
the means of having a Canadian clergy, a measure which sound policy
seems to dictate, and in time the other dominions ceded to Great Britain
may be furnished from hence with priests, which will be far more eligible
than suffering them to creep in from France or other countries.112

Trying to appease his fellow Protestants, Cramahé suggested that
Quebec’s new spiritual guide might minimize the visual splendor inherent
to Rome’s bishops but so offensive to London’s low-church sensibilities:
“perform the functions of his office decently without external pomp or
shew.” The readers of his report might have been even more reluctant if
they had known how much respect Murray had exhibited for the sensibilities of Quebec’s Catholics as soon as his troops occupied the city in
1759.113 Cramahé faced reality more deeply than many in the empire’s capital: In his words, “If these people cannot be won over by gentle means,
experience teaches, that compulsion or restrictions will only be apt to rivet
them in their ancient opinions.”
Murray’s aide found that George III’s cabinet was not yet ready to
endure the parliamentary outcry that would have erupted after any official
endorsement of a Roman Catholic bishop. Indeed the very word of
“bishop” in the context of Quebec was still unacceptable to some in
London. Instead, one proposal to the Board of Trade preferred the formula
of a “Person, so licenced to superintend the affairs of the Romish
Church.”114 Both Cramahé and Briand spent the entire year of 1765 in
London. The former recommended “all possible discretion and secrecy”115
for the latter. The two must have conducted some fascinating conversaCanadian Biography Online, vol. 4, 94, 97–98, and 102, accessed March 5, 2014,
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/briand_jean_olivier_4E.html. For more details see Neatby,
Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 109–10; also Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity,
99 and 106.
112. Lawson, The Imperial Challenge, 64. Lawson cites the Cramahé manuscript from
Ottawa’s National Archives, MG 23 | G2, AI, vol. 4, 4564–79, Library and Archives Canada.
113. See Mahon, Life of General the Hon. James Murray, 204: “he ordered due respect to
be paid to the religious processions which frequently appeared in the streets of Quebec. ‘Officers are to pay them the compliment of the hat, because it is a civility due to the people who
have chosen to live under the protection of our laws. Should this piece of ceremony be repugnant to the conscience of any one they [sic] must retire when the procession approaches.’”
114. Lawson cites that document in his The Imperial Challenge, 68–69. Even the pope
was ready to appoint a vicar apostolic rather than a normal diocesan bishop. See Lemieux,
Histoire du catholicisme québécois, 22.
115. Tousignant and Dionne-Tousignant, “Cramahé, Hector Theophilis,” 788.

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FIGURE 4. Bishop Jean-Olivier Briand (1715–1794). This image is from the
Archives de la Ville de Montréal with the kind permission of Mario Robert, Chef
de la Section des archives, Division de la gestion des documents et des archives et
de l’accès à l’information, Service du greffe, Ville de Montréal.

tions with key decision-makers in that city, but unfortunately for historians, the details available are quite vague.116
Clearly high officials assured Briand that he had tacit permission to be
consecrated in France, resulting in perhaps the most understated consecration of any French bishop during the Baroque era. The March 16, 1766
ceremony was in a lay family’s private house just west of Paris, without the
presence of the archbishop of Paris but with his permission. Emphatically
unlike the three French bishops who conducted the consecration, the new
Bishop Briand then went back to London and took an oath of loyalty to
the British crown.117
116. Doll, Revolution, Religion, and National Identity, 111: “. . . given the tenuous position
of the government’s policy, there was no chance that anything could be committed to paper.
The government could only give verbal assurances and close its eyes to any ensuring action.”
117. For more details see Vachon, “Briand, Jean-Olivier,” 99.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

Since Briand’s appointment avoided any written agreement in
London, the details depended on the governor’s good will. One official
under Governor Carleton later claimed that the bishop was violating
London’s oral understanding by wearing episcopal vestments and heading
public processions in Quebec. Briand disagreed, claiming that the authorities in London had instructed the governor to recognize him as Bishop of
Quebec.118 In any case, neither Murray nor Carleton protested Briand’s
behavior as a typical Catholic bishop; both governors cordially cooperated
with him.119
The personal bond between French-born Briand and Scottish-born
Murray probably felt quite natural, recalling the “auld alliance” with its
many medieval treaties between Edinburgh and Paris. Many Scottish aristocratic families were comfortable with the French language and with
French culture. In the 1760s, one of Murray’s brothers was still living in
France, having fled from England as a public supporter of the Jacobite
cause, with its many links to France.120 Tolerating Roman Catholics was
an old habit for that brand of Scot.
118. See Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 111.
119. See Hilda Neatby, The Quebec Act: Protest and Policy (Scarborough, Ontario,
1972), 139: “Bishop Briand dined at the Governor’s [Carleton’s] table, his authority was supported by the Governor, he dressed like a Bishop, he behaved like one—and he was treated
like one. . . . As for the government, he said, he had rather more freedom of action than he
would have had under France.” Even more strikingly, Briand enjoyed more freedom than the
typical Anglican bishop according to Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics, 31.
120. Alexander Murray, brother to James, was a key figure in a 1751–52 Jacobite plot
to kidnap George II. He fled to France and then publicly espoused the Stuart cause. For more
details see Sir Charles Petrie, “The Elibank Plot, 1752–3,” Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 14 (1931), 175–96, here 181–83. Alexander spent the next two decades living in
France, finally allowed to return to Britain in 1771. The very name of the “Elibank Plot” bore
the Murray family’s noble title; the family’s head (Alexander’s and James’ elder brother) was
Lord Elibank. Alexander even suggested assassinating the Hanover family. See Frank
McLynn, Charles Edward Stuart: A Tragedy in Many Acts, (London, 1988), 403-10. Horace
Walpole, the celebrated novelist and gossip, said that Alexander and Lord Elibank were “such
active Jacobites, that if the Pretender had succeeded, they could have produced many witnesses to testify their zeal for him; both so cautious, that no witnesses of actual treason could
be produced by the government against them.” Horace Walpole, Memoires of the last ten years
of the reign of George the Second, vol. 1, (London, 1822) 15. Also see Mahon, Life of General
the Hon. James Murray, 42–43. In 1745 “James himself at twenty-four years of age was probably neither more nor less romantic in the cause of Prince Charlie than were so many other
young Scotsmen of quality, but whatever his feelings were he kept them to himself. Family
tradition says that he was inclined at this period to place his sword at the Prince’s disposal. I
confess I am unable to find any confirmation of the story, nor any ground why the author of
the article in the Sussex Archaeological Journal should describe him as ‘Captain Hon. James
Murray, a suspected Jacobite.’”

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Was Murphy schooled by the eighteenth-century philosophes? Perhaps, but from the evidence available it may have been only through a
vague “climate of opinion,” almost certainly not from any deep study of
thinkers such as Voltaire or Diderot. Indeed, those two names do not
appear in any text by Murray in any primary source in print. The only full
book (not just an article) devoted entirely to Murray’s life mentions David
Hume, a fellow Scot, only once, as a good friend of Murray’s elder brother
Patrick, Lord Elibank.121 If in conversation the two brothers discussed
Hume’s thoughts, their words do not seem to have been captured in any
surviving document.122 The younger Murray never claimed to be a deep
thinker; his favorite speciality was in military affairs. We simply do not
know if Murray had philosophical motives for toleration.
Whatever inspired the Murray family, the governor’s breakthrough in
Quebec launched a momentum for Catholic emancipation back in the
British Isles. Once the Catholics in Quebec had received the most important rights, both religious and secular, fellow Catholics in the British
crown’s other lands inevitably intensified their own demands. It became
harder for the opponents to resist, although they managed to delay full
emancipation until the nineteenth century. During the 1770s, the parliaments in London and Dublin formally began to concede important rights.
The balances had changed after the 1760s.
A profound change in political culture, such as England’s slow waning
of anti-Catholic zealotry, usually cannot be seen as stemming from only
one cause. Often such causes are not directly political: for example, the
growing importance of the Grand Tour for young aristocratic Englishmen,
having the effect of introducing them with France’s and Italy’s Catholics
and their attractive Baroque cultures. The balance was already changing
121. Mahon, The Life of General the Hon. James Murray, 17–18. See also The Letters of
David Hume, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2011), 84–85.
122. Mahon’s words: “Possibly the years spent in Ireland opened [Murray’s] eyes to the
futility of forcing men to adopt a form of worship foreign to their instincts. Possibly in his
own early days he had heard something of the disasters brought about by the endeavour to
bring men to everlasting peace by the method of interminable war—perhaps it was merely
that he had seen many countries and had the breadth of view which men acquire when they
are brought in contact with all shades of thought.” Mahon, The Life of General the Hon. James
Murray, 284. Note Mahon’s use of the terms “possibly” and “perhaps.” Note also that Mahon
was a direct descendant of Murray, able to read family documents not available in public
archives. His words: “My thanks are especially due to Viscount Elibank, who generously
placed at my disposal a large number of family papers.” Mahon, The Life of General the Hon.
James Murray, v–vi.

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JAMES MURRAY: A FORGOTTEN CHAMPION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

inside one famous English writer’s mind in the mid-1760s: The internal
tensions in his influential book are palpable. He still insisted that those
loyal to the papacy could not be treated “upon the footing of good subjects”
under the British crown. On the other hand, however, he suggested that in
the future it might be possible to “review and soften” the kingdom’s antiCatholic laws. In his view,
it ought not to be left in the breast of every merciless bigot to drag down
the vengeance of these occasional laws upon inoffensive, though mistaken, subjects; in opposition to the lenient inclination of the civil magistrate, and to the destruction of every principle of toleration and religious liberty.123

A softening of the laws however would be conditional “when all fears of a
pretender shall have vanished, and the power and influence of the pope
shall become feeble, ridiculous, and despicable not only in England but in
every kingdom of Europe.” If one were literally to follow all the writer’s
conditions, one would have to continue the status of Catholics as secondclass citizens to this day. That relatively tolerant writer was Sir William
Blackstone; his Commentaries on the Laws of England appeared soon after
Murray’s actions in Quebec.
The threat of a Stuart “pretender” (the term used by the Hanoverian
regime) became significantly less serious in the late 1760s. After 1689
London’s last undisputedly legitimate king, James II, as well as his son, had
been forbidden to occupy the throne solely because they were Catholics.
The latter, James Francis Edward Stuart, never saw his native England
after his infancy and Scotland only for six weeks. Millions in Europe,
including many underground in Britain, recognized young James as King
James III after James II’s death in 1701. However, James III’s death in
1766 opened new possibilities. His own son Charles inherited the Stuart
family’s rights, and loyal Jacobites recognized him as King Charles III. The
pope, however, finally defected from their cause, declining to accord
Charles official recognition as King upon his father’s death.124 Charles
himself was also a defector of a sort, having abandoned his Catholicism.
Many Protestant Scots had fought and died for the Jacobite cause even
when the Stuart family’s head was a Catholic—but a religion has different
priorities than a nation’s.
123. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (Oxford, 1765–69),
4:4 [“Of Offences Against God and Religion”] (repr. [Philadelphia, 1893], vol. 2, 57).
124. Pope Clement XIII (r. 1758–69) recognized King George III after the death of
James III.

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91

With the pope formally recognizing George III as London’s king,
more and more British Catholics were ready to transfer their allegiance to
the Hanoverians. The Roman Catholic Mass in England began to include
a prayer for King George by name; in Quebec, a similar prayer in the Mass
had already appeared during Bishop Briand’s tenure even before the pope’s
defection from the Stuart cause.125 No longer did the Hanoverians have to
fear a Roman-Jacobite uprising. No longer could they automatically see the
Catholics as plotting rebels.
All of these developments together brought about a sea change in the
British Empire’s political culture. Although Murray’s achievement did not
automatically bring full emancipation in the nineteenth century,126 it
turned out to be a key turning point—perhaps even the turning point. All
key decisions after the 1760s expanded the sphere of the Catholics’ freedoms in Great Britain and Ireland, and they were never contracted—in
stark contrast to the first half of the eighteenth century. Murray’s methods
actually worked.
James Murray should not be seen as a “great man”—but among those
also rare, a good man. On balance he was a remarkable leader despite serious flaws. He was rash, short-tempered, and too ready to inflate quarrels—
but brave, honest, loyal, and kind.127 He should be remembered as a
humane imperialist.

125. Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, 165. On prayers for the
(Hanoverian) King in Québécois Masses, see Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 27.
126. Carleton or another successive governor easily could have reversed Murray’s policies. Carleton’s allies tried to codify those policies via a parliamentary act, but their opponents
managed to delay any such act until 1774. Even then there were repeated attempts to repeal
Carleton’s Quebec Act. High officials were still trying to Protestantize Quebec well into the
nineteenth century. For example, see Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics, 35. “Secret instructions accompanying the Quebec Act made it clear that Catholicism was to be tolerated only
temporarily. The original goal of the British government for Canada remained the establishment of English culture and the Church of England. . . . Correspondence by Canadien clergy
with Rome was forbidden, pastors were to be approved for a limited time only, and the government was to supervise the seminaries. Carleton sensibly overlooked these secret instructions.” For other anti-Catholic maneuvers, see Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 118–24.
127. See Neatby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 1760–1791, 44. “The Canadians first
met English rule in the person of this conscientious, lovable, impulsive, simple-hearted man;
they responded warmly to his unaffected kindness and concern for them.”

The Arabist and Explorer Alois Musil (1868–1944)
and His Unfulfilled Career as a Biblical Scholar
TOMáš PETRáčEK*
The Olomouc diocesan priest Alois Musil attained the greatest renown
among Czech Catholic experts in exegesis. His fame was, however, not
specifically in Biblical studies but in another related field, namely Near
Eastern languages and literature, also known as Oriental studies,
where he went on to become a significant figure. His initial interest,
however, lay in Biblical scholarship and source evidence exists to document the fact that he never really abandoned the idea of going back to
the Bible as a research scholar. The present article would like to focus on
Alois Musil as a Biblical scholar, introduce his ideas, and demonstrate
why he felt he had to abandon the sphere of exegesis and devote all his
energy to Oriental studies.
Keywords: Alois Musil, biblical scholarship, Oriental studies,
Modernism, Olomouc
Alois Musil1 and His Vocation as a Biblical Scholar
A native of Moravia (born June 30, 1868, in the village of Rychtařov,
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic), Alois Musil’s
*Dr. Petráček is professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Affairs in the
Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove in the Czech Republic; email:
tomas.petracek@uhk.cz.
1. Although an adequate contemporary critical biography is not yet available, the life
and work of Alois Musil has been dealt with in texts of varying scope and quality by an entire
range of authors: Ferdinand Menčík, Prof. Dr. Alois Musil, O jeho cestách, spisech a jejich významu (Olomouc, 1908); Ernst Bernleithner, “Musil Alois,” in: Österreichisches Biographisches
lexikon 1815–1950, Band VII (Vienna, 1978); Edvard Reich, Alois Musil. Selský synek
světoznámým cestovatelem (Prague, 1930); Jan Rypka, “Alois Musil, June 30th, 1868–June
30th, 1938,” Archív Orientální 15 (1938), 1–34; Georg Sauer, “Alois Musil´s Reisen nach
Arabien im ersten Weltkrieg. Ein Beitrag zu seinem Lebensbild aus Anlaß seines 100.
Geburtstages am 30. Juni 1968,” Archív Orientální 36 (1969), 243–263. Stanislav Segert,
“Alois Musil – Bible Scholar”, Archiv Orientální 63 (1995), 393–400; Josef Scharbert, “Musil
Alois,” in: Biographisch-Bibliographische Kirchenlexikon , Band VI (Herzberg, 1993), 383–93;
Alois Musil—český vědec světového jména ed. Rudolf Veselý (Prague, 1995); Alois Musil. Život
a dílo vynikajícího českého vědce a cestovatele. Katalog výstavy k 25. výročí úmrtí pořádané ve dnech

92

TOMÁŠ PeTráček

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childhood was marked by hard work on the family homestead. The basic
features of his character undoubtedly began to form at this time, these
being an indefatigable capacity for hard work and a steadfastness and
tenacity linked with a certain amount of coolness and personal detachment,
typical in his day, but in Musil’s case quite pronounced. Musil lived for his
work and remained permanently engaged in its undertaking. Despite the
doubts and opposition of his parents, he began attending grammar school
at the age of eleven where he initially experienced difficulties due to insufficient preparation in the previous school.
While at grammar school, the decision to enter seminary slowly
ripened in Musil’s mind. Although some might consider his choice of the
priesthood a calculated step which was to provide Musil, at the price of
much personal sacrifice, with a stable and well-provided-for existence
(along with support for his financially troubled family), a man of forthright
character and integrity such as Musil would have had difficult acting in
principle against his conscience. It should also be recalled that he faithfully
carried out the duties of the priesthood throughout his life (Figure 1). His
closest friends were clergy members and Musil never considered abandoning his vocation. He entered the Faculty of Theology in Olomouc in 1887
where Melichar Mlčoch, professor of Old Testament, awakened Musil’s
enthusiasm for Biblical scholarship.2 He embarked upon the study of
Hebrew and made, even prior to his ordination in the year 1891, considerable progress on the path towards his future career as a scholar.3
Despite Musil’s express wish to pursue his studies and obtain a doctoral degree, his church superiors sent him to the extremely demanding
environment of Moravská Ostrava where he served as associate pastor and
teacher of religious education. Despite the demands placed on him by his
superiors, Musil was able to pass all of his university examinations without
having to interrupt his studies and eventually completed his dissertation.
He was awarded a doctoral degree in sacred theology in June 1895. Following the publication of the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893),
18. března–20. dubna 1969 (Brno, 1969); Karl J. Bauer, Alois Musil—Wahrheitssucher in der
Wüste (Vienna–Cologne, 1989); and Erich Feigl, Musil von Arabien: Vorkämpfer der islamischen Welt (Berlin, 1988).
2. Professor Melichar Mlčoch (1833-1917) was professor of Biblical Studies of the Old
Testament at the Faculty of Theology in Olomouc over the years 1869–1900.
3. He wrote a report in Hebrew as early as 1891 about the Jubilee exhibition which took
place in Prague that same year, Miloš Drápal, “Vzpomínáme světoznámého vědce a cestovatele,” in: Alois Musil. Život a dílo vynikajícího českého vědce a cestovatele. Katalog výstavy k 25.
výročí úmrtí pořádané ve dnech 18. března–20. dubna 1969, 5–9.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

FIGURE 1. Alois Musil as a cleric, 1896, photograph taken by Atelier Wüst, in Olomouc, 1898, courtesy of the Musil family.

church authorities were made responsible for overseeing the development
of Biblical scholarship in their dioceses. The archbishop of Olomouc,
Theodor Kohn (1845–1915), consequently released Musil for two years in
1895 at his (Musil’s) own request from parish administration and granted
him a two-year scholarship to the Holy Land.
Musil immediately left for the École Biblique in Jerusalem4 and concluded his first academic year in 1895/1896 with the study of exegesis, the
geography of Palestine, and Oriental languages.5 He interrupted the

4. Czech students of the École biblique et archéologique française were studied in an
article by Tomáš Petráček, “École Biblique and its Influence on Czech Catholic Exegesis and
the Church,” Revue Biblique 118 (2011), 575–94.
5. See the register of students and professors entitled “Studium SSH,” in Archives of
École Biblique, Studium Sancti Stephani Hierosolymitani. Liber Examinum et Exercitorum
scolasticorum Anno 1890 ad Annum 1959), 17: “Dom. Aloysius Musil, archidioec. Olomucensis (Austria), exegeseos, geog. sac. et ling. orient. Studens.” Concerning the journey to
Jerusalem and the first reflections on his studies, see Menčík, Prof. Dr. Alois Musil, 6–7, 12.

TOMÁŠ PETRáčEk

95

second academic year after the first four months and left for good in 1897.
The school registry records simply indicate that Musil left the school.6
Musil’s departure definitely took place at some point between February
and March 1897.7 Also certain is the fact that the negative opinion Musil
had of the French Dominicans remained with him until the end of his life.
Even his friendship with the Czech Dominican Vincent Zapletal (1867–
1938) could do nothing to alter this negative attitude toward the French
Dominicans.8 The termination of Musil’s studies at École Biblique and the
serious clash with its founder and director Marie-Joseph Lagrange, OP
(1855–1938)9 have to this point remained an unclear chapter in Musil’s
life, but the consistory archives at the Olomouc Archbishopric were able to
shed light on this period (French letters to the Archbishop from Lagrange
and Czech letters from Musil). It has become clear that, more than anything else, the clash with M. J. Lagrange was merely the outcome of a misunderstanding, albeit a potentially dangerous one.10
On the basis of the preserved sources, it seems that the conflict came
about as a result of Musil’s failure to inform the archbishop of his intentions to leave École Biblique and move to the Jesuit University in Beirut.
When Lagrange eventually informed the archbishop of Musil’s departure,
the situation proved critical for Musil and could have easily put his entire
career in jeopardy. Musil immediately responded with an explanatory note
and thus avoided incurring the archbishop’s displeasure. Musil’s dissatisfaction with the level of teaching at École Biblique in its beginnings could
have also undoubtedly played a role, along with a definite tension between
the two strong personalities, which Lagrange and Musil most definitely
The first ten years are dealt with in the chronicle of the school:”Vers cette époque, commencement de mars, deux de nos élèves ecclésiastiques, M. Mussil et M. Léon, nous quittent,”
Chronique des premières années, in the Archives of the École Biblique, March 1897, fol. [46v].
6. Studium SSH, 17. “R. Dom. Aloysius Musil, . . . sed per quatuor menses tantum,
post quos proprio motu exivit.”
7. Chronique des premières années de l’ École biblique et archéologique française.
8. For a detailed critical biography, see Tomáš Petráček, Výklad Bible v době (anti)modernistické krize (Prague, 2006). A shortened version is available in French: Idem, Le Père
Vincent Zapletal O.P. (1867–1938). Portrait d´un exegète catholique [Studia Friburgensia—
Series historica, 6], (Fribourg, 2007). On the relationship of these two progressive Dominican
exegetes, see Tomáš Petráček,”C´est à l´université que l´avenir se prépare: M. J. Lagrange et
V. Zapletal et leur réflexion sur la mission de l´ordre dans la modernité,”Mémoire dominicaine.
Histoire—Documents—Vie dominicaine 25 (2010), 125–40.
9. See the excellent biography by Bernard Montagnes, Marie-Joseph Lagrange. Une
Biographie critique (Paris, 2004).
10. Archives of the consistory of the Olomouc Archbishopric, Czech Republic (ACO
Olomouc), Akta Dr. Aloise Musila 1895–1911, shelf mark D 12, cart. 2610 (8 November 1896).

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

were. The documentation preserved in the consistory archives of the Olomouc Archbishopric does indicate, however, that the reasons behind the
quarrel were not of an exegetical character, but instead concerned adherence to certain ecclesiastical regulations. It seems that Lagrange, as director
of the École and superior of the monastery, no longer wanted to assume
responsibility for the absent Musil. He also drew attention to the fact that
Musil had not announced his departure for Beirut in time to the archbishop in Olomouc.11 The archbishop did not immediately insist on
Musil’s return home, but did, however, stem the flow of financial support.
Musil was saved economically through the financial support of the Czech
Academy of Sciences, whose support was obtained thanks to influential
friends within academic circles.
Musil’s Brief and Controversial Career as a Professor of Exegesis
His departure from the École Biblique was the reason behind his studies
at another outstanding church institution of higher learning in the Near
East, the Jesuit University in Beirut, where he studied from 1897 to 1898.
Musil’s studies in the Near East amounted to three years in all and greatly
improved his knowledge of Semitic languages. While still a student at École
Biblique in September 1896, Musil undertook an independent expedition on
his own to explore farther parts of the regions where the events reported in
the Bible had taken place. The authors of the Holy Books were Semites, as
were their first readers, and they inhabited countries where the climate, way
of life, and mentality had remained basically unaltered for many centuries.
Musil had already begun to focus with great intensity on ethnographically
focused studies on the ways of life and mentality of the ancient nomadic
tribes. In doing so he sought to reach an improved understanding of the ideological world in which the Biblical authors would have found themselves.
His primary aim was a search for the roots of monotheism, for an
explanation as to why it was precisely this setting that gave rise to the three
significant monotheistic religions. From Beirut, Musil undertook further
independent research trips into the desert, where he attempted to track in
the footsteps of the Old Testament. These trips allowed him to reach an
acquaintance with life in the desert, while at the same time enabling him
to establish his first contacts with nomadic Bedouin tribes (Figure 2). As
11. The entirety of this dramatic moment in Musil’s life as a scholar and the further
development of his relations to M. J. Lagrange and the École Biblique is described, based on
unpublished documents, in Tomáš Petráček, “The Orientalist Alois Musil at École Biblique
and his argument with M. J. Lagrange OP,” Revue Biblique 122 (2015), 119–27.

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97

FIGURE 2. Alois Musil dressed as a Bedouin and sitting next to an unidentified
Bedouin, photograph taken probably ca. 1898 in Madaba by an unknown photographer, preserved in the Photoarchives of the Ecole biblique de Jerusalem, permission to reproduce granted by Jean Michel Tarragon of the Ecole biblique.

one of the few Europeans in the area at the time, he managed to penetrate
into still unknown places. He even socialized with sheiks of important
tribes who allowed him to travel safely in areas beyond the reach of the
official authorities of the weakening Ottoman Empire.
The breakthrough that secured Musil a leading position in the world
of Oriental studies occurred when desert tribes drew his attention to a forgotten monument, the Qusayr Amra complex, which Musil discovered in
the year 1898. There he found the remains of the caliph seat, the Umayyad
castle Qusayr Amra (from the time of caliph Walid II in the year 744) with
well-preserved, early Islamic art (with motifs of the ruler himself among
other things). Musil, who was initially unable to document the monument
due to certain dramatic events that forced him to leave,12 eventually
12. He was attacked along with his guides on his first visit and barely escaped alive,
having lost all of his documents, see Oldřich Klobas, Alois Musil zvan Músa ar Rueili (Brno,
2003), 25–27.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

returned there in 1900 and was able to document the extraordinary discovery and silence his sceptics. He published the work Kusejr Amra I–II in
1907 that dealt definitively with the knowledge and events surrounding the
discovery.13 In the year 1898, he obtained not only the respect and admiration of the specialized public, but also of the official circles of the AustroHungarian monarchy, whose attention was strongly drawn towards the
area of the world in which Musil’s interest lay.
Musil’s talent in the sphere of Oriental studies, his skill in drawing
maps and other support materials useful for the state authorities protected
him to a certain extent from the displeasure of church authorities, whom
he had annoyed through the manner in which he had left the École
Biblique and by his generally self-confident behaviour and independent
character. After his return to the Czech Lands in 1898, he was appointed
teacher of religious education at the natural sciences secondary school in
Olomouc. He taught there from 1898 to 1899 before being allowed by the
Olomouc archbishop to devote himself to ambitious expeditions across the
Orient. He consequently spent time (July to December 1899) in England
carrying out research at the libraries in London and Cambridge, as well as
in the collections of the British Museum, and later in Berlin. When he
returned to Europe in 1901 following another expedition, he faced the
daunting task of having to process an enormous amount of new information and material, and his reputation as a remarkable traveller and scholar
in Oriental studies was further strengthened.
In church circles, however, he was considered, first and foremost, a
young and promising Biblical scholar. He was consequently appointed substitute instructor of exegesis of the Old Testament at the Faculty of Theology of Olomouc University in October 1901. He was promoted to the position of associate professor as early as April 1902 and then to full professor
in December 1904. Due to the fact that he had once upset certain members
of the teaching staff by, in their opinion, inappropriately celebrating his
graduation,14 and due to envy and the suspicion that his ideas were not quite
orthodox, Musil was not welcomed with much enthusiasm by his new colleagues at the Faculty of Theology. Prior to undertaking his appointment at
the Faculty, he had to submit to an interview with Archbishop Kohn and
explain in detail how he planned to approach the teaching of exegesis.
Thanks to his merits, his undeniable abilities, and the interest of Vienna cir13. Musil, Kusejr´ Amra I–II. (Vienna, 1907).
14. The incident, whereby the ambitious Musil reacted irritably to the congratulations,
is described by Reich, Alois Musil, 61.

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99

cles in his career, Musil was able to overcome all these obstacles.15 His work
in Oriental studies was not only appreciated by the academic community
and by the Austrian authorities, but in the year 1908 the high church award
of papal prelate was bestowed on him by the Church, granting him the right
to bear the proud title of Monsignor before his name. The new Archbishop
František Bauer (1845–1915, archbishop from 1904) also had greater
understanding and sympathy for Musil and his research.
The response to his lectures in the field of Old Testament exegetics
reveals Musil as both a demanding and engaging lecturer. He exhibited a
perfect mastery of his subject and was not afraid to acquaint the students,
future Catholic priests, with the latest insights into Biblical studies, and
encouraged his students to pursue their own independent work. His career
was short, however, and frequently interrupted by further expeditions and
trips to Vienna, where he provided expert consultations on a variety of
issues concerning the Orient, an activity that prevented him from developing a broader range of pedagogical activities.16 The atmosphere within
Catholic Bible studies also underwent a rapid transformation. His work
with students, nevertheless, brought him satisfaction and left him with
fond memories.17 Even in that relatively short period, he managed to make
such an impression on students that many of them would later in their
careers as priests and scholars speak very highly of Musil.
A valuable testament to his view on the role of Catholic exegetics is
provided in “the Biblical university extensions,” this being Musil’s university lectures reworked for a wider public and published in the year 1905.18
In the introduction to the book Od stvoření do potopy (From the Creation to
the Flood), he declares that at the moment no other field of theology is
being paid more attention to than Biblical studies and that no other is as

15. As early as 1908 the publication in his praise by Menčík, Prof. Dr. Alois Musil, was
printed, which presents a summary of his life and of his discoveries.
16. Archbishop Bauer was willing to grant him long-term holidays, during the course
of which he had the opportunity to carry out intense research in Viennese libraries and collections and process the results of his own field research, Menčík, Prof. Dr. Alois Musil, 42.
17. See also the letter by Musil to his successor Jan Hejčl from Sept. 1909: “Přeji vám
. . . abyste byl v Olomouci spokojen a kněžský dorost ke hlubšímu studiu, jakož i samostatné
vědecké práci naváděl. Tak dobrého a nadaného posluchačstva nenajdete na žádné bohoslovecké fakultě v Rakousku.” [“I hope you. . . , will be content in Olomouc and lead young
future priests to a deeper study as well as to independent academic work. It would be difficult
to find students of such calibre at any faculty of theology in Austria”], edited by František
Novák, in: Jan Nepomuk Hejčl (Prague, 1999), 19.
18. Alois Musil, Od stvoření do potopy. Biblické univerzitní extenze (Prague, 1905).

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

extensive and well linked with a number of other secular scholarly disciplines. Musil further emphasizes the fact that knowledge of the Orient had
increased manifoldly around the turn of the century, with new sources
coming to light. Religious studies and ethnography had come to understand the ancient customs of cultures untouched by civilization with a parallel rapid increase in the knowledge of natural sciences: “Thus a great
many new pieces of knowledge are gradually accumulated, hidden to previous interpreters with the result that they took no notice of them in their
expeditions. Biblical scholars at present are now faced with an enormous
task involving classifying this new knowledge. There is a need to establish
that which is a clear and proven truth, that which is a probable assumption,
and that which is an erratic boulder and mere false assertion.”19
It is an extremely demanding task to distinguish clearly between the
flood of modern theories, since many are far from sound and a number of
scholars seem to succumb to the urge for praise and applause which can
easily compromise one’s research. Musil, however, rejected the stance of
“too conservative,” i.e., the stance of those who “are not willing to admit
that a lively interpretation of the Holy Scripture may, or rather has to,
manifest lively, life-conditioned progress.” The exposition of the Church
Fathers represented progress in comparison to the exposition of the synagogue. The Catholic Church “always and everywhere assists true progress.”
Biblical studies are an academic discipline and should therefore be cultivated as such. A scholar should acquire “critical scholarship,” that is
research “about the original text of the Scripture, about the manner in
which that particular holy author wrote, about the sources he used, about
the relationship of the Holy Scripture to other works of literature, etc.”
That which is “presented in a folk-like manner” in the Holy Scripture must
also be “interpreted in a folk-like manner, in other words, alongside the
opinions of the time the holy author lived in.” Since there are only “very
few places indeed” which have been explained “with certainty and finality”
by the Church, the Catholic exegete has a wide field where he can benefit
the Church with his acumen.20
Let us investigate how Musil formulates his teaching on inspiration.
All of the Scriptures and every single word there is inspired: “Zealous
through the Holy Spirit and making use of both his education and the
scholarly views of his time, the holy author could not and was not allowed

19. Ibid., 7–9.
20. Ibid., 8, 10, 14.

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101

to write any intentional untruth, he could not therefore err consciously.” He
quotes St. Augustine in that the Spirit speaking through “holy authors did
not want to teach the human race natural sciences, because they do not assist
in any way the salvation (of the soul).” St. Augustine’s statement concerning the natural sciences is repeated by St. Jerome in the context of historical
scholarship: “Much is being said in the Scriptures alongside the conjectures of
those times in which it happened and not based upon truth itself.” How
many objections would the Scripture have been spared had all the interpreters always taken notice of that extremely important principle of St.
Jerome?21 Musil concludes with an encouraging confession: “Let us not
castigate others (. . . ), let us bear in mind the words of St. Augustine: ‘The
primary duty is to have strong faith in the truth (religious) of the Scripture.
Another duty is for everyone to acknowledge that the Holy Scriptures may
be interpreted in a variety of ways.’” Hence such interpretations, which will
certainly be declared false through scholarship, should not be persisted in.
“By doing so, the Holy Scripture would be held up to ridicule by nonbelievers and their path to faith would thus be delayed.”22
He explains numerous parallels with the narratives of the Bible, e.g.,
about the flood which shares a common origin and from whence varieties
of the same stories have arisen. “The more closely we study the very ancient,
pre-Christian literary documents, the more we can observe obvious agreement in the narratives concerning the beginnings of humanity. (. . .) Precisely these narratives are then of one and the same origin, just as all people
having come from one and the same Father. They have spread all over the
world along with the human race. (. . .) But whereas with the pagans it fell
apart to form myths, it has been preserved by God’s dispensation inviolate
with the chosen people.” Musil also adopts a clear standpoint as to the
theory of the sources of the Pentateuch. The Biblical scholar acknowledges
that when there are numerous narratives drawn upon by authors of the Holy
Scriptures, be they oral or written sources, neither the inspiration nor the
reliability of the Scripture suffers. He briefly introduces the theory and its
four principal sources, with his judgement as follows: “Numerous marks of
the differences of the sources hold a great deal of truth. They are, however,
of a subordinate significance and do not represent a sound foundation. In
addition, the Book of Genesis has been rewritten so many times since the
days of Moses that obsolete expressions have been necessarily replaced by
21. Ibid., 15. Spacing by Musil. But they safely qualify themselves even against tradition: “The Holy Fathers consequently explain the flood in accordance with the scientific
knowledge of their time, they act therefore as private teachers, not as witnesses of faith.”
22. Ibid., 24–30.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

newer ones and a number of sentences have been more clearly expressed.
Consequently, the quality of style in the various sources has been to a large
extent erased.” The sources may then be admitted, but their precise number
can only be stated with difficulty and it is extremely hard to identify them
faithfully in the text.23
On the basis of his experience with the desert Semitic tribes, Musil
demonstrates differences in terms of the concept of truth. For the Semitic
desert population, the narratives handed down from generation to generation were of the utmost importance as they were seen to link one’s forefathers with the living tradition. They were viewed as being truthful without
too great a concern for the historical basis or the facts surrounding the narratives. “You may be right, but they (the forefathers) are certainly right,
precisely because they lived with it (. . .), it may have happened, it may not
have happened. Yet, our father did not tell us about it, why then should we
pretend to be cleverer than they were?”24 The important aspect is how the
story enriches the life of the community; its message and truth lies therein.
In a number of places and also in his brief booklet for a wider public,
Musil makes use of the iconography not only of Palestine but also of
ancient Oriental material in general to explain the Biblical texts. Musil had
become familiar with images on coins, on relief wall decorations, pottery
tablets and through these images came to an increased understanding of
Biblical narratives, parables, and symbols.25 Musil should have entered the
history of Catholic Biblical scholarship for merely developing and employing this method. This did not happen, however, due to transformations in
Catholic exegetics after the year 1907 when the (anti-) modernist crisis
within the Church came to the forefront. Further projects were abandoned
for the same reasons, including the founding of a specialized Czech journal
of Biblical studies, preparations for a series of Czech commentaries on the
books of the Bible, and additional plans that Musil was to take part in,
along with other Czech Bible scholars.
It is a well-known fact that conditions changed radically upon the
ascension of the new Pope Pius X in the year 1903 after the dynamic development of progressive Biblical scholarship, thanks to the support of Pope
Leo XIII. The newly established Pontifical Biblical Commission rapidly
changed its character, and instead of supporting the development of
23. Ibid., 63, 104, 158–159.
24. Ibid., 121.
25. Ibid., 78, 169, 164, 161.

Tomáš PeTráček

103

Catholic scholarly exegesis, it became an organ which, through its various
decrees introduced extremely conservative positions.26 These became very
difficult to maintain in light of the current intellectual state, as Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, stated.27 The situation grew
even worse after the year 1907, when a number of Catholic Biblical scholars could no longer continue with scholarly work in the area of the Old
Testament due to the atmosphere of (anti-)modernist hysteria. Lagrange
himself could not publish his commentary on the Book of Genesis and had
to shift to the study of the New Testament.28 The most renowned German
Jesuit Biblical scholar Franz Hummelauer (1842–1914) had to abandon
academia for pastoral work.29 Professor Zapletal in Fribourg moved away
from publishing scholarly work after the year 1907, and instead focused on
writing novels on Biblical motifs.30 It can generally be said that the conditions for scholarly exegesis became extremely problematic in the Catholic
Church up to the publishing of the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu
(1943).31 Those Catholic Biblical scholars who were unwilling to accept
the conservative approach to exegesis were either forced to focus on, for
example, translations of the Bible into national languages or technical and
less problematic disciplines such as archaeology or topography or completely move into the area of Oriental studies as a related discipline, and at
the same time “a safe area of study” from the perspective of the Church.
Musil’s Final Shift to Oriental Studies
Alois Musil was one of the last publishing progressive Catholic Bible
scholars of the Lagrange type. He contributed once again to the dis26. Albert Vanhoe, “Passé et présent de la Commission biblique,” Gregorianum 74
(1993), 261–75.
27. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “On the 100th Anniversary of the Biblical Commission: The Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes,” Theology Digest 51 (Spring,
2004), 3–8.
28. Montagnes, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, 203–50.
29. For more details, see Peter Steinig, “Theologie im Zeitalter der wissenschaftliche
Autonomie. Das systematische Anliegen des Exegeten Franz von Hummelauer SJ (1842–
1914),” in: Aufbruch ins 20. Jahrhundert. Zum Streit um Reformkatholizismus und Modernismus,
ed. Georg Schwaiger (Gottingen, 1976), 42–55; Jean Stengers, “Un grand méconnu dans
l’histoire de la liberation de la pensée catholique: Hummelauer,” in: Hommages à Jean Hadot,
ed. Guy Cambier, [Problèmes d’histoire du christianisme, 9], (Bruxelles, 1980), 163–88.
30. Petráček, Le Père Vincent Zapletal O.P, 118–25.
31. Raymond E. Brown, “Rome and the Freedom of Catholic Biblical Studies,” in:
Search Scriptures. New Testament Studies in Honour of Raymond T. Stamm, eds. Raymond T.
Stamm, Jacob M. Myers, and Otto Reimherr [Gettysburg Theological Studies 3] (Leiden,
1969), 129–50.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

course within Biblical studies in the Czech Church in the year 1906 by
publishing a booklet containing his lecture from an academic course
organized by the Society of Catholic teachers in Olomouc. Musil
explained there how to respond to various kinds of awkward questions
and how to explain certain issues to students. It was published in print
along with corrections to a manual on Scripture history and testifies to
Musil’s interest in a correct interpretation of the Bible.32 Certain more
controversial points are contained in his “errata” which accompanied the
current textbook of the day.33 Musil refuted from the very beginning the
idea that the Bible would in any way indicate the age of the human race.
Moreover, such a claim is actually in contradiction with historical truth.
The chronology and time references in the Bible are of a specific nature
and nothing can be gained by naively adding up figures. The flood must
not be substituted for the Diluvium geological period. Musil is also of the
opinion that it should not be presumed to have included the whole
world.34 Musil even used his dry sense of irony to comment occasionally
on certain pious conjectures concerning Scriptural history, for example,
the idea that one’s skin would peel off entirely after bathing in the Dead
Sea: “I used to swim at various places in the Dead Sea, but the water
never actually went through my skin.”35
In spite of Musil’s approach to the exegesis of the Bible, more conservative in comparison with Zapletal, for example, Musil could not avoid
further difficulties with church authorities, even in relation to the new
Archbishop Bauer, who otherwise wished him well. His booklet and his
lectures were used in order to accuse him not only of not believing in miracles, but of even denying them, of explaining various events of the Old
Testament through natural processes, and of introducing novelties “in articulis fidei.” Initially, several colleagues from the Theological Faculty in
Olomouc stood up against Musil and pushed for Archbishop Bauer to
make the strong suggestion that Musil be forced to stop publishing his
Biblical studies for the general public in the magazines Hlídka (Guard) and
Čas (Time). Musil consequently stopped publishing new texts on Biblical
scholarship after the year 1906.36
32. Alois Musil,, Po stopách Starého zákona. Věcné poznámky k učebnici dějin Starého
zákona (Olomouc, 1906).
33. Dějepis Zjevení Božího ve Starém Zákoně pro III. třídu gymnasií a škol reálných, written by Jan Ev. Hulakovský, the 3rd new edition adapted by František Koželuh (Prague, 1901).
34. Musil, Po stopách Starého zákona, 28–29.
35. Ibid., 32–35.
36. For more detail and documentation, see Reich, Alois Musil, 66–68.

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105

His personal enemies, as well as various opponents to progressive exegesis, continued with their attack. Further denunciations of Musil’s novel
and progressive approaches to the study of the Bible found their way to his
archbishop in the year 1906. He was reprimanded soon after by Archbishop Bauer for not being more careful and creating consternation
amongst believers with his lectures and with his popular talks for the general public. Musil protested that the denunciations had intentionally distorted and falsified the content of his lectures, which he had documented
in writing and which he claimed would serve as a defence in a public and
legal procedure. The archbishop forbad, however, this approach to solving
the disagreement. In the meantime, disputes arose in the Czech press
where the conservative Catholic press, for example the newspaper Našinec
(One of Us), published articles such as “Musil the Non-believer” or “Musil
the Heathen.”37 Musil made an effort to maintain perspective and focus his
energy on his own research. The lack of support, however, from the side of
Archbishop Bauer and the lack of support for his concept of Biblical exegesis of the Old Testament from the side of his colleagues at the Theological Faculty in Olomouc served to discourage his willingness to continue to
work in the area of Biblical scholarship, in particular in light of the fact that
he had been highly recognized by both the Church and State at the time
for his research in the area of Arab and Oriental studies.38
The evaluation requested by Archbishop Bauer, written by the canon
Dr. Josef Pospíšil (1845–1926) in the year 1906, confirmed that Musil’s
texts involving Biblical scholarship did not contain anything problematic
from the perspective of the Catholic faith.39 These disputes and denunciations, nevertheless, refused to disappear, and Musil continued to be
labelled as a suspicious, problematic exegete. Such attacks, in combination
with the atmosphere in the Church in general, and concerning specifically
exegesis of the Bible, in all probability led Musil to abandon exegetics altogether and devote himself fully to his research in Oriental studies. This is
explained by Musil in a letter to Zapletal from the year 1928 which is
quoted from in the conclusion, and Musil shared a similar fate with a
number of other progressive Catholic Biblical scholars of the day. His
statement from the previous year must have sounded bitter within this context: “How beautiful the principles of the Catholic Church are in the
manner they consider the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament! I have
37. This conflict is described in detail by Klobas, Alois Musil, 47–48.
38. See Rypka, “Alois Musil,” 16
39. The archives of the consistory of the Olomouc Archbishopric, Czech Republic
(ACO Olomouc), Akta Dr. Aloise Musila 1895–1911, shelf mark D 12, cart. 2610

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

come to know many different churches, many scholars, but I have to admit
that none provides so much genuine freedom of research as the Catholic
Church. Other Churches either suffocate any individuality or provide
unlimited freedom. The first attitude often kills the human spirit, while in
the other, the spirit often kills itself. Our Church allows independence but
protects against accidents. This is where I perceive genuine freedom.”40
An attempt was actually made to bring Musil to the Faculty of Theology at the Charles University in Prague in the year 1907. Despite interest
on the part of influential personalities, the move did not take place. It was
also the result of certain political interests on the part of the Austrian
monarchy wherein influential circles did not want to allow a talent such as
Musil to lie idle or have excessive teaching duties imposed upon. They
therefore prepared and established for him the position of Professor of Auxiliary Bible Studies and Arabic in the Faculty of Theology of the University
in Vienna. Musil began teaching there in the year 1909 (Figure 3). From
amongst a number of additional journeys, his expedition to the territories of
ancient Mesopotamia in 1912, accompanied by Prince Sixtus of BourbonParma, should not be omitted. Musil viewed the journey, first and foremost,
as an opportunity to visit a region which he had never seen previously.
During the journey, however, he grew personally close to the Prince and on
one dramatic occasion even saved his life. The Prince introduced Musil to
the court of Archduke Karl and his wife Zita, the sister of Prince Sixtus. He
became a close friend of this part of the ruling dynasty and speculations even
exist as to his role as the confessor of the future Empress Zita.41
The Austrian government also intended to make use of Musil’s unique
knowledge, abilities and contacts both before and during the First World
War. Turkey had become an ally of the Central Powers and needed peace
in its southern territories where dissatisfied Bedouin tribes, assisted by the
British government, threatened to undertake an uprising and violent struggle against Ottoman rule. Musil was supposed to try and prevent the threat
in several locations and thus represented the Austrian reaction to the activities of the renowned Lawrence of Arabia.42 Although he, as a Czech
40. Musil, Po stopách Starého zákona, 22.
41. Concerning his contacts at the court and in military circles, primarily focused on his
activities in cartography, see Bernleithner, “Ein Gelehrter im Priesterrrock,” 10–16 and Udo
Worschech, Alois Musil. Ein Orientalist und Priester in geheimer Mission in Arabien 1914–
1915 (Kamen, 2009).
42. See Theodore Procházka, “Alois Musil vs. T. E. Lawrence?” Archiv Orientální, 63
(1995), 435–39. And Udo Worschech, “Alois Musil als Vermittler zwischen den arabischen
Stämmen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Archiv Orientální, 75 (2007), 1–16.

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107

FIGURE 3. Alois Musil as a professor, 1928, photograph taken by Frantisek Drtikol,
in Prague, courtesy of the Musil family.

Catholic priest, attained the second highest military rank in the monarchy
(field marshal of the second degree. (Figure 4), his possibilities in this
sphere were very restricted due to the previous faulty policies of the Turkish elites and due to considerably limited financial resources. He was
unable to prevent the uprising of the tribes.
His contacts with members of the Habsburg dynasty brought him
troubles in Vienna and in Prague immediately after the war, troubles which
could have dealt a fatal blow to Musil’s future career, despite the
unfounded nature of the accusations. Musil neither abused the support of
the court for his personal aims nor was he a fanatical monarchist. In all
probability he took part in the secret plan of Archduke Karl to conclude a
separate peace, and he also used his high military rank and prestige to bring
about an amnesty for Czech politicians sentenced to death, as well as for
the mutinying sailors in Boka Kotorska.43 He adopted citizenship of the
Czechoslovak Republic after the breakdown of the monarchy.
43. On the uprising of sailors of the Austro-Hungarian military fleet in Kotor (today
Montenegro) on February 1–3, 1918, see Rypka, “Alois Musil,” 25.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

FIGURE 4. Alois Musil as a highly decorated officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1917, photograph taken in Vienna, courtesy of the Musil family.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the president of the new country, was actually engaged in this issue after his return to the Czech Lands. Musil was
consequently appointed to the position of Professor of Auxiliary Oriental
Studies and Modern Arabic Language in the Arts Faculty of the Charles
University in January 1920.44 Soon other initiatives followed, such as the
founding of the Institute of Oriental Studies in the year 192745 and its
journal Archiv orientální. Musil, as an esteemed expert and influential
intercessor, would also play a prominent role in establishing political, cultural, and economic links between Czechoslovakia and the Near East. His
interest in the Orient of the day influenced Czech literary production and
aroused the interest of the Czech economic and political elite in the region.
Within the atmosphere of the beginnings of the new country with the
religious turmoil characteristic for the times, Musil had an ideal opportu44. The grateful Musil dedicated to him the publication, The Manners and Customs of
Rwala Bedouins (New York, 1928).
45. See Jiří Bečka, “Alois Musil und die Gründung des Orientalischen Institutes in
Prag,” Archiv Orientální, 63 (1995), 431–34.

TOMáš PETRáčEk

109

nity to either change creeds or allow himself to be laicized, as was the case
with more than two hundred priests of the day. Musil, however, was not a
man of half-hearted faith, although it may have seemed so at first sight,
being a man who was not particularly fond of large gestures or ostentatious
displays of devotion. His ability to obtain the respect, esteem, and friendship of the Bedouins was not merely a result of his capacity to adopt their
life-style and values, but was also a result of his own deep faith.46 Moreover, the faith of the Bedouins, as experienced and described by Musil, is
a fairly basic type of monotheism, devoid of all dogmatic constructions or
moral codes, burdened neither with tradition nor with a sense of selfdefining in relation to Christians.47 On the basis of his studies and
research, Musil confirmed the celebrated thesis of another Catholic priest
from the Austrian monarchy, the ethnographer and religious scholar Wilhelm Schmidt, concerning early monotheism (Urmonotheismus) which
dominated the beginnings of human history and was only later transformed into many of the other forms of religious concepts.48
Thanks to Masaryk and his American contacts, Musil began to publish
his new works in English in the United States. At the age of almost sixty,
he learned to write in English and spent three long stays there in the 1920s.
The American Geographical Society in New York helped him gradually
publish a series of his pioneering works which gained him worldwide
renown and a number of international prizes and awards.49 His most
acclaimed work was in all probability The Manners and Customs of the Rwala
Bedouins from the year 1928. As was already mentioned, Musil made an indepth study of the Semitic desert tribes and their style of life. He was convinced that it differed very little from the arrangement of the oldest forms
of society described in the Old Testament. His socio-ethnographic study of
the lives of the Bedouin tribes consequently helped in reaching an understanding of and interpreting a number of passages in the Old Testament.
This was a way for Musil to continue to contribute in a scholarly fashion to
the interpretation of the Bible. Musil finally retired in the year 1936 and
46. Musil’s personal faith as the ground on which he was able to understand and gain
insight into the world and mentality of the Bedouins is also considered by Segert, “Alois
Musil,” 399.
47. See Luboš Kropáček, “Alois Musil on Islam,” Archiv Orientální, 63 (1995), 401–
09, esp. 403.
48. Compare with Werner Petermann, Die Geschichte der Ethnologie (Wuppertal,
2004), 599–602.
49. In the USA, he published the series Oriental Explorations and Studies (six volumes
in all: The Northern Hegaz, 1926; Arabia Deserta, 1927; The Middle Euphrates, 1928; Palmyrena, 1928; Northern Negd, 1928; and The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins, 1928).

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

spent the remainder of his days in his beloved countryside, even leaving
behind a large number of articles and studies concerning agriculture as well.
Musil’s Dreams about a Return to Biblical Studies
Musil never completely forgot Biblical studies. In his works of an
ethnographic, topographical, and historical character, he makes use of his
own observations in a number of places to explain Biblical stories—for
example, a case involving tension between certain nomads and the sedentary population, or the slingshot method among Bedouin boys. He was
concerned with localizing significant places in the tradition of the Old
Testament—e.g., pointing out the burial site of the prophet Ezekiel, or the
region where the Book of Job took place. His lifelong goal, for which he
was equipped like no other person, was the search for the path along which
the chosen people wandered from Egypt to the Promised Land. There too
he contributed a number of observations during the 1920s and 1930s.50
In his letter to Zapletal from November 1928, he expressed regret that
his latest books no longer dealt with Biblical studies to such an extent and
he revealed his true feelings: “I know how hard it is for you to work when
you have to call for approval from people who cannot see beyond their own
noses. You understand why I have not approached Biblical studies since
1906, although my love for antiquity draws me to it. I am free at the Arts
Faculty. I could lecture on selected chapters from the Bible. The students
are actually interested in precisely that material and they could publish my
lectures on their own. I can, perhaps, reach that point in a few years, naturally on the condition that the Lord God grants me health.”51 Time,
energy, and the unchanged situation within Catholic Biblical studies did
not allow it in the end, as can be deduced from another of his remarks in
which he explained why he gave up on the idea of lectures on religious
topics: “For some I would be a religious fanatic, for others a heretic.”52
Late in his life, after his retirement, he was finally able to return to his
first love, the search for the roots of monotheism. He first published a book
50. An investigation of the places where Musil deals with Biblical motifs in his works
published in English in the 1920s was presented by Segert, “Alois Musil,” 397.
51. Private Archives of the Albertinum/Fribourg (Switzerland), Fund Zapletal, letter
of Musil to Zapletal, November 28, 1928.
52. Pavel Martinásek,”Alois Musil ve vzpomínkách,” in: Alois Musil. Život a dílo vynikajícího českého vědce a cestovatele. Katalog výstavy k 25. výročí úmrtí pořádané ve dnech 18.
března–20. dubna 1969 (Brno, 1969), 17–21.

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111

FIGURE 5. Alois Musil dressed as a Monsignor, 1943, photograph taken in Otryby,
courtesy of the Musil family.

about the Christian churches of the East where he devoted a great deal of
space to the neglected subject of certain small churches which often have
extremely ancient roots.53 His extensive treatment of Islam remained in
manuscript as, under the conditions of the Nazi protectorate’s censorship,
it could not be published. Upon nearing death in 1944 (April 12, at Otryby
in the Czech Republic), speculation arose about his conversion to Islam.
The Czech Muslim community denied it immediately. Equally unfounded
are the speculations by Ernest Gellner concerning some form of supradenominational monotheism practised by Alois Musil.54 His experience,
his life with Muslims, and his sharp intellect undoubtedly convinced him
of the fallacy of various prejudices and naive superficial religious convictions. Musil, however, lived and died a Catholic priest and was buried as
such with the appropriate Church rites (Figure 5).
53. Alois Musil, Křesťanské církve nynějšího Orientu (Olomouc, 1939).
54. On both topics, see Kropáček, “Alois Musil on Islam,” 401.

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THE ARABIST AND EXPLORER ALOIS MUSIL

Conclusion
The Arabist, Orientalist, explorer, and Czech Catholic priest Alois
Musil (1868–1944) ranks among the greatest figures in Oriental Studies.
He originally began his career as a Biblical scholar, and Biblical exegetics
remained his primary and fundamental field of expertise. Changes at the
time in Catholic exegetics brought about by the pontificate of Pius X
forced him to concentrate on a different and less dangerous field of study,
represented specifically by Oriental studies. As he explained to his friend
and colleague Father Zapletal: “We both look at life and at our vocation as
priests quite differently than we did some thirty years ago. We work
because in work we seek out the meaning of life and the necessary basis for
happiness in our lives. Do not forget that I am an honest priest and as such
have a difficult position not only at home but also abroad.”55 The present
study provides a portrait of Musil as a progressive Catholic Biblical scholar
during the turbulent period of the modernist crisis.

55. See the letter of thanks to Zapletal from the year 1928 for his congratulations on
Musil’s 60th birthday in the Archives of the Vyškov Museum (Czech Republic), Fund Musil,
inv. No. H 23688.

“Signa temporum”: Religious Health Care,
Empire, and Christian-Muslim Relations in
Western Tanzania, 1920s–1960s
SALVATORY S. NYANTO*
This article relies on archival and oral sources to examine ideas about
religious health care, empire, and Christian-Muslim relations in
Western Tanzania from the 1920s to the 1960s. Ideas about religion
and empire have attracted attention from historians and anthropologists with varying viewpoints. While acknowledging the scholarly
attention to issues regarding religion and empire, this study seeks to
show how religious health institutions shaped the course of colonial
imperatives and the relations between Christians and Muslims in the
region. This article focuses on Catholic health institutions of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (commonly referred to as the
White Sisters), Medical Missionaries of Mary, and Daughters of Mary
to show the place of women missionaries in shaping ideas in relation to
empire and changing relationships between Christians and Muslims
in Western Tanzania.
Keywords: Religious Health Care, Empire, Christian-Muslim
Relations, Western Tanzania
1. Introduction
This article uses religious health institutions of Catholic women missionaries as an illustrative case to examine ideas about empire and Christian-Muslim relations in Western Tanzania from the mid-1920s to the
1960s. Although existing literature gives more weight to the missionary
enterprise as a triumph of male missionaries, it is worth appreciating the
place of female missionaries in the health sector, empire building, and
*Salvatory Stephen Nyanto is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University
of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, email: ssnyanto@gmail.com. His research interests include
Christianity, Christian-Muslim Relations, Religion and Empire, and Slavery and Missionaries in Western Tanzania. Contact: P.O. Box 35031, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The author
expresses his heartfelt gratitude to anonymous reviewers. Their comments and suggestions
have shaped the arguments in this article.

113

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

changing relations between Christians and Muslims. Female missionaries
run a considerable number of religious health institutions in Tanzania.
They include St. Joseph Peramiho Hospital in Songea, Ndanda Mission
Hospital at Masasi, Dareda Hospital in Mbulu Catholic diocese, Makiungu
Hospital in the Catholic diocese of Singida, and St. Walburg’s Hospital at
Nyangao in Lindi.1 In Western Tanzania, the Sisters of Medical Missionaries of Mary built Kabanga Referral Hospital at Kasulu, the White Sisters
ran Ndala Mission Hospital in Nzega, and later handed it to the Sisters of
Charles Borromeo. The White Sisters also ran Ussongo Health Center and
later the Daughters of Mary took charge of the hospital; the White Sisters
ran Kakonko Health Center, before they handed it to the Daughters of
Mary, and then to the Missionary Sisters of Queen of Africa (commonly
called Sisters of Chala).2 Missionaries opened dispensaries and small hospitals, like other schools, in all mission stations in the region. Maternity clinics were open to women irrespective of their religion. Care through such
clinics included regular visits after mothers returned to their homes.3
This article relies on written Church records and interviews to examine the place of religious health institutions in Tanganyika both as part of
the British Empire, and in its first years as an independent state, and
changing relations between Christians and Muslims. Most of the sources
for this study included archival, secondary and oral sources or interviews.
The article examines Church records from the archives of the Archdiocese
of Tabora, and White Fathers archives in Dar es Salaam. It also consults
reports and correspondence between missionaries and the British colonial
officials in Tanganyika in the Tanzania National Archives. It also relies on
secondary sources from both the St. Paul Senior Seminary (Kipalapala)
main library and the University of Dar es Salaam East Africana library.
These sources include general missionary annual reports and Provincial
Commissioner’s reports for the Western Province. It is important to note
that interpreting colonial government records requires constant attention
of historians, partly because authors of these documents were part of the
colonial enterprise and thus relying on these documents runs the risk of

1. Samuel Loewenberg, “Medical Missionaries deliver faith and health care in Africa”
The Lancet, 373 (March 7, 2009), 796; Nyangao Hospital, “Introduction,” http://www.nyangaohospital.com/introd.html, last accessed December 26, 2014; S. Rweyemamu and T.
Msambure, The Catholic Church in Tanzania (Ndanda, 1988), 37.
2. Georg Leisner and Ludovick Matanwa, Miaka Mia Jimboni Kigoma 1879–1979
(Tabora, 1979), 65.
3. Jacqueline Paulhus, Go to my People: Missionaries in Tanzania, 1894–1994 (n.p,
1994), 59–61.

SALVATORY S. NYANTO

115

silencing individual experiences. Historians’ interpretation of missionary
sources, writes Jeffrey Cox, “requires constant attention to the multiple
levels of exclusion in the narratives, including the narratives constituted by
statistics.”4 In cognizance of the multiple levels of inclusion and exclusion
in the missionary sources, this study draws on oral interviews collected in
Tabora and Kigoma (Western Tanzania) to present the role of the middle
voices—that is, female missionaries—in the health sector, imperial imperatives, as well as the mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims in the region.
Studies of missionaries and imperial expansion have attracted attention of historians and anthropologists with varying standpoints. The works
of Andrew Porter, Jeffrey Cox, Elizabeth Elbourne, and Jean and John
Comaroff provide examples of the works that have examined the relations
between missionaries and empires in the Caribbean, India, the Far East,
and Africa.5 Some, including the works of Sarah A. Curtis, center on
health and education to illuminate relations between the imperial motives
of the French Empire and female missionaries of the Sœurs de Saint-Joseph
de l’Apparition and the Religious Society of the Sacred Heart in Algeria and
Missouri in the United States. She focuses on the “civilizing mission” of
France to show how schools and healthcare not only extended French culture but also went beyond the simple delivery of medical care, into efforts
at conversion, and language lessons.6 Curtis also focuses on education,
healthcare and support for the poor to show how the Filles de la Charité not
only came to the forefront of European missionaries in the nineteenth century, but also expanded their work in Latin America, North Africa, the
Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire.7 The interdependent relations
between missionaries (female missionaries in this case) and states were also
4. Jeffrey Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–
1940 (Stanford, 2002), 5.
5. Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York and London,
2008); Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas
Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester and New York, 2004); Andrew Porter, “‘Commerce and
Christianity’: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century Missionary Slogan,” The Historical
Journal, 28, no. 3 (Sept. 1985), 597–621; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation
and Revolution, vols. 1 and 2 (Chicago and London, 1991–97); Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood
Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain,
1799–1853 (Montreal, 2002).
6. Sarah A. Curtis, “Emile de Vialar and the Religious Reconquest of Algeria,” French
Historical Studies, 29, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 261–69.
7. Sarah A. Curtis, “Charity Begins Abroad: The Filles de la Charité in the Ottoman
Empire” in In God’s Empire: French Missionaries and the Modern World, ed. Owen White and
J.P. Daughton, (Oxford, 2012), 89–104.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

evident during the era of imperial and missionary expansion. Julia ClancySmith demonstrates such an interdependent relationship by showing missionary awards (nishan) that the Tunisian princes (e.g., Muhammad Bey)
and French Consuls conferred on the Sœurs de Saint-Joseph de l’Apparition
for their commendable work in the medical and education sectors in colonial Tunisia.8 Similarly, the work of Ann Laura Stoler focuses on parents
and parenting, nursing mothers, servants, and abandoned children in order
to examine the interface between colonialism, gender, race, and intimacy
in Indonesian society, because these aspects determined relations between
the imperial government and the colonized.9
Other works such as those of Dorothy Hodgson, Elizabeth Prevost,
and Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton have concentrated on the evangelization of
women and the appropriation of the Christian message into culture; the
role of women in spreading the Anglican and Catholic faiths; and the new
roles that women assumed after converting to Christianity in Kenya,
Uganda, Tanganyika, and Madagascar.10 Prevost and Hodgson also show
how missionaries’ work and life styles and their encounter with indigenous
women laid the foundation for women’s emancipation from male-dominated hierarchies, and created more opportunities for women to exercise
authority in ways not previously evident before—both in the Church and
at home.11 On the whole, however, the historiography of religion in Tanzania has traditionally been tied to scholarly inquiries that highlight the
activities of male missionaries. The works of Francis Nolan, Lukas Malishi, Georg Leisner and Ludovick Matanwa, and F. van Vlijmen provide
examples of this line of thinking.12 The exception is Jacqueline Paulhus,
8. Julia Clancy-Smith, “Muslim Princes, Female Missionaries, and Trans-Mediterranean Migrations: The Sœurs de Saint-Joseph de l’Apparition in Tunisia, c. 1840–1881,” ed.
Owen White and J. P. Daughton, In God’s Empire, 109–28, here 110–11.
9. Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in
Colonial Rule (Berkley, 2002), 14.
10. See Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Women of Fire and Spirit: History, Faith, and Gender
in Roho Religion in Western Kenya (New York and Oxford, 1996); Dorothy Hodgson, The
Church of Women: Gendered Encounter between Maasai and Missionaries (Bloomington, 2005);
and Elizabeth Prevost, The Communion of Women: Missions and Gender in Colonial Africa and
the British Metropole (Oxford, 2010).
11. Hodgson, The Church of Women, 168; Prevost, The Communion of Women, 4.
12. See Francis P. Nolan, M.Afr., “Christianity in Unyamwezi, 1878–1928” (doctoral
dissertation, Cambridge, 1977); Francis P. Nolan, Mission to the Great Lakes: The White
Fathers in Western Tanzania 1878–1978 (Kipalapala, 1978); Francis P. Nolan, Mitume wa
Bwana Katika Maziwa Makuu: Wamisionari wa Afrika (White Fathers) katika Tanzania
Magharibi, 1878–2008 (Tabora, 2008); Francis P. Nolan, The White Fathers in Colonial Africa,
1919–1939 (Nairobi, 2012); Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia; F. van Vlijmen, “Toka

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FIGURE 1. Map of Early Mission Stations in Western Tanzania, 1890s–1950s.
Modified with permission from A.G.M.Afr., H. Hinfelaar, Footsteps on the Sand of
Time. A Life of Bishop Jan van Sambeek, [History Series n°9], Rome, 2007, 34; and
Georg Leisner and Ludovick Matanwa, Miaka Mia Jimboni Kigoma 1879–1979
(Tabora, Tanzania 1979), 14–15.

whose centenary Jubilee of the White Sisters remains, as far as can be
ascertained, the only work on female missionaries in the region.13 By
focusing on female health care, empire, and Christian-Muslim relations,
this study seeks to reinvigorate the study of women missionaries in Western Tanzania as an area worth investigating in historical and anthropological scholarship.

Yerusalemu hadi Tabora [1990],” unpublished manuscript in the Tabora Catholic Archives,
1:37; and Lukas Malishi, Introduction to the History of Christianity in Africa (Tabora, 1987).
13. Jacqueline Paulhus, Go to my People, ii.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

2. Women Missionaries in Western Tanzania
The earliest missionary society in Western Tanzania was the Missionary
Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (commonly called the White Sisters). In 1869—
one year after the founding of the society of Missionaries of Africa (the White
Fathers)—Cardinal Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie founded the White
Sisters. Mother Marie Salomé became the first Superior General of the society.14 The White Sisters opened their first convents at Ushirombo and
Karema in 1894. They subsequently opened other convents in Tabora, Ndala,
Itaga, and Ussongo, providing health care for all people (Christians, Muslims,
and practitioners of local beliefs and practices).15 In Kigoma, the first White
Sisters opened their convent at Mwanga-Katubuka in 1916. They moved to
Kigoma town—a few miles from Mwanga-Katubuka—along with the White
Fathers in 1923.16 In 1929, Bishop Joseph Birraux invited the White Sisters
to set up their convent at Ujiji. In 1930, the White Sisters opened their convent at Ujiji and a dispensary that later became a hospital with a maternity
clinic.17 Later in 1943, Bishop Jan van Sambeek asked the White Sisters to
set up two dispensaries and maternity clinics at Mabamba and Kakonko.18
However, the application for land for the White Sisters was a protracted
process that involved a long correspondence between the bishop and officials
of the British colonial state. These administrative difficulties caused the
White Sisters’ project to remain at a standstill for quite some years while waiting for the approval of the land lease.19

14. Directoire pour l’observance des Constitutions des Sœurs Missionnaires de Notre-Dame
d’Afrique (Alger, 1938), vii; Nolan, The White Fathers, 73; Paulhus, Go to my People, 12; and
Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 64.
15. Paulhus, Go to My People, 55, 59; A Catholic Directory of East Africa, 1950 (Mombasa,
1950), 104; Catholic Directory of Eastern Africa, 1968–1969 (Tabori 1968), 251–52.
16. Ibuhana (News from Buha), (1987), 1.
17. Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 65; A Catholic Directory of East Africa, 1950
(Mombasa, 1950), 107.
18. A Catholic Directory of East Africa, 107; Hinfelaar, Footsteps on the Sands of Time: A
Life of Bishop Jan van Sambeek, [History Series n°9], (Rome, 2007), 75.
19. Tanzania National Archives [hereafter TNA] in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, has preserved much of the related correspondence from the efforts by the White Sisters to gain
approval of their project, including the following letters: Letter from the acting Chief Secretary to the Provincial Commissioner November 18, 1938, TNA 20/78; Letter from D. R.
MacDonald, the acting Land Officer of Kigoma, July 03, 1939, TNA 20/78; Letter from C.
C. O’Hocan, acting District Officer of Kigoma to the Director of Land and Mines, Dar es
Salaam, February 20,1939, TNA 20/78; Letter from the District Commissioner of Kibondo
to the Provincial Commissioner of the Western Province, October 07, 1952, TNA 25143.29;
Letter from the Provincial Commissioner (Western Province) to the Education Officer in
Tabora, October 30, 1952, TNA 25143.30; Letter from the District Commissioner to the

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119

The second missionary society was the Medical Missionaries of Mary.
Mother Mary Martin founded the society in Ireland with the specific purpose of providing medical services.20 The first Medical Missionaries of
Mary arrived at Dareda (Mbulu diocese) in 1947. In 1954, the missionaries
opened the second medical center at Makiungu (today in the diocese of
Singida).21 In February 1951, three Sisters of Medical Missionaries of
Mary, Margaret Garnett, M. Evangelist O’Connor, and Gemma Breslin,
arrived at Kabanga in the diocese of Kigoma.22 The Medical Missionaries
commenced construction of the hospital in 1953 in order to accommodate
the increasing demand for medical care. In the same year, they opened
other small dispensaries at Makere, Buhinga, and Kasulu.23 The intention
behind opening these other dispensaries was to use the Kabanga Hospital
as a central point from which they would spread maternity clinics into
many parts of Buha (Kigoma). It was the plan of the Medical Missionaries
that maternity clinics would be staffed by African sisters and qualified
African midwives. However, due to a lack of African sisters and midwives,
it took years for the Medical Missionaries to implement fully such a plan.24
The missionary society of the Daughters of Mary was the third female
society in the region. Bishop Joseph Georges Edouard Michaud, M. Afr.
(Figure 3) issued a decree to establish the congregation of the Daughters
of Mary in May 1930, which incorporated a number of lay sisters who had
been working as catechists in Tabora (Figure 2).25 The congregation later
Provincial Commissioner, December 04, 1952, TNA 25143.33; Letter from the Provincial
Commissioner to Mr. T. O. Pike, District Commissioner (Kibondo), December 30, 1952,
TNA 25143.34.
20. “Medical Missionaries of Mary,” http://mmmworldwide.org, retrieved on July 11,
2014.
21. Nolan, Medical Missionaries of Mary: Covering the First Twenty-Five Years of the
Medical Missionaries of Mary, 1937–1962 (Dublin, 1962), 117–18.
22. Nolan, Medical Missionaries, 119; Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 67; Hinfelaar,
Footsteps on the Sands of Time, 81–82; and Tanganyika Provincial Commissioners’ Annual
Reports (Dar es Salaam, 1951), 190; St. Joseph’s Kabanga Referral Hospital and School of
Nursing, “About Us,” http://kabangarefhosp.net/aboutus.html, last accessed on March 23,
2015.
23. Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 68.
24. Société des Missionnaires d’Afrique (Pères Blancs), Rapports Annuels (1959–60), 113.
25. The “back story” of the Daughters of Mary-Tabora was an involved history with
more than one twist. The Vicariate Apostolic of Unyanyembe (the predecessor canonical
jurisdiction to the present Archdiocese of Tabora) enlisted a number of local women and girls
as lay catechists in 1907. In 1912, Bishop Bishop Henri Léonard, M. Afr., formed these
women into formal communities of three, where the women were addressed as “Mama”
(Mother). They were trained by the White Sisters at Ushirombo mission, though they were
not canonically women religious. However, they took a solemn promise to the Vicar Apos-

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

came to be known as the Daughters of Mary-Tabora. The Daughters of
Mary opened the first convent at Ndala in 1939. It was followed by the
establishment of convents in Ussongo (1942), Lububu (1945), and Kipalapala (1960).26 In 1950, the Vatican officially recognized the society and
designated it according to canon law as a diocesan society. Subsequently,
the society of the Daughters of Mary and the society of Bana Maria of
Mwanza merged to form one society, the Daughters of Mary. Three bishops made the decision to join the two female missionary societies: Archbishop Cornelius Bronsveld, M. Afr. of Tabora, Bishop Joseph Blomjous,
M. Afr. of Mwanza, and Bishop Patrick Winters (Pallotine Fathers) of
Mbulu.27 Today, the society of Daughters of Mary provides pastoral and
social (health and education) services in the dioceses of Dar es Salaam,
Tabora, Arusha, Singida, Mwanza, and Mbulu, and keeps its headquarters
at Kipalapala, Tabora.28
3. Missionaries, Colonial State, and Health Care in Western Tanzania
The activities of female missionaries in Western Tanzania—like male
missionaries—were in one way or another linked to colonial and post-colonial imperatives. It was difficult to disentangle the medical services of missionaries from the colonial enterprise as they helped to meet the needs of
colonial governments in the colonies. Reports and correspondence between
missionaries and officials of the colonial state support the argument made
by Jeffrey Cox, Jean and John Comaroff, and Thomas O. Beidelman that
missionaries were part of the colonial enterprise.29 In most instances, missionaries asked for help from the colonial governments to run their medical
services in Tanganyika. For instance, in his confidential letter to the deputy
director of medical services, Bishop Jan van Sambeek of the Vicariate Apostolic of Tanganyika applied for assistance from the Native Treasury funds
tolic and a temporary vow of chastity. The first community was set up at Ulungwa mission in
September 1913. A second community was later established at Msalala. However, the experiment was short-lived. In the 1920’s, nearly all the candidates withdrew. Those who remained
eventually joined the congregation of African Sisters (Daughters of Mary-Tabora) founded
by Léonard’s successor, Bishop Edward Michaud, in 1929. Source: “The Origins and Role of
Catechists in the Archdiocese of Tabora, 1879–1967,” August 31 1967, 9, AAT 325.297.
26. Eustella Josephat, Constitution of the Daughters of Mary-Tabora (Kipalapala, 2011),
25–27, F. van Vlijmen, “Majaribio ya kwanza ya kuanzisha Utawa wa Kiafrika katika Jimbo
la Tabora,” 1987, 5, AAT 29.01.36, Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora.
27. Josephat, Constitution, 31–32.
28. Mihayo, Miaka Miamoja, 20.
29. Cox, Imperial Fault Lines, 10, Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, xiv; Thomas Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East African
Mission at the Grassroots (Bloomington, 2012), 5–6.

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FIGURE 2. Photo of first women catechists, Tabora, ca. 1907–1912. Some later
became the first lay-sisters (1921–1930). From left: Mama Odilia, Maria Mukola,
Agnesi Balakatunga, Anna Nakatoto (Doto), Katharian Ifunzya, Virginia, Paulina,
Magdalena, Getruda Shilambele, Priscila, Martha Nyamizi, and Josepha. Photo
courtesy of the Archdiocese of Tabora Archives.

to cover the cost of proposed additional in-patient accommodations at the
Mission hospital of Ujiji. On December 18, 1939, a few months before the
formal request, the bishop complained to Mr. O. Guise Williams, the
Provincial Commissioner for Western Tanganyika, that mission income
had declined in the 1939 financial year due to the eruption of the Second
World War. As a result, the bishop noted, he was no longer able to run the
hospital without outside assistance. However, Mr. C.H. Philips, the deputy
medical director of medical services of Kigoma district, disapproved the idea
of expanding hospitalization and suggested instead that the money, if available, should be spent on a campaign against specific diseases.30
30. Confidential Letter from O. Guise Williams, Provincial Commissioner, Western
Province, to The Honourable Chief Secretary, Dar es Salaam, March 1, 1940, TNA 180/C
32 Vol. 1, No. 1144/19, TNA, Dar es Salaam; Letter from the Provincial Office, Tabora to
The Chief Secretary to the Government, May 14, 1940, TNA 180/C 32 Vol. 1, No.114/25,
TNA, Dar es Salaam.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

No sooner had the medical officer rejected the bishop’s request than
the District officer for Kigoma district reported to the Provincial Commissioner that he had authorized the Native Authorities of Luiche and Buha
to contribute funds for the maintenance of the hospital at Ujiji. It was suggested that both Luiche and Buha Native Authorities could contribute a
total of £100 in monthly installments. However, he upheld the position of
the deputy director of medical services that the money should not be used
for an expansion of the hospital. Should the money be spent on an expansion, he would order the two Native Authorities to cease making their
monthly contributions.31 The Provincial commissioner emphasized that
the rationale for the government’s support of the missionary medical services was to help reduce the tensions between Muslims and Christians at
Ujiji. Commenting on the effectiveness of the medical efforts, Mr. O.
Guise Williams said,
If as a special or temporary measure, the principle can be approved I have
no objection to raise as in Ujiji the population is overwhelmingly
Mohamedan [Muslim] and discrimination between them and followers
of the denomination is unlikely. Indeed, the medical approach is likely
from the Mission stand point to be more effective than other methods of
proselytism.32

This excerpt illustrates the colonial government’s use of the medical
approach to lessen tensions between Muslims and Christians at Ujiji. It also
shows the interdependent relations between missionaries and the British
colonial state in colonial Tanganyika. The bishop’s letter to the District Officer of Kigoma reacting to the Provincial commissioner’s decision substantiates this argument. Besides expressing his gratitude for the government’s
grants to cover the cost for running the mission hospital at Ujiji, Bishop
Sambeek recommended that one third of the building expenses—£200—
should come from voluntary subscriptions of the Indian community in Ujiji.
Sambeek noted that they had already collected a sum of 1750 shillings. He
also proposed increasing the grant from the government and the Native
authorities to cover the costs for drugs, food, and support of three White Sisters in charge of the hospital.33 The Medical Officer for Kigoma, Mr. C. H.
Philips, informed the District Officer that he was also in support of the com31. Confidential Letter from O. Guise Williams, Provincial Commissioner, Western
Province, to The Honourable Chief Secretary, Dar es Salaam, March 1, 1940, TNA 180/C
32 Vol. 1, No. 1144/19, TNA, Dar es Salaam.
32. Ibid.
33. Letter from Vicar Apostolic of Tanganyika, Jan van Sambeek to the District Officer, Kigoma, 10th May, 1939, TNA 180/C 32, Vol. 1.

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mencement of the proposed new building. However, in order to reduce the
cost of running the hospital, Philips insisted that missionaries (the sisters in
charge of the hospital) should limit in-patients until the sisters could adequately staff the hospital enough to feed patients. He urged the mission to
grow crops in order to feed patients at the mission hospital.34
Besides the interdependent relations between missionaries and the
colonial state, native communities in Western Tanzania also influenced
both missionaries and the colonial state. In this regard, it is necessary to
consider the works of Frederick Cooper, Ann-Laura Stoler, and Andrew
Thompson, each of which demonstrates the influence of the colonized on
the empire. These works show the “metropolitan-colonial relations”
between the colonized Africans and Indians and the empire and argues
that the colonized in the British Empire demonstrated their ability to
“strike back” on British domestic history, politics, culture, identity, and
nationhood.35 The changing relations between Christians and Muslims
and the drive for Africanization in Africa offer an example of the ways in
which the colonized people shaped missionaries’ ways of doing things in
Western Tanzania between the 1950s and the 1960s. These points will be
developed in the succeeding sections.
4. Health Care and Changing Christian-Muslim Relations in
Western Tanzania
The changing relations between Christians and Muslims in Western
Tanzania can be looked at from two angles: first, as an example of how
communities in Western Tanzania influenced both missionaries and the
colonial state, and secondly because of the provision of healthcare to all
people irrespective of their creed.
Initially, both the White Fathers and White Sisters experienced
unfriendly relations with Muslims for years in Ujiji and Tabora. At Ujiji,
the White Fathers felt the hostility of Mwinyi Kheri, a representative of
Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar. He was determined to protect the interests
34. Letter from C.H. Philips, the Medical Officer, Kigoma, to the District Officer,
Kigoma, 19th May 1939, TNA 180/C 32 Vol. 1, No. 118/4/39.
35. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley,
Los Angeles, and London, 2005), 30–32; Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between
Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda” in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura
Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, Los Angeles,
and London, 1997), 1–58, here 1–4; Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact
of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 2005), 3.

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of Swahili and Arab traders (mostly Muslims) in the ivory and slave trade.
Hostilities and opposition drove Fr. Toussaint Deniaud, M.Afr., and his
priestly colleagues from Ujiji to Rumonge (in present-day Burundi) in July
1879, where they were subsequently killed. In 1882, the White Fathers
attempted to set up a permanent mission station and a school at Ujiji, but
the plan was disrupted by a slave dealer, Tippu Tip.36 This, in consequence, made Ujiji unsafe for the White Fathers and White Sisters to set
up a mission station. They withdrew from the area until 1914, when they
finally opened a station at Kigoma, a few miles from Ujiji.37 Similarly, the
White Sisters and White Fathers also had uneasy experiences with the
Muslim community in Tabora. Tabora was strategically located at the
junction of the trade routes from the coast to the western frontier, and consequently the Sultan of Zanzibar regularly posted a representative there.38
In his report of 1890, Hauptmann Puder, one of the earliest administrative
officers at Tabora, stated that out of 350,000 inhabitants of Tabora district, about 233,000 people were slaves.39 Another author, Paul Reichard,
observed that about 75 percent of the population in the region were
slaves.40 Given the dominance of Islam in the region, Msgr. François Gerboin refused to set up a mission station at Kipalapala in the 1890s even
after the defeat of Isike, chief of Unyanyembe, despite an invitation
extended by a German administrator, Lieutenant Hermann Sigl. Instead,
Msgr. Gerboin opened a mission station at Ndala in the heart of
Unyamwezi, where Islamic influence was almost negligible.41
Notwithstanding these obstacles, the White Sisters’ health services
made a considerable impact on societies in Western Tanzania. One of the
36. Malishi, Introduction, 128; Nolan, Mission to the Great Lakes, 17; J. Paulhus, Go to
my People, 10; R. Oliver, Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1965), 110; Nolan, The
White Fathers in Colonial Africa, 206; Archbishop Paul Ruzoka, interview with the author,
Tabora, November 14, 2011 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora); Fr.
Bernard Baudon, W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 9, 2012 (deposited in
the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora).
37. Raymond S.K. Saba, St. Joseph’s Ujiji Junior Seminary: Diamond Jubilee 1930–2005
(Dar es Salaam, 2004), 4.
38. “The White Fathers at Tabora,” Great Lakes: Journal of African Missions, New Series
65–66 (May 1939), 24.
39. Jan-Georg Deutsch, “The ‘Freeing’ of Slaves in German East Africa: The Statistical Record, 1890–1914” Slavery and Abolition, 19, no. 2 (1998), 116; Deutsch, Emancipation
without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (Oxford, 2006), 165–166; Deutsch,
“Notes on the Rise of Slavery and Social Change in Unyamwezi c. 1860–1900” in Slavery in
the Great Lakes Region of East Africa, ed. Henry Merdad and Shane Doyle (Oxford, 2007), 76.
40. Deutsch, “Notes on the Rise of Slavery,” 76.
41. Nolan, M.Afr., “Christianity,” 196.

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remarkable contributions made by the White Sisters was to facilitate
friendly relations with Muslims. With medical services provided to all residents, including Muslims, relations between Muslims and missionaries at
Tabora changed from one of tension to one of friendship. By the end of
the 1920s, Bishop Henri Léonard of the vicariate of Unyanyembe
applauded the contribution made by the White Sisters’ dispensary in creating a harmonious relationship between missionaries and the local community. Relations became friendlier because of regular visits the White
Sisters made to residents in various mission stations. The sisters visited
local communities as far as the Itaga, Kipalapala, and Ndonno mission stations in the vicariate of Unyanyembe, and later to communities in the
vicariate of Tabora. The White Sisters also provided health services and
visited communities irrespective of their religious allegiances. Such health
services and regular visits eroded tensions that prevailed between Muslims
and missionaries in Tabora town.42
In Ujiji, by contrast, the co-existence of Muslims, the White Fathers,
and the White Sisters caused unprecedented anxieties from the 1930s
onwards. In the 1940s and 1950s, the situation became so tense that
Muslim parents barred their children from playing near the Ujiji mission
station. The fear of Muslim parents was that their children would be converted ultimately to Christianity.43 Tensions between the two groups
mounted when Muslims, especially those belonging to the Ahmadiyya
Islamic movement, started attacking Christians in their weekly local newspaper that was in circulation in the town. Nonetheless, the informant could
not remember the name of the title of the newspaper.44 An example of such
tension can be seen in the District Commissioner’s report of 1954 for the
Kigoma district, which noted an incident of a Christian teacher (not a

42. Paulhus, Go to my People, 25.
43. Alhaj Moshi S. Guoguo, interview with the author, Ujiji, January 25, 2012
(deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora); Mzee Juma Nusura and Kassim,
Ujiji, interview with the author, January 29, 2012 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora).
44. Fr. Edward Brady, W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 9, 2012
(deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora). Ahmadiyya or Ahmadiyyah is both
a sect and an Islamic movement. Its name is also shared by Sufi Orders. Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad of Qadian, from Punjab in India, founded the movement in the late nineteenth
century. He called himself the mahdi (messiah expected by Muslims at the end of the world).
The movement spread in Tanganyika along with other Sufi Orders (turuq, singular, tariqa).
The Orders represented a popular movement against traditional Sunni Islam as they did not
insist on the Quranic knowledge and Arabic to their followers. The communal prayers (dhikr)
attracted many people to convert to Islam.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

Roman Catholic) at Ujiji Muslim School who caused troubles when he
forced Muslim children to sing Christian hymns and made the sign of the
cross on the heads of a few pupils.45 The report pointed out another event
in which Muslims promoted the supposed conversion of a Roman Catholic
student to Islam:
Slight clashes occasionally occur in Ujiji between Muslims and Christian
interests but this is not surprising in the circumstances. There was an incident when the Muslims alleged to be making a copy out of the supposed
conversion of a Roman Catholic Seminary student to Islam. The “student” turned out to be a sailor of rather indifferent protestant leaning.46

Notwithstanding the increasing tensions between Muslims and Christians (including the White Fathers and White Sisters) at Ujiji, the White
Sisters’ health services attracted people of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Their hospital appealed to the Arabs, Indians, Africans, Muslims,
Christians, and non-believers (practitioners of indigenous religions).
Although the hospital was open to all, few Muslims accepted hospitalization.
They insisted on being taken home so that they could die in accordance with
their Islamic faith. The White Sisters did not force them to stay; they had to
adapt and respect the beliefs of those who needed their services.47
The White Sisters’ adaptive response to the local practices demonstrates the influence of the local or the colonized on missionaries. One of
the adaptive strategies was their attendance at Muslim festivals such as Eid
al Haj and Maulid. As already pointed above, Muslims in Ujiji invited both
White Sisters and White Fathers during Islamic festivals, a practice that
they had not been accustomed to follow before they arrived at Ujiji. Regular visits of the White Sisters also had a reciprocal impact as they instilled
confidence among the people unaccustomed to visiting the dispensary. The
presence of the White Sisters, plus regular home visits, increased not only
the mutual confidence of both local Muslims and White Sisters but also
enabled the White Sisters to extend a network of friendships and support
beyond the milieu of the missions. This, again, demonstrates the role of
gender in changing Christian-Muslim relations in both Tabora and Ujiji,
where gender mattered in missionary work since men were not necessarily
welcomed in homes—domestic spaces—in the same way in which women
were. The White Sisters’ influence through the medical work and cordial
relations with the Muslim community spread beyond Ujiji township and
45. Annual Report for Kigoma District, 1954, TNA 968.821.1.
46. Ibid.
47. Paulhus, Go to my People, 63.

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attracted many people who came from inland Buha in need of their medical services. Such an influence was evident in the annual report of 1938,
which stated that hundreds of the people from Buha attended the White
sisters’ dispensary at Ujiji every day.48
Oral interviews from informants at Ujiji singled out a prominent
White Sister of German origin, Sr. Werenfreida. Although there were
other White Sisters working at the hospital, Sr. Werenfreida is still
remembered by many Muslims to have saved the lives of many babies. She
was extremely good as a midwife and Muslims had extraordinary respect
for her. She served both Christians and Muslims for more than thirty
years.49 In 1968, the beloved sister of the people died, and many people
mourned for her. The news of her death was announced in all mosques at
Ujiji and Kigoma. One of the Muslim sheikhs commented, “I am sure that
God has taken her to heaven”.50 In recognition of what Sr. Werenfreida
had done for the natives of Ujiji, another Muslim commented,
There were many who had training similar to what she had at Kigoma
hospital. Others had better training than her, but the difference is that
when Sr. Werenfreida comes to you, you feel you are welcome. She is
interested in you and she wants you to feel better. She had contact with
us [Muslims] and she had a very human touch in her [that attracted
many patients including Muslims].51

In a similar vein, in 1987, the diocesan yearly newsletter IbuhanaNews from Buha included a report about the extreme respect and love the
Muslims of Ujiji and Kigoma had for Sr. Werenfreida, as evidenced by
comments from the editor of Ibuhana:
On that day, the prayer of the Moslem was offered for a Catholic Sister
who by her love of God and fellow man rose above race and creed to
become truly human. She was loved and honored not only because of her
skill as a nurse and midwife, but also because of her charity and affectionate personality.52

In addition to Sr. Werenfreida, Fr. Joseph Welfelé, M. Afr.—whom
the Muslims named Fr. Yusufu—also maintained a good relationship,
regardless of the tensions, with the local people and the Muslims. He is still
48. Ibid.
49. Ibuhana (News from Buha) (1985), 8; (1987), 1.
50. Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 26; Fr. Edward Brady, W.F, interview with the
author, Kabanga, February 2, 2012 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora).
51. Fr. Edward Brady, W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 2, 2012.
52. Ibuhana (News from Buha) (1987), 1.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

remembered by both the White Fathers and the Muslims as having had a
notable impact on Muslims at Ujiji. The annual report of 1958–59
acknowledges the commendable efforts made by Fr. Joseph Welfelé to
establish cordial relations with Muslims. The report acknowledged him as
having an “extraordinarily dynamic personality.”53 The report also commented that there was no other missionary among the White Fathers, apart
from Fr. Welfelé [Fr. Yusufu], who would have succeeded in obtaining permission from a Muslim chief and headmen to build Catholic outstations
“right under their nose.”54 J.C. Clarke, the provincial commissioner for the
western province commented in his annual report of 1956 that Fr. Welfelé’s
death was “mourned by all people of all races and creeds.”55
Like the White Sisters, the missionaries of the Medical Missionaries
of Mary also earned a praiseworthy reputation for their work at Kabanga
hospital. In 1951, a few months after the opening of the hospital, Mr. T.O.
Pike, in his provincial commissioner’s report for the western province,
remarked on the noteworthy work the sisters had done for the people of
the southern parts of Kasulu district, stating that they had “proved a considerable asset to South Kasulu.”56 This statement implies that their services attracted many people from various parts of the district who had no
other access to medical services. Among these villages in South Kasulu are
Makere, Buhinga, and Kasulu, to mention just a few.57
At Kabanga, a Medical Missionary Sister, Sr. Dr. Margaret Garnett,
was known far and wide in Buha since she began serving the people in
1951. She was greatly appreciated by those who received her services at
Kabanga Hospital as well as by those who received her services wherever
she went. Eyewitness accounts of Fr. Edward Brady, M. Afr., who spent
more than two decades teaching at the Ujiji Seminary, testify to the extent
to which Sr. Dr. Margaret saved people’s lives. She even visited the seminary to examine seminarians. It was, therefore, her regular mobility in rendering health services that made her known in many parts of Buha. Sr.
Margaret’s contribution to the local people is still remembered by those
who received medical services from her.58 At Kakonko, the diocesan

53. Société des Missionnaires d’Afrique (Pères Blancs), Rapports Annuels (1958–1959),
172, White Fathers Archives (WFA), Atiman House-Dar es Salaam.
54. Ibid.
55. Annual Reports for Provincial Commissioners (1956), 208
56. Annual Reports for Provincial Commissioners (1951), 190.
57. Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia, 68.
58. Fr. Edward E. Brady, W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 2, 2012.

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newsletter, Ibuhana (News from Buha) of 1973, acknowledged the work of
the White Sisters when they left the mission in 1967. The mission was
subsequently handed to the Daughters of Mary of Tabora. As the Daughters of Mary of Tabora in turn left the mission in 1971, it was anticipated
that the new missionary society, the Missionary Sisters of Queen of Africa
(commonly called Sisters of Chala), would continue to do the work of their
predecessors. The diocesan journal, Ibuhana, included the remark, “they
did a great work in the past but there are none at Kakonko. We hope that
the Chala Sisters will continue to do the fine work established by their
predecessors, the White Sisters and the Daughters of Mary.”59
At Ndala, the White Sisters’ health services also made a considerable
impact. As in other mission stations, the White Sisters’ health services
were widely known in all the chiefdoms of Uhemeli. Realizing their commitment to works devoted to serving the lives of the local communities, the
White Fathers reported in their annual report of 1955-1956 that the
White Sisters’ maternity clinic and hospital continued to do a commendable job.60 By the end of 1956, the same report brought attention to the
White Sisters’ construction of the new maternity clinic at Ussongo, which
was intended to extend health services in the chiefdom of Bussongo.61 The
maternity clinic at Ussongo, however, was not opened in 1959 despite the
completion of the application for land at Kaselya in the same year. As the
White Fathers hoped, the application was meant for the Congregation of
the Brothers of St. John of God to start a large hospital as soon as
possible.62 The report, however, does not provide further details of this
new congregation. It remains unclear whether the congregation provided
health services at Kaselya as the White Fathers intended.
5. “Signa temporum” (Signs of the Times): Africanization, Vatican II,
and Christian-Muslim Relations in Western Tanzania
Another area that demonstrated the influence of communities over
missionaries was the drive for Africanization and Vatican II in the 1960s.
Debates over Africanization attracted the attention of both nationalist
politicians and the general population in 1960, one year before the independence of Tanganyika (which became the mainland part of Tanzania
after Tanganyika’s merger with Zanzibar in 1964). Some members of the
59. Ibuhana (1973), 8.
60. Rapports Annuels (1955–1956), 184.
61. Ibid.
62. Rapports Annuels (1958–1959), 168–69.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) opposed Julius Nyerere’s
policy of appointing British settlers as ministers, arguing that the meaning
of Tanganyikans (people of Tanganyika) was Africans with black skin. For
members of the African National Congress (ANC), Africanization was
important for attaining true independence and would allow a rapid break
from the vestiges of colonial rule.63 In 1960, while debates over Africanization were still hot, the Church in Western Tanzania read the “signs of the
times” by appointing the late Archbishop Marko Mihayo, an African priest,
as the new ordinary of the Archdiocese of Tabora. In Kigoma, too, Bishop
James Holmes Siedle, M. Afr., resigned, leaving room for Fr. Alphonce D.
Nsabi to become its first African bishop in 1970. This was also an important step for the Africanization of the church in the Diocese of Kigoma.64
Further stimulus for Africanization came in 1967 when Tanzania
adopted the policy of Socialism and Self-Reliance that advocated principles of social and spatial equalities, and communal life and production in
settled villages.65 In his booklet Socialism and Rural Development, Julius
Nyerere argued, “An Ujamaa Village is the village of the members and its
life is their life. Therefore, everything which relates exclusively to their village and their life in it must be decided by them and not anyone else.”66
The Church responded to the policy of Socialism and Self-Reliance by
establishing small Christian communities interpreting Ujamaa to mean
familyhood.67 Such ideas of Ujamaa (familyhood) gained momentum in the
Church because of the decree of Vatican II, the Pastoral Constitution on
the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes), which stressed soli-

63. Ronald Aminzade, Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of
Tanganyika (New York, 2013), 79–81. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was the first president of
Tanganyika after it adopted republican government in 1962. On April 26, 1964, he became
the president of the United Republic of Tanzania, when Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to
form the United Republic of Tanzania.
64. Fr. Edward Brady W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 2, 2012;
Mihayo, Miaka 100 Jimboni Tabora, 35; Leisner and Matanwa, Miaka Mia Jimboni Kigoma,
39; Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450–1950 (Oxford, 1996), 609.
65. Donatus Komba, “Contribution to Rural Development: Ujamaa and Villagisation”
in Mwalimu: the Influence of Nyerere, ed. Colin Legum and Geoffrey Mmari (London, 1995),
32–45, here 32–37; Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (Dar es Salaam, 1968), 233–35;
Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Development (Dar es Salaam, 1973), 7–9.
66. Julius K. Nyerere, “Socialism and Rural Development” in Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom
and Socialism, Selection from Writings and Speeches (Dar es Salaam, 1977), 106–44, here 106.
Phil L. Raikes, “Ujamaa and Rural socialism,” Review of African Political Economy, 2, no. 3,
(1975), 33–52, here 38.
67. Joseph G. Healey, A Fifth Gospel: The Experience of Black Christian Values (Maryknoll, 1981), 62–63.

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darity in families, clans, communities and villages. Increasingly, the
Church in Tanzania regarded both Ujamaa and Gaudium et Spes as corresponding principles of human development because they stressed human
dignity, development, and peace.68 Upon giving hope to the anguished, the
pastoral constitution, Gaudium et Spes, remarked:
At all times the Church carries the responsibility of reading the signs of
the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, if it is to
carry out its task. In language, intelligible to every generation, she should
be able to answer the ever-recurring questions which men ask about the
meaning this present life and of the life to come, and how one is related
to the other. We must be aware of and understand the aspirations, the
yearnings, and the often-dramatic features of the world in which we live.69

In response to the advent of the independence of Tanganyika
(December 9, 1961) and the need for Africanization, the White Sisters had
to reconsider their ways of doing things. They had to re-evaluate their pastoral and social services in accordance with the aspirations of a young
nation and the readiness of the local missionaries to take charge of their
religious communities.70 The “signs of the times” increasingly included a
decline in religious vocations in Europe, which made it impossible for the
White Sisters to provide pastoral and social services in all of the mission
stations of Western Tanzania. Having worked for many decades and with
a diminishing number of missionaries, the White Sisters decided that they
should close their pastoral and social services. In 1967, they invited the
Daughters of Mary of Tabora to take charge of the Kakonko convent. In
1976, they handed the Mabamba convent to the African Sisters of Good
Counsel from Uganda. Kabanga was abandoned in 1977, Kigoma and
Ndala in 1983, and Kasulu in 1987. As the White Sisters left Ndala in
1984, they handed Ndala hospital over to both the Daughters of Mary and
the Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo. The White Sisters abandoned their
last house, the Provincial House at Kipalapala, in 1994, marking the end
of their long service in Western Tanzania.71
68. Juvenalis B. Rwelamira, Tanzanian Socialism-Ujamaa and Gaudium et Spes: Two
Convergent Designs of Integral Human Development (Rome, 1988), 60.
69. Austin Flannery, O. P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar
Documents (New York, 1975), 905.
70. Paulhus, Go to my People, 74, Marie Lorin Msola, “After the History of the Origins
of the Congregation, 1910–1974” (unpublished pamphlet, Rome, 2002), 136–137.
71. Ibuhana (1987), 1–2; Paulhus, Go to my People, 90–91; Ndala Hospital: Annual
Report (2003), 2–4; Sr. Germana Editha, Sr. Yohana Kulwa, Sr. Gaudencia Matama, Sr.
Zenobia Bifa, and Sr. Sofia Shija, interviews with author at Kipalapala Daughters of Mary,
July 3, 2014 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora). Since 1984, the

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

The decline in vocations in Europe further affected the administration
of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (White Sisters). With an
increasing shortage of women religious to coordinate all pastoral and social
services for the society, the White Sisters revised the management of the
entire religious community. It should be noted that before 1965, the order
in the northern part of Tanganyika operated as a vice-province entirely
depending on the Netherlands; the southern part operated as a viceprovince of Germany.72 However, from 1965 onwards, all areas in Tanzania, including the dioceses of Tabora and Kigoma, became one province
with one provincial superior. The headquarters of the society were established at Kipalapala. The Kipalapala provincial house was built in 1965–66,
and the provincial superior lived at Kipalapala until 1994, when all the pastoral and social work of the society ceased in the two dioceses.73
In response to Africanization and the declining vocations in Europe,
the White Sisters, as previously noted, handed over the mission stations to
the Daughters of Mary-Tabora and returned home to Europe. After the
year 1994, there were no White Sisters working in Western Tanzania.
From 1930 to the 1950s, the Daughters of Mary worked under the
guardianship of one White Sister as Mother Superior. Sr. Henrika was the
first Mother Superior who guided the society of the Daughters of Mary in
its formative years. As she passed away in 1953, Sr. Reinalda became the
second Mother Superior. Prompted by the countrywide Africanization and
the declining vocations in Europe, Sr. Reinalda (a White Sister), the last
Mother Superior, resigned in 1957, making room for the first indigenous
Sister of the Daughters of Mary (Sr. Lutgarda Joseph) to become Mother
Superior of the society.74 To run effectively the pastoral and social services
entrusted to them by the White Sisters, the Daughters of Mary invested its
financial resources into training its members in colleges both within Tanzania and abroad—including in Rome, Eldoret (Kenya), Zambia, and the
United States—in order that they could gain the skills necessary to run
schools, health centers, dispensaries, and pastoral services. Its members
also toured different mission stations searching for young girls who wanted
to become nuns.75

Daughters of Mary and Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo have been providing health services
at Ndala Hospital, making it one of the most reliable hospitals in the Nzega district.
72. F. van Vlijmen, Majaribio, 5.
73. Ibid.; Paulhus, Go to My People, 90.
74. Eustella Josephat, Miaka 75 ya Mabinti wa Maria-Tabora (Kipalapala, 2008),
28–32.
75. Ibid, 45.

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Tanganyika’s independence and the drive for Africanization paralleled
with the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), which had a considerable
impact on Christian-Muslim relations. The tensions that prevailed during
the colonial era (the era of missionary penetration) had not completely
been wiped out. Both the White Fathers and the White Sisters were still
not on good terms with Muslims in Tabora and Ujiji, and a few tensions
were still being reported. The Second Vatican Council improved relations
among Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims. Through its decree on ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio), Vatican II called for the restoration of
unity with all Christians. The removal of friction would enable Catholics
and Protestants to cooperate in pastoral and social matters.76 The decree
urged Catholics to hold ecumenical dialogues with the Protestant missionaries, and to collaborate with them in various activities ranging from pastoral to social services.77 Likewise, a similar impulse developed toward
Muslims; the declaration Nostra aetate called for relations with non-Christian religions. The decree urged both Catholics and Muslims not to recall
the quarrels and conflicts that had erupted in past centuries and to strive
for mutual understanding.78 Finally, the post-conciliar document, On Dialogue with Non-Believers (Humanae personae dignitatem) of 1968 called for
the Church to initiate dialogue with men and women who do not share the
Christian faith.79 Such a dialogue was meant to bring solidarity within the
human family, as stressed by Gaudium et spes.80
In response to Vatican II, the White Sisters initiated relations with
Protestants and Muslims at both Ujiji and Tabora. Because of the call for
relations taken up by the White Sisters, religious tensions that had taken

76. Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican II: All Sixteen Official Texts Promulgated by the Ecumenical Council 1963–1965 (London, 1966), 341; Adrian Hastings, Church
and Mission in Modern Africa (New York, 1967), 242; Thomas J. O’Donnell, “The Oecumenical Character of the Second Vatican Council,” An Irish Quarterly Review, 51, no. 203 (1962),
337–48; and Brian Hearne, “Ecumenism,” The Furrow, 20, no.1 (January, 1969), 18–24.
77. Abbott, ed., Documents of Vatican II, 341, Jacques Dupuis, Christianity and Religions: From Confrontations to Dialogue (Maryknoll, 2002), 59; Jacques Dupuis, Towards a
Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, 2001), 161–71; Austin Flannery, O.P.,
ed., Vatican Council: Post-Conciliar Documents, vol. 2 (North Port, 1982), 163; and Brian
Hearne, “Mission in East Africa,” The Furrow, 34, no.1 (1983), 23–34, here 26.
78. Abbott, Documents of Vatican II, 341.
79. Secretariat for Unbelievers, Humanae personae dignitatem [On Dialogue with NonBelievers] (August 28, 1968), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 60 (1968), 692–704. (The Secretariat for
Unbelievers was later elevated to a Pontifical Council and finally merged into the Pontifical
Council for Culture in 1993).
80. Austin Flannery, O.P, ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, 1975), 903, 1005.

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root fizzled out due to regular invitations and cooperation. By the 1970s,
relations between the White Fathers, White Sisters and Muslims at Ujiji
were generally good; they did not seem to have any friction at all. Informants attested that the relations were cordial, the White Fathers and White
Sisters were occasionally being invited by the Muslims to join them during
Maulid and Eid el Fitr; and the White Fathers and White Sisters reciprocated at Easter and Christmas. Regular invitations between the White
Fathers, White Sisters, and Muslims significantly contributed to the burying of differences between Muslims and Christians at Ujiji.81 The Daughters of Mary followed the same practices as the White Sisters in Tabora.
In addition to creating friendly relations with Muslim communities in
Tabora and Kipalapala, the Daughters of Mary regularly toured the villages
of different Christian communities. They visited the sick, especially those
who had received medical services from mission dispensaries. They also
engaged Christians in their communities on the topics of peace and cooperation with all the villagers, both Muslims and unbelievers. In this regard,
they could put into practice the decree of Gaudium et Spes.82
The initiatives undertaken by the societies of the White Sisters and
Daughters of Mary allow one to reflect in detail on the place of female missionaries in the development of decolonization and Vatican II, whose narratives often place more weight on the activities of male missionaries. In
this regard, the ascendancy of African women to the highest ranks of the
two societies demonstrates a radical departure from male hierarchy in
giving institutional recognition to the running of their own affairs independently. The recruitment of Tanzanian women to become religious sisters—in response to the declining vocations in Europe—can also be viewed
as an innovation in Tanzanian society towards female empowerment, since
becoming sisters opened new opportunities such as midwifery, teaching,
and nursing for women in Western Tanzania and beyond. These new
opportunities opened services and evangelism to female missionaries that
initially were closed to men. These new avenues for women to exercise
their authority in the Church correspond to the works of Dorothy Hodgson on the Maasai of Tanzania and Elizabeth Prevost on the people of in

81. Fr. Edward Brady, W.F., interview with the author, Kabanga, February 2, 2012; Fr.
A. B. Mutasingwa, interview with the author, Kipalapala, November 16, 2011 (deposited in
the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora); Juma Nusura and Kassim Mbingo, interview
with the author, Ujiji, January 29, 2012 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of
Tabora). Maulid is an Islamic feast after their Holy Pilgrimage of Mecca and Eid el fitr is a
feast after the holy month of Ramadan according to the Muslim calendar.
82. Josephat, Miaka 75, 33.

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FIGURE 3. Sr. Dr. Magdalena Kembe of the Daughters of Mary, standing in front
of a statue of Bishop Edward Michaud, M. Afr., Vicar Apostolic of Tabora (1928–
32), and Vicar Apostolic of Uganda (1933–45). Sr. Dr. Kembe’s work at Ndala
Mission Hospital is still appreciated in Ndala. She is currently working at the
Edward Michaud Memorial Health Center in the Archdiocese of Dar es Salaam.
The hospital is run by the Sisters of the Daughters of Mary. It was named in
memory of Bishop Michaud, the founder of the society. Photo used with permission of Sr. Kembe, Sr. Theresia Sungi (Mother Superior of the Daughters of
Mary), and Archbishop Paul R. Ruzoka, ordinary of the Archdiocese of Tabora
(2007–present).

Uganda and Madagascar. These developments show how missionary
organizations and women’s participation in the services of the Church created avenues for women to exercise their authority and enabled them to
integrate into religious and professional authorities that were not available
to them previously.83 Finally, both the White Sisters and the Daughters of
Mary respected the beliefs of those who needed their health care, including
Muslims. They hoped that their good works would suffice as evangelism.
Sr. Dr. Magdalena Kembe, a prominent sister of the Daughters of Mary
who served for many years in Ndala, represents many African religious sis83. Hodgson, The Church of Women, 168; Prevost, The Communion of Women, 4.

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CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN WESTERN TANZANIA

ters whose work as medical doctors served many women and children in
Ndala and the surrounding villages (Figure 3). It is therefore no wonder to
find five boys and girls—both Christian and Muslim—at Ndala and its
neighborhoods being named Magdalena Kembe, Shukuru Kembe and
Benedikto in appreciation of her work in saving the lives of babies and
mothers.84
6. Conclusion
This article has examined ideas concerning religion, empire, and
Christian-Muslim relations in twentieth-century Western Tanzania. Centering on female religious health institutions, the article has demonstrated
the place of women missionaries in shaping ideas about empire and changing Christian-Muslim relations in the region. It has also offered a contribution to our understanding of the extent to which religious health institutions shaped the course of colonial imperatives. Relying on archival
reports and correspondence between missionaries and officials of the colonial state, it can be seen how the activities of female missionaries in Western Tanzania, like other missionaries, were in one way or another linked to
the colonial and post-colonial imperatives. For the sisters, it was a challenge to unravel the medical services of missionaries from the colonial
enterprise as they helped to meet the needs of colonial governments in the
colonies. Besides strengthening Christian-Muslim relations in Western
Tanzania, missionaries’ attempts to read the “signs of the times” established and maintained the relations between religious health institutions
and the newly independent government in the first decade of independence. The bond grew stronger in later decades—decades in which some
religious health centers and hospitals were elevated by the government to
serve as referral hospitals and even received government subsidies and
technical support to accommodate the increasing needs of the citizens.

84. Sr. Germana Editha, Sr.Gaudencia Matama and Sr. Yohana Kulwa, interviews
with the author, Daughters of Mary-Kipalapala, July 3, 2014; Sr. Magdalena Kembe, interview with the author, Dar es Salaam, July 20, 2014 (deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Tabora).

Book Reviews
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies. Edited by Cinthia
Gannett and John C. Brereton. (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press. 2016.
Pp. xx, 444. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8232-6453-7.)
A few years ago a group of scholars and teachers, members of the Jesuit Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, confident that their special gift—a theory of
reading, writing, and speaking called “Jesuit Rhetoric”—is fundamental to higher
education, as a sort intellectual gospel, held that it should be reinforced and spread.
The result is Traditions of Eloquence, a 444-page treasure, in which thirty-five
scholars (including three Jesuits) from sixteen Catholic and eleven secular universities record the history of Jesuit teaching tactics, as they adapted their application
without compromising the principles Jesuits stressed in the 1540s. The book argues
that eloquentia perfecta (rhetoric) can “overcome the scattered, dispersed curriculum
that characterizes so much contemporary education.”
At the heart of Jesuit education, historian John O’Malley, S.J., reminds us in
the foreword, is its direction toward the common weal. As Cicero said in De
Officiis: “We are not born for ourselves alone . . . but for the sake of other human
beings, that we might be able mutually to help one another.” O’Malley sets a tone
for the whole volume that many of the contributors share: a speaker’s words must
be consistent with his behavior. “The good speaker, the good practitioner of rhetoric, the good leader has to be a good person.”
In an introductory essay, Cinthia Gannett and John C. Brereton trace Jesuit
history from the Society’s founding in 1540, the Jesuit use of emotion and imagination in preaching, their missionary travels to China, the role of classroom competition, the suppression and return, and their current influence. Along with fifty
members of the 114th Congress, they list thirty prominent entertainers, journalists,
judges, politicians, and theologians, including Charles Osgood, Bill Clinton, Tip
O’Neill, Teilhard de Chardin, and Pope Francis as “Jesuit trained.”
In Steven Mailloux’s essay, I was delighted to be reintroduced to Father Francis Finn’s turn-of-the-century novels for teenagers, Tom Playfair and Harry Dee,
among the first books I ever read. Their boarding school teacher is a young Jesuit
scholastic who is “the most wonderful man they ever met.” When he warms up to
a subject, he becomes really eloquent. “His timidity goes, his eyes flash and he talks
like an orator. He’s a poet too.” Clearly a role model for young boys like me.
137

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BOOK REVIEWS

In the essays of Patricia Bizzell and Katherine H. Adams, perhaps the most
influential spirit in the anthology is Father Francis P. Donnelly, S.J., who published influential books like the two-volume Model English (1920) and others on
both writing and speaking through the 1920s and 1930s. “Art is doing and you
learn to do by doing,” he said. Students should start writing on their first day in
kindergarten and keep writing until graduation. Donnelley’s basic method was imitation. We used Model English, at St. Joe’s Prep, in which we observed how a writer
describes a boat race, for example, and then we students applied similar imagery to
another event, e.g., a track meet. When I entered the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew
on Hudson in 1957, there was the famous Father Donnelly in person, in the infirmary where he would die at 87.
An essay which in structure and in spirit represents the main themes of the
book is David Leigh, S.J.’s on “The Changing Practice of Liberal Education and
Rhetoric in Jesuit Education, 1600–2000.” He builds his presentation around three
scenarios from the past: a Jesuit college run by the Ratio (rule book) in Italy in the
late sixteenth century; in France in the eighteenth century struggling with rationalists and Jansenists; and Marquette University in Milwaukee around 1950. As the
centuries pass, the schools adapt, keeping the basics and adding new tools. Leigh
lists the elements of the Ratio which evolve, all of which a good Jesuit teacher will
use today: short lecture, discussion, recitations and quizzes, written exercises, questionand-answer periods, and prelection, by which the teacher assigns the homework and
relates it to tomorrow’s new material.
Leigh concludes his survey reminding all involved in Jesuit education that it is
transformative; “it prepares students for responsible service of others to transform
a broken world, to make it into the kingdom of God, a place of justice and peace.”
America Magazine, New York
Editor Emeritus

RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J.

Le Chiese Orientali: Sintesi storica. By Giorgio Fedalto. (Verona: Casa Editrice
Mazziana. 2016. Pp. 195. €14.50 paperback. ISBN 978-88-97243-24-3.)
Scholars of the Christian East have employed different methods to make
sense of the vast and complex array of churches in Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, and beyond. One method is to group these churches according to “rites,” thus
treating together the churches of the Byzantine rite, for example, even if some of
the churches of that tradition might be estranged from one another. A second
method has been to group them according to communions, which yields the four
categories of churches that exist today: the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholic Eastern Churches.
In this new book, the Reverend Giorgio Fedalto, professor emeritus of Christian history at the University of Padova, employs a third method which is strictly
historical. In just under 200 pages he covers the vast sweep of the Christian East,
providing an overview of all the churches in each period. In doing so, he gives

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ample space not only to the larger more predominant players in that history, but
also to the smaller and less well-known churches to the south and east of the old
Byzantine Empire.
In the first part of the book, which includes six chapters, the author explores
the antecedents of Christianity in the Middle East and the Mediterranean area, the
emergence of Christianity, and its eventual adoption as the state religion of the
Byzantine Empire. He goes on to describe the characteristics of these eastern forms
of the Christian faith with their distinctive structures and liturgical traditions, and
looks at early developments in India, Arabia, and Persia. The Arab expansion into
Byzantine territory and its consequences for the churches of the area receives special attention, as well as the missions of the Church of the East into central Asia
and beyond.
In the four chapters of the second part of the book, Fedalto focuses on the
interaction between the Latin Church and the Christian East beginning with
Charlemagne, and the very damaging effect the Fourth Crusade had on that relationship. He then takes up the fall of Constantinople and the beginning of the centuries-long domination of the Patriarchate of Constantinople by the Ottoman
Turks. This period also saw the expansion of Byzantine Christianity far to the
north, originally in Kiev and later in Moscow.
In third part of the book, the author brings the history of the eastern churches
up to the present day, beginning with the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire.
This began as a chaotic period with the establishment of newly independent
churches in the Balkans; the breaking away of the Church of Greece, which left
Constantinople, still on Turkish soil, bereft of most of its faithful; and the catastrophic effects of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In the relative calm that has
prevailed since World War II, Fedalto brings his narrative up to the Holy and
Great Council of the Orthodox Church, which took place in Crete in June, 2016.
In his conclusion, Fedalto reflects on the effect globalization has had on the
Eastern churches and on Christianity in general. This, along with the slow but
steady progress made by the modern ecumenical movement, makes him hopeful
regarding the future unity of Christians, and he offers some thoughts on what role
the Bishop of Rome might play in that.
This brief volume is the distillation of decades of study and reflection by one
of the world’s foremost historians of the Christian East. No doubt, it is destined to
become the standard introduction to the field among Italian speakers. An English
translation of this valuable and insightful work would be most welcome.
Washington, D.C.

RONALD G. ROBERSON, C.S.P.

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ANCIENT
Faith in Formulae: A Collection of Early-Christian Creeds and Creed-related Texts.
Edited, annotated, and translated by Wolfram Kinzig. 4 vols. [Oxford Early
Christian Texts.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. xxiv, 552,
420, 464, 509. $675.00. ISBN 978-0-1982-6941-0 [set]; 978-0-19-9609024 [vol. 1]; 978-0-19-960903-1 [vol. 2]; 978-0-19-875841-9 [vol. 3]; 978-019-875842-6 [vol. 4].)
Wolfram Kinzig’s Faith in Formulae is an essential acquisition for any research
library with holdings in early or medieval Christianity. It supersedes August Hahn’s
Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten Kirche (1842; 2nd ed. 1877; 3rd
ed. 1897) and Philip Schaff’s second volume of Creeds of Christendom with a History
and Critical Notes (1877), which have shaped the scholarship of the last century and
a half. Kinzig’s book most naturally follows in Hahn’s footsteps, and so is quite different from Valerie R. Hotchkiss and Jaroslav Pelikan’s Creeds and Confessions of
Faith in the Christian Tradition (2003), which covered the entire Christian tradition, and, being not so focused on philology, printed only the most important
creeds and confessions prior to AD 814 (Charlemagne’s death).
That date provides Kinzig his chronological terminus. His chief interests are
the ancient texts that preserve formulae of faith (e.g., “I believe in one God. . .”) or
attest to the reception of those formulae. For the hundreds of texts chosen, Kinzig
provides, if available, the original Greek or Latin from the best recent edition, followed by an English translation. Sources that survive only in other languages, e.g.,
Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, are not given in those languages, but a reference to the
best edition is provided, along with a modern translation (and perhaps a Greek
retroversion). When the editions do not adequately subdivide a text, he has done
so, to make citation easier. Quotations are marked by italics or underlining. At the
end of each text is a summation that includes the writing’s date and provenance;
bibliography for noteworthy editions, translations, and studies; and brief notes.
Those source texts—some of which are obscure but important—are grouped
into 863 sections, by author, event, or work, generally arranged chronologically
(according to current scholarly consensus on dating). Some sections are quite short
(one brief text), but others are quite long. For example, §135, on the Council of
Nicaea (AD 325), has not only the creed itself (plus bibliography pointing readers
to the thirty-two Greek witnesses), but (among others) seventy-two Latin translations and transliterations.
After providing key Old Testament and New Testament passages, Kinzig
groups those sections of texts in eight chapters. Two of them—symbolum and its
meanings, early baptismal interrogations—provide contextual background to the
longest three—second-third-century formulae, eastern texts (fourth to ninth-century), and western texts (fourth to eighth-century). Another three chapters—canon
law (fourth to eighth-century), the creed in liturgical and daily life, the creed in the

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Carolingian reform—collect sources that are direct witnesses both to the confessions themselves and to their reception. In some cases, a textual cluster belongs to
more than one chapter, in which case cross-references are provided.
Kinzig’s writing is clear and graceful, and engaged with scholarly questions
about authorship and dating. His translations, and those of Christopher M. Hays,
are sound and unstilted. In many cases, they started with the older Ante-Nicene
Fathers and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translations, but only as a beginning; all English translations have been thoroughly corrected, revised, and updated.
There is no subject index, so one cannot easily find important discussions
(e.g., on the filioque at vol. 1, p. 15 and n. 71), or identify sources that have topical
overlap (e.g., §4a and §6a, which quote a similar pagan formula of initiation). And
there is not a concordance of important Greek and Latin terms. But the other
indexes—Scripture, ancient and medieval works, manuscripts and other scripta—
are immensely helpful, as is the lengthy bibliography (116 pages).
The print version is extremely serviceable, but it will reach its limits for any
scholar doing detailed research. Close comparison of the seventy-two Latin translations of the Nicene Creed would probably require simultaneous use of two or
three copies of the print volume. I recommend that Oxford, in its online version,
allow users to filter, group, and sort sources by other criteria (e.g., a particular Bible
quotation); to juxtapose any two or three versions within the same reading space;
and to highlight word differences in versions that are very close. A digital environment should also facilitate searches on technical Greek or Latin words, not possible
in the print version.
Scholars owe a debt of gratitude to Kinzig, whose work will shape scholarship
for the foreseeable future.
Dumbarton Oaks

JOEL KALVESMAKI

Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church. By Stefana
Dan Laing. [Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s
Future.] (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic Press. 2017. Pp. xxiv, 216.
$24.99 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8010-9643-3.)
Stefana Dan Laing’s book on early Christian historical writing appears in a
series called “Evangelical Ressourcement,” intended to replicate for evangelical
Christians something analogous to the “return to the sources” that animated preconciliar Catholic theology. She wishes to reconnect evangelicals to Christianity’s
ancient sources, which, she points out, cannot be limited to the Bible. She believes
this is especially necessary in a time of historical “forgetfulness” for the sake of preserving and nurturing evangelical identity. Returning to the sources also helps compensate for evangelicalism’s preference for the individual and the “vertical” with
awareness of the place for the communal and the “horizontal.”

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“Historical writing” is broadly defined to include apologetic writing, heresiology, martyr acts, and hagiography, as well as “history” in the narrower sense of the
chronicles and ecclesiastical histories written by Eusebius and his successors. An
initial chapter on ancient historical writing in Greek and Latin literature is a very
helpful introduction, with rich quotations from ancient historians and rhetoricians.
There she introduces “four characteristic features” that will also typify Christian
historiography: narration (narratio/historia), remembrance (memoria/anamnesis),
imitation (imitatio/mimesis), and causation (aitia).
Her focus is thus literary genre more than philosophy or theology of history,
though of course she recognizes the strongly providentialist cast of Christian historiography: “They [Christians] presented to the ancient world a totalizing definition of history as salvation history” (p. 55). In her discussions of “causation” as a
historiographical feature, she rightly notes the contrast with pagan notions of Fate.
However, she seems to avoid cliched appeals to “linear” views of history in Christianity versus “cyclical” views. Christian historians themselves did not have a uniform concept of where history is heading, or even whether it has a direction at all
but is not in some type of stasis (she might have noted the work of Peter Van
Nuffelen on this non-eschatological aspect of Socrates’ and Sozomen’s histories).
Because of her broad definition of “historical writing,” relatively short shrift is
given to the fourth- and fifth-century historians—only thirty pages of the whole,
versus over eighty pages for martyrdom and hagiography, and even then it is only
Eusebius and Theodoret who are really covered. She is a reliable reader of Eusebius, although I do not think he held the seven-age theory of history based on the
six days of creation (p. 67).
The author writes clearly and skillfully for a non-academic audience and
makes rich use of an impressively wide range of primary sources. Secondary literature is all in English and is better on some subjects than others (thin on apologetics
but better on martyrdom, though Thomas Heffernan’s massive commentary on The
Passion of Perpetua and Felicity is not mentioned). Richard Burgess and Michael
Kulikowski’s Mosaics of Time is the current best guide to chronicles as a genre. Current scholarship does not think that Julius Africanus’ millenarian chronological
scheme was intended for the purpose of predicting the end (p. 166).
Laing is to be complimented on her clear and careful use of genre analysis that
subtly introduces a lay readership to questions whose technical character could
quickly become deadly. Her rather rigid focus on the fourfold historiographical grid
can lead to unnecessary repetition. Though her chronological limit is the fifth century, acknowledging the place of historiography in other eastern Christian traditions (Syriac and Armenian in particular) could have been eye-opening for her
readership.
Recommended for undergraduate libraries, seminaries, and adult reading
groups, though the orientation is very much to the evangelical tradition, as shown
by sensitivity to subjects like relics (pp. 110–11), monasticism and asceticism (pp.

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119-21), and episcopacy (barely mentioned, even when apostolic succession is the
topic). In discussing motives for the devil’s hostility to humanity as a cause of martyrdom, she says that calling Satan “the envious one” reflects classical rather than
biblical concepts (pp. 29, 105–06). Is this because the Protestant canon counts
Wisdom among the Apocrypha? “Through the envy of the devil, death entered the
world” (Wisdom 2:24).
University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minn.

MICHAEL HOLLERICH

Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. By Larry
W. Hurtado. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. 2016. Pp. xiv, 290. $29.95.
ISBN: 978-1-4813-0473-3.)
After Constantine, the changes that befell Rome guaranteed a lasting place for
the emperor in histories of the Church. For Eusebius, he upended a way of life: ransacking sanctuaries, granting Christians tax privileges, banning sacrifice. For some
modern historians, from Rodney Stark to Peter Brown, Romans flocked to Christianity in the decades following. Constantine looms over Larry Hurtado’s new book,
as well. In his retelling, “Constantine adopted Christianity likely because it had
already become so successful despite earlier efforts to destroy the movement” (p. 5).
What “success” has meant for groups throughout history, of course, has always
been in the eye of the beholder: from numerical increase to a welcome acceptance.
Hurtado inclines towards the former. In his view, a “combination of the power of
persuasion, whether in preaching, intellectual argument, ‘miracles’ exhibiting the
power of Jesus’ name, and simply the moral suasion of Christian behavior, including martyrdom” ensured “the growth of Christianity in the first three centuries” (p.
5). Those “first three centuries” are a crucial frame for his project, too. Traditionally
seen as the period when Christian Scripture was slowly being compiled, the period
before the Edict of Milan is a unit of time that still carries heavy theological baggage: imagined by many Christian denominations today as an age of purity before
Constantine’s political compromises.
Tellingly, Hurtado never ventures into the details of this later world, and readers may wonder why. A critical voice might even ask how it was possible for the
author to make an argument about the changes that swept through fourth-century
Rome (“destroyer of the gods”) without ever analyzing a shred of fourth-century
evidence.
What Hurtado’s book offers, instead, is a series of well-researched looks into
behaviors that would have made early Christians seem “distinct” to those around
them. Chapter 1 suggests that Romans were concerned about Christianity’s being
“programmatically transethnic in its appeal” (p. 25). Chapter 2 summarizes
methodological advances in “religion” to argue that Christians were taught to see
their faith as requiring “an exclusivist stance” (p. 58). Chapter 3 contrasts Mithras
and Isis with Christianity; only the latter demanded Christians “make their Christian commitment the exclusive basis of their [distinct] religious identity” (p. 86).

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Chapter 4, on manuscript copying and the innovative use of letter exchange (pp.
120–21), is perhaps the book’s most thought-provoking look at many members of
the early movement who were literate, educated, and likely from wealthy backgrounds; in it, Hurtado contends that Christians chose to write in a codex form as
a “deliberately countercultural move” (p. 136). Chapter 5 builds a case for Christian
distinctiveness through an analysis of sexual ethics, infant exposure, marriage,
divorce, and child abuse in the early Church, largely through Paul’s writings, with
occasional reliance on second- and third-century Christian sources.
Hurtado’s book is engaging precisely because it wants to situate these topics
within a larger framework. And while the book doesn’t really attempt to explain
change over time, it is good at inviting readers to imagine the “similarities or differences between early Christianity and its Roman-era environment” (p. 196). Disappointingly, it also clear that Hurtado wants to use his research to point an accusatory finger at “classic liberal forms of modern Christianity” which, in his opinion,
“have often been concerned to align themselves with the dominant culture, affirming its values, even shifting in beliefs and practices markedly so” (p. 7). Not surprisingly, any evidence for Christian cultural compromise in the first three centuries is
dismissed here as a marginal phenomenon (p. 58). This is a history of the Church
still blinded by Constantine.
DOUGLAS BOIN

Saint Louis University

MEDIEVAL
Orderic Vitalis: Life Works and Interpretations. Edited by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel
Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts. (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2016. Pp. xiv, 416. $99.00.
ISBN 978-1-78327-125-2.)
This book, while essential for all who would get to the bottom of the twelfthcentury Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis, is not an easy book to read. It is,
in fact, a very heavy book, in many places hard to follow, even obscure. Those interested in an overview of Orderic, set in the context of the major period in historiography represented by the twelfth century, would do well to avoid this book, taking
instead, perhaps, an article such as that by the present reviewer —listed on page
403 of this book, but never used or referred to—or else the papers by Roger Ray
listed on page 402!
This volume, “the first complete volume of essays entirely devoted to the study
of Orderic Vitalis” (p. 14), is dedicated, quite rightly, to Marjorie Chibnall, a prolific author on Orderic and the author of the major translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica [HE] (though it is not a translation of the entire work, as is the translation
by Thomas Forester, 1853–56—not listed in the bibliography at the end of the
present book, but mentioned on page 13). The volume has arisen from two reading
groups in 2010 at the University of East Anglia and the University of York, a two-

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day workshop at Durham, and a large conference at St. John’s College Durham,
April 9–11, 2013. The papers included in the volume have thus stood the test of
time and scholarship. The general thesis of the collection is that Orderic’s HE was
not really a “seemingly meandering narrative” (p. 9), a “sprawling inclusive form”
(of historiography), “a series of loops, meanders, and—often—dead-ends” (p. 308),
but a carefully constructed work for several purposes gone into in the volume itself.
Daniel Roach and Charles Rozier provide a good introduction to the volume,
though they make no mention of Orderic’s amazing speeches, no reference to the
proclivity toward historiography of persons of mixed descent in England
(Norman/Anglo-Saxon), and no reference to the intriguing subject of Orderic’s
mother and why he makes nothing of her. Elisabeth Van Houts, in her paper on
Orderic’s father, at least mentions her (p. 20 and especially pp. 27–35; see also pp.
101, 227–28). The introduction in this paper to Orderic himself, is very useful as a
preparation for the very abstruse speculations of Thomas O’Donnell (pp. 312 and
following). I really like the author’s description of Orderic’s account of his being
sent by his father “into exile” as “some of the most moving words in medieval writing.” The author concludes with a discussion of why Orderic’s father chose SaintÉvroul to send his son to.
There is no space here to detail every paper in this volume—on Orderic’s
handwriting (“There is little doubt that Orderic spent a great part of his life working in the scriptorium at the Abbey of Saint-Évroul,” Jenny Weston on p. 54, but
note also the reference by Thomas O’Donnell to his time spent as cantor or precentor, p. 318)—to be taken together with the valuable Appendix 2 by Jenny
Weston and Charles Rozier, entitled “Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts featuring the hand of Orderic Vitalis” (pp. 385–98); an essay “Orderic Vitalis as
Librarian and Cantor of Saint Évroul” by Charles Rozier (pp. 61–77, though one
has the feeling that at Saint-Évroul monks just ‘did’ what had to be done, without
proper titles or offices as such); an essay on Southern Italy in the HE by Daniel
Roach; another on Orderic and the English language by Mark Faulkner; one on
inscriptions/epitaphs in the HE by Vincent Debiais and Estelle Ingrand-Varenne;
on diplomatic records and charters in the HE by Thomas Roche, who notes that
“Orderic quoted, dramatized and recomposed diplomatic material in his Historia,”
(p. 169); “Orderic and the Cult of the Saints” by Véronique Gazeau—over 100
saints are mentioned in the HE and this hagiographic material is an important element of the Historia; Orderic’s secular rulers and how he presents power and personality in the HE—what qualities he thinks a king should have, and how he views
and treats William the Conqueror (William A. Aird, pp. 199–203—a very good
paper, exposing well Orderic’s view of the world and the kings who ran it); the
‘tone’ of the HE—fatigue, weariness, pessimism, and depression—note “the dark
tone that his powerful speeches convey” (Emily Albu, p. 229 and see further comment on the speeches, p. 240); “Ordericus Vitalis, Historical Writing and a Theology of Reckoning” by Giles E. M. Gasper (the first of several really difficult
papers which readers will have to tackle themselves)—“It is in the relation of the
record of local, temporal, transient human existence to the cosmic landscape of salvation that Orderic’s theological reflections are to be placed,” (Gasper, p. 259);

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Elisabeth Mégier’s “Jesus Christ, a Protagonist of Anglo-/Norman history? History
and Theology in Orderic’s HE” takes this further and makes a good account of the
importance of books I and II of the HE; “Studiosi abdita investigant: Orderic and
the Mystic Morals of History”—Sigbjørn Sønnesyn’s good and careful investigation of the hidden elements in the HE that would “bring about moral reform and
progress in the reader” (p. 290 and read pp. 293–94 carefully); O’Donnell’s twentyfive-page paper on Orderic’s elevation of the practices of the monastic common life
is worth the effort, though full of the unfamiliar terms—“polymorphism,” “diegetic
bubbles,” “identitarian narratives,” “learned rhetorical figures and the polysemy of
lectio divina. . . ,” “multivalent,” etc.; “Orderic and the Tironensians” by Kathleen
Thompson, discussing an order of new monks in northern France; Orderic and cultural memory—“one of Orderic’s most pressing concerns as a historian was to
ensure the long-term preservations of memory for posterity” (Benjamin Pohl, p.
335), betraying concern for the “mediality” of cultural memory; James G,. Clark’s
“The Reception of Orderic in the Later Middle Ages,” going with the introductory
essay by Roach and Rozier on pp. 9–10 to provide a larger context for the survival
of Orderic’s work, though, as Clark remarks, “his own writing occupied only a limited space in this enterprise” of recovering and renewing lost records and narratives
about the monasteries (p. 373).
The volume also contains a list of several black-and-white illustrations, abbreviations, a chronology of the lives of Orderic and his father, a table of the composition of the HE, Appendix 1 on archaeological excavations at the abbey of SaintÉvroult-Notre-Dame-des-Bois, Appendix 2 (already referred to), a select
bibliography, a list of manuscripts cited, and a general index. The volume has a nice
exterior with a color picture of Rouen MS 31 fol. 9r (p. 394).
University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

JOHN O. WARD

EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN
Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain: A Much Ignored Side of Spanish History. By Frances Luttihuizen. [Refo500 Academic Studies, volume 30.]
(Göttingen and Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2017. Pp. 434.
$113.00. ISBN 978-3-525-55110-3.)
Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain is a puzzling book. The
author seems to have put a lifetime of work into it, for it teems with facts about the
genealogies, marriages, careers, travels, and publications of sixteenth-century
Spaniards who found evangelical doctrines attractive and pursued them at great
personal risk. The volume also takes up the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
scholars who rediscovered and collected the treatises of these Spanish Protestants,
and in some cases, put them into print. Its three appendices contain, in order: 1) a
list of prohibited books confiscated by the Spanish Inquisition in Seville, which the
author dates to 1563; 2) a list of editions and translations of the works of the most
famous Spanish philo-Protestants; and 3) a list of the contents of the twenty-two-

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volume series, Reformistas Antiguos Españoles (1847–65), which were printed by
Luis de Usoz y Rio (1805–65), with two volumes added later by Eduard Boehmer
(1827–1906).
The strength of Underground Protestantism in Sixteenth Century Spain lies precisely in these appendices, which could open up a world of research for interested
scholars. The author has done an especially impressive job of identifying the more
than 200 works that appeared on the Inquisition’s confiscation list. The collations
could help to reinvigorate the English-language study of religious ideas of Spanish
evangelicals, which has been relatively rare since the studies of A. Gordon Kinder
and Jose Nieto, though of course Stefania Pastore and Massimo Firpo have conducted excellent recent work on the topic in Italian.
This study also comes with weaknesses. The book does not have an argument;
rather, it can be viewed as a polemic, akin to the works of Jean Crespin or John
Knox. The author writes that her “main aim . . . [is] to vindicate the memory of
those men and women who died for their ‘Lutheran’ convictions, of those who were
fortunate enough to escape, and of those who rediscovered their stories and their
works” [p. 350]. In the process of that vindication, the author indulges in Black
Legend stereotypes about early modern Spain. At one point, she notes, “as a result
of the Inquisition, the Bible became an unknown book in Spain” (p. 296), which
must have been a shock to the Hebrew scholars in Salamanca in the 1570s, not to
mention Juan de Avila or Luis de Granada. It is not true that “all prisoners” were
obliged to wear sanbenitos (p. 137). To say that the “spirit of the [Spanish Inquisition] continues” (p. 328), is to perpetuate a myth about national character.
Another difficulty is that Professor Luttikhuizen apparently is not trained in
historical research. She has never encountered a text that was not telling the
straightforward truth, nor does she appreciate possible differences between earlier
and later, historical investigations. These are the only reasons I can think of as to
why she thinks it is appropriate to cite, as still-authoritative sources, Reginaldo
Gonzalez de Montes’ Sanctae inquisitionis hispanicae artes aliquot detectae (1567),
Juan Antonio Llorente’s Historia crítica de la Inquisición de España (1822), and
works by Thomas M’Crie (1828–32). Lack of familiarity with recent research is
also obvious. One of her sources for the Council of Trent is a 1908 article from the
Catholic Encyclopedia (p. 131). There is no modern scholarship on Geneva (which
was not a welcoming pot of refugees) (p. 299). The Protestant Reformation’s
effects on women were not uniformly benign (p. 298). She does not appear to know
that French printers and female literacy in Spain have been studied in depth.
Finally, the book features odd practices of citation, which also call her methods into question. Luttikhuizen has placed the references to her points both in the
body of the text and in the footnotes, though the footnotes also can contain lengthy
additional factual material, and quotes from primary sources. A great many of her
documents come from source books edited by others, but in the sequence of the
notes, she persistently cites first the call numbers from the Archivo Histórico

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Nacional [AHN] in Madrid, as if she had consulted the sources in person—see, for
example, p. 97. When the author truly appears to be quoting from AHN sources—
as on p. 304—recto and verso are not included in the folio numbers. The author’s
material from Reginald Gonzalez de Montes comes from the English translation;
she mixes quotations and translations from Spanish primary sources with quotations and translations from German and Spanish secondary sources (pp. 304–05).
In sum, I hope her readers will wish to focus on the appendices, and use the text
and its references as a useful caution about historical method.
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

LU ANN HOMZA

This Happened in My Presence: Moriscos, Old Christians, and the Spanish Inquisition
in the Town of Deza, 1569–1611. Edited and translated by Patrick J. O’Banion. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2017. Pp. lxxx, 184. $26.95
paperback. ISBN 978-1-4426-3513-5.)
This fascinating book provides in English translation ninety-two Inquisition
documents about the Moriscos in one small New Castilian town. Deza had 1,600
inhabitants, of which about 400 were Moriscos, who were in contact with a nearby
zone of Aragón where Moriscos in higher concentration maintained customs and
religion.1 The documents range over the period from 1569, when because of the
rebellion in the Alpujarras region of Granada, Moriscos in general became more
suspect, and 1611, when those of Deza, along with most of the others in Spain,
were expelled to North Africa. The material includes denunciations to visiting
inquisitors, confessions in order to receive edicts of grace, a sample sentence in a
prominent case, and letters of prisoners to their families for help and to authorities
for pardons.
Patrick J. O’Banion, in addition to making the fluent translations, provides an
introduction for non-specialists that sets the town in the context of Spain in the
second half of the sixteenth century: its Old Christians, converted Jews, the Inquisition, and the monarchy. The book is arranged for use in undergraduate classes,
with study questions at the end of chapters (which this reader tended to find difficult to answer), a timeline, a cast of about 150 characters, photographs of the town
as it is now, a glossary of terms, bibliography, and index.
This Happened in my Presence will acquaint students with a diverse set of everyday people from four centuries ago, set them to work like detectives, inform them
about Muslim customs, and give them a sense of cultural interactions in a small
town at a time when neighbors held excessive power over one another. They will
face the hard issues historians face when assessing accusations, denunciations,

1. For nearby villages in the mid-twentieth century, see Susan Tax Freeman, Neighbors,
the Social Contract in a Castillian Hamlet (Chicago, 1970), and Carmelo García Encabo, Reyes
Juberías Hernández, and Alberto Manrique Romero, Cartas Muertas: la vida rural en la posguerra (Valladolid, 1996).

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denials, and confessions in a context of coercion, and see at close hand a run-up to
ethno-religious cleansing.
But the book is not just for students. It will be enjoyed by non-students as
well, for it provides some of the intimacy and detail of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s
classic Montaillou.
This reader was left with many questions and a few suggestions for the second
edition. He would like to know if the exceptional character with a sensational confession, Román Ramírez the younger, was tortured. He would like to know more
about the relations of the Duke of Medinaceli with his Morisco subjects, who
hoped he would rescue them (perhaps a telling document could be found from a
different kind of archive). He would have liked to see the complete set of letters
from jail intervened by the Inquisition in 1611, and especially to have the text of at
least one of the Edicts of Grace, given that such edicts provided the people of Deza
with specific items of behavior or verbal propositions to denounce or confess.
This story is set over 400 years ago, but worldwide there are many places now
in which saying the wrong thing, performing the wrong ritual, or believing in the
wrong God can get one jailed, exiled, or killed.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

WILLIAM A. CHRISTIAN JR.

Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern World.
Edited by Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-LeBeau. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2017. Pp. xx, 391. $120.00. ISBN 978-1-107-14024-0.)
Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-LeBeau have designed a sophisticated,
nuanced examination of disciplinary institutions over time from the sixteenth to the
nineteenth century and across space from Europe to Asia. The book contains
twenty-five succinct essays arranged in eleven sections and three parts. The first
eight sections address the topics: local contexts and regional variations, tribunals
and jurisdictions, judges and shepherds, records, programs of moral and religious
reform, victims as actors, negotiating penance, and gender. The last three concern
extra-European areas and the decline of disciplinary institutions. Emphasis in each
essay falls on the state of the art on each topic and area and suggestions for future
research. Articulating a new overarching paradigm to replace the reigning hypothesis of the late twentieth century, confessionalization, is not this volume’s purpose.
Indeed, the term and the names of its proponents, Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz
Schilling, are hardly mentioned.
Historians tend to be splitters, each cultivating a limited area of expertise. The
editors of Judging Faith, Punishing Sin asked those contributing essays to the first
eight sections to function instead as lumpers—to attend to consistories or inquisitions across the western European map. The honor role of scholars who followed
instructions includes (in order of appearance) Raymond Mentzer, Gretchen StarrLeBeau, Kimberly Lynn, Sara Beam, Edward Behrend-Martínez, Christian Grosse,

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Kim Siebenhüner, Timothy Fehler, Lu Ann Homza, Karen Spierling, Jeffrey Watt,
and Allyson M. Poska. Unfortunately, seven other contributors proved unwilling or
unable to do so: they demonstrate no interest in or imperfect knowledge of tribunals
other than the ones they work on. The most glaring example is an essay that pays
attention exclusively to the consistory in the Scottish town of Perth. In an ideal
world, the editors would have compelled non-complying authors to try again, and if
they failed to do so, replaced them. This did not happen. A less consequential shortcoming concerns geography. The four maps are too small and lacking in detail to be
useful. Map 2 shows only a handful of the more than forty inquisition tribunals in
Italy; it does not include two Roman Inquisition outposts, Avignon and Malta. Sets
of footnotes to each chapter vary in number and thoroughness, a problem partially
remedied in the bibliographies at the end of the volume.
Otherwise, this book has much to offer. Rather than a miscellaneous collection of articles, not all of them directly pertinent to a broad topic, it provides, at its
best, a focused examination of the various facets of judging faith and punishing sin
in the early modern world. Copious cross-references enable readers to see the forest
for the trees. Two sections are particularly impressive. In “Victims as Actors,” Timothy Fehler (pp. 180–94) illustrates recent historians’ emphasis on the agency of
those summoned before consistories and the degree to which “preexisting quarrels,
settling scores, and business (or romantic) rivalries” motivated accusations. He cites
vivid examples both from records of the morals court on which his research has
concentrated, Emden, and from those of Geneva and Wesel. Paying attention to
all three inquisitions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian), Lu Ann Homza (pp. 193–
204) describes a similar historiographical shift away from the victimization paradigm and toward emphasis on the accused’s input into their trials, which included
access to defense attorneys. “Gender on Trial: Attitudes toward Femininity and
Masculinity” features Jeffrey Watt on consistories (pp. 229–39) and Alison Poska
on inquisitions (pp. 240–49). Watt stresses the differences between morals courts
not only in the overall proportions of men and women summoned but also in those
charged with each type of offense. Poska emphasizes the degree to which inquisitions, conceived and staffed entirely by men, imposed elite male priorities on
women and lower-class men. Both historians lay out thoughtful agendas for further
comparative gender-focused research on these institutions.
Nodding at the current emphasis on global history, some books purporting to
cover “the early modern world” accord only superficial attention to areas outside
Europe. That is emphatically not the case with this one, which contains two meaty
sections, “Disciplinary Institutions in the Atlantic World” and “Disciplinary Institutions in an Asian Environment,” that will prove enlightening to those familiar
primarily with Europe. In the first, Mark Muewese explores the activities of consistories in the Dutch colonies of northern Brazil, New Netherland in North
America, and Suriname (pp. 253–65). The versatile Allyson Poska takes on inquisitions in Spanish and Portuguese America (pp. 266–78). In both regions, heterogeneous populations—colonizers, Jews, indigenes, and African slaves—demanded
the discipliners’ attention and necessitated close cooperation with the governing

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powers. In Asia, as Hendrik E. Niemiejer shows (pp. 279–91), via the promotion
of consistories, the Dutch East India Company created “’Christian republics’ in
which the Reformed Church exercised an important influence in morals control.”
Bruno Feitler (pp. 292–305) addresses the operation of the Portuguese inquisition,
centered in Goa, in the vast Estado da Índia, where its mandate included attempting to discipline majority Hindu and Muslim populations.
In the final section, “The Endgame: The Decline of Institutional Correction,”
Joke Spaans treats consistories (pp. 306–16), and James E. Wadsworth deals with
inquisitions (pp. 317–30). As they and some other authors note, disciplinary institutions in the eighteenth century have received comparatively little scholarly attention. Both privilege political and social causal factors, relegating Enlightenment
ideas to a secondary position. Both insist that the story of initial decline, resurgence, and definitive decline of institutional correction must continue beyond the
early modern era into the nineteenth century or even further.
An introduction by the editors and a conclusion by E. William Monter, one
of very few scholars who has studied both Reformed consistories and the Roman
Inquisition in Italy, bookend the volume. More than merely summarizing its contents, Monter provocatively suggests that Reformed and Catholic disciplinary institutions be viewed as “reformations of penance.” What still needs explanation, he
argues, is why the mainline churches themselves abandoned their disciplinary institutions, the only remaining vestige of which is the Catholic confessional booth.
University of Virginia (Emerita)

†ANNE JACOBSON SCHUTTE

LATE MODERN EUROPEAN
Vincenzo Tizzani. Effemeridi Romane, Volume Primo: 1828–1860. Critical edition by Giuseppe Maria Croce. [Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano—Biblioteca scientifica, Ser. II, Fonti, 104.] (Rome: Gangemi Editore.
2015. Pp. cdlxxi, 864. €140,00. ISBN 978-88-492-2615-7.)
Monsignor Vincenzo Tizzani (1809–1892) was one of the most important
figures in papal and post-papal (after 1870) Rome, during the “long nineteenth
century” of Catholicism. Scholars could already access his diary of the First Vatican
Council, edited by Lajos Pasztor in two volumes in 1991 for the series “Päpste und
Papsttum.” But now, our knowledge of the life and work of Tizzani makes a definitive step forward thanks to another multi-volume opus magnum published by the
former archivist of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Giuseppe Maria Croce. This
first of two volumes is a mine of information on a very important part of nineteenth-century Catholicism, the Rome of the popes between Pius VII and Leo
XIII. Tizzani’s daily journal entries are critically edited with several thousand footnotes; the index of names for this first volume is eighty-nine pages long; the long
list of the archives he researched includes the Archive of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the Archivio di Stato in

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Rome, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Archives du Ministère des
Affaires étrangères in Paris.
Volume I opens with an introduction of more than 400 pages (pp. xxv-cdliv)
on Tizzani. The first part of the introduction is biographical. Born into a humble
family, Tizzani described himself as “Roman by birth, formation, education, and by
living close to both the lowly people and the aristocrats of Rome” (p. xxxi). One of
his friends was the most important poet in nineteenth-century Rome, Giuseppe
Gioacchino Belli. Tizzani’s life and work provides us with an open window on life
in Rome from Napoleon to the Roma “papalina” of the Restoration, from Vatican I
to the new capital of the new kingdom of Italy. Tizzani studied at the Collegio
Romano and at La Sapienza University, until he had to rely on private teachers after
the closure of all universities in the Papal States in 1831. In 1832 he entered San
Pietro in Vincoli with the intention of becoming a canon, in a Roman ecclesiastical
environment permeated by anti-Jesuitism: “to be a good canon, you have to be antiJesuit” (p. l). His career as an academic took him to teach mainly church history in
Rome, and to travel in northern Italy, until 1843 when he was appointed bishop of
Terni. There he met the future Pius IX on his way to Rome for the conclave of 1846.
In 1847, he resigned his position as ordinary of Terni and returned to Rome as
chaplain of the pontifical armed forces—right before the highest point in the clash
between the papacy and liberal-nationalist movement trying to take over Rome.
During the brief experience of the “Roman republic,” he was in exile between Rome,
Arpino, and Gaeta, before coming back to Rome in 1850 to his post as chaplain of
the papal army and to the chapter of canons of St. John in Lateran.
His importance in papal Rome is due to his participation in key doctrinal
commissions: for the definition of the Immaculate Conception of 1854 and for the
Syllabus of Errors of 1864 (two definitions that originally were planned as one) —
but also for the reform of the Roman Breviary of 1855. His work was that of a
church historian: between 1867 and 1869 he wrote four volumes (in French) on the
general councils, and participated at Vatican I, where his position made him suspect to the most extreme infallibilists: they would never forgive him for his absence
at the vote for the definition of infallibility, even though his absence had been
announced and justified and was due not to objections against the dogma. He was
a member of the Congregation for the Index, of the Congregation for the appointment of bishops, and of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. His
position was uncomfortable vis-à-vis the Roman ecclesiastical and curial establishment: unlike the Jesuits, he was not in favor of a condemnation of the work of
Antonio Rosmini, and he was not an enthusiast of the definition of papal infallibility. Appointed titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch by Leo XIII in 1886, he had
sharp and critical assessments of the pontificates of both Pius IX (p. cccxxxi) and
Leo XIII (p. cccxxxvi–ii, and cdliii) and he was especially critical of papal intransigence about the “Roman question.”
The second part of the introduction (pp. cclix-cdliv) is an analysis of Tizzani’s
Effemeridi, of his daily entries, in order to understand the history of Rome in the

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nineteenth century. Through the few lines he wrote every day—and the masterful
and incredibly detailed and nuanced contextualization by the editor, Monsignor
Croce—we enter an extremely rich world—culturally and spiritually—of this Roman
prelate with a vast web of relations in the Curia, in Rome, in Italy, and in Europe.
Sometimes a zealot, even after 1870 Tizzani was not nostalgic of the past of papal
Rome. Tizzani’s idea of the Church after the end of the Papal States seems to echo
the famous dictum of nineteenth-century Italian liberals that Cavour is believed to
have said on his deathbed: “free Church in a free state” (libera Chiesa in libero Stato).
The works of Monsignor Giuseppe Maria Croce embody the best tradition of
Catholic historical erudition. His previous, multi-volume studies and editions of
documents, for example on the Badia Greca in Grottaferrata (1990) and on Cyrille
Korolevskij (2007), constitute monuments of the historiography of the Church.
This work on Vincenzo Tizzani is another jewel, and we look forward to the publication of the second volume in 2018.
Villanova University

MASSIMO FAGGIOLI

Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second Vatican Council,
1959–1965. By András Fejérdy. (Budapest and New York: Central European
University Press. 2017. Pp. 440. €52.00; $60.00. ISBN 978-963-386-142-4.)
Rarely are results of Hungarian historiography published in a foreign language.1 Thus, András Fejérdy’s volume, which examines the attendance of the
Hungarian bishops at the Second Vatican Council, is particularly worthy of notice
as it examines their participation in the light of the Ostpolitik, relying heavily, as it
does on Hungarian government archives. The volume is a slightly amplified version of Dr. Fejérdy’s doctoral dissertation, which was published in 2011 in Hungarian. It can be rightly stated that this comprehensive overview is presented by an
expert familiar with several aspects of this subject.
The title of the book itself is revealing. The Hungarian bishops allowed to
travel to Rome had to satisfy two expectations. On the one hand, a positive report
of the state of the Hungarian Church had to be relayed. In their Council interventions, subjects of special importance to the government had to be presented positively, as, for example, during the fourth period, the social and economic conditions
in Hungary as well as the efforts of the Hungarian government toward progress and
peace had to be especially stressed. This was also the case during the bishops’ meetings at the Vatican. The Holy See above all awaited authentic and objective information on the restricted freedom of the Catholic Church in general and of the various dioceses in particular. Such accurate information and valid advice were to
provide the basis for future negotiations. At home, the bishops were expected to
suggest effective means to carry out the conciliar teachings.
1. This review was prepared under the aegis of the MTA-PPKE Vilmos Fraknói Vatican
Historical Research Group.

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It is clear from the above few lines that the author did not strictly limit himself
to the narration of the bishops’ participation in the Council, but broadened his
examination to the expectations of both the Holy See and the Hungarian Government for future contacts and negotiations. The presence of these members of the
Hungarian hierarchy is particularly emphasized as Hungary was the first member
of the socialist bloc to conclude in 1964 a secret agreement with the Holy See.
However, it should not be forgotten, as the author points out, that the Vatican was
holding parallel consultations with Czechoslovak bishops and Lithuanian priests.
The structure of the book is rational, being logically framed and easy to follow.
On the one hand, it follows a chronological, on the other, a thematic thread. A separate section is dedicated to the preparatory phase of the Council, then to the Council itself, and finally to the reception of the Council’s pronouncements. Each section
is divided into three larger chapters, each presenting the opinions and the purposes
of the Holy See, the Hungarian government, and the Hungarian Council Fathers.
Hereinafter, I would like to enumerate the main viewpoints of these three groups.
By abandoning the policies of his predecessor, Pope St. John XXIII opened
the dialogue with the Eastern Block. The ideological basis for this step can be
found, among other places, in his Pacem in terris encyclical: “It is always perfectly
justifiable to distinguish between error as such and the person who falls into
error. . . .”2 He considered the attendance of the hierarchies from the Iron Curtain countries of primary importance so that firsthand information concerning
the conditions of these Churches might be obtained. Hungary was among these,
as contact was maintained only through the nunciature in Vienna, the Budapest
embassies of other countries with Catholic traditions, and the 1959 Roman visit
of Miklós Esty, former gentiluomo of Cardinal-Primates János Csernoch, Jusztinian Serédi, and József Mindszenty, as Nuncio Angelo Rotta had been expelled in
April, 1945, by the temporary government at the command of the Soviet president of the Allied Control Committee.
The Holy See was ready even to compromise in order to re-establish contact
with the Hungarian Church. The main items to be settled were the following:
First, the appointment of bishops, which was especially urgently needed as out of
eleven dioceses only five were led by unimpeded bishops, all of which were greatly
advanced in age; next, the loyalty-oath question, which was left to the conscience
of each bishop; and the ability to rule freely their diocese as well as maintain free
contact with the Holy See. Finally, it was hoped that the attendance of all bishops
at the Council would be permitted. Although in the Intesa Practica the main items
were resolved, such as appointments, loyalty oaths, and the possession of the Pontifical Hungarian Institute, many questions were not; thus the results of the Intesa
2. John XXIII, Pacem in terris [Encyclical on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth,
Justice, Charity, and Liberty] (April 11, 1963), §158, Acta Apostolica Sedis 55 (1963), 300,
accessed online at http://w.2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/ebcckucaks/dicznebts/hf_jxxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html

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were inconclusive. At the same time, the political dialogues were continued while
the Holy See attempted to include the Hungarian ordinaries in the work of the various committees and congregations.3
A favorable change in attitude toward ecclesiastical affairs took place at the
turn from the 1950’s to the 1960’s. The June 10, 1958, a resolution of the Political
Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, Central Committee,
declared that since the churches were going to co-exist for a long time with socialism, co-operation with them was necessary. The next resolution on July 22, 1958,
differentiated between “clerical reaction” and “religious world views.” Accordingly,
it was necessary to fight only against the former. However, the principles and
methods used for keeping the Church under total control did not change. The
Council was used as a means to consolidate state control and to break the isolation
of the country. However, bishops allowed to attend the Council still were under
strict surveillance as a great number of their staff were government agents.
The author uses with great success the sources contained in the socialist governmental archives to demonstrate this fact admirably. The government attempted
to reflect a positive picture through the bishops in order to influence the negotiations, and through which it was able to obtain concessions. Later, the dialogues
were continued, with the intent of gaining advantages for the state through theoretical debate.
Participation in the Council laid a heavy burden on those Fathers who were
able to attend it, as they had to maneuver between their loyalty to Church and
State, both officially and privately. In 1959 they were not allowed to forward their
suggestions to the preparatory committees; their circulars were censored, and their
travel privileges were granted as a favor of the State. Gaining information and promoting negotiations were carried forward both by Archbishop Endre Hamvas,
head of the Bishops’ Conference, and Pál Brezanóczy, whose experience and
knowledge of languages, played an important role within their active participation.
Their submissions and contributions are ably demonstrated in the Acta Synodalia.
The reviewer personally examined each of the documents in the Archives of the
Vatican Council II: the actual texts, covering letters, the Hungarian signatures on
other submissions—which were also a means for the Hungarians to express their
opinions confidentially—as well as the signatures of other Council Fathers on
Hungarian contributions; had they been included they all could have provided
much important information in the writing of this volume had the author elected
to use these important sources. They all provided much important information in

3. For example, Sándor Kovács, Bishop of Szombathely, was a member of the Pontifical Liturgical Council; József Ijjas from 1967 was a member of the Pontifical Council for the
Laity; and József Bánk from 1967 was a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of the Code of Canon Law. Likewise, József Ijjas became a member of the Sacra Congregatio pro Institutione Catholica in 1967, and Bishop Miklós Dudás became a member of
the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in 1968.

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the writing of his volume, and the author thoughtfully made them accessible to the
writer of this review.
In the light of these, the chart of the oral contributions and written submissions of the Hungarian Council Fathers found at the end of this volume needs clarification here and there. Within the realm of their possibilities, the Hungarian
bishops attempted to carry out the Council’s teaching with the encouragement
received from the Holy See, in the renewal of liturgical life, the increase of religious
life, the reform of priestly education, and other areas.
The volume is amplified by chronological charts on the activities of the Hungarian Fathers and their proposals and an extensive bibliography. The former is
particularly useful for a quick review while the latter provides further insight into
the subject. Although a more thorough examination of the archives would have
permitted wider research, the seventy-year time limit renders them inaccessible.
This is why the author could include only a few of them.
All in all, it is my opinion that this volume fills the void surrounding the Hungarian Hierarchy’s conciliar activities very precisely, clearly, and in an interesting
fashion.
MTA-PPKE Vilmos Fraknói Vatican Historical
Research Group

KRISZTINA TÓTH

Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia. By John P. Burgess. (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2017. Pp. xiv, 264. $30.00. ISBN:
978-0-300-22224-1.)
In his highly readable volume, Burgess provides a systematic account of the
lived religious experiences of ordinary Russians and how they interact with and
shape the structures that the official Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has developed since 1991. His central research question is whether “re-Christianisation [is]
actually taking place and if so, just what difference does it make (. . .) for people’s
lives individually and as a nation?” (p. 16). Burgess uses the somewhat ambiguous
term “Holy Rus” to refer to the ROC’s aspirations for itself and the Russian people.
This aspiration obviously involves attracting Russians to the Church and encouraging them to participate in its rituals and to accept its beliefs and values as their own.
Burgess argues that social initiatives in a wider sense can be seen as a contribution to realizing the Church’s vision of Holy Rus and has consequently included
chapters on the ROC’s missionary activities, religious education at various levels,
drug rehabilitation programs, and the canonization of the new martyrs in 2000 in
his monograph. The author seeks to explain the Church’s understanding of all
these topics and includes the relevant historical background in each chapter.
Burgess works his personal experiences into the narrative and draws extensively on his Russian contacts’ views. This gives his book a light touch, which
makes it accessible to a non-expert audience. At the same time, the volume’s aca-

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demic credentials are sound as it discusses many under-researched topics, e.g., the
ROC’s missionary concept of 2007, pre-baptismal catechization, and the values
that the canonization of the new martyrs project. The book also contains many
interesting and little known statistics.
The author’s background as a Presbyterian minister and theologian is felt
throughout the book. Burgess regularly compares Russian Orthodox views and
beliefs with those prevalent in his own religious tradition and thus teases out Russian idiosyncrasies. He does not take the secular approach that political scientists
and sociologists would take. This, however, does not mean that he condones everything that the ROC and its members do. Burgess rightfully criticizes numerous
trends inside the Church, e.g., the lack of a self-critical movement in Orthodox
comparative theology and sectology which prevents the ROC from asking itself
why other religious organizations are also successful in Russia (p. 84). He also
points out the Church’s failure to identify publicly and criticize “unjust social structures that contribute to poverty, broken families, social delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse and other social crises” (p. 107).
One might, however, wonder if the idea that the ROC is being reborn and
that there is a new Russia, which is prevalent in the book’s title and throughout the
text, is still valid. To be sure, the book is written for an American or Western audience for whom Russia is indeed a ‘new’ and exotic country. But does this mean that
readers need to be fed the narrative that Russia has only just emerged from the
ruins of the Soviet Union and that the repressive state laws on religion have only
recently been revoked? It has been thirty years since Gorbachev allowed more religious freedom and liberal laws on religion were adopted even before the USSR collapsed in 1991. Thirty years is a long time, and we would hardly call a person celebrating their thirtieth anniversary a ‘new born.’ So, why do we do it for Russia and
its Orthodox Church? It is probably time to move beyond this narrative.
KATJA RICHTERS

Independent Researcher

AMERICAN
The Civil War Diary of Father James Sheeran, Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist.
Edited by Patrick Hayes. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press. 2017. Pp. xii, 596. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-228822.)
This Civil War diary of a Confederate chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, Father James Sheeran, C.Ss.R., is an important and invaluable primary
source. Father Sheeran penned this 1656-page handwritten account of his travels,
trials, and travails while serving as a Catholic chaplain from 1862 to 1865. He witnessed numerous battles, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville,
Gettysburg, and the bloody encounters of the Wilderness campaign in 1864. An
observer, albeit from a safe distance, however he witnessed the brutality of battle
and the horrific suffering of the wounded.

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He was born in County Longford, Ireland; two sources list the year of birth
as 1819 but they cannot agree on the day. Sometime in the 1830s, he migrated to
New York City, where he married his wife Margaret. The couple moved to central
Pennsylvania and from there to Monroe, Michigan, by the early 1840s. After
undergoing a religious conversion, Sheeran had all three children baptized in the
fall of 1845. His youngest child, Sylvester, died the next year, and his wife passed
away soon thereafter. Once his remaining daughter and son were old enough to be
placed in religious communities, Sheeran entered the Redemptorist novitiate on
October 15, 1855 and was ordained a priest on September 18, 1858. About that
time, his son John died at fifteen, and his daughter Isabella, now a nun, passed away
in February, 1861. After assignment to a seminary in Cumberland, Maryland, he
was sent to St. Alphonsus parish in New Orleans in 1860. In August, 1861, he left
New Orleans to join the 14th Louisiana Infantry, the famed “Lee’s Tigers” in
northern Virginia, receiving his official appointment on October 2. This diary picks
up on August 1, 1862.
As Professor Randall M. Miller of St. Joseph’s University succinctly stated on
a blurb for the book, the journal is “passionate, partisan, and pastoral.” This Confederate chaplain passionately defended Catholicism against all comers; in addition, he enthusiastically and emphatically defended the Southern cause. He blamed
the war on “Northern bigotry, that it was there that they burned our Churches,
Convents, and Academies” (p. 76). As a priest, he pastorally heard confessions, said
Mass, and gave the last sacraments to all soldiers, Union or Confederate. One
cannot easily forget his description of the wounded and the dead after the Wilderness campaigns of 1864 (p. 359). Near the end of his diary, he poignantly writes
that “here are men in battle array, armed with instruments of death, drilled in the
science of murder, seeking the field of strife and anxious to imbrue their weapons
in the blood of their fellow men” (p. 421). After crossing Federal lines in September, 1864, to care for the wounded, Sheeran was arrested on October 30, 1864, and
imprisoned in Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He was released on December 4 after
making his protest to Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. The diary ends in January,
1865, but he does provide a summary of the last months in just two pages.
Upon his release, Sheeran worked in parishes in Baltimore and New York
City before returning to New Orleans in late 1865. Transferred to St. Louis in
1868, he departed the Redemptorists on March 20, 1871, over a dispute with his
provinicial. Attached to the Diocese of Newark, he died on April 3, 1881, in Morristown, New Jersey, where he is buried.
In addition to the diary, the book includes an informative introduction by
Patrick Hayes, who does a splendid job as editor. Father Sheeran’s spiritual autobiography is also provided at the end. The Catholic University of America Press is
to be commended for publishing this useful diary for students and scholars of the
American Civil War.
Georgia Southern University

JAMES M. WOODS

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159

Founding Father: John J. Wynne, S.J. and the Inculturation of American Catholicism in
the Progressive Era. By Michael F. Lombardo. [Jesuit Studies, Volume 9.]
(Leiden: Brill. 2017. Pp. xvi, 359. $157.00. ISBN 978-90-04-30114-6.)
Mercurial even for those who carry the label “polyglot,” Jesuit Father John
Wynne (1859-1948) taught, edited, served as a shrine director, chaplain, vice-postulator or promotor of saints’ causes, and founder or organizer of numerous American Catholic organizations (including the American Catholic Historical Association) between 1882 and 1948. Not since 1926, when he was feted for his fiftieth
jubilee as a Jesuit, has there been any sustained attention given to the legacy left by
this enterprising Catholic.
The present study is Lombardo’s 2014 University of Dayton dissertation (now
an open-access document), presented with only minor revision. It places Wynne in
the thick of debates raging in the Progressive Era, but we see little of him in the
years that follow. The book’s biographical element trails off by the end of the
1920s. The focus is instead on Wynne’s major projects: development of Catholic
literacy as a hedge against unbridled liberalism; editorship of America magazine as
a religious antidote to secular society; and the co-editorship of the Catholic Encyclopedia. Rather than capitulate to the age, during which many progressives were
openly hostile to the Catholic Church, Wynne sought to make a space for Catholic
engagement in public affairs even while promoting a well-defined separation
between Church and state.
The author’s somewhat meandering first chapters detail the very concept of
progressivism and its implementation and relation to the Church between 1890
and the 1920s. A phenomenon in which Wynne lent his intellectual prowess, he
defied its antireligious sentiments in print, especially its pragmatism and its wholesale embrace of modernity, as well as the muting of Catholic interests on questions
of public policy. Among the latter was the American government’s control of the
Philippines and the problem of revising laws that adversely affected the Church.
On the other hand, Lombardo urges, Wynne did not remain “isolated in an American Catholic ‘ghetto’” (p. 14). By extension, he argues that “American Catholic
intellectual life was not dormant during the first two decades of the twentieth century” (p. 14). Here he is in fundamental agreement with people like Thomas
Woods, who have suggested that the Progressive Era stands as both a fertile and
somewhat unexplored field of research in American Catholic history. On Lombardo’s reading, Wynne is a leading figure among Catholic intellectuals in the
United States. That is true enough, but one can hardly call him a band leader for
the simple fact that there was hardly a band to conduct. American Catholic intellectuals, broadly defined as influential thinkers in their respective fields, were a
lamentably small group, made up mainly of notable clergy, and largely removed
from national or international significance. Given these lackluster circumstances, it
is not hard to see how Wynne stands out as head and shoulders above his peers.
Indeed, as my own work has tried to show, it is one reason that postwar Catholic
intellectuals looked askance at the Progressive era’s arid landscape.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Perhaps the best contribution made by this book is Lombardo’s history of the
founding of America magazine. On this he leans on a licentiate thesis of the
deceased Jesuit John Ciani (d. 1994), but also the America archives at Georgetown
University. As Wynne ushered its transition from the Messenger of the Sacred Heart,
and the shorter-lived Messenger, America was launched after careful planning, but
principally on Wynne’s terms and vision. It was “pedagogical” and meant to help
readers in both “Catholic discernment and action in the world” (p. 257). Lombardo
makes an appealing conclusion: the magazine was “a creative adaptation of Ignatian
spirituality to the context of Progressive Era US Catholicism” (p. 257).
Lombardo’s footnotes have a somewhat unconventional bearing. For many of
the individuals he mentions or cites, whether living or dead, whether contemporaneous with Wynne or our own day, he makes mention of their professional status
or institutional affiliation. This tends to clutter the narrative unnecessarily. Still,
the volume makes for an important addition to Brill’s “Jesuit Studies” series, particularly insofar as previous monographs have focused more on Jesuits outside the
United States.
Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, Philadelphia

PATRICK HAYES

Sin in the Sixties: Catholics and Confession, 1955–1975. By Maria C. Morrow.
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2016. Pp. xx,
264. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-8132-2899-0.)
Maria Morrow’s interesting book chronicles the collapse by 1975 of a Catholic
penitential culture that had been in a flourishing state on the eve of the Second
Vatican Council. Sacramental confession lay at the heart of this culture, with many
Catholics—although probably not a majority—confessing at least monthly by the
close of the 1950s. But that penitential culture also encompassed compulsory fasting, periodic abstinence from meat, voluntary personal sacrifice during Lent and
even Advent, and an emphasis on the reparative dimensions of suffering. Meatless
Fridays and austere Lents, in Morrow’s telling, did more than define a people.
They underwrote an acute consciousness of personal sin among Catholics and thus
provided essential support to the Sacrament of Penance.
Morrow acknowledges certain tensions in the penitential culture of the 1950s.
Prosperous suburban Catholics were less responsive than their immigrant forebears
to what we might call the Catholic romance of suffering and increasingly open to
what critics regarded as the exculpatory insights of psychology. Tensions were
growing too around Catholic teaching on contraception, by most priestly accounts
the single most difficult problem when it came to the confessions of adults. Certain
theologians, moreover, were newly critical of what they saw as excessive Catholic
legalism with regard to penitential practice and the inadequate Scriptural grounding of contemporary Catholic moral theology. Bernard Häring’s The Law of Christ,
published in 1954 but translated into English only in 1963, was for many American
priests the most authoritative summary of a new approach to sin and confession,

BOOK REVIEWS

161

one that stressed an ethic of love and the penitent’s fundamental moral orientation
over an exclusively act-centered morality.
Genuine upheaval, however, came only in the wake of Vatican Council II.
Tensions over birth control came to a head and seriously eroded the Church’s
authority in the realm of sex. One predictable result was a sharp decline in the frequency of confession, even among the devout. The laws of fast and abstinence in
the American Church were significantly liberalized by the nation’s bishops in 1966,
with Catholics encouraged to undertake voluntary penances in lieu of the traditional Friday abstinence, retained only for the Fridays in Lent. Catholics heard
more about social sin from their parish priests and theologians and less about reparative suffering. Efforts to revitalize the sacrament of penance by emphasizing its
relational aspects, had the effect—as Morrow sees it—“of minimizing the reality of
actual sin and the value of the sacrament of penance to counter sin in everyday life”
(p. 195). Small wonder, then, that by the mid-1970s, significant numbers of American Catholics seldom or never had recourse to the sacrament.
The revolution in consciousness that Morrow addresses is enormously important for an understanding of recent American Catholic history. She is right to analyze the sacrament of penance in the context of a broader penitential culture. My
difficulty comes with her periodic assertions, invariably sans evidence, as to the
impact of these changes. “Though the language of sin continued to be used at least
in liturgies,” she writes of the post-conciliar Church, “for many it became an elusive, empty, and even forgotten concept, with little reference to the actions in
young adults’ own lives” (p. 78). Rhetorical moments such as this remind me of
childhood disputes in my religiously plural neighborhood back in the 1950s. The
Catholics among us maintained that Protestants could sin boldly because their
churches had abandoned the sacrament. The Protestants saw it otherwise:
Catholics could sin boldly precisely because sacramental absolution was so readily
at hand. Had a wise adult overheard us, she would surely have warned us against
easy judgments when it came to the interior lives of others.
The Catholic University of America (Emerita)

LESLIE W. TENTLER

Report of the Editor
Volume 103 of the journal consisted of 846 pages of articles, addresses, essays,
book reviews, brief notices, and the quarterly sections Notes and Comments, Periodical Literature, and Other Books Received, with an additional twenty pages of preliminary material and forty-six pages of the general index. In all, Volume 103 contained 912 pages. Subsidies from authors and contributions from others made
directly to the journal allowed for the addition of pages above those budgeted. Dr.
Paul F. Grendler of Chapel Hill, NC (emeritus of the University of Toronto) and the
Reverend Robert C. Ayres of Cazenovia, N.Y., have made generous contributions.
Of the eighteen regular articles and two addresses published, three treated a
medieval topic, six early modern European, three late modern European, seven
American, and one a modern ecumenical theme. Fourteen of their authors came
from American institutions, the others from Canadian, German, Italian, Maltese,
Polish, and Portuguese universities. In addition, there was a Forum Essay dealing
with a book on the early modern period that had contributions by scholars from
Canadian, Italian, and American institutions.
In 2017, the journal published 150 book reviews and one brief notice. The
book reviews can be subdivided into the following categories: general and miscellaneous (14), ancient (11), medieval (34), early modern (44), late modern (20),
American (21), Latin American (5), and Canadian (2). In addition, there was a
review of a film treating an early modern missions theme (1). Their authors came
mostly from institutions in the United States (93 or 62%), but those in other countries were also represented: in the United Kingdom (25 or 16%), Canada (10 or
7%), Italy (8 or 5%), Germany (3 or 2%), two each from Australia and France, and
one each from Austria, Belgium, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Spain,
and Sweden. One brief notice and the review of the film were by authors at institutions in the United States. Please see Table 1.
The editors received thirty-four new submissions of articles in 2017. They
came primarily from the United States, but also from Australia, Canada, Chile,
Croatia, the Czeck Republic, Korea/Japan, Russia, Tanzania, and the United
Kingdom. Table 2 shows the current disposition of these submissions. During the
year 2017, seventeen articles earlier accepted were published.
Two articles received awards during 2017. The Peter Guilday Prize for the
best article that was the first scholarly article published by an author went to Ms.
Kathleen Walkowiak for her study “Public Authority and Private Constraints:
Eugenius III and the Council of Reims” (pp. 409–36). A new prize, anonymously
donated recently and entitled the Nelson H. Minnich Award was granted to Dr.
162

REPORT OF THE EDITOR

163

TABLE 1.
Book Reviews, Film Review, and Brief Notice Published in 2017
Area
General
Ancient
Medieval
Early Modern
Late Modern
American
Latin American
Canadian
Film
Brief Notice
TOTAL

Winter

Spring

Summer

Autumn

TOTAL

3
3
16
12
5
9
3
0
1
0
52

5
4
7
12
9
7
0
2
0
0
46

4
4
6
12
4
3
2
0
0
0
35

2
0
5
8
2
1
0
0
0
1
19

14
11
34
44
20
20
5
2
1
1
152

Carolyn Salmons for her article “A Church United in Itself: Hernando de Talavera
and the Religious Culture of Fifteenth-Century Castile” (pp. 639–62), deemed by
the prize committee to be the best article to appear in the journal in 2017.
During 2017 the journal experienced staffing problems. With the departure in
November of Ms. Elizabeth Foxwell as staff editor, a search for her replacement
took four months to find an appropriate candidate. Ms. Mary Tonkinson filled in
for a couple months but then also left. Mr. Richard Lender subsequently helped
out. We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding during this period of
TABLE 2
Manuscripts Submitted in 2017

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

Rejected or
Conditionally Withdrawn
Published
Accepted Accepted
(W)
Pending in 2017 TOTAL
1

1

2
2
1
4
6

1

1

2

0

1-W
16, 1-W

2
2
6
1

2
14

1

1

1
2
4
1
7
13
1
0
2
0
3
34

164

REPORT OF THE EDITOR

transition. The editor is most appreciative of their services and those provided by
the associate editors Msgr. Robert Trisco and Dr. Jennifer Paxton, by the graduate
assistant Ms. Katya Mouris, and by the Board of Advisory Editors. The journal
could not function without their continued dedicated services.
NELSON H. MINNICH
Editor

Notes and Comments
ASSOCIATION NEWS
At its Presidential Luncheon during the annual meeting of the American
Catholic Historical Association on January 5, 2018 in Washington, D.C., the following awards with their citations were announced:
2017 John Gilmary Shea Prize Citation awarded to William B. Taylor of the University of California–Berkeley, for Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of
Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016)
Awarded to William B. Taylor for his book Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A
History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016). This magisterial study takes as its subject the transformation, through Catholic devotions, of the landscape of the New World in the colonial period. Taylor’s principal concern is to demonstrate how different strains of
early modern piety became rooted in specific places in Mexico, and why certain
practices flourished over the first three-hundred years of that nation’s history. In
addition to considering shrines large and small, he explains the place of miracles,
of pilgrimages, of the promotion of shrines in print, and of the role of devotional
images in the elaboration of a new spiritual geography. Rooted in decades of
archival research and in a deep knowledge of religion in colonial Mexico, Theater
of a Thousand Wonders challenges facile interpretations of devotional behaviors and
of the fluctuations in popularity of different shrines. Rather than seeing simply the
substitution of one form of religious behavior for another in the wake of the Spanish conquest, and a mirror for metropolitan devotions, Taylor demonstrates how
Mexican shrines and devotional practices diverged from their Spanish sources in
ways that were unique to New Spain. These differences in behavior, amply adduced
by records as diverse as hagiographic texts, Inquisition records, confraternity
archives, as well as artistic and architectural evidence, reveal the tensions between
popular spirituality and official desires, as well as the competition between religious
orders to harness the wellsprings of devotions across the colony. In sum, Taylor’s
study is a profound meditation on the presence of the holy in New Spain, and how
Mexicans responded to it over the span of the colonial period. Owing to its skillful
deployment of a massive quantity of data on lived religion in New Spain, as well as
to its elegant analysis of the pious practices of colonial Mexicans, this work amply
merits recognition with the 2017 John Gilmary Shea Prize.

165

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

2017 Msgr. Harry C. Koenig Journal Prize in Catholic Biography awarded to
Prof. Paul T. Murray of Siena College, for “‘The Most Righteous White Man in
Selma’: Father Maurice Ouellet and the Struggle for Voting Rights,” The Alabama Review 68.1 (January 2015): 31–73.
The inaugural Harry C. Koenig Journal Article Prize, for an outstanding biographical study of a Catholic individual published in 2015 or 2016, has been
awarded to Prof. Paul T. Murray of Siena College, for “‘The Most Righteous
White Man in selma’: Father Maurice ouellet and the struggle for Voting
Rights,” The Alabama Review 68.1 (January 2015): 31–73. Prof. Murray draws on
published records, private papers, and personal interviews to present the story of
Father ouellet’s sustained engagement, at considerable personal risk, in the struggle for African-American civil rights in the early 1960s. though cast in a biographical mode, this article is not limited to recounting an individual life. the author
very effectively sets Father ouellet’s story in its social and political context, links it
with broader historical developments, and brings in the actions and contributions
of his brethren in the society of st. edmund and the sisters of st. Joseph, expanding our knowledge of the catholic contribution to critical questions of racial justice
in the civil rights movement. Moreover, while the focus is definitely on Father
ouellet’s engagement with the civil rights movement in selma, that central episode
is situated within the broader arc of his life. the result is a moving story of moral
courage, told with great sensitivity to the historical circumstances in which that
story unfolds.
2017 Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History awarded to John Howe, Before
the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium (Cornell University Press, 2016)
in this learned, wide-ranging study, John Howe boldly reframes the long
tenth century, not as a fallow interval in the history of the Latin church in western
europe, but as period whose creative ferment made the Gregorian Reform possible.
Howe deploys his arguments with exemplary economy and clarity, calling attention
to the significant roles played by actors inside and outside the church, and to the
value of exploiting visual and material evidence alongside textual sources.
The ACHA 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award, presented to Rev. Gerald P.
Fogarty, S.J., of the University of Virginia
Gerald P. Fogarty of the society of Jesus and holder of the william R. Kenan,
Jr., professorship in Religious studies and History at the University of Virginia
earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree at Fordham University in 1964 and then went
on to earn six graduate degrees, including his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1969.
He specializes in Vatican-American relations and is a genuine scholar who has contributed substantially to our knowledge of American catholic history. His books
are in everybody’s footnotes, his interests and personal knowledge of American
catholic history are outstanding. it was he who pioneered the use of the Vatican

NOTES AND COMMENTS

167

Archives for the study of US Catholicism (the new buzz word: transnationalism.)
He is tri-lingual (Italian, Latin, and English) and even when people in the profession dismissed any idea of foreign study (who cares what Rome thinks?), Gerry
went ahead and unraveled some of those complicated interactions between the U.S.
Church and the Vatican in The Vatican and the American Hierarchy, from 1870 to
1965 (1982), as well as The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O’Connell,
American Agent in Rome, 1885–1903 (1974); he has continued his Church-State
research and publishing with “Relations between the Church in the United States
and the Holy See,” in The Jurist (1992); “The Holy See, Apostolic Delegates, and
the Question of Church-State Relations in the United States,” in The U.S. Catholic
Historian (1994); and “Roosevelt and the American Catholic Hierarchy” in FDR,
The Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933–1945 (2003).
Presently he is working on a sequel to his The Vatican and the American Hierarchy
monograph. Gerry has also written a first-class history of the Diocese of Richmond, Commonwealth Catholicism: A History of the Catholic Church in Virginia
(2001). And we would be remiss if we did not mention that during his academic
career, Gerry has published over eighty scholarly pieces, including journal articles,
book chapters, encyclopedic entries, and book reviews. And he has several items
ready for the press as we speak. Of note about this priest-scholar, Gerry Fogarty
has always been serious about blending his life as a priest with his scholarship–he
considers both a service to the Church.
It is for his dedication to the study of Catholicism, his research and his publications that the American Catholic Historical Association presents its 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award to the Reverend Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J. of the University
of Virginia.
The ACHA 2018 Distinguished Teaching Award presented to Anne Klejment of
the University of St. Thomas.
“Why learn history?” Anne Klejment writes in her U.S. Catholicism syllabus.
“It is time travel,” she explains, “transporting us from ourselves and our limited perspectives and linking us to people and societies separated by time and space. The
past has shaped our modern world in ways that we will begin to better understand
in our study of history. . . . Knowledge of history gives context and meaning to life
and to a valuable liberal arts education that unlocks vaults of knowledge.” It is this
approach to the study of history that has inspired her students over the years at the
University of St. Thomas. It is why she has been nominated and awarded the 2018
Distinguished Teaching Award—but let us hear from those who nominated her.
In nominating Anne for this Teaching Award, a former student wrote: “Both
in and outside of class, Dr. Klejment has demonstrated her passion and commitment
to teaching history, while staying true to, and promoting, her Catholic values. As a
student and advisee of Dr. Klejment, I have been witness to this passion and I am
thankful to have worked closely with someone who is so willing to share her love for
history with her students.” Some of the most memorable parts of Dr. Klejment’s

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

class, the student continued, “were when she talked at length about a topic or a
person in history that she felt strongly about—the example that comes to mind
immediately is Dorothy Day. I will never be able to come across Day’s name without
thinking of Dr. Klejment. Another thing that made me appreciate her as a professor
and adviser is her ability and willingness to have and facilitate tough conversations.
In her Twentieth Century U.S. History class, we talked exclusively about marginalized peoples, which provided countless opportunities for politically charged and
controversial discussions—all of which she facilitated with ease. I was constantly
impressed by her, and as an aspiring teacher this is one skill that I hope to gain from
her. In all, Dr. Klejment is one of the most intelligent, kind, genuine, and passionate
instructors that I have had at Saint Thomas; I am glad to have had her not only as
a professor, but as an advisor as well. I know that she is as committed to her students
as she is to teaching and for that I am not only thankful, but inspired.”
It is for her dedication to the art of teaching, her love of her students, and her
devotion to the pursuit of knowledge that the ACHA presents the 2018 Award for
Distinguished Teaching to Dr. Anne Klejment of the University of St. Thomas.
The ACHA 2018 Award for Distinguished Service presented to The American
Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
The ACHRC is awarded the Distinguished Service Award for the way it promotes Catholic scholarship, conservation, and preservation, which are varied,
inventive, and mainstays.
How has the ACHRC promoted the study of American Catholicism? It has
been through six major areas:
1. Online Finding Aids: The ACHRC has posted 195 finding aids online, for
records such as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Daughters of
the Americas, the John Ryan papers, and the records of organizations such as the
National Catholic Education Association.
2. Digital Collections online: Over the past fifteen years, the archives has
worked to digitize collections materials to make them available to researchers
throughout the world. There are currently thirty-one full or partially digitized collections available online, freely accessible to anyone with a computer.
3. Educational Materials: With the American Catholic History Classroom,
the archives has posted hundreds of primary documents and photos from its collections, along with supporting essays and other resources for educators to use in
teaching Catholicism. Currently, the archives hosts twenty-five such websites constructed by professional scholars. Topics cover race, politics, labor, and interfaith
relations with the Catholic Church.
4. Blog Posts: Published two to four times a month, the blog, The Archivist’s
Nook, informs scholars and the general public of new, unique, and novel aspects of

NOTES AND COMMENTS

169

our collections. Since 2015, the ACHRC has published ninety-two such posts on
topics related to a variety of collection-related materials, including Mother Mary
Harris Jones, to the records of the USCCB’s Office of Film and Broadcasting, to
the founding of welfare organizations such as Catholic Charities USA.
5. Conferences: Between 2013 and 2017, the archives has secured funding for
three Catholic Archives in the Digital Age Conferences held on the Catholic University campus related to media and archives, teaching and archives, and religious
order archives. All conferences have been free of charge to participants.
And finally, through Mohler Grants: The Dorothy Mohler Research Grants
help defray research and travel costs for those using the collections at the Archives.
Every year two grants are awarded to scholars using the collections.
It is for its devotion and dedication to the promotion and preservation of U.S.
Catholic History that the American Catholic Historical Association is pleased to
award the 2018 Distinguished Service Award to The American Catholic History
Research Center and University Archives, The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D.C.
John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award awarded to Sean B. Rost of the University of
Missouri, for “A Call to Citizenship: Anti-Klan Activism in Missouri, 1921–1928”
Two other annual awards related to the Catholic Historical Review were also
announced during the Business Meeting:
The Peter Guilday Prize for 2017, presented to Ms. Kathleen Walkowiak of Saint
Louis University
The Peter Guilday Prize, awarded for an author’s first scholarly publication, is
given to Ms. Kathleen Walkowiak of Saint Louis University for her article “Public
Authority and Private Constraints: Eugenius III and the Council of Reims” that
appeared in Volume 103, no. 3 (Summer, 2017), 409–36. This well-researched and
written study re-evaluates Pope Eugenius III (1145–53) and demonstrates that he
should not be seen as an ineffectual pope because of the poor reception of his conciliar decrees. Rather, by examining his roles as mediator and counselor, theologian
and jurist, ruler and symbol, Eugenius emerges as a skillful manager of the various
pressures on him at the Council of Reims (1148) and as a very attractive and
humane prelate. To arrive at this new assessment of the pope, Ms. Walkowiak critiques the historical sources for their various biases. She notes how Eugenius used
elaborate ceremonies to manifest and aggrandize his papal authority, the spiritual
and political significance of his giving the golden rose to King Alfonso VII of
Castile, the public cutting up of a book to demonstrate his authority over questions
of heresy, the choice of the date of Laetare Sunday to promote crusades, and his
dramatic prostrating himself at the feet of a count to pressure him to be reconciled
with his spouse. Eugenius III exercised papal power with compromise and in collaboration, with patience and in an objective manner. He balanced off factions and

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NOTES AND COMMENTS

squabbles and tried to uphold the decisions of his predecessors. As a marriage
counselor he made emotional appeals in an effort to resolve marital conflicts. As an
arbiter of theological disputes, he found it difficult to understand the new technical
terminology of the dialecticians with their use of logic and grammar to speculate
on the mystery of the Trinity, and negotiated a compromise whereby Bishop
Gilbert of Poitier accepted the four points composed by Bernard of Clairvaux and
thus escaped condemnation. The decrees his council issued were mostly re-iterations of earlier decrees, but some were modification of these, and others were new.
The ways Eugenius III managed the Council of Reims, as demonstrated by Ms.
Walkowiak, reveal a papal monarch who managed effectively the various pressures
on him. For this new assessment of an important medieval pope the Peter Guilday
Prize is gladly awarded to Ms. Kathleen Walkowiak.
The Nelson H. Minnich Prize for 2017 presented to Dr. Carolyn Salomons of St.
Mary’s University in Calgary.
In 2017 an anonymous donor gave to the Catholic Historical Review an endowment to establish the Nelson H. Minnich Prize to be awarded to the author of the
best article to appear in the journal in 2017. The first recipient of this prize is Dr.
Carolyn Salomons for her study “A Church United in Itself: Hernando Talavera
and the Religious Culture of Fifteenth-Century Castile.”
The committee singled out this article for its originality in clarifying the reasons why Archbishop Talavera opposed the divisive actions of the Spanish Inquisition in using force, instead of education, to achieve religious unity in Castile. Talavera was not “tolerant” in the modern sense of the word; he did not favor the
continued practice of the Muslim and Jewish religions, but he did respect the converts’ gradual growth in their understanding and practice of Christianity, aided by
preaching and instruction. The article also documents, using primary sources, some
archival, Talavera’s efforts to protect the jurisdictional rights of the Church against
the encroachments of overly zealous officials of the royal inquisition. His opposition
brought down upon him their wrath, with the imprisonment of members of his
family and of himself. His appeal to Pope Julius II was sustained by a bull in 1506
that praised his blameless life and zeal for souls, but he died before the letter acquitting him of charges of heresy arrived. The committee felt that this article has made
a significant contribution to the study of later medieval Spanish religious history.

SPRING 2018 MEETING
The spring meeting of the Association will be held at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland on April 12–15. A plenary lecture by Catherine
O’Donnell (Arizona State University) will be given on the life of Elizabeth Ann
Seton. There will also be guided tours of the Mount, including the Rhoads Memorial Archives, the Seminary, and the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes (the oldest Lourdes replica in the United States and new home to the shrine of
St. Sharbel); also tours of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, includ-

NOTES AND COMMENTS

171

ing the Basilica, historical buildings, and cemetery, and of the Gettysburg National
Military Park and “Catholic sites” in the surrounding area. To register for the
meeting, please visit the ACHA website.
Those wishing to present papers at the annual meeting of the Association in
2019 in Chicago should submit their proposal by April 16, 2018. For more information, please visit the call for papers link on the ACHA website.

CONFERENCES
On January 17–19, 2018, an international conference “Che cos’e stato il 1968”
was held in Barcelona at the Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià. The papers traced the
events in Barcelona, Paris, Berlin and Frankfurt, Berkeley, and Mexico City, and
how these were perceived in Moscow. Other papers examined their Marxist,
Freudian, Nietzschian, and feminist underpinnings and their influence on scientific
theology, politics, education, art, literature, and cinema. A special session was dedicated to the ecclesiastical consequences of the events of 1968.
On January 25–26, 2018 an international colloquium was held in Florence at
the Istituto Sangalli on “Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586): A European
Statesman in an Age of Conflicts.” The session on “Granvelle in between the Arts
and Politics” treated his correspondence preserved in European archives, Granvelle
as an artistic agent of Philip II, and Granvelle’ artistic patronage. The session on
“Granvelle and/in Italy” studied his trips to Rome and his relations to Naples, Florence, Milan, Genoa, and Sicily. His role on the wider European stage was the topic
of another session that focused on France, England, the Low Countries, and Spain.
On March 17, 2018 a colloquy will be held at the Collège des Bernardins in
Paris on the theme “Le concile de Florence (1437–1439): Histoire et Mémoires.”
Among the speakers and their presentations are: Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “Ce
que nous savons du concile de Florence”; Antoine Arjakovsky, “Heurts et malheurs
de la réception du concile de Florence”; the session “Les déformations mémorielles
(dans les Églises d’Orient et d’Occident) et leurs possibles guérisons au temps present” features Bernard Sesboüé, “Les déformations mémorielles dans l’Eglise
catholique romaine”; Dan Muresan, “Entre réception et déception : résonances de
l’Union de Florence dans les pays orthodoxes de tradition grecque, serbe et
roumaine”; and Florent Mouchard, “Le Concile de Florence en Russie: des mythes
historiographiques aux vicissitudes de l’Eglise moscovite (XVe s.).” The session
“Quelques personnalités clefs du concile et la profondeur des débats théologiques”
has Émilie Rosenblieh speaking on “Eugène IV au concile de Ferrare-Florence ou
l’invention d’une tradition conciliaire”; Bernard Marchadier on “La figure de Mgr
Isidore de Kiev”; and Alexandre Siniakov on “ La relation entre Moscou et Constantinople à l’époque du concile de Florence.” Another session entitled “Les
approches ecclésiologiques des pères du concile : l’authenticité des consensus trouvés” enlists Barbara Hallensleben on “Les avancées et les limites de l’ecclésiologie
du concile de Florence”; Konstantinos Vetochnikov on “Analyse de l’acte du Concile de Florence”; and Gérard Dédéyan on “Participation et réception du concile de

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Florence par les Églises non chalcédoniennes orientales.” Participating at the concluding roundtable “Le besoin d’un récit commun du christianisme d’Orient et
d’Occident au second millénaire” are François Euvé, Anne-Marie Reijnen, Roland
Minerath, Borys Gudziak, and Jean de Charioupolis.
On April 12–14, 2018 the Folger Institute in Washington will hold a conference on “Exploring Entangled Histories: Britain and Europe in the Age of the
Thirty Years’ War, c. 1590–1650.” Registration is open until March 30th. Please
see info@folger.edu.
On June 21–22, 2018, the National University of Ireland in Galway will sponsor a conference on “Glossing Cultural Change: Comparative Perspectives on
Manuscript Annotation, c. 600–1200CE.” Proposals (300 word maximum) for
twenty-minute papers that explore the role of glossing as revealing reading practices, mandating how manuscripts should be read and interpreted, teaching one
how to organize knowledge, or creating new knowledge should be sent by February
23, 2018 to Pádraic Moran at padraic.moran@nuigalway.ie.
On July 2–3, 2018 the Athens Institute for Education and Research will sponsor in Athens the “16th Annual International Conference on History and Archeology: From Ancient to Modern.” Proposals for papers should be submitted by
March 5, 2108 to Dr. Jayoung Che at atiner@atiner-conferences.gr.
On August 29–31, 2018 an international conference “Towards a Different
Reformation” co-sponsored by the North American Association for the Study of
Religion will be held at the University of Johannesburg. The conference will study
how the Reformation is conceived, understood, and theorized in a materialist
framework over long periods as an iconic event, as discourse, as a series of contested
social and ideological formations. The conference organizers welcome paper proposals that investigate the Reformation as an historical, discursive event involving
social redefinitions, economic interests, and politico-cultural formations that have
trajectories into the present. The deadline is April 6, 2018 and the proposals should
be sent to Professor Gerhard van den Heever or Professor Maria Frahm-Arp at
reformation2018@gmail.com.

PUBLICATIONS
The entire volume (75) of Franciscan Studies for 2017 consists of “Essays on
John of Capistrano.” James D. Mixson and Bert Roest have contributed a preface
(pp. 1–3), and twelve articles follow: Letizia Pellegrini and Ludovic Viallet,
“Between christianitas and Europe: Giovanni of Capestrano as an historical issue”
(pp. 5–26); Ottó Gecser, “Giovanni of Capestrano on the Plague and the Doctors”
(pp. 27–47); Daniele Solvi, “Giovanni of Capestrano’s Liturgical Office for the
Feast of Saint Bernardino of Siena” (pp. 49–71); James D. Mixson, “Bernardino’s
Rotting Corpse? A Skeptic’s Tale of Capestrano’s Preaching North of the Alps”
(pp. 73–88); Pietro Delcorno, “Giovanni of Capestrano and Jan Brugman in a
Manuscript of the Brothers of the Common Life: The Hague, Koninklijke Biblio-

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173

theek, MS 78 H 54” (pp. 89–116); Bert Roest, “Giovanni of Capestrano’s AntiJudaism within a Franciscan Context: An evaluation of recent scholarship” (pp.
117–43); Filippo Sedda, “An liceat cum Iudeis participare. A consilium of Giovanni of
Capestrano” (pp. 145–74); Pavla Langer, “Giovanni of Capestrano as novus
Bernardinus. An Attempt in Iconography and Relics” (pp. 174–208); Luca Pezzuto,
“Prints for Canonization and ‘Verae Effigies’: The History and Meanings of
Printed Images Depicting Giovanni of Capestrano” (pp. 209–32); Giuseppe
Cassio, “Saint Giovanni of Capestrano in the Artistic Representations of the Franciscan Family Tree” (pp. 233–73); Michael F. Cusato, “Highest Poverty or Lowest
Poverty? The Paradox of the Minorite Charism” (pp. 275–321); and Filippo Sedda,
“Olivian Echoes in the Economic Treatises of Bernardine of Siena and John of
Capistrano” (pp. 385–405).
A collection of articles on “La ricerca storica internazionale sul cattolicesimo
romano tra Cinquecento e Novecento: Per uno stato dell’arte,” edited by Giuseppe
Battelli, appears in the second issue for 2017 (Volume 38) of Cristianesimo nella
storia. Following the editor’s introduction (pp. 319–21) are two articles on “Il
metodo, i materiali e gli strumenti”: Battelli, “La recente storiografia internazionale
sul cattolicesimo romano tra Cinquecento e Novecento. Metodo e approcci, periodizzazione, statuto disciplinare” (pp. 325–56), and Enrico Galavotti, “La storia
dei cristiani nell’era digitale” (pp. 357–80). The other eight articles fall under the
heading “Tra i nodi maggiori”: Claus Arnold, “Katholizismus und Modernisierung
in der Neuzeit” (pp. 383–98); Corinne Bonafoux, “Le catholicisme, ennemi de la
modernité, une ligne de force de l’historiographie” (pp. 399–419); Carlo Fantappié,
“Chiesa, codificazione e modernità” (pp. 421–66); Maria Teresa Fattori, “Chiesa
della Controriforma, Stato della Chiesa, Stato secolare: parallelismi morfologici
alleanze ideologiche, contraddizioni” (pp. 467–93); Máximo García Fernández,
“Religiosidad popular y comportamientos colectivos. Europa, siglo XVI—1830”
(pp. 495–516); Andrea Gardi, “Problemi di distrettuazione ecclesiastica nella storiografia recente” (pp. 517–42); Giovanni Miccoli, “L’avversione per i gesuiti: un
capitolo non secondario della storia della Compagnia di Gesù” (pp. 543–81); and
Joachim Schmiedl, “Die katholische Kirche zwischen Primat, Kollegialität und
Synodalität” (pp. 583–604).
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation is commemorated in the issue for
July–September, 2017 (Volume 97, Number 3) of the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie
religieuses. The theme is approached from seven directions: Irene Dingel, “Un monde
en transition. L’influence de la Réformation sur la théologie, la société et la politique”
(pp. 327–47); Marc Lienhard, “Luther et les images” (pp. 349–60); Jérôme Cottin,
“Le Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521). Une théologie militante et polémique en
images” (pp. 361–84); James Hirstein, “Des modes d’expression sublimes dans l’Epistola ad Leonem decimum et le Tractatus de libertate christiana corrigés par Martin
Luther, par Beatus Rhenanus et par l’officine d’Adam Petri en vue de l’édition de
1521” (pp. 385–421); Matthieu Arnold, “Martin Luther et les Juifs (1523, 1543). De
la coexistence amicale à la ségrégation” (pp. 423–37); Matthias Morgenstern, “La
dernier sermon de Luther (14 ou 15 février 1546) et son «admonestation contre les

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juifs»” (pp. 439–48); and Morgenstern and Annie Noblesse-Rocher, “La réfutation
des accusations de crime ritual d’Andreas Osiander” (pp. 449–67).
“A Special Issue of Church History in Commemoration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation” is dated December, 2017 (Volume 86, Number 4). Euan
Cameron has provided the “Introduction” (pp. 971–79), and there are six contributors: Andrew Pettegree, “Print and the Reformation: A Drama in Three Acts”
(pp. 980–97); David H. Price, “Hans Holbein the Younger and Reformation Bible
Production” (pp. 998–1040); Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, “Between New Ideals
and Conservatism: The Early Lutheran Church Interior in Sixteenth-Century
Denmark” (pp. 1041–80); Christopher Boyd Brown, “Art and the Artist in the
Lutheran Reformation: Johannes Mathesius and Joachimstal” (pp. 1081–120).;
Alexandra Walsham, “Recycling the Sacred: Material Culture and Cultural
Memory after the Reformation” (pp. 1121–54); and Louis D. Nebelsick and
Tomoko Emmerling, “‘Finding Luther’: Toward an Archaeology of the Reformer
and the Earliest Reformation” (pp. 1155–1207).
Yet another journal has devoted an issue to the quincentenary of the Reformation. Church History & Religious Culture presents the following brief studies in
its number 3–4 for 2017 (Volume 97): “Semper Reformanda: A Call for the Ongoing Value and Relevance of Reformation Studies,” by R. Ward Holder (pp. 305–
09); “The Future of Reformation Studies,” by Vincent Evener (pp. 310–21);
“Enduring Erasmus: Reception and Emotion in Christian Humanism,” by Kirk
Essary (pp. 322–33); “Calvin Studies in Context: A Modest Proposal,” by Kenneth
J. Woo (pp. 334–45); “Early Modern British Religious History: Looking Forward,”
by Susan Royal (pp. 346–55); “The Reformation in Poland-Lithuania as a European Networking Process,” by Kestutis Daugirdas (pp. 356–68); “Lay Female
Devotional Lives in the Counter Reformation,” by Jennifer Hillman (pp. 369–80);
“Early Modern Catholicism and Its Historiography: Innovation, Revitalization,
and Integration,” by Jaap Geraerts (pp. 381–92); and “Faces of the Reformation,”
by Joke Spaans (pp. 408–51).

OBITUARY NOTICE
Christopher Joseph Kauffman
(1936–2018)
Dr. Christopher Kauffman, educator, scholar, mentor, husband, father and
family man passed into the hands of God, surrounded by his loving family on January 30, 2018. In his eighty-one years Kauffman, through his teaching, numerous
publications, both articles and books, and his inauguration and editorship of the
U.S Catholic Historian, made an indelible mark on the education of future scholars
as well as advancing the study of American Catholic history.
Born on October 9, 1936 in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of four children
of Dr. Daniel Emmanuel Kauffman and Bernice O’Brien, Kauffman was raised by
his mother and maternal grandfather, Christopher O’Brien, due to the premature

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175

death of his father when he was only an infant. He was greatly influenced by his
grandfather, who, while serving as a surrogate father, provided the guidance and
mentorship his grandson needed in many aspects of his life, including faith. As a
youth, Kauffman daily observed his grandfather praying the rosary on his knees.
Kauffman was totally devoted to his family, beginning with his mother, whom he
visited regularly until her death in 1987 and his three siblings, Margaret Abel and
Jack Kauffman, who preceded their brother in death, and his eldest brother, Daniel
Kauffman, presently residing in Georgia. While his mother kept the home fires
burning as a principal distributor of Catholic school uniforms, young Chris
attended parochial schools, including the Christian Brothers Academy, in Clayton,
Missouri. As a youth, he was an avid reader and, recognized by his teachers as one
with exceptional aptitude, he thus was encouraged by his teachers to read books
which were advanced for his age. While attending high school, he encountered his
great academic mentor, Justus George Lawlor, who encouraged him to attend St.
John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1958.
Lawlor continued to serve as a mentor for Kauffman throughout the latter’s career.
Returning home, Kauffman completed master (1961) and doctoral (1970) degrees
at St. Louis University.
After completing his master’s degree, he began his career as an educator, initially for several years at Mercy High School and then for short periods of time at
Fontbonne College for women, Marillac College, and St. Louis University. In the
early fall of 1966 he met Helen Schaberg. After a short courtship they married on
December 26, a convenient time since both were teachers enjoying the Christmas
holiday. Together they brought into the world their three children, Jane Kauffman

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Marinelli, Christopher Justus Kauffman, and Katie Kauffman. Over the years their
family expanded with seven grandchildren. From Kauffman’s perspective, one of
the truly great joys, especially from the influence of his grandfather, was being
called “Grandpa.”
Christopher Kauffman’s first significant foray into American Catholic history
was through a series of institutional histories that he was commissioned to write.
His first monograph in this genre was a two-volume history of the Alexian Brothers (1976). Moving to Connecticut, he next produced a centenary history of the
Knights of Columbus (1982), plus an update and addition ten years later. The
family’s last move was to Baltimore, where he completed a history of the Society of
St. Sulpice (1989). As his career continued, he penned an authoritative history of
the Cathiolic Health Association of the United States (1990), a biography of
William Howard Bishop, the founder of the Glenmary Home Missioners (1991),
and a history of the Marianists in the United States (1999). While these monographs were significant, arguably his greatest contribution in this scholarly format
was his editorship of two multi-volume works which encompassed a broad range of
topics associated with American Catholic life. His award-winning six-volume
Bicentennial History of the Catholic Church in America (1989) authorized by the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) was followed, beginning ten
years later, by his nine-volume American Catholic Identities: A Documentary History
(1999–2003).
In September 1989 Christopher Kauffman began another important phase of
his life, taking the position as the Catholic Daughters of the Americas Chair in
American Catholic History at The Catholic University of America in Washington,
D.C. Teaching there until his retirement in 2008, he served as professor, mentor,
and friend to many students, and guided numerous men and women to the completion of their doctoral dissertations, including the writer of this memoriam. In
addition to his teaching responsibilities at the University, Kauffman served as President of the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) in 2004. He was
awarded emeritus status from Catholic University in 2014.
Kauffman’s career as an educator and his array of monographs and multivolume publications were certainly matched if not exceeded by his composition of
over 100 scholarly articles, covering topics as wide-ranging as an analysis of a proposal for the ordination of women, the early history of The Catholic University of
America, the work of Catholic Relief Services in Vietnam, plus numerous articles
that addressed topics related to his monographs. While these individual contributions of research and writing are highly significant, his editorship of the U.S.
Catholic Historian from 1983 to 2013 may be his greatest contribution of all. Focusing on various topics for the individual issues of this journal, Kauffman brought to
light stories of American Catholics that heretofore had been underrepresented by
historians, including women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, and
those on the frontier and borderlands.

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177

Beyond the halls of academia, Kauffman reveled in his family life. His commissioned histories allowed him to travel with his family to Europe, especially Germany and France. The habit he had from youth of being an avid reader continued
throughout his life. He was particularly attracted to murder mysteries. More
recently he began to write poetry. He was described by his friends as a very sociable
individual, making friends easily and always enjoying the opportunity to entertain
people in the family home. Certainly the academic community, especially those of
us who study American Catholic history, have lost a giant and a friend. He has left
a great legacy behind, forging a path that we, his students and those who have benefited from his scholarship and friendship, should be very glad to follow.
Stonehill College

RICK GRIBBLE, CSC

Periodical Literature
GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Il magistero e il ministero di Paolo VI sulla pace. †Pietro Card. Parolin. Istituto
Paolo VI, 73 (June, 2017), 32–44.
Fünfzig Jahre nach dem Sturm—Ein historischer Rückblick auf die Enzyklika
Humanae Vitae. Franz Xaver Bischof. Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 68 (4,
2017), 336–54.
Mission Impossible? Pope Benedict XVI and Interreligious Dialogue. Emil Anton.
Theological Studies, 78 (Dec., 2017), 879–904.
Les Fêtes des martyrs dans les livres issus de la réforme liturgique de Vatican II:
Calendrier romain général et communs. Philippe Beitia. Ephemerides Liturgicae, CXXX (Apr.–June, 2017), 274–89.
Augustin, docteur de la grâce: histoire d’un titre. Simon Icard. Revue d’Études
Augustiniennes et patristiques, 63 (1, 2017), 181–98.
Cusanus, die Neuscholastik und die historiographische Repräsentation des
Epochenanbruchs. Mario Meliadò. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 99 (1, 2017),
115–56.
The Reformation as Revolution: Anticlericalism, Social Movement, and Modern
Conceptions of Freedom. Hans-Jurgen Goertz. Mennonite Quarterly Review,
91 (Oct., 2017), 541–62.
Studi e prospettive della ricerca sul controllo delle istituzioni ecclesiastiche in età
moderna. Daniele Edigati. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXV (II, 2017), 249–
71.
The World Day of Prayer: Ecumenical Churchwomen and Christian Cosmopolitanism, 1920–1946. Gale L. Kenny. Religion and American Culture, 27
(Summer, 2017), 129–58.

ANCIENT
Nommer et classer les religions aux IIe–IVe siècles: La taxinomie “paganism,
judaïsme, christianisme.” Francesco Massa. Revue de l’histoire des religions,
Dec., 2017, 689–715.
Inclusivité et exclusivité dans la Vie d’Apollonius de Tyane. Philostrate sur le
judaïsme, le christianisme et les traditions païennes. Danny Praet. Revue de
l’histoire des religions, Dec., 2017, 661–88.
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Rethinking Valentinianism: Some Remarks on the Tripartite Tractate, with special
reference to Plotinus’ Enneads II, 9. Francesco Berno. Augustinianum, LVI
(Dec., 2016), 331–45.
The date of the Martyrdom of simeon bar sabba’e and the persecution of christians in Persia under shapur ii. rafal Kosiński. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 21 (dec., 2017), 496–519.
neue Priester braucht das land, oder: Wollte Kaiser Julian eine “heidnische
Kirche” schaffen? Hans-ulriche Wiemer. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum,
21 (dec., 2017), 520–58.
Gli organizzatori della spiritualità bizantina: Basilio di cesarea—Gregorio di
nazianzo. Francesco Trisoglio. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, lii (3,
2016), 537–49.
le discours sur les religions chez Grégoire de nazianze et Maxime le confesseur,
ou l’art de discréditer le “monothéisme” juif. christian Boudignon. Revue de
l’histoire des religions, dec., 2017, 777–95.
shenoute’s Feast: Monastic ideology, lay Piety, and the discourse of Food in late
antiquity. dana robinson. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 25 (Winter,
2017), 581–604.
la religion qui souille: les categories du pur et de l’impur dans la polémique
religieuse pendant l’antiquité tardive. Pierluigi lanfranchi. Revue de l’histoire
des religions, dec., 2017, 717–36.
‘… neque in dexteram, neque in sinistram declinans’ (Vita Augustini 22,1). Possidius’ relationship with augustine and augustine’s embodiment of the Praeceptum in the Vita Augustini. Paul van Geest. Revue d’Études Augustiniennes et
patristiques, 63 (1, 2017), 99–121.
Klosterflucht und Klerusniveau. augustins Epistula 60 an aurelius von Karthago—
einführung und ausführlicher Kommentar. andreas e. J. Grote. Augustiniana, 67 (1–2, 2017), 101–22.
Jesus christus—Ciuis Romanus. die christianisierung des augustus und die
romanisierung christi bei orosius—ein Paradigma politischer Theologie?
Heinz sproll. Augustinianum, lVi (dec., 2016), 367–90.
lasting Penitential consequences in the late Fifth and early sixth century Gallican church: investigations and current applications. Matthew s. ernest.
Ephemerides Liturgicae, cXXXi (apr.–June, 2017), 257–73.
les âges de l’Humanité et la critique du christianisme selon damascius. Philippe
Hoffmann. Revue de l’histoire des religions, dec., 2017, 737–75.
abundance, Luxuria, and sin in late antique Historiography. eoghan ahern.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 25 (Winter, 2017), 605–31.
eutichio, monaco e patriarca ‘nella tormento’ (e Gregorio Magno). Giorgio
cracco. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, lii (3, 2016), 569–89.

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MEDIEVAL
Liturgy against apostasy: Marian commemoration and the Jews in Visigothic
Iberia. Kati Ihnat. Early Medieval Europe, 25 (nov., 2017), 443–65.
Violence against the dead: The negative Translation and damnatio memoriae in
the Middle ages. dyan elliott. Speculum, 92 (oct., 2017), 1020–55.
Glossing Vergil and Pagan learning in the carolingian age. sinéad o’sullivàn.
Speculum, 93 (Jan., 2018), 132–65.
The ecumenical synods in the eastern Byzantine and post Byzantine iconographic
tradition. Maria Kazmía-Tsérnou (†). Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa,
lii (3, 2016), 517–36.
Monastische Buchkultur in Burgund vom 9. zum 11. Jahrhundert. die Bibliothekskataloge des Klosters saint-Vivant de Vergy (Vat. lat. 296 und 1981).
Tobias daniels. Francia, 44 (2017), 315–38.
Musical cryptography and the early History of the ‘león antiphoner’. elsa de
luca. Early Music History, 36 (oct., 2017), 105–58.
abadologio del monasterio de san claudio de león (siglos X–XiV). ernest
Zaragoza Pascual. Compostellanum, lXii (Jan.–June, 2017), 209–36.
Kingship and Hospitality in the iconography of the Palatine church at alt’amar.
igor dorfmann-lazarev. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, lii (3,
2016), 479–516.
The Portrayal of Marriage in Miracula in France, c. 1000-1200. elisabeth van
Houts. Gender & History, 29 (nov., 2017), 505–28.
el monasterio de santa María de ripoll: escuela y literatura en torno al abad oliba
(primera mitad del siglo Xi). edición de textos. stefano Maria cingolani.
Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 471–86.
‘You conquer countless enemies, even as a maiden’: The conqueror’s daughter and
dynastic rule at Holy Trinity, caen. laura l. Gathagan. History, 102 (dec.,
2017), 840–57.
Índices de la regesta Pontificia Medieval de la iglesia de santiago de compostela
(1095–1417). Xosé M. sánchez sánchez. Compostellanum, lXii (Jan.–June,
2017), 179–207.
el señorio del obispado de Burgos en cantabria en la edad Media. carmen díez
Herrera. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 439–54.
elección de sepultura y espacio funerario: santa María la real de nájera (siglos XiXV). Margarita cantera Montenegro. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 455–69.
reputation, authority and Masculine identities in the Political culture of the First
crusaders: The career of arnulf of chocques. natasha Hodgson. History,
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Count Hugh of Troyes and the Prestige of Jerusalem. James Doherty. History, 102
(Dec., 2017), 874–88.
scribal crusading: Three new Manuscript Witnesses to the regional reception
and Transmission of First crusade letters. Thomas W. smith. Traditio, 72
(2017), 133–69.
Precari cepit et Scripturis Divinis animum impendere. la Passio del San Luxorio gran
caballero nel ciclo scultoreo del santuario di Fordongianus. Gian Gabriele
cau. Theologica & Historica, XXV (2016), 225–67.
The introduction of the Feast of conception. The Middle english versions of the
legend: What was lost in transmission. Wiesje emons-nijenhuis. Revue Bénédictine, 127 (June, 2017), 90–132.
la devoción mariana: Teologia y orden cisterciense. iria Blanco Brey. Compostellanum, lXii (Jan.–June, 2017), 139–78.
imperial rule in Medieval spain: christian and islamic contexts. Wolfram
drews. Medieval History Journal, 20 (oct., 2017), 288–318.
constructing identity in the Middle ages: relics, religiosity, and the Military
orders. Tomasz Borowski and christopher Gerrard. Speculum, 92 (oct.,
2017), 1056–1100.
Kritik des essgewohnheiten bei den cluniazensern in der Apologie Bernhards von
clairvaux. ira adámková. Revue Bénédictine, 127 (June, 2017), 133–47.
William of Malmesbury, Monk, Historian, Hagiographer and Man of letters.
William smith. American Benedictine Review, 68 (June, 2017), 154–95.
William of Malmesbury and fortuna. Tom stephen Forster. Journal of Medieval
History, 44 (1, 2018), 21–38.
‘all this i say against the rage of archdeacons against my poor fellow citizens’:
archdeacons’ authority and identity in Twelfth-century england. stephen
Marritt. History, 102 (dec., 2017), 914–32.
Beating swords into croziers: warrior bishops in the kingdom of castile, c. 1158–
1214. Kyle c. lincoln. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (1, 2018), 83–103.
stratégies de conflit et de communication au Xiie siècle. les bourgeois de
châteauneuf de Tours contre les chanoines de saint-Martin. constanze
Buyken. Francia, 44 (2017), 57–78.
What makes a saint? a lincoln case study in the communion of the local and the
universal church. nicholas sagovsky. International Journal for the Study of the
Christian Church, 17 (3, 2017), 173–83.
Between parson and poet: a re-examination of the latin continuation of William
of Tyre. James H. Kane. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (1, 2018), 56–82.
Kentish Pilgrims in canterbury cathedral’s Miracle Windows. rachel Koopmans.
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, lXXX (2017), 1–27.

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Bishop Benedetto of Cephalonia, 1207-post 1239. apostolos Kouroupakis and
christopher david schabel. Mediterranean Historical Review, 32 (dec.,
2017), 139–52.
legal learning and saintly authority in thirteenth-century hagiography: the Magna
vita sancti Hugonis. Phillipa Byrne. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (1, 2018),
39–55.
el arzobispado de compostela, los obispados del noroeste de la península ibérica y
el iV concilio de letrán de 1215. santiago domínguez sánchez. Hispania
Sacra, 69 (2017), 487–503.
The Function and spirituality of Bonaventure’s “Treatise” on the Miracles of st.
Francis. George F. rambow. Franciscan Studies, 75 (2017), 323–41.
saints’ Lives as efficacious Texts. cistercian Monks, religious Women, and curative reading, c. 1250–1330. sara ritchey. Speculum, 92 (oct., 2017), 1101–43.
Ad agendam penitentiam perpetuam detrudatur: Monastic incarceration of adulterous Women in Thirteenth-century canonical Jurisdiction. edward a. reno
iii. Traditio, 72 (2017), 301–40.
Writing Polemic as History: The apocalyptic implications of elias of cortona,
Hugh of digne, and Gerardo segarelli in salimbene’s Cronica. austin Powell.
Franciscan Studies, 75 (2017), 343–84.
i Papi per dante e dante per i Papi. Vittorio capuzza. Antonianum, Xcii (apr.–
sept., 2017), 327–49.
la carrière de simon Festu: un clerc au service de l’État monarchique sous le règne
de Philippe le Bel. alain Provost. Revue historique, 141 (July, 2017), 515–40.
Memorializing identity: the foundation and reform of san lorenzo in Panisperna.
emily e. Graham. Franciscan Studies, 75 (2017), 467–95.
david ii’s chapel royal at st Monans in the context of medieval pilgrimage. rory
lamb. Innes Review, 68 (nov., 2017), 117–31.
alfonso Pecha’s Treatise on the origins of the Great schism: What an insider
“saw and Heard.” robert e. lerner. Traditio, 72 (2017), 411–51.
Hildegardian Prophecy and French Prophecy collections, 1378–1455: a study
and critical edition of the “schism extracts.” Magda Hayton. Traditio, 72
(2017), 453–91.
la imagen de los judíos en los sermones de Bartomeu catany, o.F.M. (c. 1380–
1462). oriol catalán casanova. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 505–20.
un relato de traslación de reliquias en la castilla del siglo XV: la obra de alonso
de cartagena. luis Fernández Gallardo. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 521–31.
le porte del regno: una lettura narratologica dei progetti iconografici realizzanti
da lorenzo Ghiberti per il Battistero di Firenze. agnese Maria Fortuna.
Vivens Homo, XXViii (July–dec., 2017), 369–89.

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183

El patriarcat de Constantinoble abans i després del 1453. sebastiá Janeras. Revista
Catalana de Teologia, 42 (1, 2017), 65–90.
Voyager au service d’un prélat: le voyage d’officiers de l’archevêque de Bordeaux à
l’ouest et le centre de la France (25 novembre 1459-1er janvier 1460). Kevin
Porcher. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 124 (4, 2017), 7–23.
Cum reverentia et ceremoniis et honore. cluny, sus monasterios hispanos y el capítulo
General de 1460. carlos M. reglero de la Fuente. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017),
533–44.
las parroquias en los dominios monásticos en la Baja edad Media y principios de
la Moderna: san Zoilo de carrión y san román de entrepeñas (siglos XiV–
XVi). Julio a. Pérez celada. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 597–618.
The iconography of Vecchietta’s Bronze christ in siena. Giulio dalvit. Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, lXXX (2017), 29–59.
devotion and dissent in late Medieval illuminated World chronicles. nina
rowe. Art History, 41 (Feb., 2018), 12–44.
encounters with the levant: the late medieval illustrated Jerusalem Travelogue by
Paul Walter von Guglingen. Marianne P. ritsema van eck. Mediterranean
Historical Review, 32 (dec., 2017), 153–88.
i senseri dei pellegrini e l’organizzazione dei viaggi da Venezia per la Terra santa.
sergio Baldan. Studi Veneziani, lXXiV (2016), 15–46.
The Codex Sinaiticus Liturgicus revisited: a new edition and critical assessment
of the Text. alexandra nikiforova and Tinatin chronz. Orientalia Christiana
Periodica, 83 (i, 2017), 59–125.

siXTeenTH cenTurY
The sistine ceiling with regard to Jews and Turks, and Michelangelo[’s] two journeys to Venice. andrea donati. Studi Veneziani, lXXiV (2016), 257–91.
cortese’s ideal cardinal? Praising art, splendour and Magnificence in Bernardino
de carvajal’s roman residence. Bernhard schirg. Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, lXXX (2017), 61–82.
Humanism and the Fifth lateran council. John Monfasani. Freiburger Zeitschrift
für Philosophie und Theologie, 64 (1, 2017), 27–44.
Apostolici regiminis and vera philosophia. From savonarola to Javelli. annalisa cappiello. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 64 (1, 2017), 45–57.
Truth of faith in transcendental perspective: Francisco suárez and the Apostolici
regiminis (1513). Giancarlo colacicco. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
Theologie, 64 (1, 2017), 97–110.
il contesto storico ed ecclesiale in cui sono maturati gli eventi della “ite vos”. Felice
autieri, oFMconv. Miscellanea Francescana, 117 (i–ii, 2017), 104–29.

184

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

La “Ite vos”: dagli impegni frustrati di riunificazione alle speranze deluse della
“Bulla unionis.” Luigi Pellegrini, OFMCap. Miscellanea Francescana, 117 (i–
ii, 2017), 130–42.
Parabola degli operai mandati nella vigna (Mt 20, 1-16) e la bolla “ite vos.” Tomasz
szymczak, oFMconv. Miscellanea Francescana, 117 (i–ii, 2017), 143–64.
Quale riforma e quale lutero? nuovi orientamenti di ricerca. stefano cavallotto.
Miscellanea Francescana, 117 (i–ii, 2017), 216–37.
luther d’après les recherches récentes. Marc linehard. Recherches de Science
Religieuse, 105 (July–sept., 2017), 363–90.
die selbsthistorisierung der reformation mittels der Konzeption evangelischer
Wahrheitszeugen. Wolf-Friedrich schäufele. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte,
128 (2, 2017), 156–70.
¿Fue san ignacio un místico? Manuel ruiz Jurado. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 92 (apr.–
June, 2017), 327–44.
John calvin’s use of erasmus. Max engammare. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 37 (2, 2017), 176–92.
The last death of catholic england: The grand funeral of anne of cleves, the
neglected fourth queen of Henry Viii, took place during the reign of Mary
Tudor, when english catholicism was resurgent. eliot Wilson. History
Today, 68 (Jan., 2018), 50–59.
counter-reformation Policies versus Geostrategic Politics in the “estado da
india”: The case of Governor Francisco Barreto (1555–1558). nuno Vilasanta. Journal of Asian History, 51 (2, 2017), 189–222.
The inquisition Tribunal in Goa: Why and for What Purpose? José Pedro Paiva.
Journal of Early Modern History, 21 (6, 2017), 565–93.
“Persecutors under the cloak of Policy”: anti-catholic Vengeance and the
Marian Hierarchy in elizabethan england. robert Harkins. Sixteenth Century
Journal, XlViii (summer, 2017), 357–84.
The Holy Maid of Wales: Visions, imposture and catholicism in elizabethan
Britain. alexandra Walsham. English Historical Review, cXXXii (apr.,
2017), 250–85.
reformationsdeutung in John Foxes Acts and Monuments—das Beispiel Martin
luther. christopher Voigt-Goy. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 128 (2,
2017), 186–97.
il mercante Bartolomeo Fores e l’istituzione della prima processione in onore di
sant’efisio a cagliari (15 gennaio 1564). roberto Porrà and nicola settembre. Theologica & Historica, XXV (2016), 389–419.
Piste teologiche tridentine nel programma di don Vincenzio Borghini per l’intradosso della cupola di santa Maria del Fiore. Gianni cioli. Vivens Homo,
XXViii (July-dec., 2017), 391–412.

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185

Litigating for Liberty: Enslaved Morisco Children in Sixteenth-Century Valladolid. Stephanie M. Cavanaugh. Renaissance Quarterly, 70 (Winter, 2017),
1282–320.
la censura pedagógica de la compañía de Jesús en la edad Moderna a través de su
reglamentación jurídica. Javier Vergara ciordia and Beatriz comella-Gutiérrez. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 545–66.
el final de hegemonía hispana en la compañía de Jesús: los memorialistas italianos
(1585-1593). esther Jiménez Pablo. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 619–37.
custodian of wisdom: the Marciana reading room and the transcendent knowledge
of God. Jarrod Michael Broderick. Studi Veneziani, lXXiii (2016), 15–94.
il cristo ‘tedesco’ di Tiziano nella chiesa evangelica luterana a Venezia. Fabrizio
Biferali. Studi Veneziani, lXXiii (2016), 241–47.
il coro della basilica di s. Giorgio Maggiore. sergio Baldan. Studi Veneziani,
lXXiii (2016), 287–320.
il pittore Giovanni Battista Ponchini “dal secolo alla chiesa”. Vincenzo Mancini.
Studi Veneziani, lXXiV (2016), 309–20.
a Bull in the archives. John crossley. Philippiniana Sacra, lii (May-aug., 2017),
623–30.
Jerome nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae Imagines and the Birth of Global imagery.
Jean Michel Massing. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, lXXX
(2017), 161–220.
Grazio Maria Grazi tra Bellisario Bulgarini e Federico Borromeo. scuola,
erudizione e collezionismo librario tra siena, Venezia e Milano (XVi–XVii
sec.). Marco cavarzere and Maurizio sangalli. Studi Veneziani, lXXi (2015),
45–120.
The lutheran identity of Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua: renaissance of a renaissance Mass. alanna ropchock Tierno. Early Music History, 36 (oct., 2017),
159–91.
Between sacrament, sin and crime: Mixed Marriages and the roman church in
early Modern europe. cecilia cristellon. Gender & History, 29 (nov., 2017),
605–21.

seVenTeenTH and eiGHTeenTH cenTuries
(easTern HeMisPHere)
nuns, Family, and interfamilial dynamics of art Patronage in Post-Tridentine
roman convents. Marilyn dunn. Sixteenth Century Journal, XlViii
(summer, 2017), 323–56.
Migration from within and without: in the footsteps of eastern christians in the
early Modern World. John-Paul a. Ghobrial. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 27 (dec., 2017), 153–73.

186

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Reliquary of the Manger, Church of São Roque, Lisbon. Ron B. Thomson.
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LXXX (2017), 243–48.
Gegenreformatorische Ketzerkritik bei Friedrich spee. rainer Hillenbrand. Archiv
für Kulturgeschichte, 99 (1, 2017), 45–77.
reawakening the “old evangelical Zeal”: The 1617 reformation Jubilee and collective Memory in strasbourg and ulm. christopher W. close. Sixteenth Century Journal, XlViii (summer, 2017), 299–321.
The english revolution as a civil war. John Morrill. Historical Research, 90 (nov.,
2017), 726–41.
lutherus incombustus. Bücherverbrennung in Polen im spiegel der konfessionellen Geschichtsschreibung. Maciej Płaszyński. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 128 (2, 2017), 171–85.
carnival and sacred drama: schütz’s christmas Historia and the Transformation
of christmas in the second Half of the seventeenth century. Markus
rathey. Early Music History, 36 (oct., 2017), 159–91.
The role of religion in British-produced histories of ireland and india, c. 1650–
1800. alix chartrand. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (Winter,
2017). (not paginated)
“Huyendo de los lobos carniceros de su patria”. las monjas irlandesas en castilla,
una aproximación social y discursive (1652–1706). cristina Bravo-lozano.
Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 639–46.
nobleza y honor: el patronato eclesiástico de la casa de Toreno en la asturias del
antiguo régimen. Juan díaz alvarez. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 579–95.
negotiating the conflicting religious claims of Gallican historiography. louis Maimbourg’s Histoire du Luthéranisme (1680) and Histoire du Calvinisme (1682).
Jean-Pascal Gay. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 128 (2, 2017), 198–210.
religious conflict and civic identity: Battles over the sacred landscape of Montpellier. Barbara B. diefendorf. Past & Present, no. 237 (nov., 2017), 53–91.
The order of the Thistle and the reintroduction of catholicism in late-seventeenth-century scotland. Jennifer strtak. Innes Review, 68 (nov., 2017), 132–
46.
Parole e immagini nella devozione alla Passione di cristo in sardegna nel XVii e
XViii secolo: Via Crucis e processione dei Misteri. Fabrizio Tola, Theologica
& Historica, XXV (2016), 535–61.
il patrimonio dell’antico convento di sant’agostino di cagliari attraverso un
registro dei secoli XViii–XiX. cristiana campus. Theologica & Historica,
XXV (2016), 203–24.
das chartular von st. emmeram und seine edition durch Bernhard Pez. Manuela
Mayer. Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 125 (2,
2017), 287–303.

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187

The Jesuit Paradox: Intellectual Authority, Political Power, and the Marginalization of Astrology in Early Modern Portugal. luís Miguel carolino. Early Science and Medicine, 22 (5–6, 2017), 438–63.
Mapping the Miracle: empirical approaches in the exodus debate of the eighteenth century. renate dürr. Past & Present, no. 237 (nov., 2017), 93–133.
some beneficiaries of Thomas innes. Julian russell. Innes Review, 68 (nov., 2017),
177–80.
The Manichaean apostolate: catharism, Gnosis, and reincarnation in a Trial of
the Portuguese inquisition (1759). antonio Victor ribeira. History of Religions, 57 (nov., 2017), 129–63.
Vie et destin d’une communauté religieuse au miroir de son livre de raison: la Visitation d’albi (1783–1791). danielle rives. Annales du Midi, 129 (Jan.–Mar.,
2017), 43–63.

nineTeenTH and TWenTieTH cenTuries
(easTern HeMisPHere)
orthodox internationalism: state and church in Modern russia and ethiopia.
Tobias repprecht. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60 (Jan., 2018),
212–35.
Historiografía de la compañía de Jésus restaurada en españa (1815–2017).
Manuel revuelta González. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 92 (apr.–June, 2017), 301–
26.
The Myth of the Flogging Parson: samuel Marsden and severity of Punishment
in the age of reform. Matthew allen. Australian Historical Studies, 48 (nov.,
2017), 486–501.
natural Theology, Theodicy, and Political economy in nineteenth-century
Britain: William Whewell’s struggle. Paul oslington. History of Political
Economy, 49 (dec., 2017), 575–606.
‘ireland as a Weapon of Warfare’: Whigs, Tories, and the Problem of irish outrages, 1835 to 1839. Jay r. roszman. Historical Journal, 60 (dec., 2017), 971–
95.
Joseph Ferdinand Müller, court chaplain and Promoter of the Bavarian Benedictine Mission to america. Warren Murrman, o.s.B. American Benedictine
Review, 68 (June, 2017), 121–35.
Heroic church leadership in india: capuchin Bishop anastasius Hartmann
(1803–1866). Jose Kalapura sJ. Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, 101 (3–4, 2017), 218–41.
“…bloss für erwachsene brauchen wir keine Gemeinde zu gründen.” religionspädagogische Themen bei eduard Herzog (1880–1896). erika Moser. Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 107 (Jan.-Mar., 2017), 44–64.

188

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Queen Lili’uokalani’s Beloved Kawaiaha’o Seminary. Sandra Bonura. Hawaiian
Journal of History, 51 (2017), 31–68.
John Kinross, the Third Marquess of Bute, architectural restoration, innovation
and design. deborah Mays. Innes Review, 68 (nov., 2017), 147–68.
le monde charitable représenté: réseaux d’acteurs et “concordat charitable” à Paris
en 1900. stéphanie Ginalski and christian Topalov. Revue d’histoire moderne
& contemporaine, 64 (July–sept., 2017), 90–123.
Bible Translation and the Formation of corporate identity in uganda and congo,
1900–40. emma Wild-Wood. Journal of African History, 58 (nov., 2017),
489–507.
indigenous Modernities: Missionary Photography and Photographic Gaps in
nauru. Heather Waldroup. Journal of Pacific History, 52 (4, 2017), 459–81.
religión y nacionalismo vasco en el siglo XX: aproximación desde el sujeto a una
relación compleja. Fernando Martínez rueda. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017),
721–33.
Buonaiuti, la Piana, de stefano. carteggi tra modernisti per una teologia della
storia. salvatore corso. Laurentianum, 57 (3, 2016), 341–565.
la “acn de JP” y sus primeras campañas de mítines sociales (1909–1910). Pablo
sánchez Garrido. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017), 689–707.
‘For Freedom and Justice’: The responses of chapels in the swansea area to the
First World War. Gethin Matthews. Welsh History Review, 28 (dec., 2017),
676–710.
a Mennonite Witness to revolution: Johann G. rempel’s Memoir of Moscow,
March-June 1917. James urry. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 91 (oct., 2017),
511–40.
The clergy versus the church in 1917–1918: (“ecclesiastical Bolshevism” and the
ecclesiastical Bolsheviks). P. G. rogoznyi. Russian Studies in History, 56 (4,
2017), 250–72.
“l’austria sia l’austria”. la santa sede e la “difesa a oltranza” dell’indipendenza
della Prima repubblica austriaca (1918–1938). luca lecis. Theologica & Historica, XXV (2016), 289–315.
From Hearing to Heresy: The Temporary slavery commission, the congregational church, and the Foundation of anti-colonial organizing in angola.
Kate M. Burlingham. Canadian Journal of History, 52 (Winter, 2017), 420–47.
The role of Missionaries in the spread of Personalism in Vietnam, 1930–1961.
Phi Vân nguyen. French Colonial History, 17 (2017), 103–34.
la construcción simbólica del liderazgo providencial del “caudillo” a través de la
prensa católica y falangista (1936–1942). Pablo alberto Baisotti. Hispania
Sacra, 69 (2017), 709–20.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

189

Ein Vermächtnis Kaiser Wilhelms II. Was hat Walter Grundmanns Eisenacher
“Entjudungsinstitut” mit Martin Luther zu tun? Johannes Wallmann.
Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 114 (sept., 2017), 289–314.
christian Marriage between Tradition and Modernity: catholic and Protestant
Women and Marriage education in late colonial cameroon, 1939–1960.
charlotte Walker-said. Gender & History, 29 (nov., 2017), 544–69.
Modernist churches in scotland: the cold and leaky masterpieces of Gillespie, Kidd &
coia. leon robinson and ally Wallace. Innes Review, 68 (nov., 2017), 169–76.
der Missionstourismus des schweizerischen Katholischen Volksvereins. ein
Beispiel für demokratisierten Wissentransfer in der nachkonzilszeit? uta
Karrer and Harald Grauer. Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, 101 (3–4, 2017), 262–78.
Feminism, the state, and the centrality of reproduction: abortion struggles in 1970s
italy. Maud anne Bracke. Social History, 42 (nov., 2017), 524–46.

aMerican and canadian
dissenting Puritans: anne Hutchinson and Mary dyer. Francis Bremer. Historical
Journal of Massachusetts, 46 (Winter, 2018), 22–45.
Moravians encounter new england’s radical evangelicals, 1745 and 1759. Jared
s. Burkholder. Journal of Moravian History, 17 (2, 2017), 160–77.
“The Knife of daily repentance”: Toward a religious History of calligraphy and
Manuscript illumination in German-speaking Pennsylvania, ca. 1750–1850.
alexander l. ames. Mennonite Quarterly Review, 91 (oct., 2017), 471–510.
“Times of Peril”: Quakers in British-occupied new York during the american revolution, 1775–1783. Joseph John crotty. Quaker History, 106 (Fall, 2017), 45–71.
“our God and our guns”: religion and Politics on the revolutionary Frontier.
christopher ryan Pearl. Pennsylvania History, 85 (Winter, 2018), 58–89.
chumash conversions: The Historical dynamics of religious change in native
california. ella Paldam. Numen, 64 (5–6, 2017), 596–625.
Fasts, Thanksgivings, and senses of community in nineteenth-century canada
and the British empire. Joseph Hardwick. Canadian Historical Review, 98
(dec., 2017), 675–703.
The Hierarchy of Heathenism: Missionaries Map the Globe. emily conroy Krutz.
Diplomatic History, 42 (Jan., 2018), 55–71.
The Ministerial Formation of Jacob creath Jr. (1817–1826). stanley n. Helton.
Restoration Quarterly, 59 (1, 2017), 38–52.
“so that in this part you should not lag behind other missionary congregations…” The
introduction of national Helpers in the Moravian Mission among the labrador
inuit. Hans J. rollmann. Journal of Moravian History, 17 (2, 2017), 138–59.

190

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

The Great Physician: mainline Protestant ministers’ expectations of doctors, 1840–
1900. ronald J. Gordon. American Nineteenth Century History, 18 (sept.,
2017), 227–43.
‘We must go out of this union’: The Two secessions of Basil Manly sr. Mandy
ellene McMichael. Baptist History and Heritage, 52 (summer, 2017), 8–19.
“if There Were one People”: Francis Weninger and the segregation of american
catholicism. david Komline. Religion and American Culture, 27 (summer,
2017), 218–46.
a black and white sermon: John Jasper’s capitalization on white exploitation in late
nineteenth-century Virginia. Thomas strange. American Nineteenth Century
History, 18 (sept., 2017), 273–93.
From Modern to apostolic: Two schismatic Quaker Groups in indiana. Gregory
P. Hinshaw. Quaker History, 106 (Fall, 2017), 30–44.
experiences in the Parsonages of the lutheran church in southern illinois during
the War Years of 1917–1918 described by an eyewitness at the request of the
officers of the Historical society. Justus christian William John lohrmann.
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 90 (summer, 2017), 39–50.
The Forgotten origins of the southern Baptist convention’s near east Mission:
W. a. Hamlett’s Month in the Holy land. Walker robins. Baptist History
and Heritage, 52 (summer, 2017), 20–31.
‘The serious nature of the division’: calvary Baptist church of des Moines and
the Fundamentalist challenge of the 1920s. Bill r. douglas. Baptist History
and Heritage, 52 (summer, 2017), 32–48.
Bernard ramm: an exemplar of the development of a neo-evangelical-Baptist
identity within the american Baptist convention. andrew Kim. Baptist History and Heritage, 52 (summer, 2017), 49–60.
arthur ernst Michel, 1862–1955: His life and Ministry. Milton l. rudnick.
Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 90 (summer, 2017), 9–26.
Globalising the us christian right: Transnational interchange during the cold
War. Makku ruolsila. International History Review, 40 (2018), 133–54.
The alamo christian Foundation. ronald J. Gordon. Arkansas Historical Quarterly, lXXVi (autumn, 2017), 218–47.
À la croisée de la révolution tranquille et du judaïsme orthodoxe: l’implantation
de la communauté hassidique des Tasher au cœur du Québec francophone et
catholique (1962–1967). simon-Pierre lacasse. Histoire sociale, 50 (nov.,
2017), 399–422.
Theodore M. Hesburgh, Theologian: revisiting land o’lakes Fifty Years later.
edward P. Hahnenberg. Theological Studies, 78 (dec., 2017), 930–69.

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191

LATIN AMERICAN
Old Words and the New World: Liberal Education and the Franciscans in New
Spain, 1536–1601. aysha Pollnitz. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
27 (dec., 2017), 123–52.
“They are Blacks of the caste of Black christians”: old christian Black Blood in
the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century iberian atlantic. chloe ireton.
Hispanic American Historical Review, 97 (nov., 2017), 579–612.
Beyond the Bride of christ: The crucified abbess in Mexico and spain. cristina
cruz Gonzales. Art Bulletin, 99 (dec., 2017), 102–32.
revuelta plebeya, conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza
en la Historia del reino de Quito, de Juan de Velasco. estefania Flores ortiz.
Colonial Latin American Review, 26 (sept., 2017), 386–440.
el proyecto de creación del obispado de Montevideo en 1809: un aspecto ignorado
de la demanda de autonomía local. Fernando aguerre core. Hispania Sacra,
69 (2017), 661–73.
catholic republicanism: The creation of the spanish american republics during
revolution. Gabriel entin. Journal of the History of Ideas, 79 (Jan., 2018), 105–
23.
“if they are useful, why expel them?” las Hermanas de la caridad and religious
Medical authority in Mexico city Hospitals, 1861–1874. elizabeth o’Brien.
Mexican Studies, 33 (Fall, 2017), 417–42
culture Wars in the Trenches? Public schools and catholic education in Mexico,
1867–1897. Margaret chowning. Hispanic American Historical Review, 97
(nov., 2017), 613–49.
el club católico de Montevideo: confesionalidad, sociabilidad y polémica (1875–
1893). una biografía colectiva. susana Monreal. Hispania Sacra, 69 (2017),
675–87.
The Triangle of empire: sport, religion, and imperialism in Puerto rico’s
YMca, 1898–1926. antonio sotomayor. The Americas, 74 (oct., 2017),
481–512.
la reconceptualización católica de la revolución: el pensamiento cristiano frente al
cambio histórico, chile (1960–1964). Marcos Fernández labbé. Hispania
Sacra, 69 (2017), 735–53.
empresarios, católicos y estado en la consolidación del campo cinematográfico en
argentina. Fernando llorens. Latin American Research Review, 52 (5, 2017),
824–37.

Other Books Received
Chautard, Jean-Baptiste, O.C.S.O. The Spirit of Simplicity. Translated and annotated by Thomas Merton. (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. 2017. Pp. xviii,
139. $15.95 paperback.)
Darrow, Leah. The Other Side of Beauty: Embracing God’s Vision for Love and True
Worth. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Books. 2017. Pp. xx, 184. $16.99 paperback.)
Escrivá de Balaguer, Josemaría. En Diálogo con el Señor. Textos de la Predicación
Oral. [Obras Completas de San Josemaría, V/1.] (Madrid: Ediciones RIALP,
S. A. 2017. Pp. xlvi, 460. €36,00 paperback.)
Frank, Gillian, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White (eds.). Devotions and
Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United
States. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2018. Pp. xii, 303.
$32.95 paperback.) Among the thirteen essays published here are “Sex is Holy
and Mysterious: The Vision of Early Twentieth-Century Catholic Sex Education Reformers,” by James P. McCartin (pp. 71–89.); “Sexual Diplomacy:
U.S. Catholics’ Transnational Anti-Birth Control Activism in Postwar
Japan,” by Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci (pp. 113–32); and “Modernizing Decency:
Citizens for Decent Literature and Covert Catholic Activism in Cold War
America,” by Whitney Strub (pp. 133-51).
Frilingos, Christopher A. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy
Gospels. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2017. Pp. xvi, 183.
$39.95 cloth.)
Gellert, Michael. The Divine Mind: Exploring the Psychological History of God’s Inner
Journey. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2018. Pp. 286. $26.00 cloth.)
Goodman, Martin. A History of Judaism. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. 2018. Pp. xxx, 623. $39.95 cloth.)
Graney, Christopher M. Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2017. Pp.
xxx, 145. $25.00 paperback.)
Gunn, Steven. The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII. (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2018. Pp. xvi, 297. $47.95 cloth.)
Keating, Ryan W. Shades of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers, and Local
Communities in the Civil War Era. (New York: Fordham University Press.
2017. Pp. viii, 312. $140.00 clothbound; $40.00 paperback.)
192

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

193

Levering, Matthew. Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the
Wise and Good Creator. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2017. Pp. xii,
372. $44.99 cloth.)
Nagasawa, Yujin. Miracles: A Very Short Introduction. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2018. Pp. xii, 115. $11.95 paperback.)
O’Collins, Gerald. Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. xxiv, 139. $11.95 paperback.)
Puente Luna, José Carlos de la. Andean Cosmopolitans: Seeking Justice and Reward
at the Spanish Royal Court. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 2018. Pp. xiv,
345. $99.00 hardcover; $29.95 paperback.)
Teresa of Avila, Saint. Her Life in Letters. Translated and introduced by Kieran
Kavanaugh, O.C.D. (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. 2018. Pp. x, 338.
$22.00 paperback.) An abridged version of The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of
Avila, 2 vols. (Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications.
2001, 2007).
Weber, Francis J. An Historical Compendium of Rev. Maynard J. Geiger’s “The Life
and Times of Saint Junípero Serra” (1959). (Mission Hills, CA: Saint Francis
Historical Society. 2017. Pp. 196. $8.95 paperback.) Part Two contains fourteen essays on the history of the cause of canonization, devotion to and commemorations of Serra, and Weber’s memories of the ceremony of September
23, 2015.