THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW VOL. 105 SPRING 2019 NO. 2 The Conflict between Damasus and Ursinus: Damasus’s Contested Legitimacy as Bishop of Rome KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT* The succession of Liberius as Bishop of Rome is notorious for a bloody clash between the supporters of both contenders to the See of Peter, Damasus and Ursinus. Several casualties were reported, after which Damasus gained the upper hand. Nevertheless, the conflict between both parties continued as long as Damasus remained in office, until his death in 384. This fact raises questions about Damasus’s legitimacy as bishop of Rome. The current article frames and addresses these questions. Our study analyzes the information about the events following Liberius’s death. We bring together data available in late antique sources and evaluate current scholarship on the matter. In order to situate the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus, we compare their simultaneous elections with other double episcopal succession disputes in Late Antiquity. By doing so, it is possible to delineate the criteria for valid episcopal successions to the See of Peter in this period. According to these criteria, Damasus, and not Ursinus, was rightfully considered the successor of Liberius. Damasus enjoyed the most support and performed all the necessary steps for a valid succession. Yet public acclamation by the people, an important step in the succession process, was missing in Ursinus’s case. In this way, Ursinus never obtained recognition as the legitimate new bishop of Rome. Keywords: Damasus, Ursinus, Liberius, Episcopal elections, Rome, Late Antiquity, Collectio Avellana *Kristiaan Venken is a doctoral researcher and Anthony Dupont is Research Professor of Christian Antiquity, both at the Research Unit of History of Church and Theology at KU Leuven’s Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (Belgium). 219 220 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS Overview of the Conflict O n 24 September 366, Liberius, bishop of Rome, died. Two deacons of Liberius, Damasus and Ursinus, competed to succeed him. Many scholars have described and analysed their struggle on the basis of contemporaneous sources.1 These sources relate the conflict in more or less detail and provide their own, sometimes quite partisan, interpretation. In the briefest of terms, the following events have been identified as taking place after Liberius’s death and before Damasus finally managed to impose himself as Liberius’s successor: the election of both candidates, their ordination, and one or more violent clashes between their supporters.2 In this essay, we analyze the background and details of these events, the rivalries that were at play, and the sources that report them. We also make a determination as to which of the candidates was entitled to be the new bishop of Rome, according to the criteria then acknowledged for a valid episcopal succession. Both candidates passed through the necessary steps, but because Damasus managed to secure popular approval in the form of a public acclamation and Ursinus did not, Damasus was finally able to succeed Liberius as bishop of Rome and should be viewed as his valid successor. The scholarship on the said Roman conflict contains many debated claims, for which our article offers an extensive up-to-date summary and evaluation. For instance, some scholars draw their conclusions chiefly based upon their reading of one of the most extensive sources, the Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem (Gesta). This document, however, is composed by supporters of Damasus’s opponent Ursinus, and thus clearly has an anti-Damasus motivation. Using the Gesta as the main source for the conflict and its outcome, and with the other contemporaneous sources providing only limited information, scholars have been too quick to copy the view of the Gesta, which has in turn colored their conclusions, most often to the credit of Ursinus. This article, furthermore, advances scholarship by comparing the parallel election of Damasus and Ursinus with sim- 1. An overview of scholarship on the topic is provided by M. Löx, Monumenta sanctorum. Rom und Mailand als Zentren des frühen Christentums. Märtyrkult und Kirchenbau unter den Bischöfen Damasus und Ambrosius (Wiesbaden, 2013), 27n60. A chronological table of the events may also be found in A. Coşkun, “Der Praefect Maximinus, der Jude Isaak und der Strafprozess gegen Bischof Damasus von Rom,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 46 (2003), 43–44; and in R. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi. Il governo di Roma al tempo dei Valentiniani, Munera 21 (Bari, 2004), 169. 2. U. Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366–384). Leben und Werk (Tübingen, 2009), 41. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 221 ilar double elections to the See of Peter in Late Antiquity. This comparison is aimed at establishing criteria for a valid succession. In this way, we will argue that certain details, such as the exact chronology of the events, despite being considered important by ancient sources and later scholarship, mattered less than the formal correctness of the succession procedure. Our study shows that public approval of a candidate, not mentioned in the primary sources and only lately taken into account, is a fundamental factor in the succession process. We will also show, finally, that the background of both candidates does matter. This is not, as the Gesta seem to suggest, their prior history of orthodoxy, but their function as a deacon, as well as the support they enjoyed, on a very local and political level. In this context, the influence of the Roman aristocracy also played a role, and our article builds on and deepens the research of recent studies on the latter. Sources Detailed, unbiased, and contemporary sources about the succession conflict do not exist. Available sources favor one of the candidates, omit details, or were written at some distance in time from the events. The disputed succession is referred to in Damasus’s biography in the Liber Pontificalis. Ammianus also describes it in a detailed way. Jerome, Rufinus, Socrates Scholasticus, and Sozomen (the latter two dependent on Rufinus) offer reports that are similar to each other and portray Damasus positively. The most detailed description of the conflict is found in a polemical text composed by Damasus’s opponents and preserved among the first documents of the Collectio Avellana. Additional sources include Damasus’s later correspondence with other bishops, his correspondence with Jerome, and his epigrams.3 References to Ursinus or to his conflict with Damasus are also found in several other sources: for example in documents from the Collectio Avellana that preserve some of the communication between emperors and the Roman city authorities; in the imperial correspondence with Ambrose; and finally in a synodal letter communicating the outcome of a Roman council presided over by Damasus.4 3. See M. Löx, Monumenta sanctorum, 25–26. 4. Letters 4–13 in the Collectio Avellana, cf. M. Löx, Monumenta sanctorum, 26n51, quoted above. For further references to these letters of Ambrose, see M. Raimondi, “Elezione ‘iudicio Dei’ e ‘turpe convicium’. Damaso e Ursino tra storia ecclesiastica e amministrazione romana,” Aevum 83 (2009), 197: Ep. X; Raimondi, “Elezione ‘iudicio Dei,’” 203: Ep. extra coll. V; and cf. F. A. Poglio, Gruppi di potere nella Roma tardoantica (350–395 d.C.) 222 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS The Collectio Avellana is “a mid-sixth-century collection of nearly 250 documents relating to the bishopric of Rome in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.”5 References to Damasus or to his conflict with Ursinus can be found in a number of texts from the beginning of this collection, specifically in documents 1, 2, and 5–13. The first text, entitled Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos (Coll. Av. 1), is a pamphlet that describes scenes from the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus; the scenes took place not only immediately after Liberius’s death in 366, but also during Liberius’s pontificate. The pamphlet was written immediately after the events of 366-368 by an author hostile to Damasus. This author’s intention in publishing his account of the first conflicts during the time of Liberius was to blacken Damasus’s name and thus to prejudice the Italian bishops against him. It has been supposed that this pamphlet was later affixed as a preface (Praefatio) to a petition (Libellus Precum) submitted to the emperor Theodosius by the followers of Lucifer of Cagliari in 383 or 384;6 hence the pamphlet is also called the Praefatio. More recently this link between the Gesta and the Libellus Precum has been challenged. According to the revisionist view, the Gesta do not stem from the same archives as the other documents of the Collectio Avellana; instead the Gesta were only added later to the Collectio Avellana by its sixth-century compiler, who also provided the title for both documents and the text linking them. The Gesta and the Libellus Precum would then be originally independent documents. The brief connection that existed in 366 between the authors of both documents, namely, between the supporters of Ursinus who produced the Gesta and those of Lucifer of Cagliari who authored the Libellus, did not exist anymore in 383–384 when the Libellus was published.7 An argument in favor (Torino, 2007), 156: Ep. extra coll. VII. This last document contains the synodal letter of a Roman council held under Damasus. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 171n269. 5. K. Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority in sixth-century Rome: the Liber Pontificalis and the Collectio Avellana,” in Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300– 900, ed. K. Cooper and J. Hillner (Cambridge, 2007), 59. For this dating, Blair-Dixon refers to O. Günther, Avellana Studien, Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Classe 134 (Vienna, 1896), Abh. 5, 2. 6. Ch. Pietri, “Damase évêque de Rome,” in Saecularia Damasiana (Rome, 1986), 33. See also G. De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso - una nota,” in Peregrina curiositas. Eine Reise durch den «orbis antiquus». Zu Ehren von Dirk Van Damme, ed. A. Kessler, T. Ricklin, and G. Wurst (Freiburg, 1994), 263, who states that, although with some doubt, the Gesta is generally assumed to have originated from the same “Ursinian-Luciferan environment” which created the Libellus Precum, for which it may have served as its historical-juridical preface. The Libellus Precum was included in the Collectio Avellana as Coll. Av. 2. O. Günther dates the Libellus Precum to 383 or 384: Otto Günther, ed., Epistolae imperatorum pontificum aliorum inde ab a. CCCLXVII usque DLIII datae. Avellana quae dicitur collectio, CSEL 35 (Prague, 1895), 5. 7. See R. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 131–132 and 154. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 223 of this thesis is that in Coll. Av. 1,6 the church at which the conflict took place is called the basilica Liberii, which is the name the church bore in the sixth century, rather than the basilica Sicinini, which is the name the church bore in the fourth century.8 Another indication that both documents originated independently is that in the Libellus Precum Ursinus is not mentioned at all.9 Additionally the negative judgment concerning the current city prefect Viventius (Coll. Av. 1,6) would seem to be inappropriate for the preface of an official document addressed to the emperor and requesting clemency for the followers of Lucifer of Cagliari; consequently the negative remark about Viventius would be proof that the pamphlet did not have an official character.10 Separating the Gesta from the Libellus Precum, which implies that the Gesta were not (part of) an official document directed to the emperor, removes one of the arguments in favor of the document’s reliability. It has been argued that the Gesta must have had a certain historical value because the emperors reacted positively to it.11 This positive reaction (Coll. Av. 2a), however, is actually in response to the Luciferians’ requests in the Libellus Precum (Coll. Av. 2) and not in response to the content of the Gesta inter Liberium et Felicem. The Gesta are indeed the longest and most detailed document describing the conflict over the succession of Liberius. They offer detailed chronological and topographical information, apparently by someone who knew 8. See Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority,” 71. See also D. Trout, ed., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford, 2015), 5n20, which refers to O. Brandt, “The Early Christian Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina,” in San Lorenzo in Lucina: The Transformations of a Roman Quarter, Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Instituter Rom 4°, 61, ed. O. Brandt (Stockholm, 2012), 148–151. Trout considers Blair-Dixon’s dating of the Gesta to the fifth-sixth century obviated by O. Brandt’s archaeological findings regarding the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. 9. This same argument is discussed by M. Green in his attempt to ascertain the relationship between the followers of Ursinus and those of Lucifer of Cagliari. See M. Green, “The Supporters of the Antipope Ursinus,” The Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1971), 531– 538. Even if the Gesta are not the Praefatio of the Libellus Precum, E. Di Santo detects in both documents the same anti-Damasus feelings and the same ecclesiological concepts. E. Di Santo, L’apologetica dell’Ambrosiaster. Cristiani, pagani e giudei nella Roma tardoantica, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 112 (Rome, 2008), 58–59. 10. So Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 151. 11. E.g., by G. De Spirito, Ursino e Damaso, 264: “Se le due lettere furono accolte, non potevano avere presentato alle massime autorità una situazione totalmente mistificata dei fatti che in esse si esponevano. La Cancelleria imperiale doveva essere ben informata al riguardo. . . . Alla luce di queste considerazioni si puo concludere che entrambi i testi paiono essere fide digni e che rappresentano uno di quei rari casi in cui si può ascoltare la voce di quanti uscirono perdenti da una lotta sviluppatasi in seno alla Chiesa.” 224 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS the situation very well.12 The trustworthiness of the Gesta is sometimes challenged and sometimes accepted.13 In favor of their reliability is that the Gesta were written very shortly after the facts and related events that had happened quite recently; hence these events were still in the public domain and widely known.14 An argument against the Gesta, apart from their internal contradictions, is that the document was produced by a very partisan author.15 Another record of the events can be found in Jerome’s chronicle for the year 366.16 Jerome had been in Rome in 366 as a student, which makes him a possible eyewitness to the conflict, but his account of the events is short, imprecise, and suppresses details; in fact, in his account, Jerome is very “far from sticking to the facts.”17 When he wrote his report, the conflict with Ursinus was still fresh; perhaps “Jerome had seen no need to open these wounds.”18 As his secretary and close collaborator of Damasus between 382 and 384, Jerome’s report too is one-sided.19 Rufinus of Aquileia was also in Rome when Damasus became bishop, and he stayed there during the following years. He too must have been a witness to the dramatic events. His account of them is very concise and conceals much.20 At some chronological distance from the events of the confrontation, and with the conflict settled in favor of Damasus, Rufinus presents what happened but with a negative view of Ursinus.21 12. According to Massimiliano Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius secuit pia viscera matris. Damaso, i primi martiri cristiani e la città di Roma,” in Gianluca Pilara and Massimiliano Ghilardi, La città di Roma nel pontificato di Damaso (366–384). Vicende storiche e aspetti archeologici (Rome, 2010), 174 and in particular 174n193. 13. Poglio, Gruppi di potere, 63n151, gives an overview; G. De Spirito, L. Cracco Ruggini and C. Carletti, consider the Gesta to be a trustworthy witness; R. Lizzi Testa however does not. 14. Poglio, Gruppi di potere, 63. 15. These internal contradictions, one-sidedness and lack of objectivity were noted by Massimiliano Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius,” 174n192. 16. Jerome, Chron. ad a. 366. 17. L. Cracco Ruggini, “Rome in Late Antiquity: Clientship, Urban Topography, and Prosopography,” Classical Philology 98 (2003) 375n49. So also A. Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” Historia. Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 14 (1965), 109. 18. Trout, Damasus of Rome, 2. 19. Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 109. 20. Rufinus, Hist. Eccl., 11, 10. For the conciseness of Rufinus’s account, see Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 109n22. 21. Rufinus wrote his text some thirty years after the events. See L. Dattrino, “Papa Damaso (366–384) nella Storia ecclesiastica di Rufino,” in Saecularia Damasiana (Rome, 1986), 151. When he wrote his text around 403, Ursinus had become discredited, and this KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 225 Socrates of Constantinople or Socrates Scholasticus (ca. 380-post 439) composed his Ἐκκλησιαστική Ἱστορία in seven books, which cover the history of the church from 305 to 439. In book 4, chapter 29, he discusses the events of the succession of Liberius. It is assumed that Socrates relied primarily on Rufinus in this passage, but certain elements also point to an independent source.22 Socrates’ text, for example, contains a number of new elements, particularly the statements that Ursinus was consecrated by some insignificant bishops—Rufinus writes that it was an inexperienced rural bishop, whom he does not mention by name—and that the consecration took place not in a church, but in a place nearby. Finally Sozomen, a Christian historian from the first half of the fifth century, wrote a history of the church (Ἐκκλησιαστική Ἱστορία) in nine books, covering the period from 323 to 425, from the emperor Constantine till the accession of the emperor Valentinian III. The difficulties surrounding the succession of Liberius appear in chapter 23 of book 6. In this passage, Sozomen briefly describes the discord that arose when Ursinus, consecrated bishop shortly after Damasus, tried to succeed Liberius. The text is very similar to, if shorter than, that of Socrates.23 Provisionally, we can conclude that Jerome, Rufinus, Socrates, and Sozomen all aim at a Damasus-friendly presentation of the events by blaming the Ursinians for the confrontation.24 Ammianus Marcellinus was a non-Christian historian of the late fourth century, whose Res gestae record the history of the Roman emperors from the year 96 to the death of the emperor Valens in 378. Damasus and Ursinus figure in the accounts of the years 367 and 368 where Ammianus development according to Lippold explains Rufinus’s distortion of the facts. Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 109. Lippold’s judgment is, as we will argue, too severe where he insists that Rufinus’s chronology of the election and ordination of both opponents and the information about the place of Ursinus’s ordination is a forgery. 22. For the dependency of Socrates on Rufinus, see e.g., Löx, Monumenta sanctorum, 25; and Pierre Périchon and Pierre Maraval, ed., Socrate de Constantinople. Histoire Ecclésiastique. Livres IV–VI, Sources Chrétiennes (SC) 505 (Paris, 2006), 124n1. Arguments for an independent version are given by Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 110. Lippold considers Socrates’ version worse in quality than that of Jerome and Rufinus. 23. See Guy Sabbah, André-Jean Festugière and Bernard Grillet, ed., Sozomène. Histoire Ecclésiastique. Livres V-VI, SC 495 (Paris, 2005), 351–353. 24. See e.g. Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 109; Löx, Monumenta sanctorum, 25–26; and L. Cracco Ruggini, “Clientele e violenze urbane a Roma tra IV e VI secolo,” in Corruzione, repressione e rivolta morale nella Tarda Antichità, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Catania, 11–13 dic. 1995), ed. R. Soraci (Catania, 1999), 33n60. 226 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS provides an extensive description of the disputed election. The only thing he says about the cause of the conflict, however, is that it was about who should be the new bishop of Rome. Ammianus records the clash between the different groups, the number of victims, the place of the massacre, and the attitude of the city prefect Viventius. The nature of Ammianus’s report and its level of detail differ greatly from the Gesta.25 Although some scholars have cast doubt on his impartiality, Ammianus writes from an outsider’s perspective and is therefore likely to have been neutral about church-political matters, without choosing sides as to who was the rightful new bishop of Rome.26 The Liber Pontificalis is a collection of notes about the bishops of Rome, from Peter up to Stephen V (885–886). The oldest edition, which dates to the early sixth century, does not address the disputed succession of Liberius. That succession is mentioned, however, in the second edition, which dates to the mid-sixth century, and upon which our current standard text is based.27 Assessing the reliability of the Liber Pontificalis, D. Trout writes, The ultimate question for historians, of course, concerns the reliability of the Liber. . . . Despite that suspect beginning [a forged correspondence between Jerome and Damasus on the design of the work], it is now gen25. As described by Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 153–154n203. In addition, and in contrast to the communis opinio, Lizzi Testa assumes that it was Ammianus’s intention to present an ideal situation for a city prefect such as Viventius, and that the description of the bloody clash at the basilica Sicinini only serves to introduce Ammianus’s criticism of urban luxury among the clergy compared to the sober life of their colleagues in the countryside. 26. Ammianus’s neutrality is posited by Ghilardi, who, with Edward Gibbon, finds Ammianus “an accurate and faithful guide.” Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius,” 180n208; Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 42; and Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 110. For doubts on his impartiality, see e.g. A. Coşkun, “Der Praefect Maximinus,” 21n13. Coşkun takes a position against Dattrino’s assertion that Ammianus defended Ursinus and Künzle’s that Ammianus’s account was hostile to Damasus. L. Dattrino, “Papa Damaso,” 150; P. Künzle, “Zur basilica Liberiana: basilica Sicinini = basilica Liberii,” RömQS 56 (1961), 130 sqq. Mentioning Lippold’s emphasis on Ammianus’ neutrality, Coşkun agrees with Neri that Ammianus follows a Damasus-friendly tradition by approving of Ursinus’s exile. A. Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 110; V. Neri, Ammiano e il cristianesimo. Religione e politica nelle “Res gestae” di Ammiano Marcellino (Bologna, 1985), 200 sqq. Coşkun further posits that Ammianus’s real agenda was to defend the city prefect Praetextatus. 27. For a comparison of the texts about Damasus in the various editions and redactions, see A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana (Vatican City, 1942), 59–60. A good overview of L. Duchesne’s theory of the different editions of the Liber Pontificalis is given in Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority,” 65–66. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 227 erally agreed that the Liber Pontificalis preserves a significant amount of trustworthy material. This is especially true of, but not limited to, the archival portions of the lives (e.g. donation lists and ordination accounts). Nevertheless, all material in the text requires careful consideration before it can be used as “evidence.”28 Scholars point to the different historical value of the subsequent redactions of the Liber Pontificalis,29 with most preferring the older redactions, which of course do not contain the account of the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus. Comparing the Liber Pontificalis with the Collectio Avellana, we can observe in both a tendency to present all periods of the papacy in sixth-century terms, a desire to defend the papal cause against political pressure, as well as a concern for defining and defending the papacy on the basis of document collections or archives. Despite these similarities, the two collections present or draw on different documents and each collection expresses a different point of view. The sixth-century redaction of the Liber Pontificalis presents a Damasus-friendly view of the conflict.30 It has been suggested that “if the Liber Pontificalis and the Collectio Avellana are read in light of each other, then the contrasting strategies of each text with regard to the problem of authority and memory will allow us to correct, at least in part, for their often ignored distortions.”31 Criteria for a Valid Succession In the following section, and based on the partial information that has come down to us through the different documents, we examine which of the contenders, Damasus or Ursinus, had the better claim to be the rightful successor of Liberius. An important task is therefore to establish the criteria that determined valid episcopal succession in the Eternal City. Beside the disputed election between Damasus and Ursinus, Rome has known other dual elections and other conflicts over episcopal succession. These episodes may shed light on the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus. 28. D. Trout, Damasus of Rome, 60, with reference to the papers in H. Geertman, ed., Atti del colloquio internazionale: ll Liber Pontificalis e la storia materiale. 21–22 febbraio 2002 (Rome, 2002). 29. Thus Lizzi Testa, 171n272. On the other hand, the later texts, which were written contemporaneously with the pontificate discussed, offer a better guarantee of truthfulnees. See Michel Aubrun, Le livre des papes. Liber pontificalis (Turnhout, 2007), 7n1. 30. Writes L. Cracco Ruggini, “Clientele e violenze urbane,” 31n57. 31. Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority,” 60, see also 66 and 74–76. 228 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS For example, issues similar to those at play in the dispute concerning the successor of Liberius were present in a parallel situation in 418, when the archdeacon Eulalius and the priest Bonifatius competed to succeed Zosimus. A short overview of the facts is as follows: both Eulalius and Bonifatius were elected and ordained. Upon notice by the city prefect, the emperor approved Eulalius; this approval was later withdrawn at the request of the supporters of Bonifatius. The emperor then called a local synod in Ravenna to solve the problem. When the local synod did not resolve the issue, the emperor convened a national Italian synod. Meanwhile both rivals were forbidden to enter Rome. Eulalius violated this ban, with the result that the emperor recognized Bonifatius as the lawful successor to Zosimus. The events are reported in the imperial correspondence contained in the Collectio Avellana. By studying the events that led to the succession of Bonifatius, with particular attention to the letter addressed to the emperors by Bonifatius’s supporters (Coll. Av. 17), M. Raimondi has been able to establish the following succession procedure: 1) assembly of the clergy together with the people; 2) election of the candidate by the clerics; 3) presentation of the choice to the people; 4) election of the candidate by the people through acclamation; 5) ordination of the new bishop; 6) recognition (subscriptio) of the new candidate by the priests; 7) benediction (blessing) by the bishops present; 8) procession of the new bishop.32 Based on this same letter, and on the correspondence between the emperor Honorius and the urban prefect Symmachus, G. Dunn lists the following elements as the criteria by which Eulalius had at first been considered the new and valid bishop of Rome: “the competent number of ordainers,” “the right time and place for ordination,” and “the fact that Eulalius was elected first.” Conversely, again based on the above-mentioned Coll. Av. 17, G. Dunn also identifies arguments against the regularity of Eulalius’s election: “his support [was] minimal,” and he was ordained by a bishop who “was elderly and sick.” An argument in favor of Bonifatius is that he “had the backing of seventy of Rome’s presbyters.” Eulalius, for his part, was “ordained by the bishop of Ostia, as custom required.” Scrutinizing the phases of this conflict, Dunn observes, “Their conflict action was mild initially: the election of a leader, his ordination as bishop, the occupation of a basilica.” Regarding “the arguments we see eventually about what made someone the legitimate bishop,” Dunn reaches the fol32. See Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 198–199. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 229 lowing conclusion: “In Rome this had to do with the number of presbyteral and diaconal electors each candidate could muster, about who was elected first, and about the number of ordaining bishops (and the presence of the bishop of Ostia as the principal prelate).”33 Likewise, R. Lizzi Testa, assessing the arguments used in the Gesta to promote Ursinus and to discredit Damasus, identifies several criteria, by which the Gesta of course intend to favor Ursinus. Contributing to the validity of a succession are chronological precedence of ordination and being ordained in the right location; discrediting is the occurrence of violence or the use of illegal measures during the process of succession.34 Studying why Gregory became pope in 590, J. Moorhead identifies the following factors as beneficial to becoming the next bishop of Rome: membership in the diaconal college, being designated as successor by the previous pope, and diplomatic experience. Other factors were the family background of the candidate and intervention by the public authorities.35 In the following section we study how the criteria identified above applied to the papal election of 366. The Successor of Liberius Diaconal Background of the Candidates In late antiquity, in addition to being designated by the previous bishop as his intended successor, a background as deacon, and certainly as archdeacon, was often an asset for becoming the new bishop of Rome.36 Several times the Gesta attach particular importance to the qualifications of deacon or archdeacon, e.g., in Coll. Av. 1, 2, where the qualification of diaconus is mentioned explicitly for Damasus and the qualification of archidiaconus for Felix; in Coll. Av. 1, 5, where Ursinus and two other deacons are mentioned by name as part of the group requesting the ordination of the deacon Ursinus as successor to Liberius; in Coll. Av. 1, 6, where two other deacons of the Ursinian camp are exiled; and in Coll. Av. 1, 10, which names the three Ursinian deacons allowed to return from 33. G. Dunn, “Imperial Intervention in the Disputed Roman Episcopal Election of 418/419,” Journal of Religious History 39 (2015), 4, 10. 34. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 144. 35. See J. Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Religious History 30 (2006), 279–293. 36. See Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope,” 284, 290. 230 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS exile.37 In Coll. Av. 1, 2, and Coll. Av. 1, 5, the special qualifications of diaconus or archidiaconus are referred to in direct connection with episcopal ordination.38 Indeed, Rome was in a special situation with regard to the diaconal college since the number of deacons was restricted to seven.39 The restriction naturally afforded the diaconal college a special status.40 The deacons were directly attached to the bishop and chose an archdeacon as their leader.41 The college of deacons influenced episcopal elections in Rome, often with the result that a deacon, typically the archdeacon, became the new bishop. The elevation of a deacon to episcopal rank was not in agreement with canon law of that time, but Rome was apparently not the only place where a deacon could become bishop.42 37. Coll. Av. 1, 2: “Clerus omnis id est presbyteri et archidiaconus Felix et ipse Damasus diaconus et cuncta ecclesiae officia omnes,” and “[clerus] Felicem archidiaconum ordinatum in loco Liberii episcopum susceperunt.” Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Tunc presbyteri et diacones Ursinus Amantius et Lupus cum plebe sancta, quae Liberio fidem seruauerat in exilio constituto, coeperunt . . . sibi Ursinum diaconum pontificem in loco Liberii ordinari deposcunt.” The reference to Damasus that follows does not describe him as a deacon but does attribute to him the ambition to become bishop in the place of Felix: “periuri uero in Lucinis Damasum sibi episcopum in loco Felicis expostulant.” Coll. Av. 1, 6: “Ursinus . . . pontifex ordinatus, cum Amantio et Lupo diaconibus in exilium mitteretur.” Coll. Av. 1, 10: “Tunc Ursinus cum Amantio et Lupo diaconibus septimo decimo Kalendarum Octobrium Lupicino et Iouino conss. ad urbem rediit.” Here no qualification for Ursinus is given; in the eyes of the Gesta, he is the legitimate bishop at this moment. 38. Coll. Av. 1, 2: “Sed clerus contra fas . . . Felicem archidiaconum ordinatum in loco Liberii episcopum susceperunt.” Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Sibi Ursinum diaconum pontificem in loco Liberii ordinari deposcunt.” 39. Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope,” 286, referring to Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica 6.43 (ed. GCS 2); and Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 7.19 (ed. GCS NF 4). The same assessment was made by M. Raimondi, who based on this fact was able to reconstruct the diaconal college of 366. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 185. Raimondi also proposes a partial composition for the diaconal college of 355, just before Liberius’ exile. 40. As observed by Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope,” 286: “The small number in the diaconal college could be held to suggest that a particular dignity pertained to the rank of deacon at Rome. Such a perception would have been in accord with views which had been current within the Roman church around 400, when Jerome, a person with first-hand experience of practice in Rome, had been uneasy at the authority wielded by deacons there.” 41. On the attachment of the deacons to the bishop, see S. Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume. Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitäten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr, Millennium-Studien 11 (Berlin, 2007), 223. On the position and election of the archdeacon, Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope,” 286n43 refers to Jerome, ep. 146.20. In addition to the occurrence of the term archdeacon referred to here and the occurrences in Collectio Avellana 1, 5, G. Dunn finds in Coll. Av. 17, 2, one of the earliest references to this position among the Roman deacons. Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 2n3. 42. As Moorhead relates in “On Becoming Pope,” 284–285. For the papal legislation, Moorhead refers to letters by Pope Siricius and Pope Zosimus. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 231 In the election of 366, both candidates held diaconal rank, as is stated by the Gesta. In the sources, however, we miss an indication as to who was the archdeacon, or which candidate had been designated by the previous bishop Liberius as his successor. From the silence of the Gesta, with its tendency to highlight elements favorable to Ursinus and unfavorable to Damasus, we may assume that Ursinus was not the archdeacon. Damasus may have been the archdeacon, but the possibility is unproven. Felix was the archdeacon in 355; he was also responsible for a schism and died in 365. From Raimondi’s reconstructions of the diaconal college in 355 and 366, we may deduce that Damasus had the highest seniority, but seniority was apparently no guarantee for becoming the new archdeacon since the position was an elected one.43 Disputes among the deacons during the last year of Liberius’s pontificate may have prevented the election of a new archdeacon. In any case, for the election of 366 the college of deacons presented itself as a divided group without a real leader. Election A regular episcopal election requires support by a majority of the clergy;44 so a successful candidate is one that obtains support from a majority of the electors. According to normal procedure, all electors convene at one place to vote for their preferred candidate. In the case of the parallel elections mentioned above, it is at this point that the problems arose. The candidates and their respective followers convened at different places, each obtaining, at a minimum, the support of a majority of the electors present at that location, hence not per se a majority of all the electors. The amount of support obtained was important; the place in which each election was held was not, in principle, although it may hint at the nature of a particular candidate’s support. With respect to the election, chronological precedence does seem to have played a decisive role.45 Relative Chronology With respect to the election and ordination of both candidates in 366, chronological information is scarce. Therefore, it is difficult to reconstruct the chronology of events relating to the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus in their race to become, upon the death of Liberius in 366, 43. See Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 185, for the composition of the diaconal college and Moorhead, “On Becoming Pope,” 286n43, for the special position of the archdeacon. 44. See Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 4. 45. For this, see for instance the above-mentioned election of 418, where Eulalius was elected first but Bonifatius finally became the bishop of Rome. 232 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS the next bishop of Rome.46 Many sources restrict themselves to asserting the precedence of one candidate’s election or ordination over that of the other; other sources do not give any chronological information at all. The only detailed source is the Gesta, but even there exact dates, though provided for other events, are absent for events associated with the conflict between Ursinus and Damasus.47 Hence the sequence given by the Gesta for the elections and ordinations of Ursinus and Damasus is at best only a relative one.48 Other sources provide very little precise chronological information: Ammianus and Sozomen provide none; Jerome, Rufinus, and Socrates only imply the priority of Damasus’s ordination. The divergent information from these sources proves difficult to reconcile.49 A sound assumption seems to be that the two candidates were elected almost at the same moment.50 Place of Election In the later dispute of 418, Eulalius was elected in the Lateran Basilica, Bonifatius in the Church of Theodora.51 From this diversity of locations we may deduce that there was no fixed place for the election of the new Roman bishop. The most detailed topographical information about the competition between Damasus and Ursinus to succeed Liberius may be found in the Gesta. This document is also the only one to mention the place of the election of Ursinus and the place of the nomination of Damasus. 46. Diefenbach agrees in his Römische Erinnerungsräume, 226n38. 47. The Gesta (Coll. Av. 1) provide exact dates for the deaths of Felix (22 November 365) and Liberius (24 September 366), for the start of the clash at the basilica Liberii (26 October 366, 8 a.m.), for the return of Ursinus and his two deacons from exile (15 March 367), and for the second exile of Ursinus, beginning on 16 November 367. Relative information about chronology includes the three-day duration of the initial confrontation at the basilica Iulii and Damasus’s occupation of the basilica Lateranensis as well as his ordination there seven days later. 48. As Reutter observes in Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 36. 49. As Reutter again notes in Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 47: “Stimmt die Chronologie des Ursinerberichts, verschweigen alle anderen Quellen, daß Ursinus bereits zum Exil verurteilt wurde, oder Hieronymus, Rufin und Ammian berichten nur von den Auseinandersetzungen, die der Ursinerbericht als die an der basilica Iuli darstellt, d.h. vor der Ordination des Damasus; dann wäre die Chronologie, die die beiden kirchlichen Schriftsteller bieten, falsch.” 50. Cf. Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 225; and Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 113. See also Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 43 and 136n37. Reutter, based on the exact wording and the silence of the Gesta as to certain details, deduced that it was most likely not Ursinus but Damasus who was elected first. 51. Discussed by Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 1–2. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 233 In Lucinis According to the Gesta, the desire of Damasus’s supporters to see him as the new bishop was expressed in a place called ‘Lucina’, in Lucinis.52 The event referred to was not a formal election; instead Damasus was merely nominated at that place to be a candidate.53 The location mentioned refers to a titular church designated by the name in Lucinis.54 Although it has been thought that this name corresponds to the building later known as the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina,55 archaeological evidence does not support this thesis.56 Therefore, it is more logical that the designation refers to another church in the same area, namely, the titulus beati Marcelli as argued by R. Lizzi Testa. That area was home to Damasus and an ideal place for him to obtain support; it was in the same area he converted his family domus into the titular church that later would receive the name San Lorenzo in Damaso.57 Basilica Iulii The Gesta mention that Ursinus was elected in the basilica Iulii .58 A consensus has not yet been reached about the identity of the church referred to by this name.59 According to the Liber Pontificalis, Pope Julius I (pontificate: 337–352) had built two churches that took his name, one in 52. Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Periuri uero in Lucinis Damasum sibi episcopum in loco Felicis expostulant.” 53. Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius,” 174n195; De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso,” 266; and Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei e turpe convicium,” 200–220, argue that this was not the real election, but only an expostulatio, a nomination of Damasus. 54. See Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius,” 182–183 and De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso,” 266. 55. D. Trout also calls the building “a basilical forerunner, it seems, of S. Lorenzo in Lucina near the Via Lata in the northern Campus Martius.” Trout, Damasus of Rome, 6. Others directly identify in Lucinis with S. Lorenzo in Lucina, as noted by Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 36n136. 56. As reported by Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority in sixth-century Rome,” 7172: “With the exception of the Praefatio, literary references to the titulus Lucinae, as in the lists of 499, or to the basilica of S. Lorenzo in Lucina mentioned in LP, all date to –the late fifth and sixth centuries. Recent excavations, however, have adequately demonstrated that the church did not exist until the early fifth century.” 57. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 146–147. 58. Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Tunc presbyteri et diacones Ursinus Amantius et Lupus cum plebe sancta, quae Liberio fidem seruauerat in exilio constituto, coeperunt in basilica Iuli procedere et sibi Ursinum diaconum pontificem in loco Liberii ordinari deposcunt.” 59. A good overview of the different positions and their arguments is given in Ghilardi, “Tempore quo gladius,” 183–185; and in Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 199n141. 234 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS Trastevere, the other close to Trajan’s forum.60 Earlier in the Gesta, ‘ Iuli’ is mentioned in combination with the clarification ‘trans Tiberim’;61 this has led some scholars to identify the basilica Iulii with the current Santa Maria in Trastevere.62 Others have argued that the term ‘basilica’ was a later addition in Coll. Av. 1, 3.63 In that case, the basilica Iulii in Coll. Av. 1, 5, does not need to be in Trastevere, and it could therefore be identified with the basilica Iulii iuxta forum Traiani instead.64 In addition to the argumentation given above, in Coll. Av. 1, 3, the Church of Julius in Trastevere has been linked to Felix. If Ursinus had been elected in this same church, it would have been unlikely for the Gesta—in keeping with its polemical strategy of putting Ursinus in the line of Liberius and Damasus in the line of the schismatic Felix—to have mentioned this detail instead of keeping it silent. Therefore, the most likely location for the election of Ursinus is the basilica Iuli iuxta forum Traiani. Geographic Implications So Ursinus was elected in the basilica Iulii, and Damasus became a candidate in the titulus in Lucinis. The terminology used in the Gesta to refer to Roman churches is of some interest here. For the three churches with episcopal dignity, the Gesta consistently use the term ‘basilica’; the other churches are mentioned without this title and only with a name in the genitive.65 When 60. As reported by V. Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani di Roma dal IV al VI secolo (Vatican City, 2001), 60. 61. Coll. Av. 1, 3: “Felix notatus a senatu uel populo de urbe propellitur. Et post parum temporis impulsu clericorum, qui peiurauerant, inrumpit in urbem et stationem in Iuli trans Tiberim dare praesumit.” 62. Proponents of this view are listed by Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 35n135. Cf. Trout, Damasus of Rome, 5-6. 63. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 137n151: “ è inserzione dell’editore Günther [App. crit., p.2] in base alla notizia di L. P. 36, ove si afferma che papa Giulio costruì due basiliche intramurane, e per il fatto che poco oltre nel testo [C. A. 1, 5, 20–21] si menziona la basilica Iulii come luogo ove fu eletto Ursino.” 64. As argued by H. Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam. Studi sul Liber Pontificalis e gli edifici ecclesiastici di Roma da Silvestro a Silverio (Leuven, 2004), 240. 65. See Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam, 29–30: “A questo resoconto segue la vivace descrizione, del conflitto tra Damaso e Ursino (cc. 5–14) e le determinazioni topografiche nei passi citati sono: c. 3 stationem in Iuli trans Tiberim / c. 5 in basilica Iuli / in Lucinis / ad basilicam Iuli / c. 6 Lateranensem basilicam / ad basilicam Liberii / c. 9 in basilica Liberii / c. 12 ad sanctam Agnem / Queste sono tutte denominazioni di uso corrente nel linguaggio comune e supporre—come si è dato il caso—l’uso di un linguaggio denigratorio o corruzione del testo è del tutto superfluo” (slash added to indicate new lines in the original text). See also Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume. Heiligenmemoria und kollektive Identitäten im Rom des 3. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr, Millennium-Studien 11 (Berlin, 2007), 232–233. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 235 a church is named without a title, it is regularly a titular church (titulus) that is meant. Unlike the basilicas, which were under direct control of the bishop with assistance by the deacons,66 titular churches had an aristocratic background and had often developed from private houses (domus); as a result, the titular churches were managed by the priests rather independently from the bishop.67 This distinction was maintained later in the Lenten stational liturgy, during which the more significant stationes on Sundays and important weekdays were assigned to the basilicas, and the ceremonies on the other weekdays were held in the titular churches.68 Efforts have been made based on the geographical data to outline the groups that supported either candidate. With the election of Damasus happening in a titular church, ‘in Lucinis’, and that of Ursinus in the basilica Iulii, a logical deduction would be that Damasus had the support of priests and the rich aristocracy, while Ursinus was backed by the plebs and the clergy who were under control of the bishop.69 Later investigations, which have assumed that both candidates had the support of part of the aristocracy,70 focus on which aristocratic group supported which candidate. In the relationship mentioned in the Gesta between Ursinus and Liberius on the one hand and between Damasus and Felix on the other,71 an indication has been found that Ursinus was supported by the “the great Christian senatorial families (Anicii-Probi, Valerii, Ambrosii) who were closely involved in the work of Christianization carried out by Pope 66. As noted by Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 223. 67. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 95. and Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie, 93. The earlier opinion, however, that every titular church referred to a private house from before the freedom of religion, is no longer supportable. So Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie, 99. 68. Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam, 18 sqq.; also Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 233. 69. See, for example, L. Cracco Ruggini, who in this way identifies aristocratic support for Damasus: “the final victory of Damasus . . . can be interpreted as that of an aristocratic faction, not even necessarily Christian, but in any case concerned to ensure the victory of a candidate to the papal throne whom they judged to be pliable and therefore desirable.” Ruggini, “Rome in Late Antiquity,” 373–374. And cf. S. Diefenbach, who disagrees with the position put forward by Ruggini: “Die Differenzierung in einen felicianisch-damasianischen Titelklerus mit starkem Rückhalt in der Senatsaristokratie und in einen liberisch-ursinischen Bischofsklerus mit enger Beziehung zur plebs sancta kann also, was die Verhältnisse unter Liberius und Felix II. betrifft, nicht überzeugen.” Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 233. 70. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 136. 71. Coll. Av. 1, 5 [CSEL 35, 2]: “Periuri uero in Lucinis Damasum sibi episcopum in loco Felicis expostulant. . . . Tunc presbyteri et diacones Ursinus Amantius et Lupus cum plebe sancta, . . . sibi Ursinum diaconum pontificem in loco Liberii ordinari deposcunt.” 236 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS Liberius among the senatorial class,”72 whereas Damasus was supported by the newly converted families.73 Noticing, however, the good relationship between Damasus and Ambrose, other scholars have considered the opposite to be more likely: it was Damasus who was supported by the old Christian families, and the dispute about the succession between Damasus and Ursinus was an element in a power struggle among the different aristocratic families in Rome to further their influence, including their influence in the Christian community.74 The geographical location of the churches involved in the dispute is instructive, though not because that location reflects a link between Damasus and Felix or between Ursinus and Liberius,75 and not because the location indicates support by the local aristocracy.76 More important was the personal relationship of each candidate to the population of the specific 72. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 172, with reference to Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 143–170. 73. See the description and demurral in Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 236n75. 74. Poglio, Gruppi di potere, 159–160: “Si potrebbe ritenere che l’elezione di Damaso al soglio vescovile della città di Roma fosse il frutto di un’alleanza dei casati cristiani, gravitanti attorno ai Probi-Anicii, con i pagani Ceionii-Rufii, capeggiati da Volusianus Lampadius i quali, nell’occasione, agirono di conserva.” Poglio criticizes Lizzi Testa’s point of view, basing his argument on the link between Ambrose and Damasus. Poglio, 156n240. Poglio therefore does not accept, rightly in our view, that Ursinus was supported by a family alliance with the Ambrosii. In Poglio’s view, the confrontation between Ursinus and Damasus for the see of Rome was part of the struggle for influence and power between the established families of the Roman upper class. The thread in Poglio’s work is the change in power dynamics in the city of Rome, in the provinces, and in the wider Roman Empire during the second half of the fourth century, when the different senatorial or aristocratic clans managed to establish their power and influence at the expense of the opposing families and their alliances. Poglio concludes that the greater part of the second half of the fourth century was characterized by continuous struggles between aristocratic families. On the one hand, there were the families of pagan denomination, like the Vulcacii-Nazeratii, Orfiti, Symmachi, Nicomachi and Praetextati. They opposed the Christianized aristocratic families, like the Probi-Anicii, the Gracchi, the Furii, the Paulini, the Bassi, the Valerii, and the Ambrosii (with the Ceionii-Rufii family, still largely pagan in its lifestyle, associated with the latter). These struggles between aristractic families had repercussions for the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus as well. 75. The Gesta promote the connection between Damasus and Felix in order to portray Damasus in a bad light. From an anti-Damasus source, this portrayal loses its value, as explained by Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 237n75. 76. L. Cracco Ruggini located the titulus in Lucinis, where Damasus was elected, in Trastevere, since that was a traditionally Christian area and the area where traditional rich aristocratic families had their private houses (domus). Ruggini, “Rome in Late Antiquity,” 373–376. However, the idea of locating the titulus in Lucinis in Trastevere has proved to be untenable, as stated by Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 235n69. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 237 area in which each was elected, whether that relationship was due to prior pastoral work there or to existing family ties.77 For Damasus this link was clear, since in Lucinis was the place of his father’s house; for Ursinus further investigation is required to establish such a relation between the place of his election and the people that supported him. With the election in the basilica Iulii by his followers, Ursinus made the first step towards succeeding Liberius. Damasus had merely been appointed by his supporters to be the successor of Liberius; further steps needed to be taken in order to consolidate his candidacy and prevent Ursinus’s. Inevitably the two groups confronted each other. As to what happened next, we have no account other than that of the Gesta: a three-day clash at the basilica Iulii, with casualties.78 Episcopal Ordination A valid ordination requires a “competent number of ordainers” and “the right time and place for ordination.” The competence of the ordainers could be questioned, for example, when the ordaining bishop “was elderly and sick.”79 A traditional framework for the consecration of a new bishop of Rome has been identified by Ch. Pietri: the consecration, or ordination, took place in the Lateran basilica, on a Sunday, and the consecration was performed by the bishop of Ostia. For the place of consecration, Pietri gives as examples the location of Damasus’s consecration (Coll. Av. 1, 6) and that of Eulalius’s (Coll. Av. 14, 4); for occurrence on a Sunday, he refers to the cases of Damasus, Bonifatius, and Celestinus, and maybe of Siricius; the role of the bishop of Ostia is attested by Augustine of Hippo.80 77. As Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 136, explains. 78. Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Quod ubi Damasus, qui semper episcopatum ambierat, comperit, omnes quadrigarios et imperitam multitudinem pretio concitat et armatus fustibus ad basilicam Iuli perrumpit et magna fidelium caede per triduum debacchatus est.” 79. Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 4, quoted above. 80. Charles Pietri, Roma christiana: Recherches sur l’Eglise de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311–440), Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 224 (Rome, 1976), 681–682: “En revanche, l’Eglise romaine a pu fixer, dès la fin du IVe siècle, le cadre de la consécration: la cérémonie se déroule au Latran [note 6, which refers to Damasus (Coll. Av. 1, 6) and Eulalius (Coll. Av. 14, 4)], dans la basilique de la liturgie pontificale, et suivant une habitude ancienne, un dimanche [note 7, which refers to the term ‘dies consuetus’ in Coll. Av. 14, 4, and 15, 1, and states that verification is possible for Damasus, Bonifatius, and Celestinus, and maybe for Siricius; the note also refers to Michels (1925) and Lietzman]. Une autre tradition s’impose définitivement; elle attribue à 238 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS Place of Ordination In 418, during the dispute as to who would succeed Zosimus, Eulalius was ordained bishop in the Lateran basilica, where he had been elected two days before; Bonifatius was ordained bishop in San Lorenzo in Lucina, not in the Church of Theodora, where his election had taken place the day before.81 Both managed to be recognized as bishop of Rome, which means that both churches were valid locations for an ordination.82 Basilica Lateranensis Damasus was ordained in the Lateran basilica,83 which, as the church of the Roman bishop and the see of his administration, was a location of considerable importance.84 Its suitability for the ceremony,85 was augmented by its location in the center of Rome and its foundation by the emperor Constantine.86 U. Reutter finds in the location of Damasus’s ordination an argument in favor of the legitimacy of Damasus’s installation process.87 M. Raimondi sees in the Gesta’s report about this place an indication that the Ursinians also recognized its importance.88 Similarly, that the Gesta mention the basilica Lateranensis as the place of Damasus’s ordination, instead of hiding this detail, is for S. Diefenbach and A. Lippold an indication that the basilica Lateranensis was not seen as the only legitimate location for an episcopal consecration.89 The Lateran basilica cer- l’évêque d’Ostie, la consécration de l’élu [note 1, with reference to the Liber Pontificalis and to Augustine, Brev. Coll. 3, 16]. Le Liber Pontificalis faisait remonter cette pratique au pape Marc; Augustin en donne sûrement témoignage pour la fin du IVe siècle.” 81. Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 2. 82. Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 250n126. 83. This location is mentioned in the Gesta (Coll. Av. 1, 7): “Lateranensem basilicam tenuit et ibi ordinatus episcopus.” Though not confirmed by other ancient sources, the location is taken for fact by modern authors, e.g., Trout, Damasus of Rome, 6; and Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 44. 84. See Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 44; and Pietri, Roma christiana, 411–412. 85. So Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 202. 86. See Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 230; and Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie, 52. 87. Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 44: “Darauf [der reguläre Vorgang für die Einsetzung eines neuen Bischofs] deutet auch die Ordination des Damasus in der Lateransbasilika hin, die zu dieser Zeit die Kirche des römischen Bischofs und sein Amtssitz war; deshalb sprechen auch Hieronymus und Rufinus von einer Priorität der Damasusordination.” 88. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 200. 89. See Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 231 and Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 119. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 239 tainly was a traditional place for an episcopal ordination, but it was not the only valid location. Significant too is the absence of violence at the basilica Lateranensis.90 Damasus seems to have taken possession of this basilica without resorting to force, and he was able to hold it against the Ursinians. The latter probably tried to disturb Damasus’s installation ceremony, just as Damasus’s followers disturbed the installation ceremony of Ursinus at the basilica Iulii. Intervention of public forces likely prevented such a disturbance on the part of the Ursinians and, by detaining the Ursinian priests, facilitated Damasus’s ordination. By mentioning the liberation of these seven Ursinian priests by the partisans of Ursinus, Coll. Av. 1, 6, alludes to their prior detention.91 Basilica Liberii or Sicinini Most scholars who have examined the issue think Ursinus was ordained in the basilica Iulii immediately after his election in the same location.92 This claim is based on the text of the Collectio Avellana; at Coll. Av. 1, 5, the ‘ordination’ of Ursinus by bishop Paul of Tivoli is mentioned immediately after Ursinus’s election and before Damasus’s ordination, while Coll. Av. 1, 6, indicates that Ursinus was ordained before Damasus. The text of the Gesta, however, is not very clear.93 Given that the text of the Gesta uses the word benedictus instead of ordinatus, and that historians such as Jerome, Rufinus, and Socrates do not place Ursinus’s consecration in the basilica Iulii, but elsewhere, namely, in the area Sicinini or the basilica Sicinini, the hypothesis that Ursinus was ordained elsewhere, possibly in secret,94 deserves consideration. Coll. Av. 1, 5, reports that the process of Ursinus’s installation at the basilica Iulii was interrupted: Damasus and his supporters invaded the 90. See Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 202. 91. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 152. 92. See De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso,” 266. 93. See the remarks of Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 114–115. 94. An indication in favour of such a secret ordination is that, apart from Bishop Paul of Tivoli giving his blessing to Ursinus (Coll. Av. 1, 5), no ordaining bishop is mentioned in Coll. Av. 1. Sozomen’s account of Ursinus’s ordination (Hist. Ekkl. VI, 23, 1–3) points in the same direction: “A deacon named Ursicius [Ursinus], who had obtained some votes in his favor, but could not endure the defeat, therefore caused himself to be clandestinely ordained by some bishops of little note.” English translation from Ph. Schaff and H. Wace, ed., A select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church; Second Series, vol. 2, Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories (Edinburg, 1989), 359. 240 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS church, and a violent clash with bloodshed followed.95 Ursinus and his followers were apparently driven from that location. After having been forced to abandon the basilica Iulii, Ursinus had to look for another place in which to continue the ordination. With only three basilicas in the city center suitable for episcopal ordinations and since Ursinus had just been driven out of the basilica Iulii, and since Damasus was occupying the basilica Lateranensis, the only choice left to Ursinus was the basilica Liberii. When Damasus occupied the basilica Lateranensis in support of his claim to the see, “the Ursinians countered this occupation of the bishop’s church, which had been founded by Constantine, with the basilica Liberii, a central location that seems to have possessed a rank comparable to that of the bishop’s church.”96 The basilica Liberii is also mentioned in Coll. Av. 1, 7, where it is the location of a violent clash between the partisans of Ursinus and of Damasus. This clash resulted in 160 Ursinians killed, more injured, and serious damage to the building: its main doors were damaged by fire and broken open; roof tiles were thrown down; and the roof itself was destroyed.97 A violent confrontation between Damasus and Ursinus is also reported by Ammianus, along with the exact number of 137 casualties on the rebel side; Ammianus identifies the basilica Sicinini as the location of this confrontation.98 Some scholars have regarded this confrontation as the 95. Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Ursinum Paulus Tiburtinus episcopus benedicit. Quod ubi Damasus, qui semper episcopatum ambierat, comperit, omnes quadrigarios et imperitam multitudinem pretio concitat et armatus fustibus ad basilicam Iuli perrumpit et magna fidelium caede per triduum debacchatus est.” 96. Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 229–230. According to Diefenbach, in fourth-century Rome there were already three churches of episcopal rank: the Lateran basilica, the basilica Liberii, and the basilica Iulii. For both parties, Damasus and Ursinus, it was important to occupy a building in the city center in order to substantiate their claims. Another argument in favor of one of these churches would have been the church’s size and its location in a densely populated area of the city. Diefenbach, 233–234, 231. 97. See Coll. Av. 1, 7: “Tunc Damasus cum perfidis inuitat arenarios quadrigarios et fossores omnemque clerum cum securibus gladiis et fustibus et obsedit basilicam hora diei secunda septimo Kalendarum Nouembrium die Gratiano et Dagalaifo conss. et graue proelium concitauit. Nam effractis foribus igneque subposito aditum, unde inrumperet, exquirebat; nonnulli quoque de familiaribus eius tectum basilicae destruentes tegulis fidelem populum perimebant. Tunc uniuersi Damasiani irruentes in basilicam centum sexaginta de plebe tam uiros quam mulieres occiderunt; uulnerauerunt etiam quam plurimos, ex quibus multi defuncti sunt. De parte uero Damasi nullus est mortuus.” 98. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 27, 3, 13: “Constatque in basilica Sicinini, ubi ritus Christiani est conuenticulum, uno die centum triginta septem reperta cadauera peremptorum efferatamque diu plebem aegre postea delenitam.” The term basilica Sicinini probably derives from administrative language, corresponding to Ammianus’s objective to describe the events from the perspective of the Roman administration, cf. Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 226n39. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 241 same event reported in Coll. Av. 1, 7, leading to the conclusion that the basilica Sicinini and the basilica Liberii were one and the same place.99 The two names referring to one basilica would be consistent with Jerome, Rufinus, and Socrates mentioning this place as the location of Ursinus’s consecration (so Jerome and Socrates) or as the place of the deadly confrontation (so Ammianus and Jerome).100 In this incident, the authorities did not intervene; in fact the city prefect Viventius withdrew from the scene.101 But on other occasions, the authorities did take action. Ursinus was banished a first time shortly after the confrontations commenced (Coll. Av. 1, 6). The emperor later rescinded this decision and permitted Ursinus to return, possibly at the behest of Ursinus’s followers (Coll. Av. 1, 10, and Coll. Av. 5). As the riots recommenced or continued, Ursinus was banished a second time (Coll. Av. 7, Ammianus Marcellinus). According to Coll. Av. 6, Ursinus was exiled to Gaul on account of the continuous unrest that he caused. As the imperial letters explicitly state, both banishments were motivated by the authorities’ desire to restore order in Rome. That Ursinus was the one exiled shows that the secular power regarded him as the instigator of the troubles. The identification of the basilica Sicinini with the basilica Liberii has not been self-evident to all scholars.102 Nevertheless, while different 99. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 153n203: “Le cifre dei due racconti non coincidono: 160 uccisi e una gran quantità di feriti, molti dei quali successivamenti defunti, secondo i Gesta; 137 cadaveri per Ammiano. È difficile tuttavia pensare che non si riferiscano ad uno stesso episodio, nella medesima basilica.” 100. See Jerome, Chron. ad a. 366: “Romanae ecclesiae xxxu ordinatur episcopus Damasus et post non multum temporis interuallum Ursinus a quibusdam episcopus constitutus Sicininum cum suis inuadit, quo damasianae partis populo confluente crudelissimae interfectiones diuersi sexus perpetratae”; and Rufinus, Hist. Eccl., 11, 10: “Ursinus quidam eiusdem ecclesiae diaconus . . . in basilica, quae Sicinini appellatur, episcopum se fieri extorqueret.” Socrates also refers to this place: “A certain Ursinus, a deacon of that church, had been nominated among others when the election of a bishop took place; as Damasus was preferred, this Ursinus, unable to bear the disappointment of his hopes, held schismatic assemblies apart from the church, and even induced certain bishops of little distinction to ordain him in secret. This ordination was made, not in a church, but in a retired place called the Palace of Sicine, whereupon dissension arose among the people.” Socrates, Hist. Ekkl., IV, 29, 1–6; English translation from Ph. Schaff and H. Wace, Socrates, Sozomenus, 113. 101. See Ammianus, Res Gestae, 27, 3, 12–13. 102. See Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 39; and Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 126. 242 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS opinions have been defended,103 today there seems to be a near consensus, still not accepted by all,104 or only with reserve,105 that the basilica Sicinini was the basilica Liberii,106 which is also the current S. Maria Maggiore.107 In addition, scholars have investigated the meaning of the term ‘Sicininum’; it appears to refer to a zone or district in Rome, probably on the Esquiline.108 So in Rome there was a district called Sicininum, and all the old sources refer to this name as the location of a violent clash over the ordination of Ursinus; the Gesta alone speak about the basilica Liberii.109 Additionally, the term basilica Sicinini is used once in the Collectio Avellana. It occurs in the title of the sixth letter (Coll. Av. 6), in which the emperors command that the last church still in possession of the Ursinians be evacuated and given to Damasus.110 Since this title probably stems from the official language of Roman administration, it employs a civil rather than a religious terminology.111 This letter is dated after November 16th, 367 and before January 12th, 368, so more than a year after the clash at the basilica Liberii.112 If the basilica Liberii had been surrendered by the party of Ursinus after the violent clash with the party of Damasus, identification of the basilica Sicinini with the basilica Liberii would be difficult.113 An explanation may be that the Ursinians continued to occupy this basilica for more than a year after the bloodshed, even under pressure 103. See J. Curran, Pagan city and Christian capital. Rome in the fourth century (Oxford, 2002), 140. 104. As noted by Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 154n204. 105. See N. McLynn, “Damasus of Rome. A fourth-century pope in context,” in Rom und Mailand in der Spätantike. Repräsentationen städtischer Räume in Literatur, Architektur und Kunst, ed. Therese Fuhrer (Berlin, 2011), 309. 106. See Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 227n39; and Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam, 29. 107. See Geertman, Hic fecit basilicam, 26: “La basilica Liberii, per raggioni che non ci sono note, viene sostituita dalla nuova S. Maria Maggiore.” 108. See McLynn, “Damasus of Rome,” 309n30; and Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 154n204. 109. K. Blair-Dixon sees in the term basilica Liberii an anachronism of the fifth or sixth century, that is, a later identification for a place previously known under a different name, or a reference to a building yet to be built. Blair-Dixon, “Memory and authority,” 71. The insertion is due to a possible later interpolation or correction in the text. 110. As described by Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 154n204. 111. See the explanation of Diefenbach, Römische Erinnerungsräume, 228n44. 112. On the date of this letter, see Trout, Damasus of Rome, 7n28. 113. As assumed by Curran, Pagan city, 140. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 243 from the side of Damasus.114 Coll. Av. 1, 8, and Coll. Av. 1, 9, seem to confirm such hypothesis.115 Ordination Day The transition process, from the death of a bishop to the election and ordination of his successor, could happen very fast. After Zosimus died on Thursday, December 26, 418, Eulalius was elected on the very next day, Friday the 27th, and Bonifatius was elected the day after that on Saturday the 28th. Both candidates were ordained on Sunday the 29th of December.116 Concerning the chronology of the ordination of Damasus and Ursinus, information found in the different sources is contradictory; “witness stands against witness,”117 and it is not the exact date that is stressed, but the precedence of one ordination before the other. Considering as incorrect the chronological information offered by Jerome, Rufinus, and Socrates,118 and thus crediting the chronology found in the Gesta, some scholars have held that Ursinus was ordained first.119 Nevertheless, in view of the previously discussed accounts of Ursinus’s ordination in the basilica Liberii, it seems more likely that Damasus was ordained first. The traditional day of the week for an episcopal ordination was Sunday,120 though not all scholars agree that this was a requirement at the 114. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 159. Lizzi Testa disagrees with Curran that the Ursinians occupied more churches and that the last church to be evacuated by them, around one year later, was not the basilica Sicinini, but a different church; cf. Curran, Pagan city, 141. 115. Coll. Av. 1, 8: “Post tres autem dies sancta plebs in unum conueniens coepit aduersus eum domini mandata recitare” and Coll. Av. 1, 9: “Saepe igitur eadem plebs adunata in basilica Liberii.” 116. See Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 1–2. 117. In the expression of Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 43: “Hieronymus und Rufinus gehen davon aus, daß Damasus zuerst geweiht wurde, während der Ursinerbericht ausdrücklich davon spricht, daß die Weihe des Ursinus, die in der basilica Iuli stattfand, Priorität hatte und Damasus darauf mit einer dreitägigen Belagerung dieser basilica reagierte. Hier steht Zeugnis gegen Zeugnis.” 118. So Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 109: “So ist bei Rufin die Chronologie von Wahl und Weihe der beiden Kontrahenten und auch die Angabe über den Ort der Weihe des Ursinus verfälscht.” 119. See, e.g., Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 118. See also the chronological tables of Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 55; Coşkun, “Der Praefect Maximinus,” 43–44; and Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 169, which all locate Ursinus’s ordination before Damasus’s, albeit with the necessary question marks for the exact dates in question. 120. Dunn, “Imperial Intervention,” 2n6, referring to C. H. Turner, “The Papal Chronology of the Third Century,” Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1915–1916), 341. 244 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS time of the conflict between Damasus and Ursinus.121 The day that Liberius died, 24 September 366, was a Sunday. The next Sundays were 1 October and 8 October. That Damasus waited seven days before taking possession of the basilica Lateranensis for his ordination,122 may indicate that he wanted to wait for the next available Sunday;123 1 October was the first possible and is the most probable date for Damasus’s ordination, with 8 October as a second possibility.124 The biographical data provided in the Liber Pontificalis also point to October 1st as the likeliest date for his ordination.125 The Gesta give remarkably little information about the ordination of Ursinus. Apart from one mention in a concise sentence from Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Ursinum Paulus Tiburtinus episcopus benedicit,” the ordination is only referred to indirectly, once in Coll. Av. 1, 5, and once in Coll. Av. 1, 6.126 Noticeable is the difference in wording: ‘ordinatus’ for Damasus in Coll. Av. 1, 6; ‘ordinari’ and ‘ordinatus’ for Ursinus in Coll. Av. 1, 6; ‘benedicit’ in Coll. Av. 1, 5, which might point to something special in Ursinus’s ordination.127 Except for the name of Bishop Paul of Tivoli, no further data are provided concerning Ursinus’s ordination; even with regard to its exact date, we remain uninformed, which leaves us only to speculate. Identifying, as indicated above, the basilica Liberii or Sicinini as the place where Ursinus was ordained would also help to determine the date of that ordination. If we assume that the seven Ursinian priests who were brought to the basilica Liberii (Coll. Av. 1, 6) assisted at this ceremony, it 121. For examples, see Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 119n73. 122. Coll. Av. 1, 6: “Post dies septem cum omnibus periuris et arenariis, quos ingenti corrupit pretio, Lateranensem basilicam tenuit et ibi ordinatus episcopus.” 123. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 144. 124. D. Trout entertains both possibilities, but prefers the earlier date. Trout, Damasus of Rome, 6. Most scholars now prefer 1 October, some 8 October. 125. The Liber Pontificalis reports a six-day vacancy after Liberius’s death on 24 September 366 (“Et cessavit episcopatus dies VI,” LP 37), leading to 1 October as the beginning of his successor’s tenure. For the duration of Damasus’s office, 18 years 3 months and 11 days is given (“sedit ann. XVIII. m. III d. XI,” LP 39). Calculating back from Damasus’s death on 11 December 384, one arrives at 1 September 366, which is before Liberius’s death. Assuming an error of one month results exactly in 1 October 366. 126. See Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Sibi Ursinum diaconum pontificem in loco Liberii ordinari deposcunt,” and Coll. Av. 1,6: “Ursinus uir uenerabilis, qui prius fuerat pontifex ordinatus.” 127. So Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 43–44: “Die Weihe des Ursinus wird lediglich mit der kurzen Bemerkung Ursinum Paulus Tiburtinus episcopus benedicit konstatiert, wobei offenbar der terminus technicus für die Weihe ordinare, der bei Damasus verwendet wird, fehlt.” Reutter notices this also in Jerome’s account of the facts: “Danach wurde zunächst Damasus ordiniert und kurze Zeit später Ursinus als Bischof festgesetzt, d.h. wohl nur gewählt.” Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 39. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 245 must have happened in October, and it must have happened before 26 October, since during the bloody confrontation on that day the building was severely damaged, most probably making it unfit for an ordination afterwards. So in our view, supported by the ancient historians and with some indications in the Gesta, Ursinus was not ordained in the basilica Iulii, but in the basilica Liberii, before 26 October. If these conclusions are correct, the ancient historians would have a case for dating Damasus’s ordination before that of Ursinus. In the end, however, the whole question of chronology needs to be put into perspective. What is really important is not the exact chronology of the events, nor even who was ordained first, but rather that the regular procedure for a Roman episcopal ordination was followed; such was the case for Damasus. Consecrating Bishop The Gesta mention that Ursinus was blessed (benedicit) by Bishop Paul of Tivoli,128 but they do not give the name of the bishop who formally ordained the would-be pope.129 The other sources either discredit the ordaining bishop or bishops as “inexperienced” (Rufinus), “of little distinction” (Socrates), “of little note” (Sozomen),130 or they do not mention the ordaining bishops at all (Jerome); nowhere, apart from the Gesta’s mention of Paul of Tivoli, is a name given. Similarly, no source names the bishop or bishops who ordained Damasus. The assumption that Damasus was ordained by the bishop of Ostia, while possible, remains unproven.131 It seems that ordination by the bishop of Ostia was traditional but not a requirement.132 According to the fourth canon of Nicaea, the ordaining 128. Coll. Av. 1, 5: “Ursinum Paulus Tiburtinus episcopus benedicit.” 129. As Lizzi Testa observes in Senatori, popolo, 148. 130. Rufinus, Hist. Eccl., 11, 10; English translation from Ph. Amidon, Rufinus of Aquileia: History of the Church, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 133 (Washington, DC, 2016), 451; Socrates, Hist. Ekkl., IV, 29, 3; English translation from Ph. Schaff and H. Wace, Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories, 113; Sozomenos, Hist. Ekkl. VI, 23, 1; English translation from Schaff and Wace, Socrates, Sozomenus: Church Histories, 359. 131. Trout, Damasus of Rome, 6; and Pietri, Roma christiana, 411–2 are both convinced that Damasus was ordained by Florentius, the bishop of Ostia. According to Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 148n184, it is only a hypothesis that Damasus would have been consecrated by the bishop of Ostia. A similar statement is made by Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 119. 132. The opinion that ordination by the bishop of Ostia was a requirement, comes from an entry in the Liber Pontificalis (LP 34), which states that Pope Marcus initiated this tradition, and from the proof supposedly furnished by Augustine in his Brev. coll. cum Don. 3, 16, 246 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS bishops should all be bishops from the surrounding area; the minimum number of such bishops was three, and in that case written consent of the other bishops in the area was to be obtained afterwards. The three traditional for the ordination of a Roman bishop were the ones from Ostia, Velletri, and Porto.133 Since, as we have observed, Damasus tried to perform every step in the succession according to the rules, it is very probable that he was ordained by these bishops. Acclamation or Public Approval After Damasus’s death in 384, Ursinus attempted to succeed him, this time in competition with Siricius. Once again, Ursinus failed to obtain the city’s bishopric. In an imperial letter to the city prefect Pinianus, congratulating him on the succession of Rome’s bishop, the emperor explains the failure of Ursinus as the result of popular acclamations against him and in favor of Siricius.134 For the election and consecration of a bishop at Rome, Pietri explains, “In theory, a consensus of the people, the clerics, and the neighboring bishops is needed to secure the appointment of a successor to Peter.”135 The need for a consensus evolved from the practice of the second and third centuries, when the local community determined who became the new bishop.136 Public approval or acclamation was thus a prerogative of the people in the choice for a bishop.137 It is significant that the Gesta contain no mention of an acclamatio for Ursinus; silence was probably maintained on this point because the absence 29, where he refers to the ordination of the bishop of Rome: “sicut nec Romanae ecclesiae episcopum ordinat aliquis metropolitanus, sed de proximo Ostiensis episcopus.” Lippold, “Ursinus und Damasus,” 116–117, adds that the note in the Liber Pontificalis is too uncertain, and that the text of Augustine’s is only referring to the requirement that the ordaining bishop should come from the neighborhood. 133. De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso,” 269n24–25. For Rome this traditon was only established later, according to Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, 148. 134. Coll. Av. 4: “Proinde quoniam religiosum Siricium antistitem sanctitatis sic praeesse sacerdotio uoluerunt, ut Ursinum improbum acclamationibus uiolarent.” 135. Pietri, Roma christiana, 680. 136. See Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 148–149. 137. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 203. The people could approve or disapprove a new bishop because of his moral qualities. For these, in the fourth century reference was made to 1 Tim. 3. For a more thorough treatment, M. Raimondi refers to C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, 2005), 32– 40, where Rapp discusses the use of this scriptural text in late antiquity as a basis for pragmatic Christian leadership. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 203n152. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 247 of an acclamatio was unfavorable to Ursinus.138 In other words, Ursinus failed to obtain a popular acclamation. The supporters of Damasus prevented precisely that with their assault on the basilica Iulii, where Ursinus had been elected.139 Damasus, on the other hand, did obtain a public acclamation at the basilica Lateranensis, where he was ordained according to regular procedure.140 The regularity of Damasus’s election, namely, by acclamation, is attested in a letter of 384 sent to the court by Ambrose, who uses the words ‘iudicio Dei’ to indicate that this unanimous acclamation by the people was seen as the expression of God’s will. That Ursinus failed to obtain public approval is noted by Ambrose in another letter to the court, dated in the year 381. Here Ambrose uses the words ‘turpe convicium’ to describe Ursinus as an unworthy candidate.141 Ambrose could not just be repeating pro-Damasus propaganda. The official character of the correspondence, the second letter being a report of the council of Aquileia of 381, is further support for its trustworthiness. In this way the authority of the bishop of Milan, together with the authority of an imperial letter, serve to confirm the legitimacy of Damasus’s election and the illegitimacy of the election of Ursinus. Without popular approval, the ordination of Ursinus was incomplete. Failure to obtain popular approval, and even receiving popular disapproval, made Ursinus an invalid candidate in the eyes of the authorities and the emperor, regardless of the relative chronology of the two elections. Assessment of the Legitimacy of Damasus’s Installation If we adopt the Gesta as the main and privileged source of information for the conflict, then a pro-Ursinus, anti-Damasus conclusion is easily 138. As implied by Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 203–204. 139. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 150: “Non acclamato dal popolo dopo l’ordinazione a causa dell’assalto dato alla chiesa dai seguaci di Damaso.” 140. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 158: “acclamato dalla maggioranza del clero e del popolo, dopo essere stato ordinato nella cattedrale del Laterano.” 141. In a letter to the court Ambrose referred to Damasus’s election with the words “Romanae ecclesiae sacerdos iudicio dei electus.” Ep. X 72,10: Zelzer, CSEL 82.3, 16. The expression iudicio Dei indicates that Damasus’s election strictly followed the rules of ecclesiastical tradition, where unanimity of popular vote was seen to reflect the will of God. In another letter to the court (actually a letter of the council of Aquileia to the emperors, dated in 381, see Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, 74), the court is requested not to agree to requests for clemency on Ursinus’ behalf. That letter recorded that Ursinus did not obtain public approval: “quem cum ‘habere’ oportuerit ‘testimonium etiam ab his qui foris sunt’ quali testimonia cives proprii prosecuti sint clementia vestra meminisse dignetur. Pudet enim dicere, inverecundum est recensere, quam turpi famam eius convicio sauciaverint.” Ep. ext. coll. 5, 5: 248 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS reached: “The Gesta inter Liberum et Felicem intend to illustrate both the way in which Damasus reached the episcopacy as well as the form, at the boundaries of regularity, in which his election took place. Compared to Ursinus, who was elected and ordained at the same time in the basilica Iulii iuxta forum Traiani, Damasus received in Lucinis only investiture and then had to wait for some time before he could proceed to the Lateran in order to receive consecration.”142 To the eyes of some in the aristocracy, the installation of Ursinus looked to be more than valid, and it happened before the installation of Damasus. The opposing aristocratic faction, which supported Damasus, had to react by any means available to them, even by violence, in order to get their candidate on the See of Saint Peter.143 If, however, we take some distance from the Gesta and look to the details of the installation process itself, it is Damasus who meticulously performed the necessary steps;144 the process for Ursinus was less meticulous in adhering to these steps. Fundamentally, the election of Ursinus failed because he was not publically acclaimed, and he was not publically acclaimed because he only had the support of a minority of the people. “Ursinus may well have been elected and ordained first, but his consecration was imperfect.”145 The refusal of the Ursinians to recognize this fact makes them partly responsible for the riots at the basilica Sicinini. Conclusion Relying on the Gesta as main source of information—it is indeed the most detailed source, but also extremely partisan—easily leads to the conclusion that Ursinus was the legitimate successor to Liberius. With the help of the admittedly scarce information available in other sources that are nearly contemporaneous with the disputed succession, and using the information in the Gesta against itself, a different conclusion can and should be reached. Damasus had a claim to be the legitimate successor of Liberius. It was Damasus, not Ursinus, who accurately performed all necessary steps in the succession process: election by most of the clergy, approval by the Zelzer, CSEL 82.3, 184–85. In this fragment Ambrose not only clearly indicates that Ursinus was disapproved of by the citizens of Rome, he also mentions a possible typical outcome of such public acclamationes: Ursinus’s reputation was compromised turpi convicio. Raimondi, “Elezione iudicio Dei,” 197 and 203. 142. De Spirito, “Ursino e Damaso,” 266–267. 143. See Poglio, Gruppi di potere, 146-147. 144. So Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 144; Reutter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom, 44; with reference to Pietri, Roma christiana, 411. 145. Lizzi Testa, Senatori, popolo, papi, 150. KRISTIAAN VENKEN AND ANTHONY DUPONT 249 majority of the people, ordination in the Lateran basilica (Rome’s main church), and subsequent recognition by his peers. For Ursinus, at least one formal step was missing: he did not obtain public approval, which rendered his episcopal bid defective. Chronological priority of election, an argument sometimes used, is difficult to establish. If Damasus was only nominated in the titulus in Lucinis, and not yet elected, then Ursinus’s election happened before Damasus’s. The exact place of the election appears to be unimportant for a determination of validity, but the location of the election could be an indication of the kind of support that each candidate obtained. Damasus’s candidacy received support in Lucinis, from the area of his paternal roots, and Damasus succeeded in having the larger part of the deacons, priests, and people (plebs) behind him. Support for Ursinus in the basilica Iulii proved minoritarian; including himself, only three of the seven deacons were behind him, and his priestly support was possibly limited to the seven priests mentioned as at Ursinus’s side in Coll. Av. 1, 6. So Ursinus had a minority of the clergy, and the party of people that supported him was smaller than that of Damasus. Acclamation, whether in favor of a candidate (iudicio Dei) or against a candidate (turpe convicium), was a necessary step in the succession process. Two different letters from the correspondence of Bishop Ambrose of Milan with the emperor speak to this issue. From the first, we know that Damasus did obtain public approval; from the second letter, we learn that Ursinus was disapproved by the people. The official character of the letters is an argument for the legitimacy of Damasus’s election. Concerning the ordination ceremony of either Damasus or Ursinus, only scant information is furnished by the oldest sources. We are told little, for example, about Damasus’s ordination. Apart from the late antique historians, who in their concision imply only that Damasus was ordained first, without mentioning the place, the time, or the bishops present, the only additional information is found in the Gesta, which state that the event happened in the basilica Lateranensis after a seven-day delay. Taking account of this delay and of the biographical data in the Liber Pontificalis yields a date of October 1st, 366, for the ordination of Damasus, who remained in office until December 11th, 384. Sources are just as silent on the consecration of Ursinus. Even the partisan Gesta provide only a few hints, one concerning the identity of the ordaining bishop and another asserting that Ursinus was ordained first. Some other late antique sources hint at the chronological priority of Damasus’s ordination, or specify the place of Ursinus’s ordination: the basilica Sicinini or Sicininum. So Ursi- 250 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DAMASUS AND URSINUS nus’s ordination too is poorly documented. It probably happened not in the basilica Iulii, where Ursinus was elected, but in the basilica Sicinini (called basilica Liberii in the Gesta), the location to which Ursinus and his supporters fled after the first violent confrontation with the party of Damasus. If Ursinus’s consecration did take place in the basilica Liberii, then that consecration must have been later than Damasus’s, which contradicts the testimony of the Gesta. The ordinations of both Damasus and Ursinus seem to have taken place in one or another regular basilica. With the limited information available, the names or number of bishops who assisted at the ordination of either candidate cannot be established, except for one reference in the Gesta to Paul of Tibur, or the late antique historians’ assertion that Ursinus was ordained by bishops of little distinction. Information about the bishops who consecrated Damasus is entirely absent from the sources presently known. The parallel elections of Damasus and Ursinus were not the only parallel elections for the bishopric of Rome. This particular succession process, however, was accompanied by serious violence. The most severe confrontation, at the basilica Sicinini, with over a hundred victims, merited an entry in the official data of the local administration and was therefore reported by Ammianus. At the moment itself, the city prefect withdrew from the scene, and the authorities did not intervene. Ursinus was later exiled several times as an instigator of continuous unrest in the Roman Christian community; Damasus, however, was allowed to remain in office, a possible indication that he was not held responsible for the violence. These exiles indirectly demonstrate that the authorities regarded Damasus rather than Ursinus as Liberius’s rightful successor. In any case, the unusual violence casts a dark shade on the succession process in general and on the candidates themselves, on Ursinus, who failed to become Rome’s bishop, and on Damasus, whose tenure lasted for about eighteen years. The Saint Formerly Known as Christ: Some General Lessons for Catholic Historiography from an Obscure Case MICHAEL P. CARROLL* Images of the so-called “Sunday Christ,” a type of medieval wall painting found in many of England’s parish churches, have always been interesting because there are no medieval texts that discuss this image in any precise way. Notwithstanding the lack of textual references to this image modern scholarly commentators have used presuppositions derived from Christocentric theology to construct a widely-accepted interpretation of what these images would have “meant” to medieval English Catholics. This article argues, however, that if we rely only on the medieval evidence we have, and in particular on the “St. Sunday” label generally accepted as being associated with these images, then it is possible to construct an entirely plausible—but quite different—interpretation. The article concludes with some general lessons for the study of late medieval Catholicism that go beyond this specific case. Keywords: Sunday Christ, St. Sunday, Medieval Catholicism, England, Image cults, Christocentrism D uring the 1980s and 1990s Eamon Duffy and several other historians demolished the contention that the Reformation in England was the end result of widespread popular dissatisfaction with a corrupt Church.1 To the contrary, these revisionist scholars established that English Catholicism had been thriving right up until the eve of the Reformation. One result is that starting in the late 1990s, the critical issue, at least among English historians concerned with religion, became how fast or how slow Protes- *Michael P. Carroll is professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada); email mcarroll@wlu.ca. 1. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400– C. 1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven, 2005 [1992]); for a balanced overview of the revisionist project with the hindsight of a decade or so, see Peter Marshall, “(Re)Defining the English Reformation,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 3 (2009), 564–586; Lionel Jeffries, “Review Article: “Revisionism” in Tudor Reformation Studies,” Irish Historical Studies 38, no. 152 (2013), 690–695. 251 252 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST tantism had taken root in England.2 In this article, however, I focus on the experience of Catholicism in late medieval England without being distracted by an implicit concern with the looming Protestant threat. My primary concern will be with something that is very specific (namely, lay interactions with one particular type of image found on the walls of some parish churches). Nevertheless, I argue that close attention to this particular case— and to the way modern scholars have interpreted it—holds some general lessons for the historiography of medieval Catholicism. Confronting the Sunday Christ As pleasant as it is for modern tourists, and that certainly includes tourists-who-are-academics, to visit the interiors of parish churches scattered across the English countryside, it cannot be taken as an experience that recreates what would have confronted a medieval viewer—and a large part of the reason for this is that these interiors have been stripped of most of the images that would have confronted a medieval viewer. Nor is it simply a matter of those images just having been removed from these churches; they were removed and obliterated. Other commentators, of course, have noted Reformers’ iconoclasm was waged against most religious images in late medieval England that were made of wood (typically oak) and so easily burned.3 But those same iconoclastic fires also deprived modern scholars of the ability to confront the visual cues associated with those images that would have confronted medieval Catholics. True, some medieval images have survived. These include, for instance, many rood screens that once separated priest from people and whose analysis figures so prominently in the work of English historians like Duffy, as well as many of the alabaster images that were sold abroad as the Reformation unfolded and which have since been returned to England.4 2. For a review of post-revisionist scholarship, see Eamon Duffy, “The English Reformation after Revisionism,” Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2006), 720–731; Mary Hampson Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison, 2007). 3. Kathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England 1350–1500 (New York, 2002), 74; Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2016), 115. 4. Eamon Duffy, “The Parish, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval East Anglia: The Evidence of Rood Screens,” in The Parish in English Life: 1400–1600, ed. Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibbs, and Beat A. Kumin (Mancester, 1997), 133–162; Paul Williamson, ed., Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Alexandria, VA, 2010). MICHAEL P. CARROLL 253 What have also survived are many wall paintings that had been packed willy-nilly on the walls of parish churches—if only because it was often easier for iconoclasts to whitewash over these images than to destroy them. Even more medieval wall paintings would have survived to the present day except for the aesthetic considerations that led Victorians to strip the plaster from church walls in order to uncover the stonework beneath.5 The vast majority of the wall paintings uncovered in English parish churches are images that can be linked to textual sources, e.g., to biblical accounts of particular persons or events or to stories about the Virgin Mary or particular saints known from the exempla mentioned in sermon collections. In most cases, then, these textual sources are available to modern scholars to aid in interpreting what those images might have meant to medieval viewers.6 These textual sources are especially important given that—notwithstanding the common justification for images on the grounds they are “books for the illiterate”—most wall paintings are really at best only very truncated representations of the stories and traditions with which they are clearly associated.7 Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, however, examples began accumulating of one particular image, found on the walls of parish churches at different locations in England and Wales, that was not in any clear way linked to stories or legends that could be used by modern commentators to contextualize those images. These particular wall paintings showed a man, usually clad in a loincloth and gazing directly at the viewer, and who was surrounded by a variety of everyday implements and tools. The wounds depicted on the man’s body, especially the wounds in his hands, feet and side, left no doubt that he was meant to represent Christ. That a nimbus sometimes appeared behind his head only cemented that interpretation. Although the exact nature of the implements depicted varied from location to location, they were generally tools and other objects associated with the occupations and trades that would have been found in a typical village community during the Middle Ages. Athene Reiss has written the definitive English-language account of these Christ-with-implements images, and her review of the first scholarly 5. E. Clive Rouse, Medieval Wall Paintings (Haverfordwest, 1991). 6. For an overview of the textual sources associated with most English wall paintings, see Roger Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008). 7. Athene Reiss, “Beyond “Books for the Illiterate”: Understanding English Medieval Wall Paintings,” The British Art Journal 9, no. 1 (2008), 4–14. 254 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST FIGURE 1. The Sunday Christ (right) at Breage, Cornwall, with St. Christopher (left). Photo by Mattana; available on Wikimedia Commons. attempts to interpret these images during the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries demonstrates that those early interpretations shared a common element: commentators projected onto the image a positive relationship between Christ and the trades/occupations represented.8 Thus, for some commentators the tools represented gilds, and the image connoted divine approval of the activities associated with gilds. For most of these early commentators, however, the core idea was more simply that these images were meant to convey the notion that this-worldly labor was consecrated and so a way of serving God. Over time, scholars pointed to examples of these Christ-with-implements images in churches in continental Europe, mainly but not exclusively located in the alpine regions of Germany, Austria, France, northern Italy, Switzerland and Slovenia. Then, in the late 1930s, German investigators called attention to a textual message associated with one of these 8. Athene Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting (Oxford, 2000). MICHAEL P. CARROLL 255 Continental images: a single sentence below a Christ-with-implements image in the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence said [in English translation] “Whomsoever does not keep Sunday holy and does not have devotion to Christ, God will condemn to eternal damnation.”9 Such a text seemed to leave little doubt: these images were meant to convey the message that working on Sunday, rather than coming to Church to honor Christ, was sinful. Although textual referents like the one at San Miniato al Monte have been found at a few other locations on the Continent, they have never been found in England. Even so, English scholars came to adopt the view that all Christ-with-implements images, wherever they were found, were meant to convey the message that good Christians were expected to abstain from work on Sunday and attend church instead. One result is that academics came increasingly to incorporate “Sunday” into the label given this image. Reiss herself settled on the “Sunday Christ,” and noted that this label accorded well with international usage, e.g., Cristo della Domenica in Italian; Christ du Dimanche in French; Sontagschristus in German. Although not accepted universally, the “Sunday Christ” label is now routine in English-language publications.10 Color reproductions of these Sunday Christ images can be found in Reiss’s book as well as in Dominique Rigaux’s Le Christ du Dimanche.11 Not content with simply viewing the Sunday Christ as conveying an “abstain from work on Sunday, come to church” injunction, scholarly commentators went on to layer onto this core message more complex interpretations that drew upon medieval Catholic theology. For instance, after noting that Christ-with-implements images were indeed designed to warn people against working on Sunday, A. Caiger-Smith went on to argue that this portrayal was really only one particular application of a more general theme. That more general theme, he said, was “the idea of continual reenactment of the Passion, the idea that Christ not only redeemed the sins of the world on Calvary, but suffers his Passion still for sins which men are committing every day.”12 9. Quoted in ibid., 9. 10. Achim Timmerman, “Review Article: The Sunday Christ,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 155, no. 1 (2002), 288–291. 11. Dominique Rigaux, Le Christ Du Dimanche: Histoire D’une Image Mediévale (Paris, 2005). 12. A. Caiger-Smith, English Medieval Mural Paintings (Oxford, 1963), 57. 256 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST Later commentators have continued to advance much the same interpretative claim, i.e., that the Sunday Christ was meant to remind medieval viewers of the suffering associated with Christ’s Passion and the continuing significance of that suffering in meriting human (and so, their own) redemption. Thus, for example: “The Sunday Christ likewise transforms banal objects, such as a pair of scissors, into elements of a representation of Christ embodying the memory of his sacrifice”13 “To a late medieval audience . . . this image pictorialized the disastrous effects of working on Sundays and other feast days, particularly since it directly implicated the viewer’s own actions (symbolized by the tools) in the perpetuity of the Passion.14 “The message was uncompromising. Working on the Sabbath added to the wounds suffered by Christ for mankind.”15 “Paintings in naves of a full-length bleeding Christ, naked but for a loin cloth, and surrounded by the tools that parishioners used in their daily working lives, readily reminded parishioners . . . that they should not work on Sundays and holy days but rather offer appropriate devotion to Christ whose suffering saved them”16 “. . . Sunday Christ images function precisely to erase [the distinction between] the sacred history of the Crucifixion and the secular life of labor.”17 Given the strong and recurrent emphasis upon the Passion and its redemptive importance in these scholarly interpretations, it is not surprising that Reiss suggests that Sunday Christ images had been inspired in the first instance by images of the Man of Sorrows.18 These are three-quarter length images of Christ depicting him wearing the Crown of Thorns with wounds in his hands and left side and the Arma Christi (instruments of the Passion) surrounding his body. What happened over time, Reiss argues, is that the Arma Christi in these Man of Sorrows images were replaced by everyday occupational tools thereby giving rise to Sunday Christ images—and later 13. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 1. 14. Timmerman, “Review Article: The Sunday Christ,” 288. 15. Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 88. 16. G.W. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012), 98. 17. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown, “Introduction: Arma Christi: The Material Culture of the Passion,” in The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, ed. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Farnham, Surrey, 2014), 10. 18. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 9. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 257 commentators have tended to accept Reiss’s reconstruction of this iconographical history.19 The now-prevailing interpretation of the Sunday Christ just reviewed is, of course, entirely plausible. Certainly, to state the obvious, a concern with the Passion of Christ was a theme that in one way or another pervaded not only what medieval Catholics “saw” in their Churches (the giant rood in particular) but also the devotional guides that structured the messages disseminated by the clergy. Moreover, we also know of (other) popular traditions that saw sinful actions in the present as creating anew the suffering of Christ’s Passion. The best-known example here involves the belief that swearing an oath on a part of Christ’s body, considered a form of blasphemy, caused pain to that body, which is a tradition known from a variety of sources including a small number of wall paintings.20 As Jonathan Michael Gray states “didactic books, wall paintings, poems and stories suggest that many medieval people believed that oaths by Christ’s members really did tear into his corporeal body.”21 In the context of such a tradition, the suggestion (again, under the now-prevailing interpretation of the Sunday Christ) that working on Sunday recreated the suffering of the Passion would certainly have made sense. Yet, while there is nothing inherently implausible about the prevailing scholarly interpretations of Sunday Christ images just reviewed, other aspects should be considered. First, direct documentary evidence does not support this sort of interpretation, at least from English sources. From the period being examined, i.e., no textual source from late medieval England links these images to the Passion of Christ or, more specifically, to a relationship between working on Sunday and the Passion. Second, it is an explanation that conflates the meaning that Church authorities might have intended to convey by this image and the meaning most lay viewers would have embraced as they gazed on that image, that is, it simply assumes that little or no difference exists between the two meanings. Thus this explanation denies agency to medieval viewers by denying a priori the possibility that they might have systematically constructed a meaning for themselves stepping outside the Christocentric theology of the period. 19. Cooper and Denny-Brown, “Introduction: Arma Christi: The Material Culture of the Passion,” 9–10; Paul Williamson, “Introduction,” in Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculture from the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. Paul Williamson (Alexandria, 2010), 19. 20. For an example of such a wall painting, see Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings, 89. 21. Jonathan Michael Gray, Oaths and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2013), 29. 258 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST What is proposed here is that modern scholarly explanations reviewed above seem reasonable to current scholars mainly because they conform to the official Christocentric theology favored by Church authorities (then and now), notwithstanding the lack of any direct evidence to support these explanations and notwithstanding that it conflates the meaning intended by Church authorities and the meaning that would have been evoked in the minds of lay Catholics. Is there a way to reconstruct an alternative account of what a Sunday Christ image might reasonably have “meant” to lay Catholics that is not shaped by an implicit privileging of Church-approved Christocentric theology about the Passion? I think there is, and a conceptual first step is found in the literature associated with what has been called the “material turn” in the academic study of religion over the last two decades.22 What makes this material turn tradition relevant is that much of it has been concerned with the “gaze” that adherents turn toward images in a variety of religious traditions. The most general point made by scholars in this tradition—and it is hardly a complicated one—is that meaning does not reside in an image but is created when viewers look upon an image with a gaze that has been shaped by all the social and cultural contexts in which the viewer is embedded.23 Official doctrine may be one of the contextual influences shaping that gaze, but it is often not the only (or even the most important) of these. David Morgan is a leading figure in this tradition, and he has in fact written extensively about the range of influences that shaped the gaze of Catholics as they looked upon different images of Christ, images of the Sacred Heart and Veronica images in particular, over time.24 This emphasis on taking into account the many different things shaping the gaze that religious adherents turn toward religious images fits in well with recent calls 22. Birgit Meyer et al., “The Origin and Mission of Material Religion,” Religion 40, no. 3 (2010), 207–211. 23. On the importance of considering all the contextual elements that shape the gaze adherents turn toward religious images, see especially David Morgan, “The Materiality of Cultural Construction,” Material Religion 4, no. 2 (2008), 228–229; Morgan, “Materializing the Study of Religion,” Religion 46, no. 4 (2016), 640–643; Terje Stordalen, “Locating the Textual Gaze Then and Now,” Material Religion 8, no. 4 (2012), 521–524. 24. David Morgan, The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley, 2012), 56–59, 111–36; “Rhetoric of the Heart: Figuring the Body in Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” in Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, ed. Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer (New York, 2012), 90–111; “The Visual Piety of the Sacred Heart,” Material Religion (2017), 1–5. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 259 for historians to pay more attention to material culture in studying the Catholic tradition, especially when it seems evident that the way in which Catholics interacted with that material culture seems not to coincide with officially-sanctioned beliefs.25 The core point that Morgan and his associates make, namely, that meaning does not reside in the image itself but is projected onto it, seems especially evident in the case of Sunday Christ images. After all, as common as it is now for scholars to associate these images with the Passion, that was not the meaning attributed to this sort of image in the first eighty years following its modern rediscovery (during which time, remember, most English commentators projected some version of a “sacred dignity of labor” meaning onto the image). In the end, the “material turn” scholarship leads us to ask, simply, what else, besides theological commentaries on the Passion, might have in some important (and possibly, more important) way systematically shaped the gaze that medieval viewers directed toward the “Sunday Christ” images they saw on the walls of their parish churches and so shaped the ways in which those medieval viewers interacted with that image? In fact, a clue as to what such a “something else” might have been for late medieval English Catholics has been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. St. Sunday In 1858, the author of a brief entry in Notes and Queries pointed to the following passage he had encountered in a Surrey will dating to 1515: “Also I bequeath to the ymage of Seynt Sunday v pound of wax for a tapier, to burne every Sonday in service time as long as it will endure” and wondered who “St. Sunday” was.26 Over the next few decades, Notes and Queries published several other references to this mysterious “St. Sunday.” Several authors suggested that “St. Sunday” was really just “St. Dominic” and resulted from a confusion of “Dominicus” with “Domenica.”27 Others brought forward placenames that incorporated “St. Sunday,” e.g., in the name of a holy well.28 Finally, still others pointed to further references to 25. Maureen C. Miller, “Introduction: Material Culture and Catholic History,” The Catholic Historical Review 101, Centennial Issue, no. 1 (2015), 1–17. 26. Anonymous, “Saint Sunday,” Notes and Queries Second series 137 no. August 14 (1858), 132. 27. “Saint Sunday,” Notes and Queries Second series 137 no. September 11 (1858), 215; “St. Sunday,” Notes and Queries 9 (Fifth series), no. March 30 (1878), 254. 28. R.C. Hope, ibid. 11 (Twelfth series), no. October 28 (1922), 359; James Wilson, ibid. Tenth series 11 no. March 13 (1909), 208. 260 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST this saint in churchwarden accounts or wills (more on these particular references below). Who really was St. Sunday? Reiss suggests that the term referred to images of the Sunday Christ.29 Partly, she justifies this suggestion by pointing to an early medieval document that warns against work on Sunday and that uses “Seynt Sunday” as a synonym for “Holy Sunday.” But Reiss also relies on a passage in a letter written by a Protestant clergyman in 1633, in which that clergyman referred to an image that had been described years earlier by a “Doctor Jackson”; that cited passage states: [Doctor Jackson] saw in Wickham Church in Buckinghamshire ye Picture of Saint Sunday on ye walls many times stabbed through and he gave this interpretation thereof that Christ hath received of Christians more wounds on Sunday than he did of ye Jews.30 Reiss does not provide a precise reference to this work by “Doctor Jackson,” but it is almost certainly a reference to an anti-Catholic polemic published by Thomas Jackson (1579–1640) in 1625. Consulting Jackson’s original work, we find that in a section on Catholic image cults he does indeed talk about seeing “a picture of St. Sunday” surrounded by “tradsmen’s tooles, that had wronged this Saint, (or rather violated the Sabbath)” and then notes: The picture seems to represent our Saviour Christ. And the importance of the Embleme in charitable construction may be this, that he hath received more wounds by prophane Sabbath-breakers, then he did by the Iewes.31 Jackson’s original passage then leaves no doubt: he is clearly describing a Christ-with-implements image and clearly reporting on a Catholic tradition that associated this image with a “St. Sunday” label. Further, Jackson’s own attempt at interpreting the image does associate it with a “refrain from work on Sunday” message. I will mention one more piece of evidence confirming the “Sunday Christ”/“St. Sunday” equivalence, if only because it has not been cited by 29. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 18–20. 30. Quoted in ibid., 19. 31. Thomas Jackson, A Treatise Containing the Originall of Vnbelief, or Misperswasions Concerning the Veritie, Vunitie, and Attributes of the Deitie Witih Directions for Rectifying Our Beliefe or Knowledge in the Forementioned Points (London, 1625), Early English Books Online, accessed July 10, 2017. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 261 Reiss or as far as I know anyone else. That evidence is found in a book by the Protestant author John Bridges (d. 1618) in a section where Bridges is responding to a Catholic author, Nicholas Sander (d. 1581), who had written in defence of Catholic image cults. Sander had argued that Catholic images were quite different from pagan idols because although many pagan idols had “no truth at all in nature but were feigned monsters,” that was not true of the images venerated by Catholics because “all our images have that essential truth extant in the world, which they represent.32 Bridges responded to this claim by arguing that it was hardly true that all Catholic images represented a truth “extant in the world,” and gives this example to make his point: As for example, the Image of S. Sunday pictured like a man, with all kinde of tooles about him, as though he had bene Iohn of all craftes. Wheras, for the béeing of any suche man, there was no suche essentiall truth at all extant in the worlde that it represented.33 Bridges is suggesting that “St. Sunday” was not a real saint. Still, here again, as in Jackson’s book, the main point is only that Bridges clearly describes an image of what would now be called the Sunday Christ and also reports a Catholic tradition associating that particular image with a “St. Sunday” label. Even apart from these additional confirmations, Reiss’s suggestion that St. Sunday and the Sunday Christ were one and the same was quickly accepted by other scholars, and this equivalence is now taken for granted in almost all discussions.34 Associating St. Sunday with Sunday Christ images allows us the advantage to know something about the devotional practices associated with these images. This is important, as noted, because no medieval texts explain what Sunday Christ images meant to lay Catholics. By contrast, 32. For commentary on Sander’s argument, see Robert S. Miola, Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Oxford, 2007), 58–61. 33. John Bridges, The Supremacie of Christian Princes Ouer All Persons Throughout Theor Dominions, in All Causes So Wel Ecclesiastical as Temporall, Both against the Counterblast of Thomas Stapleton, Replying on the Reuerend Father in Christe, Robert Bishop of Vvinchester: And Also against Nicolas Sanders His Uisible Monarchie of the Romaine Church, Touching This Controuersie of the Princes Supremacie. (London, 1573), 497, Early English Books Online, accessed 19 June 2017. 34. Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Reform in an English Village (New Haven, 2001), 25; David Dymond ed., The Churchwardens’s Book of Bassingbourn, Cambridgesbhire: 1496–C.1540 (Cambridge, 2004), 12n. 262 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST late medieval references to St. Sunday do exist, and most are found in wills. Reiss herself lists thirty-eight wills that mention St. Sunday over the period 1483 to 1539, and in virtually all of these, the testator provides money (or sometimes, in-kind goods) for the maintenance of “lights” (candles or tapers) for St. Sunday in the parish church.35 The following summaries, all reproduced from Reiss, are typical: Ashford, Kent: In 1528, Alice Quested, widow, left to the “Light standing before St. Sunday, St. Christopher, and our Lady, 12d.” Boughton Malherbe, Kent: In 1535, Philip Edinden left 2 pence each to the lights of Saint Sonday, Saint Sebastian, and Saint Sitha. Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire: In 1501, William Paxford left bequests to several saints, including “to seynt Sonday light 4d.” Cutcombe, Somerset: In 1532, Joanna Murley gave four pence each to Saint Anthony, “Saint Sonday”, and Wells Cathedral. Darfield, South Yorkshire: In 1530, John Wadeluff . . . gave “a hyeff of beis to keip the lyght afore Seynt Sonday and Seynt Erasmas.”36 Nor is Reiss’s list exhaustive. The will left in 1525 by John Jobson, a fishmonger from the city of Lincoln, for instance, made several bequests to different churches, one of which was the parish church of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, and in this regard Jobson said: To the highe alter of Slefforth iijs. iiijd. To the gilldes of the Trinitie and St. X’pofer in the same church iijs. iiijd. each. To the same ij gildes a grete pott of brasse. To the light of St. Sonday in the same xijd. To the light of the xij Apostelles in the same church iijs. iiijd. To the lights of St. Sithe and St. John in the same xijd. each. To the light of St. Gregory in the same xxd. To the roode light in the same xxd. To the gillde of St. George in the same xijd.37 Similarly to cite another case not listed in Reiss Richard Ording’s 1514 will directed that yearly income from a property he owned be used by the church wardens in the parish church at Fosdyke, Lincolnshire. to fynd and kepe ther with a candell of a ponde wax to be made twyse in the yere for to be lightyd and burne before our lady of Pite in the cherche 35. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 129–34. 36. All of the above summaries/excerpts are taken verbatim from Reiss, 129–134. 37. “Lincoln Wills: 1525,” in Lincoln Wills: Volume 1, 1271–1526. British History Online, ed. C.W. Foster (London), accessed 30 January 2018, http://www.BritishHistory.Ac.Uk/Lincoln-Wills/Vol1/Pp146-163. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 263 of ffosdyke at the highe messe every hallyday for evermore. I will that iiijd. be taken yerly of and upone my said grene callyd bosto’ grene by the said cherche wardens for to fynd and kepe a candell of halfe ponde of wex to be made twyse in the yere for to lyghte and burne afore seynt sunday in the said cherche of ffosdyke at the highe messe every hallowdy for evermore.38 Incidentally, the fact that the reference here (as in many of the wills listed by Reiss) is to setting a candle “afore seynt Sunday” is clearly an implicit reference to an image of St. Sunday. Candles, to be sure, were used in a variety of locations in parish churches, and that includes candles associated with Christocentric locations, like those placed on rood lofts (and so near the rood); near the Sacrament at the main altar; and near the Easter sepulchre. Still, because images of what we now call the “Sunday Christ” was called Saint Sunday, and since the lights provided for “St. Sunday” in these wills are so often part of a bequest to provide lights for several different saints, of which St. Sunday was only one, an obvious interpretive possibility emerges: lay Catholics provided lights for images of St. Sunday, that is, images of the Sunday Christ, for the same reason they provided candles for other saints. And we know what that reason was. The Church’s official position—expressed in any number of theological treatises over the centuries—has always been that saints and Mary are intercessors—influential intercessors, to be sure, but intercessors only— who can intervene with Christ (or God) on behalf of the devout. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that for many lay Catholics the saints and Mary were seen to have de facto independent power to protect or to grant particular favors. For Church leaders, such an attitude was a popular error that needed to be corrected—which is why the Council of Trent, in its 1563 declaration “On the invocation, veneration, and relics of saint, and on sacred images,” was careful to make clear the value of venerating the saints only because they were intercessors.39 Protestant reformers, of course, saw in such a belief a particularly blatant example of the superstitious errors that had crept into the Church. Unfortunately, modern scholars studying Catholicism have too often imposed the “official position” of the Church— Mary and the saints are simple intercessors—on the thinking of medieval 38. Ibid. 39. Rev H. J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (St. Louis, 1950), 215–17. 264 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST Catholics even when as seems likely it systematically distorts the thinking of those Catholics.40 If we set aside confessional judgments about what Catholics were supposed to believe, and what is and is not a “popular error,” and focus on the known devotional practices associated with the cult of the saints and Mary, what do we know? One thing we know is that a layperson’s relationship with these supernatural beings was not one-way. In exchange for the protection and favors they provided or might provide, the saints and Mary were seen to expect veneration.41 And what was the most common way of venerating a saint in a parish church? At least for late medieval England, there is much evidence to suggest that it was placing “lights” before an image of the saint.42 The centrality of the tit-for-tat reciprocity foundational to the devotional practices associated with the saints and Mary, and the role of “lights” in particular in devotional practices, is especially well-illustrated in a sermon exemplum from John Mirk’s Festial. Festial, a collection of vernacular sermons written originally in the late fourteenth century, remained in use well into the sixteenth century and was likely the most widely-used sermon collection in late medieval England.43 In the sermon meant for the Purification of the Virgin, Mirk tells the story of a woman “of evil living” who had never done a good deed in her life. The woman was so obviously evil that when she died, fiends did not bother to wait for a formal judgement before whisking her soul off to hell. Two angels, however, forced these fiends to bring the woman’s soul back to be judged by Mary. What happened next is described in this passage from an early sixteenth-century edition of Festial: “Than sayd our lady she [that is, the woman] fonde a candell brennynge afore me & was euer her wyll whyle she lyued & therfore I wyl be as kynde to her as she was to me.”44 And with that, Mary 40. For examples of modern scholars who continue to suggest, in commenting on medieval Catholicism, that Mary and the saints were seen by medieval Catholics as simple intercessors, see Michael Carroll, “The Early Robin Hood and ‘the Myght of Mylde Marye’: Revisiting the Lived Experience of Catholicism in Late Medieval England,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 43, no. 1 (2014), 116–134. 41. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400–C. 1580, 183–87; Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? (Princeton, 2013), 106–12. 42. Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England 1350–1500, 94–98; Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Phoenix Mill, UK, 2004), 157–85. 43. Susan Powell, John Mirk’s Festial, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2009), pp. xix–lvii. 44. John Mirk, The Festyuall (London, 1508), 141, Early English Books Online, accessed 22 June 2017. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 265 commanded that a torch be lit and set next to the woman’s soul in hell, so that no fiend would come near her. The fiends responded by saying that they would rather give up the women’s soul than do this and so the woman was restored to life—after which she became a good and holy person. However much at variance the elements of this story might be with the official doctrine of the Church, it gave clerical legitimation by virtue of being included in sermons to a popular belief: maintain lights before an image of Mary or a saint, and they will use their considerable power to be as kind to you as you were to them. Incidentally, this particular exemplum from Mirk’s Festial was sufficiently well known that the Protestant author John Bridges (d. 1618) used it in the polemic against Catholic image cults mentioned above to illustrate just how shallow (in his view) the Catholic practice of setting lights before images of Mary and the saints was.45 In the end, then, relying only on the references to “St. Sunday” in wills, what would we conclude about what a Sunday Christ image could reasonably have “meant” to lay Catholics who gazed upon that image in their local parish church? A conclusion entirely consistent with the available evidence is that the figure depicted was regarded as a saint comme les autres, and so someone who would provide favors or protection in exchange for veneration. Such a conclusion, of course, is quite different from the reigning interpretations of the Sunday Christ, which suggest that this image functioned mainly to help people see a link between their working on Sunday and the Passion of Christ. Again, it seems clear to this writer that Sunday Christ images likely did start out—in England and on the Continent—as images meant to convey a “don’t work on Sunday, come to church” message that Church authorities wanted to convey. But what happened over time is that some lay Catholics became active participants in creating religious meaning and converting an image of Christ into the image of a saint. True, we need to say “some” in order not to overstate the case. In the end, after all, “St. Sunday” is mentioned in only a few dozen wills, scattered across a number of locales, and no certain way is available to establish just how popular his cult was. Nevertheless, the fact remains that (1) the evidence we have (from 45. John Bridges, The Supremacie of Christian Princes Ouer All Persons Throughout Theor Dominions, in All Causes So Wel Ecclesiastical as Temporall, Both against the Counterblast of Thomas Stapleton, Replying on the Reuerend Father in Christe, Robert Bishop of Vvinchester: And Also against Nicolas Sanders His Uisible Monarchie of the Romaine Church, Touching This Controuersie of the Princes Supremacie (London, 1573), 447, Early English Books Online, accessed 19 June 2017. 266 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST wills) makes it plausible that for some medieval Catholics St. Sunday was associated with the sort of reciprocity associated with saints generally, and (2) that we still have no clear evidence associating Sunday Christ images with the Passion. In the end, then, to see the conclusion advanced in this article—Sunday Christ images were converted by some Catholics into images of a saint—simply as a “superstitious error” while simultaneously favoring the prevailing medieval interpretation of the Sunday Christ that working on Sunday recreates the wounds of the Passion would be to set aside a concern for what the lived experience of late medieval Catholicism actually was in favor of what it should have been. When did St. Sunday Become a Saint? If the “St. Sunday” designation was a folk tradition developing as a creative response on the part of the laity in some parishes, then we would expect a lag between the first appearances of Sunday Christ images and the emergence of “St. Sunday.” Is there any evidence for such a temporal patterning? At first sight, the evidence from wills looks promising. Thus, both in England and on the Continent, the available archeological evidence suggests that Sunday Christ images started appearing on church walls in the mid-to-late 1300s.46 By contrast, although Reiss, as mentioned, located thirty-eight wills mentioning “St. Sunday” over the period 1483–1539, a clear majority of these date to 1520–1539; i.e., it appears that references to “St. Sunday” proliferate on the very eve of the Reformation. Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that the pattern here is a methodological artifact. We know, for instance, that the number of surviving wills increases dramatically in the late 1400s and early 1500s, though whether this is because will-making increased in this period or because earlier wills were less likely to be preserved “must be a matter of speculation.”47 Quite possibly, in other words, the greater number of wills mentioning St. Sunday from 1520 onwards in the 1500s might only be the result of more wills having been written in this period and surviving. Numbers aside, and as Clive Burgess reminded us some time ago, using wills to assess the popularity of religious devotions is generally problematic—for at least two reasons. First, devotional practices that we know from other sources were 46. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 13–14; Rigaux, Le Christ Du Dimanche: Histoire D’une Image Mediévale, 41. 47. Motoyasu Takahashi, “The Number of Wills Proved in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in The Records of the Nation, ed. G.H. Martin and Peter Spufford (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1990), 189. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 267 especially important to English Catholics are typically not mentioned in wills since those practices were set up during a person’s lifetime and continued automatically as the result of tradition.48 This is why wills so often make no mention of the chantries and donations to almshouses to secure the prayers of inmates that functioned to lessen a deceased Catholic’s time in Purgatory. On balance, then, as mentioned, we cannot make too much if anything of the fact that references to St. Sunday start to appear in wills in the late 1400s and increase over the decades leading to the Reformation. Still, one set of records exists that—limited though they are—seems more promising in regard to the matter of temporal patterns. The churchwarden accounts from the parish of Morebath, in Devon, constitute one of the most complete and comprehensive sets of such accounts from sixteenth-century England. As Duffy points out in his book on Morebath, these accounts were written by a single individual, Christopher Trychay, the parish priest at Morebath from his arrival in 1520 until his death in 1574. He kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens.49 What makes the Morebath records especially important to historians, of course, is that Trychay’s tenure spanned a period critical to England’s shift from Catholicism to Protestantism. What makes the Morebath accounts relevant to our concerns here is that although Trychay’s account provides, albeit retrospectively, a list of the image cults existing at Morebath in the 1520s, his very first mention of “Sent Sunday” only appears in the Churchwarden’s account for 1530, where an expense is recorded for “ye setting of ye tabernacle of sent Sonday.”50 Later in that same year there is an expense listed for “ye gere sett fast Sent Sonday ys tabernacle.”51 Incidentally, that the Morebath accounts suggest the image of St. Sunday was set in a tabernacle and had to be secured, means that it was not a wall painting. Williamson suggests that it was an alabaster panel similar to an alabaster panel showing the Sunday Christ that is currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (see Figure 2), which has a flat back and lead-plugged holes in the back to which wires could be attached.52 48. Clive Burgess, “Late Medieval Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered,” in Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. Michael Hicks (Wolfeboro Falls, NH, 1990), 14–33. 49. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Reform in an English Village, xiii. 50. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 130. 51. Ibid. 52. Williamson, “Introduction,” 19–20. 268 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST FIGURE 2. Alabaster image of a Sunday Christ; English, c. 1500. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In any event, after those first two 1530 entries, and throughout the 1530s, Trychay’s accounts regularly mention an expense “for wex and wyke & makyn for ye hole ere be fore sent Sonday,” that is, for making a candle or taper to be set before the image of St. Sunday.53 The very last mention of St. Sunday occurs in the account for 1539—which suggests that St. Sunday’s cult fell victim to the general suppression of image cults set in motion by the Royal Injunctions of 1538. Overall, then, the Morebath accounts lend support to a conclusion consistent with the interpretation advanced here: though Sunday Christ images had been around for centuries, the redefinition of those images as the images of a saint, and so as someone to be associated with the tit-for-tat reciprocity typical of saints, occurred mainly in late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. And thinking about why this might have occurred during precisely this period of time allows us to link St. Sunday to larger processes reshaping English Catholicism generally during this same period. 53. Reiss, The Sunday Christ: Sabbatarianism in English Medieval Wall Painting, 132–33. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 269 The Proliferation and Diversification of Saintly Cults Duffy has argued that a dramatic upsurge in the popularity of saintly cults occurred generally in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, and accompanied much new investment in the images associated with these cults.54 For Duffy, this increased popularity and a corresponding willingness of the laity to devote resources to these saintly cults is evidence for the central contention of the revisionist project that he helped pioneer: English Catholicism was flourishing right up until the onset of the Reformation. What is not entirely clear from Duffy’s account, but what emerges from Richard Marks’s careful study of image cults in the parish churches of late medieval England, is that this upsurge in the popularity of saintly cults accompanied an increased diversification.55 In other words, not only was there an increase in the popularity of saints (like St. George) who had always been popular, but there was also a rise to prominence and popularity of a number of saints (and their associated cults) that had not previously been especially popular (at least in England). For lay Catholics at the parish level, then, the late-fifteenth and earlysixteenth centuries would have been a time of innovation and change in regard to saintly cults that Church authorities fully sanctioned. In this climate of innovation and change under the interpretation being developed here Catholics in some parishes redefined what had for centuries been a Christocentric image into the image of a saint. In other words, whatever meaning Church authorities had originally intended Sunday Christ images to convey, the general upsurge in the popularity of saintly cults, both old and new, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries led some Catholics to become active participants in the process of creating religious meaning by associating the Sunday Christ image in their parish church with the tit-for-tat reciprocity that was the hallmark of all saintly cults. Anything Else? Is there anything else that we can recover from the historical record about the then-newly-minted St. Sunday and his cult? Possibly. While it was common to direct all manner of appeals to a saint, it was also common for traditions to develop associating particular saints with particular specialities, that is, that saw certain saints as being adept at curing certain ail- 54. See in particular Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400–C. 1580, 155–57. 55. Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England, 86–120. 270 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST ments or providing protection from specific dangers. As Duffy has pointed out, we often know about these saintly “specialities” at least partly because they were regularly the basis for the ridicule that reformers like Erasmus, and later, various Protestant commentators, directed at the cult of the saints.56 In this context, then, we possibly catch sight of a “speciality” associated with St. Sunday in a Reformation-era (1533) play by John Heywood, which was one of these works critical of saintly cults.57 In his play, Heywood associates his “Pardoner” character with several relics. Two of these are modeled on the relics associated with the Pardoner in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: a bone from a “Holy Jew’s sheep” that can be dipped in water which then acquires curative properties, and a mitten that when used to sow grain leads to great yields. But in an obvious attempt to ridicule devotion to the saints Heywood also gives his Pardoner several “impossible” relics. These include the toe of the Holy Trinity, which cures toothaches; the jawbone of All Hallows—good for drawing out poison; and the brainpan of St. Michael to cure headaches. This list of impossible relics, however, starts with the arm of St. Sunday. Including St. Sunday’s arm in his list of “impossible” relics suggests that Heywood himself fully understood that St. Sunday was not a real saint. Still, if we look at the entire passage in which Heywood mentions St. Sunday’s arm, we find this: And another holy relyke / eke here se ye may The blessed arme / of swete saynt sondaye And who so euer is blessyd / with this ryght hande Can not spede amysse / by se nor by lande And yf he offereth / eke with good deuocyon He shall not fayle / to come to hyghe promocyon Although the passage does reinforce the “impossible” theme, i.e., the arm of a non-existent saint cannot exist and so cannot “bless” anyone, it also associates devotion to St. Sunday with the protection of those traveling by land or sea. There is no way of knowing if Heywood made this up out of whole cloth or simply borrowed another saint’s speciality, St. Christopher being the obvious possibility. At least at Breage, Cornwall, St. Christopher and S. Sunday were in close proximity; see Figure 1. Since we know from 56. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400–C. 1580, 179–81. 57. John Heywood, A Mery Play Betwene the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte (London, 1533), Early English Books Online, accessed 14 July 2017. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 271 the evidence of wills that devotion to St. Sunday did take place and also know reciprocity was central to the devotional activities associated with saintly cults, it seems entirely plausible to propse that this passage was tapping into a popular tradition suggesting that St. Sunday specialized in protecting travelers. Conclusions No late medieval texts discuss what Sunday Christ images meant is precisely what makes a consideration of these particular images an interesting historiographical exercise. Having seen that a few brief inscriptions found in Continental churches suggest that these images reflected an “abstain from work on Sunday” message has led modern scholars to construct an interpretation suggesting that English Catholics who gazed upon one of these images in their parish church would have been led to reflect on the link between their working on Sunday and the suffering associated with Christ’s Passion. What should now be clear, however, is that this interpretation rests heavily upon theological presuppositions about the Passion and its redemptive importance that have been projected onto this image by modern commentators. By contrast, if attention is paid only to the English evidence we do have—most notably the identification of these images as “St. Sunday” and the lights provided for St. Sunday in wills— then we can construct an interpretation about what these images would have meant to lay Catholics perfectly consistent with that evidence but which makes no mention of the Passion or its redemptive importance. What then is the larger point? Very simply this: if scholarly commentators have so casually and uncritically projected meanings derived from the Christocentric theology favored by Church authorities onto the data in this case, and in the process ignored other and entirely plausible interpretations, have they done something similar in other, more complicated, cases? The only way to answer such a question of course is to cast a fresh eye on the assertions scholars have made about the lived experience of medieval Catholicism, and that will be the main takeaway from this article. To provide a concluding and at this point, necessarily brief example of what all this might mean, consider one of the most forceful statements that Duffy makes about the nature of late medieval Catholicism: The liturgy lay at the heart of medieval religion, and the Mass lay at the heart of the liturgy. In the Mass the redemption of the world, wrought on Good Friday once and for all, was renewed and made fruitful for all who believed. . . . As kneeling congregations raised their eyes to see the 272 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST Host held high above the priest’s head at the sacring, they were transported to Calvary itself . . .58 The implicit theology in this passage is impeccably Christocentric, and Duffy’s characterization here will, I suspect, seem unproblematic; certainly, readers will have encountered it, or something very much like in, in any number of books describing medieval Catholicism. Note, though, that Duffy is clearly making a statement not just about theology but about the way lay Catholics experienced the Masses they attended in their parish churches (see his last line particular). Of course, much evidence supports the contention that the minds of those attending a mass would have been drawn to think about the Passion, and in particular, about the Crucifixion. The centrality and visual presence of the giant rood alone would have done this. Certainly, and in addition, no shortage of devotional guides, recommended prayers, sermons, etc., Duffy provides examples of all these that were explicit in their linking the Mass to the Passion and its redemptive importance. But also much evidence abounds—that Duffy himself, however inadvertently, reviews—to suggest that late medieval Catholics may well have experienced most of the masses they attended in a way that did not at all evoke the sort of “transportation to Calvary” imagery so central to Duffy’s interpretation. Duffy, for example, makes clear that masses were said in most parish churches not just at the main altar in the chancel but also the secondary altars in the nave. In discussing these secondary altars, he goes on to make a number of interrelated points: (1) the masses held at these altars during the week attracted regular attendees, (2) it is entirely possible that attendance at these side altars constitute the most common lay experience of the Mass, and (3) most of the masses at these side altars were sponsored by the laity and were either votive masses in honor of Mary or a saint or a mass that was part of a chantry or other such arrangement meant to provide suffrage for the dead in order to shorten their stay in Purgatory.59 None of these statements will strike anyone as unusual, yet they are worth emphasizing because collectively they suggest that in the minds of the laity the masses at side altars, which are possibly the masses they attended most often, were experienced as primarily instrumental activities. 58. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, C. 1400–C. 1580, 91. 59. Ibid., 370–72. MICHAEL P. CARROLL 273 Such a conclusion in itself is by no means novel. My point is only that (even) Catholic historians have tended to see such instrumentality within the context of an interpretive worldview that privileges internalized Christocentric beliefs and so a worldview that (at least implicitly) devalues this sort of instrumentality. In Duffy’s case, what this means is that his whole discussion of the Mass is designed to create the impression that the Mass as the re-enactment of Calvary is what the Mass mainly meant to late medieval Catholics—even while simultaneously acknowledging that the masses at side altars might well have had other meanings. Duffy of course is not alone in letting a privileging of Christocentric theology influence discussion of what the Mass would have meant to those attending. To take one other example: in his own account of late medieval English Catholicism, G.W. Bernard first takes note of the many references to the practice of attending several masses during a single week, including the masses celebrated in private homes, and then says, What we have in such casual references are glimpses of active piety; but, we cannot easily judge whether actions performed or donations made regularly were done routinely and unthinkingly, or from genuine devotion and commitment. How the mass was inwardly experienced we cannot know.60 To be sure, Bernard—unlike Duffy—at least acknowledges that there is some ambiguity about how late medieval Catholics might have experienced the Mass. Even so, in drawing a contrast between “genuine devotion and commitment” [emphasis added] and actions done “routinely and unthinkingly,” it seems evident that Bernard’s thinking is still being shaped by interpretive framework that gives pride of place to deeply-held internalized beliefs about the Passion and death of Christ and their role in our Redemption. And yet another way to view all this—less influenced by Christocentric theology but perfectly consistent with the evidence—starts by seeing the instrumentality associated with side-altar masses not as a “less genuine” form of religiosity but rather as just another manifestation of that same tit-for-tat reciprocity associated with the cult of the saints. Again, as obvious as all this might seem, it is a perspective which would lead to see the practice of attending several masses a day less as an indication of strongly internalized beliefs linking the Mass to the Passion 60. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome, 94. 274 THE SAINT FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHRIST (as per Duffy) and more as being about a ritual which ensured the wellbeing of society by establishing relationships of reciprocity with the supernatural beings (Mary, the saints, Christ) being honored and that worked to the benefit of themselves or their deceased relatives. It was no more “unthinking” (as per Bernard, above) than the elaborate set of practices associated with the cult of the saints and the cult of Mary generally. Another way of saying all this is that, contra Duffy and most other scholarly commentators who have sought to convey the experience of medieval Catholicism to modern audiences, it may well have been the emphasis upon reciprocity associated with saintly cults, and not at all the theology about the Passion and its role in Redemption, that gave meaning to most of the masses attended by Catholics in late medieval England. Apology in the Form of Autohagiography: Angélique Arnauld’s Defense of Her Reform of Port-Royal ELISSA CUTTER* In the context of the Jansenist controversy in seventeenth-century France, the nuns at the convent of Port-Royal made an effort to record the history of the convent and its reform by the abbess, Mother Angélique Arnauld (1591–1661). In this project, the nuns employed feminine and monastic genres of writing as a way to defend both the convent and its supporters. This article examines the autobiographical account of Mother Angélique through the lens of the genre of autohagiography, demonstrating how she used this genre in defense of the convent to write an apology for her former confessor, the Abbot of SaintCyran (1581–1643), and a theology of divine providence. In her use of this genre, Mother Angélique expressed her theological ideas in a manner permitted to women in the early modern era. Keywords: Angélique Arnauld, autohagiography, Jansenism, providence, Saint-Cyran I n January 1655, Mother Angélique Arnauld (1591–1661), having just stepped down from her role as abbess of the convent of Port-Royal, wrote an autobiographical account of her reform.1 She wrote this text in *Elissa Cutter received her PhD in historical theology from Saint Louis University in 2016. She is assistant professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Georgian Court University, Lakewood Township, New Jersey. Email: ecutter@georgian.edu. She first presented the research that appears in this article at the 2015 American Catholic Historical Association annual meeting. She thanks Ralph Keen and the members of the audience for feedback that shaped this article and Alec Arnold, Annie Chen, Erick Moser, and Kenneth Parker for their comments on an early draft of this article. 1. Three editions of this text were published with editing in the eighteenth century. The first had limited circulation under the title Mémoires et relations sur ce qui s’est passé à Port-Royal des Champs depuis le commencement de la Réforme de cette abbaye (1714). Scholars have judged it to be an inaccurate edition based on their comparisons of the text with the manuscripts that are available. The second appeared as volume three of the series Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal, initially begun in 1734 by Claude-Pierre Goujet (1697–1767). This edition was titled Mémoires pour servir à la vie de la Révérende Mère Marie-Angélique de Sainte-Magdeleine 275 276 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY the midst of the Jansenist controversy and other controversies related to her reform of the convent as a young abbess. Given this context, she did not intend to write a complete autobiography, but rather to describe the history of the convent from the moment that she arrived there.2 She thus explained at the beginning of her account: In the name of the Very Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I am writing by obedience an account of what has happened in this house, in the fifty-two years since I was brought there to be its abbess, on July 5, 1602, aged only ten years [and] ten months, by a very great disorder, common in that time, when there was no longer any discipline practiced for promotions to benefices, nor almost any regularity in our order.3 She had first become abbess of the convent in 1602, while still a child. When Angélique4 was eight years old, her grandfather, Simon Marion (d. 1605) had placed her as coadjutrice to Jeanne de Boulehart (d. 1602), the abbess of the Cistercian convent of Port-Royal in the valley of Chevreuse, located to the southwest of Paris. He achieved this in spite of her youth by Arnauld, réformatrice de Port-Royal (1737). The final copy of this text appeared in the Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal et à la vie de la Révérende Mère Angélique de Sainte-Magdeleine Arnauld, réformatrice de ce monastère (1742), a collection of writings, originally compiled by Angélique’s niece, Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly. (This collection is referred to as the Mémoires d’Utrecht, based on the place of publication.) Angélique’s Relation is on pp. 262–370. Scholars have also republished the Relation twice in the twentieth century. First, Louis Cognet published it in 1949: Jacqueline Marie-Angélique Arnauld, Relation écrite par la mère Angélique Arnauld sur Port-Royal, ed. Louis Cognet, Les cahiers verts (Paris, 1949), hereafter, Relation-C. Cognet explains in his introduction that although the original manuscript no longer exists, he published this from the manuscript that he judged to be the most accurate. Then, Jean Lesaulnier published the Relation in 1992 in an edition of the Chroniques de Port-Royal: Jacqueline Marie-Angélique Arnauld, Relation de la Mère Angélique Arnauld, ed. Jean Lesaulnier, Chroniques de Port-Royal 41 (1992), 7–93, hereafter, Relation-L. This edition is the accepted critical edition of the text because Lesaulnier based it on the earliest extant manuscript, located at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF ms. Fr. 17795), in comparison with manuscripts located elsewhere. This study relies primarily on Lesaulnier’s edition. 2. Carol Baxter, “Writing the Self and Community Identity: The Personal Records of Port-Royal Nuns,” in Narrating the Self in Early Modern Europe, ed. Bruno Tribout and Ruth Whelan (Bern, 2007), 86. 3. “Au nom de la Très Sainte Trinité, Père, Fils et Saint-Esprit, je fais par obéissance une relation de ce qui s’est passé dans cette maison, depuis cinquante-deux ans que j’y fus conduite pour y être abbesse, le 5 juillet 1602, âgée seulement de dix ans [et] dix mois, par un très grand désordre, ordinaire en ce temps-là, où il ne se pratiquait plus aucune discipline pour les promotions aux bénéfices, ni dans notre ordre presque aucune régularité.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 11. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the French are my own. 4. Because any study of Port-Royal and Jansenism involves multiple members of the Arnauld family, I will refer to members of the Arnauld family by their first names, to avoid confusion. ELISSA CUTTER 277 lying about her age and drawing on his political connections. The subsequent death of the abbess in 1602 led to ten-year-old Angélique becoming the abbess of the convent.5 At the time that Angélique became abbess, while the convent was ostensibly under the Rule of Saint Benedict, the leadership had long let the rules of religious life lapse. Notably, the nuns at Port-Royal did not live strictly in cloister, and Angélique’s parents freely came and went as they pleased, taking charge of the convent for their young daughter. After years of discontent with life in the convent, during which Angélique desired to leave, an itinerant preacher’s exposition of the Incarnation and Christ’s humility in becoming human inspired her and led to her conversion to a more rigorous religious life according to the original charisms of the Cistercian order.6 Following this experience, she reformed the convent strictly according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. As part of implementing her reform, Angélique spent many years searching for an appropriate confessor, and in the mid-1630s chose Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (1581–1643), known primarily by his title as the Abbot of Saint-Cyran. This selection connected the convent of PortRoyal to what would become the Jansenist movement. Namely, SaintCyran had studied and remained friends with Cornelius Jansen (1585– 1638), professor at Louvain and bishop of Ypres whose Augustinus, published posthumously in 1640, would precipitate the Jansenist controversy in France. Thus, through Angélique’s association with Saint-Cyran, the convent of Port-Royal became associated with Jansenism and enveloped in controversy. As it developed, the Jansenist controversy became focused on the Port-Royal nuns and questions about their knowledge and understanding of Jansen’s theological views on grace. Defenders of the convent took the position that the nuns’ ignorance of these theological views should lead to their categorization as “noncombatants” in the controversy. Early scholarship on Jansenism—especially works published before the first half of the twentieth century—frequently followed the narrative established by the 5. Angélique was elected abbess on July 5, 1602, at age ten. The superior general of the Cistercian order consecrated her in that position on September 29, 1602, a mere twenty-one days after her eleventh birthday. 6. On the theological influences on Angélique’s reform, see Elissa Cutter, “Monastic Reform in Seventeenth-Century France: The Cistercian and Tridentine Influences on Angélique Arnauld’s Reform of the Convent of Port-Royal,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 52, no. 4 (2017), 425–51. 278 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY FIGURE 1. Angèlique Arnauld, abbess of Port Royal des Champs, with her sister Jeanne, by Philippe de Champaigne. (Wikimedia Commons) defenders of the convent and so focused on the male figures of the movement, like Blaise Pascal (1623–62), Antoine Arnauld (1612–94), and Saint-Cyran.7 Scholars frequently portrayed the nuns as subservient to their confessors and, as such, having made no contribution to the developing controversy. And yet, Angélique’s autobiographical account, known as her Relation, provided a way in which she could participate in the defense of the convent and of her confessor, Saint-Cyran, without contravening Pauline directives on women’s silence.8 Interest in studying the Port-Royal nuns and their writings began in the 1970s alongside an increasing interest in studies of women.9 This more 7. For an analysis of this tradition of scholarship, see Daniella Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns (Cambridge, 2011), 2–7. 8. See 1 Cor. 14:34–35 and 1 Tim. 2:11–12. 9. Philippe Sellier, preface to L’écriture de soi: Lettres et récits autobiographiques des religieuse de Port-Royal: Angélique et Agnès Arnauld, Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Jacqueline Pascal, by Agnès Cousson (Paris, 2012), 10. ELISSA CUTTER 279 recent scholarship on the Port-Royal nuns has analyzed the different rhetorical approaches that the nuns used in expressing their opinions and religious views during the Jansenist controversy. The first extensive analytical work on the writings of the nuns came from Ellen Weaver-Laporte whose 1978 The Evolution of the Reform of Port-Royal examines the vision of reform as expressed in the Constitutions de Port-Royal and the writings of Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly (1624–84), Mother Angélique’s niece.10 In relation to the latter, she analyzes the nuns’ writings using the genres of “chronicle” and “myth.” She asserts the apologetic nature of all the accounts that the nuns produced, but she has not analyzed these texts in detail, except for her work on the Constitutions. In her brief discussion of Angélique’s Relation, she notes that this text has similarities to other autobiographical texts of nuns, especially that of Teresa of Avila, concluding ultimately that “we may be dealing with a particular literary genre.”11 In Adoration and Annihilation, John Conley has analyzed and critiqued the writings of the Port-Royal nuns in relation to their philosophical content.12 With this approach, Conley examines—as he explains—“a canon different from that habitually presented by literary critics and historians,” the two types of scholars who tend to study the Port-Royal nuns.13 As such, when dealing with Angélique’s writings, he examines the philosophical content of her letters and spiritual conferences, not her Relation, although his work recognizes the need to understand the appropriate genres of the texts written by the Port-Royal nuns.14 Thomas Carr, in his Voix des abbesses du Grand Siècle, examines the monastic discourses of the Arnauld family members who also acted as abbess of Port-Royal—namely, Angélique, her sister Agnès Arnauld (1593–1672), and their niece Angélique de Saint-Jean— and argues for the importance of these discourses as forms of feminine preaching.15 In his introduction, he discusses the different categories and genres of texts written by the Port-Royal nuns, which includes writings to nourish the spiritual lives of nuns, community texts, professional texts, and “textes destinés ad extra,” or texts written to send outside of the 10. F. Ellen Weaver, The Evolution of the Reform of Port-Royal: From the Rule of Cîteaux to Jansenism, Beauchesne Religions (Paris, 1978). Her analysis of the Constitutions appears also in F. Ellen Weaver, La contre-réforme et les Constitutions de Port-Royal (Paris, 2002). 11. Weaver, The Evolution of the Reform of Port-Royal, 127. 12. John Conley, Adoration and Annihilation: The Convent Philosophy of Port-Royal (Notre Dame, IN, 2009). 13. Conley, Adoration and Annihilation, 41. 14. Conely, Adoration and Annihilation, 61–112; on the importance of genre, see 1–2, 18, 39. 15. Thomas M. Carr, Jr., Voix des abbesses du Grand Siecle: La Prédication au féminin à Port-Royal, Contexte rhétorique et Dossier (Tübingen, 2006). 280 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY FIGURE 2. Jean-Ambroise Duvergier de Hauranne, Abbot of Saint-Cyran (1581– 1643), portrait by Philippe de Champaigne. (Wikimedia Commons) community.16 In Carr’s categorization, Angélique’s Relation falls into the first category of writings to nourish the spiritual lives of nuns, but Carr does not analyze the Relation itself in his text, focusing instead on the nuns’ preaching. As I will argue, in contrast to Carr’s inclusion of autobiographical accounts as writings intended for internal use within the convent, the text of the Relation serves a clear apologetic purpose, indicating that Angélique would have expected that those outside the convent would read her text as well.17 The nuns of Port-Royal produced their written texts with a view to the external world, whether to promote Angélique’s reform, to defend the convent against accusations of Jansenism, or both.18 16. Carr, Vois des abbesses, 11–12. 17. What makes the Port-Royal nuns unique in the seventeenth-century is not just their writing, but their writing for external purposes, that is, to defend themselves in the context of the Jansenist controversy. See Baxter, “Writing the Self and Community Identity,” 8485; Agnès Cousson, L’écriture de soi: Lettres et récits autobiographiques des religieuses de PortRoyal: Angélique et Agnès Arnauld, Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, Jacqueline Pascal (Paris, 2012), 25; Bernard Chédozeau, “Idéal intellectuel et vie monastique à Port-Royal,” Chroniques de Port-Royal 37 (1988), 63–64. 18. See also John Conley, “Conventual Writing and Context: The Case of Port-Royal,” Religions 9, no. 3 (2018): https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9030069. ELISSA CUTTER 281 Daniella Kostroun and Agnès Cousson have focused more directly on the Relation and the genre of autobiographical writing by the Port-Royal nuns in their scholarship. Kostroun’s Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism discusses the rhetorical approach of the science des saints as characterizing the nuns’ writings.19 In this perspective, the nuns participated in political and theological discourses and debates by modelling behavior. Thus, although not explicitly named as such in Kostroun’s book, Angélique’s Relation provides an example of the way in which the nuns’ recorded such behavior.20 Kostroun has delved more deeply into this type of analysis— addressing the Relation specifically—in her recent text, “The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action among the Port-Royal Nuns.”21 In this, Kostroun demonstrates how the rhetorical use of friendship reflects the Port-Royal nuns’ self-understanding in relation to the Benedictine tradition. In her analysis of the Relation, she applies the categories that Jodi Bilinkoff outlined as part of the hagiographical model of male-female friendship.22 Although she does not explicitly connect this to her previous analysis of the science des saints, Kostroun demonstrates how one hagiographical structure—that of finding a “soul mate”—appears, at least partially, in the Relation.23 In L’écriture de soi: Lettres et récits autobiographiques des religieuses de Port-Royal, Cousson focuses on the expression of the self in the writings of the Port-Royal nuns, examining both the letters of the nuns and their autobiographical accounts.24 She examines the different ways in which the nuns expressed the self in their writings and the theoretical underpinnings of this type of expression at Port-Royal, including both the dangers of the self—in terms of the human self-imposing on the nun—and the benefits to the self—such as in confession. Her research focuses primarily on the 19. Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 12–14, 240. 20. Kostroun uses the Relation to provide evidence of Angélique’s reform but does not discuss the genre of the text. See Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 22–34. Her use of the Relation here contrasts, for example, to her description of the genre of letter-writing among early modern women; see Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 59–60. 21. Daniella Kostroun, “The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action among the PortRoyal Nuns,” in Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, ed. Lewis C. Seifert and Rebecca M. Wilkin (Farnham, 2015), 189–217. 22. These categories are: (1) longing and looking; (2) finding; (3) connecting, both body and soul; (4) parting; and (5) communion. See Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 76–95. Kostroun argues that only the first two categories (of longing and looking, and of finding) apply to the Relation. Kostroun, “The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action,” 199. 23. Kostroun, “The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action,” 204–5. 24. Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 27–28. 282 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY letters and the accounts of the nuns written in captivity during the Jansenist controversy, but she does discuss Angélique’s Relation. Cousson describes lives written at Port-Royal in general as following the model of the lives of saints and aimed at the edification of the readers and the formation of a community identity.25 In discussing the Relation itself, Cousson notes several important characteristics of this text that distinguish it from a typical autobiography, especially the way in which Angélique held back an expression of herself in the account, focusing more on providing a communal history and apology of the spirituality at Port-Royal.26 However, as Cousson focuses on the way in which the writings of Port-Royal express the self, she concludes that “the Relation is also, and maybe above all, the story of a woman who is emancipated from paternal authority in order to act according to her will, conflated with the divine will.”27 Angélique’s Relation explains the history of the convent of Port-Royal under her leadership, first in the unreformed state that allowed her to become abbess at such a young age, and then in her reform according to the directives of the Council of Trent and following the Rule of Saint Benedict. Although, according to her text, Angélique had intended this to be an account of her entire life at the convent, she only wrote about the events occurring between her entrance to the convent in 1602 and the imprisonment of Saint-Cyran by Cardinal Armand Richelieu (1585–1642) in 1638.28 Of course, since Angélique wrote this account much later in her life, reflecting back on her early life at the convent and initial reform, the specter of the Jansenist controversy hangs over the entire text, evident especially in the way in which she wrote about her relationships with her confessors. The incompleteness of this text, however, may have derived in part from Angélique’s own writing practices, in which, according to the introduction by Angélique de Saint-Jean, Angélique made a retreat in order to write, but during which she “[gave] more time to prayer than to writing.”29 As Angélique de Saint-Jean’s comment concerning Angélique’s balance between prayer and writing suggests, we cannot simply view the Relation as a form of autobiography. As Carol Baxter notes—comparing Angélique’s Relation to the community’s relations de captivité, written later 25. Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 505–6. 26. Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 525–6, 530. 27. “la Relation est aussi, et peut-être avant tout, l’histoire d’une femme qui s’est émancipée de l’autorité paternelle pour agir selon sa volonté, confondue avec la volonté divine.” Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 538. 28. See Lesaulnier’s introduction to Arnauld, Relation-L, 7. 29. “donnant plus de temps à prier qu’à écrire” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. ELISSA CUTTER 283 in the controversy—Angélique’s text focuses on God’s direction of her reform and on providing an exemplary model for others to follow, not on the individual self.30 Guy Basset studied Angélique’s text as part of the colloquium on Angélique Arnauld held in 1991, four hundred years after her birth, describing it as a history of the convent “under the eyes of God.”31 This description is important: Angélique did not write to describe herself and her own life, as would be typical for an autobiography, but to place her life into the life of the community of Port-Royal.32 Basset’s study places her work in a broader historical and textual context and examines the text itself. Basset emphasizes these contexts because of his focus on understanding the history of the convent and the life of Angélique—a history that derives not only from the Relation, but also from the texts written alongside it by members of the community of Port-Royal. He notes, in relation to the Relation, Angélique’s tendency to leave out names and dates, asserting she did so because these would have been familiar in the Port-Royal milieu. However, we can examine the genre of this text further to illustrate why Angélique wrote in this way. Her goal in writing her text would not have been to record history by naming all relevant facts, but, as Basset recognizes, to record “God’s view” of history. As a tool to understand texts like this in the medieval era, Kate Greenspan has proposed the genre of autohagiography. This genre indicates how women religious would write their autobiographical accounts to conform their lives to the lives of other women religious and saints.33 30. Baxter, “Writing the Self and Community Identity,” 86–87. 31. “Son intention est d’inscrire l’histoire sous le regard de Dieu.” Guy Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique ou le ‘Livre de la providence de Dieu’,” Chroniques de PortRoyal 41 (1992), 103. 32. Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 107. 33. See Kate Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition in Medieval Women’s Devotional Literature,” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 6, no. 2 (1991), 157–68; “Autohaiography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville, FL, 1996), 216–36; and “Autohagiography,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus, The Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages (New York, 2006), 53–56. The term “autohagiography” was originally used by Richard Kieckhefer. Kieckhefer uses the term to refer to the autobiographical writings of saints, both male and female, but does not analyze the genre further in relation to its standard components, as Greenspan does, nor does he include any recognition of gendered differences in relation to the genre. See Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: FourteenthCentury Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984), 6–7. An alternate genre for understanding works like the Relation is the command autobiography, an account or confession written under the order of a spiritual director, an especially common genre for women religious of the early modern period. Greenspan critiques the use of this term “command auto- 284 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY Writing in the midst of controversy, however, Angélique did not merely conform her life to the autohagiographical genre, she also used the genre to write an apology for her work of reform in the context of the Jansenist controversy.34 In particular, we find evidence of her intention to use this work as an apology in her defense of Saint-Cyran and her theology of God’s providence. I argue that, in writing her Relation, Angélique employed the genre of autohagiography not only to serve as an apology for the convent in the midst of the Jansenist controversy, but as a means to express her theological and spiritual views. In what follows, I will first illustrate how Angélique’s account conforms to the genre of autohagiography. Then I will demonstrate how her text functions as an apology in the context of controversy. In this, I will examine the two abovementioned aspects of her apology, namely, her defense of Saint-Cyran and her theology of God’s providence. Angélique linked the apologetic and theological functions of her account. My approach to the Relation, therefore, studies the text for what it can demonstrate about both social realities and theological beliefs.35 Ultimately, the Relation shows Angélique as theologically insightful—she did not merely record the history of her reform of PortRoyal, but framed the text in a specific way to respond to religious controversies and express her theology. The Relation as Autohagiography The genre of hagiography has led scholars to theorize about the role of truth and historical accuracy in the accounts of the lives of saints and other biography” for women’s writings because it “led some scholars to conclude either that women only wrote at the command of their confessor or of God, or else that those who chose to write usurped a male prerogative.” Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 157. She argues that of these two views, “one gives too little credit to [the importance of women’s autobiography], while the other exaggerates its ability and its intention to represent ‘female selfhood.’” Ibid., 158. See also Greenspan, “Autohaiography and Spiritual Autobiography,” 218. In part due to these critiques of the genre of command autobiography, I follow Greenspan in preferring the genre of autohagiography to refer to women’s autobiographical accounts in the medieval and early modern eras. 34. Authors in this era regularly used autobiographical texts to serve polemical functions. See Baxter, “Writing the Self and Community Identity,” 99. On Angélique’s Relation, John Conley recognizes the apologetic nature of this text, but does not go more in depth into this claim because his analytical focus is on her letters and conferences. See Conley, Adoration and Annihilation, 55–56. 35. On this method, see Rachel J. Smith, “Devotion, Critique and the Reading of Christian Saints’ Lives,” in Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions, ed. Rico G. Monge, Kerry P. C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith (London, 2016), 35–36. ELISSA CUTTER 285 holy figures. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “hagiography” has roots in anti-Catholic polemics, so it always had a pejorative sense that emphasized the exaggerations and accounts of the miraculous that accompanied the lives of saints. Even within the Catholic tradition itself, there has existed a consistent tendency to discover what is historical or accurate in hagiographical accounts.36 This appears, for example, in the late medieval and early modern efforts at standardizing and centralizing the procedures for the canonization of saints.37 Modern approaches to the genre tend to view hagiography as a form of “sacred historiography” that necessitates interpretation on par with biblical hermeneutics in order to reach an understanding of both “empirical and existential” forms of truth in the texts.38 Because of the exaggerations and miraculous events included in the genre of hagiography, reference to autohagiography may suggest that the genre involves a great amount of self-praise, making the life of the woman religious seem better than her life might appear if the reader had direct access to the historical account. However, Barbara Diefendorf has found that these texts are generally reliable for the main events of the subject’s lives, allowing for certain adaptations made for the genre of autohagiography.39 The genre does not necessarily involve the betterment of one’s life and, in fact, the authors of autohagiographical texts emphasized topoi of humility and submission in order to not make any claims to honor or sanctity.40 Rather, this genre shows how women religious wrote their autobiographical accounts in such a way as to conform to the lives of other women 36. Smith, “Devotion, Critique and the Reading of Christian Saints’ Lives,” 26–29. 37. See, for example, Clare Copeland, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint, Oxford Theology & Religion Monographs (Oxford, 2016), 119–41. 38. Rico G. Monge, “Saints, Truth, and the ‘Use and Abuse’ of Hagiography,” in Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions, ed. Rico G. Monge, Kerry P. C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith (London, 2016), 7–22. See also the interpretation of biblical and hagiographical texts in comparison in Patricia Fann Bouteneff and Peter C. Bouteneff, “Sacred Narrative and the Truth: What Does It Mean If It Did Not Happen?” in Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions, ed. Rico G. Monge, Kerry P. C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith (London, 2016), 37–49. 39. Barbara B. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford, 2004), 21. Similarly, Jodi Bilinkoff has argued that even though there are formulaic elements in hagiography, as in other genres, each still has its own unique features related to the lives of the figures depicted. See Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 9–10. 40. Greenspan, “Autohaiography and Spiritual Autobiography,” 224; “Autohagiography,” 54. 286 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY religious and saints.41 In this, they aimed to provide edifying models for their readers more than they aimed to describe their own lives or represent themselves.42 They would “reconstruct the lives of their subjects to conform to expectations of what constitutes holiness.”43 Thus, women religious writing their autobiographies according to this genre would write in a way that followed patterns and highlighted elements that they had read or heard about in the lives of saints.44 In fact, Diefendorf argues that devout women modeled not only their autobiographies on the lives of saints, but even tried to imitate these saints in how they lived their lives.45 As such, the (auto)hagiographical texts achieved what they intended to achieve, that is, the creation of models for others to follow.46 Since Angélique most likely wrote her Relation in imitation of the autohagiographies of female saints, many of the characteristics of the genre appear in her text. In what follows, I will examine several of these characteristics: specifically, the practice of not including names and dates, the rhetoric of humility, and some standard components, namely rejection of marriage, conversion, and loss of family. First, autohagiographical writing tends to leave out details like names and dates, as Greenspan notes in her analysis of the genre, keeping “deliberate silence about external particulars that might distinguish them from their fellows.”47 In Angélique’s text, although she periodically noted dates for events, she favored general chronological references, like “several years later.”48 She also kept silent about particulars like names, except for those whose influence or role she deemed most important, like Saint-Cyran.49 41. The genre of hagiography has its roots in oral tradition, where preachers would repeat themes and words in order to make the texts memorable. These themes and events thus became a standard structure in hagiographical texts. See Bouteneff and Bouteneff, “Sacred Narrative and the Truth,” 47. 42. Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 159, 165; “Autohaiography and Spiritual Autobiography,” 218–9, 232; “Autohagiography,” 53, 54. 43. Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 159; “Autohaiography and Spiritual Autobiography,” 219. 44. As Greenspan explains, “It is enough for the purposes of hagiography, however, that the holy woman suffer, remain steadfast, and win out over her tempter. Here adherence to that heroic pattern satisfies the demands of the genre. Every nun can strive to fit herself into this pattern regardless of the details of her own life.” Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 161–2. See also Greenspan, “Autohaiography and Spiritual Autobiography,” 227–8. 45. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 19. 46. Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 33-35, 99, 109–10. 47. Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 159. 48. Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 114. 49. On inclusion of some of the women of import, including her sister Agnès and Marie des Anges Suireau who both also held the position of abbess, see Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 107; Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 528–30. ELISSA CUTTER 287 Instead, she referred to people as “this Capuchin” or “this man” or “the girls.” Although these references may have been familiar in the PortRoyal milieu, as Basset asserts, reading Angélique’s text as a form of autohagiography illustrates further why she would have left out this information.50 By following the patterns of the lives of saints in writing her Relation, she aimed to describe an edifying theological history of her reform of the convent, not record particulars about herself and the history of the convent. Second, Angélique relied on the rhetoric of humility, which appears in her emphasis on obedience throughout her account and her expression of her initial reluctance to write.51 Angélique de Saint-Jean provided an introduction to her aunt’s text that emphasized the rhetoric of humility, explaining how Angélique initially refused to write her account until so ordered by her confessor. According to this introduction, when Angélique de SaintJean initially asked her aunt for her account, her aunt refused, but knowing that her aunt would not dare disobey her confessor, she asked the confessor of Port-Royal, Antoine Singlin (1607–64), to order her aunt to write her account.52 Her niece wrote, “She was completely sad about this [request], and perhaps that she very much distrusted the use that we wanted to make of it, for she dreaded nothing more in the world than that one might write or that one might speak of her in an advantageous manner after her death.”53 Whether or not Angélique actually held this sentiment, the expression of it illustrates a characteristic of autohagiographical writing. More significant for understanding this genre, in the Relation the narrative that Angélique constructed of her life conformed to certain accepted patterns of holiness. Angélique highlighted aspects of her life that would correspond to these patterns. For example, the autohagiographical lives of female saints often included a rejection of marriage. Since Arnauld entered the convent at such a young age, this component might seem out of place; 50. We have many of the texts by the Port-Royal nuns today because of the vast network of friends around the convent of Port-Royal who copied and saved these writings. Angélique would have known that her text was intended not just for her sisters and confessor, as explicitly expressed in the introduction to the text, but also for the friends who formed this network. I discuss this point further in the introduction to my dissertation, “The Early Modern Abbess as Théologienne: The Theology and Practice of Mother Angélique Arnauld.” 51. Greenspan, “The Autohagiographical Tradition,” 158, 165; Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 27–28. 52. Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. 53. “Elle en fut toute triste, et peut-être qu’elle se défiait bien de l’usage que nous en voulions faire, car elle n’appréhendait rien tant au monde que l’on écrivît ou que l’on parlât d’elle après sa mort d’une manière avantageuse.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. 288 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY but she does note that she felt pressure from “some people,” probably her Protestant relatives, to leave the convent because she had made her profession before reaching the age of majority, which was twenty five in France at that time.54 She explained her rejection of this temptation in her account, saying, “When some people said to me that, having made my profession before the age of majority, I could recant it, I testified to have no desire for this.”55 Elsewhere, she reported to her nephew, Antoine Le Maistre (1608–58), about her temptation to run away from the convent, heading to La Rochelle where her Protestant relatives lived, and to get married.56 In spite of this temptation and even though she hated religious life while young, she reported that she could not make herself leave for fear of displeasing God.57 She overcame her temptation to leave the convent and get married because of an illness that she called “a singular grace of God” on her.58 After her parents cared for her during this time, she resolved to remain a nun, though merely for the sake of her parents “without going further nor considering my duties toward God.”59 54. See Arnauld, Relation-C, 179n15. There was a conflict, here, between French and canon law. The Catholic Church considered sixteen as the age at which one could take religious vows without consent, whereas the French state held children to be completely subject to their parents’ authority until age twenty-five. See Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Give Us Back Our Children: Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocations in Early Counter-Reformation France,” The Journal of Modern History 68, no. 2 (1996), 285–6. 55. “Lorsque quelques personnes me disaient qu’ayant fait ma profession avant l’âge, je pouvais m’en dédire, je témoignais n’en avoir nulle envie.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 14. 56. “Enfin lorsque j’eus quinze ans, sachant fort bien que je n’étois point obligée à la Religion parce que je n’étois pas d’âge & ayant inclination pour la vie d’une honnête femme mariée, je déliberai en moi-même de quitter Port-Royal et de m’en retourner au monde, sans en avertir mon père & ma mère, pour me retirer du joug qui m’étoit insupportable, & me marier quelque part. Je crus alors qu’au pis aller je serois en sureté à La Rochelle, quoique je fusse bonne Catholique, & que Dieu m’eût donné une aversion secrete pour l’heresie, jusqueslà qu’une de mes parentes qui étoit Huguenote, m’ayant dit que je lusse l’Epitre aux Romains & que j’y trouverois la condamnation de la creance Catholique Romaine, je la lus & y trouvai tout le contraire, parce qu’il plaisoit à Dieu de m’éclairer de la lumiere de la vraie foi.” Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Port-Royal, Et à la Vie de la Reverende Mere Marie Angelique de Sainte Magdeleine Arnauld, Reformatrice de ce Monastere, 3 vols. (Utrecht, 1742), 2.255–6. See also Arnauld, Relation-L, 76–77n13. She also expressed here her jealousy at the married state of her sister Catherine, who had married Isaac Le Maistre in 1605. She wrote, “De sorte que je voulois mal à ma sœur Catherine qui depuis a été mariée, de ce que venant ici, elle étoit plus devote que moi, & aimoit à chanter avec les Sœurs; ce que je n’aimois point.” 57. Arnauld, Relation-L, 14. 58. Arnauld, Relation-L, 14. 59. “La grande amitié que mon père et ma mère m’avaient témoignée me fit résoudre de bon cœur pour les satisfaire, de demeurer religieuse, et de vivre dans toute la modestie que je devais, sans aller plus loin ni regarder mes devoirs vers Dieu.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 15. ELISSA CUTTER 289 Angélique’s sickness and resolution to live as a nun led to her description of another standard autohagiographical component, her conversion. Although Angélique did not use the language of “conversion” explicitly in her account, she did portray her experience as a turning away from her aversion to religious life toward embracing of religious life according to the Cistercian tradition and the Mémoires d’Utrecht titled that section of her account as “sa conversion.”60 The concept of conversion implies an interior changing of one’s life, a rejection of what came before in embracing the new.61 Normally we discuss conversion in relation to the changing of one’s religion or, during the modern era, changing one’s Christian denomination. However, the term itself does not necessarily imply a change of religion, and Angélique’s experience of conversion would have been influenced by the Benedictine concept of conversio morum, conversion of life. This idea of conversion of life became so foundational to the spirituality of Port-Royal that it appeared in the vows that the nuns pronounced on the day of their profession, promising stability, conversion of life, and obedience.62 Angélique’s Relation recounts her experience of conversion as an example of this idea of the conversion of life. As noted, she disliked life at the convent as a child. However, following her sickness and after these years of discontent with life in the convent and her temptations to leave, according to Angélique’s account, an itinerant preacher’s exposition of the Incarnation and Christ’s humility in becoming human inspired her and led 60. Mémoires d’Utrecht, 1.24. 61. Michel Meslin, “Politique et conversion,” in La conversion et le politique à l’époque moderne, ed. Daniel Tollet (Paris, 2005), 9. 62. The complete vow stated, “Ego, Soror N. a S.N.N., promitto stabilitatem meam, conversionem morum meorum, et obedientiam secundum Regulam Sancti Benedicti Abbatis, coram Deo, Beatissima Virgine matre, et omnibus Sanctis ejus quorum reliquia hic habentur, in hoc Monasterio Portus Regalis, Cisterciensis Ordinis, per Dei misericordiam, et sanctae sedis Apostolicae gratiam perpetuae divinissimi Sacramenti corporis et sanguinis Domini Nostri Iesu Christi venerationi, singulariter consecrato. In praefentia, etc. nec non et Dominae N. a S.N. Abbatissae.” Agnès Arnauld, Constitutions du monastère de Port-Royal du SaintSacrement, ed. Jean Lesaulnier, Univers Port-Royal (Paris, 2004), 59. See also Weaver, The Evolution of the Reform of Port-Royal, 92. The Latin text of the Rule of Saint Benedict reads, “Suscipiendus autem in oratorio coram omnibus promittat de stabilitate sua et conversatione morum suorum et oboedientia,” which the RB1980 translates as “When he is to be received, he comes before the whole community in the oratory and promises stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience.” Timothy Fry, ed., RB1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes (Collegeville, MN, 1981), 58.17. Emphasis is my own. The idea of the Benedictine vow of “conversion of life” (conversio morum), which appears in the vow of the Port-Royal nuns, derives from a scribal error, an error that was corrected in the 1912 critical edition. For further discussion of this language, see RB1980, 459–63. 290 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY to her conversion to a more rigorous religious life according to the original charisms of the Cistercian order.63 Angélique explained, “We went thus to the sermon of this Capuchin, when it was completely night, during which God touched me such that, from this moment, I found myself more happy to be a religious than I had thought myself unhappy to be one.”64 Angélique thus indicated “this moment” as the turning point that led to her rejection of her previous life, namely her dislike of religious life, and her total embracing of a new life in which she was happy to be a nun. This conversion experience led to Angélique’s subsequent reform of the convent of Port-Royal to be more faithful to the Cistercian tradition.65 Angélique’s overall account functions as an apology for the choices that she made in implementing this reform. As one of these choices she made in implementing reform according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, Angélique reestablished the cloister. In this, we can identify a third autohagiographical component in her account, the loss of family. Angélique’s experience of loss of family because of her reform is well-known in the history of Jansenism, thanks to CharlesAugustin Sainte-Beuve’s study of Port-Royal in the 1840s.66 Angélique herself reported the initial involvement of her family in the affairs of the convent. When she first became abbess, for example, her mother stayed with her at the convent to manage the temporal affairs, including repairs to the building itself.67 Patrons of convents, the Arnauld family in this case, involved themselves greatly in the lives of these convents, not just financially, but administratively. Female patrons also often had arrangements in which they could enter convents even when rules of cloister were enforced, so the practice of Angélique’s mother’s staying at the convent remained common in early modern France, even with reformed convents.68 The 63. The sermon that the Capuchin priest, Basile d’Étampes, preached at Port-Royal on the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1608, led to Angélique’s conversion. We know these key dates in the history of Port-Royal due to the historiographical work of Angélique de Saint-Jean and the long tradition of scholarship on Jansenism and Port-Royal. 64. “Nous allâmes donc au sermon de ce capucin, qu’il était toute nuit, pendant lequel Dieu me toucha tellement que, de ce moment, je me trouvai plus heureuse d’être religieuse que je ne m’étais estimée malheureuse de l’être.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 16. 65. The conversion of the abbess and subsequent reform followed a pattern that was common among convents in early seventeenth-century France. See Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 96. 66. This work has been republished as Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 2 vols. (Paris, 2004). 67. Arnauld, Relation-L, 11–12. 68. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 161; Jean Mesnard, “Introduction: Le Concile de Trente et la réforme de Port-Royal,” Chroniques de Port-Royal 60 (2010), 11. ELISSA CUTTER 291 FIGURE 3. Mother Angelique Arnauld’s niece, Mother Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly (1624–1684), elected Abbess of Port Royal des Champs in 1678, portrait by Philippe de Champaigne. (Wikimedia Commons) management of the convent by her mother and father continued throughout her childhood, and her parents opposed her efforts at reform because of this. Angélique described them as “not wanting, in the manner of the world, to have to put up with this law.”69 Her father particularly opposed reform. After a visit in which her father forbade her to reform the convent to more austere manners, she described how she returned to Port-Royal “completely sad, seeing so many impediments to my desires.”70 They worried especially about her desire to impose the cloister. Angélique reported that her mother argued that, since she was only seventeen at the time, “it was necessary for her to enter to see how I was behaving.”71 The conflict between Angélique’s desire to implement cloister and her family’s desire to be involved with Port-Royal finally culminated with a visit from her father. She spoke to the priest who was then functioning as 69. “et surtout à mon père et à ma mère qui ne voulaient, en façon du monde, subir cette loi.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 20. 70. “fort triste, voyant tant d’empêchements à mes désirs.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 19. 71. “Et ma mere disait qu’il était nécessaire qu’elle entrât pour voir comment je me comportais.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 20. 292 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY confessor at Port-Royal, asking what she should do in this case.72 She reported, “I told this to that religious who had helped us and for whom we had asked as confessor, asking him what I could do to prevent my father and my mother from entering. He told me that I would sin mortally if I did not refuse them the door, which made me resolve to do it.”73 Because of this advice, she told her mother to stop her father from visiting, but explains how her father did not think that she would be so bold as to refuse him entrance. Scholars now talk about this conflict and the reestablishment of the cloister as the “journée du guichet,” literally, “the day of the grille,” the event that Saint-Beuve’s scholarship brought to prominence.74 On 25 September 1609, her family came to meet her at the convent, and she only spoke to them through the cloister window, forbidding them to enter, as had previously been their custom. Angélique described her father’s response, saying, “I refused him the door; at [this refusal] he was in such anger that he . . . assur[ed] me that he would not see me [again] in his life, and that he had extreme grief to see that my spirit had been corrupted, and that he recommended for me to at least be [more] moderate.”75 Although she only broke with her family temporarily over the cloister, since her sisters and her mother eventually became nuns at Port-Royal, this episode also illustrates how Angélique could use the events of her own life to conform to the autohagiographical pattern.76 In this case, a temporary break with her family in establishing the cloister serves to conform her life to the pattern of lives of female saints who broke with their families to serve the will of God. The evidence that Angélique conformed her autobiographical account to the genre of autohagiography appears, thus, in the stylistic way in which she wrote as well as the components of her life that she chose to incorporate 72. Claude de Kersaliou (1581–1653) was a Cistercian who eventually became abbot of Vauclair in northern France. He served as confessor at Port-Royal in 1609, but Angélique’s father forced him out of this position by December of that year. 73. “Je le dis à ce religieux qui nous avait aidées et que nous avions demandé pour confesseur, lui demandant comment je pourrais faire pour empêcher mon père et ma mère d’entrer. Il me dit que je pécherais mortellement si je ne leur refusais la porte, ce qui me fit résoudre de le faire.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 20–21. 74. See Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 1.59–64. 75. “Et je lui refusai la porte, dont il fut si en colère qu’il s’en voulait retourner à l’heure même, m’assurant qu’il ne me verrait de sa vie, et qu’il avait une extrême douleur de voir qu’on me pervertissait l’esprit, et qu’il me recommandait au moins d’être [bien] sage.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 21. 76. She noted later in her account, for example, while telling of her sister Anne’s entrance at Port-Royal, that her father’s anger had calmed. Arnauld, Relation-L, 27. ELISSA CUTTER 293 into her account. Stylistically, she wrote in a manner that would allow the reader to universalize her experience, leaving out specific names and dates that would tie her account to a specific time and context. She aimed in her account at edifying the reader more than providing the detailed history of Port-Royal. She also relied on the rhetoric of humility, another characteristic of autohagiographical writing, which appears particularly in the emphasis on her writing as an act of obedience. Finally, she structured the account of her life to conform it to the patterns of holiness established in other autohagiographies and spiritual biographies. Three aspects of this structure stand out in particular: her rejection of marriage, a temptation that she had when she remained unhappy with her life at the convent; her conversion from a dislike to an embracing of religious life; and, finally, her loss of family in the “journée du guichet.” These examples demonstrate Angélique’s use of the autohagiographical genre to structure her account of life at Port-Royal. The Relation as an Apology We must also pay attention to the context in which Angélique wrote her Relation to see how the controversies over Jansenism and Port-Royal directed her approach to her autohagiographical account. These controversies influenced her focus on defending Saint-Cyran’s role at Port-Royal and her use of a theology of God’s providence throughout her narrative. Prior to the publication of the Augustinus, the text by Jansen that started the controversy over Jansenism in France, several controversies occurred around Port-Royal. An early controversy occurred around the Chapelet secret, a devotional treatise about God’s attributes written by her sister Agnès.77 During the debate in print about this treatise, Saint-Cyran defended the text and developed a relationship with Angélique and PortRoyal. Then, in 1638, as mentioned previously, Richelieu arrested SaintCyran due to conflicts between their religious and political views.78 The Jansenist controversy erupted in France in 1642 with a series of sermons that linked the practices of Port-Royal to Jansenist theology.79 The 77. Conley, Adoration and Annihilation, 128; Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 30-31; Anthony D. Wright, The Divisions of French Catholicism, 1629-1645: ‘The Parting of the Ways’, Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700 (Surrey, 2011), 128–31. 78. Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 34–38; Wright, The Divisions of French Catholicism, 120. Wright recognizes how the religious and political issues intertwined in this conflict. For their conflict over the annulment of the “clandestine” marriage of Gaston d’Orléans, see ibid., 118. For Richelieu’s views on the sacrament of penance, which conflicted with those of Saint-Cyran, see ibid., 33–34, 127. 79. Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 38–40. 294 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY controversy manifested in a publication war led, on the part of the Jansenists, by Angélique’s younger brother, Antoine. Then, in 1653, the papal bull Cum occasione condemned five propositions about grace allegedly drawn from Jansen’s Augustinus. The controversy continued, however, because Jansenists argued that the pope could judge these propositions as heretical, but could not make judgments about whether or not the propositions appeared in a specific book, namely the Augustinus. During this controversy, Angélique finished her term as abbess of Port-Royal and another conflict began in which the faculty of theology of the Sorbonne examined Antoine’s writings. This examination led to his censure and expulsion from the Sorbonne in 1656.80 Angélique wrote her Relation in this context—the controversy over the practices at Port-Royal having begun around 1630 and over Jansenism in 1642, leading to the attacks on the writings of her younger brother around the time in which she wrote her text.81 Angélique’s writing of the text in the time of controversy appears first in the way in which her text acts as an apology for the spiritual direction she received from Saint-Cyran. For example, when explaining the desire God gave her to put herself under his direction, she clearly defended both his person and his methods of spiritual direction. Angélique wrote, “And it is necessary to remark that it was not that this holy man conducted people by any force nor constraint in the spirit of penance, nor that he prescribed great mortifications and austerities.” She described him here as a holy man and denied that he imposed rigorous penances on others. She thus attempted to correct misconceptions that others might hold about Saint-Cyran, based on what they might have heard in controversy. She continued, “But God made for him the grace, through the strength of solid truths, to touch hearts so much with the love and the respect that they owed to God, that he made the pain of having offended [God] and a great desire to satisfy him to arise, that they always wanted to do more than [Saint-Cyran] wanted.” She argued here that Saint-Cyran was not responsible for the austere penances for which he became known, but rather that his direction led people to desire to complete such penances for their sins. She explained further, “For that he pointed out in confessions the least circumstances in order to identify the inclinations and the direction of the heart. His exactness was not painful to souls: on the contrary, as they understood it to be a product, not of a severe and scrupulous spirit, but of a true charity and righteousness, it gave great consolation and hope to souls 80. Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 95. 81. Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 104–5. ELISSA CUTTER 295 that God wanted to heal them, having made them fall into the hands of so good a physician.”82 She described him as a good physician of souls who worked from charity and righteousness. An important point of comparison here is Angélique’s description of Francis de Sales’s spiritual direction, which she received prior to her meeting Saint-Cyran. About Francis de Sales, she wrote, “If this holy man had remained in France, I believe that I would have taken great benefit from his holy direction, which was by no means soft and gentle, as the majority of the world imagined him because he only revealed that to souls who had a true confidence in him and that he saw disposed to believe it. And of all those who I had seen before him, I found none of them as firm as him.”83 In both of these examples, Angélique attempted in her text to correct what she saw as misconceptions about the nature of the spiritual direction she received from Francis de Sales and Saint-Cyran. In the case of SaintCyran, she aimed to explain how his direction was not as harsh as others thought it was; in the case of Francis de Sales she did the reverse, aiming to explain how his direction was actually harsher than others thought it was. Both of these descriptions ultimately serve to defend the spiritual practices at the convent of Port-Royal. She also connected the teaching of Saint-Cyran to God’s grace, both in the passage cited above and elsewhere in her account. Here she explained that through God’s grace Saint-Cyran had the ability to direct people well, examining their inclinations to discern what God wanted of them. She thus used this text as an opportunity to repair his reputation, portraying him in a positive manner and denying the negative characteris82. “Et il faut remarquer que ce n’était point que ce saint homme portât les personnes, par aucune force ni contrainte, dans l’esprit de pénitence, ni qu’il ordonnât de grandes mortifications et austérités. Mais Dieu lui faisait la grâce, par la force des solides vérités, de toucher tellement les coeurs de l’amour et du respect qu’on devait à Dieu, qu’il faisait naître la douleur de l’avoir offensé, et un si grand désir de lui satisfaire, qu’on voulait toujours plus faire qu’il ne voulait. Pour cela il remarquait dans les confessions les moindres circonstances, afin de reconnaître les inclinations et la pente du coeur. Son exactitude n’était point pénible aux âmes: au contraire, comme on la voyait procéder non point d’un esprit sévère et scrupuleux, mais d’une véritable charité et droiture, elle donnait grande consolation et espérance aux âmes que Dieu les voulait guérir, les ayant fait tomber entre les mains d’un si bon médecin.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 61–62. 83. “Si ce saint homme fut demeuré en France, je crois que j’aurais tiré grand avantage de sa sainte conduite, qui n’était nullement molle et douce, comme la plupart du monde se l’est imaginé, parce qu’il ne se découvrait qu’aux âmes qui avaient une vraie confiance en lui et qu’il vouait disposées à le croire. Et de tous ceux que j’avais vus avant lui, je n’en trouvai aucun si ferme que lui.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 42. 296 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY tics for which he had become known. Later, in recounting an accusation against her for not taking on a priest as a spiritual directee, she noted the influence of Saint-Cyran in her decision but argued that “I can say that [Monsieur] de Saint-Cyran had in this only to make me to remember the first movements of the grace of Our Lord in myself, which gave me a so ardent desire for separation from the whole world.”84 In this instance, she argued that Saint-Cyran did not teach anything new, but merely helped her to remember the graces that God had provided for her. Passages such as these go beyond the genre of autohagiography and turn her text into an apology for Saint-Cyran. Her brother, Antoine, had written several systematic defenses of Saint-Cyran, which he published in 1644.85 Angélique used the genre of autohagiography to provide a similar defense, but one more fitting to her position as a nun in early modern France. The Relation and the Theology of God’s Providence Additionally, as previously noted, Angélique interpreted her life and her reform of Port-Royal as having occurred under the watchful eye of God’s providence. The concept of God’s providence appeared frequently as a theme in autobiographical religious writings of seventeenth-century France, and, in that Angélique also employed this theme, her Relation did not differ from other autobiographical writings of this period.86 The use of God’s providence as a central theme in these autobiographies indicated that primary agency derived from God, not the human participants. But for Angélique, the controversies around Port-Royal affected the way in which she used God’s providence as the central theme. She likely turned to an emphasis on God’s providence because of her experience with the con84. “Et je puis dire que M. de Saint-Cyran n’avait fait en cela que me ramentevoir les premiers mouvements de la grâce de Notre Seigneur en moi, qui me donnait un si ardent désir de la séparation de tout le monde.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 66. 85. These texts appear in volume 29 of Antoine Arnauld, Œuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, Docteur de la Maison et Société de Sorbonne (Paris, 1775–83; repr., Brussels, 1964–7). 86. Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity, 106. On the idea of divine providence in the Catholic tradition, and the history of this concept in the history of Christianity, see Mark W. Elliott, Providence Perceived: Divine Action from a Human Point of View (Berlin, 2015); Thomas Marschler, “Providence, Predestination, and Grace in Early Modern Catholic Theology,” Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600–1800, ed. Ulrich L. Lehner, Richard A. Muller, and A. G. Roeber (Oxford, 2016), 89–103; Mark Pontifex, Freedom and Providence, Twentieth-Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, Section 2: Basic Truths, v. 22 (New York, 1960); and Mark B. Wiebe, On Evil, Providence, and Freedom: A New Reading of Molina (Dekalb, IL, 2017). Unfortunately, many of these works on providence subsume the discussion of providence itself into the discussion of God’s grace or the problem of evil, so the attention paid to the concept of divine providence itself is minimal. ELISSA CUTTER 297 troversies surrounding the convent. She used this theme to center her autohagiography because she aimed to illustrate God’s favor on Port-Royal while they experienced persecution for their associations with Jansenism and Saint-Cyran. She desired to show God’s care for Port-Royal even when it looked to the outside world as if God had abandoned them. Although Angélique did not set out a systematic theology of God’s providence in her text, we can clearly see how she used it to structure her account. Her niece stated this intent clearly in her introduction to the Relation. Angélique de Saint-Jean explained how, in requesting that her aunt write this account, they wanted her to write an account of God’s providence over Port-Royal.87 Angélique de Saint-Jean wrote: We took for it the subject about which she was telling us very often, in particular from all that had happened to her, that she had reason to write a book on the providence of God, as she had had so many experiences of it, and that there was nothing that she desired more than in dying to leave us with a great confidence in this adorable providence that had made miracles for us, because she was not able to otherwise call all the conduct that God had maintained on this house.88 As Angélique de Saint-Jean thus explained it, her aunt interpreted her whole life as a series of experiences of God’s providence directing both her and the convent. Angélique de Saint-Jean further recorded that Angélique had expressed her desire to record these experiences for her religious sisters on numerous occasions “from fear that we might come to forget what God had done for us.”89 Angélique’s own expression of God’s providence in the text is more subtle, however, and only once did she make an explicit reference to her purpose of recording the experiences of God’s providence on the house. In discussing her feelings about the spiritual benefits she received 87. As Angélique de Saint-Jean wrote it in the introduction, this “they” (referred to in the text as “we”) seems to imply the nuns in the community at Port-Royal, especially since she wrote the introduction anonymously, attributing it to “une religieuse de Port-Royal.” However, since she and Antoine Le Maître were the primary historiographers of the PortRoyal community, “they” could refer to them together. 88. “Nous en prîmes sujet à propos de ce qu’elle nous disait fort souvent, en particulier de tout ce qui lui était arrivé, qu’elle aurait eu sujet de faire un Livre de la Providence de Dieu, tant elle en avait fait d’expériences, et qu’il n’y avait rien qu’elle eût plus de désir de nous laisser en mourant qu’une grand confiance en cette adorable Providence, qui avait fait des miracles pour nous, parce qu’elle ne pouvait appeler autrement toute la conduite que Dieu avait tenue sur cette Maison.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. 89. “de crainte que nous ne vinssions à oublier ce que Dieu avait fait pour nous” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. 298 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY from Saint-Cyran, she noted, “I must not say this, only writing that which concerns the direction and the Providence of God over this house.”90 In his study of the Relation, Basset emphasizes the lack of a systematic theological definition of God’s providence in Angélique’s text.91 Unfortunately, although Basset’s title includes the idea of the Relation as a book of divine providence, he leaves his discussion of her theology of divine providence to the final pages of the article. Ultimately, he concludes that “the best definition of providence is located in the heading of the text which opens by a sign of the cross. ‘In the name of the Very Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ Traditional sign of the church: affirmation of faith and inscription in the history of salvation.”92 However, this lack of a systematic theological definition does not indicate a lack of a theological understanding of providence in Angélique’s text. As noted above, God’s providence forms the central theme of the text and thus Angélique wove examples of what she recognized as the working of providence through the story of her life.93 We can see in these examples what she understood about the theology of providence. Furthermore, in her introduction to the Relation, Angélique de SaintJean hinted that Angélique may have had the desire—a desire she tried to suppress—to write a theological text about divine providence. Angélique de Saint-Jean explained that Angélique had frequently said to the nuns that her experience at the convent had given her “reason to write a book on the providence of God”—that is, to write her own theology of divine providence based on her experiences of God’s providence at Port-Royal—and that “the desire sometimes came to her to write this book on providence.”94 Ultimately, Angélique de Saint-Jean reported that Angélique refused to write this text, explaining, “But she was at heart such an enemy of writing books, that what she was saying about it was only in order to express the 90. “Je ne dois point dire ceci, n’écrivant que ce qui concerne la conduite et la Providence de Dieu sur cette maison.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 61. Kostroun interprets this as a reference to the unimportance of her friendship with Saint-Cyran as opposed to the unity in her relationships with the other nuns. Kostroun, “The Gendered Self and Friendship in Action,” 204. In contrast, my reading emphasizes the theological focus that Angélique had in writing her text. 91. Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 117. 92. “En définitive la meilleure définition de la Providence se trouve en tête du texte qui s’œuvre par un signe de croix. ‘Au nom de la Très Sainte Trinité, Père, Fils et Saint-Esprit.’ Signe traditionnel de l’Eglise: affirmation de la foi et inscription dans l’histoire du salut.” Basset, “La Relation de la Mère Angélique,” 118. See Arnauld, Relation-L, 11. 93. Carr, La Voix des abbesses, 126. 94. “elle aurait eu sujet de faire un Livre de la Providence de Dieu” and “il lui prenait quelquefois envie d’écrire ce Livre de la Providence” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. ELISSA CUTTER 299 desire she had to establish us in the gratitude and confidence in God, and she greatly rebuked us when we wanted to speak with her about this.”95 This tendency was part of the culture at Port-Royal, where the nuns understood writing as worse for their spiritual lives than speaking, with silence always as the preference.96 In spite of this claim that Angélique disliked the nuns’ writing theological works, when obedience obliged her to write an account of her reform, she took the opportunity to explain her theology of divine providence using examples of God’s action in her life and the life of the community of Port-Royal. Basset’s critique for a lack of a systematic expression of Angélique’s theology in the Relation thus fails to take into account her use of the genre of autohagiography. Because of her use of this genre, although Angélique did not offer the reader a systematic definition in her account, that does not mean that her text does not include a theological explanation of God’s providence. For Angélique, God’s providence expressed itself through God’s mercy and care over the convent of Port-Royal. In other words, she did not focus in her Relation on a general sense of the way God’s providence works over the world, but rather on the care effected through God’s providence on her life and her reform of Port-Royal. Angélique clearly demonstrated that she understood God’s providence as caring for the nuns at Port-Royal, but she did not address the question of his direction of worldly affairs beyond the convent walls except in how they related to the convent. Early in her account, she illustrated the ways in which God cared for the convent closely, preventing it from falling into further disorder while she was in charge as a child. She noted that God had pity on the convent even when it was in disorder and that he created such an environment at the convent while she was still young such that both she and the convent would be protected.97 For example, nuns who caused disruptions at the convent prior to her reform left it willingly when she was still young for fear of her parents who had managed the convent. According to Angélique, God also used the environment of fear in the convent to maintain peace there and make the nuns fond of her, especially in comparison to how the previous abbess had 95. “Mais elle était au fond si ennemie de faire des livres, que ce qu’elle en disait n’était que pour exprimer le désir qu’elle avait de nous établir dans la reconnaissance et la confiance en Dieu, et elle nous rejetait bien loin quand nous lui voulions parler de cela.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 10. 96. Cousson, L’écriture de soi, 107–8. However, as Chédozeau has noted, the volumous correspondence maintained by the nuns seems an exception to this practice of silence. See Chédozeau, “Idéal intellectuelle,” 63. 97. Arnauld, Relation-L, 11–12. 300 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY treated them. She explained the role of God’s providence in this explicitly, writing that “divine providence made use of all these bad treatments in order to make these girls love me, in receiving a better [treatment] under my direction.”98 In her reflection on her early life at Port-Royal, then, she noted not that God moved the convent toward reform or moved her toward her ultimate conversion, but that God kept peace at the convent during her time as a child abbess. In this account, we see her understanding that she did not have to do anything to earn God’s providential care, but that he selected the convent for his favor prior to any merit on their part. Angélique also credited God’s providence and grace for her conversion and for her new appreciation for religious life. She introduced her account of the ways in which God moved her toward conversion, explaining: Time passed thus from the year 1602 until in the year 1607, when God [wanted] to advance the work of his mercy on this house, when, I am obligated to say that, in advancing in age I was advancing in malice and was no longer able to put up with religious life, which I had never regarded except as an insupportable yoke; and nevertheless I was carrying it, in distracting myself the best that I was able, without saying my grief to anyone, and in pretending to be content.99 According to her account, God thus protected her during this time from doing bad even though she was not living her life appropriately as a nun, that is, she was not living her life according to the Rule of Saint Benedict.100 All this prepared her for her initial conversion, started by the sermon by Basile d’Étampes during which God touched her with his grace and led her to feel happier about her religious life—“more happy to be a religious than I had thought myself unhappy to be one.”101 Again, although Angélique did not write a systematic theology of God’s providence, she understood it to work through secondary causes, 98. “La divine Providence se servit de tous ces mauvais traitements pour faire que ces filles m’aimassent, en recevant un meilleur sous ma conduite.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 13. 99. “Le temps se passa ainsi depuis l’an 1602 jusques en l’an 1607, où Dieu voulant avancer l’œuvre de sa miséricorde sur cette maison, au temps où je suis obligée de dire qu’avançant en âge j’avançais en malice et ne pouvais plus souffrir la religion, que je n’avais jamais regardée que comme un joug insupportable; et néanmoins je le portais, en me divertissant le mieux que je pouvais, sans dire ma peine à qui que ce fût, et en faisant semblant d’être contente.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 13–14. 100. Arnauld, Relation-L, 14. 101. “plus heureuse d’être religieuse que je ne m’étais estimée malheureuse de l’être.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 16. ELISSA CUTTER 301 especially the words and teachings of those around her. We see this in her account of her conversion and in the beginnings of her reform. She explained that in discussing with her parents her desire for reform after her initial conversion, they, and especially her father, opposed her plans because of the austerity of the reforms she desired. Following this, she returned to Port-Royal “in the resolution to do all that I could to serve God, but without doing anything that might be able to make my father angry.”102 Shortly thereafter, following another sermon, one of her religious sisters applied the preaching on the Beatitudes to Angélique, namely, “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’s sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”103 Angélique described this message, one that she identified as coming from God through her religious sister, as a turning point in her desire for reform. She further explained, “Nevertheless, this word penetrated my heart, and God made use of it through his goodness to make me think seriously of satisfying God rather than my father.”104 In Angélique’s description of this event, her sister took the words of the sermon and applied it to Angélique on her own initiative, but God’s providence intervened in the way in which Angélique heard the words and used them to influence her toward reform. Although not described in her text using the language of causality, Angélique understood providence to work through such secondary causes from the circumstances of her life. She provided many similar examples to show how God cared for Port-Royal, both during times of peace and times of suffering. In this way, Angélique used her theology of God’s providence to illustrate that God cared for Port-Royal and watched over the nuns even when the convent experienced persecution because of their association with Jansenism. Her theology of God’s providence thus acted also as an apology for Jansenism, showing God’s favor over the convent of PortRoyal even in the midst of controversy. Conclusion Overall, the genre of autohagiography helps us understand and interpret Angélique’s Relation. The characteristics of this genre appear clearly in 102. “Quelques jours après, je revins [au monastère], dans la résolution de faire tout ce que je pourrais pour servir Dieu, mais sans rien faire qui pût fâcher mon père.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 19. 103. Matt. 5:10. 104. “Néanmoins, cette parole me pénétra le cœur, et Dieu s’en servit par sa bonté pour me faire songer sérieusement à satisfaire plutôt à Dieu qu’à mon père.” Arnauld, Relation-L, 19. 302 APOLOGY IN THE FORM OF AUTOHAGIOGRAPHY Angélique’s text, like the practice of not including specific names and dates, the use of a rhetoric of humility, and the inclusion of standard components, such as rejection of marriage, conversion, and loss of family. The understanding that Angélique may have adapted these events in her life in order to conform to a certain standard of holiness as set out in other texts of this genre and to thus provide a model for others to imitate provides a literary context for interpreting Angélique’s text in relation to the actual events of her life. Some of these events—like the rejection of the temptation to marriage—may not have held as much significance for Angélique at the time, but she could use them in writing her account to demonstrate how her life followed the patterns established by earlier female saints and models of holiness. We thus must remain careful in how we use the Relation as a source for events surrounding Angélique’s reform of Port-Royal, understanding always that she filtered her description of these events through the autohagiographical genre. But Angélique’s text goes beyond the autohagiographical genre and also functions as an apology for her reform and association of the convent with those accused of Jansenism. This appears clearly in her defense of Saint-Cyran and her theology of God’s providence. Her agenda in writing this text shows clearly in these aspects: she intended to show that the accusations of Jansenism did not accurately apply to either Saint-Cyran or Port-Royal. Saint-Cyran, she argued, did not teach excessively rigorist practices in relation to the sacraments, but merely inspired God’s will in those he directed spiritually. Additionally, God’s providential care over Port-Royal demonstrated his favor over the convent, in spite of the accusations of heresy coming from their opponents. Thus, although Angélique did not write a systematic theology of providence, she used her life and the reform of the convent as a prism through which to identify the spectrum of providence at work at Port-Royal. In this way, she expressed her theology through the narrative of her life at and reform of Port-Royal. Angélique’s theology of God’s providence, as expressed in her Relation, remains particularly significant because the overall question of the theological understanding of the Port-Royal nuns became a central point of contention during the Jansenist controversy. For example, in 1655, Antoine published his Lettre à une personne de condition, in which he argued that their opponents should not involve the nuns in the controversy over the Augustinus. He asked: What pretext can they have for spreading their persecution against virtuous nuns, who understand nothing in all these matters of theology, who have never read the least line about all these contested questions, and ELISSA CUTTER 303 who make a particular vow to avoid all kinds of contention, in order to occupy themselves solely with the faithful observation of the Gospel and of their Rule?105 He thus argued that the ignorance of the nuns in these theological matters made their lives peripheral to the controversy, as they only concerned themselves with following the Gospel and their Rule. Angélique’s Relation demonstrates, in contrast, that she had a sophisticated understanding of theology, in this example of a theology of God’s providence, one that has remained unrecognized because it appeared not in a systematic theological treatise, but in the more feminine genre of autohagiography. Significantly, this genre of autohagiography also provided her with the means to involve herself in the Jansenist controversy, providing a defense of the spiritual direction she received from Saint-Cyran and her overall reform of the convent. 105. “Quel prétexte peuvent-ils avoir d’étendre leur persécution contre de vertueuses filles, qui n’entendent rien en toutes ces matieres de Théologie, qui n’ont jamais lu la moindre ligne sur toutes ces questions contestées, & qui font une profession particuliere d’éviter toutes sortes de contentions, pour s’employer uniquement à la fidelle observation de l’Evangile & de leur Regle?” Antoine Arnauld, Œuvres, 19:323. I have adapted here the translation of this passage cited in Kostroun, Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism, 92. Missionaries, Martyrdom, and Warfare in French Colonial Louisiana, 1699–1764 MICHAEL PASQUIER* An analysis of the relationship between martyrdom and warfare in French colonial Louisiana illustrates how Catholic priests made sense of their precarious position in a brutal colonial frontier at the geographic periphery of New France. Based on events surrounding the deaths of six priests, martyrdom never appears to be a singular act of willfully receiving the wrath of a “savage other” and becoming a holy saint in the published annals of religious orders and in the minds of pious readers. Rather, moments of martyrdom situated priests within larger colonial systems of violence that redirected the attention of missionaries away from the conversion of indigenous people and toward their physical destruction, in effect joining performances of martyrdom with everyday practices of life in a colonial society oriented by rituals of warfare, revenge, and honor. Keywords: John Gilmary Shea, martyrdom, warfare, colonialism, missionaries, Native Americans, priesthood, violence, Indian missions, hagiography Gilmary Shea, the premier American Catholic historian of the nineJohn teenth century, wrote a manuscript entitled “American Martyrology: Lives of Catholic Missionaries Killed on the Indian Missions in Canada and the United States from the Earliest Times.”1 Of the dozens of names contained in the unpublished tome, Shea identified six Catholic priests in French colonial Louisiana as martyrs: Nicolas Foucault, Jean François Buisson de St. Cosme, Jacques Gravier, Paul du Poisson, Jean Souel, and Antoine Sénat. He published part of his martyrological research in the book History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States *Michael Pasquier is associate professor of Religious Studies and History and the Jaak Seynaeve Professor of Christian Studies at Louisiana State University. 1. John Gilmary Shea, “American Martyrology: Lives of Catholic Missionaries Killed on the Indian Missions in Canada and the United States from the Earliest Times,” n.d., John Dawson Gilmary Shea Papers, University of Notre Dame Archives (hereafter UNDA), Notre Dame, Indiana, 550–52, 606, 623. 304 MICHAEL PASQUIER 305 (1854), in which he concluded that, “like the other missions [of North America], that of Louisiana can count its heroes who did not hold life dearer than duty,” and who “dyed with their blood the land where they had preached the gospel, earnestly, zealously, if not with fruit.”2 At the time, Shea’s characterization of martyrdom—complete with willful self-sacrifice, Christ-like courage, and zealous evangelism—managed to satisfy the hagiographic appetites of devout Catholic readers. But like so many martyr tales, Shea’s stories about the forgotten saints of French colonial Louisiana say more about the compilers and consumers of martyrologies than about the people directly impacted by the killing of priests in early America. Historians have made it their business to study the “memory work,” as Elizabeth Anne Castelli describes it, associated with martyrdom as “a form of culture making” that imaginatively connects living religious adherents to the suffering of the dead by reconstituting the past in narratives and performances.3 Several scholars have concentrated on what Allan Greer calls the “hagiographic sensibility” of religious texts that retrospectively consider the holiness and heroism of Christians who died for their faith.4 Writing about the famous deaths of eight Jesuits during the Huron-Iroquois wars of the 1640s, Tracy Neal Leavelle argues that later Jesuits in New France “believed that sacrifice—physical and mental, including the missionary’s life if necessary—was essential to the goals they hoped to accomplish.” These “martyrs,” Leavelle continues, “thus provided a sense of attachment to the spirit of Jesuit origins, and they became the first great local heroes for the Jesuits in New France to follow.” In other words, the famous hagiographic narratives of Jesuits like Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues connected later missionaries with a “growing fabric of Jesuit myth” that, ideally, would sustain them even in the most torturous of ordeals.5 Of course, living up to hagiographic scripts for martyrdom was another matter, as Greer notices in Jesuits whose “experience of New France produced such meager results in the real world” and as Emma Anderson observes in the “continual remembering and reinvention” of Jesuit exploits “in the popular, protean collective imagination from their time [in the seventeenth century] 2. John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1529–1854 (New York, 1854), 452. 3. Elizabeth Anne Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York, 2004), 4. 4. Allan Greer, “Colonial Saints: Gender, Race, and Hagiography in New France,” William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 2 (Apr. 2000), 324. 5. Tracy Neal Leavelle, Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America (Philadelphia, 2012), 36, 42, 31. 306 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE to our own.”6 It is at this juncture between the ideal martyr and the real missionary—the myth and the man—that the history of Catholic missionaries in French colonial Louisiana demonstrates how priests directly involved in the drama of martyrdom reacted to the violent deaths of their confreres with a mixture of spiritual fulfillment and righteous revenge. Eighteenth-century Louisiana—a colonial enterprise at the periphery of France’s imperial holdings in North America and the Caribbean—is an especially suitable time and place to witness the plural, dynamic, and flexible qualities of the concept of martyrdom in New France.7 For starters, there is an uncommonly thin hagiographic filter through which to examine circumstances surrounding the murder of six obscure missionaries— two priests of the Foreign Missions and four Jesuits—and to scrutinize John Gilmary Shea’s rather sanguine characterization of Louisiana’s socalled forgotten martyrs. The Society of Jesus ended publication of the Jesuit Relations during the 1670s (over two decades before the first permanent French settlement in the lower Mississippi valley), while its eighteenth-century corollary Lettres édifiantes et curieuses allocated little coverage to the thoughts and actions of missionaries in Louisiana. Historians have depended, sometimes solely, on these earlier Jesuit accounts for insight into missionary ideas about martyrdom in New France.8 More- 6. Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (New York, 2005), 9; and Emma Anderson, The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (Cambridge, 2013), 6. 7. Robert Michael Morrisey argues that “[i]n Illinois, like everywhere else in the early modern French empire, Indians and colonists, slaves and officials, created an idiosyncratic order that was usually not what anybody intended.” Morrisey, Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (Philadelphia, 2015), 7. See also Robert Michael Morrisey, “‘I Speak It Well’: Language, Cultural Understanding, and the End of the Missionary Middle Ground in Illinois Country, 1673–1712,” Early American Studies 9, no. 3 (Fall 2011), 617–648. Moreover, Robbie Ethridge observes that the convergence of “the European world” and “the Mississippian world” led to “new opportunities, new possibilities, and new ways of doing things for both Natives and newcomers.” Such a convergence describes French colonial Louisiana, which, “over the course of time,” resulted in “a transformation of both worlds and a melding of them into a single, colonial one.” Ethridge, From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715 (Chapel Hill, 2010), 2. Shannon Lee Dawdy makes similar points in Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago, 2008), but with particular attention to the circumstances of life in Louisiana during the eighteenth century. 8. Allan Greer, The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America (New York, 2000); Bruce Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal, 1985); and Kenneth Morrison, The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies, and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter (Albany, 2002). MICHAEL PASQUIER 307 over, out of Reuben Gold Thwaites’ seventy-three volume The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (1896–1901), there are only fourteen letters written by seven Jesuits that directly relate to Louisiana. Why so few? Because, according to Thwaites, “[t]he Louisiana Mission of the Jesuits, while producing several martyrs, and rich in striking examples of missionary zeal, has yielded but meagre [sic] documentary results.” What was more, though “[t]he several missions of New France played a large part in American history; that of Louisiana, although interesting, is of much less importance.”9 Without recourse to a pool of easily accessible sources that explicitly speak to religious matters, only a handful of historians have found it feasible to sketch the religious landscape of a region that stretched along the Mississippi River from the Illinois country to the Gulf of Mexico.10 Fortunately, the voluminous secular colonial records of Louisiana, paired with the few hagiographic depictions contained in the Lettre édifiantes and other written material, do account for the participation of laypeople, Jesuits, and other priests in defining martyrdom and responding to violence against the clergy within a colonial context awash in physical brutality and ongoing warfare. While not a comparative study of martyrdom throughout all of New France, one of the challenges of this essay is to take seriously Allan Greer’s caution that historians mind “the cultural gap separating Jesuits and natives” by recognizing a similar gap between the experiences of eighteenth-century missionaries among the Indian nations of Louisiana and the experiences of the more famous North American martyrs of the seventeenth century.11 One of the chief differences between Louisiana and these other missionary sites was a comparative lack of attention given to the development of Indian missions. Although the Canadian explorer Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville founded the first permanent French settlement in Louisiana in 1699, the Society of Jesus did not establish a permanent missionary presence until 1727, almost three decades after Paul du Ru, S.J., traveled to the nascent colony in 1700 to survey possible sites for Indian missions along the Mississippi River. Du Ru returned to France two years For a more suspicious reading of the Relations, see Carole Blackburn, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632–1650 (Montreal, 2000). 9. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (hereafter JR), 73 vols. (Cleveland, 1896–1901), 1:37. 10. For one of the few books to take seriously the religious history of French colonial Louisiana, see Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill, 2007). 11. Greer, Jesuit Relations, 17. 308 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE later.12 At about the same time, three priests of the Foreign Missions (Albert Davion, Jean François Buisson de St. Cosme, and François Jolliet de Montigny) accompanied French explorers down the Mississippi River to Louisiana, after which they planned, like du Ru, to build a network of Indian missions.13 Two priests of the Foreign Missions would be killed within seven years of their arrival. While certainly mindful of the triumphant narratives of previous martyrs and the obligation to convert Native Americans, the first generation of missionaries in Louisiana expended most of their energy and resources trying to survive in a colony that often seemed on the verge of collapse. Another way to understand Louisiana’s breakdown in Indian missionization is to consider the link between martyrdom and warfare in the context of Franco-Indian relations. Priests of the Foreign Missions depended on the colonial government for protection in the missionary fields of the lower Mississippi valley, a relationship cemented at an early stage by the murder of two priests in 1702 and 1706. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville—brother of Iberville and governor of Louisiana at the time of the first missionary killing—applied lex talionis, or the law of retribution, when responding to violent acts against the French. As someone who, according to Patricia Galloway, “seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the Indian concept of honor and to understand tribal power structures as no other governor did,” Bienville instituted a retaliatory model of warfare against native groups that appealed to the laity and clergy alike.14 Furthermore, just as a second generation of Jesuits started to repair Louisiana’s abandoned Indian missions, the Natchez revolted against French rule in 1729, which heightened missionary participation in military expeditions against Indian nations until the expulsion of the Society of Jesus in 1763.15 Given these circumstances, military service—described by Daniel Usner as “an impor12. Journal of Paul Du Ru [February 1 to May 8, 1700]: Missionary Priest to Louisiana, trans. Ruth Lapham Butler (Chicago, 1934), 7, 51, 52. 13. In 1665, Bishop François de Laval affiliated the Séminaire de Quebec with the Séminaire des Missions Étrangères in Paris, which led to a new branch of the Quebec seminary devoted to the conversion of Native Americans in the Mississippi valley. Priests of the Foreign Missions, as they were called, were secular priests. 14. Patricia Galloway, “The Barthelemy Murders: Bienville’s Establishment of the Lex Talionis as a Principle of Indian Diplomacy,” in Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives, Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narratives (Lincoln, 2006), 245. 15. For more on the Natchez rebellion, see James F. Barnett Jr., The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735 (Jackson, 2007), 101–131; Gordon M. Sayre, The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh (Chapel Hill, 2005), 203–248; and Arnaud Balvay, La Révolte des Natchez (Paris, 2008). MICHAEL PASQUIER 309 tant sphere of intercultural exchange among Indians, settlers, and slaves”— introduced priests to dangerous activities that tested their resolve to uphold hagiographic models of missionary behavior and involved laypeople in making meaning of martyrdom without the spiritual constraints of a martyrological tradition with roots in the European Reformation and the missionary fields of Asia, Africa, and the Americas.16 In Louisiana, as in other parts of New France, priests faced the possibility of martyrdom as missionaries interested in the conversion of Native Americans and as chaplains interested in the punishment of Native Americans. An analysis of the relationship between martyrdom and warfare in the lower Mississippi valley illustrates how missionaries and laypeople tailored Christian beliefs and practices to make sense of their precarious positions in a colonial frontier, in many cases associating the ideal of martyrdom as the ultimate performance of holiness with violent retribution against the indigenous perpetrators of priest-killing. If the lives of Louisiana’s clergy are any indication, martyrdom was never a singular act of willfully receiving the wrath of a non-believer because of one’s faith and becoming a holy saint in the published annals of religious orders and in the minds of pious readers. Rather, moments of martyrdom also situated priests within larger colonial systems of violence that often redirected the attention of missionaries away from the conversion of indigenous people and toward their physical destruction, in effect joining performances of martyrdom with everyday practices of life in a frontier society oriented by rituals of warfare, revenge, and honor.17 Nicolas Foucault, a French priest of the Foreign Missions stationed among the Quapaws, was believed to have been killed along with several other Frenchmen by a group of Koroa guides while canoeing down the Mississippi River in 1702. Jean François Buisson de St. Cosme, a Canadian priest of the Foreign Missions and three lay companions died under similar circumstances four years later, supposedly murdered by a group of Chitimacha warriors as they were encamped on the banks of the Mississippi. In both cases, what remains of the archival record reveals three interrelated per16. Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783 (Chapel Hill, 1992), 85. See also Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1999); and Robert Kolb, “God’s Gift of Martyrdom: The Early Reformation Understanding of Dying for the Faith,” Church History 64, no. 3 (Sep. 1995), 399–411. 17. For more on the involvement of Jesuits in matters of war and diplomacy, see John Steckley, “The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iroquoian Images to Communicate Christianity,” Ethnohistory 39, no. 4 (Autumn 1992), 478–509. 310 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE spectives on the deaths of Foucault and St. Cosme, none of which explicitly refers to them as martyrs. Rather, priests of the Foreign Missions, Jesuits, and colonial officials stressed the need to exercise revenge against offending native groups in a manner conducive to Bienville’s practice of lex talionis. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Foucault, priests of the Foreign Missions and the Society of Jesus retreated from recently established Indian missions and requested that Bienville enhance missionary protection. They made little attempt to follow in Foucault’s footsteps. Davion, one of the three original priests of the Foreign Missions to reside in Louisiana, “saw the debris of the massacre” just days after the incident while traveling up the Mississippi River. “We well recognized the hats, plates and the altar which was still set up,” he wrote to his superior, “and a few papers written by M. Foucault.”18 In response, Davion quickly turned around, for “I justly feared I would meet with the same fate as my confrère.” Joseph de Limoges, a Jesuit missionary stationed among the Houmas, joined Davion on his withdrawal to Mobile. According to Davion, Limoges “does not think he will return to his Houma mission, unless better means are taken than were used in the past for the safety of the missionaries.” Limoges told Davion “several times that he thought [the Jesuits] would abandon these missions of the Lower Mississippi, seeing the little progress that was to be made among these nations.” Limoges left Louisiana for France by the end of 1703, followed in 1704 by Peter Dongé, S.J. In Davion’s estimation, “nothing is to be expected from the mission if this murder [of Foucault] is left unpunished.”19 Moreover, the superior of the Foreign Missions requested that the Minister of the Marine Louis Phelypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain order Bienville to “send two . . . soldiers or Canadians to the villages where there are missionaries to assist in assembling the Indians in order to make large villages of them and to protect the missionaries from the insults of the most brutal ones.”20 Instead of redoubling efforts to found and protect new Indian missions, Bienville organized a military expedition, 18. Lettre à Monseigneur, de la part de M. P. Davion, n.p., 14 Feb. 1703, Fonds du Seminaire des Missions étrangères (hereafter FSME), Paris, vol. 344, fol. 65, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC), Ottawa, Ontario. 19. Lettre à Monseigneur pour lui apprendre la Mort de M. Foucault, missionnaire, et de trios autres Français, tués par les sauvages,” n.p., 12 Dec. 1702, FSME, Paris, vol. 344, fol. 57, LAC. See also Lettre du missionnaire Davion à Monseigneur, n.p., 23 Sept. 1703, FSME, Paris, vol. 344, no. 69, LAC. 20. Jérôme Phélypeaux, Comte de Pontchartrain to Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, Versailles, 30 Jan. 1704, in Mississippi Provincial Archives, 1701–1729, French Dominion (hereafter MPA), eds. Dunbar Rowland and Albert Godfrey Sanders, vols. 1–3 (Jackson, 1927, 1929, 1932), 3:17. MICHAEL PASQUIER 311 reporting in 1704 that “the Koroas who are the nation that killed the missionary [Foucault] together with three Frenchmen . . . have been entirely destroyed by the Arkansas who are our allies.”21 Few measures were taken to protect missionaries following the death of Foucault, resulting in the killing of St. Cosme and three Frenchmen by a band of Chitimachas in 1706. Again, available sources demonstrate an unwillingness on the part of lay and ordained colonists to characterize the murder of a priest of the Foreign Missions as a case of martyrdom. Instead, most colonists used the violent act to justify waging war against the offending Indian nation. For Bienville, the death of St. Cosme was an opportunity to improve the martial reputation of the French by ordering roughly twenty voyageurs to attack the accused group of Chitimachas. They succeeded in destroying a Chitimacha village, killing forty warriors and capturing “the man who boasted that he had killed the missionary.” The detachment of voyageurs returned the supposed murderer of St. Cosme to Fort Louis, where Bienville “had him tomahawked in the square.” The governor explained to Pontchartrain that “I did not do it . . . without knowing the good effect that that would produce in the villages of the other nations. . . . [since] it is the custom in all the nations” of Louisiana “to kill as many of the men of their enemies as they have lost on their side.” To do otherwise—that is, to not achieve “vengeance man for man”—was disgraceful. Moreover, Bienville was clear that he did not destroy the Chitimacha village and stage a public execution out of respect for priests of the Foreign Missions, declaring “that these gentlemen from the Foreign Missions are hardly suitable for the conversion of the Indians and that very far from running to martyrdom they are fleeing from it by abandoning their missions as one of them has just done.” The Jesuits, on the other hand, appeared to Bienville to “never become disheartened” even after being “maltreated with blows by the Indians.”22 Later in the eighteenth century, lay chroniclers of life in French colonial Louisiana recounted Bienville’s violent retaliation against the Koroas and Chitimachas. André Pénicaut, a carpenter who arrived in Louisiana with Iberville’s first expedition, remembered how four Koroa guides “broke [the] heads” of Foucault and other Frenchmen in their sleep, “threw their 21. Bienville to Pontchartrain, Fort Louis, Louisiana, 6 Sept. 1704, MPA 3:22–23. Historians typically refer to the Arkansas as Quapaws. For more on the life of Jean François Buisson de St. Cosme, see George Edward Milne, Natchez Country: Indians, Colonists, and the Landscapes of Race in French Louisiana (Athens, GA, 2015), 45–52. 22. Bienville to Pontchartrain, Fort Louis, 25 Feb. 1708, MPA 3:116, 120. 312 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE bodies in the river,” stole their belongings, and fled to a nearby village, making the Koroas “the most cruel of all the savages of Louisiana.” Pénicaut also recalled how Bienville responded to the death of St. Cosme by ordering the Canadian explorer Louis Juchereau de St. Denis to lead an expedition composed of Indian allies against the Chitimachas, where “our savages gave the cri de mort, and so did we, which terrorized the Chetimachas.” When the villagers attempted to escape, “we fired into them, killing fifteen and taking forty prisoners, as many men as women and children.” The captives were marched to Mobile where Bienville “had the murderer of M. de St. Cosme bound to the wooden horse and his head broken with a blow of a stick.” Afterward, “his scalp was taken and his body thrown into the water.” Bienville then encouraged “all the savage nations friendly to us” to continue fighting the Chitimachas and to expect payment of “ten crowns for the scalp of each enemy slain or for each enemy brought back alive.”23 Despite some factual discrepancies, several other secondhand accounts recapitulated Pénicaut’s message that the French, under the leadership of Bienville, retaliated against those who killed Foucault and St. Cosme without acknowledging them as martyrs.24 For their part, Jesuits discounted the meaningfulness of the deaths of Foucault and St. Cosme by describing priests of the Foreign Missions as unable to match the spiritual discipline and missionary organization of the Society of Jesus. Jesuits also resented priests of the Foreign Missions for establishing Indian missions in the first place, an attitude that probably influenced their collective decision not to identify Foucault and St. Cosme as martyrs. Roughly contemporaneous with Foucault’s death, Gabriel Marest, S.J., accused priests of the Foreign Missions of “living in missions where they do nothing . . . not even tak[ing] the trouble to learn les Langues Sauvages.” Foucault merited special disfavor for “abandon[ing] the famous mission of the acansas.”25 Jacques Gravier, S.J., made a similar evaluation of St. Cosme, who “had not made a Single Christian among the Natches.” In Gravier’s estimation, neither Foucault nor St. Cosme could claim similar “promises that I made to God to die among my poor Ilinois.” The same 23. Pénicaut, Fleur de Lys and Calumet: Being the Pénicaut Narrative of French Adventure in Louisiana, trans. Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams (Baton Rouge, 1953), 98–99, 70–72. 24. Bernard de la Harpe, “Historical Journal of the Establishment of the French in Louisiana,” in Historical Collections of Louisiana, ed. Benjamin Franklin French (New York, 1851), 3:32–36; “Mémoire de M. de Richebourg sur la premiere guerre des Natchez,” in Historical Collections of Louisiana, 3:246; and Le Page du Pratz, The History of Louisiana, ed. Joseph G. Tregle, Jr. (Baton Rouge, 1975), 77–79. 25. Gabriel Marest to Jean de Lamberville, Illinois, 26 Nov. 1702, JR 66:41. MICHAEL PASQUIER 313 went for other priests of the Foreign Missions who, according to Gravier, were “hated by nearly everyone” for their inadequate management of garrison chapels and Indian missions. Describing a priest of the Foreign Missions who lived in an Apalachee village for four years and who administered the sacraments “[w]ithout understanding the savages,” Gravier asked “[w]hat would be said if a Jesuit were to do as much?”26 Over twenty years later, editors of the Lettres édifiantes published a letter penned by Paul du Poisson, S.J., detailing his trip down the Mississippi River. In it, Poisson noted how a group of Chitimachas “killed a missionary, Monsieur de Saint Côme,” and how “Monsieur de Bienville, who was commanding in the name of the King, avenged his death.” Poisson referred to the killing of St. Cosme as one of the many “slight bits of Mississippi erudition” that warranted less coverage in his account than “the greatest torture” caused by “the cruel persecution of the mosquitoes.”27 A third priest, this time Jacques Gravier, S.J., died in 1708 from wounds sustained two years earlier while evangelizing in a Peoria village in the Illinois country. One Jesuit source recalls Gravier’s welcoming attitude toward martyrdom as he faced an enraged Peoria man, but none depict his dying days while convalescing in Mobile under the care of Bienville. For that, secular records reveal how colonial officials used the assault against Gravier to justify military aggression against those who attacked the French. According to Jean Mermet, S.J., Gravier offended a Peoria man by refusing to bury his relative, after which he shot the priest several times with arrows. One of the projectiles “would have killed him,” Mermet wrote, “had it not been for the collar of his cassock, which stopped the arrowhead,” while another struck the priest near the wrist causing profuse bleeding. Gravier reportedly asked his assailant during the melee, “My son, why do you kill me? What have I done to you?” He then “knelt to commend himself to God,” only to be rescued by a group of “praying savages.” The same Indians provided Gravier with an escape down the Mississippi River where he expected to nurse his wounds at a post in Louisiana, but also “with the view of returning [to the Illinois country] as soon as he is cured, in order to die on his first battle-field.”28 Bienville hosted the wounded Gravier at Mobile. King Louis XIV, upon learning of the attack, instructed Governor de Muy to “take measures to exact satisfaction for this action.”29 In 1708, Gravier 26. Jacques Gravier, “Upon the Affairs of Louisiana,” Fort St. Louis, 23 Feb. 1708, JR 66:131, 133. 27. Paul du Poisson to Unknown, Arkansas, 3 Oct. 1727, JR 67:303, 293. 28. Jean Mermet to the Jesuits of Canada, Cascaskias, 2 Mar. 1706, JR 66:55, 65. 29. Louis XIV to Nicolas Daneau de Muy, Versailles, 30 June 1707, MPA 3:59. 314 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE obtained “an order from [Pontchartrain] to give him men to go up to his mission” in the Illinois country in order to avenge the transgressions of the offending Peorias and to protect the missionary from future assault.30 It is likely that Bienville would have complied with Pontchartrain’s instructions were it not for Gravier’s unexpected death at Mobile. Reports of Gravier’s demise, to say nothing of the murders of two priests of the Foreign Missions, did not energize a new wave of missionary enthusiasm in the lower Mississippi valley. From 1708 to 1723, priests of the Foreign Missions represented the most recognizable clerical body in Louisiana, most of whom avoided interaction with Native Americans by staying in or near Mobile and New Orleans. It was not until 1723 that Raphaël de Luxembourg became the superior of the Capuchin mission in Louisiana with instructions to oversee the administration of Catholic churches and chapels for French colonists. Nicolas Ignatius de Beaubois arrived at New Orleans in 1725 as the new Jesuit superior of Louisiana with jurisdiction over Indian missions throughout the Mississippi valley, which led to the placement of Paul du Poisson among the Quapaws, Jean Souel among the Yazoos, and Mathurin le Petit among the Choctaws. In this emerging frontier society, historians George Edward Milne and Charles O’Neill have shown how Capuchins and Jesuits established semipermanent, competing ecclesiastical bodies, with members of both orders attending as much to economic development and political gamesmanship as to sacramental dispensation and moral legislation.31 Events surrounding the Natchez revolt of 1729 curtailed Jesuit efforts to reinvigorate Indian missions and triggered Jesuit involvement in military activities as chaplains and diplomats. Two of Beaubois’s recruits—Poisson and Souel—were among the approximately 230 settlers killed during and after the Natchez assault on Fort Rosalie, a tobacco-producing post located above New Orleans on the Mississippi River. A third Jesuit, Pierre Doutreleau, was severely wounded, but would survive. Colonial officials wrote dozens of letters and reports on the Natchez revolt. The frenzied correspondences contain several references to the three Jesuit victims. Based mostly on first- and second-hand accounts that were flooding into New Orleans, Governor Étienne Boucher de Périer reported to the Minister of 30. Bienville to Pontchartrain, Fort Louis, 25 Feb. 1708, MPA 3:120. 31. Milne, Natchez Country; and Charles Edward O’Neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, 1966). See also Claude L. Vogel, The Capuchins in French Louisiana (1722–1766) (New York, 1928); and Jean Delanglez, The French Jesuits in Lower Louisiana (1700–1763) (Washington, DC, 1935). MICHAEL PASQUIER 315 the Marine Jean Frederic Phelypeaux, Comte de Maurepas that “Father Dupoisson [sic], a Jesuit, was killed at the Natchez by the hand of the chief of these rebels who crushed his head with an ax,” while “Father Souel, another Jesuit missionary, was massacred by the Yazoos in whose midst he was established.”32 Following a personal meeting with Doutreleau, Périer also conveyed to Maurepas the circumstances of the Jesuit’s escape. “He had been attacked on the first day of the year at the mouth of the river of the Yazoos while saying mass,” the governor wrote. Doutreleau and a companion “had escaped with his priestly robes,” but “the Indians of that nation had killed three of his men.”33 According to Périer, Doutreleau “served as chaplain to the little French army” within months of receiving his wounds and participated in the siege of Natchez forts in retaliation for the massacre at Fort Rosalie.34 Though troubled by the deaths of Poisson and Souel, Périer exhibited considerably more concern for the immediate security of New Orleans and military expeditions against the Natchez, Yazoos, and Chickasaws. Rumors of an impending attack against the colonial capital had spread throughout the region. “It was then,” the governor wrote, “that I saw with great sorrow that people were less French in Louisiana than elsewhere,” as “fear had so powerfully taken the upper hand that even the Chaouchas who were a nation of thirty men below New Orleans made our colonists tremble.”35 Périer responded by organizing a party of company slaves to destroy the Chaoucha village, which, in the governor’s opinion, “has kept the other small nations established on the river in an attitude of respect.”36 Périer also ordered Joseph Christophe de Lusser, a Swiss captain of the Mobile garrison, to conduct a diplomatic mission to the Choctaws in order to gather information on the military strength of the Natchez, Yazoos, and Chickasaws. Two weeks into his journey, Lusser arrived in the Choctaw village of Chickasawhay at the home of Michel Baudouin, S.J. Choctaw warriors, recently returned from skirmishes with the Natchez, brought to Baudouin and Lusser the mistaken news of Souel’s escape from the Yazoos. It would be almost two months and dozens of miles later that the Jesuit and the captain would learn from an enslaved French woman that Souel was actually dead. They encountered her at the residence of a Caffetalaya chief who had 32. Étienne Boucher de Périer to Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas, New Orleans, 18 Mar. 1730, MPA 1:75–76. 33. Ibid., 1:66. 34. Ibid., 1:76. 35. Ibid., 1:64. 36. Ibid., 1:71. 316 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE taken her from the Yazoos. “She began to cry at once when she saw us,” Lusser wrote, so “I left to Father Beaudouin, who has more sympathetic speech than I, the care of consoling her.” She recounted how “the Reverend Father Souel with his little negro had been killed” and how she watched her husband tomahawked to death by a group of Yazoo warriors. After negotiating her release from the Caffetalayas, Baudouin noticed an “Indian who was leading [a dance] had a paten hanging about his neck, another ciborium at his side, this one with a maniple on his arm and all the others were adorned with the clothes of the French that they had won at the defeat of the Yazoos.” The sacramental objects and vestments, which Baudouin bought back from the Caffetalayas, had belonged to Souel. Lusser and Baudouin then backtracked to the Jesuit’s residence at Chickasawhay, where they negotiated with the Choctaws over the price of Natchez scalps and the release of French slaves taken from the Natchez. Lusser returned to Mobile with a census of “men bearing arms” in Choctaw villages, some of which he based on estimates made by Mathurin le Petit, S.J., when he was stationed at Chickasawhay during the late 1720s.37 Mathurin le Petit, now Jesuit superior of Louisiana, resided in New Orleans and was in a position to hear many of the rumors about what had happened to his fellow priests. The result was Petit’s epistolary narrative of “this unexpected attack by the Natchez Savages” published in the Lettres édifiantes.38 According to Petit, Poisson had left his missionary post among the Quapaws and made a temporary stop at the Natchez mission just two days before the revolt. Poisson then overextended his stay among the Natchez, probably because the Capuchin curé assigned to the post was on leave from his missionary duties. On the morning of November 28, 1729, as Poisson prepared for mass, “a gigantic Chief six feet in height seized him, and having thrown him to the ground, cut off his head with blows of a hatchet.” Poisson, before being decapitated, managed to utter, “ah mon Dieu! ah mon Dieu!” Two weeks later, Yazoo warriors supposedly shot Souel dead as he was returning to his residence among them. Petit quoted a Yazoo as saying, “Since the black Chief [Chef noir] is dead . . . it is the same as if all the French were dead—let us not spare any.” After destroying the poorly defended French post on the Yazoo River, “one of the Yazous, having stripped the Missionary, clothed himself in his garments,” and reported to the Natchez “that his Nation had redeemed their pledge” to 37. Joseph Christophe de Lusser to Maurepas, n.p., 16 Mar. 1730, MPA 1:85, 87, 95, 99, 102, 103, 109, 113, 115. 38. Mathurin le Petit to Father d’Avaugour, New Orleans, 12 Jul. 1730, JR 68:187. MICHAEL PASQUIER 317 massacre the French. Around the same time, Stephen Doutreleau, S.J., and a small party of voyageurs were met by “a boat full of Savages” who identified themselves as “Yazous, comrades of the French,” and gestured that “it was their intention to hear Mass, although they were not Christians.” A group of Yazoos fired muskets at Doutreleau as he “was saying the Kyrie Eleision” and wounded him in the arm, at which point the Jesuit “threw himself on his knees to receive the last fatal blow.” Here, the Jesuit account of Doutreleau’s attack starts to resemble the narrative of Gravier’s near-death experience in 1706. Doutreleau “received two or three discharges” while kneeling before his assailants, but managed to escape “miraculously . . . and without any other defense than an entire confidence in God.”39 One more volley of musket shot struck Doutreleau’s mouth before he and two of his lay companions escaped down the Mississippi River. The murders of Poisson and Souel provided Petit with an opportunity to extend the tradition of Jesuit martyrdom to the geographic periphery of New France. Petit depicted Poisson and Souel as model martyrs comparable in holiness to those Jesuits who died during the Huron-Iroquois wars of the 1640s. He was careful to highlight how Poisson and Souel exhibited “the appropriate qualifications for apostolic men,” which included an attachment to the hardship of missionary life, a proficiency in “the language of the Savages,” and the successful conversion of indigenous flocks. He reassured his readers that the “excellent” devotion of Poisson and Souel “to the Savage Missions in this Colony . . . placed a great difference in the eyes of God between their death and that of the others, who have fallen martyrs to the French name.” Moreover, based on the word of a French woman formerly enslaved by the Quapaws, Petit described the dead body of Souel as incorrupt after fifteen days in the open air. “His skin was still as white,” the woman told the Jesuit, “and his cheeks as red as if he were merely sleeping.”40 As a compliment to scenes of holiness and piety, Petit expressed the collective impulse of his Jesuit peers to seek revenge by supporting French expeditions to exterminate the Natchez and other belligerent Indian groups. Petit acknowledged the “wise measures” adopted by Bienville “to revenge the French blood which had been shed, and to prevent the evils with which almost all the posts of the Colony were threatened.” The swift retaliation of the French against the Natchez and Yazoos pleased Petit, as did the “good Savages” who delivered dozens of enemy scalps to French 39. Petit to d’Avaugour, New Orleans, 12 Jul. 1730, JR 68:167, 175, 177, 179. 40. Ibid., 68:185, 217–219. 318 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE officials. Yet even Indian allies like the Choctaws could “become so inflated with their pretended victory,” Petit wrote, “that we have much more need of troops to repress their insolence” and convince them “to finish the destruction of our open enemies.” To that end, Doutreleau, “though not yet entirely cured of his wounds,” served as chaplain to French soldiers in the first military “campaign against the Natchez” and “gave new proofs of his zeal, his wisdom, and his courage.”41 The French conducted several military campaigns against the Chickasaws during the 1730s and 40s.42 Jesuits enthusiastically supported these operations by serving as chaplains to the French and as diplomats to their Indian allies. Michel Baudouin, S.J., proved especially instrumental in negotiating alliances with the Choctaws and facilitating attacks against the Chickasaws. Writing from “the remote depths of the forests of Louisiana” in 1732, Baudouin reported to the commissaire-ordonnateur on the military strength and intra-tribal politics of the Choctaws, as well as the effectiveness of French efforts “to exact vengeance [against the Chickasaws] for the affront that we had just received from the Natchez.” The Jesuit considered it prudent to “destroy the Chickasaws, the common enemy,” and offered his advice on how to use the Choctaws to achieve such an end.43 Instead of concentrating on the conversion of native peoples, Baudouin functioned as an intermediary between the French and Choctaws on matters related to warfare and trade. He hosted meetings between French officials and native chiefs at his residence in Chickasawhay, during which agreements were made over the price of scalps, the transfer of slaves, and the supply of arms.44 He “ke[pt] careful watch over the movements of Red Shoe[s]” and other Choctaw chiefs, and “spare[d] nothing to prevent the execution of [the French] plan” to support Choctaw assaults against the Chickasaws.45 In short, Bienville and other 41. Ibid., 68:187, 217, 219, 183. 42. Michael J. Foret, “The Failure of Administration: The Chickasaw Campaign of 1739-1740,” Revue de Louisiane/Louisiana Review 11 (1982), 49–60; Michael J. Foret, “War or Peace? Louisiana, the Choctaws, and the Chickasaws, 1733–1735,” Louisiana History 31, no. 3 (Summer 1990), 273–292; and Wendy St. Jean, “Trading Paths: Mapping Chickasaw History in the Eighteenth Century,” American Indian Quarterly 27, no. 3/4 (SummerAutumn 2003): 758–780. 43. Michel Baudouin to Edmé Gatien Salmon, Chickasawhay, 23 Nov. 1732, MPA 1:155–163. See also Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500–1700 (Lincoln, 1995); and Stephen P. Van Hoak, “Untangling the Roots of Dependency: Choctaw Economics, 1700– 1860,” American Indian Quarterly 23, no. 3/4 (Summer-Autumn 1999), 113–128. 44. Régis du Roullet, Récit des principaux événements survenus aux Chactas pendant la période considérée, 23 Aug. 1731–18 Mar. 1733, MPA 1:171. 45. Bienville to Maurepas, New Orleans, 28 Apr. 1738, MPA 3:710. MICHAEL PASQUIER 319 colonial officials relied upon Baudouin for “information about everything that concerns this [Choctaw] nation.”46 That being said, the independent actions of Baudouin sometimes frustrated Bienville, who, at one point, criticized the Jesuit for “taking a hand in everything except his mission” and blamed him for the “cool” and “insolent” attitude of the Choctaws.47 Further north, Jesuits of the Illinois country contributed to military expeditions against the Chickasaws and Natchez. Colonial officials agreed with the commandant of Fort Chartres that “the Chickasaw and the Natchez will only be destroyed by the Illinois Indians. . . . Thus it is a necessity to have some troops at the Illinois, both to go to war with them against the Chickasaws and to be the masters of the country and to have a superiority over the Illinois.”48 As early as 1732, Jesuits suggested that the French fund the establishment of “a rather strong garrison [in Illinois] with a commandant . . . who will overawe both natives of the country and the colonists,” and thus protect Jesuit missions.49 Bienville took the advice of Jesuits to place Pierre d’Artaguette in command of the Illinois post.50 Thereafter, d’Artaguette organized groups of Illinois warriors, many of whom were Christian converts, into raiding parties against the Chickasaws, on one occasion “captur[ing] twenty women and children from the enemy . . . and a man whom they burned” to death.51 Another French expedition against the Chickasaws came in 1736 after extensive preparation by Bienville and his military deputies. Their plan involved several moving parts—Choctaw warriors were to join French and enslaved African forces from Louisiana and then connect with d’Artaguette and “his company of thirty soldiers, one hundred voyageurs and colonists and almost all the Indians of the village of the Kaskaskias” before attacking Chickasaw villages in the vicinity of Fort Tombecbe (present-day Sumter County, Alabama).52 Bienville and d’Artaguette never combined forces and the Chickasaws defeated both in separate actions. Antoine Sénat, S.J., and approximately two-dozen Frenchmen were captured in a raid against a Chickasaw village not far from Fort Prud46. Analyse des passages de lettres de Bienville, concernant les nations sauvages, 15 May 1733, MPA 1:194. 47. Bienville and Salmon to Maurepas, Louisiana, 16 Sept. 1735, MPA 3:684. 48. Extrait d’une lettre de Robert Groston de St. Ange, Illinois, 30 Oct. 1732, MPA 4:124–125. 49. Henri de Louboey to Maurepas, New Orleans, 20 May 1733, MPA 1:221. 50. Bienville to Maurepas, New Orleans, 18 May 1733, MPA 1:615–616. 51. Bienville to Maurepas, New Orleans, 20 Aug. 1735, MPA 1:265. 52. Bienville to Maurepas, New Orleans, 28 June 1736, MPA 1:311. 320 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE homme (near present-day Memphis, Tennessee), during which d’Artaguette and around forty soldiers died.53 Secular records, though devoid of explicit references to martyrdom, describe a scene in which Sénat experienced torture and met his death with dignity and bravery. Mingo Ouma, a Chickasaw chief sympathetic to the French, reported to one of Bienville’s deputies “that he had really been sorry for the French and that he had wished to save the prisoners of Mr. d’Artaguette’s party but that the warriors in their fury had thrown all into the fire, living and dead, except three.” The Chickasaw chief added that “the Black Robe [Sénat] . . . had sung until his death.”54 Bernard Diron d’Artaguette, the commandant of Mobile, repeated Mingo Ouma’s description of “the black robe, who sang from the time he arrived in the village with all the others until the last breath.”55 The former commissary of Mobile reported that an Avoyelles woman formerly enslaved by the Chickasaws “affirmed also that during the preparation of this barbarous tragedy our Frenchmen sang [with Sénat], since it is the custom of the Indians, who only judge the bravery of a warrior by the stronger or weaker sounds of his voice at the moment that they kill him.”56 In a letter to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Petit characterized Sénat as a Christian martyr in no uncertain terms, combining distinctively Jesuit traits of holiness and self-sacrifice with more general French notions of bravery and manliness. “Sénat has been rewarded,” Petit wrote, “for his generous charity by the glorious crown of martyrdom [gloriosa martyrii corona].” Petit based his belief in Sénat’s model death on reports that reached New Orleans following d’Artaguette’s disastrous expedition against “the savage enemies of our nation, commonly called Tchikakas.” According to Petit, Sénat chose death instead of retreat because he “preferred to brave the fury of the savages rather than leave without spiritual aid the souls of the [French] captives so dear to his zeal.” He and his fellow sufferers were the recipients of “reproaches, insults, and clubs,” after which they were “ignominiously stripped . . . of their clothing” in anticipation of death by fire. According to Petit, “there is no reason to doubt” that Sénat prepared the French captives “to suffer impending death like Christians” by hearing their confessions and absolving them of their sins. “It is certain,” Petit continued, that everyone “kne[lt] together with their missionary” and “chanted long and loudly many prayers” until the 53. Ibid., 1:313. 54. Bienville to Maurepas, New Orleans, 20 Dec. 1737, MPA 3:708. 55. Diron d’Artaguette to Maurepas, Mobile, 24 Oct. 1737, MPA 4:149. 56. Crémont to Maurepas, New Orleans, 21 Feb. 1737, MPA 4:141. MICHAEL PASQUIER 321 moment of expiration. Petit was sure that the sight and sound of French piety “won the admiration of the savages.” No longer were Sénat and his fellow Christians called “women” by their Chickasaw captors; now they were “proclaimed to be men and heroes.”57 Michel Baudouin, still serving as missionary to the Choctaws, accompanied and survived Bienville’s expedition against the Chickasaws in 1736. Secular depictions of the chaplain’s participation in the governor’s failed military campaign reinforce the characterization of Jesuits as essential servants of the French colonial regime who were actively involved in the extermination of indigenous nations deemed enemies of the Crown. According to available sources, Baudouin assisted in the recruitment of Choctaw warriors and experienced the initial stages of combat against the Chickasaws. The Paris-based procurator of Jesuit missions in New France reported to the Rome-based Superior General of the Society of Jesus that “Baudouin was nearly caught by the enemy,” at which point “[h]e fell sick, and was forced to abandon the army of the governor in the enemy territory. But by the help of Divine Providence, he succeeded in leaving the Chickasaw country safe and sound.”58 Dumont du Montigny, a lieutenant in the Chickasaw expedition of 1736 and author of Mémoires Historiques sur la Louisiane (1753), wrote a significantly different account of Baudouin’s actions in the second chant of his 4,962-line epic, “Poème en vers touchant l’établissement de la province de la Loüisiane.” “With us,” Dumont de Montigny wrote, “we had Beaudouin for chaplain / He was a Jesuit full of spirit” who exceeded Bienville in military prowess and leadership ability. The Jesuit chaplain punctuated his benediction before battle with highly martial language and manly bravado, insisting that the mere appearance of the assembled forces would convince the Chickasaws to surrender arms. Describing the defeat and retreat of Bienville’s army, Dumont de Montigny included a scene in which Baudouin gave last rites to a wounded German soldier and allowed for his burial, “would you believe it, alive!” Dumont de Montigny’s somewhat disparaging portrayals of Bienville and Baudouin extended to his omission of Sénat as a central actor in the Chickasaw execution of d’Artaguette and other Frenchmen by fire.59 57. Mathurin le Petit to Francis Retz, New Orleans, 25 June 1738, JR 69:29, 31. 58. Camille de Rochemonteix, Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle-France au XVIII e siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1906), 1: 364. 59. Marc de Villiers, ed., “L’Établissement de la Province de la Louisiane, Poéme composé de 1728 à 1742, par Dumont de Montigny,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 23, no. 2 (1931), 344, 347, 352. 322 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE Sources related to the next military campaign against the Chickasaw (1738–40) demonstrate how the deaths of Poisson, Souel, and Sénat factored prominently in Jesuit representations of martyrdom and participation in Louisiana’s Franco-Indian wars. “War was to be waged against” the Chickasaw, the Jesuit chaplain Pierre Vitry began his journal of the expedition in 1738, “which had to be destroyed or subjugated.” Written for the education and edification of his Jesuit peers, Vitry’s journal is similar to the Jesuit Relations in its attempt to link contemporary Jesuit activities to past Jesuit heroics. Traveling up the Mississippi River, Vitry and his companions stopped at a Natchez post, where “the heart of a Frenchman bleeds at the sight of the land which was dyed in blood” during the Natchez revolt of 1729. They also encamped near the mouth of the Yazoo River, “on the very site [where] . . . the Jesuit Father Doutreleau was saying Mass when he and the voyageurs accompanying him were attacked by the Yazoo,” and four leagues from the fort where “the Jesuit Father Souel was murdered, and several Frenchmen slaughtered.” Vitry, who had arrived in Louisiana over two years after the Natchez revolt, “christened Fort de l’Assomption” at or near the previous site of Fort Prudhomme, “for M. the Commandant wished to place it under the protection of the Blessed Virgin.”60 Soon thereafter, Jacques-Quintin de la Bretonnière, S.J., arrived at the fort with approximately three hundred Christian Iroquois warriors and a sizeable Canadian army eager to “take part in the war” against the Chickasaw who “3 years ago burned to death the Jesuit Father Sennat.”61 French and Canadian forces used the fort to collect artillery, store provisions, and organize small detachments of Indian allies to skirmish with the Chickasaws in advance of a final assault. In response, Vitry prayed, “God grant that so many preparations may have a successful issue!”62 Involvement in military operations against the Chickasaw forced Vitry and other Jesuits to consider the meaning of death not only for themselves, but also for their indigenous enemies. By witnessing and in some cases participating in public ceremonies of torture and execution, Jesuits expressed mixed feelings about their dual role as missionaries seeking to convert Native Americans and as chaplains seeking to punish Native Americans. It 60. “Journal of Father Vitry of the Society of Jesus, Army Chaplain during the War Against the Chickasaw,” Mid-America 28, no. 1 (January 1946), 30, 32, 33, 40. See also “Journal du Pere Vitry de La Compagnie de jesus faisant fonctions D’aumonier des troupes destinées a La Guerre contre Les Sauvages Tchikachas en 1738, 1739, et le commencement de 1740,” Nova Francia 4, no. 3 (May–June 1929), 146–166. 61. Luc François Nau to Madame Aulneau, Sault St. Louis, Quebec, 12 Oct. 1739, JR 69:39. 62. “Journal of Father Vitry,” 43. MICHAEL PASQUIER 323 was in the latter capacity that Jesuits showed themselves to be less interested in becoming martyrs and more interested in avenging the deaths of those made into martyrs. In 1739, for example, a group of Potawatomis offered one scalp and three Natchez captives to Bienville at Fort Assumption. A Christian Potawatomi chief, according to Vitry, greeted Bienville as “Father” and announced that “the Great Master of Life has favored my warriors by delivering these enemies into their hands.” Referring to the Natchez, the chief supposedly said, “Here is some meat for which you are hungry; it is not fat. I beg you to accept it at once.” Bienville kept a sixteen-year-old Natchez woman as his “present,” but returned a Natchez “man of thirty” and “one [female] aged fifty” to the Potawatomis with the “hope that you will enjoy yourselves.” Vitry then observed a group of Missouri Indians perform “their dog dance” by “fall[ing] on the body of the [male Natchez] victim and ris[ing] with a piece of flesh in their teeth, their mouths full of blood.” The next morning, Vitry described how “the man is hung by his wrists from the pole; and fire-brands and torches are applied to all parts of his body until death.” The Natchez woman “was also put to the torture by fire, but with less cruelty.” Of the spectacle, Vitry wrote, “Human nature stands aghast and trembles with horror at the sight of these tortures.” He also wondered about “what force sustains these barbares in the midst of their most horrible torments, to such a point that they neither shed tears nor cry aloud.” Vitry speculated that Sénat must have exhibited similar “fortitude” when the Chickasaws recognized him as a priest, “bound [him] on the cadre,” and burned him alive.63 Vitry survived the Chickasaw wars and became Jesuit superior of Louisiana in 1739. Baudouin continued to operate as missionary and diplomat to the Choctaws during the 1740s, a decade marked by violent intervillage conflict within the Choctaw nation and sporadic clashes with the Chickasaws. In 1742, Baudouin reported to the commandent of Mobile, Henry de Louboey, that “the Choctaws have never appeared better disposed to go and take scalps from the Chickasaws than they have appeared this spring.”64 A year later, he played a pivotal role in convincing Choctaw chiefs to attend a gift-giving ceremony in Mobile hosted by the new governor of Louisiana, Pierre François Rigault, Marquis de Cavagnal et Vaudreuil.65 63. Ibid., 44, 45, 46, 47. 64. Baudouin to Louboey, 20 May 1742, Chickasawhay (?), MPA 4:196. 65. Pierre François Rigault, Marquis de Cavagnal et Vaudreuil, “Speech to be made to the Choctaw on the peace demanded by the Chickasaw—to be delivered by Father Baudouin, Missionary, to the Chickachahee and Apekas,” 29 Aug. 1743, 3:2, LO 9, Vaudreuil Letterbook (hereafter VL), LAC; and Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 14 Nov. 1743, 3:27, LO 9, VL, LAC. 324 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE For the remainder of his governorship, Vaudreuil relied on Baudouin for information relevant to French interests in the lower Mississippi valley, relaying the Jesuit’s intelligence on the Choctaws and Chickasaws to officials in Louisiana, Canada, and France.66 In turn, Vaudreuil sometimes instructed Baudouin to deliver harangues (speeches) to chiefs on matters of trade, warfare, and diplomacy. Harangues usually began by invoking the authority of the governor, describing him as “the great chief of all the French of the colony and the father of all the hommes rouges and in particular of all the Choctaws.”67 After several years of working together, Vaudreuil acknowledged Baudouin for his “great assistance to me because of the knowledge that he has of [the Choctaws]” and for being “very zealous for the welfare of the service.”68 Vaudreuil was especially appreciative of Baudouin’s diplomatic talents after the Choctaw chief Red Shoes was implicated in the killing of three Frenchmen in 1746, one of whom was accused of raping Choctaw women.69 When Jadart de Beauchamp arrived at Chickasawhay to negotiate blood reparation with the Choctaws, Baudouin posted a French flag outside his residency and worked on behalf of the governor’s emissary “to put everything back in order there once they had whitened the ground that the ill-intentioned had reddened.”70 Bloodshed did not abate, however, as a civil war within the Choctaw confederation raged for the remainder of the 1740s, culminating in the assassination of Red Shoes by an unidentified Choctaw assailant in 1747. It was during this period of civil war that Veudreuil requested an increase in support for Jesuit missions from Maurepas, the Minister of the Marine. The minister admitted that “you find many advantages to augment the number of missionaries to the Choctaws,” not 66. Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 13 May 1744, 3:80, LO 9, VL, LAC; Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 25 June 1744, 3:89, LO 9, VL, LAC; Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 30 Jul. 1744, 3:95, LO 9, VL, LAC; Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 9 Sept. 1744, 3:117, LO 9, VL, LAC; and Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 28 Sept. 1744, 3:135, LO 9, VL, LAC. 67. Vaudreuil, “Speech to be made to the Choctaw . . . by Father Baudouin,” 29 Aug. 1743, Louisiana, 3:2, LO 9, VL, LAC. See also, Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 23 Sept. 1744, 3:126, LO 9, VL, LAC; and Vaudreuil, “Speech to be delivered to the Choctaw,” 26 Sept. 1744, 3:131, LO 9, VL, LAC 68. Vaudreuil to Maurepas, 12 Feb. 1744, New Orleans, MPA 4:223–224. 69. Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 13 Oct. 1745, 3:180, LO 9, VL, LAC; and Vaudreuil to Baudouin, 19 Dec. 1745, 3:185, LO 9, VL, LAC. 70. Beauchamp’s Journal, 16 Sept.-19 Oct. 1746, MPA 4:270, 274. For more on Red Shoes and the Choctaw civil war, see Richard White, “Red Shoes: Warrior and Diplomat,” in Struggle and Survival in Colonial America, ed. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash (Berkeley, 1981), 49–68; and Patricia Galloway, “Choctaw Factionalism and Civil War, 1746–1750,” in Pre-Removal Choctaw History: Exploring New Paths, ed. Greg O’Brien (Norman, 2008), 70–102. MICHAEL PASQUIER 325 the least of which was the possibility for the Jesuits to reinforce the diplomatic work already performed by Baudouin. But the minister also recognized how difficult it was to provide the Jesuits with pensions suitable for administering des missions des sauvages in Louisiana. In an attempt to reduce operational expenses, Maurepas took the advice of Vitry to “abandon all the other [Jesuit] missions” except those in New Orleans, Illinois, and the Choctaw nation, almost ending Indian missionary work in the lower Mississippi valley for the remainder of the French colonial period.71 Following the death of Vitry, Baudouin was appointed Jesuit superior and vicar general of Louisiana in 1750. Baudouin’s return to New Orleans reignited a longstanding dispute over ecclesiastical authority between the Jesuits and the Capuchins. It also hastened the Jesuit retreat from missionary fields. For the next ten years, a fledgling presence among the Alabamas and Choctaws was all that remained of the Jesuit’s original mandate to maintain a network of Indian missions in the region. Finally, with the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1763, the Louisiana Superior Council ordered the dissolution of the Jesuit community, confiscation of its property, and expulsion of its six remaining members. Baudouin, because of his advanced age and poor health, was the only Jesuit to stay in Louisiana following the Superior Council’s ruling. He died of natural causes in 1768 after spending forty years in the colony. Upon returning to France after the suppression in 1764, François Philibert Watrin, S.J., attempted to recast the image of Louisiana’s banished Jesuits as a body of missionaries who were committed to the conversion of Native Americans, open to the possibility of martyrdom, and loyal to the colonial government. He highlighted the charity of the Jesuits, “especially when it attains that eminent degree at which it pledges a minister of Jesus Christ to give his life for his brethren.” Poisson, Souel, and Sénat topped his list of missionaries who were exposed to “trials . . . which may be counted as [the] most precious fruits of their missions . . . in the midst of barbarians.” He did not mention Gravier, a Jesuit, and Foucault and St. Cosme, both priests of the Foreign Mission; their deaths at the hands of Native Americans were all but forgotten by the time of the Jesuit suppression. Another fruit of Jesuit labors, according to Watrin, was the capacity to be “useful—we dare say, even necessary—to the colony.” Baudouin’s mission among the Choctaws was Watrin’s primary case in point. Were it not for Baudouin’s ability “to maintain an alliance between this 71. Maurepas to Vaudreuil, 30 Sept. 1747, Versailles, LO 9, VL, LAC. 326 MISSIONARIES, MARTYRDOM, AND WARFARE nation and ours,” Watrin argued, New Orleans would have been sacked and the colony left in ruins. “It was to prevent such acts,” he continued, “that the missionaries endured the burden of living with the Chactas, so barbarous a people, and made them feel how advantageous to them was the friendship of the French.” Put simply, the chance of death “was the price at which the missionary then rendered services to the colony.”72 Watrin’s summary of the Society of Jesus in eighteenth-century Louisiana illustrates how closely Jesuits associated the ideals of martyrdom to the overall welfare of the French colonial regime. Jesuits, along with priests of the Foreign Missions earlier in the century, joined their lay counterparts in developing diplomatic relations with Native American groups, which led them to subordinate their interest in indigenous conversion and to focus on their own personal survival and that of the colony. Missionaries also played an important part in the perpetuation of Franco-Indian wars in Louisiana, both when they died and when they did everything they could not to die. Based on evidence surrounding the deaths of six missionaries in the lower Mississippi valley, the meaning of martyrdom was subject to the multiple interpretations of French priests and laypeople who were complicit in the manifestation of a decidedly martial society that valued violence, revenge, and honor. By putting in conversation the thoughts and actions of men as different as Bienville and Baudouin, pious characterizations of martyrdom of the kind found in the Jesuit Relations complement other depictions of the French responding to the murders of priests with fear, anger, and retribution. From this perspective, the death of a member of the clergy was not only a matter of retrospective hagiographic edification; it was also a moment when lay and ordained colonists worked together to avoid the possibility for future martyrs. For Louisiana’s Jesuits and priests of the Foreign Missions, the will to live often surpassed the will to die, which is not surprising given how involved missionaries were in colonial warfare. 72. François Philibert Watrin, “Bannissement des Jésuites de la Louisiane,” 3 Sept. 1764, Paris, JR 70:247, 253, 241. Rome’s Response to Slavery in the United States SUZANNE KREBSBACH* The Catholic Church in the United States remained politically neutral about slavery and abolition in the decades before the Civil War, partly because of the influence of John England, bishop of the diocese of Charleston. In a much publicized defense of slavery, England argued that slavery was a political issue, not a moral one. Clergy and laity, however, wrote repeatedly to Rome and criticized their leaders for neglecting to promote a ministry to free and enslaved African Americans. Roman authorities, particularly those of Propaganda Fide, were reluctant to take a stand on this important issue until near the end of the Civil War. This paper explains why John England defended slavery and why Propaganda did not issue guidance on one of the greatest moral dilemmas in American history. Keywords: Slavery; Bishop John England; Propaganda Fide; Abolition; Pope Gregory XVI T he politics and morality of slavery bedeviled every American citizen and every religious denomination in the United States prior to the American Civil War. The issue fractured Protestant churches into proslavery Southern and antislavery (or neutral) Northern branches. The Catholic Church in the United States did not split over slavery. While historians have taken a broad view of the American Church on this point, it is time to take a closer look at the issue of slavery, race, and Catholicism by looking at Rome’s day-to-day decisions on this critical issue.1 *Suzanne Krebsbach is an independent scholar in Charleston, South Carolina. She thanks the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame-sponsored conference “North Atlantic Communities in Rome, 1622–1939” where she presented an early version of this essay in June 2017. 1. See Maria Genoino Caravaglios, The American Catholic Church and the Negro Problem in the XVIII–XIX Centuries (Charleston, SC, 1974); Madeline Hooke Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy (New York, 1944). By “Rome,” I mean the popes, the Curia, and, most importantly, the Propaganda Fide. 327 328 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, American attitudes were mixed on the issue of slavery, but political fault lines developed on slavery and antislavery after the Denmark Vesey Plot in South Carolina in 1822 and Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1831. The issue came to dominate nearly every aspect of American culture. By the 1830s, many abolitionists insisted on the immediate abolition of slavery, while some Southerners threatened to nullify federal laws and dissolve the Union. Nullification created a constitutional crisis, which was temporarily resolved in 1833 and 1850, but only laid to rest in 1865 when the American Civil War ended.2 Among the nation’s Catholic bishops John England’s opinions on slavery, while controversial, left a lasting mark on the American Church and its response to this political issue.3 When Bishop John England learned in March 1840 of Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 apostolic letter In supremo apostolates, he insisted that his close friend Pope Gregory may have condemned the slave trade, but he would never have condemned the institution of domestic slavery, and he refused to believe the pontiff had done so.4 John England had reason to believe he knew the mind of the pope. In 2. The literature on slavery, anti-slavery, abolition, and anti-abolition in antebellum American politics and culture is vast. One important recent work is Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York, 2009). 3. John England, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1786, was appointed first bishop of Charleston, South Carolina in 1820 and died in 1842. He was a man of exceptional ability and eloquence who had a lasting impact on his time. While aspects of his life and thought have been extensively studied, the standard biography is Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England: First Bishop of Charleston (1786‒1842), 2 vols. (New York, 1927). Also valuable is Peter Clarke, A Free Church in a Free Society: The Ecclesiology of John England, Bishop of Charleston, 1820–1843, a Nineteenth Century Missionary Bishop in the Southern United States (Hartsville, SC, 1982). Adam L. Tate touches on John England’s attempt to blend Catholicism and American republicanism. See Adam L. Tate, “Confronting Abolitionism: Bishop John England, American Catholicism and Slavery,” Journal of the Historical Society 9, no. 3 (2009), 373‒404, here 373. For additional analysis of England’s lasting intellectual legacy, see R. Frank Saunders, Jr., and George A. Rogers, “Bishop John England of Charleston: Catholic Spokesman and Southern Intellectual, 1820–1842,” Journal of the Early Republic 13 (1993), 301–322. 4. John England worked closely with Pope Gregory in the 1830s as the pontiff sought to reestablish the Church in the republic of Haiti. Guilday, Life and Times, 2:270‒313. For the state of the Church in Haiti, see Adolphe Cabon, Notes sur l’Histoire Religieuse d’ Haiti de la Revolution au Concordat, 1789‒1860 (Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1933); Jean L. Comhaire, “The Haitian Schism, 1804‒1860,” Anthropological Quarterly 29, no. 1 New Series (1956), 1‒10; and Richard W. Rousseau, “Bishop John England: 1837 Relazione to Rome on His Haitian Mission,” Archivium Historiae Pontificiae 11 (1973), 269‒288. John F. Quinn discusses John England and the controversial apostolic letter as well as Irish response to abolition. See John F. Quinn, “Three Cheers for the Abolitionist Pope!: American Reaction to Gregory XVI’s SUZANNE KREBSBACH 329 FIGURE 1. Bishop John England (1786–1842), first bishop of Charleston, South Carolina (1820–1842), from National Cyclopædia of American Biography (1893). (Wikimedia Commons) the 1830s the Charleston bishop and the pontiff had worked closely on diplomatic negotiations with the republic of Haiti over a proposed concordat. Pope Gregory XVI had tapped the prelate for his diplomatic skills as well as for England’s experience working with a large black Catholic population in South Carolina. When the apostolic letter appeared, John England may not have appreciated the pontiff’s long experience in various offices of the Curia which formed the background of his well-known brief.5 As Mauro Cappellari, Pope Gregory’s influence on the church, missions, and world diplomacy extended for over thirty years, first at the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (1814), which was associated with the Secretary of State’s office, followed by Holy Office (1816), and eventually the Congregation of the Propaganda (1826) where he was Cardinal Prefect. As Pope Gregory XVI, he reigned from 1831 Condemnation of the Slave Trade, 1840‒1860,” Catholic Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2004), 67‒93. He notes that the pope made no effort to clarify his position. Quinn, 71n19. 5. For a thorough discussion of the Roman diplomacy behind this papal document see Quinn, “Three Cheers,” 68‒71. 330 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. to1846.6 Among other interests, he encouraged missions in North and South America, Africa, and Asia and established new vicariates there. He opened negotiations with Haiti to revive the dormant Church in that republic. He negotiated with Catholic and non-Catholic powers, especially with Great Britain to attain his goal of centralizing church administration in Ireland and Great Britain.7 His career therefore, could be seen as a continuum: repairing the Church in Europe from the shattering force of revolution and war and extending the Church worldwide. Rather than a reactionary, he could be seen as the creator of a new and more powerful Church, one not directly dependent on political power.8 Great Britain was the dominant power in the post-revolutionary, post-Napoleonic world order. It was no great surprise, therefore, that the Holy See would look to Great Britain for international stability and as a means of achieving its own centralizing goal. Gregory and his three predecessors, Pius VII, Leo XII, and Pius VIII, were pragmatic in pursuing similar goals.9 The British Foreign Office, if not the British Crown itself, 6. Philippe Boutry, “Gregory XVI,” Encyclopedia of the Papacy, vol. 2 (New York, 2002), 670‒675. Christopher Korten, “Defining Moments: The Reasons Mauro Cappellari Became Pope Gregory XVI,” Archivium Historiae Pontificiae 47 (2009), 17‒39. Korten provides an important insight into the relationship of John England and Pope Gregory. See also Christopher Korten, “Converging Worlds: Paul Cullen in the World of Mauro Cappellari,” in Cardinal Paul Cullen and His World, ed. Dàire Keogh and Albert McDonnell (Dublin, Ireland, 2011), 34‒46. 7. See Oliver P. Rafferty, “The Catholic Church, Ireland and the British Empire, 1800– 1921,” Institute of Historical Research 84, no. 224 (2011), 288‒309, for an example of papal pragmatism in negotiating Catholic issues with Protestant Great Britain. 8. Richard Gray argues that Pope Gregory XVI’s experience in the Propaganda Fide gave him universal rather than a European perspective on the Church and the collapse of the ancien règime presented the opportunity to implement papal authority in Africa free of European influence. See Richard Gray, “The Catholic Church and National States in Western Europe During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, from a Perspective of Africa,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 14, no. 1 (2001), 148‒55, here 151. Jean L. Comhaire points out the influence of the Napoleonic wars and the South American revolutions on the Haitian Church. Comhaire generalizes this era. The wars of Napoleon lasted from 1803 to 1815. By 1826 all of Latin America was free of colonial rule except for Cuba and Puerto Rico. See Comhaire, “Haitian Schism,” 3. As Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman correctly pointed out, the papacy was reconstituted in 1814 when Pius VII returned to Rome from Napoleon’s prison. H.E. Cardinal [Nicholas] Wiseman, Recollections of the Last Four Popes and of the Rome in Their Times (Boston, 1858), 71. For an observation on the post-Napoleonic Church, see Luca Codigola, “Roman Catholic Conservatism in a New North Atlantic World, 1760‒1829,” William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2007), 717‒56, here 720‒21. 9. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven, CT, 1997), 195‒221. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 331 had been determined to abolish the worldwide slave trade. When Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, secretary of the Foreign Office, asked the Holy See to support Britain’s crusade against the international slave trade, Gregory acceded because it coincided with his worldwide goals for the Church. Gregory published the apostolic letter In supremo apostolatus on December 11, 1839. Ten days later Palmerston sent a copy of the document to Lord Howard Walden, British consul in Lisbon. Palmerston stated that the pope, who wrote his apostolic letter at the request of the British government, interdicted and denounced all African slave trade of whatever kind. Walden was to communicate this to the Portuguese government and publish it in Portugal’s newspapers. A cover letter and copy went to George S.S. Jerningham, British agent in Madrid, with the same instructions. Sir Augustus John Foster, British agent in Turin, replied to Palmerston that by the time he received the dispatch, the papal letter had been published in all the Italian papers. Henry Canning, British agent in Hamburg, also noted the local papers had already published the brief by the time he received orders from the Foreign Office.10 Palmerston sent a cover letter and copy of the brief to other important consuls including Sir Henry Steven Fox, British minister to the United States, and to the British consuls in New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans, thus blanketing the country. Although there was no doubt in the British Foreign Office, or in the press in Europe and South America, that In supremo apostolatus reprehended slavery and the slave trade, John England refused to accept this.11 The reception in the United States, however, was guarded. Public opinion saw the British (abolitionist) collusion with a Catholic power as doubly offensive. The Emancipator, an abolitionist paper, was enthusiastic that the pope took such a step, but national sentiment was cool to a British attempt 10. Palmerston to Lord Howard de Walden, Foreign Office, December 21, 1839. British Parliamentary Papers, Slave Trade, Volume 18, Class B, No. 147, 251. [Hereinafter BPP, Slave Trade]. Walden noted the Spanish papers already had the news; BPP, Slave Trade, Volume 19, Palmerston to Mr. H. S. Fox, December 31, 1839, Class D, No. 170, 193. The British consulate in Charleston, SC, was vacant at the time. BPP, Slave Trade, Volume 18, Palmerston to Sir George S.S. Jerningham, Foreign Office, December 31, 1839, Class B, No. 32, 26; BPP, Slave Trade, Volume, 19, Sir Augustus Foster to Viscount Palmerston, March 5, 1840, Class C (Further Series), No. 23, 15; BPP Slave Trade, Henry Canning to Palmerston, Hamburg, March 3, 1840, Class C (Further Series), No. 20, 14. Palmerston sent the same cover letter and copy of the papal letter to British agents in Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Sardinia, Tuscany, the Two Sicilies, Argentina, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Chile, Haiti, Mexico, Uruguay, New Granada (Columbia, Ecuador and Panama), Peru, and Venezuela. 11. Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. It abolished slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833. Palmerston was determined to eradicate world-wide slave trade. 332 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. to dictate global policy on slavery that included the right to seize slaves and ships. The anti-British stance of American bishops of Irish extraction gave the clergy an easy opportunity to dismiss the messenger and the message. In South Carolina, the Charleston Mercury considered the British foreign policy move to be part of a crusade against the South. John England acknowledged the news but dismissed it as a repetition of well-known positions, sneering that it “but repeats the previous injunction of Paul III to the Spaniards or Urban VIII to the Portuguese, and Benedict XIV and Pius VII.”12 The following week England printed in his diocesan newspaper, the United States Catholic Miscellany, the text of the papal letter as well as his opinion on the topic. The prelate’s rhetoric echoed that of other Southerners. Abolishing slavery would be injurious to property and to society. Slaves were as well off as other laborers. He refused to discuss the moral effects of slavery. Abolitionists had sold slaves to Southerners, and now they wanted to abolish slavery in the name of humanity. Pope Gregory’s letter made two points, England said. It is unchristian to enslave free people, and it is unchristian to mistreat slaves and deprive them of physical and moral necessities. The prelate insisted that the pope’s letter was “far from censuring” slave owners “who manage their property with a delicacy, a responsibility and perplexity, to which they who vilify us are strangers.” He was “firmly of the opinion, that in all the South there is less cruelty and injustice committed against the slave by his owner, than there is committed by the American Abolitionists against the American Slave holders.”13 At their Fourth Provincial Council of Baltimore in May 1840, held two months after receiving the apostolic letter, the bishops of the United States were too occupied with disciplinary matters to dwell on the letter and explore its implication.14 In 1841, John England argued forcefully in his rebuttal to John Forsyth that slavery was a political issue but not a moral one.15 England’s influence on the matter coincided with other 12. Charleston Mercury, “Federal Game of Abolition,” March 2, 1840, 2; “The Crusade Against the South,” March 4, 1840, 2; “Defining a Position,” March 5, 1840, 2; United States Catholic Miscellany, March 7, 1840, 279. [Hereinafter USCM]. 13. “The Slave Trade,” USCM, March 14, 1840, 286. 14. See Edward Misch, The American Bishops and the Negro from the Civil War to the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1865–1884 (Rome, 1968), 51. 15. John England published his open letters to John Forsyth in the United States Catholic Miscellany between September 1840 and February 1841. They were reprinted in the bishop’s collected works. See The Works of the Right Reverend John England, First Bishop of Charleston, ed. Sebastian Messmer, 7 vols. (Cleveland, 1909), 5:183‒311. John Forsyth’s career included terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from Georgia. He also served as the Governor of Georgia and as Secretary of State under Presidents SUZANNE KREBSBACH 333 FIGURE 2. Bishop Patrick Lynch (1817–1882), third bishop of Charleston, South Carolina (1857–1882), Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. (Wikimedia Commons) American Catholic prelates’ opinions. At their Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, convened in 1843, the nation’s bishops urged Catholics to follow civil authorities on slavery and antislavery, which meant, in effect, maintaining the political status quo.16 The Congregation of the Propaganda Fide appeared unconcerned that American bishops abdicated their moral responsibility on the issue. While officially neutral from 1840, most American bishops supported slavery. Bishops Augustin Verot of Savannah, Georgia, Martin J. Spalding of Louisville, Kentucky, Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Francis P. Kenrick of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Forsyth published his address in August 1840. See John Forsyth, Address to the People of Georgia (Fredericksburg, VA, 1840). For a full discussion of this American politician, see Alvin Duckett, John Forsyth: Political Tactician (Athens, GA, 1962). 16. The bishops’ decision mirrored the Missouri Compromise of 1820. See Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009). Rice, American Catholic Opinion, 63‒85; Joseph E. Capizzi, “For What Shall We Repent? Reflections on the American Bishops, Their Teaching and Slavery in the United States, 1839–1861,” Theological Studies 65 (2004), 767‒91, here, 781. 334 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. Philadelphia (later Archbishop of Baltimore), John England and Patrick Lynch of Charleston, South Carolina, and John Hughes of New York, were among the more prominent defenders of slavery.17 The Propaganda Fide criticized Verot in 1861 and Martin in 1864 for their pastoral letters which advocated Southern slavery.18 An examination of the correspondence between the Propaganda Fide and American Catholic laity and clergy reveals how officials of Propaganda, influenced by its consultor Giovanni Antonio Grassi, tolerated a wide variety of opinion and actions. If American Catholic prelates avoided the topic, clergy and laity had many questions. Who in Rome guided American Catholic teaching on slavery? Was Roman policy well formed? Evidence from the Propaganda Fide archives suggests the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Antonio Grassi influenced Propaganda’s opinions on American matters between 1818 until his death in 1849. Grassi was president of Georgetown University in 1810 when he arrived from Europe. He served as head of the Jesuit mission in Maryland in 1812. At Georgetown and in Maryland, the Jesuits held slaves. He became a United States citizen in 1815 but left the country in 1818 to take up duties in Rome where he was consultor to the Propaganda Fide on American matters. He never returned to the United States. Grassi’s notes on his American sojourn and his advice to the Propaganda 17. For Spalding’s views, see David Spalding, “Martin John Spalding’s ‘Dissertation on the American Civil War,’” Catholic Historical Review 52, no. 1 (1966), 66‒85. For a look at John Hughes, see Rena Mazyck Andrews, “Slavery Views of a Northern Prelate,” Church History 3, no. 1 (1934), 60‒78 and Richard Shaw, Dagger John: The Unquiet Life and Times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York (New York, 1977). Archbishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati was an antislavery minority voice. See David Endres, “Rectifying the Fatal Contrast: Archbishop John Purcell and the Slavery Controversy among Catholics in Civil War Cincinnati,” Ohio Valley History (2002), 23‒33. For Patrick Lynch’s views, see David C.R. Heisser, Patrick N. Lynch, 1817‒1882: Third Catholic Bishop of Charleston (Columbia, SC, 2015). For scholarship on Verot, see Michael V. Gannon, Rebel Bishop: The Life and Era of Augustin Verot (Milwaukee, WI, 1964). 18. “Within certain limits he [Augustin Verot] tries to justify slavery as it was practiced in the South. It does not seem that everything he says can be accepted,” Note by the Propaganda Fide [Hereinafter PF] Minutante, January 4, 1861. Finbar Kenneally, United States Documents in the Propaganda Fide Archives, A Calendar, 12 volumes (Washington, DC, 1966), 3:490. Microfilm, University of Notre Dame Archives. [Hereinafter referred to as U.S. Documents, and MPRF UNDA respectively]. The PF note is dated the same day as Verot’s American sermon, so the PF date is incorrect. See A Tract for Our Times: Slavery & Abolition Being the Substance of a Sermon Preached . . . on the 4th Day of January 1861: Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer . . . New Edition (New Orleans, 1861). Verot preached his sermon in January 1861; Martin wrote his pastoral in December 1861. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 335 Fide on American matters reflect his understanding of the American society and culture as it was when he lived there.19 The Congregation of the Propaganda Fide was the administrative branch of the Holy See responsible for missions worldwide.20 Many European priests, new to the mission fields of North America, were unfamiliar with pastoral issues generated by this slavery-dominated culture.21 The Prefects and Secretaries of Propaganda knew American clergy faced obstacles in dealing with slaves and free blacks, but their answers to questions fueled more questions. From repeated requests to Propaganda for guidance, it was clear that Propaganda struggled to communicate basic pastoral guidelines. Bishop William Dubourg of New Orleans, Louisiana, born in Saint Domingue and reared in France, asked Propaganda for advice on slaves and slave marriages and baptisms.22 In 1819, the Vincentian missionary priest Felix de Andreis discussed his missionary problems in frontier St. Louis, Missouri, with the Propaganda, dwelling on evangelization 19. On Jesuits and slavery, see Thomas Murphy, Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1717‒1838 (New York, 2001). For a look at Grassi’s American activities, see Gilbert J. Garraghan, “John Anthony Grassi, S.J., 1775‒1849,” Catholic Historical Review 23, no. 3 (1937), 273‒92; Edward Devitt, “Georgetown College in the Early Days,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 12 (1909), 21‒37. Oscar Handlin treated Grassi’s views on America as a European visitor rather than an American citizen. See Oscar Handlin, This Was America (Cambridge, MA, 1949), 137‒50. Philip Gleason points out that Grassi was not morally outraged by slavery. See Philip Gleason, Documentary Reports on Early American Catholicism (New York, 1978), 21. Grassi’s report on his American experience went through three editions between 1818 and 1820. See Notizie varie sullo stato presente della Repubblica degli Stati Uniti dell’ America Settentrionale, scritte al Principio del 1818, dal Padre Giovanni Grassi della Compagnia di Gesù, part of which was reprinted in English as “The Catholic Religion in the United States in 1818,” Woodstock Letters 11, no. 3 (1882), 30‒246. 20. For a general introduction to the Propaganda Fide archives, see Luca Codignola, Guide to Documents Relating to French and British North America in the Archives of the Sacred Congregation ‘de Propaganda Fide’ in Rome, 1622–1799 (Ottawa, Ontario, 1991). See also Francis X. Blouin, Vatican Archives: An Inventory and Guide to Historical Documents of the Holy See (New York, 1998). Also valuable is Holy See’s Archives as a Source for American History, ed. Kathleen Sprows Cummings and Matteo Sanfilippo (Notre Dame, IN, 2016). Although out of the scope of this study, Robert Trisco offers insight into the Propaganda Fide’s practice in the American Church. See Robert Trisco, The Holy See and the Nascent Church in the Middle Western United States, 1826‒1850 (Rome, 1962). 21. See Michael Pasquier, “‘Though their Skin Remains Brown, I hope Their Souls will Soon be White’: Slavery, French Missionaries, and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the American South, 1789–1865,” Church History 77, no. 2 (2008), 337‒70. 22. William DuBourg to PF, n.d. Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 1:213. MPRF UNDA. For biography of Bishop Du Bourg, see Annabelle M. Melville, Louis William Du Bourg, Bishop of Louisiana and the Floridas, Bishop of Montauban 1766‒1833, Volume 2, Bishop in Two Worlds, 1818‒1833 (Chicago, 1986). 336 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. FIGURE 3. Father Giovanni Antonio Grassi, S.J., (1775–1849), President of Georgetown University, 1811–1817, Georgetown Presidents Collection. (Wikimedia Commons) to ‘sectaries,’ blacks, and Indians.23 Catholic plantation owners in Colleton District south of Charleston encouraged missionary work among their slaves, but the diocesan priest, Felix Carr, had problems which he detailed for Cardinal Prefect Giacomo Filippo Fransoni and Secretary Alessandro Barnabò. His primary difficulties included the vast number of slaves in his care and size of his ministry. Carr traveled between rice plantations on Hutchinson’s Island along the Atlantic coast, the inland cotton plantations of St. Bartholomew Parish, and Charleston’s Cathedral of St. John and Saint Finbar with its large urban black Catholic community. Propaganda acknowledged his concerns and encouraged him to persevere in ministry.24 23. Felice [Felix] de Andreis to PF, 21 June 1819, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 1:356, MPRF UNDA. For other correspondence from De Andreis, see Frontier Missionary: Felix De Andreis, 1778‒1820: Correspondence and Historical Writing, Felix de Andreis, John E. Rybolt, and Nathaniel Michaud, (Vincentian Digital Books. 4, 2005) http://via.library.depaul.edu/ vincentian_ebooks/4. Accessed October 6, 2017. 24. Priests who studied at the Urban College of the Propaganda Fide in Rome were required to send PF biennial reports. Felix Carr to PF, October 25, 1848; same to the same, December 31, 1851, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 2:278, 533. PF to Carr, March 3, 1852, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 4:1455, MPRF UNDA. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 337 Missionary work among enslaved South Carolina Catholics was arduous and rewards seemed few to the missionaries.25 Although proponents of slavery, the antebellum bishops of Charleston, John England, Ignatius Reynolds, and Patrick Lynch, supported black evangelization and slave missions to the best of their limited abilities. During the 1840s and 1850s, Bishop Reynolds oversaw a flourishing free and enslaved black Catholic community in Charleston where black Catholic baptisms outnumbered white baptisms in the city parishes. Other bishops provoked criticism by their neglect or frank hostility. Another priest, Andre Cauvin, complained that his bishop Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, neglected black Catholics. Louis Binisse de Saint Victor, the papal consul in New York, repeatedly wrote to Propaganda about American bishops and the prevailing Catholic attitudes to slavery.26 The relative ease with which Ignatius Reynolds dealt with ideological elements of church policy suggests he may have been more pragmatic than his predecessor John England or successor Patrick Lynch. Reynolds, however, published John England’s collected writings in 1849, thus promoting throughout the country England’s apologia for slavery.27 Prejudice against free blacks added another element to the racially intolerant American church.28 In 1858, Harriet Thorp Thompson, a free black woman, blamed Archbishop John Hughes of New York for shutting black Catholics out of Catholic schools there. Free blacks in New York resented racist clergy and told Propaganda what they experienced. Thompson informed Pope Pius IX what she and other black Catholics needed from the Church. “If you would provide for the salvation of the black race in the United States who is [sic] going astray from neglect on 25. For a look at black Catholics in Charleston, see Suzanne Krebsbach, “Black Catholics in Antebellum Charleston,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 108, no. 2 (2007), 143‒59. 26. Krebsbach, “Black Catholics,” 153; Binisse to PF, November 15, 1861, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 2:1924; same to the same, September 18, 1863, same to the same, January 5, 1864, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 3:211, 341; PF Note, 1865, Kenneally, U. S. Documents, 3:495, MPRF UNDA. 27. Ignatius Reynolds, ed., The Works of the Rt. Rev. John England, 5 vols. (Baltimore, 1849). Bishop Sebastian Messmer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reprinted John England’s works in 1909, thus extending his influence into the twentieth century. Messmer is honored as the founder of the first black Catholic parish in his diocese. https://www.archmil.org/Bishops/ Former-Archbishops/Messmer.htm. 28. Rev. Andre Cauvin to PF, April 20, 1858, Kenneally, U. S. Documents, 2:1318, MPRF UNDA. 338 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. the part of those who have the care of souls, now I would not dare to say anything disrespectful against the ministers of God, but the reason of this neglect is as it is well known to your Holiness. . . .” She indicted Irish clergy. Children of all races attended public schools and private academies where they were taught anti-Catholic prejudice, but Catholic schools were only open to white children. “How can it be said they teach all nations when they will not let the black race mix with the white . . . leaving black children a prey to the wolf,” she asked. Because the letter was from an American Catholic, the letter went first to Propaganda, and may have been forwarded to the pope. A Propaganda official noted this issue would be kept in mind when they wrote to American bishops. If Propaganda wrote any letter to American bishops defining policy on slavery and racism, this letter has not surfaced.29 Racial prejudice was not limited to the laity. Felix de Andreis unsuccessfully tried to admit blacks to the Vincentian community as brothers in 1819. Partly as a way to provide more priests for black ministry, in 1853 the Redemptorist priest, Thaddeus Anwander of Baltimore, confessor to the black religious community, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, recommended a black Catholic William Augustine Williams to the Urban College of Propaganda Fide in Rome. Baltimore Archbishop Francis Kenrick added his recommendation as did Bishop Louis Amadeus Rappe of Cleveland, Ohio. Rappe suggested when Williams completed his studies Propaganda should send him to Haiti where racism was not as strong as in America. Kenrick suggested that Propaganda should send Williams to Liberia.30 Williams eventually decided he lacked a vocation and worked for a time in Europe, but returned to the United States despite the racial prejudice he encountered there. It is important to note that sponsors and other mentors always referred to Williams by race, possibly because Williams strongly identified as black. On his return, Williams taught in 29. Thompson’s letter was signed by two dozen others. Thompson to Pope Pius IX, October 29, 1853, Kenneally, Ibid., 2:715, MPRF UNDA. Propaganda’s promised letter never appeared. See PF Note: May 31, 1858, Kenneally, Ibid., 2:1320, MPRF UNDA. PF directed the archivist to summarize the letter to ‘certain’ American bishops regarding Negroes. A cryptic note in 1861 may refer to this letter or one similar. See Jeremiah Williams Cummings to PF, September 12, 1861, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 1:1891, MPRF UNDA. PF tried to communicate with “Confederate” bishops through Cummings, a New York priest and friend of Orestes Brownson, the well-known writer and Catholic convert. 30. De Andreis to PF, September 23, 1819, Kenneally, U, S. Documents, 1:371, MPRF UNDA; Anwander to PF, February 21 and July 23, 1855, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 2:877, MPRF UNDA; Louis A. Rappe to PF, November 24, 1854, Kenneally, Ibid., 2:838, MPRF UNDA; Kenrick to PF, October 4, 1854, Kenneally, Ibid., 2:1364, MPRF UNDA. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 339 the Baltimore black Catholic community.31 Other black Catholics, however, were not so identified. The Healy brothers of Georgia, sons of an Irish immigrant father and his mulatto slave, consciously avoided race identification. James Healy, later bishop of Portland, Maine, and his brothers Sherwood and Patrick, studied for the priesthood at France’s leading seminary, St. Sulpice, in Paris. Though of mixed race, they never referred to themselves as black, nor did their mentors refer to their race in correspondence with Propaganda. Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick of Boston, recommended to Propaganda that upon ordination Sherwood Healy not be sent back to the United States. The unspoken reason was Healy’s noticeable racial features.32 In addition to the steady stream of letters from laity and fellow clergy, Bishop Michael O’Connor of Pittsburgh and Bishop John Barry of Savannah, Georgia, wrote Cardinal Prefect Fransoni in 1852 specifically about needs for ministry to blacks. Although preoccupied with ever-present issues of priests and discipline, Fransoni asked Pope Pius IX to address evangelization of blacks and Native Americans in an audience on November 14, 1852. Excerpts of the United States bishops’ letters were sent to Monsignor Luca Pacifici, Secretary of Briefs to Princes, to draft a circular letter to American bishops on the subject.33 31. For a look at Baltimore’s black Catholic community, see Diane Batts Morrow, Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003). 32. John Bernard Fitzpatrick to PF, July 5, 1859, Kenneally, U.S. Documents, 2:1489. MPRF UNDA. For recent analysis of the Healy family and their religious vocations, see James O’Toole, Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family, 1820‒1920 (Amherst, MA, 2003). Cyprian Davis discusses the Healy brothers, race, and the Church. See Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York, 1990), 146‒52. Stephen Ochs discusses Williams and the Healy brothers in context of the priesthood. See Stephen J. Ochs, Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Priests, 1871–1960 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1990), 26‒32. 33. Propaganda Note, November 1852, Kenneally, U. S. Documents, 7:1058, MPRF UNDA; PF to L. Pacifici, November 18, 1852, Kenneally, Ibid., 4:1527, MPRF UNDA; Same to the same, November 27, 1852, Kenneally, Ibid., 4:1536, MPRF UNDA; M. O’Connor to PF, September 30, 1852, Kenneally, Ibid., 2:593, MPRF, UNDA. Bishop O’Connor resigned his see in 1860 and entered the Jesuit order. Later, he worked in Baltimore, MD with the Josephite fathers. Black Catholics there venerated his memory because of his zeal and devotion. Clipping [undated but probably 1872]. Diocese of Pittsburgh, Manuscripts, CDPA/2.30 UNDA. For a look at O’Connor’s early career, see Henry A. Szarnicki, Michael O’Connor: First Catholic Bishop of Pittsburgh, 1843–1860: A Story of the Catholic Pioneers of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1975). John Barry’s career as Bishop of Savannah was brief. See Patricia J. Rezek, “Right Reverend John Barry, Second Bishop of Savannah,” The Past: The Organ of the Ui Cinsealaigh Historical Society 17 (1990), 81‒87. 340 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. FIGURE 4. Bishop Michael O’Connor (1819–1872), first bishop of Pittsburgh (1853–1860), from National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1896. (Wikimedia Commons) Preoccupied with ongoing political crises related to the movement for unification of the states on the Italian peninsula and as sovereign ruler of his own Papal States, Pope Pius IX deferred addressing the issue of slavery and racism in America. In June 1853, Cardinal Prefect Fransoni dispatched Archbishop Gaetano Bedini, who would later serve as Secretary of Propaganda from 1856 to 1861, on a six-month fact-finding mission to the United States. Bedini was tasked with investigating the nation’s multiethnic Catholic community and exploring the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations with the United States. At the time, a consul represented the United States in Rome. In addition, he was instructed to observe the situation of blacks and Native Americans. Since Giovanni Grassi had died in 1849, Propaganda decided Bedini could provide firsthand information for the pope’s projected letter on the issue.34 34. Gaetano Bedini, born in Senigallia on the Italian Adriatic coast in 1806, had a distinguished career in the Curia, owing to the patronage of fellow Senigallia native, Pope Pius IX. Bedini was made an archbishop in 1852 and cardinal in 1861. He died in Viterbo in 1864. Elements of Bedini’s visit may be compared to those of Hungarian Louis Kossuth. See Steven Bela Vardy, “Louis Kossuth and the Slavery Question in America,” East European Quarterly 39, no. 4 (2005), 449‒64. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 341 Bedini’s visit was compromised from the outset by poor communication between the Holy See and the nation’s bishops whose advice had not been sought about this risky venture. He visited during a period of increasing Catholic European immigration which corresponded with a rise of antiCatholic movements. Catholic clergy were cool to the visitor and wary about the reactions his presence stirred. The United States government was unsure if Bedini was an official representative and should be greeted as such or if he traveled in a lesser capacity. Political chaos prevented the envoy from completing his mission. Anti-Catholic riots followed Bedini’s itinerary, and Italian revolutionaries tried to assassinate him in New York City. In his report Bedini dwelt at length on bishops, clergy, the anti-Catholic riots, and the assassination attempt. He was especially critical of the bishops’ lack of public support for him and his mission. He praised Catholic laymen and America in general. Regarding racism, he told the pontiff the problem was so delicate as to be considered dangerous. The whole country was prejudiced about blacks. “Even though [a bishop] might be able to restrict his work to religious matters, his actions would always be abused or interpreted in a political sense. Therefore, it might be better for the Bishops to show and profess marked neutrality.” Blacks, however, must not be deprived of religion because of social or political reasons. He noted successful evangelization efforts in the nation’s capital. “I say nothing about the more remote States where slavery is so prevalent since I did not visit them. I do not dare say the Bishops and priests in these States are failing in their duties, but if there is evidence of this, I am sure some exhortations from the Sacred Congregation [of the Propaganda Fide] will produce happy results.”35 If there were exhortations to more charitable duty to blacks, the nation’s bishops managed to ignore them. But after American racist expression grew more febrile in 1861, Cardinal Barnabò and Propaganda took a more active role.36 War loomed when Abraham Lincoln won office in November 1860 and eleven Southern states seceded from the Union. On January 4, 1861, Bishop Augustin Verot of Savannah and other Southern bishops celebrated 35. James F. Connelly, The Visit of Archbishop Gaetano Bedini to the United States of America (June, 1853‒February, 1854) (Rome, 1960), 238‒39. For an analysis of Bedini’s visit, see David Endres, “Know-Nothings, Nationhood, and the Nuncio: Reassessing the Visit of Archbishop Bedini,” U.S. Catholic Historian 21, no. 4 (Fall 2003), 1‒16. Matteo Sanfilippo, “Monsignor Gaetano Bedini e l’emigrazione verso le Americhe,” in Archivio storico dell’emigrazione italiana, ed. Giovanni Pizzorusso and Matteo Sanfilippo (Rome, 2006), 179‒85. 36. Barnabò was Secretary of Propaganda from 1848 to 1856, then Prefect from 1856 to 1874. Gaetano Bedini followed Barnabò as Secretary from 1856 to 1861. See Thomas Nicholas Burke, “Eulogy of the Late Cardinal Barnabò,” Lectures and Sermons, 3 vols. (New York, 1888), 3:88‒96. 342 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. a day of fasting and prayer for the South. In his sermon the bishop said that slavery was part of the “plan of Divine Providence in the Government of this world” and implied that Southern slavery was God’s will.37 Later the same year, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, wrote a pastoral to his priests on the same subject and with the same emphasis.38 Martin’s opinions echoed what had become American practice of supporting slavery, but the prelate went further when he stated slavery was God’s will, and as such was far from evil. Slavery, in fact, could be considered Christian because it redeemed millions.39 Discrimination based on pseudoscientific racism, an early form of Social Darwinism, began to replace economics and politics as the preferred proslavery argument. Although Propaganda had considered sending a letter on slavery to the bishops of the United States at least since the 1850s, no papal document ever appeared. Perhaps Propaganda and Pope Pius IX chose to let political events take their course before finally taking action themselves. The outcome of the Civil War was not a foregone conclusion until 1864. Cardinal Barnabò found both Verot’s and Martin’s ideas unacceptable, but only in 1864, when the Confederacy appeared to be losing, did the Holy See condemn these Southern ideas as error. In the closing months of that conflict, consultor Vincenzo Gatti addressed the theology of slavery and condemned Bishop Martin’s pastoral by reinterpreting a twenty-five-year-old papal letter. By reaching back to Pope Gregory XVI’s 1839 slave trade document, Gatti acknowledged development in the doctrine of slavery. Heretofore Propaganda had treated slavery pragmatically without stressing moral issues. But when slavery had ignited a civil war, moral neutrality was no longer possible, and opinions such as Verot’s and Martin’s finally demanded response.40 Gatti opened the door to reexamine the origins of the apostolic letter. In doing so, he refuted Martin point by point. Inter alia, he insisted there 37. Verot, A Tract of the Times, 4; Gannon, Rebel Bishop, 32‒9. 38. Verot gave his sermon on January 4, 1861. Martin’s pastoral was dated August 21, 1861. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861. For Martin’s pastoral, see, Letter pastoral de Mgr. l’Eveque de Natchitoches, à l’occasion de la Guerre du Sud pour son Independence. (New Orleans, Catholic Propagator, 1861), Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center, P001.3258. 39. Maria Genoino Caravaglios, “A Roman Critique of the Pro-Slavery Views of Bishop Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 83, no. 2 (1972), 67–71, here 71. 40. New York Archbishop John Hughes also taught slavery was not inherently wrong. Joseph Capizzi, “A Development of Doctrine: The Challenge of Slavery to Moral Theology,” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1998), 209, 237. SUZANNE KREBSBACH 343 was no natural difference between blacks and whites. As he asserted, the pro-slavery argument that Africans sold their own people into slavery did not justify slavery. Several religious orders were devoted to redeeming slaves; most recently Niccolò Olivieri had founded a society in 1853 to redeem Christian slave girls in Egypt.41 Gatti insisted that slavery was a violation of a natural right. “The true Christian good is one which does not harm people’s rights.” “Philanthropists” were right to criticize the slave trade, but wrong to argue in favor of human ownership because slavery originated in violence and in violation of natural law. The black slave trade belonged precisely to this latter kind of chattel slavery which Bishop Martin defended. This mistake, Gatti held, favors the preservation of slavery in the Southern states in opposition to the popes who have condemned “not only the slave trade but slavery itself . . . and they have even condemned also those who favour it, or those who teach it to be lawful . . . and co-operate in any manner whatever in the practices indicated.”42 As Propaganda and Vincenzo Gatti upended justifications of slavery, Archbishop Martin Spalding organized the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, held in October 1866, to address the accumulation of issues since the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852 and to give direction to the Church for the post-Civil War era. In addition to the usual issues of personnel and ecclesiastical organization, Propaganda, through Spalding, directed American bishops to plan for evangelization of emancipated blacks. Only Verot of Savannah and Richard Whelan of Wheeling, West Virginia, supported the idea. Every bishop who had supported slavery before 1865, in effect, still supported a subordinate position for blacks after the Civil War. The same bishops who had defended slavery six years before were now tasked with extending ministry to former slaves. In a special session held after the official council closed, the prelates decided that diocesan synods and provincial councils would be better suited to the task of integrating blacks into the Catholic Church. In other words, they promoted a form of diocesan state’s rights or popular sovereignty, principles of governance that had been so pernicious in recent American history. Only at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 did American bishops agree to 41. See Fabian Klose, “‘A War of Justice and Humanity’: Abolition and Establishing Humanity as an International Norm,” in Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the 16th Century to the Present, ed. Fabian Klose (Gottingen, 2016), 169‒86. See James William Brodman, Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier (Philadelphia, PA, 1986) for a look at the Trinitarian and Mercedarian religious orders which worked to redeem slaves in the Mediterranean during the Crusades. 42. Caravaglios, Roman Critique, 79. 344 ROME’S RESPONSE TO SLAVERY IN THE U.S. fund this missionary work. Spalding’s “golden opportunity” to reap a harvest of souls was still unrealized at the end of the nineteenth century.43 Propaganda’s laissez-faire attitude to American slavery and racism until 1864 can be explained in part by Grassi’s pervasive influence during most of that period. Only after Grassi released his formidable hold on Propaganda did Rome emphasize the immorality of American slavery. The fact that Vincenzo Gatti had to emphasize an ongoing condemnation of slavery and the slave trade twenty-five years after the apostolic letter was written indicated that American clergy chose not to implement it or did not understand it. In post-bellum United States legalized racism replaced legalized bondage. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution gave blacks political freedom and (for men) voting rights, but through the late nineteenth century racist Jim Crow state and federal laws crushed those gains. Propaganda had defaulted to Giovanni Grassi’s opinion of slavery despite years of discord and thus missed nearly every opportunity to correct American Catholic attitudes to slavery. John England was wrong about the origins of the pope’s apostolic letter. His misguided defense of slavery permeated American thinking in the decades leading to the Civil War. American bishops had defaulted to John England’s views upon slavery and thus resisted nearly every opportunity to evangelize blacks. In spite of Vincenzo Gatti’s eloquent defense of antislavery, most American clergy could not break the chains of their racial bias. Equality in the Church required at least another century of struggle to redress this injustice. 43. Misch, American Bishops, 48; Davis, Black Catholics, 116‒36. Book Reviews GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS White Eagle, Black Madonna: One Thousand Years of the Polish Catholic Tradition. By Robert E. Alvis. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2016. Pp. xvi, 349. $125.00 clothbound. ISBN 978-0-8232-7170-2; $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8232-7171-9.) The central contention of Robert Alvis’ study, that the Catholic Church in Poland holds a peculiarly central place in that country’s history and culture, is inarguable. The Catholic Church has shaped the relationships between its Polish faithful and Poland’s non-Catholic populations within its changing borders, as well as between Poland and its various neighbors in Europe, and even globally in the places touched by Polonia—Poland’s diaspora. In turn, Poles also have enriched the Catholic faith in ways that until relatively recently—during and after St. John Paul II’s pontificate—many English speakers were unaware of. Alvis’ White Eagle, Black Madonna seeks to introduce and make intelligible to this audience some of the wide and deep crosscurrents that Catholicism’s instantiation in Poland have generated in that country and for the world. The work is divided into ten chapters that focus on distinct eras of Polish history and the role of the Catholic Church therein, though it is heavily weighted towards the modern era. The sketches of general Polish history are generally judicious, and interweave Poland’s changing geopolitics, internal political life, social development, and broader cultural changes with the story of its Catholic religious life. Several of the chapters are particularly important in demonstrating the dynamic ways in which Polish Catholics integrated their faith into their peculiar circumstances. In his discussion of the Reformation, for example (the strongest chapter in his work), Alvis notes Poland’s uniqueness as a country that for over a century saw much of Polish Catholicism’s lay leaders (especially among the nobility—the szlachta) and prominent clergy resist the pull of religious violence that engulfed Europe. This was due to their society’s distinctive, pre-existing multi-religious pluralism as well as the degree to which, even as Catholics, Poles had previously found themselves targeted by the crusading zeal and predatory geopolitical vison of the Teutonic Knights in the high Middle Ages. Polish resistance to religious violence was both politically pragmatic—the szlachta understood that a state strong enough to enforce religious uniformity would be strong enough to subordinate them—but also principled and faithful, as Polish Catholic lay believers and many of their clergy grasped the importance of a free religious conscience. There are many ironies of Poland’s Reformation. These 345 346 BOOK REVIEWS include how the papacy (and some Polish churchmen then and later) considered this refusal to use coercion a sign of religious and political weakness, as well as how this resistance played a key role in the resurgence of Catholicism in the late sixteenth century as the Church in Poland turned to teaching and evangelization instead of force to answer the challenge of Protestantism. Finally, perhaps the supreme irony of this graced historical moment is that while Polish Catholics resisted the pull of religious persecution during the Reformation, in a changed—and charged—geopolitical and cultural moment a century later, Polish Catholic lay and clerical elites enacted restrictions on religious life that their forefathers had rejected. This is an ambitious book that points to just how much needs to be done to make a vastly different experience of Catholicism accessible to a wider audience. While this reviewer wishes that the author had been able to develop at greater length the development of Poland’s rich Catholic spirituality and customs, as well as the sustained work of education, charitable works, and burgeoning social movements that were a primary mode of experiencing Catholicism for many Poles, Professor Alvis has offered us a concise and rewarding survey. University of Ohio DAVID CURP Religion and Society in the Diocese of St Davids 1485-2011. Edited by William Gibson and John Morgan-Guy. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2015. Pp. xii, 240. $124.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-4772-6. The diocese of St Davids was very much the largest diocese in Wales, covering most of the south of the country, until it was divided in two by the creation of the new diocese of Swansea and Brecon in 1923. This collection of essays does not set out to provide a comprehensive history of the diocese but nevertheless covers a great deal of ground, with four chapters devoted mainly to its history and four more on particular themes set in different periods. John Morgan-Guy, in two chapters devoted to the “long Reformation,” describes a process of change which developed slowly, hampered by a lack of key texts in accessible Welsh until, he argues, the turn of the sixteenth-seventeenth century. He presents it as a largely peaceful and successful process, which benefited from the willingness of many of St Davids’ bishops to make haste slowly in the matter of reform, resulting in a relatively small number of dissenters and very few recusants in the diocese after the Restoration. Robert Pope offers an analysis of theological debate in the diocese over three and a half centuries, moving from the detailed arguments between Calvinists and Arminians, through the rise of scholarly study and the establishment of theological colleges, of which there were several in the diocese, to the response to the challenges of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. William Gibson offers a robust contribution to the developing rehabilitation of the post-Restoration Church of England in Wales. Using examples from the diocese, BOOK REVIEWS 347 he argues that the “Great Awakening” was rooted in a church which had already been undergoing a process of reform from within for many years and that the perceived Welsh-English dichotomy in the Church does not stand up to scrutiny. Eryn White’s contribution considers the many revivals which affected the diocese in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and very early twentieth century. She discusses the nature of revival in general and its possible triggers, as well as possible reasons why the phenomenon disappeared after the 1904–05 revival. She argues that, perhaps for linguistic reasons, revivalism in Wales was barely touched by the development of the more mechanistic and deliberate approach to revival developed elsewhere from the mid-nineteenth century. Mike Benbough-Jackson examines the variety of St David’s Day celebrations in the diocese, categorizing them loosely as cultural, religious, political, or military. He notes their fluctuating popularity and their tendency to provide a focus, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, for the expression of rival political and religious points of view. Harri Williams’ study of Bishop John Owen highlights his role in the disestablishment debate. Williams argues that Owen’s role in defending the Church before 1914, and especially in encouraging the Welsh dioceses to prepare for disestablishment, rather than campaign for its repeal, has been seriously underestimated. He sees Owen as largely responsible for the improved financial arrangements when the Church was finally disestablished in 1920. William Price uses successive bishops as a framework to take the reader from disestablishment to the present day. Touching on themes such as ecumenism, clerical churchmanship, gender issues, and clergy numbers, he traces the diocese’s response to the challenges of the twentieth century and notes the problems facing the diocese today. Overall, the volume provides a useful insight into developments in St Davids, and more widely in Wales, over some 450 years, though significant variations in focus, and some overlap between authors, will probably disappoint those expecting a coherent history of the diocese. PAULA YATES St. Michael’s College Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales ANCIENT In Defence of Christianity: Early Christian Apologists. Edited by Jakob Engberg, Anders-Christian Jacobsen and Jörg Ulrich. [Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, Vol. 15.] (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang. 2014. Pp. xiv, 263. $72.95. ISBN 978-3-631-62383-1; ISSN 1862-197X.) There are many ways of handling early Christian apologetic, and it is a merit of the present volume that the contributors have followed no one formula, but have 348 BOOK REVIEWS addressed the distinctive questions that each apologist has raised for the last two centuries of scholarship. Thus Nils Arne Pedersen’s essay on Aristides of Athens offers a lucid appraisal of the arguments that can be urged on behalf of the Greek, Syriac, and Armenian redactions (not forgetting the fragmentary Greek papyri), concluding justly that none can be identified without qualification as the original text. Jörg Ulrich, candidly granting that Justin Martyr has not always enjoyed the prominence that is accorded to him today, spends less time investigating the provenance of his Logosdoctrine than in illustrating his use of this doctrine to integrate his theology, his epistemology, and the ethical teaching that culminated in his martyrdom. René Falkenberg refutes point by point the charges against the orthodoxy of Tatian which have been in vogue since the time of Irenaeus—a topic of scholarly conversation still, though not so salient in modern Anglophone study as his contestation of pagan norms of ethnic and cultural superiority. Athenagoras, arguably a more systematic philosopher than Justin, also gives a fuller account of the accusations of Christian immorality, and Anders-Christian Jacobsen devotes the greater part of his study to this apologist’s vindication of monotheism as on the one hand a guarantee of chaste conduct and on the other a bar to the worship of any other deity. Jakob Engberg, paying tribute to the breadth and originality of the case made by Theophilus in his three books to Autolycus, reminds those who censure his silence regarding Christ that the scope of a book is determined by its aims and the composition of its audience. Theophilus was not the author of only one book; the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, by contrast, may have said all that he had to say in one short tract, which, as Anders Klostergaard Petersen notes, contrives to be at once apologetic, protreptic, and apocalyptic in its tenor. Jesper Hyldahl commends Clement for having demonstrated, against his Gnostic opponents, that a Christian could adopt principles or tenets first advanced in the pagan schools without compromising either the singularity of Christian preaching or its claims to absolute truth. Where Clement’s more dogmatic works are lost, those of Tertullian survive in bulk, and Niels Willert’s systematic review of his use of reason and ethical exhortation in the cause of his religion should explode any lingering myths of “Tertullian the irrationalist.” The relative dating of Minucius Felix and Tertullian is a problem that cannot be evaded, although it cannot be answered; Svend Erik Mathiassen makes a more original contribution by reminding us that his Octavius is not so eirenic as its dialogic form and Ciceronian style might lead one to surmise. The political stimulus to the writing of apologetic is examined by Jakob Engberg, with special attention to Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan; Engberg and others provide a useful collection of pagan sources on this “side of the debate,” while Marie Verdoner inspects Eusebius’ deployment of the term “apology” and the works to which he gives that appellation. The comprehensive introduction by Engberg, Jacobsen, and Ulrich reminds us that apologetic is a Eusebian construct and that Christians will have enhanced the more ludicrous allegations of their persecutors; in adding Hermias to the list of apologists, it strangely overlooks Kindstrand’s arguments for its Cynic provenance and was written too early to notice Whitmarsh’s theory that the charge of “atheism” was invented by the apologists themselves. Christ Church, Oxford MARK EDWARDS BOOK REVIEWS 349 MEDIEVAL Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam. By Lev E. Weitz. [Divinations: Re-reading Late Antique Religion.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. x, 340. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-81222-5027-5.) In this work, Lev Weitz adds to the growing scholarship on religious minorities living under Muslim rule. He argues that “caliphal rule fundamentally transformed even the most well-established non-Muslim communities. The response of their elites to the structures and imperatives of caliphal rule led to significant reforms to their communal institutions and traditions, and ultimately to the redefinition of their very character as religious communities” (p. 6–7). To support this bold thesis, he focuses on marriage and broader aspects of family law to illustrate how Christian leaders adapted to new circumstances. The title is somewhat of a misnomer, in that Weitz focuses mostly on the Eastern Syriac (Nestorian) community and, to a lesser degree, the Western Syriac (Jacobite) church, with only passing discussion of other Christian sects. The rich image of a community in transition that he draws from the Eastern Syriac material is, however, quite compelling. The book is divided into three chronological sections, the first describing marriage traditions from late antiquity through the Abbasid revolution (750 A.D.), the second addressing the apogee of the Abbasid period, and the third dealing with the fragmentation of central authority beginning in the tenth century. The first of Part I’s three chapters contrasts marriage practices in late antique Roman and Sasanian societies to Christian tradition. Weitz argues that Christian marriage differed from other regional traditions in its focus on chastity, its rejection of divorce, and (in contrast to Sasanian tradition) its opposition to polygamy and close kin marriage. He acknowledges that these norms were difficult for the Church to enforce in the absence of political power and that violations, compromises, and deviations were common. Chapter 2 assesses the impact of Islamic rule on Christian marriage traditions. The Muslims’ practice of delegating authority over marriage, inheritance, and other aspects of communal law to their subject religious communities created both opportunities and challenges. Christian leaders had to develop comprehensive systems to regulate marriage and family that did not encourage conversion to Islam, which imposed fewer restrictions, particularly in regard to divorce and polygamy. Marital rules became a means by which to define and defend Christian communities and their identities. The final chapter of Part I discusses the impact of the rise of the Abbasids and their refinement and institutionalization of the dhimmi system. Here Weitz focuses on the Eastern Syriac church, examining in depth eighth-century works by Isho‘bokt and Timothy I. He argues that the Eastern church’s circumstances were more complicated because of proximity to Baghdad and features of previous Sasanian rule. The Western church had already developed extensive marriage laws under Roman rule, when Christianity was the official religion. Weitz argues that, while Christianity was not inherently legalistic, dynamics of the dhimmi system forced Christian leaders to develop more complex legal systems. 350 BOOK REVIEWS Part II, consisting of five chapters, describes the Christian legal institutions that emerged under Abbasid rule. Weitz begins with a primer on Syriac family law, focusing on traditions of inchoate marriage, aversion to divorce, and insistence of monogamy, while acknowledging the challenges that local custom and competing sects presented. In the following chapter, he addresses practical complications of marriage law in a mixed society in which Christian leaders had limited coercive power. The only meaningful punishment religious leaders could impose was anathema, barring violators from the Eucharist and other church rites. However, exclusion could be counterproductive, encouraging apostasy and further shrinking Christian ranks. Divorce remained especially problematic in this regard, given the ease with which marriage contracts could be ended in Islamic courts. Regarding divorce, Weitz shows that the Church offered little compromise. In chapter 6, Weitz discusses close-kin marriage, which was encouraged by the Sasanians, but scorned by the Romans. On this issue, the Eastern church vacillated. Timothy I attempted to ban first-cousin marriages on the basis of logical arguments equating cousins to siblings. His contemporary and eventual successor Isho‘barnun rejected Timothy’s view, appealing directly to Scripture. Weitz argues that this debate mirrors the reason v. revelation disputes that roiled both Islam and Judaism during this period, representing broader intellectual trends. In the next chapter, Weitz addresses the issues of polygamy and concubinage. Both were banned by the Church but persisted among elite Christians, particularly those attached to the Abbasid caliphal court. In some instances, the Church anathematized polygamists, but often ignored the issue for fear of driving influential Christians to convert to Islam. Inheritance law was more commonly used to discourage the practice by disinheriting offspring from a man’s additional wives or concubines, though not consistently. The final chapter of Part II addresses mixed marriages, which were likely more common than sources suggest. Here the Church concentrated on discouraging women from marrying outside the faith. Women who married Muslim husbands were likely to convert, denying the Christian community of their offspring as well. The prospect of Christian men marrying outside the faith sparked little debate, arguably because it was rare, given restrictions on Muslim women’s marital options in a patriarchal society. Part III of the book consists of a single chapter describing legal developments during the decline of the Abbasids. Weitz’s discussion of “Christian Sharia” describes parallels between emerging Christian rules and Islamic law. He presents instances of outright borrowing, but also shows how the basic structure and organization of Islamic legal tradition shaped discourse in other faiths. Weitz also discusses the increasing use of Arabic language in Christian writings and the implications of Christian scholars adopting Arabic, Islamic terminology. Weitz’ work is an important contribution to the discussion of Christianity under Islamic rule and the interaction between traditions. He clearly demonstrates that Christian rules and norms were not static nor entirely insulated from Muslim influences. His recognition that the transition to Islamic imperial rule presented opportunities for Christian leaders to extend their influence and consolidate their BOOK REVIEWS 351 communities is especially important. There are, as always, additional questions that Weitz could have addressed. In particular, more attention to intra-Christian disputes about marital law and to the Western Syriac and Melkite traditions in general would be welcome. If one of Weitz’s purposes is to show Christian reactions to Muslim imperial rule, more discussion of the Umayyad period would be helpful. One could argue that the Melikes’ status in Damascus was roughly analogous to that of the Nestorians in Baghdad. While Weitz’s focus on the East and Baghdad is understandable, a more complete discussion of the Western Syriac and Melkite experiences under the Umayyads would have enriched his analysis. That said, a study of this depth must be somewhat limited in its breadth. Weitz has made an important contribution to the understanding of the interfaith dynamics of the early Islamic period that will have a lasting impact on the field. Southern Connecticut State University STEVEN C. JUDD Saint Brigid of Kildare: Life, Legend and Cult. By Noel Kissane. (Dublin: Open Air, an imprint of Four Courts Press; distributed in the United States by International Specialized Book Service, Portland, OR. 2017. Pp. 357. £22.50; $39.95 paperback. ISBN: 978-1-84682-632-0.) Noel Kissane’s Saint Brigid of Kildare is a labor of love from a writer intimate with the saint and her cult. Kissane first encountered Brigit in the legends recounted by his schoolteacher, while growing up in a small Irish village where girls were called Bridge, Bride, Bridie, and Biddy after the saint. Saint Brigit is hard for Irish children to avoid, since she is one of three patron saints of the nation, along with Patrick and Columba. She is hard for a medievalist to avoid, as her name appears across the historical record of Ireland. Her seventh-century vita by Cogitosus of Kildare is the earliest extant hagiography from the island. Cogitosus related Brigit’s origins, travels, miracles, and interactions with Irish men and women in the early sixth century. The hagiographer also described the church and community that Brigit supposedly founded at Kildare in the province of Leinster, which not only served as a center of learning, religion, and trade, but also commanded a network of churches and monasteries spread across the province and beyond. Subsequent medieval vitae confirm the importance of Brigit’s cult in Ireland, as well as the power and wealth of her successors as abbess of Kildare. Kissane could not avoid Brigit, either. He wrote a doctoral dissertation about her in 1977 and then, as the years passed, realized that no one had produced a “substantial” or “definitive” (p. 15) scholarly analysis of the saint and her cult. When he retired from his position as Education Officer at the National Library in Dublin in 2003, he wrote this book about the saint’s 1500-year history. Kissane’s aim was to distinguish “between what was faulty history and what was myth, legend or pious tradition” (p. 15). Many legends about the saint persist: her miraculous interventions in childbirth, her protection of flocks and herds, the healing power of her wells, and the belief that the saint was the avatar of a non-Christian triple goddess Brig or Brigit who cared for poets, craftsmen, and healers. Some scholars have even 352 BOOK REVIEWS claimed that Brigit may not have actually existed but was created to Christianize a flourishing feminine cult at Kildare. Kissane believes in a Brigit who was “one of the most remarkable women in Irish history” (p. 17), although, as he admits, we have no supporting historical documents to tell us who she was, where she came from, and how she sponsored the creation of Kildare. He begins with a brief survey of Brigit’s Ireland and the island’s initial Christianization by Saint Patrick and others, then, chapter by chapter, describes and analyzes the primary and secondary sources useful for studying Brigit and her influence to the present day. Chapters cover the historiography of Brigit and her cult, the manuscript sources for her life and legend, evidence for devotion to Brigit across centuries, and later printed sources about her, both Irish and Continental. Kissane outlines the spread of Brigit’s cult across Ireland and over the waters to the rest of Europe, based on evidence of church dedications and place names. He further treats hymns, poetry, and modern folklore dedicated to Brigit. Finally, he summarizes the modern history of the revived Brigidine Order of vowed women. The book does not pretend to have a narrative but is essentially a reference work that will be extremely helpful to anyone embarking on a study of Saint Brigit or any aspect of her veneration. Many pages consist of heavily annotated bibliography. There are entire pages of footnoted lists, e.g., 96–97, where Kissane lists a “galaxy of notables scholars, right up to the present day” who wrote about Brigit, beginning with St. Malachy O’Toole, comrade of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and ending with the modern folklorist Dáithí Ó hÓgáin. Likewise, pages 128–37 list wells associated with the saint. My favorite list begins on page 167, where Kissane lists churches, schools, Gaelic Athletic Association clubs, and artistic representations and relics of Brigit, again organized by county. Kissane tells us that County Carlow, for instance, has one athletic club called Naomh Brid in Leighlinbridge, and several stained glass windows featuring Brigit; County Kilkenny has no athletic club but does have a statue of Brigit with a cow in Lisdowney. Scholars familiar with the historical material will still find these lists very useful as a guide to the more obscure sources that might answer such questions as, “Which Portuguese church claims to have bits of Brigit’s skull?” or “How many wells are dedicated to Brigit in Co. Leix?” Kissane not only treats historical and onomastic evidence but also discusses types of modern evidence generally ignored by all but folklorists, such as pamphlets and other local literature produced by Brigit’s parishioners and admirers. Those who seek new interpretations of Brigit’s history will be disappointed by the book. Although Kissane sets out to separate legend from fact, he generally relies on traditional interpretations of important historical questions. Without much evidence, he declares that the Irish were Christianized by 531—the medieval hagiography may suggest this, but the supporting material evidence is thin. Kissane rightly notes the problems of using hagiography as a historical source, but he trusts Brigit’s hagiographers on their depiction of her parentage, mission, and character. The symbolism of Brigit’s early vitae, according to Kissane, is “most likely” reflective of the cult to the goddess Brig that preceded Brigit. This may be so, but there is little BOOK REVIEWS 353 beyond the literary coincidences of hagiography and twelfth-century antiquarian histories to prove it. When discussing academic debates about Brigit and larger issues, such as the process of Christianization, Kissane typically takes a sic et non stance, describing both sides of an argument and then choosing the most traditional opinion. He does not pay much attention to the nature of indigenous religious practices, the role of gender in the Christianization process, the organization of Irish religious communities, or women’s monasticism—or why Brigit seems to be the only saint consistently linked to a “pagan” deity. Yet Kissane seems not to have intended his “substantive” book to offer new directions for scholarly analysis. The book reveals instead his boundless knowledge of the archival and printed sources related to Brigit, his collected data for place names and dedications, and the evident devotion to Brigit that has long permeated Irish life. Two appendices offer reprinted translations of some important medieval texts and deal with Brigit as represented in Christian liturgy. Kissane’s bibliography is extensive. This book is a gift to all students of premodern Ireland and Irish religion, all of whom should set the volume on a convenient shelf. University of Southern California LISA BITEL Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais. By Matthew Bryan Gillis. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. x, 277. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-879758-6.) Matthew Gillis’ Heresy and Dissent offers a microhistorical analysis of the career of Gottschalk of Orbais (808-867) in order to illumine coercive and exclusive dimensions of reform and correctio in the ninth-century Frankish World. The book proceeds chronologically through the major conflicts of Gottschalk’s life. Gillis uses evidence from canonical and theological controversies to get at social and political tensions sometimes overlooked in more recent scholarship on Carolingian culture and society. Gottschalk’s voice is heard mainly through surviving poems and hymns, treatises, and statements of faith, which Gillis reads against other contemporary sources to sketch a vivid portrait of the Carolingian dissenter. Chapter one addresses Gottschalk’s criticism of his own oblation as he squares off against his abbot, Hrabanus Maurus, in a legal and theological analysis of force and freedom at stake in the practice of child oblation. The second chapter offers a subtle analysis of Gottschalk’s self-positioning in the aftermath of a patron’s fall from power. Chapter three recounts the genesis of Gottschalk’s most explosive theological proposal, double predestination, during his time as a missionary. The fourth chapter chronicles Gottschalk’s experience of scrutiny of his doctrines and his resistance to correction by his ecclesiastical and civil superiors. Chapter five describes how the severity of Gottschalk’s defeat not only steeled his resolve to resist, but also activated networks of sympathy through which he continued his resistance and cultivated his teachings. The sixth chapter traces the growing sophistication of Gottschalk’s dissent and the renewed controversy stirred when ecclesi- 354 BOOK REVIEWS astical leaders refocused their attention upon him. Chapter seven reviews how significant and sympathetic contacts across the Carolingian world allowed Gottschalk to continue resistance to correction up to the end of his life. Rather than Gottschalk appearing as an antagonist in the well-studied lives of Carolingian luminaries like Hrabanus Maurus and Hincmar of Reims, the powerful, influential, and prolific archbishops are presented almost solely from Gottschalk’s perspective and look very different from their typical scholarly portraits. Similarly, rather than analyzing the legal and theological reasoning of disputes involving Gottschalk, attention remains squarely on social and political manipulation by all parties in attempts to find ways of seizing power in the disputes. Throughout, Gillis takes as sympathetic and apologetic an approach to Gottschalk as possible. This perspective leads to a number of subjunctive constructions as he connects his admittedly difficult and sparse sources. It also pushes Gillis’ discussion into some surprising corners, such as when he lionizes Gottschalk’s demand to be subjected to particularly violent and gruesome judicial ordeals, which occasioned some Carolingian leaders to question his sanity. Gillis’ effort is a welcome addition to expanding scholarly understanding of the early medieval world. Particularly impressive and thought-provoking is how by placing Gottschalk, the individual, at the center of the story, a much larger, wider, and deeper discussion emerges than has been appreciated as Gottschalk, his antagonists, and a host of other engaged parties wrangle over not just theological and canonical disagreements, but also over how to manage dissension, how to interpret the consequences of recalcitrance, what are fitting responses to insubordination, and what exacerbating or extenuating circumstances look like. Gillis’ book paints an effective and vivid portrait of the complicated, heated, and coercive aspects of the Carolingian Renewal. Mount Saint Mary’s University OWEN M. PHELAN The Festal Works of St. Gregory of Narek. Annotated Translation of the Odes, Litanies, and Encomia. Translated and annotated by Abraham Terian. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2016. Pp. liv, 407. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-8146-6319-9.) The Armenian monastic author, Gregory of Narek (Grigor Narekats‘i, ca. 945– 1003), is most renowned for his collection of prayers entitled the Book of Lamentation (Matean Oghbergut‘ean), rightly considered one of the masterpieces of Christian spiritual and mystical literature. The fame of the Book of Lamentation, however, has often overshadowed Gregory’s many other devotional and liturgical works. On account of the efforts of Abraham Terian, English readers now have access to a highly readable translation of these other poetic works of Gregory. In addition to his translation, Terian’s introduction provides a succinct biographical overview of Gregory as well as a very informative description of the development of the different and somewhat confusing terminology used in the Armenian Church for liturgical odes, litanies, and encomia. Terian also explains how he arrived at the text on which he BOOK REVIEWS 355 based his translations, justly pointing out some shortcomings in the published editions, and noting in his translations when he has preferred readings from the apparatus. Each of the translated texts appears with a short preface that discusses the structure and theological meaning of the poem. The volume further contains a set of appendices presenting texts in translation that bear relation to Gregory’s life, including his four surviving colophons; his biography composed by Nersēs Lambronats‘i; the reasons Catholicos Anania Mokats‘i outlined for the anathematization of Gregory’s father, Bishop Khosrov Andzewats‘i; and two genealogical tables, one of Gregory’s family and one of the contemporary bishops of Mokk‘. A much-welcomed contribution that Terian’s translation has made is the excavation of biblical references and allusions that permeate Gregory’s poems. Although he humbly claims that he may have missed more, his ample documentation and explanation of them in his notes as well as their convenient listing in an index will certainly assist in furthering scholarship of the reception, interpretation, and employment of biblical passages in the Armenian tradition. Readily noticeable is the high number of references to or citations from the Apocalypse of John. The frequency of allusions to the Apocalypse in these festal poems echoes Gregory’s reliance upon the biblical book in his Book of Lamentation and confirms his affinity for it. One historical assertion that Terian puts forth should be corrected. In his introduction, he attributes the founding of the monastery of Narek to Gregory’s uncle, Anania Narekats‘i and repeats the assumption that “the monastic community at Narek was probably one of several re-established communities that had fled maltreatment in Byzantine Cappadocia during the Byzantine-Abbasid conflict of 934-944 and the ensuing Byzantine expansionism” (p. xviii, n4). However, as Krikor Maksoudian has shown in an article also cited by Terian, “A note on the monasteries founded during the reign of King Abas I Bagratuni,” Revue des études arméniennes 22 (1990–91): 203–215, the evidence that Anania was the founder of the monastery and that he along with other monastic leaders had fled Byzantine persecution is not convincing (p. 208). Maksoudian’s conclusion (pp. 212–213) that the rise of new monastic institutions during the tenth century is intimately tied to contemporary changes in the socio-economic condition of the region and that their founders were not refugees, but local teachers and monks who enjoyed the support of the nobility and monarchy is far more persuasive. The perpetuation of this error, however, does not detract from the grace with which Terian has translated these poems nor from the erudition he displays in annotating them. California State University, Fresno SERGIO LA PORTA Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood in the Twelfth-Century West. By Susan R. Kramer. [Studies and Texts, no. 200.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2015. Pp. xii, 171. $80.00. ISBN 978-0-88844-200-0.) While historians will likely never agree about what, precisely, the twelfth century “discovered” about the individual, recent scholarship has left no doubt that religious 356 BOOK REVIEWS thinkers of the era developed new and ever more probing ways to discuss selfhood and interiority. While some scholars like Colin Morris have argued that the twelfth-century “self” arose from a new emphasis on inner reflection, others have seen the self as a “fiction” imposed by an increasingly assertive Church as it tried to control and discipline the behavior of Christians (pp. 15–16). In an attempt to situate interiority into the larger history of Christian thought and action, Susan Kramer’s erudite new book delineates the concept of self that informed Lateran IV’s call for confession. In chapter one, “Secrecy of Conscience,” Kramer explores how theologians and clerics approached internal sins that had no obvious external manifestation. During Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, thinkers like Augustine and Bede used biblical examples of Jesus raising the dead to demonstrate that God Himself granted forgiveness for these sins directly. For Augustine, “verbal signs” were simply inadequate to express the secrets of the heart, but by the twelfth century theologians such as Richard of St. Victor were insisting that such secrets had to be confessed verbally, in private, and to a priest. Thus, “the heart can be made transparent,” and the self becomes an object of priestly scrutiny (p. 53, author’s emphasis). Kramer’s remarkable second chapter, “Tears and the Articulation of Authority,” further explores the triumph of oral confession, examining how tears gave way to words as the necessary means of expressing contrition. While some early exegetes argued that Peter’s tears upon denying Christ indicated that they were sufficient to express his contrition, twelfth-century writers such as Hugh of St. Victor determined that, in Kramer’s words, “tears are not a substitute for spoken language” (p. 66). Because a sinner could choose to deceive through words, verbal utterances to a priest in the twelfth century revealed volitional acts by an autonomous soul. Chapter 3, “Sin and the Autonomous Soul,” discusses how this soul could coexist with humanity’s collective responsibility for sin, which prevailing theories of original sin required. According to much twelfth-century theology, autonomy springs from the conjunction of body and soul, which gives people the ability to turn away from God, who is blameless for the actions of those who knowingly reject His will. Thus, “the experiences articulated through oral confession were fundamental to the origins of the person as a union of body and soul” (p. 109). The 1215 requirement for oral confession was not simply an assertion of disciplinary authority, but rather an extension of complex discussions on the nature of body and soul. Kramer again pursues the body-soul dichotomy, this time through metaphor, in the fourth chapter on “Sin, Contamination, and Consent.” Oral confession here cleanses the soul’s blemishes, often represented as a kind of disease. Indeed, disease became a metaphor for an individual’s moral failings, and therefore “internal actions were . . . vital to determining the individual’s status as healthy or contaminated” (p. 133); the sacramental system, under the guidance of the literate clergy, served to cleanse the ecclesiastical community. In this way, Kramer deftly integrates individual autonomy into a model of selfhood that recognized the disciplinary authority of the Church. BOOK REVIEWS 357 Kramer’s book is short, and some scholars will find a few loose ends here and there. Those who have been chipping away at the privileged place of the twelfth century in medieval intellectual and ecclesiastical history might be troubled by the scant attention paid here to the period between Bede and Anselm. There is also little acknowledgment here of scholarship that has sought to minimize what I call the “teleology of 1215”: Kramer takes a very traditional position as to the importance of Lateran IV for day-to-day Christian practice. These suggestions for further engagement aside, Susan Kramer has provided medieval historians with a unique, persuasive, and extraordinarily sophisticated approach to the old question of the self in the Middle Ages. Whitman College JOHN D. COTTS Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400. By Gregory S. Moule. [Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Volume 51.] (Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2016. Pp. xvi, 374. $181.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-31132-9.) As Gregory Moule points out in the introduction to this book, most studies of medieval academic censure tend to focus either on the theological beliefs being censored or the limits of academic inquiry. Moule moves away from this emphasis and instead sets out to examine in detail the legal and jurisdictional issues that underpinned the University of Paris’s process of internal censure. By situating the censure of academic heresy within its specific legal context, Moule pushes against the image of the theological faculty at Paris as merely advisors, and instead highlights their own legal and jurisdictional authority. In chapters 2 and 3, Moule begins by showing that the corporate model of the faculty of theology was largely based upon the corporate model of the bishop and cathedral chapter, with the faculty of theology paralleling the canons and the chancellor paralleling the bishop. After establishing the chapter as an analytic lens for the faculty of theology, in chapters 4 and 5 Moule examines in detail the legal tradition of cathedral chapter jurisdiction by tracing its development from Gratian’s Decretum through to the Decretals, noting the contributions of major commentators. Moule notes that canons were given jurisdiction over misdemeanor offenses, rather than serious ones which led to clerical degradation. In matters of heresy, however, the legal literature clearly stated that the bishop had sole jurisdiction, and acted only with the counsel, rather than consent, of the canons. In chapter 6, Moule then moves to the question of academic heresy and shows that being “suspect of heresy” was more of a misdemeanor offense rather than a serious one, and therefore it could fall under the jurisdiction of the faculty of theology. Chapter 7 provides a detailed analysis of a piece by Pierre d’Ailly in which he argues that the theological faculty could act both doctrinaliter and judicialiter in cases of heresy within their own ranks. Moule shows that d’Ailly’s assertion was legally sound, firmly based in tenets of decretal legislation, papal privilege, custom, and Roman law. Chapters 8 and 9 examine fraternal correction, tracing its theological development and examining the role it 358 BOOK REVIEWS played in cases of censure. It did, in fact, play a crucial role in investigating suspect teaching, but often the procedure shifted from fraternal correction into a judicial process, and could be omitted altogether in certain circumstances. Moule’s thorough, detailed, and meticulous work highlights several important aspects of academic censure in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which he lays out in his conclusion. The book shows a clear relationship between the structure and procedures of a cathedral chapter and that of the faculty of theology at Paris. The legal literature shows that, as a corporate body, the theological faculty possessed both elements of jurisdiction, able to act both doctrinaliter and judicialiter. This jurisdiction developed over the course of the thirteenth century and was fully in place by the early fourteenth century. Finally, he shows that cases of academic censure were not merely instances of fraternal correction, but were in fact judicial acts. He points out that the topics of fraternal correction and medieval corporate theory remain largely untapped areas of study which can continue to shed new light on medieval intellectual life. By moving away from a purely theological view of academic censure and illuminating its legal context, Moule’s study provides new perspectives and makes an important contribution to the study of academic heresy. University of Nottingham JUSTINE L. TROMBLEY The Capetian Century, 1214–1314. Edited by William Chester Jordan and Jenna Rebecca Phillips. [Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Vol. 22.] (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. 2017. Pp. xvi, 359. €100,00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56718-1.) The year 2014 marked a significant set of anniversaries for the history of Capetian France. In 1214, King Philip II “Augustus” (1180–1223) won a resounding victory at the battle of Bouvines against Imperial, Flemish, and English forces that secured the territorial and political gains of his long reign, and in the same year his grandson Louis IX (Saint Louis, reigned 1226–70) was born. The reign of Louis IX’s assertive grandson Philip IV “the Fair” (1285–1314) marked the apogee of the Capetian dynasty, and his death in 1314 heralded the beginning of its decline. The present collection, comprising the proceedings of a conference held at Princeton University in 2014, concerns the intervening “Capetian century,” which has conventionally been seen as an age of expansion and consolidation of the royal domain and of royal government, and as the period in which Paris and the Île-de-France came to enjoy a dominant position in French culture, learning, and the economy. Thirteen essays, by both North American and European scholars, are organized into four parts: “royal patronage and expressions of kingship”; “power and its representation”; “Philip the Fair and his ministers”; and “Crusading and crusading orders.” The collection contains much for readers of this journal, as many of its essays reveal different aspects of the development of theocratic kingship in France that culminated in the explosive confrontations between Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII in the early 1300s. These chapters show how the monarchy transformed BOOK REVIEWS 359 itself in many respects from the French Church’s servant to its master. In a beautifully illustrated chapter, M. C. Gaposchkin analyzes how royal bibles moralisées from the 1220s and 1230s depict the subordination of royal power to ecclesiastical priorities and influences, notably in crusades against heretics and “Saracens.” Several articles reveal the shifts in the balance between the monarchy and Church in the course of the thirteenth century, as notionally autonomous institutions were suborned to a greater or lesser extent to the royal will. William Courtenay considers the monarchy’s cultivation of the University of Paris, which reached fruition in Philip IV’s attempts to use the University to bolster his position against Boniface VIII and the Templars, although in neither case was he particularly successful. Two surveys show the monarchy’s persisting favor to the Cistercians (Anne Lester) and the gradual convergence of royal interests with those of the Dominicans (Sean Field). The latter traces how the Dominican networks of royal confessors and inquisitors increasingly enabled the monarchy to manipulate the Church to its own advantage, especially through the use of inquisitions into heresy to reinforce royal authority—eventually enabling Philip IV’s assault upon the Knights Templar. The foundations of Philip’s quarrel with Boniface VIII are exposed in Julien ThéryAstruc’s study of the royal counsellor Guillaume de Nogaret, especially his role in the treason trial of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers (1301), which demonstrated how the French Crown’s claims of theocratic authority now posed an overt challenge to the papal leadership of Christendom. Other essays address more temporal aspects of royal power during this period. The articles by Elizabeth A. R. Brown and Elisabeth Lalou analyze the characters of Philip IV and his chief ministers and consider this king’s modern biographers, as well as the vast modern database for Philip’s government, the Corpus Philippicum, that historians have yet to exploit fully. Further chapters concern the ideological assumptions behind royal seals (Brigitte Bedos-Rezak), royal domain administration (Hagar Barak), and the fate of Templar knights who survived the dissolution of their order in 1312 (Helen Nicholson). Inevitably, such a collection of essays cannot be comprehensive: it says little about large parts of the kingdom of France, or about the broader royal dynasty such as its powerful cadet branches or the Capetian queens. The essays are weighted toward the second half of the “Capetian century,” reflecting the dynamism of recent research into the later Capetians, and toward the monarchy rather than the whole kingdom. Xavier Hélary’s shrewd study of the royal army under Philip III and Philip IV is the only one to examine royal power from the perspective of the French aristocracy, which otherwise appears here mainly in relation to the crusades (chapters by Paul Crawford and Jochen Burgtorf). Nevertheless, this is a rich collection, especially for its valuable insights into the emergence of a practice and style of kingship that, in Théry-Astruc’s words, “transformed the King of France into a pope in his own realm” (p. 250). Swansea University DANIEL POWER 360 BOOK REVIEWS The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena. By Unn Falkeid. [I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017. Pp. viii, 269. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-971-844.) Unn Falkeid connects six fourteenth-century authors through their reactions to the Avignon papacy. The author underlines the reactions of the six to the papal claim to plenitude of power, which could extend from ecclesiastical to temporal politics. Unfortunately, the claims made are treated almost in isolation from declining papal temporal power, especially in France. The increasing centralization of papal power over spiritual matters and the great luxury of papal Avignon are relegated to the Conclusion. The first author treated is Dante. Falkeid knits together the poet’s Paradiso, the third part of the Comedia, with the pro-imperial Monarchia. Dante argued against papal temporal claims in favor of a universal emperor. The poet’s exile from Florence and the hospitality given him by pro-imperial Can Grande della Scala made him an eager partisan of Emperor Henry VII. Although he was disappointed by Henry’s failed aspirations, the poet promised him a place in the heaven of the just rulers, alongside Emperor Justinian. Dante’s solution to the problem of papal aspirations was diametrically opposite that of Marsilius of Padua. Marsilius, a physician, saw the body politic as afflicted by the aspirations and errors of Pope John XXII. His cure for the illness was removal of all coercive power from the clergy. It belonged instead to the laity, the “faithful legislator,” which could put power into the hands of the “ruling part” or even a prince. That allowed Marsilius to advance the cause of Ludwig of Bavaria, king of the Romans, in opposition to Pope John. Marsilius also argued the case of dissident Franciscans opposing the pope in a conflict over the Minorites’ ability to use goods without owning them. The author fails to pursue this polemic farther to its image of a lay-dominated Church. One of these dissident Franciscans was William of Ockham, who regarded John as a heretic who over-extended the papacy’s legitimate authority. Falkeid focuses on Ockham’s most personal polemic, the Breviloquium. In that tract, Ockham argued that the pope could not overreach the bounds of reason and Scripture. Nor could his pride triumph over the rights of others. Falkeid also points to the possibility that Ockham thought the friars were returning to a pre-lapsarian state of poverty. Those chapter cohere. Falkeid’s focus broadens in the chapter on Petrarch. It traces nicely the poet’s involvement with the revolt of Cola di Rienzo, ultimately unsuccessful, against the consequences of the papacy’s absence from Rome. Criticism of this absence ties Petrarch to two spiritual women, Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. The poet criticized the luxury of Babylon on the Rhone and argued for the return of the papacy to widowed Rome. BOOK REVIEWS 361 Birgitta, residing in Rome, called for the pope’s return to the Eternal City. In a prophetic voice, she also called for reform of the clergy. Her call for papal return was briefly successful with Urban V’s short time in Rome. Her reputation as a prophet was buttressed by a prediction that the pope’s flight back to Avignon would be followed by his death, which it was. Catherine was involved in the politics of Italy, but she came to focus on the return of Gregory XI, Urban’s successor, to Rome. Her appeal was successful, but Gregory died in Rome before he could flee to Avignon, leading to schism in 1378. Catherine, like Birgitta, urged ecclesiastical reform. She advanced, however, a more wide-ranging view of the clergy needing to return to its role of nourishing Christ’s mystical body with the sacraments. This book offers many insights, and it will arouse further discussion of its subjects, just as the author intended. Rutgers University THOMAS M. IZBICKI Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text. By Sarah McNamer. [The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, Volume 14.] (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2018. Pp. clxxx, 264. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-268-10285-2 hardcover; 978-0-26810287-6 e-book.) Few medieval religious texts enjoyed greater influence than the early fourteenth-century Meditationes Vitae Christi (MVC), often known as “pseudoBonaventure” because so many manuscripts credit the Franciscan saint. Mary Stallings-Taney, editing the text in 1997 for the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, ascribed it instead to an obscure Tuscan friar, Johannes de Caulibus. In this revisionist study, Sarah McNamer turns all previous inquiries into authorship on their head. On her telling, the original core of the lengthy MVC was a short Italian text preserved in a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian MS Canonici Italian 174). This brief devotional work meditates only on Christ’s infancy and passion—by far the most popular parts of the Meditations—from a markedly feminine point of view, with casual references to “our sweet spouse” suggesting that the writer and her intended audience were nuns. In a long, tightly argued introduction, McNamer posits that this Italian author was a Poor Clare from Tuscany, whose work was soon afterward Latinized and expanded by one or more clerics. The book presents an edition and facing-page translation of the Canonici text, prefaced by a study addressing the textual history of the MVC, its authorship, date and place of composition, and the manuscript itself. A linguistic analysis by Pär Larson is also included. McNamer’s thesis, first aired in a 2009 Speculum article, has already sparked controversy; she is engaged in ongoing debate with two Hungarian scholars, Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth. Space does not allow a full discussion of the issues here, but no one with an interest in affective piety or the vicissitudes of women’s authorship can overlook this volume. BOOK REVIEWS 362 As McNamer rightly observes, only the absence of close reading maintained the priority of the received Latin text for so long. Single authorship for the MVC is difficult to support in view of the work’s sharp tonal and stylistic contrasts. Its deeply affective meditations on the infancy and passion have little in common with the much longer, central portion on Christ’s public ministry, which is heavily didactic and includes numerous citations from St. Bernard and other authorities. Unlike the Italian text, the public ministry section pointedly calls attention away from women and low-status people. The Latin redactor, McNamer argues, also deleted a long, sentimental scene in which the Virgin kisses Christ’s body from head to toe—a compelling case of a male cleric toning down feminine affectivity. It is no wonder that his material proved less attractive to a growing lay audience, hungry for devotions that could move them to tears. If McNamer is right, our broader narrative about the Franciscans’ role in the evolution of lay piety will have to change, for everything that Johannes de Caulibus or another friar added to the nun’s meditations was designed not to produce an affective text, but to neutralize one. Much is at stake here, and it will take time for Italianists and Franciscan scholars to give these issues the thorough vetting they deserve. In the meantime, McNamer’s compelling arguments have already changed our understanding of the MVC and its reception. Marshaling the revisionist potential of textual scholarship at its finest, her monograph won the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Award for the best work of the year in Italian literary studies. Northwestern University BARBARA NEWMAN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700. By Miles Pattenden. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. xvi, 309. $112.50. ISBN 978-0-19879744-9.) In his introduction, Miles Pattenden, author of an earlier work on the fate of the Carafa family after the death of Paul IV (Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome [Oxford University Press, 2013]), explains his approach to the subject of his present book: papal elections in the early modern age. Conclaves, the rules governing them, and their conflicts have recently received a good deal of attention from international scholars and especially in Italy. The author draws widely on available works but unlike other studies he makes it clear that his “aim is to present a holistic argument rather than to inform about the activity that took place in and around conclaves on its own terms” (p. 7). In keeping with this approach, which seeks to “capture” the essence of the conclave, the author has included a seventh chapter, immediately preceding the conclusion, which aims to consider “how the papacy’s identity as an elective monarchy affected the development of the governmental practices that we commonly associate with early modern Absolutism” (p. 218). The sections of this chapter dealing with venality, the development of the papal bureaucracy, the legislative BOOK REVIEWS 363 activity of the popes as measured statistically (Table 7.1, p. 234), the phenomenon of public debt, and papal nepotism are rather descriptive, with few references to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So the proposal to construct an interpretational theory of how papal institutions developed between 1500 and 1800 based on these categories and with the help of the ideas contained in Douglass North’s Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1990) appears to be overly ambitious. Moreover, it might have been a better idea to locate this chapter—which the author intends to be strategic—at the beginning of the book. The work’s contribution is essentially to be found in chapters 2–6, which focus on papal elections as a political process, identifying the motivations, skills, and results achieved by those who played a major role in them. As is well known, for centuries the bishops of the Roman Church were elected by the clergy and the people, and it was only in 1059 that Nicholas II decreed that the cardinals should be the sole electors of the pope, a measure that was confirmed in the Third Lateran council by Alexander III (1179, Licet de vitanda), which added the clause of the two- thirds majority. The three canonical methods of election per scrutinium (ballot), per compromissum (a small group of cardinals designated by the college elected the pope), per inspirationem (electors unanimously acclaimed a cardinal) were set out explicitly in the conciliar constitution promulgated by Gregory X on November 1, 1274. Thus, the Middle Ages bequeathed to the modern era an institutional mechanism which in its essential features (those having the right to vote, two-thirds majority, electoral procedures) would endure, though not without a few important changes, down to the present day (on this topic of the continuity/innovation of these rules over time see Agostino Paravicini Bagliani and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Il Conclave. Continuità e mutamenti dal Medioevo ad oggi [Viella, 2018]). Chapter 2 deals with the figure of the cardinal as it evolved between 1417, the year the popes returned to Rome, and the end of the eighteenth century. This chapter adopts a highly statistical approach that takes into account variables such as cardinals’ family extraction, geographical origins (increasingly Italian over the centuries), wealth, piety, and links with external secular powers (Italian princes and the great monarchies, especially France and Spain). Professor Pattenden considers cardinals not just an oligarchy but a political class—a group held together by affinities and relationships—and he uses these two categories to shed light on individual aspects of the cardinalate and how these were related to evolving electoral practices. For example, he asks whether the bureaucratization of the cardinalate “affected its members’ approach to the papal election” (p. 37). In chapter 3, which deals with electoral procedures, the author begins to make a comparison with other electoral systems such as those for secular sovereigns (the Empire, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland) and elections involving other religious authorities (for example, the Coptic pope or abbesses for life), but he doesn’t treat these examples in depth. Instead, he describes the legislative activity regarding conclaves that, without infringing on the basic principles established by the medieval popes, continued to be pursued in the modern age. Rules regarding isolation were made stricter, the personnel admitted into the enclosed space of the conclave were selected more carefully, and, in particular, the reforms of Gregory XV, which have 364 BOOK REVIEWS been studied in great detail by Günther Wassilowsky (Die Konklavereform Gregors XV. (1621/22). Wertekonflikte, symbolische Inszenierung und Verfahrenswandel im posttridentinischen Papsttum [Stuttgart, 2010]), bureaucratized and ritualized voting procedures by ballot, which put a halt to the practice of election by acclamation. These reforms did not resolve the problem of limiting the influence of factions and external powers that were able to penetrate the enclosed space of the College. Here and in the ensuing chapters Pattenden shows how the cardinals acted on two different levels, as individuals and as a body. During a Vacant See (chapter 4) the College’s authority increased. However, for the cardinals as a political body it was not easy to control the city and the Curia during an interregnum because of jurisdictional conflicts with other political players (the City Government, for example) and because of the complex relationships with the family of the deceased pope. Chapter 5 gets to the heart of the cardinals’ decision-making processes within the enclosed space of the conclave. Cardinals’ degree of agency during the electoral process was influenced by a variety of concerns: the need to safeguard the interests of the College as a body through capitulations, the fact of belonging to a particular faction of cardinals, and personal interest. Decisions on for whom to vote, which could change over the course of the ballots, were the result of the interaction among these various factors, as well as of an assessment that required accurate information—here the conclavists excelled as they were often authors of treatises on the twists and turns of the conclave—regarding the personal character and opinions of the papabili in order to be able to predict government policies and the composition of the papal entourage. What were the outcomes of these processes? According to the author, the cardinals’ strategies were generally conservative, aimed at avoiding risk and protecting the interests of their families and the curia. In chapter 6, Professor Pattenden shows us the dynamics that marked the beginning of every pontificate in which the newly elected pope affirmed his authority, embodying it visually through ritual and intensifying his personal and family patronage, but also sometimes resorting to coercion in order to control the College and Curia. In essence Professor Pattenden retells the story of papal elections from the early modern age from the point of view of the cardinals. He raises interesting general and methodological problems, but the answers he provides are not quite equal to the questions: in the book there appears to be a discrepancy between a need to generalize in order to permit the reader to grasp the constitutional essence of the papacy and the descriptive character of his approach, which reflects a very vast and heterogeneous bibliography. The terminus point of the eighteenth century is also not sufficiently justified. Nonetheless, the book represents a courageous attempt to provide a concise treatment of a topic that continues to arouse the passionate interest of international scholarship. Sapienza University of Rome MARIA ANTONIETTA VISCEGLIA BOOK REVIEWS 365 Leone X: Finanza, mecenatismo, cultura. Atti del convegno internazionalae, Roma, 24 novembre 2015. Edited by Flavia Cantatore, C. Casetti Brach, Anna Esposito, F. Frova, D. Gallavotti Cavallero, P. Piacentini, F. Piperno, and C. Ranieri. 2 tomes. [Roma nel Rinascimento, Inedita, Saggi, 69.] (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento. 2016. Pp. viii, 814, 184 illustrations. €100,00; €80,00 for members. ISBN 978-88-85913-95-0.) This collection of thirty-nine studies, all but one in Italian, is grouped under the themes: “The New Age of Gold,” “International Equilibria,” “Ceremonies, Music, Spectacle,” “Cultural Patronage,” “The Arts, the Court, the City,” “Literature and Entertainments,” and “Gold and Money between the Curia and City.” The studies demonstrate how Leo X reversed his predecessors’ marginalization of Rome’s municipal administrative powers and respected its communal prerogatives, thus initiating a new “golden age” for the Eternal City. The first section studies Leo X’s influence on local institutions. Carla Frova traces the Medici pope’s efforts to make the University of Rome a leading institution of learning by attracting to its faculty prominent scholars. Vincenzo de Caprio shows how Pietro Bembo’s theories on imitation of classical Ciceronian and Virgilian Latin, as found in his published correspondence of 1512 with Gianfrancesco Pico, influenced the Latin and Italian literary style of the Roman court and curia. Luciano Palermo claims that Leo X has been unfairly depicted as a spendthrift. He followed in the footsteps of his predecessors who overspent their incomes, and he was reorganizing papal finances according to “reasons of state” when overtaken by a premature death. Maurizio Gargano studies the letter of Raphael and Baldessar Castiglione addressed to Leo X that proposed a subtle architectural plan for the city that combined three components: ancient Roman (rescuing ruins), Christian (churches, hospital), and Medicean (the imposing Madama palace near Piazza Navona and a new via Leonina [via della Scrofa-via di Ripetta] leading northward toward Florence). Alessandro Zuccari studies the function and decorations with Medicean themes of the Villa Madama on the slope of Monte Mario designed by Raphael and Sangallo where Leo X went to relax. The second section is dedicated to Leo X’s efforts to fashion an equilibrium with foreign powers. Elena Valeri studies Leo’s caution and dissimulation in trying to preserve some modicum of Italian independence when confronted with the rivalry among France, the Empire, and Spain for dominance of the Italian peninsula. Using the correspondence of Bernardo Divizi, Marcello Simonetta follows Leo’s oscillating stance regarding Francis I’s intentions for Milan and Naples following the death of Louis XII. The third section is dedicated to ceremonials, music, and spectacle. Anthony M. Cummings shows how the frottolist Michele Pesenti da Verona evolved into a “proto-madrigalist” due to the aesthetic tastes of the Leonine court. Marzia Pieri studies the various types of comedic performances (classical and modern) that briefly flourished in various settings (laboratories) around Rome under Leo X and 366 BOOK REVIEWS points to Francesco de’ Nobili (Cherea) as the founder of modern comedy. Klaus Pietschmann documents Giovanni dei Medici’s passionate interest and expertise in music just before his election as pope, a strategy for increasing his reputation, evident in the treatise Regule florum musices (1510) of Pietro Cannuzzi, O.F.M., dedicated to the cardinal. Section four contains ten essays devoted to patronage and culture. Among the figures and objects studied are the curial official and patron Baldassarre Turrini by Outi Merisalo; the Greek scholar, printer, and tutor Angelo Barbato by Francesca Niutta; the former tutor and papal adviser Bernardo Michelozzi by Claudia Corfiati; the urban poets of Leonine Rome by Stefano Benedetti; Erasmus’ advice to the pope on promoting peace by Davide Canfora; the oration by Blosio Polladio and the poem of Caio Silvano Germanico on the occasion of the installation of the statue of Leo X in the Campidoglio by Rosanna Pettinelli; and the statue sculpted by Domenico Aimo da Varignana and its fate by Angela Quattrocchi. Some of the chronicles describing Leo X’s procession to take possession of the Lateran Basilica are analyzed by Francesco Lucioli. How the Servite church of the Santissima Annunziata with its miraculous painting of Mary was decorated to receive its cardinal protector, Antonio del Monte, who consecrated it, and the pope himself during his visits to Florence (December, 1515, to February, 1516), who gave the church an elaborate chasuble adorned with Medici emblems, is studied by Cristina Acidini. A portrait of Leo X as a diplomatic pope caught between Gallicanism and anxiety over reform is drawn by Raffaele Ruggiero. Section five with eight essays is given to the arts, court, and city. Leo X’s relationship with Raphael is the principal subject of four contributions: Giovanna Sapori’s on Raphael’s decoration of Roman palaces; Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi’s study of the shop of Raphael as it worked in the Sala delle Prospettive of the Farnesina; the depiction of the Muses in the style of Raphael by Gerino da Pistoria in the Villa della Magliana under Leo X by Anna Cavallaro; and the commissions given to Raphael by Leo X to further diplomatic and political ends by Stefania Pasti. The architectural commissions given by Cardinal Ferdinando Ponzetti in Leonine Rome are studied by Flavia Cantatore. The new stairway to the papal residence in Castel Sant’Angelo is the subject of an essay by Renata Samperi and Paola Zampa. Micaela Antonucci examines the relationship between Leo X and Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, while Costanza Barbieri that with Lucrezia Borgia. Section six with five essays is given to literature and entertainments. The influence of Pietro Bembo on literary style in Rome is studied in separate essays by Luca Marcozzi and Pietro Petterutti Pellegrino. Jacopo Sannazaro’s Christian poem De partu Virginis (draft of 1521) with its classical pastoral allusions and biblical arguments defending the immaculate conception of Mary, commissioned by Leo X in 1518, is interpreted by Francesco Tateo as a defense of the Church, the spouse of Christ. How Pietro Aretino remembered his four years as a servant of Leo X, as a golden age in a city that was the tail of the world, is explored by Paolo Procaccioli. The cultural and political significance of the gift of the elephant Annone to Leo X BOOK REVIEWS 367 by King Manuel of Portugal in 1514 as celebrated in thirteen whole or excerpts of poems (transcribed in an appendix) is surveyed by Domenico Defilippis. The seventh and final section, devoted to the topic “gold and money between the city and curia,” contains six essays. The role of bankers in Leonine Rome is the subject of three essays: Agostino Chigi by Ivana Art, the Sauli of Genoa by Andrea Fara, and Jewish bankers by Anna Esposito. How the papacy under Leo X managed the finances of Perugia is investigated by Manuel Vaquero Piñero. Alexis Gauvain studies the guild or sodality of over one-hundred goldsmiths and jewelers that flourished in the city under Leo X, identifying many by name and the projects they worked on. Andreas Rehberg studies Leo X’s counts palatine, the significance of their title, their numbers and privileges, a prosopographical study of their geographical origins, and a list of 275 counts, giving their names, country of origin and diocese, clerical or lay status, date of appointment, Vatican register document, and authority or not to grant doctorates. These essays are all works of serious scholarship and add to our understanding of Leonine Rome. As indicated by the collection’s title, they focus on culture, patronage, and finance. The figure of Leo X who presided over this “golden age” of Renaissance Rome receives little attention in this 800-page work. Notably missing is any examination of him as a religious figure. What can be said about his personal piety? How did he understand the papal office and his responsibilities as chief pastor: to promote divine worship, preach the Gospel, spread Christianity, maintain church discipline, resolve controversies in the Church, defend its doctrines from heretics, and unite Christians in defense against the assaults of the Turks? The image one gets from this collection unwittingly perpetuates the polemical picture of Leo X propagated by Paolo Sarpi, that Leo X was a great patron of culture, but had little interest in religion. The Catholic University of America NELSON H. MINNICH Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity. Edited by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2014. Pp. ix, 198. $95.00. ISBN 978-1-137-47473-5.) Recent scholarship on the English Reformation has been revitalized by a new focus on the intersection between gender and piety. Yet while critics have generally treated Catholic and Protestant women separately, this collection of essays edited by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer is a welcome exception to the rule. By presenting six case studies of women with diverse religious beliefs, Women during the English Reformations offers a tantalizing glimpse of how female agency operated across confessional lines in early modern England. The first three chapters explore the cultural significance of female piety during the Henrician and mid-Tudor eras. Drawing attention to printed books that were dedicated to Tudor royal women, Valerie Schutte deftly explains the perplexing 368 BOOK REVIEWS lack of English translations of Erasmus’s Institution of Christian Matrimony by noting the book’s relevance to the divorce proceedings of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. In the standout chapter that follows, Janice Liedl considers the autonomy of Margaret Pole, one of the most powerful women of the early Henrician period. Liedl cogently demonstrates that Pole’s femininity was not a sufficient defense to avoid execution for treason, despite her attempts to use gender stereotypes as a means of self-protection. Rebecca A. Giselbrecht then surveys thirteen letters sent to the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger by women such as Jane Grey and the Belgian wife of John Hooper, revealing that these women drew on their familial connections and reformed piety to participate in an international Protestant network. Chapters four through six shift to the seventeenth century, investigating how women gained personal and political agency by negotiating the competing demands of gender and religion. Lisa McClain argues that Elizabeth Cary, largely known as the first Englishwoman to write an original play, developed “an alternative model of Catholic womanhood” (p. 69). Probing the differences in Cary’s portrayal of marriage before and after her conversion to Catholicism in the 1620s, McClain provocatively contends that tensions between faith and femininity helped reshape English culture. In a particularly accomplished essay, Amanda L. Capern explores how Eleanor Davies similarly balanced gender and piety in order to achieve political agency within her prophecies. By identifying strands of Calvinist theology within Davies’s inscrutable writings, Capern illuminates the political relevance of these texts to the social upheaval of the Stuart era and Civil Wars. Sharon L. Arnoult then examines the way that Elizabeth Delaval’s meditations depict godly femininity, offering a compelling analysis of how one woman’s search for worldly fulfillment clashed with gender stereotypes informed by religion. In a somewhat puzzling twist, the final chapters focus on later representations of early modern women’s responses to the Reformation. Kaley A. Kramer discusses the representation of Mary Stuart’s fictional daughters in Sophia Lee’s The Recess (1783–1785), locating later myths about Catholics within a space between historiography and hagiography. Finally, in a survey of Tudor royal women on screen, William A. Robison provides ample evidence that film and television shows distort history by ignoring or misrepresenting the religious views of these influential women. The intended readers of this volume would seem to be scholars working on early modern history, literature, and religion. This audience will find much of interest in the volume’s initial six case studies, which offer a useful introduction to several lesser-known women whose responses to the English Reformation deserve further consideration. Wayne State University JAIME GOODRICH BOOK REVIEWS 369 Heretics and Believers: a History of the English Reformation. By Peter Marshall. (New Haven and London. Yale University Press. 2017. Pp. xix, 652. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-300-17062-7.) As recently as 1992, in his epoch-making study The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy could presume a modicum of familiarity among his readers with the story and beliefs at the heart of Christianity. Twenty-five years later, Peter Marshall has to introduce his monumental account of the English Reformation with a description of an image (the crucifix) and an outline of the Christian faith. In British universities today it is no longer possible to presume that even teachers, let alone students, will have so much as a vague cultural memory of Christianity. This is a secular change of a kind to parallel that experienced by the people of England, and of much of the rest of Europe, in the sixteenth century. It is a privilege for a historian (though perhaps not for a Christian) to have lived through it, because it gives added depth to one’s appreciation of that earlier moment of tectonic cultural shift. No attempt to summarise Marshall’s rich and complex narrative could do it justice, but one must try. A full and sympathetic yet not romanticised account of the late medieval Church leads on to the lengthiest section of the book, the tangled story of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and of the increasingly idiosyncratic and utterly unstable substitute for a religious settlement that emerged under the guidance of that wayward tyrant. This period is Marshall’s particular stamping ground. His learning is deepest here, and his touch surest. His unravelling of the intricate threads of Henry’s last years yields the fullest and most plausible account ever of the years 1540–46 (a period skated over by most previous historians), acutely sensitive to the repercussions of European politics on English religion. The tidal flow and ebb of Reformation Protestantism in the dozen years of Edward VI and Mary I are covered in the book’s shortest section. The central idea is “disruption” (p. 319). Marshall conveys with a wealth of local detail just how thoroughly the religious policies driven by the crown and shaped by courtly cliques shook the parishes of England, those delicate yet durable institutions built up like coral reefs through the long centuries of medieval Christendom. Disruption struck at every level, from the episcopate and the great abbeys down to the humblest of hedge-priests and the throngs of men and women who walked in the parish processions on Sundays or tended the lights before their crosses and images. It was evident not only in the heads in bloodied straw and entrails in bloodied sawdust that shocked the capital, but in the penstrokes and erasures that amended the missals and prayer books across the land, and in the smashing, burning, and looting that swept away the hardware of the old religion. It was evident too in the wives of the priests (or ministers), in the circulation of English Bibles (the ‘Word of God’) in the hands of laymen and women, and in the terrible agonies of men and women burning alive in marketplaces. It is captured most effectively in Marshall’s summary of the tumultuous events of 1549 as “a short but bloody civil war” (p. 334). Nothing would ever be the same again, and, whichever of Mary’s Counter-Reformation or Elizabeth’s Re-Reformation might ultimately triumph, the victor was bound to face an immense task of stabilization and reconstruction. The final section of Marshall’s book engages with the long effort under Queen Eliz- 370 BOOK REVIEWS abeth, after yet another phase of radical disruption (there is no ‘Elizabethan Settlement’ here), to recreate the relatively cohesive parish religious experience of the old religion in the radically transposed theological key of the new. The ‘Reformation’ under Elizabeth was a success, undoubtedly, but never quite the success that it had hoped to be. The ‘Word of God,’ a potent engine of destruction when turned adroitly against the medieval Church which had been its custodian for so long, nevertheless proved an inadequate foundation on which to build. Catholic prognostications of the interminable and indeterminable theological contentions which could be the only logical outcome of the Protestant appeal to ‘scripture alone’ were amply vindicated within a lifetime. Heretics and Believers is a work of astonishing learning and finely written. Its only weakness is its slightly clunky title. As a logical division, “Heretics and Believers” is neither exclusive nor exhaustive. As a phrase it simply does not run off the tongue. Nor does it capture particularly well the flavor of sixteenth-century speech. Yet that one quibble aside, one can have nothing but praise for the book. Peter Marshall has traversed in masterful fashion a vast and constantly expanding ocean of published academic research (not all of it by any means masterful itself). More importantly, he has worked through mountains of primary source material with the sharpest of eyes for tell-tale incident and even more for the comments and insights and complaints and insults of those English men and women of long ago, confronting unforeseen challenges to their most deeply cherished beliefs or experiencing the opening of their eyes to previously unsuspected truths. Eamon Duffy changed the way we see the Reformation. Yet The Stripping of the Altars was not itself a history of the Reformation but an account of the execution and obsequies of the ‘old religion,’ an account which itself laid to rest the myth of ‘decline and fall’ which had long dominated perceptions of it. Peter Marshall’s magnum opus, every bit as significant as Duffy’s, responds to the implicit challenge to retell the whole story. It is a genuinely great work, a worthy winner of the Wolfson Prize and in itself sufficient to justify its author’s recent election to the British Academy. In its narrative sweep, in its human sympathy, and in its sheer scholarship, Heretics and Believers is as nearly definitive a treatment of the subject as one could hope for. As English, British, and Western culture accelerate ever further away from their Christian past, one wonders whether there shall ever again be either the need or the capacity for anyone to produce another work as great on this great subject. Queens’ College, Cambridge RICHARD REX Trent and Beyond: The Council, Other Powers, Other Cultures. Edited by Michela Catto and Adriano Prosperi. [Mediterranean Nexus 1100-1700, Vol. 4.] (Turnhout: Brepols. 2018. Pp. 619. €140,00. ISBN 978-2-503-56898-0.) This is an important and wide-ranging book which offers a fascinating variety of different perspectives on what was one of the most important phenomena of the great religious ferment of the Early Modern period, namely, the legacy and inter- BOOK REVIEWS 371 pretation of the Council of Trent. Deriving from a conference of the same name, the book explicitly seeks not to privilege Eurocentric evaluations of the council but rather to investigate its echo outside Europe. Yet of the six sections into which the volume is divided, only the last (albeit the longest) can be seen as having fulfilled this remit. This section does contain nine essays, running to over 150 pages, so the topic is hardly neglected even if it actually constitutes only a quarter of the volume. The section opens with a very useful English-language survey by Giovanni Pizzorusso of Propaganda Fide’s conceptualization of mission territories and the problems of Tridentine reform in a “non-Tridentine space,” conceived primarily as a juridical-normative context. Other highlights of this section are the complementary essays on the Chinese rites by Michela Catto, which explores the limitations of Tridentine orthodoxy in dialogue with the “religion-less,” despite the best efforts of the Society of Jesus to reconcile different imperatives, and Sabina Pavone’s excellent analysis of the tensions unleashed by Tridentine preoccupations with stricter regulation of sacramental practice and the vast new universe opened up by missionary activity in India. A secondary concern of the conference and volume was clearly to consider the council from beyond a Catholic confessional perspective, and Section Five of the book does offer a whole series of insights into Protestant reactions to Trent. This is opened by an interesting survey by Emidio Campi of the thinking in this respect of Martin Luther, Martin Chemnitz, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, which is then supplemented by a very nuanced discussion of Martin Bucer, by Ian Hazlett, which argues that Protestant rejection of any council that did not treat Scripture as the unique source of authority, or that admitted any papal oversight, predated Trent, and was not in any sense a result of it. The neglected topic of Italian reformers’ reaction to Trent is examined through the lens of Giacomo Cantimori by Diego Pirillo in an article which highlights the irénisme étatique and Erastian conceptions of the relationship between church and state which he came to espouse as a shield against more radical Anabaptist and Anti-Trinitarian positions. Sitting somewhat obliquely with these contributions is a consideration by Geneviève Gross of the leadership of the Genevan church by Théodore de Bèze through the lens of a clerical deposition from 1564, which is rich with insights but somewhat tangential to the history of the council itself, and a thought-provoking investigation by Elizabeth Tingle of the reinvention of indulgences as a tool of Catholic reform after Luther. Outside these sections, most of the other contributions do not in fact correspond to the avowed intention to avoid Eurocentrism and to be receptive to interpretations from Protestant perspectives. Although eclectic in their scope, none are without interest, however. Juan de Ribera, more famous in non-Spanish historiography for his influence on the expulsion of Moriscos from Spain, emerges as a highly “Tridentine” bishop from the essay of Emilio Callado Estella; there are a series of insights into pivotal figures such as Giovanni Morone, Gaspar Contarini, Diego Laínez, and Ignatius de Loyola in the articles by Masssimo Firpo, Matteo al Kalak, Paul Oberholzer, and Enrique García Hernán, as well as illuminating investigations 372 BOOK REVIEWS of Sforza Pallavicino’s fashioning of a Catholic historiography of the council a century after its close, the hagiography of Pietro Aretino, and much on images in the contributions of Wietse de Boer and Pierre Antoine Fabre. The volume is also fortunate to have an essay on the myth of Trent and its role in the extension of papal power by Wolfgang Reinhard. More than anything else, perhaps, the diverse range and subjects of these analyses demonstrate the central importance of the council to so many aspects of the religious history of the Early Modern period. University College Dublin TADHG Ó HANNRACHÁIN From Rome to Zurich, between Ignatius and Vermigli: Essays in Honor of John Patrick Donnelly, SJ. Edited by Kathleen M. Comerford, Gary W. Jenkins, and W. J. Torrance Kirby. [Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, Vol. 184.] (Leiden and Boston: Brill. 2017. Pp. x, 229. $129.00. ISBN 978-90-04-33176.) Patrick Donnellly, S.J., is a man much admired as a scholar, priest, and mentor, whose warmth and generosity of spirit has long benefitted both colleagues and young scholars. The editors of this volume of essays honoring Donnelly are to be congratulated on bringing together contributions that speak both to the diversity of his interests and of the impact he has had in re-shaping the field of Reformation studies. Long before the current, and rightful, trend in scholarship to work across confessional boundaries in comparative contexts, Donnelly pointed to the influence of medieval theology on the writings of Protestant reformers. His extraordinary list of publications, starting with his monograph Calvinism and Scholasticism, reveals the breadth and depth of Donnelly’s engagement with Peter Martyr Vermigli, Robert Bellarmine, Ignatius Loyola, and Girolamo Savonarola, to name but a few figures. Donnelly has been at the forefront of the project to translate the works of Vermigli, making available to a broad audience one of the seminal figures of Reformed Protestantism of the second generation. Further, he has been one of the leading scholars on the Jesuits in the early modern world, producing a range of learned articles and translating texts from their first hundred years. This collection does what one would hope from a Festschrift: it pays its respects to the honoree while setting out new directions of research. Thomas McCoog opens with an account of William Good, a little-known Jesuit in Elizabethan Ireland, which opens a window on the complex nature of Catholicism in the 1560s, where confusion and temporizing met growing Protestant attempts at religious hegemony. Robert Scully makes an important contribution to current engagement with cultures of memory and commemoration by examining the ways in which the life and witness of Thomas More was constructed by Catholics as a source of inspiration. The theme of identity and conflict continues in Gary Jenkins’ study of the Catholic controversialist Thomas Stapelton, whose excoriating prose was turned on the reformers of Geneva, notably the deceased John Calvin. Jenkins not only situates Stapelton theologically, but provides us with a fresh understanding of both Catholic polemical writing and of the arguments made against Reformed writers, who were seen as the greatest threat to the Church. BOOK REVIEWS 373 Maryanne Cline Horowitz takes us to another theme found in Donnelly’s work, the role of the imagination, which she demonstrates to be a strongly contested concept in the sixteenth century. Drawing, for example, on Ignatius, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, Cline Horowitz parses the meanings of imagination, clarifying the boundaries between the acceptable and proscribed. The remaining essays turn toward Protestant theology, beginning with Richard Muller’s discussion of medieval and Reformed scholasticism, with a particular eye to William Ames. For some time, Muller has been educating us on the complex relationships between late-medieval thought and early and later Reformed theology, and he points to the ways in which Donnelly laid the foundations for a more robust understanding of the roots of the Reformation in the Middle Ages. Muller’s essay leads well into the contribution of Eric Parker, which provides one of the principal surprises of the volume: Martin Bucer’s engagement with PseudoDionysius, not a writer often associated with the Reformers. Parker provides a nuanced reading of the influence of Neo-Platonism, and ways in which it was appropriated in the sixteenth century. Jason Zuidema, who has written a fine book on Guillaume Farel, likewise takes us in an unanticipated direction by drawing on contemporary discussions of a new monasticism and the uneven way in which its advocates read church history, to call for a more rigorous engagement with early modern texts if they are to be invoked, either positively or negatively, in our present age. A third McGill contribution comes from Torrance Kirby, a long-time collaborator with Patrick Donnelly. Kirby draws on his larger project on conversion to offer a careful analysis of Vermigli’s use of Aristotelian ethics, adding to our growing knowledge of how Reformed theologians worked closely with the classical tradition. Emidio Campi, emeritus professor in Zurich, closes with a study of Vermigli in relationship to the Heidelberg Catechism, offering a reassessment of the current scholarly consensus by opening the possibility of significant Swiss influence. A short review cannot do justice to the expansiveness of scholarship in this volume or convey the sense of gratitude it offers to the pioneering work of a distinguished scholar. The best tribute offered by these authors is the manner in which they look forward to provoke us to new ways of thinking about early modern religion. Yale University BRUCE GORDON Vincent de Paul, The Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform. By Alison Forrestal. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2017. Pp. x, 312. $135.00. ISBN 978-0-19-878576-7.) In her masterful study, Vincent de Paul, The Lazarist Mission, and French Catholic Reform, Alison Forrestal reminds the reader of Vincent de Paul’s missionary philosophy, namely, that a true missionary, “found everything good and indifferent, he accepts everything, he can do anything” (p. 101). Forrestal uses the 374 BOOK REVIEWS theme of mission and missionary activity to weave together carefully and with great clarity the life of Vincent de Paul (1581–1660). Her study begins with an analysis of de Paul’s coming to know himself from his childhood experiences through his education and ordination as a priest. Forrestal illuminates the transformational moments in de Paul’s life. Her study prepares the reader to experience the full dynamism of de Paul’s missionary activity by setting up a background in which de Paul is schooled by such notable French clerics as Pierre Bérulle and Francis de Sales. One must note that Forrestal’s research is well grounded in both secular and ecclesiastical archival sources. Forrestal presents the story of the Lazarist mission not only as a narrative, but also as an analysis of the statistics regarding the numbers of missionaries, the numbers of people being treated for various maladies, and the interaction between the de Paul’s Congregation of the Mission and his fraternal collaboration with Louise de Marillac and the Daughters of Charity. Another strength of Forrestal’s present study is the balance of the question of gender within her research. While the book is mainly a study of Vincent de Paul, Forrestal nonetheless explores de Paul’s friendships and working relationships with women beginning with Madame de Gondi, his partnership with Louise de Marillac, and the mentoring relationships he fostered with Jane Frances de Chantal, and numerous other women religious. Forrestal’s inclusion of a gendered narrative strengthens the study of Vincent de Paul while allowing the history of these pioneer missionary men and women to tell their own stories. Forrestal is careful to include in her study a discussion of Jansenism and the issues that it presented for early modern French Catholicism. Vincent de Paul was no stranger to the teaching of the Jansenists and even to some of the main players in the Jansenist movement. Forrestal details Vincent’s theology of grace, which he offers as a counter to the Jansenistic teachings found in many parts of France in the seventeenth century. Overall, Alison Forrestal’s exploration of the life of Vincent de Paul and the Lazarist Mission is fresh and presents a new facet within the larger study of Vincentiana. It should be noted that Forrestal has provided a wealth of information in a series of three appendices which chronicle the Lazarist houses established during de Paul’s lifetime along with a list of significant benefactors and their donations toward the work of the Mission. Scholars of early modern French Catholicism will find in Forrestal’s bibliography a treasure trove of sources in English, French, and other European languages. Any serious scholar of de Paul, de Marillac, the Catholic Reformation, or Early Modern France in general would benefit greatly from a thorough reading of Forrestal’s research. Saint Vincent College Latrobe, Pennsylvania BRIAN BOOSEL, O.S.B. BOOK REVIEWS 375 Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Edward Muir. Edited by Mark Jurdjevic and Rolf Strom-Olsen. (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2016. Pp. 440. $49.95. ISBN 978-07727-2185-3.) Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe, a compilation of essays in honor of Edward Muir, takes as its theme a subject to which Muir has contributed as much as any living historian: the relation of ritual to the political and cultural life of early modern Europe. Contributors include both distinguished scholars of early modern Europe and several young scholars (largely former graduate students of Muir at Northwestern University). The high quality of the essays testify to the centrality that ritual has come to occupy as a hermeneutic for understanding culture and politics in the early modern period and as a vindication of the anthropological turn in history, to which Muir’s work has been fundamental. The volume begins with an editorial introduction to the work of Edward Muir, then turns to a number of essays inspired by Muir’s interests and methodologies. The range of categories to which the framework of ritual is applied is impressive. We have here some familiar suspects: studies of the ritual aspects of early modern processions, religious ceremonies, coronations, and pastoral visitations. But the volume also includes a number of essays that analyze topics whose ritualistic aspects have been less well-appreciated: the production of book manuscripts, the procedures associated with granting pardons for sex crimes, the historiographies of the Burgundian ducal court, and the “deep play” of the Renaissance gaming table. One major theme that emerges from this collection of essays is the polyvalent nature of most early modern rituals. The success of any given ritual often seems to have depended on a certain slipperiness in its meaning: thus, as both Patricia Fortini Brown and Monique O’Connell point out, political rituals might simultaneously function to project the dominant state’s power and to affirm the local traditions and concerns of subject communities. Similarly, Celeste MacNamara’s study of rural confraternities in the Veneto shows that the Counter-Reformation flourishing of rural devotion played out largely in the spaces of “mutually beneficial compromises” between Church and community. Or, as Susan Karant-Nunn demonstrates, the veiled faces at a Saxon elector’s funeral might simultaneously represent an expression of real grief, a calculated conformity to the societal expectation to cry, or even some hybrid emotion generated from the ritualized cultivation of grief in the funeral procession. Thus, the volume as a whole seems to affirm that rituals were most successful when the same ritual could be molded in different ways to meet the needs and expectations of diverse audiences. This work will likely be of much more use to historians of early modern Italy than to others, since the preponderance of essays are on Italian topics. Nevertheless, on the whole, this impressive work contains much excellent scholarship by many leading historians, and though a few essays in the volume do stray from the topic 376 BOOK REVIEWS of ritual, even in these cases, the meeting of ideas with Muir’s work remains a welcome constant. Mount Saint Mary’s University GREGORY MURRY Exercer l’autorité: l’abbé de Cîteaux et la direction de l’ordre cistercien en Europe (1584– 1651). By Bertrand Marceau. [Bibliothèque d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. 58.] (Paris: Honoré Champion. 2018. Pp. 745. €150 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8061-4497-9.) A revision of a doctoral dissertation defended at the Sorbonne in 2013, this book is a lengthy, thorough, and at times tedious study of what may be viewed as a rather narrow topic. Directed by Alain Tallon, Marceau’s thesis focused on how abbots of the abbey of Cîteaux exercised their authority over two-thirds of a century. The period is in fact a particularly vibrant one in politics, church history, and related matters from the latter stages of the French Wars of Religion to the majority of the young King Louis XIV. In the context of the Cistercian order, 1584 corresponds to the beginning of the twenty years of Edme de la Croix as abbot of Cîteaux, while 1651 was marked by a general chapter of the order. Marceau’s book demonstrates how complex and contested the exercise of abbatial authority could be. The abbot of Cîteaux was both abbot of one abbey only, albeit an exceptionally important one, and, ex officio, also superior general of the Cistercians, not only in France, but wherever houses of the order were. He had to deal with a broad range of overlapping and competing claims to authority. Monastic chapters, in his own monastery, or of the whole order, were a source of alternate authority. In France the monarch used the title Most Christian King and claimed rights over the Church that included appointment of abbots as well as of visitors sent to reform religious houses. Cardinal Richelieu was for a time not only first minister to Louis XIII but abbot of Cîteaux, though he was hardly a monk. State authorities intervening in monastic affairs also included the French parlements, courts that could support or oppose legal claims of the Cistercians. The abbot was a feudal lord and had plenty of secular legal matters to deal with in addition to everything else. Cistercian houses outside France had to contend with claims of their own ‘secular’ rulers, and these rulers often posed obstacles to any French or other foreign supervision in their territories, thus challenging the very notion of an international religious order. (Jesuits were hardly the only order to face this kind of difficulty.) Popes also claimed authority over the Cistercians, no matter their location or nationality, and local bishops chafed at assertions of exemption of religious from episcopal jurisdiction. Among Cistercians themselves, the seventeenth century was a time of growing tension between those favoring a stricter observance (one that would, for example, forbid consumption of meat) and those wishing to retain a more moderate observance. Abbots of Cîteaux had to manage this source of division, one difficult to heal. The tension would eventually result in a separate Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), though this development came later than in the years studied here. BOOK REVIEWS 377 This volume is well-worth the attention of historians. Maps, an index, and a bibliography enhance its accessibility and usefulness. For those who think that there was some kind of golden age of the Church in the past—when all accepted Church authority—this study offers a case study of just how problematic exercise of such authority could be, in an age often termed one of absolutism. Contestation of authorities, not simplistic submission to them, may have been characteristic of what in France is called le Grand Siècle. Regis College, Toronto THOMAS WORCESTER, SJ Constantia et Fortitudo. Der Kult des kapuzinischen Blutzeugen Fidelis von Sigmaringen zwischen ‘Pietas Austriaca’ und ‘Ecclesia Triumphans’: Die Verehrungsgeschichte des Protomärtyrers der Gegenreformation, des Kapuzinerordens und der ‘Congregatio de propaganda fide’ (1622–1729) By Matthias Emil Ilg. 2 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2016. Pp. 1-784; 785-1485. €88,00 paperback. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-3-402-13164-0.) This two-volume study, the author’s 2016 University of Tübingen dissertation, totals almost 1,500 pages in printed format. Needless to say, it is an exhaustive exploration of the life and cult of the early modern martyr Fidelis of Sigmaringen (1577–1622). Sixty years ago, the Austrian scholar Anna Coreth identified Fidelis and the Capuchin piety he exemplified as one of the essential features in the formation of Pietas Austriaca, that peculiar brand of Habsburg imperial piety that Coreth argued eventually came to shape popular religiosity in the Austrian lands. Born at Sigmaringen in Hohenzollern territory in 1577, Markus Rey or Roy displayed an unusually pious disposition from an early age, eventually renouncing the legal profession and his career as a local magistrate in 1611 and joining the Capuchin order the following year. In his new life as Fidelis in the order, he became an accomplished preacher. Persuaded by the strength of his piety and the nonjudgmental nature of his preaching, he was said to have won many back to the Roman Church in and around his friary in Habsburg Weltkirchen. Consequently, in 1622, he embarked on a preaching mission to the Graubünden, where he and his associates fell victim to an outbreak of Calvinist rebellion. His martyrdom was said to be particularly gruesome, with his skull run through with a sword, his body slashed multiple times by numerous attackers, and his left leg lopped off. Ilg’s exhaustive study examines the sources used to construct Fidelis’s vita in the years immediately following his martyrdom, before embarking on a detailed examination of the development of his cult and the role it came to play in Austrian piety. He divides this treatment into two phases: the first stretching from the saint’s death in 1622 until 1672 and the second from 1672 until the saint’s eventual canonization in 1729. In its first phase, the cult’s militant echoes rallied Catholic forces fighting in the Thirty Years’ War, bolstered the claims of the Hohenzollern territories from which Fidelis hailed to sanctity, and served the Habsburg dynasty and the Capuchin Order as a supreme example of militant devotion. In the second phase of devotional development, the saint came to be celebrated as a symbol of 378 BOOK REVIEWS Habsburg Catholic triumph, as the monarchy and Catholic Church revived in the decades following the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Yet despite the popularity and wide dissemination of Fidelis’s cult, the Church at Rome proved skeptical of claims to Fidelis’s sanctity and numerous unsuccessful efforts prompted the Capuchins to become increasingly assiduous in collecting records of the saint’s intercessions. Eventually, in 1729, these diligent efforts, and Habsburg influence, bore fruit. This exemplary study includes thorough person registers, indexes, and bibliography. Appendices present the germane textual and visual evidence for the expansion of Fidelis’s devotion, too. In short, the meticulous diligence with which Ilg has presented his comprehensive research will ensure its long life as the final word on this saint’s place in the devotion of the Catholic Reformation. University of Maryland, College Park PHILIP M. SOERGEL The Cruelest of All Mothers: Marie de l’Incarnation, Motherhood, and Christian Tradition. By Mary Dunn. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2016. Pp. xiv, 208. $88.00 hardcover. ISBN 978-0-8232-6721-7.) Marie de l’Incarnation is best known for her work as co-founder of the Ursuline convent in seventeenth-century Quebec. Mary Dunn nevertheless limits herself to explaining how this “cruelest of all mothers,” to use Marie’s own epithet, could abandon an eleven-year-old son, Claude Martin, to become a nun in 1631. Approaching the question from a variety of emic and etic perspectives, Dunn interlaces objective analyses with highly personal reflections about her own struggles as the mother of a child with developmental disabilities. The result is a thought-provoking post-modern hagiography that aims to diminish, if not completely erase, the historical and epistemological distance initially separating Dunn from her subject. Dunn’s central thesis is that the “the Christian tradition . . . gave rise to [Marie’s abandonment of her son]” (p. 10). She begins by “explicating” the abandonment in Marie’s own words, analyzing how she attempted through private correspondence and spiritual autobiography to reconcile her discordant roles as mother and mystic by casting her action as a personal sacrifice in imitation of Christ and in submission God’s will—a sacrifice ironically premised on Marie’s own maternal affection. Reconstructing a broader historical context in chapter 2, Dunn moves on to “explain” how the abandonment might also be interpreted as “an act of resistance against the norms of seventeenth-century French family life” to the extent that Marie’s supposed decision to leave Claude with no material support transgressed an “absolute and essential obligation” of early modern French parents “to protect the patrimony of their children” (p. 49). Dunn shifts her methodology in chapters 3 and 4, drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu to “[situate] Marie within the distinctive social field of seventeenth-century French Catholicism” (p. 12). Revealing the denigration of biological motherhood by ancient and medieval patristic authors, Dunn argues that this traditional disparagement was inflected in seventeenth-century France not only by a long-standing hagiographic topos of maternal renunciation, BOOK REVIEWS 379 but also a persistent theme of “abandonment” in the spiritual writings of the French Catholic Reform. Dunn concludes that had Marie been born in a different time and place, she might have inscribed motherhood itself, rather than its renunciation, as a form of spiritual self-sacrifice. Conventional scholars may grumble that Dunn’s book is thin on evidence. A visit to French judicial and notarial archives might have allowed her to reconstruct more fully the social, legal, and material constraints within which Marie operated as she negotiated in practice the gendered nature of French customary laws on widowhood and guardianship (tutelle). Given that Marie entered the Ursulines without a dowry, one is left wondering whether she really could have offered Claude more material support than she did, as she herself (perhaps only rhetorically) alleged. Other scholars will conclude that Dunn’s book nevertheless establishes the diminished place of biological motherhood in seventeenth-century French Catholic spirituality. Here, too, greater nuance may be warranted. One conspicuous omission from the book is Vincent de Paul, co-founder of the Parisian foundling hospice, whose Daughters of Charity arguably did pursue at this time a spirituality of selfsacrifice through their engagement in the material and menial tasks of motherhood. Dunn’s book is most successful as a personal memoire of general interest to all scholars. The intimate autobiographical stories that she weaves into her account may offer only limited insight into the distinctive features of seventeenth-century motherhood, but they do reveal how twenty-first century mothers still struggle to balance spiritual or intellectual callings against obligations toward—and affection for—their families. Demonstrating how common concerns can connect people across several centuries, Dunn’s book exemplifies how scholarship, like religion, can achieve a communion of understanding, if not necessarily agreement. University of Colorado at Boulder MATTHEW GERBER Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits: The Imago primi saeculi (1640). Edited by John W. O’Malley, S.J. [Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 12.] (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2015. Pp. x, 771. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-916101-184-8.) At a sales price of $120, this 771-page, richly illustrated, folio book is a steal. It will be avidly read by Jesuits and Catholics and emblem scholars, in fact by anyone with more than a passing interest in historicity and the religious experience. It should make us all rethink what we believed about the Imago. There is a huge bibliography on the Jesuits, but the Imago primi saeculi of 1640 is probably the richest emblematic work ever produced by the Society of Jesus, and its engravings count among the finest produced anywhere. In an important sense it enables us to understand how the Jesuits understood themselves and their order. With its original 952 pages the Imago was and remains a formidable book. What emblem scholars may not always have realized is that about 80% of the original Latin book is unillustrated prose. Its publication created a controversy, and its detractors were ardent in their condemnation of the book, which in their view glorified the Jesuit order. 380 BOOK REVIEWS It is no secret that there was considerable opposition to the success of the Society of Jesus, which was phenomenal. That opposition could be doctrinal, but also political. In one sense it is understandable that the Belgian Jesuits should have composed the Imago to celebrate the centenary of their order. The unbiased observer will need to decide whether the book essentially serves God, humankind, or the Society. What decides that question will go far beyond what the Flanders Jesuits may have written. The rhetoric and erudition of the texts must also be considered when looking at the emblems in the Imago. The Society was established under a pope and in 1773 was suppressed under another pope, although the extent to which religious or political considerations were paramount in the papal decision to suppress the order will likely continue to divide historians for some time. It is known that the Jansenists of the day were vehemently opposed to the Society. And it must have been received as a personal blow to Jesuits to learn that the order had been suppressed in France in 1764 through a combined effort of Jansenists, French politicians, and the negative views of Ignatius’s own alma mater, the theological faculty of Paris. For a long time, the opposition of the monastic orders had been growing. This book, edited by John O’Malley, S.J., was written by contemporary scholars. The editor himself contributed the introduction and the first chapter on “The Imago: Context, Contents, and Controversy.” Here O’Malley provides a masterful account of the book and the controversy it sparked. This is followed by “The Frontispiece and Opening Emblem. A Translation” by Michael C. J. Putnam. Next comes “Classicism and the Baroque: The Imago primi saeculi and its Detractors” by Marc Fumaroli. This brings us to the heart of the opposition to the Imago. Fumaroli begins by discussing the terms “classicism” and “baroque,” as well as “Asianism” and “Atticism” (pp. 57–58). He argues that the Council of Trent was geared to a “worldly and learned elite” (p. 59), a view that may not sit well with some historians today. Fumaroli highlights the Jesuit desire to reach the masses, recognizing the need to arouse “surprise and admiration” (p. 60). It is hardly surprising that the Imago praises such Jesuit saints as Ignatius himself, Francis Xavier, Aloysius Gonzaga, and Stanislaus Kostka. But the treatment of India, Japan, and China almost seems cavalier when one recalls the many Jesuit martyrdoms and the eradication of Christianity in Japan during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. As a partial answer to the detractors, Fumaroli points to the unequivocal statements in the Imago texts that the book is a tribute to God and Christ, although it does celebrate the Society of Jesus (pp. 64–65). The Bollandists evidently viewed the central figure on the frontispiece of the Imago as female. Fumaroli also sees the figure as female, although he has a positive interpretation (see pp. 65–66). If there is “self-glorification” (p. 67), it is also devoid of pride. But were the detractors caught in the old “confusion between a legitimate love for oneself and an illegiti- BOOK REVIEWS 381 mate vanity (amour-propre)?” (p. 69). The notion of pride remains, although the author insists that it is not personal, but the “pride of a group” (p. 69). There is also the humility of individual Jesuits. The Imago is a centenary celebration, but there are many traditions going back to Jewish, Roman, and Christian jubilee celebrations. Fumaroli returns to the issue of Atticism versus Asianism (p. 72), suggesting a differing conception of the public: an elite group and a more general collective. The Imago is the opposite of Atticism. The author argues that the very presence of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew poems implies two kinds of reading—“one for ‘unlearned readers,’ the other for ‘learned’ readers” (p. 73). The Flemish Jesuits also published a version in Dutch. The Jansenists sought to analyze the Imago as if it were doctrinal or historical, seeking to “discredit the eloquent subjectivity of the Jesuits . . . obscured by Latin pedantry” (p. 73). The detractors wrote in French, translated passages into French, insisting that French, especially their French, was a “faithful mirror of an abstract and universal reason” (p. 73). Fumaroli then proceeds to categorize the books of the Imago (pp. 74–80), stressing the element of myth, but never losing sight of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The author notes the “fusion of heroic epic and a Christian spirituality” (p. 76) and Jesuit humanism. The skeptical and critical reader today may entertain other ideas about the Hidalgo career of the young Ignazio before his conversion and may doubt the veracity of those sections of the Imago. Fumaroli correctly stresses the education of young laymen and clergy, which far transcends the education of an elite class (see p. 77). The Imago in many ways identifies the “fruits of the humanism taught in the Society’s colleges” (p. 78). The Society experienced persecution and slander, and Jesuits were martyred, although emblem #580, reproduced on p. 624, depicts only a phoenix, named allusively. Fumaroli returns to his earlier comparison of the Imago to a church when he reviews the celebration of the Flemish Province in Book Six (see p. 80). The opposition of the Augustinians (see p. 81) increased, but it required the support of more worldly French to topple the Jesuit order in France, with Pascal “using this modern style in the service of the Augustinian cause” (p. 82). The author sketches in the changes in public taste, recognizing that “the style of the Imago primi saeculi, with its hyperbolic stiffness and its epideictic overload” (p. 82) lent itself to parody. By this time the Jesuits were “behind the times in terms of language as well as style” (p. 82), and Pascal delivered the death blow. In all Fumaroli provides a helpful summary, noting that in the years 1640– 1660 a Parisian desire arose to differentiate itself from the Catholic and Latin humanism that had served so well Rome, Spain, and the Society of Jesus. Jansenist Augustinianism and the newer French style tended towards Atticism, which was in so many ways the opposite of the Imago. This chapter was translated and slightly adapted from an earlier French publication. The chapter on “Jesuit Uses of Art in the Province of Flanders” was written by Jeffrey Muller. The author properly recognizes Antwerp as the “second great centre” (p. 89) after Rome. It is noteworthy that the very first church dedicated to St. Ignatius was the new Jesuit church in Antwerp of the Jesuit Professed House, built between 1615 and 1621. After the suppression of the order in 1773 the church 382 BOOK REVIEWS was dedicated to Carlo Borromeo. Muller asks why the important Jesuit contribution has been neglected, suggesting Belgian art history is the result of a “tangled historiography and politics” (p. 89) that have excluded interdisciplinary methods. Some might question his evident enthusiasm for a “dialogue between art history and other disciplines” (p. 90). Many of the currently available corpora, such as Iconoclasm and the Marburg collection, have already drawn together scholars from diverse disciplines. But none of these reservations is intended to negate the importance of a Jesuit style in Flanders. It is no coincidence that the author finds the Imago so central. But taking Book Six “in good faith” (p. 90) may seem naïve to the present-day reader after reading Fumaroli in this same Saint Joseph’s University Press book. To some extent all scholars cherry-pick the statistics and quotations that support their arguments. Muller does this with the statistics for catechisms (p. 91), deriving his numbers from the Imago. Money rules the world, as the German proverb has it. And the author can cite the 3,000 florins paid by the layman Johannes Brugels in 1618 for prints of Carlo Borromeo, one for each student in catechism classes. It seems that there is no evidence of pictures being used at this time for teaching Christian doctrine. This brings Muller to consider the 1647 work of Jan Willem Steeg, also known as Steeghius: Die Christelycke Leeringhe . . . (Antwerp: widow of Jan Cnobbaert, 1647). Steeg’s book, according to its title, was intended for children and grownups who cannot read. Since it is written in the local language it was likely pitched to the local market. Today it will be found largely in Belgian libraries. So how important and influential was Steeg’s book? The literary historian will know where at least to begin to look. I would ask if the work had a second edition, perhaps more editions, how large was each print run? What did it cost? Can its influence be detected in any other documents? There follows: “The Imago primi saeculi Societatis IESU as Emblematic SelfPresentation and Commitment” by Marc van Vaeck, Toon van Houdt, and Lien Roggen. This is one of the most important chapters representing a detailed re-evaluation of the emblems, meaning both texts and illustrations, including the surrounding cartouches, and what the authors regard as Jesuit practice. As always theoretical general statements made by authors (and I mean thereby the authors of the Imago) must always be compared with actual practice. The modern author-scholars are doubtless correct in stressing the encomiastic purpose of the Imago, which does praise the accomplishments of their order. They do speculate about the “rigid norm” (p. 129), never explained in the Imago, as referring to the exclusion of the human figure in some impresa treatises. This brings them to Paolo Giovio and Jesuit theoretical studies. The authors and Claude-François Menestrier knew that not all earlier writers of impresa treatises agreed on the exclusion of the human figure. Whether the reader likes it or not, the emblems of the Imago do picture many unreal items, such as the phoenix, and the texts do contain depictions of so-called “true” histories as well as fictitious fables. In fact, the Imago does seem closer to the purposes and function of the impresa, although it would be difficult to find “lines of demarcation between the emblem genre and the impresa tradition” (p. 130). It is BOOK REVIEWS 383 little wonder that the Jesuit theoretician Jacob Masen is discussed approvingly since Masen himself discussed no fewer than thirty-six emblems of the Imago. The authors apparently accept Masen’s definitions (p. 130). The authors review briefly some of the earlier research (Mario Praz, AnneElisabeth Spica, G. Richard Dimler, S.J.), noting that it reveals “little of the idiosyncratic character of the Imago” (p. 132), although they never say wherein the “idiosyncratic” lies. As the most likely source they suggest Silvestro Pietrasanta’s De symbolis heroicis libri IX (Antwerp, 1634), which is, on the whole, well discussed (pp. 133–136). When commenting on the use of protasis and apadosis, mention, at least in a footnote, could have been made to Dimler’s earlier publication. In this wide-ranging and richly illustrated chapter the authors are clearly indebted to the work of Lydia Salviucci Insolera and to the unpublished (?) doctoral dissertation of Gregory Ems at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, among other earlier published works. The authors can pinpoint some correspondences and differences between the Imago emblems and Pietrasanta (pp. 136–142). Intertextuality, montage, and “creative rethinking” (p. 140) have reshaped some of the imprese taken over from Pietrasanta and others, among whom Paolo Aresi is shown to have been a source (pp. 142–146). Some interpretations appear ingenious, especially that of the meaning of the finger in Imago #190 (p. 146). Further sources are suggested in other emblem books printed in the Low Countries (pp. 148–155). The authors know that a relatively small number of books must have served the engraver, Cornelis Galle the Younger. But for emblem scholars the question remains: how does the pictura relate to the text(s)? Source hunting is only one approach. One should recognize that the authors are sophisticated and critical in their approach to sources. There are different ways of considering the relationship of engraved image to texts. The authors in this book are primarily concerned with inventio and printed sources (pp. 148–150). But one can also question the application of meaning to a relatively common motif; concretely, candle and wick-trimmer, mother bear licking cubs into shape, pine cone, and fire. In the Imago the application of meaning is idiosyncratic, or Freeman might have said “arbitrary.” But it is not arbitrary once one accepts the Jesuit frame of reference, although the actual application of meaning to the well-known motif may have been unexpected. The authors refer to a letter from the publisher Balthasar Moretus, indicating that the Jesuits had to pay the engraver (p. 155). For me that also raises a question of responsibility. Moretus received texts from the Jesuits, but he disclaims responsibility for paying for engravings. So what could that have meant at the time? I would like to think that the engraver knew that he had to satisfy his clients who were paying for his work. That would seem to imply that the Jesuits had seen what he was engraving and approved. Or am I being too picky, too practical? Such borrowing was hardly new for Antwerp engravers at the time (p. 156). It is also known that engravers often worked with copies of books of emblems and 384 BOOK REVIEWS imprese, made available to them (pp. 156–157). Since thousands of such illustrated books were published between 1531 and last week, it is not known how widespread the practice was. The authors of this chapter are able to report in some detail on the actual creation of the Imago, and on the efforts of the Jesuits after publication to “remain alert” (p. 158) to reaction to the work. Their colleagues were asked for their opinions and corrections of errors. Those of Josse Andries are particularly interesting (pp. 158–159). Here we have the reactions and suggestions of a reader who was also a Jesuit. While the authors recognize the importance of Jesuit schools, they do note the absence of any reference in the Imago to the discipline and toil required of the students (p. 161). The role of emblems in the curriculum and the use of affixiones is stressed (p. 162). The authors also discuss martyrdom (pp. 163–166), acknowledging that the typical humanistic training in classical Latin and Greek often ill equipped Jesuits for their missionary work. Indeed, the insight is far-reaching that European schoolboys and indigenous peoples both required educating and civilizing before souls could be saved (p. 165). The authors also comment on the considerably shorter Dutch version, the Afbeldinghe van d’eerste eeuwe der Societet Iesu, noting the bequests and costs associated with its publication (pp. 166–168). But the Af-beldinghe omits twenty-two of the original Latin emblems (p. 172). Apparently accepted is the explanation of Salviucci Insolera identifying the “political and religious situation . . . and the tensions surrounding the activities of the Flemish-Belgian province . . . in the Calvinist Dutch Republic” (p. 172). A “greater modesty” (p. 173) characterizes the Af-beldinghe. Not that Marc Van Vaeck and his colleagues accept all the arguments advanced by Salviucci Insolera (see pp. 173–75). The Imago emblems also had a brief life in the affixiones that were displayed in the Antwerp Jesuit church, now known as the Carolo Borromeo church. Some of the Imago emblems were reproduced in color on the panels of the affixiones (p. 176). Important differences are noted (pp. 179–181). In one sense the after-life of the Imago emblems can also be traced to the production of affixiones by students of the Jesuit schools (pp. 182–185), also in what I have called bishop’s books, welcoming a newly appointed bishop, and in the emblem production of such writers as Henricus Engelgrave, Joannes van Sambeeck, and Franciscus Nerrincq, all Jesuits (pp. 185–191). The chapter concludes with examples of the after-life of the Imago in the decoration of religious buildings from Switzerland to Argentina and Columbia (pp. 191–194). This is a well researched and richly illustrated chapter, which yields much invaluable new information, but the one thing that I did not find was any discussion of the Asianism of the Imago, to which Marc Fumaroli attaches such importance. The appended glossary (pp. 196–197) will be helpful, although emblem scholars may wonder at the exclusion of inscriptio from the list and the use of BOOK REVIEWS 385 “motto” in its stead, since we know that many a so-called motto is nothing of the kind, but that may be just another quibble. A more important quibble may be allowed. Either the authors or the editor could have included English translations of all Latin quotations, since it can no longer be assumed that today readers will be fluent in early modern Latin. Next in the SJUP volume comes “Introductions to the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew poetry” by Michael C. J. Putnam, Alexander Sens, and James P. M. Walsh, S.J. The chapter on “The Emblems” contains translations by Michael C. J. Putnam (Latin), Alexander Sens (Greek), and James P. M. Walsh, S.J. (Hebrew). Since few readers will possess a copy of the Imago, we are indebted to the authors and the press for reproducing so many illustrations and for printing the excellent translations of the texts. The book concludes with an appendix, bibliography, and index. There is at the outset a question of the translation of the texts, first by the Jesuits themselves when writing a version of the Latin in Dutch, but later also by the detractors, the Jansenists, who translated portions into French, and now into English by a contemporary colleague (pp. 424–705), including 614 footnotes explaining most of the erudite allusions. Translation is an art. In my view no-one understands a work better than a good translator, who must wrestle with the meaning and effect of the original text, but must also have a command of the original language and the culture that produced the text as well as a strong facility in the target language. For the emblem scholar and art historian the relationship of engraved image to text continues to be an unresolved issue. The common understanding is that image and texts contribute to an understanding of the whole emblem; that a meaningful relationship exists between image and words. But in the vast majority of cases we do not really know how the wood-cut or engraving came into being. That is to say, we may know who cut the metal plate, or carved the wood block, but we rarely know how the design was produced. Too often it is assumed that the author gave written or oral instructions, or that the publisher provided those instructions, or that the artist proceeded from the texts, which in the case of Latin texts would require a considerable language proficiency and understanding of the classical allusions. If the educated reader today has difficulty recognizing some of the classical names and allusions in the Latin texts, should we assume that whoever designed the engravings in the seventeenth century was sufficiently versed in Latin to recognize them? I prefer to believe that the Latin Phoebus and the more common names such as Hercules, Venus, Cupid, and Troy would have been recognizable. None the less, the description of visual parts, whether of emblems or frontispieces is important. One might start with the frontispiece to the Imago. I do not see the figure with “IHS” on its chest and with long curly hair as female as some of the Jansenist detractors claimed when they satirized the Jesuits. Putnam provides a close description of the frontispiece and the first emblem (pp. 50–55). While not committing himself to an identification of the gender of the figure, he does none the less use the possessive adjective “his” twice in his description of the figure (p. 51). 386 BOOK REVIEWS This bring us back to the book, the Imago primi saeculi of 1640, the texts of which are highly erudite. The doctrinal, even spiritual issues, may concern today’s reader little and even less the political controversy about the Society of Jesus. But there remains the question of the relationship of image to texts. To what extent, if at all, are the erudite and rhetorically bombastic qualities of the Latin texts incorporated into the engraved images? That will finally be a matter of interpretation. Assuming one agrees with the translations into English, the question remains in how far those texts are adequately rendered visually. It would be unreasonable to expect all keywords and classical allusions in the Latin texts to find inclusion in the engravings. In the face of no clear indication of the opposite I have to assume that the illustrator worked on his own. So how much Latin do we assume Moretus’ illustrator really possessed? After all, Moretus received texts from the Belgian Jesuits, who would pay for publication. Perhaps a final observation will be allowed on the emblems of the Imago. They are unusual in having three textual parts. Printed at the top of each emblem is a brief thematic statement, which Van Vaeck and colleagues term titulus and probably only found in the Imago. This is immediately followed by an inscriptio, which is a motto, the term preferred in this book. There follows the picture, often called pictura or icon. This will usually be an engraving, etching, or wood-cut. Finally there will be a subscriptio. I can imagine very different kinds of readers who may wish to consult or possess a copy of this beautiful book: Jesuits themselves, historians of religion or of the early modern period, but also emblem scholars and some art historians. Saint Joseph’s University Press is to be congratulated on adding such a beautiful and richly illustrated work to its prestigious new series. One can only hope that it will soon be included in personal and public libraries. McGill University (Emeritus) PETER DALY The Boulter Letters. Edited by Kenneth Milne and Paddy McNally. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed by International Specialized Book Services, Portland, OR. 2016. Pp. 467. €55.00; $74.50. ISBN 978-1-84682-290-2.) Following his appointment as Archbishop of Armagh in 1724, Hugh Boulter (1672–1742) exerted considerable influence on Ireland over the following two decades. His correspondence, first published in 1769/70, has long been one of the most important printed sources for scholars of early Hanoverian Ireland. Introducing this modern edition of the letters, Kenneth Milne quite rightly observes that a new edition is long overdue. Milne’s introductory bibliographical note offers a very brief overview of the roles played by Boulter’s secretary, Ambrose Philips, Dublin printer George Faulkner, and William Wall in the original publication of the letters. Milne follows up with a biographical ‘sketch’ of Boulter’s life (pp. 11–72). Threading together the disparate strands of Boulter’s life and career, Milne offers a judicious assessment of the growth and later decline of Boulter’s influence on Irish politics and on the established church during the 1720s and 1730s. Running to BOOK REVIEWS 387 more than sixty pages, this ‘sketch’ represents perhaps the most detailed account of Boulter’s life yet published and adds significant value to this edition. Paddy McNally does no less in an ensuing essay (pp. 73–95) that delves into the letters with the aplomb of a scholar who has worked with the material for more than three decades. Adopting a thematic approach, McNally elegantly delineates the archbishop’s preoccupations, as well as the successes and vicissitudes of his career. Here we are given an indication of the figures to whom Boulter was writing and how often (pp. 76–8), as well as an assessment of some of his preoccupations, such as his distrust of converts from Catholicism (p. 90) and the importance he attached to the disposal of the patronage in his gift (pp. 82–4). These introductory essays are easily the greatest strength of this edition and go a long way toward making up for some strange editorial decisions. Annotations found in the original eighteenth-century edition have been retained, with no effort made to redraft references that are, occasionally, more obscure than they would have been 250 years ago. No additional effort has been made to include annotations or footnotes that might have provided further contextualisation. The effect of this decision is compounded by an overall lack of scholarly apparatus. The front matter to modern collections of correspondence typically includes research aids such a table of letters reproduced, as well as the biographical details of persons mentioned within the letters. Neither is present in this edition. There are other curious omissions. While the incorporation of previously unpublished correspondence (from the British Library, Chatsworth House, and PRONI) is particularly welcome, the reader is given no way of locating them other than scanning for relevant archival references. Nor is the reader given any real sense of what these letters add to our understanding of Boulter. Putting such quibbles aside, the editors have provided the most comprehensive overview of Boulter’s life and career yet published. While not without its flaws, this edition certainly supersedes its eighteenth-century counterpart and will prove indispensable to scholars working on the political and ecclesiastical history of eighteenth-century Ireland. Royal Irish Academy EOIN KINSELLA How the Jesuits Survived Their Suppression: The Society of Jesus in the Russian Empire (1773–1814). By Marek Inglot, S.J. Edited and Translated by Daniel L. Schlafly. (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2015. Pp. xviii, 305. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-916101-81-7.) If the suppression of the Jesuits in the late eighteenth century was a surprising if not shocking event, the survival of the Order, even if only by a thread, was perhaps even more so. For a host of intersecting reasons, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in particular countries and empires from 1759 onward because of the animosity of forces both without and within the Church. Finally, due to ever increasing pressure, Pope Clement XIV gave way and issued the papal bull Domi- 388 BOOK REVIEWS nus ac Redemptor in 1773, which ushered in the general suppression. Yet, in one of the great ironies of secular and ecclesiastical history, the bull was not promulgated in several non-Catholic areas: for some years in Protestant Prussia and never in Orthodox Russia. In what turned out to be the beginning of the end of Poland— though a lifeline for the Jesuits—the First Partition of Poland in 1772 transferred lands to Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In the latter two states, Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great admired Jesuit education and were unwilling to allow a pope to tell them what to do in their own countries. Marek Inglot’s How the Jesuits Survived Their Suppression discusses the longterm significance of Catherine’s protection of the Jesuits, employing them as part of her goal of creating an expansive school system in the underdeveloped Russian Empire. Though reluctant to disobey the official papal directive, the Jesuits in the Province of Belarus (White Russia) proceeded with increasing confidence once they received the tacit approval of Clement XIV and the explicit verbal approval of his successor, Pius VI. As clear signs that the Society, at least in Russia, had a future, twenty Jesuits were ordained in 1776, a novitiate opened in 1779, and the First General Congregation (of Polock) was held in 1782 and elected a Vicar General (Stanislaw Czerniewicz). The Jesuits engaged primarily in two of their traditional apostolates: schools and missions. Especially under Catherine’s son, Paul I, who was a very enthusiastic supporter of the Society, the Jesuits opened more colleges, including a prestigious one in St. Petersburg, and expanded their missions in the Russian Empire. Paul’s assassination in 1801 led to the accession of his son, Alexander I, who generally supported the Society, at least initially. The new pope, Pius VII, was very pro-Jesuit and, although opposition from the king of Spain delayed his plans for a general restoration, in 1801 he granted canonical approval to the Jesuits in Russia. As proof of ongoing international Jesuit solidarity, many former Jesuits elsewhere aggregated to the Province of Belarus, though they could only do so personally, not corporately. As even clearer signs of rebirth, the Society was restored in various locales, including England, the United States, Holland, and Belgium. As the Napoleonic era neared its end, the pope proclaimed the universal restoration of the Society on August 7, 1814. Irony struck once again, however, and due to the tsar’s changing attitudes, the Jesuits were expelled from Russia in 1820. This is a handsomely-produced volume, with a wide array of black-and-white and color illustrations, as well as an extensive biographical index of contemporary Jesuits. While the scholarly apparatus is impressive, Inglot might have provided somewhat more background on the suppression, especially the pernicious effects of the Bourbon Family Compact. In addition, the concluding argument that the conservative, if not reactionary, mindset of much of the restored Society of Jesus in the nineteenth century was largely due to the mentality of the “Russian” Society is a bit simplistic. Traditionalist attitudes emanated from many sources in the so-called “Age of Metternich.” Nevertheless, this is an intriguing study of the surprising survival of the Society for almost fifty years in the Russian Empire. Le Moyne College ROBERT E. SCULLY, S.J. BOOK REVIEWS 389 LATE MODERN EUROPEAN Violence, Politics and Catholicism in Ireland. By Oliver P. Rafferty, S.J. (Dublin: Four Courts Press; distributed in the United States by International Specialized Book Services, Portland, OR. 2016. Pp. 247. €45,00; $70.00. ISBN 978-184682-583-5.) The essays collected in Violence, Politics and Catholicism in Ireland interrogate the tension between the political sensibilities of the bulk of Ireland’s Catholic faithful and the theological and practical defense of the state that was so much a part of Roman Catholicism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As will be clear to those familiar with the works of Oliver P. Rafferty, S.J., the author has wrestled with such concerns for decades now. In bringing together eight previously published essays with two new pieces, this welcome volume sheds light on the myriad tensions of those dynamics on an island united politically—in whole and then only in part—to the British state with its distinctly Protestant ethos. Unsurprisingly, Cardinal Paul Cullen looms large in several essays, including an extended look at his ultramontanism. Readers familiar only with his imperious oversight of Irish Catholicism in the mid-nineteenth century will benefit from this sympathetic judgment that “one cannot but be struck by the essentially religious nature of his outlook on life, and on what was happening in Ireland and the Europe of his day. At the very least, this is what one expects from a cardinal.” Sympathy does not equate to fawning, as that religious outlook had, Rafferty points out, an “almost apocalyptic tenor, with the forces of light ranged against the forces of darkness.” One sidelight of that conclusion was that God intervened to punish sin, which Rafferty notes, included His meting out of a “just punishment” to Abraham Lincoln “for his having attended the theatre on Good Friday” (pp. 122–23). Readers will come to appreciate three overlapping potential conflicts: those between Irish Church leaders who sought to carve out a more respected (and respectable) place for their flocks in a state that many of those same parishioners sought to undermine; those between the competing yet complementary empires of Britain and Rome in an era of unprecedented imperial expansion; and those between Irish and British Catholic leaders, whose sense of loyalty to Rome was colored by their loyalty to their flocks. At specific points in time—especially during the twentieth century when the Catholic dioceses in Ireland straddled two states, one of which viewed its large Catholic minority as alien and potentially threatening—the third set of these tensions became acute. Figures, including the leader of English Catholicism Cardinal Francis Bourne, could question Irish loyalties during the Great War (1914–1918), while Irish chaplains heroically ministered to soldiers at the front, offering sacramental care in the most dangerous of circumstances (pp. 134–62). At the same time, Rafferty carefully delineates that an individual’s personality and background shaped his actions alongside theological training, high office, and circumstance. Thus, one finds the Cardinal Joseph MacRory of Armagh could act as a go-between for the IRA with the government of neutral Ireland in 390 BOOK REVIEWS the 1940s, while Bishop (later Cardinal) Cahal Daly refused to meet with representatives of Sinn Féin, the party associated with the Provisional IRA’s campaigns in the 1970s–1990s, which Daly considered “morally evil” (pp. 167–72, 208). Based on thorough grounding in diocesan and Roman archives, as well as in the contemporary press, this work is very much a study of Catholic leaders—which is to say men in positions to shape Irish Catholicism. With that understanding, it can be read in whole or in parts with great profit. Marquette University TIMOTHY G. MCMAHON Mother Figured. Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal. By Deirdre de la Cruz. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2015. Pp. xiv, 302. $30.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-226-31491-4.) Deirdre de la Cruz, currently associate professor in the Departments of History and Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, focuses her research on Filipino popular and religious cultures. With her study Mother Figured she puts with one major scholarly stroke the Philippines (and Southeast Asia) on the global map of Marian (apparitional) studies. With an ethnological approach, combining the theory and methods of anthropology and history, and with an eloquent style, De la Cruz convincingly portrays the importance of Mother Mary for the Filipino community in the postcolonial era. The title of the book is hence appropriate. Although the work runs up from the mid-nineteenth century, the emphasis lies on the post-World War II era and continues till the beginning of the twentyfirst century. The core of her book concerns the 1948 Asian “Fátima”-inspired apparitions in a Carmelite monastery in the city of Lipa. Based on documents from a variety of various churches, convents, libraries, and archives and on ethnographic fieldwork, the author describes and analyzes this cult. Her perspective is not institutional nor on church politics, but by focusing on religion of everyday life and the lay actors within Filipino “marianism,” she shows how Marian devotional practice and its inherent networks function. When coming more toward the present, De La Cruz points out how mediation and how technologies and mass media have influenced Marian devotion. An issue in this study is De La Cruz’ point concerning the problem of “universal religion,” which is taken too often literally for being really universal. Also the term “marianism” contains a universality which for her cannot be established. For example, when the Lipa apparitions were connected to Cold War rhetoric and used in the United States by the Rosary Crusaders in their anticommunism, the Filipino reality was that the apparition had more to do with vernacular issues than with the global fight against atheism. While De La Cruz rightly criticizes uniformity of universalism, she has detected in the Philippines a trend to reshape their Mary into a more ‘universal’ BOOK REVIEWS 391 figure, taking her away from the local apparitional manifestation. This relates to the Filipino favoring of Mary-centric Christianity and Mary’s maternal qualities in particular (in opposition to her perpetual virginity). The author interprets that interestingly as an instrument to subvert the patriarchal and rationalist approach of the universal church. It also gave the Filipinos a new missionary Marian zeal for the Catholic world. This was, for example, expressed in the vanguard role of the lay Marian devotees advocating the acknowledgment of a new fifth Marian dogma by the Vatican. This heavily contested dogma was brought up by another 1950’s apparition: the Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam. This apparition has become nowadays also a substantial Marian cult in the Philippines, a perfect topic, I would say, for a new scholarly study by De La Cruz. PETER JAN MARGRY University of Amsterdam AMERICAN Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2016. Pp. x, 236. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8232-6886-3.) William Kurtz’s Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America is a carefully researched and thorough examination of American Catholic identity through the ordeal of the Civil War. His argument is refreshingly lucid. As a largely immigrant religious group in an overwhelmingly Protestant country, antebellum Catholics saw a brief opportunity to prove their American bona fides by serving the Union cause. This bloody trial of assimilation, however, revealed that Catholic culture was far from monolithic. American Catholics were not only divided by regional politics; they were also conflicted as to the purpose of the war itself. In the aftermath of the war, the patriotic service believed by many Catholics to be irrefutable proof of their loyal citizenship was largely ignored by the dominate Protestant Republicanism of the post-bellum North. Still viewed as suspect outsiders with foreign loyalties, Catholics, like so many other Americans North and South, found in the war a touchstone of historical memory that shaped their identity both as American citizens and a religious minority. Kurtz carefully demonstrates that following the anti-Catholic outbursts of the Know-Nothing years, the Civil War presented northern Catholics the possibility of acceptance as trustworthy American citizens. The courage of Irish and German brigades on the battlefield, the able leadership of key Catholic officers, the service of Catholic chaplains, and the sacrifice and care of northern nuns who nursed casualties regardless of religion or even region, impressed northern Protestants. As the war dragged on and denied the Union a quick resolution, however, initial positive reactions to Catholic “Americanism” faded. The Church in the North, as other factions in the North, divided over the place of slavery and abolition in prosecuting the war. Some independent Catholic journals aggressively attacked abolitionism as recrudescence of anti-Catholic Puritanism. Other journals, mostly in the minority, 392 BOOK REVIEWS embraced emancipation as the moral purpose of the war. Disputes over slavery and abolition were further complicated for Catholics by the war effort itself, especially the Lincoln administration’s decisions to abrogate certain freedoms of the press, suspend habeas corpus, and—most abhorred—to conscript from the Irish urban poor. While northern Catholics were far from the only sub-culture struggling to make sense of the purpose of the war and the meaning of emancipation, that some prominent Catholic leaders made cause of these issues brought them back under the ire of nativist Protestants. Moreover, coinciding with these ambiguities at home were the antiliberal politics of the papacy in Europe, as well as the Vatican’s brief and neutral diplomatic correspondence with the Confederacy. Taken together, foreign intrigue and domestic instabilities, especially in urban areas with large concentrations of Irish, kept northern Protestant suspicion of Catholicism alive in the waning years of combat. By war’s end, northern Catholics found themselves facing familiar critiques such as had been levelled by nativist detractors before the war began. Namely, Catholics, especially Irish and German Catholics, are religious outsiders whose innate conservatism and loyalty to a foreign prelate prevented them from attaining to trustworthy and responsible citizenship. Though the world had changed for both Catholics and Protestants after the war, and though heroic Catholic service to the union was not left unacknowledged, northern Protestant Republicans were not above exploiting xenophobic fears. The trial of the Union failed to secure American Catholics a lasting respect in the North and consequently accelerated the creation of a Catholic sub-culture whose legacy remained well into the twentieth century. William Kurtz’s study is a valuable contribution to the field of U.S. religious history. The book reveals how a native Catholic identity emerged from a plethora of competing loyalties in nineteenth-century America. It also preserves important stories and anecdotes that should be integral to any future work on religion and the American Civil War. Perhaps most significantly it explores in microcosm the complicated relationship between the prevailing tensions that have made the modern world: religion, liberalism, and the nation state. This is a required text for anyone who wants to further his or her understanding of Catholic history, U.S. religious History, and the American Civil War period. Samford University W. JASON WALLACE A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American. By Kathleen Sprows Cummings. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2019. Pp. x, 320. $28.00 cloth. ISBN 978-1-4696-4947-4.) When in 1975 Elizabeth Bayley Seton became the first U.S.-born saint, Catholics throughout the nation cheered the long-awaited recognition. It was a powerful moment. Seton was an “all-American saint,” a New York-born wife and mother, a convert to Catholicism, and a foundress of women’s religious communities. Canonized sixty-eight years after her cause for sainthood was first introduced, Seton was heralded as a saint in the new “American style of holiness.” BOOK REVIEWS 393 Kathleen Sprows Cummings, in A Saint of Our Own, skillfully tells the story of U.S. Catholic saint-seeking, focusing on St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s ascent to “holy hero” status while weaving in the stories of other saintly contenders: Kateri Tekakwitha, the North American martyrs, Philippine Duchesne, John Neumann, Frances Cabrini, and Katharine Drexel, among others. What emerges is not a summary of multiple canonization processes, but a well-crafted narrative of the “search for homegrown holiness” (p. 11). Cummings details whom American Catholics promoted for sainthood and what it indicates about their priorities and interests. In short, as Cummings proves, the “afterlives” of holy heroes say more about the saint-seekers than about their heroes. Organized chronologically, Cummings discusses the first Americans considered for sainthood, comparing and contrasting various expressions of holiness (martyrs, missionaries, founders of religious communities, etc.) and how they conformed (or not) to the emerging American style of sanctity. Cummings keeps score for the reader, reporting which causes were gaining steam and which were languishing—and why. In explaining what led to the advance of Mother Cabrini’s cause, for instance, Cummings relates a significant hagiographical shift: the new ideal of sanctity privileged not early missionaries but potential saints who had “embraced the nation rather than antedated it” (p. 72). In short, modern Americans looked for and to modern saints. The Italian-born Mother Cabrini’s canonization in 1946 resonated with some Americans, but a true American-born “saint of our own” remained elusive. Cummings follows additional sainthood causes at mid-century, focusing on Seton and Neumann: the infighting and intrigue; various starts and stops; and human and spiritual dynamics, leading to the “dramatic photo finish” in which Seton edged out Neumann. The two were beatified just months apart in 1963; Neumann was canonized in 1977, two years after Seton. However, even with the canonization of Seton, the story is not exactly one of triumph. Anticlimactically, as Cummings argues, U.S. Catholics had found their saint “at the precise moment it ceased to matter” (p. 230). Due to changes in Church and society, Catholics came to rely less on canonized saints to define holiness, and even when they did, they looked not to a single model, but to diverse expressions of sanctity in an increasingly pluralistic Church. Cummings’ narrative includes vivid quotations and interesting details throughout. It builds from chapter to chapter, both satisfying and further evoking the reader’s curiosity. As the story unfolds, it interfaces with broader historical developments, including anti-communism, Vatican Council II, ecumenism, civil rights, and the women’s movement. And while discussing the interventions of religious superiors, bishops, and postulators, Cummings does not forget the unsung laity who prayed to these would-be saints, caring “far less about the national implications of . . . saintly triumph than . . . about the miracles [the saint] might effect in their own personal lives” (p. 128). 394 BOOK REVIEWS A Saint of Our Own offers a substantial contribution to understanding U.S. religion, hagiographical developments, and the shifting priorities of the Catholic faithful. It takes up a relatively unexplored topic, providing an astute and interesting analysis of the evolution of U.S. saint-seeking from the early twentieth century to today. Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount St. Mary’s Seminary DAVID J. ENDRES A Partisan Church: American Catholicism and the Rise of Neo-conservative Catholics. By Todd Scribner. (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America Press. 2015. Pp. xii, 244. $34.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-813-227290.) Todd Scribner, education outreach co-ordinator at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, provides a judicious, albeit at times critical, account of the rise of Catholic neo-conservatives through the writings of three prominent Catholic public intellectuals, Michael Novak, the Reverend Richard Neuhaus, and George Wiegel. He shows that these three men often differed on important questions facing the nation and the Catholic Church in the United States in the Reagan years but agreed that the U.S. bishops had become too involved in current policy debates and were neglecting their responsibility to provide an ecclesiological foundation for maintaining moral order in an increasingly secular society. Novak, Neuhaus, and Weigel came into prominence in the post-Vatican Council II years. Novak and Neuhaus began as liberals; and Weigel, a generation younger, was deeply influenced by the pacifist antiwar activist Robert Pickus. All turned to the right in the 1970s in response largely to antiwar post-Vietnam U.S. foreign policy. All believed that the Soviet Union posed a serious threat to American foreign policy interests, but all initially supported Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Novak and Neuhaus came on-board Reagan’s presidential bid only in the latter stages of the campaign. The rise of neo-conservatives in this period is well-trodden in popular and scholarly literature. Scribner’s significant contribution is to add nuance to the meaning of neo-conservative Catholics, especially around ecclesiological issues reflected in their political positions. He explores in detail their positions on American foreign policy during the Carter and Reagan years, showing that they were not of a uniform mind. Scribner sets his discussion within the context of the post-World War II era, when animosity toward Catholics in mainstream American culture began to decline, while at the same time secularism grew. The trend toward secularism, as sociologist Robert Wuthnow observes, meant that political identity became more important that did denominational identity. Scribner shows that a central goal of Novak, Neuhaus, and Wiegal was to propose a place for the Catholic Church of the United States in this new order. They accepted generally the belief that Catholicism and the American republican order were compatible, if not essential. Novak, Neuhaus, and Wiegal accepted BOOK REVIEWS 395 French philosopher Jacques Maritain’s belief that there should be a clear delineation between church and state. Neo-conservatives were especially worried that the U.S. Catholic bishops had become too involved in specific policy issues, as was apparent in the bishops’ stances on foreign policy, particularly nuclear disarmament and Latin America. The neo-conservative complaint was just a disagreement that the bishops were too sanguine about the threat that Soviet Communism posed to world stability and American interests, but that by taking such specific policy positions the Church was undermining its authority as a necessary mediating institution within the general culture. All agreed that Catholic intellectuals needed to play a role in American politics, but insisted that the church hierarchy should constrain itself from specific political positions. This parsing of these two spheres, state and church, was fraught with tensions and perhaps inconsistencies on their part. While they called for the Catholic laity to play a more important role in the institutional church and in political life, they gave little attention to how to revive the laity. Scribner does not explore fully this general absence in the thinking of the neo-conservatives. Neo-conservatives spoke in abstraction about the importance of the laity in political life, criticized the bureaucratization of the Church, and the bishops’ overreliance on staff expertise, but gave little, if any attention, to how to revitalize the Catholic laity. Scribner conveys the intellectual power of these three intellectuals in policy discussions of the day. Yet the influence of any intellectuals or groups of intellectuals on policy discussion and politics in general is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain with any precision. Scribner avoids this task; what he does offer, none the less, is an excellent discussion of the ideas generated by these three important historical figures. DONALD T. CRITCHLOW Arizona State University LATIN AMERICAN Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer. By Robin Varnum. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2014. Pp. xvi,368. $26.95. ISBN: 978-0-80614497-9.) Raised in Jerez de la Frontera, a client and servant of the powerful Dukes of Medina Sidonia throughout his life, a veteran of war in Italy, and married to a wealthy conversa (a person of Jewish origins from a family that converted to Christianity during the late medieval period), Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was appointed royal Treasurer for the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez in 1526 and subsequently Governor of the Spanish province of Río de la Plata (roughly today’s Paraguay) in 1540. Both appointments failed to produce the results he evidently hoped for while, somewhat paradoxically, allowing him to create a reputation as a “good conquistador,” one who saw the Native Americans as fully human persons capable of embracing Christianity and Spanish rule without Spanish use of vio- 396 BOOK REVIEWS lence, i.e., military conquest. He also gained a reputation as a sort of Christian missionary, not only because of his seeming stance on how to treat Native Americans but also because, once forced into the role by Native insistence, he used Christian prayers as part of healings, events that could be considered miracles. The Narváez expedition landed on the west coast of Florida, marched north to near modern Tallahassee, and then by locally built barges sailed along the Gulf Coast until the ships were wrecked or lost at sea on the Texas coast. From there Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors eventually wandered across northern Mexico and part of the future United States Southwest until they met Spaniards in Sinaloa. He returned to Spain without the fortune he had hoped to obtain but with his version of a joint report on the odyssey that he and his companions had prepared in Mexico, and that, with some additional editing, he published at Zaragoza in 1542 (La Relación que dio Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca de lo acaesido en las Indias en la armada donde iva por governador Pánfilo de Narbáez . . .) and in a second edition in 1555 (the book is better known under its 1749 title: Naufragios). He declined offers to join Hernando de Soto’s expedition, which was making up when he returned to Spain. Cabeza de Vaca’s appointment as Governor of the Río de la Plata (1540) also ended in failure. There he encountered an entrenched group of Spaniards and Spaniard-Guarani relations that included the use of women to cement alliances and provide services of all sorts for their (common law) husbands. That is, he found conditions that flew in the face of Catholic teachings about marriage and in the face of the Ordinanzas of 1526 that were to govern the Spanish “conquest” of the Americas. When, by his account, he tried to correct these and other abuses, as his contract with the Crown required, the local powers organized a mutiny, imprisoned him, and sent hm to Spain in chains. He was accompanied by papers that characterized him as a violator of the Ordenanzas. Jailed and duly charged with various crimes, Cabeza de Vaca spent the remaining years of his life seeking first a lessening of his sentences (achieved) and then exoneration. As part of that effort, his secretary, Pero Hernández, wrote a commentary on the events in Paraguay (published in La Relación y Comentarios del gobernador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos journadas que hizo a las Indias . . . [Valladolid, 1555]). Cabeza seems to have died (1556?) without a full pardon. Professor Varnum ably weaves the recent scholarship on Cabeza’s life, the Narváez expedition (especially on the route he took in Texas) and his activities in the Río de la Plata with his own writings (and those of Hernández) about those events. The views of Cabeza’s opponents in Paraguary are noticed but quickly passed over as she continues to follow his account. The result is a very readable lifeand-times biography. One of its virtues is that it supplies the background information a reader might need for understanding the context as well as the actual events. Does this rhetorical strategy amount to showing a man who “endeavored to set a moral course for others to follow . . .” and whose “successes in brokering agree- BOOK REVIEWS 397 ments and accommodating people of different races and cultures” make him “exemplary” (p. xi) and worthy of the statutes and other commemorations he has received (pp. xi–xii)? I have my doubts. The problem is that Varnum does not comment on the evident contradiction between the persona and values that Cabeza de Vaca and Hernández portray in their writings and the ample evidence in those writings, and in the charges levied against him by his opponents in Paraguay, that he was not the “good conquistador” that she and other scholars would have him be. José Rabasa, for example, has pointed out that Cabeza’s self-presentation in the Relación and (via Hernández) in the Commentarios as a loyal, law-abiding servant of the Crown is shaped to fit the standards in the Ordinanzas of 1526 (Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier [Duke University Press, 2000], pp. 67–72, 80). Far from eschewing all violence against Native Americans, Cabeza was quite prepared to use war in Paraguay when they failed to accept Spanish rule or rebelled under it. Moreover, it appears that while restoring “the rule of law” in Spanish-Indian relations, he saw to it that his personal economic interests (as well as those of the Crown) were served, much as his opponents charged. Varnum acknowledges that “like most Spaniards of his generation, Cabeza de Vaca believed that Indians would be better off living as Christians under Spanish rule.” She faithfully reports the instances in Paraguay when he threatened or used war. Yet in the end, she, like many other writers, is seduced by Cabeza’s rhetoric, especially in the Relación, where he presents sympathetic descriptions of the peoples he encountered along the way. All that said, this book will likely become the standard biography in English for some years to come. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge PAUL E. HOFFMAN Una historia olvidada e inolvidable. Carranza, Constitución e Iglesia católica en México (1914–1919). By Carmen-José Alejos-Grau. [Serie: Doctrina Jurídica, num. 844.] (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas. 2018. Pp. xxx, 609. 700 MXN paperback. ISBN 978-607-3-1135-8.) The book is a good example of the most traditional sort of historiography. The author has heavily relied on archival sources, namely, the Vatican Secret Archives (Archivio Segreto Vaticano); the Archives of the Former Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (Archivio dell’ex-Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari), and the Apostolic Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The author has also used Mexican archives such as the Historical Archive of the Archbishopric of Mexico (Archivo del Arzobispado de México) and three other Roman archives. Her effort in painstakingly canvassing archival records to build a narrative about the difficult years of 1914–1919, when both the Mexican revolution and the Great War were at their prime, is a valuable piece of scholarship for those interested in very detailed information regarding the archbishops’ perspective on Mexican politics. Her work brings also light to the sometimes-overlooked personal 398 BOOK REVIEWS takes on the matter. Moreover, Alejos Grau’s attempt at showing the palimpsest of different and contradictory voices within the Catholic authorities is successful when it comes to using firsthand material. More than half of the 600-page volume consists of appendixes, where she has translated and transcribed documents such as letters, reports, pamphlets, and other important findings, which will be of use for scholars willing to study the period further. That by itself is a valuable contribution. Moreover, the author writes a story based on personal accounts of the main political actors with no regard for the current (vast and excellent) research on the period. Secondary bibliography is seldom used in the book, which even lacks a section of bibliographical references. Thus, archival research is put to use with no regard for new scholarship in the field, creating an individualistic factual account, which does not contribute to the understanding of the great trends of the period. In spite of her claims, the author seems to misunderstand the immense historical importance of what was at stake at the time. While her narrative pays punctilious attention to the bishops’ and archbishops’ reports to Rome and the back and forth of the American Embassy and the episcopate, it does not acknowledge other perspectives (such as Carranza´s or Villa’s), and so the explanatory ability of the book is poor. Moreover, although Alejos Grau makes explicit attempts to situate the Mexican religious strife within a global framework, her account of the period hardly makes sense of the issues at stake. The rise of secular states; the importance of social democrat, communist, anarchist, and socialist labor movements; the Great War itself; the emergence of democratic legitimacy; the transformations within the Catholic Church ant its efforts to follow the pace of the times—such as social Catholicism—are not part of the narrative. Instead, the author sketches a history of great men by doing nineteenth-century history in the twenty-first. Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City MARISOL LÓPEZ-MENÉNDEZ Priest Under Fire: Padre David Rodríguez, the Catholic Church, and El Salvador’s Revolutionary Movement. By Peter M. Sánchez. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2015. Pp. xvi, 308. $44.95. ISBN 978-0-8130-6119-1.) Priest Under Fire illuminates the crucial roles that diocesan priests played in the history of progressive Catholicism, peasant movements, popular politics, and revolution in El Salvador. David Rodríguez, a Catholic priest, backed the creation of a potent peasant movement in San Vicente, a Salvadoran department. In the mid1970s, peasant activists and Rodríguez joined the Popular Liberation Forces— Farabundo Martí—(FPL), a founding organization of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a revolutionary movement that fought a twelve-year war (1980–1992) against the oligarchic military regime in El Salvador. BOOK REVIEWS 399 After the signing of the peace accords that ended the Salvadoran conflict in 1992, Rodríguez participated in the transformation of the insurgent FMLN into a legal political party and served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador. Sánchez analyzes Rodríguez’s transformation from a conservative priest into a key figure of liberationist Catholicism, his interactions with peasant communities, his personal decision to join the insurgency, the roles he played during the conflict, and his participation in postwar Salvadoran politics. Rodríguez’s trajectory unfolded during the epochal church reform generated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1967) and the Second Conference of Latin American bishops held in Medellín, Colombia (1968). In this context, the Salvadoran Catholic Church mutated from a conservative institution traditionally allied with the Salvadoran elites into a progressive institution that sided with the poor and the oppressed. In particular, the interactions between priests influenced by Liberation Theology, a progressive Catholic ideology prevalent at that time, and peasant communities that endured extremely precarious living and working conditions and repression, were instrumental in the formation of powerful peasant movements and rural insurgencies in the 1970s. Sánchez’ insightful examination of Rodríguez’s trajectory epitomizes this historical process. According to Sánchez, the roles that individual leaders play in revolutionary mobilizations have been largely overlooked in the scholarship on social and revolutionary movements (p. 13). Sánchez argues that “widespread contention is generated only when a few political entrepreneurs, who operate in an unjust society, decide to risk their lives by challenging the status quo, and that they are most likely to be effective when they develop or use new, revolutionary ideas that generate a broad-based insurgent consciousness” (p. 7). Sánchez maintains that priests and nuns were “awakened by the new revolutionary ideas emanating from the Church and from well-known theologians” (p. 7). “The awakening of religious leaders then preceded [cursives in the original] the awakening of the peasants, and it is likely that peasants engaged in risky contentious politics because they now had strong allies they had never had before,” namely, “highly respected Catholic priests and nuns” (p. 7). Sánchez conducted several interviews with Rodríguez and “a total of 103 interviews” with people who were cognizant of Rodríguez’s trajectory to write an account of Rodríguez’s life story that illustrates this argument (pp. 261–262). Sánchez suggests that the “new pastoral” conducted by Rodríguez and other liberationists leaders as part of the Church reform put them in “in conflict with state’s interests” (p. 111). The new pastoral contributed to “raise the consciousness” and political organization of peasant communities. Diocesan priests like Rodríguez decided to “accompany” peasant leaders formed by the new pastoral who joined revolutionary organizations (p. 111). Rodríguez joined the FPL mainly because he deemed the insurgency a form of self-defense against tyranny sanctioned by the Church’s doctrine (i.e., a “Just War”), particularly by the teachings of Pope Paul VI (pp. 111–112). My research on the history of peasant communities in Chalate- 400 BOOK REVIEWS nango, a central department in El Salvador (Joaquín M. Chávez, 2017), concurs with Sánchez’s study on this point. Rodríguez had a conservative family background and religious education. He witnessed the oppression experienced by peasant communities in San Vicente and also had the opportunity to learn about the new Catholic theology in Chile. Rodríguez’s identification with the grievances and demands of peasant communities, his gradual embracing of the new theology, and integration into the progressive sector of the Church, informed his political radicalization. State terror against peasant communities motivated Rodríguez to join the FP (p. 110). From that point forward Rodríguez assumed multiple responsibilities in the insurgency. Sánchez has clearly demonstrated that indeed the Catholic reform played a major role in the transformation of Rodríguez’ political and religious mentality and gradual embracing of revolutionary politics. Sánchez’s interpretation on the interactions between diocesan priests and peasant leaders in 1970s El Salvador is less persuasive. Like the studies conducted by Carlos R. Cabarrús (1983) in Aguilares and Jenny Pearce (1986) in Chalatenango, Sánchez’s research concludes that diocesan priests were the catalysts of the peasant mobilizations that took place in San Vicente (p. 264). However, Sánchez qualifies this argument: “After speaking to a number of campesinos, I started to realize that the accepted notion that priests and nuns ‘awakened’ the poor was paternalistic and discounted the intelligence of campesinos” (p. 264). My own research (Joaquín M. Chávez, 2017) indicates that trans-class urban-rural interactions that featured crucial political dialogues and the formation of long-term alliances between Catholic priests, urban insurgents, and peasant leaders enabled the creation of the peasant movement and the expansion of the urban insurgency into rural areas. In the case of San Vicente, the peasant leaders’ revolutionary ethos apparently also “awoke” Rodríguez’s consciousness in multiple ways. Rodríguez himself alluded to this process (pp. 106–107). The intricate religious and political interactions between diocesan priests, urban insurgents, and peasant leaders that took place in San Vicente arguably also shaped Rodríguez’s consciousness. The formation of peasant consciousness was a byproduct of these interactions and not simply derivative of the diocesan priests’ agency. Sánchez has avoided the risk of romanticizing the iconic Padre David Rodríguez. Instead he has offered a balanced account of Rodríguez’s trajectory that illustrates the centrality of leaders and new revolutionary ideas in the formation of social and revolutionary movements in El Salvador. Priest Under Fire constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on Salvadoran Catholicism. University of Illinois at Chicago JOAQUÍN M. CHÁVEZ Notes and Comments NELSON H. MINNICH PRIZE The Nelson H. Minnich Prize for Best Article in the Catholic Historical Review in 2018 is awarded to Brian R. Larkin, professor of history, College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University, Minnesota. His article “Beyond Guadalupe: The Eucharist, the Cult of Saints and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City” appeared in the Spring issue (Volume 104, No. 2). In this groundbreaking article, Professor Larkin demonstrates that the Virgin of Guadalupe was not the preeminent Marian devotion of colonial Mexico. The Guadalupan devotion was rising, but always second in preference to Our Lady of Sorrows. He also proposes that Mexican devotion to local virgins, saints, and Christ images never exceeded devotion to such universal Catholic devotions as the Eucharist. He proposes that otherworldly concerns such as eternal salvation and release from purgatory be considered important motivations for religious gifts and bequests. Professor Larkin’s contribution lies in his argument for greater balance in examining colonial Mexican piety. He finds a presentism in considering the colonial past, first by imposing on that era the Guadalupan domination that later generations produced, and second by focusing on the local/exotic/particular over the universal in developing an understanding of colonial Mexican piety. While Robert Morgan’s Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity, 1600–1810 emphasizes American discontinuities, this author balances that attention to the unique with equal attention to the more commonplace or universally recognized. Thoroughly grounded in primary sources, the author uses tables to demonstrate the range of devotions present in the minds of devotees as they wrote their last wills and testaments. In acknowledging evidence that does not support his arguments; he admits that further study is needed on the widespread popularity of Our Lady of Sorrows or St. Anthony of Padua. He places the Mexican experience in wider contexts: Tridentine reforms of Catholicism, papal declarations, Spanish piety, official sponsorship of particular devotions, and others. This strengthens the emphasis on the importance of universal devotions in relationship to local Mexican novelties. On account of its outstanding research and original contributions, “Beyond Guadalupe: The Eucharist, the Cult of Saints and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City” deserves recognition of the Nelson H. Minnich Prize for 2018. 401 402 NOTES AND COMMENTS NEWBERRY LIBRARY The Newberry Library’s Center for Renaissance Studies proudly launches a new digital resource devoted to Italian paleography, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Paleography, the study of the history of handwriting and scripts in books, manuscripts, and other documents, is essential for scholarly research in the humanities for the premodern period. Created and edited by Isabella Magni (Newberry Library), Lia Markey (Newberry Library), and Maddalena Signorini (Università di Roma-Tor Vergata) in collaboration with the University of Toronto Libraries Information Technology Services and the Walter J. Ong S.J. Center for Digital Humanities at St. Louis University, this new website provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular handwriting from 1100 to 1700 using manuscripts in the Newberry collections as well as other US institutions. The new paleography site complements a resource devoted to French paleography launched in 2016, also funded by the Mellon Foundation and designed in partnership between the Newberry, Toronto, and St. Louis. Like the French site, the intended audience of the Italian site is varied: scholars preparing to conduct research in Italian archives; students studying Italian language, history and culture; curators, librarians, and archivists who work with manuscripts; calligraphers and graphic designers interested in historical scripts; and anyone who would like to experiment with transcribing early Italian documents. The site features 102 digitized manuscripts representing 7 different types of scripts and 3 difficulty levels. Each manuscript is paired with a transcription and a scholarly entry written by a specialist in the field. These background essays provide the historical, cultural, and at times codicological context for the manuscripts. Using the Ong Center’s transcription tool, T-PEN, users of the site can transcribe the documents and save their transcriptions online. The site includes a handbook describing the various types of scripts and providing the history of the vernacular in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The site also comprises an appendix with significant manuscript calligraphy books and maps from Italy in the Newberry collections to showcase the library’s rich holdings and to provide another context for studying handwriting from the period. Finally, examples of abbreviations and symbols, a glossary of paleography terms, links to dictionaries, and bibliography and references provide essential resources for the study of Italian paleography. Over the next year, the team plans to incorporate teaching materials to make integration of the site into the classroom seamless. Access the Italian Paleography website at: https://italian-paleography. library.utoronto.ca. Follow on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/italpaleography RESEARCH GRANTS The University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism administers four grant programs and one research award to support scholarly research in several subject areas. The next application deadline for each of NOTES AND COMMENTS 403 the following programs is December 31, 2019. For information on application, visit the Center website: cushwa@ndu Research Travel Grants Research Travel Grants assist scholars who wish to visit the University Archives or other collections at the Hesburgh Libraries at Notre Dame for research relating to the study of Catholics in America. Peter R. D’Agostino Research Travel Grants Offered in conjunction with Italian Studies at Notre Dame and designed to facilitate the study of the American past from an international perspective, these grants support research in Roman archives for a significant publication project on U.S. Catholic history. Mother Theodore Guerin Research Travel Grants The Cushwa Center recently launched this program supporting scholars whose research projects seek to feature Catholic women more prominently in modern history. Grants are made to scholars seeking to visit any repository in or outside the United States, or traveling to conduct oral history interviews, especially of women religious. Theodore M. Hesburgh Research Travel Grants The Cushwa Center established the Theodore M. Hesburgh Research Travel Grant Program to support research projects in any academic discipline that consider and incorporate the work of Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., former president of the University of Notre Dame. Hibernian Research Awards The Cushwa Center administers Hibernian Research Awards supported by an endowment from the Ancient Order of Hibernians, providing travel funds for the scholarly study of Irish and Irish American history. CAUSES OF SAINTS Pope Francis on January 15, 2019, authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate decisions related to causes of four candidates. He made the announcement during an audience with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation. The decisions announced: • Miracle attributed to the intercession of Blessed Marguerite Bays, virgin, of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi; born in Pierraz, Switzerland, 8 September 1815 and died in Siviriez, Switzerland, on 27 June 1879. • Martyrdom of the Servants of God Maria del Carmen (née: Isabella Lacaba Andía) and thirteen companions, professed religious of the Franciscan Order of 404 NOTES AND COMMENTS the Immaculate Conception; killed in hatred of the faith during the Spanish Civil War in 1936; • Heroic virtues of the Servant of God Anna Kaworek, co-founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Michael the Archangel; born in Biedrzychowice, Poland on 18 June 1872, and died in Miejsce Piastowe, Poland, on 30 December 1936. • Heroic virtues of the Servant of God María Soledad Sanjurjo Santos (née: María Consolata), professed religious of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick; born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, 15 November 1892 and died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 23 April 1973. LECTURES The 13th Annual Antonine Tibesar, O.F.M., Lecture sponsored by the Academy of American Franciscan History will be held at St. Francis Church and Friary, 134 West 31st Street, New York, NY, location of the Provincial Administration of Holy Name Province, Order of Friars Minor, on Friday, October 25, 2019, 6:00 p.m. Paul T. Murray, professor emeritus of sociology, Siena College, Loudonville, New York, will speak on “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Father Nathaniel and the Cost of Civil Rights Leadership.” For more information, contact the Academy at: aafh.org ACHA members may note that Professor Murray received the inaugural Harry C. Koenig Prize for an outstanding biographical study of a Catholic individual for his article, “‘The Most Righteous White Man in Selma’: Father Maurice Ouellet and the Struggle for Voting Rights,” Alabama Review 68.1 (Janaury 2015): 31-73. For the Tibesar Lecture, Professor Murray recounts the Civil Rights leadership in the 1960s of Father Nathaniel Machesky, O.F.M., friar of Assumption Province (Order of Friars Minor) and pastor of the African-American parish in Greenwood, MS. At the University of Notre Dame, Tara McCarthy, associate professor of history at Central Michigan University, will deliver the 2019 Hibernian Lecture title, “A Century of Suffrage: Catholic Activism, Class Consciousness, and the Contributions of Irish American Women.” The lecture will be given, Friday, September 20, 2019, 4:30 p.m. at the Morris Inn Ballroom on campus. Professor McCarthy is author of Respectability and Reform: Irish American Women’s Activism, 1880– 1920 (Syracuse University Press, 2018). The 2019 Hibernian Lecture is co-sponsored by the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. The Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame is sponsoring the lecture: “Sacred Protests: Politics and Faith after Clergy Sexual Abuse” given by Brian Clites, instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, on November 4, 2019, at 4:30 p.m. in the Morris Inn Private Dining Rooms at Notre Dame. NOTES AND COMMENTS 405 In the wake of Boston’s Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal in 2002, survivors of sexual abuse have been empowered to come forward with their stories of suffering. From the ashes of their collective trauma, abuse survivors have also built a robust agenda of political and religious reforms. Professor Clites will offer an ethnographic exploration of Catholic abuse survivors’ protests, examining not only the reforms that victims seek but also the conflicting emotions that they feel toward their church. PUBLICATION SERIES The University of North Carolina Press has announced a new publication series, “Ethnographies of Religion.” The series editor is: Kristy Nabhan-Warren, University of Iowa. Ethnographies of Religion will publish creative new works on religious life throughout the Americas, featuring the methods of religious studies along with anthropological approaches to lived religion. The religious studies perspective encompasses attention to historical contingency, theory, religious doctrine and texts, and religious practitioners’ intimate, personal narratives. The series also highlights the critical realities of migration and transnationalism. All inquiries welcome—contact: Kristy Nabhan-Warren: kristy-nabhan-warren@uiowa.edu or Elaine Maisner: emaisner@email.unc.edu CONFERENCES Associazione Italiana dei Professori di Storia della Chiesa is sponsoring a conference titled “Dalla Riforma di S. Giustina alla Congregazione Cassinese, Genesi, Evoluzione, e Irradazione di un modello monastico Europeo,” September 18-21, 2019 at Abbazia di Santa Giustina, Padua, Italy. Early Christian martyr, Santa Giustina (Justina), is the patron saint of Padua. Sessions on 18 September 2019: Giancarlo Andenna, Accademia dei Lincei, “Discorso di aperture”; Francesco Veronese, Università di Padova, “Santa Giustina nell’Alto Medioevo (secoli VI–X): fonti, problemi, contesti.” Mauro Tagliabue, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, “Alle origini del modello congregazionale di Santa Giustina: Monte Oliveto e la sua novità istituzionale.” Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, “L’Osservanza e il rinnovamento della vita religiosa femminile in Italia.” Gabriel Soler, Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, “San Giorgio in Alga: un vivaio di spiritualità e riforma nella laguna Veneziana.” Franz Xaver Bischof, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität-München, “Movimenti di riforma monastica non congregazionali fra ‘300 e ‘400: Kastl e Melk.” Ubaldo Cortoni, Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, “Figure riformatrici fra ‘300 e ‘400: Ambrogio Traversari e il mondo camaldolese.” Pierantonio Piatti, Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche, “Ludovico Barbo: biografia di un rifondatore nello specchio di san Benedetto.” Francesco Trolese, Istituto di liturgia pastorale “S. Giustina”—Padova, “L’azione di Ludovico Barbo nella prima fase della riforma: sviluppi istituzionali della Congregazione tra adesioni e resistenze durante pontificati di Martino V ed Eugenio IV.” 406 NOTES AND COMMENTS Sessions on 19 September 2019: Mariano Dell’Omo, Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, “Montecassino nella Congregazione de Unitate: eredità di una tradizione e mutamenti di un’istituzione tra Chiesa e società nel corso del ‘500.” Giovanni Spinelli, Centro Storico Benedettino Italiano, “Un’analisi statistica e cronologica delle aggregazioni di monasteri a Santa Giustina prima e dopo il 1504.” Thierry Barbeau, Abbazia di Solesmes, “Les Déclarations de Sainte-Justine, un modèle de monachisme renouvelé pour les congregations françaises de Chezal-Benoît, de Saint-Vanne et de Saint-Maur.” Francesco Salvestrini, Università di Firenze, “Santa Giustina e Vallombrosa: influssi e intersezioni.” Ugo Paoli, Monastero di S. Silvestro di Montefano, “Eugenio IV e la Congregazione Silvestrina.” Sebastiano Paciolla, Pontificia Università Lateranense, “Influsso della Congregazione di Santa Giustina in altri ambiti monastici: Congregazione cistercense di Castiglia, Congregazione cistercense di San Bernardo in Italia.” Nadia Togni, Università di Ginevra, “La Congregazione Melitense in Dalmazia. Guglielmo Scannerini, Centro Storico Benedettino Italiano, “La spiritualità che pervade alle origini la Congregazione di Santa Giustina e l’evoluzione che si registra dal ‘400 al ‘500.” Luca Ceriotti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, “Carriere monastiche e governi abbaziali tra ‘400 e ‘500.” Session on 20 September 2019: Matteo Al Kalak, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, “Gli esponenti della congregazione cassinese al concilio di Trento.” Massimo Zaggia, Università di Bergamo, “Studi e prodotti librari della Congregazione benedettina cassinese lungo il ’500.” Filippo Lovison, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, “La Congregazione di Santa Giustina ormai cassinese nella Chiesa del ‘500.” Vincenzo Vozza, Università di Padova, “I Cassinesi nella crisi religiosa del ‘500: per un bilancio storiografico e alcune ipotesi di ricerca.” Lorenzo Matè Sadornil, Abbazia di Santo Domingo de Silos, “La Congregazione Cassinese, quella di Valladolid e la diaspora dei benedettini inglesi sul continente.” Roberto Rusconi, Università di Roma Tre, “Le biblioteche monastiche alla fine del ‘500: a proposito dei benedettini cassinesi.” Edoardo Barbieri, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, “La Congregazione benedettina di Santa Giustina e le sue opere liturgiche a stampa.” Antonio Lovato, Università di Padova, “La musica liturgica nelle “Ordinationes” della Congregazione di Santa Giustina.” Giacomo Baroffio, Università di Pavia—Sede di Cremona, “Canto e liturgia di Santa Giustina.” Sessions on 21 September 2019: Gianmario Guidarelli, Università di Padova, “La cultura architettonica della Congregazione di Santa Giustina, nei secoli XV e XVI.” Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Università Suor Orsola Benincasa—Napoli, “Da Andrea da Salerno a Marco Pino: l’arte nella Napoli di primo Cinquecento e la committenza dei monasteri meridionali della Congregazione di Santa Giustina.” Federica Toniolo, Università di Padova, “Codici e libri miniati nella Congregazione nel ‘400 e nel ‘500.” N OTES AND COMMENTS 407 On 17–20 October 2019, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC) will hold its annual meeting in St. Louis. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the society and in honor of that event the SCSC is returning to the city where it was established, and its first conference was held. While the meeting program will provide an opportunity to mark this important anniversary in the society’s history, it will also be an opportunity to think about future directions for early modern studies. At the fiftieth anniversary conference, there will be an extended poster board commemorating the history of the Society. Reminiscences about the society and conference or documents pertinent to its founding and operations that members are invited to share will be posted. For program information and registration, visit the SCSC website: sixteencentury.org On March 26–28, 2020, the 95th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America, the Program in Medieval Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Medieval Association of the Pacific. The conference program will feature a diverse range of sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies. Registration, book exhibits, and other events will be in the Martin Luther King Jr. Building on Sproul Plaza, a short half-mile walk from the Downtown Berkeley BART stop, and sessions will be held in historic Wheeler Hall just inside the Sather Gate. Information on accommodations, as well as MAA student bursaries and travel grants, will be made available in the fall of 2019. For further information visit the Academy website: medievalacademy.org On 8–10 November 2019, the 38th International Conference of the Haskins Society will take place at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. The featured speakers in 2019 include: Jean-François Nieus (Namur), Fiona Griffiths (Stanford), and Simon Yarrow (Birmingham). For additional information and registration, visit the Haskins Society website: the haskinssociety.wildapricot.org PUBLICATIONS Eight articles in Volume 80 (2017) of Wissenschaft und Weisheit explore the theme “Zwischen Charisma und Leben: Klara von Assisi und ihre Schwestern in der aktuellen Forschung”: Werner Maleczek, “Zwanzig Jahre danach: Ist die Authentizität von Klaras Testament eine erledigte Frage?” (pp. 7–68); Paul Zahner, O.F.M., “Die Quellen der Lebensform des Ordens der Armen Schwestern der Klara von Assisi (Klararegel) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lebensform Hugos (Hugolinregel)” (pp. 69–86); Maria Pia Alberzoni, “Das Leben von Pönitenten vor und nach der Verklösterlichung: hospitia werden zu monasteria” (pp. 87– 104); Niklaus Kuster, O.F.M.Cap., “Klaras Vernetzung mit Armen Schwestern. Blicke auf den Damiansorden in Europa 1253” (pp. 105–67); Leonhard Lehmann, O.F.M.Cap., “Spirituelle Motive für die Klausur bei Franziskus und Klara von Assisi” (pp. 168–201); Pietro Maranesi, O.F.M.Cap., “Le sorelle povere di San Damiano e l’ordine claustrale di San Damiano. Una tensione documentaria tra due 408 NOTES AND COMMENTS progetti identitari” (pp. 202–54); Gerard Pieter Freeman, “Gitter und Pforte. Die Instrumente der Klausur in den Damianitinnenregeln des 13. Jahrhunderts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von San Damiano” (pp. 255–88); and Martina Kreidler-Kos, “’Immer hat Gott dich beschützt wie eine Mutter ihr Kind’. Das Motiv der Mütterlichkeit in Leben, Schriften und Zeugnissen der hl. Klara von Assisi” (pp. 289–315). The second number for 2018 (Volume 130) of Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Âge, contains a number of brief articles under the heading “Les observances régulières: Historiographies,” edited by Sylvie Duval, Haude Morven, and Ludovic Viallet, who have provided the “Introduction” (pp. 261–65): Michele Lodone, “Riforme e osservanze tra XIV e XVI secolo” (pp. 267–78); Bert Roest, “Observances ‘féminines’ dans la famille franciscaine: phénomènes boulversants, pluralistes et multipolaires” (pp. 279–87); Sylvie Duval, “Les Dominicaines ou les paradoxes de l’Observance” (pp. 289–99; Letizia Pellegrini, “An irreducible plural: Franciscan Observances in Europe (15th century)” (pp. 301–11); Anne ReltgenTallon, “Les observances dominicaines” (pp. 313–21); Cristina Andenna, “Canonici Regolari e ‘mondo’ dell’Osservanza: Riflessioni e spunti di ricerca” (pp. 323–35); Peter Loewen, “A rudder for the ship of fools? Olivier Maillard in an Age of Reform” (pp. 337–43); and Denise Zaru, “Les Observances dominicaine et franciscaine: ferments de nouveauté artistique ou gardiennes de la tradition? Éléments de réponse et perspectives de recherché” (pp. 345–62). “Autorità e recezione dei concili” is the theme of a half-dozen articles published in the first number for 2019 (Volume 40) of Cristianesimo nella storia. Giuseppe Ruggieri has provided the “Introduzione” (pp. 7–9), and the contributors are Hans-Georg Gradl, “Paulus und Jerusalem. Zur Autorität und Wirkung des ‘Apostelkonzils’ (Gal 2. 1–21)” (pp. 11–33); Rita Lizzi Testa, “L’autorità del concilio di Serdica in Occidente: testimonianze ambrosiane (epp. 30, 2–3; 72, 10)” (pp. 35–57); Andrea Tilatti, “Autorità dei concili. Aquileia e le sue costituzioni provinciali” (pp. 59–90); Matteo Al Kalak, “L’autorità di un concilio. Trento, la sua applicazione e il suo mito” (pp. 91–111); Jean-François Chiron, “La réception de ‘Pastor aeternus’ chapitre IV, entre amplifications et contextualisations” (pp. 113–45); and Giuseppe Ruggieri, “Interpretazione accrescitiva e recezione” (pp. 147–63). The Pontifical University Antonianum (specifically its three faculties in the Rome campus, viz., theology, canon law, and philosophy) dedicated a study day on May 13, 2018, to games of chance or hazard. Some of the papers presented on that occasion have now been published in Antonianum, Volume XCIII, Number 4 (October–December, 2018), the more historical of which are: “’Perdo et venco’: la predicazione osservante sul gioco nel ‘400,” by Lorenzo Turchi (pp. 655–70); “Il gioco sociale e ricreativo come antidoto all’azzardo nel diritto canonico dall’alto medioevo all’umanesimo,” by Michele Sardella (pp. 671–82); “L’umorismo in Francesco d’Assisi,” by Arnaldo Casali (pp. 683–723); “Une autre pensée du jeu. François d’Assise et le cerf-volant,” by Bernard Forthomme (pp. 725–43); and “Il Gioco del rovescio. Variazioni sul gioco francescano” (pp. 745–68). N OTES AND COMMENTS 409 To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the death of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, the Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift has devoted all the articles in the fourth number for 2018 (Volume 69) to “Ludwig I. König von Bayern: Stifter der Abtei St. Bonifaz. Zum 150. Todestag.” The editor of this fascicle, Franz Xaver Bischof, has set the tone in an “Einführung in das Themenheft” (pp. 345–46), and the six contributors are Birgitta Klemenz, “Der König und sein St. Bonifaz” (pp. 347–62); Stefan Haering, O.S.B., “Der König und seine Erneuerung der Klöster. Ein Beitrag zur Klosterpolitik Ludwigs I. von Bayern” (pp. 363–78); Hermann Rumschöttel, “Der König und seine Kirchenbauten” (pp. 379–92); Katharina Weigand, “Der König und seine Universität. Ludwig I. und die Translokation der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität nach München” (pp. 393–410); Franz Xaver Bischof, “Der König und seine Bischöfe. Ein Beitrag zur Bischofsernennungspolitik Ludwigs I.” (pp. 411–24); and Hans-Michael Körner, “Der König und seine Strasse” (pp. 425–39). Volume 29 (2018) of Catholic Southwest, A Journal of History and Culture, is dedicated to the Cristero War in Mexico. Following an introduction by the editor, Richard Fossey, “Blood and Martyrdom in the Catholic Southwest” (pp. 1–2), are four articles: “Creating Catholic Utopias: Transnational Catholic Activism and Mexico’s Unión Nacional Sinarquista,” by Julia G. Young (pp. 3–20); “’With One Voice’: Father Amado Pardavé and the Politics of Liturgy in Cristero Mexico,” by Matthew Butler (pp. 21–57); “Cristero Witness, Emigrant, Claretian Bishop: Invited Remarks at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Texas Catholic Historical Society,” by Plácido Rodríguez, C.M.F. (pp. 58–68); and “Archbishop Arthur Jerome Drossaerts Versus Mexican Liberals in the 1920s and 1930s,” by Jason Surmiller (pp. 69–82). Under “Notes and Comments” is “A List of Those Who Were Canonized or Beatified,” compiled by Richard Fossey and Nancy Autin (pp. 89– 93, including two pages of photographs). OBITUARY NOTICE LAMIN SANNEH (1942–2019) Professor Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University, died unexpectedly after a stroke on January 6, 2019. Over a distinguished academic career in which he authored over twenty books and taught across the globe in a variety of important academic positions, Sanneh became a leading figure in the study of African Christianity and Islam, as well as in the spread of Christianity in Africa and elsewhere. Sanneh influentially enhanced appreciation of the historical impact of biblical translation, both on developing African vernacular culture and in propagating the remarkable expansion of the world Christian movement. The title of Sanneh’s 2012 autobiography, Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African, summarizes his self-understanding. He was born a Muslim in 410 NOTES AND COMMENTS the Gambia, one of Africa’s smallest countries, and educated piously in traditional Islamic settings as well as elite government institutions. He became attracted to Christianity as a youth, learning about Jesus through the Qur’an. Baptized a Methodist late in his teens, he overcame the reluctance of Christian missionaries who feared for his safety. Later he would say he discerned the intrinsic Christian welcome of his Mandinka heritage and language, contrary to Muslim insistence on Arabic and resistance to vernacularization, and this drew him to the new faith. He thus lived what he chronicled as a scholar—the enormous growth of Christianity in Africa after the colonial period ended—and personally experienced one overlooked reason for that growth that he himself analyzed: Christianity’s embrace of African languages. Sanneh later became Catholic and served on several Vatican commissions. Leaving western Africa, Sanneh made his way to Germany and the US for further education. Eventually his fluency in Arabic led to further studies in Islamic history, in Nigeria, Lebanon, and then the UK to pursue a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He received his degree in 1974, writing about a pacifist Islamic revival movement in western Africa, then taught briefly in the UK and several countries in Africa before settling at Aberdeen in 1978. There he met Andrew Walls and Jonathan Bonk and both became friends and colleagues, helping set the stage for the beginnings of world Christianity as an academic field. While teaching the history of Christianity and Islam at Aberdeen, Sanneh grew intrigued by the contrast between the Christian predilection to translate its scriptures and the Islamic refusal to do so. Against what he perceived as an implicit anti-Christian bias among most historians, he insisted on the deep cultural respect for traditional cultures that missionary translation evinces, a far cry from the alleged cultural imperialism with which missionaries were usually saddled. From Aberdeen, Sanneh came to Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions in 1981. There he further developed insights into translation’s implications for Christianity. More than simply a practical way to make Christianity understood by new believers, translation also represented for Sanneh an implicit confidence that God’s word can speak in any tongue, the implication being that all languages can bear the divine presence. These insights eventually became Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (1989, 2nd edition 2009), a landmark text in world Christianity and mission studies. After his years at Harvard, Yale invited Sanneh to join its Divinity School faculty, where he remained until his death. There in 1992 he helped begin the influential Yale-Edinburgh Group, which has organized annual summer meetings around mission studies and world Christianity, alternating between the two universities. While at Yale, Sanneh continued studying African religion, publishing Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa (1999), a study of anti-slavery activists in western Africa. He also extended his insights NOTES AND COMMENTS 411 beyond Africa with works like Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel Beyond the West (2003) and Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (2008), which examined Christianity’s expansion across the globe. Sanneh was a warm and genial person, an elegant public speaker, and a giant in the study of Christianity. Happily, the University of Ghana in Accra in 2018 agreed to house the Sanneh Institute, which will open in 2020 to support advanced research on religion and society with an eye toward cooperation and peace among believers of different faiths, especially in West Africa. University of Notre Dame PAUL KOLLMAN, C.S.C. Periodical Literature GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS Il governo Della Chiesa. Sulla cultura curiale di Benedetto XV. Enrico Galavotti. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (2, 2018), 401–22. La rotta di Paolo VI, timoniere del Concilio Vaticano II. † Gualtiero Sigismondi. Istituto Paolo VI, notizario n. 74 (Dec., 2017), 39–54. Paolo VI e Atenagora a cinquant’anni dal viaggio in Turchia. Due documenti diplomatici. Eliana Versace. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n. 74 (Dec., 2017), 55–73. Saint Paul VI, maître spirituel et éducateur. Patrice Mahieu O.S.B. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n.77 (June, 2019), 87–110. The Baptist Followers of Mani: Reframing the Cologne Mani Codex. Jae Hee Han. Numen, 66 (2/3, 2019), 243–70. The Role of the Natural Law in Politics According to Thomas Aquinas. William A. McCormick, SJ. History of Political Thought, 39 (4, 2018), 591–605. Contribution de l’Eglise et des “forces idéal” à la construction de la paix durant la guerre froide. Joseph Joblin, SI. Gregorianum, 99 (3, 2018), 637–57. Le “moment” de soupçon. Sciences humaines et Compagnie de Jésus (années 1960). Frédéric Gugelot. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (3, 2018), 655–69. Henri Matagne, bollandiste. Lettres à ses collègues Victor et Remi De Buck. Bernard Joassart. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (June, 2018), 107–39. Catalogues de manuscrits latins. Inventaire hagiographique (trent-cinquième série). François Dolbeau. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (June, 2018), 140–77. Eine Franziskusbiografie als Alterswerk: Wie der deutsche Historiker Dieter Berg den Poverello in seiner Zeit beleuchtet. Niklaus Kuster. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (3–4, 2018), 485–506. Écrire l’histoire monastique au XXIe siècle: Notes critiques. Alain Ranwel. Revue de l’histoire des religions (1, 2019), 151–65. L’opera scientifica de Paolo Prodi: un bilancio. In occasione della Giornata di studio a lui dedicata, 13 dicembre 2017. Birgit Emich. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 44 (1, 2018), 153–65. “To Make the World One in Christ Jesus”: Transpacific Protestantism in the Age of Empire. Gavin James Campbell. Pacific Historical Review, 87 (Fall, 2018), 575–92. 412 PERIODICAL LITERATURE 413 ANCIENT Ius conubii or concubina: The Marital and Social Class of Perpetua in the Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Thomas J. Heffernan. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (June, 2018), 14–42. Emperors, bishops, art and jurisprudence: the transformation of law in Eusebius of Caesarea. James Corke-Webster. Early Medieval Europe, 27 (Feb., 2019), 12– 34. Norme, malédiction et forme de vie dans la “règles” de Chenouté. Fabrizio Vecoli. Augustinianum, LVIII (June, 2018), 65–85. The Common, History, and the Whole: Guiding Themes in De vera religione. Thomas Clemmons. Augustinianum, LVIII (June, 2018), 125–53. À propos des relations entre Ambroise et Gratien. Questions chronologiques et historiques que pose le De fide. Enjeux et portée du concile d’Aquilée. Paul Mattei. Augustinianum, LVIII (Dec., 2018), 400–39. Pachomius Outside the Shadow of the Vita Antonii. Mary K. Farag. Harvard Theological Review, 111 (Oct., 2018), 516–40. Diakonia et économes au service de l’économie monastique en Égypte (IVe–VIIIe siècles). Maria Chiara Giorda. Augustinianum, LVIII (June, 2018), 205–28. Paula and Jerome: towards a theology of Late Antique pilgrimage. Giselle Bader. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 18 (4, 2018), 344–53. Saint Augustine as a Reforming Voice for the Catholic Church in Roman Africa: The Testimony of his Letter 29 to Alypius. Kolawole Chabi. Augustinianum, LVIII (Dec., 2018), 469–90. The Canons of the Council of Chalcedon concerning Monks. Ewa Wipszycka. Augustinianum, LVIII (June, 2018), 155–79. Canoni conciliari armeni: Šahapivan e Dowin. Alessandro Orengo. Augustinianum, LVIII (Dec., 2018), 533–95. A Threefold Heresy: Reassessing Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Animal Sacrifice in Late Antiquity. Curtis Hutt. History of Religions, 58 (Feb., 2019), 251–76. Law, memory, and priestly office in Rome, c. 500. Conrad Leyser. Early Medieval Europe, 27 (Feb., 2019), 61–84. After Gundovald, before Pseudo-Isidore: episcopal jurisdiction, clerical privilege and the uses of Roman law in the Frankish kingdoms. Stefan Esders and Helmut Reimitz. Early Medieval Europe, 27 (Feb., 2019), 85–111. Family Rural Churches in Late Antique Palestine and the Competition in the ‘Field of Religious Goods’: A Socio-Historical View. Jacob Ashkenazi. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 69 (Oct., 2018), 700–27. 414 PERIODICAL LITERATURE MEDIEVAL Bede, Theodore and Wighard. Why did Pope Vitalian need to appoint a new bishop for the English church in the 660s? Richard Shaw. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 521–42. Caring for Churches, Orphans, and Widows in Late Merovingian Francia. Contemporary and Carolingian Perspectives. Gregory I. Halfond. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 544–74. Why Remember Ratchis? Medieval Monastic Memory and the Lombard Past. Maya Maskarinec. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXVII (Jan.– Mar., 2019), 3– 58. L’autel d’or de la basilique Saint-Ambroise et le programme episcopal d’Angilbert II de Milan. Miriam Rita Tessera. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 126 (1, 2019), 8–29. Des moines athonites en voyage. Réseaux de relations, mobilité monastique en financements du IXe au XIe siècle. Vangelis Maladakis. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 84 (2, 2018), 371–84. Truth and Mimesis in Byzantium: A Speaking Reliquary of Saint Demetrios of Thessaloniki. Laura Veneskey. Art History, 42 (Feb., 2019), 16–39. Les Lettres dans l’hagiographie médiolatine (IXe–XIIe siècles). Marie-Céline Isaïa. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 61 (Apr.–June, 2018), 109–27. Per omnia ecclesiastica officia promotus. A normative perspective on the career of bishops in the church province of Reims (888–1049). Jelle Lisson. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 5–37. Behind Hartker’s Antiphoner: Neglected Fragments of the Earliest Sankt Gallen Tonary. Henry Parkes. Early Music History, 37 (Oct., 2018), 183–246. Alle origini dell’Aureum Saeculum desideriano: Montecassino tra i secoli X–XI. Amalia Galdi. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 129 (2, 2017), 439–65. The ‘just judgment” in Western France (c. 1000–c.1150): Judicial Practice and the Sacred. M. W. Mchaffie. French History, 33 (Mar., 2019), 1–23. Between history and hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury’s vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia. Charles C. Rozier. Journal of Medieval History, 45 (1, 2019), 1–19. Saint Jérôme et Jonas à l’époque romane. De l’influence d’un Père de l’Église sur les textes des XIe et XIIe siècles. Anne-Sophie Traineau-Durozoy. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 61 (Oct.–Dec., 2018), 379–406. Le média épistolaire dans les Gesta abbatum Trudonensium. Kevin Schmidt. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 61 (Apr.–June, 2018), 129–40. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 415 Ipotesi ricostruttiva dei sistemi di accesso della Basilica Onoriana di Sant’Agnese fuori le mura. Luisa Covello. Augustinianum, LVIII (Dec., 2018), 511–31. Évêques et élites urbaines aux premiers temps de la commune de Cambrai (fin XIe– début XIIIe siècle). Nicolas Ruffini-Rozani. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 61 (Oct.–Dec., 2018), 357–77. The Character of Papal Finance at the Turn of the Twelfth Century. Benedict G. E. Wiedemann. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (June, 2018), 503–32. Papal Councils and the Development of Lay Penance in the Long Twelfth Century. Atria A. Larson. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (2, 2018), 323–69. Remembering Phoebe in the Twelfth Century: The Forgotten Deacon in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Anne L. Clark. Journal of Medieval Religious Culture, 45 (1, 2019), 1–28. Civilisation et romanesque aux XIIe–XIIIe siècles. Catalina Girbea. Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, 62 (Jan.–Mar., 2019), 49–59. Doorkeepers, the chamberlain and petitioning at the papal court, c. 1150–1200. Benedict Wiedemann. Historical Research, XCI (Aug., 2018), 409–25. Sapientes nostri. I Dialogi (o Antikeimenon) di Anselmo di Havelberg e la circolazione dei testi di Gregorio di Nazianzo nell’Europa latina del XII secolo. Riccardo Saccenti. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 39–63. La Translatio sanctae Monicae (BHL 6001), le culte de sainte Monique et le culte de “moi” au XIIe siècle. Benoît-Michel Tock. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (Dec., 2018), 365–432. From Arnulf of Lisieux to Stefania of San Silvestro: A 12th-Century Letter and Its Hagiographic Afterlife. Anne L. Clark. Franciscan Studies, 76 (2018), 23–38. Les cisterciens et la cartularisation au Moyen Âge. Les cartulaires des abbayes cisterciennes de Wallonie jusqu’au début du XVe siècle. Nathalie Verpeaux. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 576–610. Conventus iste fundatricis reginae tumulo non parum illustratur. Il sepolcro di Eleonora d’Angiò nella chiesa di San Francesco a Catania. Paola Vitolo. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 129 (2, 2017), 283–300. Hyspanus Diecus Roderico, un aperçu des lettres échangées entre chacelier de Castille et l’archevêque de Tolède (ca. 1218). Amaïa Arizaleta. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 61 (Apr.–June, 2018), 141–56. “Tenere vivo il fuoco o adorare le ceneri?” Cluny e il mondo universitario nel XIII secolo: tra riappropriazione della tradizione e ridefinizione della propria identità. Pietro Silanos. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 129 (1, 2017), 101–21. How to craft a crusade call: Pope Innocent III and Quia maior (1213). Thomas Smith. Historical Research, XCII (Feb., 2019), 2–23. 416 PERIODICAL LITERATURE Pietro di Bernardone nella vicenda iniziale di Francesco: Analisi della “Legenda trium sociorum.” Pietro Maranesi. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 7–52. Der Brief des heiligen Franziskus an alle MinderbrüderVersuch zu einem historischen Kommentar. Oktavian Schmucki OFMCap. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 79 (2016), 7–46. Dominikus in den Franziskus-Quellen. Zum 800. Geburtstag der Dominikaner. Niklaus Kuster OFMCap. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 79 (2016), 47–84. Francesco d’Assisi zelante seguace di Cristo crocifisso in due sconosciuti sermoni di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea Franciscana, 84 (3–4, 2017), 397–448. Bonaventura dubbioso sull’indulgenza della Porziuncola? Felice Accrocca. Collectanea Franciscana, 87 (3–4, 2017), 449–62. Il codice F.IX.19 della Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati in Siena: Un testimone disatteso dei sermoni di san Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea Franciscana, 87 (3–4, 2017), 635–69. Bastard Priests: Illegitimacy and Ordination in Medieval Europe. Sara McDougall. Speculum, 94 (Jan., 2019), 138–72. Church-union negotiations between Rome, Nicaea and Rus’, 1231–1237. Alexander V. Maiorov. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 84 (2, 2018), 385–405. Lives on hold: the Dampierre family, captivity, and the crusades in thirteenth-century Champagne. Randall Todd Pippenger. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (5, 2018), 507–28. Demonic Possession and the Practice of Exorcism: An exploration of the Franciscan legacy. Bert Roest. Franciscan Studies, 76 (2018), 301–40. Medicine and Religion in Early Dominican Demonology. Ayelet Even-Ezra. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 69 (Oct., 2018), 728–45. Posterità di Bonaventura in Pietro di Giovanni Olivi. Paolo Vian. Antonianum, XCIII (Apr.–June, 2018), 283–98. Heretical networks between East and West: the case of the Fraticelli. Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (5, 2018), 529–42. Benedict of Alignan’s Tractatus fidei contra diversos errores: a neglected anti-heresy treatise. John H. Arnold. Journal of Medieval History, 45 (1, 2019), 20–64. Dalla chiesa di s. Michele “in area Castri Ursini” al convento di S. Francesco presso la contrada di S. Stefano: Impianti insediativi dei frati minori a Catania tra Duecento e Trecento. Antonio Mursia. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 75–89. Ordinationes Monasterii Wratislaviensis: I più antichi statuti per le Monache dell’Ordine di San Damiano. Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 91–145. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 417 Damianite e Clarisse nel “Regnum.” I monasteri fondati in Campania, Calabria e Basilicata nel Duecento. Marco Espositi. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 147–86. Thomas of Hereford’s miracles—between Aquinas and Augustine. Stefan Dragulinescu. Journal of Medieval History, 44 (5, 2018), 543–68. Reflejos de una mentalidad cristiana española: la historiografia de Alfonso el Sabio. María Isabel Becerra de Cardozo. Revista de Historia Universal, 18 (2017), 111–21. ‘In common for everyone’: shared space and private possession in the English parish church nave. Gabriel Byng. Journal of Medieval History, 45 (2, 2019), 231–53. Le origini del Terzo Ordine Regolare di san Francesco al vaglio della storiografia contemporanea. Riccardo Battiloro. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (3–4, 2018), 681–778. Un légendier de Cologne conservé dans une collection privée. Analyse et commentaire. Cécile Lanéry. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (Dec., 2018), 241–333. Le silence des agneaux: la normativité pastorale à la lumière de la prédication mendiante sur le Bon Pasteur (Jean, 10, 11) aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Florent Coste. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 129 (1, 2017), 123–42. La substitution des images aux reliques, et ses limites, dans la diffusion de la virtus des saints (espace français, fin XIIIe–XVe s.) Jean-Marie Sansterre. Analecta Bollandiana, 136 (June, 2018), 61–106. The Composition of the “Instructiones” of St. Angela of Foligno. Mateusz Stróżyński. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 187–215. Le XIVe siècle maronite. Mariam de Ghantuz Cubbe. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 84 (2, 2018), 421–67. Etica economica e credito nella Summa Astesana (1317). Appunti sul pensiero teologico-sociale francescano nel Io sec. di vita. Oreste Bazzichi. Miscellanea Francescana, 118 (I–II, 2018), 75–108. Le transfert de la collégiale de Celles à Visé sous l’évêque de Liège Adolphe de la Marck en 1338. De la piété d’un prince-évêque. Jean-Louis Kupper. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 94–130. Entre volonté réformatrice et valorisation personnelle: le Registre de Gilles li Muisis (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms IV 119). Ingrid Falque. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 131–60. Die Klosterpolitik der Grafen und Fürsten zu Fürstenberg. Thomas Zotz. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 138 (2018), 9–26. Il Duomo e la città: i segni di una rinnovata attenzione dopo il primo soggiorno pisano di Carlo IV (1355–1362). Mauro Ronzani. Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 129 (1, 2017), 39–45. 418 PERIODICAL LITERATURE Revising the Body in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations. Laura Godfrey. Journal of Medieval Religious Culture, 45 (1, 2019), 61–77. La Chiesa armena e Roma nella Storia di Tamerlano di T’ovma Mecop’ec’i. Marco Bais. Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Âge, 130 (1, 2018), 9–19. Minding the Rod: Sodomy and Clerical Masculinity in Fifteenth-century Leicester. Katherine Zieman. Gender and History, 31 (Mar., 2019), 60–77. The Athonite Patronage of Stephen III of Moldavia, 1457–1504. Alice Isabella Sullivan. Speculum, 94 (Jan., 2019), 1–46. York’s Jesus: Crowned King and Traitor Attainted. Theresa Tinkle. Speculum, 94 (Jan., 2019), 96–137. Recording and curating relics at Westminster Abbey in the late Middle Ages. Julian Luxford. Journal of Medieval History, 45 (2, 2019), 204–30. Bessarione e la Crociata. L’epistola al frate minore Giacomo della Marca. Gianmario Cattaneo. Miscellanea Francescana, 118 (I–II, 2018), 109–32. Bramante’s coro finto, Ex-Votos, and Cult Practice in Sforza Milan. Timothy McCall. Renaissance Quarterly, 72 (Spring, 2019), 1–53. “End in tears”? Über religiose Komplexität und das Ende des Mittelalters. Dorothea Weltecke, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 44 (2, 2018), 121–54. SIXTEENTH CENTURY Bell on Trial: The Struggle for Sounds after Savonarola. Daniel M. Zolli. Renaissance Quarterly, 72 (Spring, 2019), 54–96. Raphael’s Rainbow and the Vision of Saint Catherine. Tracy Cosgriff. Renaissance Quarterly, 72 (Spring, 2019), 97–147. Geschichtliche Quellen zu Franziskus und Klara von Assisi vor der Spaltung des Ordens 1517 und zu Beginn der Reformation. Johannes Karl Schlageter OFM. Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 79 (2016), 142–74. Erasmus’ Paraphrases on the New Testament and the Presentation of Christ’s Teaching. Peter Mack. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 39 (1, 2019), 5– 21. Non sum Oedipus, sed Morus: A Portrait of Erasmus’ Moria. Elisa Bacchi. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 39 (1, 2019), 75–91. La figura de Lutero en su contexto histórico. Rafael Lazcano. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 93 (Apr.–June, 2018), 279–333. Variaciones históricas en la imagen católica y evangélica de Martín Lutero. Santiago Madrigal, SJ. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 93 (Apr.–June, 2018), 335–73. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 419 Die Einfürung der Reformation in Eppingen 1522 bis 1556. Ein Beitrag zum Reformationsgedenken 2017. Manfred Tschacher. Freiburger DiözesanArchiv, 138 (2018), 47–62. From Spain to Sicily after the Expulsion. Conversos between Economic Networks and the Aristocratic Elite. Fabrizio D’Avenia. Journal of Early Modern History, 22 (6, 2018), 421–45. The Ambiguities of Belief and Belonging: Catholicism and the Church of the East in the Sixteenth Century. Lucy Parker. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (Dec., 2018), 1420–45. Empire and the Right to Preach the Gospel in the School of Salamanca, 1535– 1560. Daniel S. Allemann. Historical Journal, 62 (Mar., 2019), 35–55. The doctrine of the Sabbath in the Edwardian Reformation. Stephen Tong. Historical Research, XCI (Nov., 2018), 647–61. Opposing Tyranny from the Outside: The Case of the Marian Exiles. Francesca Pirola. History of Political Thought, 40 (1, 2019), 69–84. Life After Exile: Former Catholic Emigrés and the Legacy of Flight in Marian England. Frederick E. Smith. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (Aug., 2018), 806–34. Profezia, politica, religione e censura nelle pseudo-lettere di San Francesco di Paola su Savonarola (prima metà XVI–prima metà XVII secolo): prime ipotesi interpretative. Ernesto Lettieri. Archivio Storico Italiano, CLXXVIII (Jan.– Mar., 2019), 127–56. Isocrates’s phronesis and the Early Jesuits. Jaske Kainalainen. Journal of Early Modern History, 22 (6, 2018), 528–48. How Protestant was the Elizabethan Regime? Neil Younger. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (Oct., 2018), 1060–92. Martyrologists Without Boundaries: The Collaboration of John Foxe and Heinrich Pantaleon. Thomas S. Freeman and David Scott Gehring. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 69 (Oct., 2018), 746–67. Music Theory at Work: The Eton Choirbook, Rhythmic Proportions, and Musical Networks in Sixteenth-Century England. Anne Heminger. Early Music History, 37 (Oct., 2018), 141–82. In the Shadow of Cathay: A Survey of European Encounters in Discerning, Mapping, and Exploring Tibet during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Ana Carolina Hosne. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (II, 2018), 243–87. Sacred Landscapes, Spiritual Travel: Embodied Holiness and Long-Distance Pilgrims in the Catholic Reformation. Elizabeth Tingle. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (Dec., 2018), 89–106. 420 PERIODICAL LITERATURE Divine Right and Secular Constitutionalism: The Jesuit-Absolutist Debates, 1580– 1620. Nathaniel Mull. History of Political Thought, 39 (4, 2018), 606–33. Robert Persons, popular sovereignty, and the late Elizabethan Succession debate. M. J. M. Innes. Historical Journal, 62 (Mar, 2019), 57–76. Hagiography by the Book: Bibliomancy and Early Modern Cultures of Compilation in Francisco Zumel’s De vitis patrum (1588). Spencer J. Weinreich. Journal of the History of Ideas, 80 (June, 2019), 1–23. Select document: Catholic ownership of tithes: a County Wexford widow’s dispensation, 1595. Brian Matt Cuarta. Irish Historical Studies, 42 (Nov., 2018), 336–44. ‘A Savage Conversion’. Unbelief and Demonic Possession in Pierre de Bérulle’s Traité des Énerguménes (1599). Ismael Del Olmo. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 189–209. Wissensbestände/ “archivi del sapere” der Frühen Neuzeit. Juristisch-theologische Debatten im 16./17. Jahrhundert. Angela De Benedictis and Luise SchornSchütte. Historische Zeitschrift, 308 (Feb., 2019), 1–45. SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (EASTERN HEMISPHERE) Privacy in Early Modern Christianity and beyond. Traces and Approaches. Mette Birkedal Bruun. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 44 (2, 2018), 33–54. Vocational Freedom, Parental Authority and Pastoral Persuasion in SeventeenthCentury France. Christopher J. Lane. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 69 (Oct., 2018), 768–84. Les minimes et la discipline du jeûne et de l’abstinence à l’âge classique. Identité monastique, morale régulière et ascétisme alimentaire au XVIIe siècle. Sylvio H. De Franceschi. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (2, 2018), 371–99. Le corps brisé. Les conséquences politiques de l’application de l’exemplarisme bérullien aux controverses eucharistiques (1600–1609). Stéphane-Marie Morgain. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 211–43. Protestant Military Humanism in Early Stuart Ireland. D. Alan Orr. Historical Journal, 62 (Mar., 2019), 77–99. The political sermons of Lancelot Andrewes. Jonathan McGovern. Seventeenth Century, 34 (Feb., 2019), 3–25. Writing a Spiritual Biography in Early Modern France: The “Many Lives” of Madeleine de Lemoignon. Jennifer Hillman. French Historical Studies, 42 (Feb., 2019), 1–34. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 421 Death of a Polemicist: Honour and Calumny in Early Modern European Religious Debate. Paul Cohen. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (June, 2018), 533– 66. Language and Power in an English Convent in Exile, c. 1621–c. 1631. Emilie K. M. Murphy. Historical Journal, 62 (Mar., 2019), 101–25. The true habit of St. Francis: The Capuchins and the construction of a new Franciscan identity. Alejandra Concha Sahli. Collectanea Franciscana, 87 (3–4, 2017), 513–52. Editoria celebrativa e stratificazione nobiliare fra le clarisse e cappuccine d’antico regime. Un censimento. Angelo D’Ambrosio. Collectanea Franciscana, 87 (3– 4, 2017), 553–612. Metamorfosi di un’estasi: san Giuseppe da Copertino e la cupola della Santa Casa di Loreto. Massimo Vedova. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (3–4, 2018), 779–826. Il ruolo dei Frati Cappuccini della Provincia di Sant’Angelo nel terremoto che ha colpito San Severo e la Captianata il 30 luglio 1627. Marianna Lafelice. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (3–4, 2018), 827–846. Charles I’s most loyal subject: Thomas Harrison and the sin of Uzzah. David Cressy. Historical Research, XCI (Aug., 2018), 446–61. Where was the Church of England, 1646–1660? Christopher Haigh. Historical Journal, 62 (Mar., 2019), 127–47. Athanasius Kircher and Vegetal Magnetism: Analogy as a Method. Lucie Cermáková. Early Science and Medicine, 23 (5/6, 2018), 487–508. Milton, Jerome, and Apocalyptic Virginity. Brooke Conti. Renaissance Quarterly, 72 (Spring, 2019), 194–230. Could Chinese Vegetarians be Baptized? The Canton Conference and Adrien Grelon SJ’s Report of 1668. Thierry Maynard SJ. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (1, 2018), 75–145. Morti senza testamento e pratiche ecclesiastiche d’Antico Regime. Un’indagine sul regno di Napoli. Francesco Gaudioso. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 163–85. Confessional disputes in the republic of letters: Susan Du Verger and Margaret Cavendish. Justin Begley. Seventeenth Century, 34 (Apr., 2019), 181–207. A ‘disorderly, tumultuous way of serving God’: prayer and order in Ireland’s church and state,1660–1689. Kathryn Rose Sawyer. Irish Historical Studies, 42 (Nov., 2018), 207–24. Le Prevenciones divinas contra la vana idolatría de las gentes (ca. 1670) di Isaac Orobio de Castro e il loro posto nella letteratura polemica ebraica anticristiana. Miriam Benfatto. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (3, 2018), 591–611. 422 PERIODICAL LITERATURE De l’assistance spirituelle à l’affirmation du temporel. Pour une lecture sociale de la “Confrairie de Messieurs les prêtres et chapelains de cette ville de Dinan, faubourgs et des environs” aux XVIIe and XVIIIe siècles. Françoise CassigneulCohan. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 126 (1, 2019), 75–102. Ralph Thoresby and individual devotion in late seventeenth- and early eighteenthcentury England. Laura Sangha. Historical Research, XCII (Feb., 2019), 139– 59. Affairs of Humanity: Arguments for Humanitarian Intervention in England and Europe, 1698–1715. Catherine S. Arnold. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (Aug., 2018), 835–65. ‘The Cat’s Paw’: Helen Arthur, the act of resumption and The Popish pretenders to the forfeited estates in Ireland, 1700–03. Frances Nolan. Irish Historical Studies, 42 (Nov., 2018), 225–43. Le clergé de France au XVIIIe siècle. Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 104 (July–Dec., 2018), 376–91. Clergé et institutions ecclésiastiques dans les appels namurois au Grand Conseil de Malines (XVIIIe siècle). Marc Ronvaux. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 611–54. Un antijésuitisme issu des missions d’Asie dans le diocèse de Lausanne: Les Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de l’abbé Pierre-François Favre (1746). David Aeby. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (II, 2018), 189–241. The Jesuit Province of France on the Eve of its Destruction in 1762. Gillian Thompson. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (1, 2018), 3–74. State-Sponsored Inventories of Jesuit Houses in the Aftermath of the Suppression of the Society of Jesus: Notes on a Source for Jesuit History from the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth. Andrea Mariani. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, LXXXVII (II, 2018), 289–373. Landscape and Iconicity: Proskynetaria of the Holy Land from the Ottoman Period. Pnina Arad. Art Bulletin, 100 (Dec., 2018), 62–80. Les quévaisiers de Lanvellec à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Leur place dans la société paroissiale. Erwan Léon. Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 126 (1, 2019), 163–79. NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES (EASTERN HEMISPHERE) Consensus or Contestation? The Memory of Saint Louis During the Restoration, 1814–30. Sean Heath. French History, 33 (Mar., 2019), 44–64. Julian Tenison Woods: From Entangled Histories to History Shaper. Mary Cresp and Janice Tranter. Australasian Catholic Record, 95 (July, 2018), 286–303. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 423 Retour au Syllabus. Pie IX et les erreurs de la société moderne: réexamen de la genèse d’un texte. Ignazio Veca. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 245–71. An Armenian Involvement in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Ethiopia. David W. Phillipson. History in Africa, 46 (2019), 137–45. Social status homogamy in a religiously diverse society. Modernization, religious diversity, and status homogamy in Hungary between 1870–1950. Zoltan Lippenyi. History of the Family, 24 (Mar., 2019), 15–37. The Warsaw New Testament of 1881: Origins, Subsequent History, Controversies. Peter Nicholson. Polish Review, 63 (4, 2018), 56–90. ‘An admirable little book written by a lady’: Emily Williams and recording and restoration of stained glass in Late Victorian England. Rachel Koopmans. Women’s History Review, 27 (Dec., 2018), 1123–51. Christianity and the character education movement, 1897–1914. James Arthur. History of Education, 48 (Jan., 2019), 60–76. Donne e sacerdozio tra Ottocento e Novecento. Culto mariano e riparazione sacerdotale in alcune esperienze religiose femminili in Francia e Italia. Liviana Gazzetta. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (3, 2018), 613–36. Les thomistes dominicains en France (premier XXe siècle). Étienne Fouilloux. Cristianesimo nella storia, 39 (3, 2018), 637–54. Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43. Anders Sancleted. Social Science History, 43 (Spring, 2019), 87–111. “Cardinal Manning” and the Redisciplining of Biography. Albert D. Pionke. Victorian Studies, 61 (Autumn, 2018), 86–92. Women Missionaries and Colonial Silences in Kenya’s Female ‘Circumcision’ Controversy, 1906–1930. David M. Anderson. English Historical Review, CXXXIII (Dec., 2018), 1512–45. What Price Loyalty? Australian Catholics in the First World War. Jeff Kildea. Australasian Catholic Record, 96 (Jan., 2019), 25–44. De la guerre au génocide. Les causes du “seyfo” des chrétiens syriaques. Marco Impagliazzo. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 690–706. Orthodoxy and Revolution: The Restoration of the Russian Patriarchate in 1917. Simon Dixon. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 28 (Dec., 2018), 149–74. Achille Ratti, Nunzio apostolico in Polonia, e i Frati Minori Cappuccini a Varsavia alla luce de “I Diari” (1918–1921). Wiesław Block. Collectanea Franciscana, 88 (1–2, 2018), 217–49. Catholic Missions in China: failure to form native clergy. Ambrose Mong. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 19 (1, 2019), 30–43. 424 PERIODICAL LITERATURE Martin Niemöller als völkisch-nationaler Studentpolitiker in Münster 1919 bis 1923. Benjamin Ziemann. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 67 (Apr., 2019), 209–34. Papal Diplomacy by Proxy? Catholic Internationalism at the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, 1922–1939. Cormac Shine. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 69 (Oct., 2018), 785–805. Per una storia delle traduzioni italiane di Bonaventura da Bagnoregio nel Novecento. Barbara Faes. Antonianum, XCIII (Apr.–June, 2018), 199–229. Religion in the Early Nazi Milieu. Towards a Greater Understanding of ‘Racist Culture.’ Samuel Koehns. Journal of Contemporary History, 53 (Oct., 2018), 667–91. Meßkircher Priester im Konflikt mit dem Nationalsozialismus. Helmut Weißhaupt. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 138 (2018), 85–108. Un invito “molto speciale.” Spionaggio fascista e diplomazia italiana nel Conclave del 1939. Giovanni Coco. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 273– 317. Corrispondenza tra Giovanni Battista Montini ed Ercoliano Bazoli (1939–1978). Alessandro Bertoli. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n. 77 (June, 2019), 7–66. Athletes for France or Athletes for the Church: Conflict between Sports Officials and Catholic Sportsmen during the Vichy Regime (1940–1944). Keith Rathbone. French History, 33 (Mar., 2019), 88–109. Il novizio Carlo Maria Martini. Gli anni cuneesi (1944–1946). Alberto Guasco. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 709–48. Die “Kriegsberichte” von Pfarrern der Erzdiözese Freiburg 1945–1947. Für die Nutzung im Internet und die Drucklegung vorbereitet. Ein Arbeitsbericht. Norbert Ohler. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 138 (2018), 109–22. Säkulares Sterben? Die Kirchen und das Lebensende in der Bundesrepublic Deutschland. Florian Greiner. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 67 (Apr., 2019), 191–208. Una spiritualità per il clero diocesano. L’Istituto Secolare dei Sacerdoti del Sacro Cuore: appunti per una storia. Daniele Premoli. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 750–86. A New Primacy of Conscience? Conscientious Objection, French Catholicism and the State during the Algerian War. Rachel M. Johnston-White. Journal of Contemporary History, 54 (Jan., 2019), 112–38. The Opening of the Coconut Curtain: Pacific Influence on the World Council of Churches through the Campaign for a Nuclear-Free Pacific, 1961–2000. Christine Weir. Journal of Pacific History, 54 (Mar., 2019), 116–38. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 425 Les enjeux de “l’analyse spirituelle des origines”: Michel de Certeau, historien de la Compagnie de Jésus (XVIe siècle). Guido Mongini. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 104 (July–Dec., 2018), 277–91. De la marge claire au centre obscur: Michel de Certeau et la gauche catholique (1965–1978). Yvon Tranvouez. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 104 (July– Dec., 2018), 323–36. Einige Erinnerungen an das römische Requiem für Augustin Kardinal Bea SJ—mit einem selten gewordenen Totenzettel. Hermann-Josef Reudenbach. Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv, 138 (2018), 123–34. Archbishop Hurley, the principle of overriding right and the post-conciliar debates on contraception and collegiality. Philippe Denis. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (1–2, 2018), 319–44. Breve Apostolico di Beatificazione di Paolo VI. † Pietro Card. Parolin. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n. 75 (June, 2018), 25–34. La testimonianza di Mons. Pasquale Macchi. Istituto Paolo VI, notiziario n. 75 (June, 2018), 35–78. More Catholic than Rome; more reformed than Geneva: Joseph P. Cassidy and possibilities for renewal in the Church of England. Ann Loades. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 19 (1, 2019), 59–71. Noise and Silence in Rwanda’s Postgenocide Religious Soundscape. Andrea Mariko Grant. Journal of Religion in Africa, 48 (1/2, 2018), 35–64. The Roman Catholic Church of Norway and migration challenges. Olav Hovdelien. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 19 (1, 2019), 17–29. Time to make two Koreas one again: Korean Christians’ self-reflection and diakonia duties. Gil-Soo Han. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 18 (4, 2018), 296–314. AMERICAN AND CANADIAN James Madison, Religious Liberty and Union. Sarah A. Morgan Smith. History of Political Thought, 39 (4, 2018), 690–718. The Disestablishment of Religion in Virginia: Dissenters, Individual Rights, and the Separation of Church and State. Debra R. Neill. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 127 (1, 2019), 2–41. The First Wall of Separation between Church and State: Slavery and Disestablishment in Late-Eighteenth-Century Virginia. Sarah Barringer Gordon. Journal of Southern History, LXXXV (Feb., 2019), 61–104. Signs in the Heavens and the Distress of Nations. Zach Marshall. J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 6 (Fall, 2018), 285–306. 426 PERIODICAL LITERATURE ‘. . . we congratulated ourselves that reason has not with us yet left its seat’: first generations of American missionary women in the Near East. Janet Marquardt. Women’s History Review, 28 (Feb., 2019), 57–84. Redemptorist Archives: A Three-Year Review. Patrick Hayes. American Catholic Studies, 130 (Spring, 2019), 61–72. “Scheming and Turbulent”: An Analysis of Obedience and Authority in the Founding of the Sisters of Charity of Cinncinnati. Jacqueline Willy Romero. American Catholic Studies, 130 (Spring, 2019), 37–60. The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: Republican Catholicism and Irish Catholic Apologetics. Anne Morgan. Pennsylvania History, 86 (Winter, 2019), 86–102. Rehearsing for the Great Debate of 1850: The Controversy over Seating Father Theobald Mathew on the Floor of the Senate. Stephen E. Maizlish. Civil War History, 64 (Dec., 2018), 365–84. American Catholics and ‘The Use and Abuse of Reading,’ 1865–1873. Erin Bartram. Religion and American Culture, 29 (Winter, 2019), 36–64. From Methodist Church to Architectural Firm in Nashville, Tennessee. Kristen Baldwin Deathridge. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, LXXVII (Fall, 2018), 238–51. Parish and Nation: French Canada, Quebec, and Providential Destiny, 1880–1898. Patrick Lacroix. The Historian, 80 (Winter, 2018), 725–48. A Match Made in Heaven? Southern Evangelicalism and the Rise and Fall of Agrarian Populism in the 1890s. Mattias Smängs. Social Science History, 43 (Spring, 2019), 63–86. The Parliament of Empire: Charles Bonney’s American Vision. Lucia Hulsether. Religion and American Culture, 29 (Winter, 2019), 102–33. History and American Catholic Understandings of the Sacrament of Penance: 1900–1960. Patrick W. Carey. American Catholic Studies, 129 (Summer, 2018), 1–37. Tar Heel Cubans: Reverend Robert L. Wharton, North Carolina Missionary and Education in Cuba. Joe P. Dunn. North Carolina Historical Review, 96 (Jan., 2019), 67–92. Daniel A. Lord, S.J.: A Forgotten Catholic Dynamo of the Early Twentieth Century. Stephen Werner. American Catholic Studies, 129 (Summer, 2018), 39–58. Les missionnaires-colonisateurs “gouvernementaux” entre Église et État, 1911– 1936. Frédéric Lamieux. Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 72 (Autumn, 2018), 5–171. The United States Supreme Court and Lutheran Parochial Schools. Framing the Identity of Lutheran Schools in North America. Benjamin J. Nickodemus. Historical Footnotes: The Biannual Newsletter of Concordia Historical Institute, 63 (1–2, 2018), 14–18. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 427 Latter-day Saint and Catholic Interactions in the Restoration of Historic Nauvoo. Scott C. Esplin. American Catholic Studies, 129 (Winter, 2018), 23–44. “Utter Ruthlessness and Brutality”: An Archdiocese Fights Back When a Major Newspaper Compares Saint Ignatius Loyola to Adolf Hitler. Ralph Frasca. American Catholic Studies, 129 (Winter, 2018), 45–68. The Birth of American Catholic Theology. Roger Haight, SJ. Theological Studies, 80 (Mar., 2019), 7–36. Les tactiques d’un intellectuel clérical progressiste: le père Georges-Henri Lévesque, 1945 à 1955. Jules Racine St-Jacques. Canadian Historical Review, 100 (Mar., 2019), 1–21. Promoting “the Kingdom of God”: Louisiana College and G. Earl Guinn at the Dawn of the Culture Wars, 1951–1957. Thomas V. O’Brien and Joseph L. Odenwald. Louisiana History, LX (Winter, 2019), 46–82. Martin H. Meyer (1897–1971): Lay Leader for an Impossible Mission. Milton L. Rudnick. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 91 (Winter, 2018), 41–49. Ultramontanism, Nationalism, and the Fall of Saigon: Historicizing the Vietnamese American Catholic Experience. Tuan Hoang. American Catholic Studies, 130 (Spring, 2019), 1–36. LATIN AMERICAN Bautizando el colonialismo: Las políticas de conversión en México después de la conquista. Ryan Dominic Crewe. Historia Mexicana, 68 (Jan.–Mar., 2019), 943–1000. Traducciones bíblicas en lenguas indoamericanas. El Evangeliario náhuatl de la biblioteca capitular de Toledo (Mss 35–22). Heréndia Téllez Nieto and José Miguel Baños Baños. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 656–89. ‘Y yo, con buen celo y ánimo, tomé los pinceles del oleo. . .’: dynamics of cultural entanglement and transculturation in Diego de Ocaña’s Virgin of Guadalupe (Bolivia, 17th–18th centuries). Astrid Windus. Colonial Latin American Review, 27 (Dec., 2018), 431–51. Regímenes de memoria misional: formas visuales emergentes en las reducciones jesuíticas de América del Sur. Guillermo Wilde. Colonial Latin American Review, 28 (Mar., 2019), 10–36. El proceso cartográfico de la reforma parroquial del arzobispo Lorenzana: propuestas planimétricas de José Antonio de Alzate y recreación ilustrada de la ciudad de México (1767–1772). José María García Redondo. Historia Mexicana, 68 (Jan.–Mar., 2019), 1001–74. 428 PERIODICAL LITERATURE A contribuiçáo da Igreja católica na trajetória feminina na política brasileira. Da Primeira República à Contemporaneidade. Clélia Peretti and Karen Freme Duarte Sturzenegger. Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, 78 (May–Aug., 2018), 301–17. A paroquializaçáo como fenômeno geopolítico e estratégia biopolítica no processo de formaçáo da República no Brasil. Rogério Luiz de Souza. Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira, 78 (May–Aug., 2018), 318–42. Rustic Reich: The Local Meanings of (Trans) National Socialism among Paraguay’s Mennonite Colonies. John Eicher. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60 (Oct., 2018), 998–1028. Paolo VI e l’America Latina. Gianni La Bella. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 113 (July–Dec., 2018), 788–819. Jorge Bergoglio and the theologians who shaped his reading of the Spiritual Exercises. Jacques Servais, S.I. Gregorianum, 99 (3, 2018), 483–507. Missions, Unions, and Indigenous Organization in the Bolivian Amazon: Placing the Formation of an Indigenous Organization in Its Context. Chuck Sturtevan. Latin American Research Review, 53 (4, 2018), 770-84.