Paul F. Grendler THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW VOL. 109 WINTER 2023 NO. 1 Journeys in Church History On the Road to Italian Church History PAUL F. GRENDLER* I am an historian of the Italian Renaissance rather than a lifetime church historian. But because it is not possible to study Renaissance Italy without encountering church institutions in various circumstances, the majority of my books deal with the church in Italy in greater or lesser degree. That is the framework for this journey in church history. The journey began on May 24, 1936, in Armstrong, Iowa, population 700, near the Minnesota border. My grandparents on my father’s side came from Silesia, then part of Germany, now part of Poland, while my grandparents on my mother’s side came from Luxembourg. All four emigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1900 and settled in small towns or farms in northern Iowa. A remakable feature of my parents’ lives was that both taught one-room rural schools, grades one through eight, in northern Iowa. My father taught from 1924 to 1942, and my mother from 1926 to 1935. Neither had the opportunity to obtain a university degree. But one could qualify as a teacher in a rural school with a few weeks of instruction. My father attended a teacher-training program one summer, probably in Spencer, Iowa. My mother learned how to teach at a summer program at Iowa State Teacher’s College at Cedar Falls, much later renamed The University of Northern Iowa. That was it. They were obviously talented teachers. The story is that they met at a teachers’ conference. They married in the summer of 1935 during the Great Depression and I grew up in modest circumstances. *Paul F. Grendler is a professor emeritus of history of the University of Toronto. He now lives in Chapel Hill, NC, and can be reached at paulgrendler@gmail.com. 1 2 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY My father stopped teaching in 1942 because it did not pay enough to support a growing family of two sons and a third on the way. He became a school custodian, which meant that he was in charge of heating and cleaning a school building. He served as the school custodian in several small towns. My mother helped my father by sweeping classrooms after school and I did the same in my first two years of high school. In those small towns one building, usually three stories and a large basement, housed all twelve grades with maybe a gymnasium attached. The heat came from a large coal-burning furnace for which the school custodian needed a license to operate. When I was ten our family lived in two large rooms in the Bradgate, Iowa, Consolidated School for the academic year 1946– 1947, because of the shortage of housing right after World War II. I was a voracious reader as a child. My father took me and my brothers fishing now and then and I brought along a book for when the fish were not biting. After a while I decided that the book was more interesting than the fish and stayed home. Every tiny town in which I lived had a public library which I haunted. Bradgate, population about 250, was such a town. Its public library consisted of some space in the fire house. One could sit on the running board of the fire engine and look at a book. It was open Wednesday and Saturday nights. The bookmobile brought a fresh load of books every three months from the Humboldt County Library located in Humboldt, Iowa. When I was almost out of books to read toward the end of periods between visits of the bookmobile, I was forced to look at the tiny permanent collection, which included a set of Shakespeare’s complete works. I am sorry to say that I did not have enough curiosity to try Shakespeare. My interest in history began as a child during World War II. My parents subscribed to a daily newspaper, The Des Moines Register, and my father listened to radio news commentators such as H. V. Kaltenborn (1878–1965). So I followed the progress of the war and first learned about far away countries. My parents kept track of domestic politics. For example, in the summer of 1948 when I was helping my father scrub floors and wash walls in the school building in Bradgate, he brought along a radio and we listened to the speeches and commentary at the national political conventions. Those were years in which the conventions were real and broadcast all day long. The interest in history continued when I was in high school in a larger town with a public library that was open several days a week and had enough resources to purchase books. It acquired the six volumes of Winston Churchill’s The Second World War (1948–1953). I read them in study hall and everywhere else, every word, including the documentary appendices. PAUL F. GRENDLER 3 My parents were New Deal Democrats and I inherited their preferences. In 1952, when I was a junior in high school in Greene, Iowa, population 1,300 at that time, the high school sponsored a mock election. I delivered a passionate speech in favor of Adlai Stevenson to the assembled grades nine through twelve, some 160 students, while my chief academic rival, a girl, spoke for Eisenhower. My speech was so persuasive that Eisenhower won the student vote by a margin of two and one-half to one. I should not have been disappointed. The last time that Butler County, in which Greene is located, voted Democratic in a presidential election was 1936, when it voted for Roosevelt over Landon by 2.4%. In 2020 Butler County voted for Trump 67% to 28%. Although my parents never had the opportunity, they were determined that their children would be college graduates. As I approached graduation, the question was how would I get to college and where would I go? The answer to the first question was that while in high school I had many jobs, some interesting, others dreary, before and after school, and on Saturdays and in the summers, with the money going into a savings account. The where was solved in a different way. On a Saturday morning in the spring of 1953 I went to Waterloo, Iowa, about forty miles away, where I and forty to fifty other students wrote a three hour examination. So did other seniors in several other towns in an area of northeastern Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, and western Illinois. The prize was free tuition at Loras College, a liberal arts college for men in Dubuque, Iowa, operated by the Archdiocese of Dubuque. I was one of the six winners. Although annual tuition was only $300, it meant a great deal to my parents and me. What to study? I was always good in mathematics so my parents very sensibly thought that I should study to become a certified public accountant. But all I really wanted to do was play the piano and I also played the trombone. So I became a music major. Then my piano teacher thought that I needed to broaden my horizons and attend a conservatory of music. I prepared a tape playing a Beethoven piano sonata, not one of the more difficult ones, and sent it and my transcript and letters of recommendation to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. To my pleasant surprise it accepted me. I began in the fall of 1956. One of the glories of conservatories is that you are surrounded by music played by your fellow students, and you quickly realize how good you are not. And I lacked perfect pitch or excellent relative pitch. The highest to which I could aspire was a high school music teacher, a very honorable pro- 4 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY fession. But I did not think that I would be very good at leading teenagers in a band or chorus. So after one year in the Oberlin Conservatory, I transferred to Oberlin College. I have never regretted the years spent studying music. Over time and the failure to practice, my piano skills have diminished so much that I seldom play now. But when I retired from teaching and moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I began to sing with choruses. Although my voice is mediocre, I sing the right notes. I have had the opportunity to sing such choral masterpieces as the Bach B minor Mass, and to perform with the North Carolina Symphony three times. When I transferred to Oberlin College, again I had to decide what major to choose. My previous interest in history emerged and I chose European history. I was then fortunate to encounter an able and dedicated teacher. In my senior year at Oberlin I took three courses in nineteenthand twentieth-century European history from George M. Kren (1926– 2000), who was a one-year replacement for someone on leave.1 As my interest in history blossomed, he recommended that I go to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in order to study with his mentor there, George L. Mosse (1918–1999). I had no idea who Mosse was and I wasn’t astute enough to look at his books. I took Kren’s word for it and applied to Wisconsin plus several other places. My historical interests had shifted to the Reformation or the Renaissance and Reformation. At that time Oberlin had a small Protestant-oriented graduate school of theology. It was quiet, so I went there to study. The shelves of the main reading room held standard histories of the Reformation, which I began to read. The complex history of the sixteenth century attracted me. A final comment about Oberlin. Throughout my college career I always held jobs to pay expenses. In my last two years at Oberlin I was a waiter at the Oberlin Inn, which hired sixteen to twenty students, men and women, plus more students for special occasions, to be its waiting staff. In my last year my fellow student waiters elected me co-head waiter. Our duties were to serve as a buffer between management and the other student waiters and to train student waiters. In addition, I did the scheduling of all the student waiters, which was complex because of their academic schedules. Although I have been elected president of three scholarly organizations, this election by my peers still gives me equal or greater satisfaction. 1. For Kren’s condensed biography, see: The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians: With a Biobibliographic Guide, eds. Andreas W. Daum, Hartmut Lehmann, and James J. Sheehan (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 23, 34, 36, 397. PAUL F. GRENDLER 5 To my pleasant surprise, Wisconsin accepted me. At that time Wisconsin was one of the three or four best history graduate schools in America. And Mosse accepted me as a graduate student. Again I was fortunate, because my undergraduate record was uneven, to put it mildly. What predictive value did grades in piano and music theory have for success in European history? I received no fellowship, which was understandable. Mosse was a brilliant, original, and prolific historian, and a demanding teacher.2 He wrote several books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe including a well-known textbook on Reformation Europe. He is best remembered today for his many books on nineteenth- and twentiethcentury European cultural history including pioneering studies on the intellectual origins of the Nazi ideology. In my first semester of graduate study at Wisconsin, Mosse lectured on the intellectual history of sixteenth-century Europe at 11 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. His lectures were stimulating and provocative. After one of his first lectures I left saying, how can he interpret Luther in that way? So I skipped lunch and went straight to the library to look up the text (in translation) he had discussed. I found that yes, he had read the text, and yes, it could be understood his way. After that, I did not skip lunch. His seminars, held in his home, were even more stimulating. His students were writing master’s theses and doctoral dissertations on sixteenth-, seventeenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century European history. Hence, the papers and discussion flew from Calvinism to Marxism, to the Munich Revolution of 1919, back to the sixteenth century for a paper on the Heidelberg Catechism, forward to French Fascism, and elsewhere.3 I was in awe of Mosse and the other students. And I was frantically trying to keep up with him and them. At that time graduate students at Wisconsin had to write a master’s thesis. I settled on a topic in sixteenth-century French intellectual history. But instead of finishing my master’s thesis in the summer of 1960, I played hooky and went to Europe. I found a very cheap student charter flight to Paris and I bought a youth hostel pass. I spent the summer hitch-hiking around Europe, from Paris to Ljubljana. I visited Berlin before the wall was 2. See George L. Mosse, Confronting History: A Memoir (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); and The Second Generation, 414–16, and from the index. 3. Mosse was not the only excellent historian at Wisconsin. For more on the teachers, graduate students, and the academic environment at Wisconsin, see my oral history interview of January 22, 2022: Paul F. Grendler, “Oral History: Paul F. Grendler,” interview by John Tortorice, University of Wisconsin-Madison, George L. Mosse Program in History, January 22, 2022, https://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/2022/03/07/grendler/ 6 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY erected and argued the merits of democracy and communism with East German students in bad German and fractured English. I discovered Italy. It was as if a light ignited in my head. I loved Italy, the sunny skies, the friendly people, and the history that was all around me as I walked the streets of Venice and Florence. I was so attracted to the country and its history that when I returned to Madison, I changed my focus from France to Italy. I wanted to study the Italian Renaissance. So I enrolled in a beginning Italian class. This was in addition to graduate history classes, holding a teaching assistantship, and finishing my master’s thesis. I wanted to study the Italian Renaissance but the department of history at Wisconsin had no historian in that field. Indeed, medieval history dominated and Renaissance studies were of little importance in American graduate education. A small example. At Wisconsin I did something permissible but uncommon. I did a minor outside of the department of history, in the history of philosophy. This meant taking four courses in philosophy and doing an oral examination. So I did a course on medieval philosophy, another on nineteenth-century European philosophers, and so on. There was no course in Renaissance philosophy or anything close to it. So I had the bright idea of doing a reading course in Renaissance philosophy. I prepared a list of texts—Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Pietro Pomponazzi, Justus Lipsius, etc.—that I would read. But I needed the permission of the chair of the philosophy department to do a reading course. He practically threw me out of his office: there was no philosophy in the Renaissance! I did a course on Hegel instead. Years later The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (1989), a volume of nearly 1,000 pages edited by Charles B. Schmitt and others, appeared. I was happy to contribute an article. But the situation was changing. I was a member of a generation of graduate students and young scholars who benefitted directly from a major development in North American humanities scholarship including Renaissance studies. In my classes at Toronto I sometimes asked a trick question: which two political figures indirectly contributed the most to the growth of Renaissance studies in North America? The answers are Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. They drove into exile a host of fine scholars, most of them young and Jewish. The majority went to the United States, a few went to Canada and England. They brought with them European scholarly traditions and much technical expertise. Most important, they understood European history in a way that only those who have lived it can. The great European refugee scholars had a huge impact on practically all humanities fields in North America. Any scholar of my era who heard PAUL F. GRENDLER 7 their lectures or read their books can testify to this. I was a direct beneficiary. George Kren, who taught me at Oberlin, was born in Austria. In 1938, at the age of twelve, he and his family fled Austria and came to the United States. George Mosse was the youngest son of a very wealthy Jewish publishing family in Berlin. The family left Germany in 1933 when George was fifteen. He came to the United States, earned a Ph. D. from Harvard, and taught at the University of Wisconsin. Some of the refugee scholars made major contributions to Italian Renaissance history. Thus, although the University of Wisconsin lacked an historian of the Italian Renaissance, I could read the books of Hans Baron (1900–1988), Felix Gilbert (1905– 1991), and Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999). In the fall of 1961 I was again very fortunate. Mosse went on leave and the department hired Giorgio Spini (1916–2005) from the University of Florence to substitute for him for the fall semester.4 This was probably on Mosse’s recommendation, because they knew each other. The department of history made me Spini’s assistant. That was because I was the only graduate student in the department interested in Italian history. Assistant sounds impressive. But I only checked references, graded some papers, mailed packages at the post office, and helped Spini to navigate the American university bureaucracy. I would meet him in the morning and his mail box would be full of pieces of paper. And he would ask me, “What do I do with all this?” And I would tell him which office of the university it came from, which communication he should answer, and which to throw away. Or I explained the campus group that was inviting him to speak. Spini was very helpful to me. Above all, he suggested a dissertation topic. An important step on the road to doing Italian Renaissance history was the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1946, expanded in 1961. It made it possible for young American scholars to go to European libraries and archives to look at the sources at first hand. I applied for a Fulbright fellowship, Mosse and Spini wrote letters for me, and I received it. I also married in June 1962. The Fulbright stipend was enough for one person but provided no funds for spouses. So I borrowed a thousand dollars, and Marcella and I sailed for Italy on the SS Constitution in October 1962. After the year 1962–1963 in Italy, Mosse obtained for me a visiting position for the academic year 1963–1964 at the University of Pittsburgh where I did my first teaching and finished my dissertation. 4. Spini, a Waldensian and a Socialist, was a brilliant and versatile historian who published books on sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and nineteenth-century Italy, plus a book on New England Puritanism. 8 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY I defended my dissertation in mid-July 1964. It was a sleepy affair because all the examiners and I had been awake until the small hours of the morning watching the Republican National Convention and Barry Goldwater’s famous speech in which he said “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” We were all a bit hungover. In the fall of 1964 I began to teach at the University of Toronto where I taught until I took early retirement in 1998. I arrived at the University of Toronto at a time when the department of history was undergoing a vast expansion. It added several young and able European historians who became good friends. They included William Callahan in Spanish history, James Estes in German Reformation history, and David Higgs who taught French and Portuguese history. In the 1970s all sorts of things were going on in these countries, as Italy endured the Red Brigades, Spain almost reverted to Fascism in 1975, and Portugal emerged from dictatorship. We followed and discussed these events. There was also a vibrant community of Renaissance scholars outside the department of history including Konrad Eisenbichler, James Farge, James McConica, Erika Rummel, and others. The Collected Works of Erasmus project began in the 1970s, and I was a part of it from 1976 onward. It enabled me to keep in touch with scholars and the latest scholarship on the Renaissance and Reformation in northern Europe. I taught a variety of courses and directed dissertations in Italian Renaissance history. Antonio Santouosso, Thomas Deutscher †, Nicholas Terpstra, Paul Murphy, Mark Lewis S.J., and Mary S. K. Hewlett wrote their dissertations under my direction, and they are teaching in or have taught in Canadian and American universities and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. My first book was Critics of the Italian World 1530–1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Nicolò Franco & Ortensio Lando. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Giorgio Spini had suggested Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574) as a dissertation topic and I pursued it in Italy. The book was broader; it reconstructed and analyzed the works of three men who wrote voluminously for the vernacular presses of Venice and gave voice to dissatisfaction with contemporary Italy. One chapter is entitled “Religious Restlessness.” The three writers energetically condemned clerical abuses and longed for a simple non-theological Christianity of Scripture and faith. They were attracted to Erasmus’ “philosophy of Christ” and praised scriptural studies. Future scholarship confirmed that Lando (born between 1500 and 1512; d. 1555) did become a Protestant. This was my first small venture into religious history, an account of criticism of the Catholic Church in Italy and attraction to Erasmian and Protestant views as a better way. It led directly to my second book. PAUL F. GRENDLER 9 The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977, was a deep plunge into a controversial area of Italian church history, censorship by the Indexes of Prohibited Books and the Inquisition during the struggle against Protestanism in Italy. It is a study of joint ecclesiastical and state censorship of the press in Venice. For the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century, until the plague years of 1575 to 1578, Venice was the largest publishing center of Europe and the publisher of half or more of all the books printed in Italy. Moreover, the records of the Venetian Inquisition are found in the Archivio di Stato in Venice. The documents are almost complete and available to scholars. But they had received very little attention when I began to read them in the summer of 1967. I read every trial transcript looking for references to prohibited books, the printers and publishers of Venice, and anything else relevant. If I may insert a non-scholarly note, I combined research and living in Italy in a most pleasant manner in the summer of 1967. I, my wife Marcella, and our eighteen-month-old son Peter, lived in a room in an inexpensive pensione on the Lido di Cavalino, a long sand bar near the beach on the Adriatic Sea located between the Lido di Venezia and the Lido di Jesolo. Unlike the other two lidi, the Lido di Cavallino was strictly zoned and not built up, but populated by orchards and this pensione. Six days a week I rose early, ate a cold breakfast on a tray just outside the door to our room, walked about a mile to catch a bus which took me to Punta Sabbione, where I caught a boat. I shared the boat with tourist industry employees who commuted to Venice daily. We arrived at Riva dei Schiavoni, where I caught a vaporetto to a stop near the Archivio di Stato. I read documents in the Archivio until it closed at 1:30, ate a quick lunch at a counter, then read manuscripts and books in the Biblioteca Marciana until 5 p.m. I then reversed the commute, arriving in time for a swim before dinner. In the meantime Marcella and Peter spent the day at the beach along with Italian families from the Veneto. We were the only English-speaking family at the pensione all summer. The research on the book continued during two years in Italy, 1970–1972, when I was a fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. My research revealed that the Index and Inquisition were effective only when the Venetian government decided to support the ecclesiastical authorities. That cooperation started slowly in the late 1540s; then the government strongly supported the Tridentine Index from the 1570s until the 1590s. However, a series of disputes between Venice and the papacy erupted in the 1590s. They reached a climax in the battle over the papal interdict that the 10 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY papacy imposed, but Venice ignored, in 1606 and 1607. During the interdict the clandestine traffic in prohibited books became almost open, because the Venetian Inquisition did practically nothing. After the interdict the Venetian presses did not publish Protestant books, but they did publish other prohibited books. The book won the 1978 Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association and was translated into Italian. The book uses the term Counter Reformation. It accepts that the papacy made a largely successful effort to prevent Italy from becoming Protestant, an effort that relied heavily, although not exclusively, on the Index of Prohibited Books and the Roman Inquisition. The book points out that the Venetian Inquisition tortured some suspects and released to the secular arm for execution a small number of recidivists. However, the church did not impose its will on a resisting civil society. The book does not see the Counter Reformation as an exclusively papal effort. And the efforts of the Index and Inquisition did not prevent Italians from obtaining some prohibited books from northern Europe. It is a nuanced study that presents a detailed examination of what happened, case by case and decade by decade, amid changing circumstances. The accepted view of many historians, Italian and non-Italian, when the book was published was that the Counter Reformation shut Italy off from developments in the rest of Europe, thus preventing Italy from becoming modern, like other European, especially Protestant, states. This view goes back at least to Jacob Burckhardt, who wrote in 1860 that the Counter Reformation destroyed the Italian Renaissance. It became historical orthodoxy during the Risorgimento of the nineteenth century when the papacy opposed Italian unification. And it was widely held by Italian historians in the 1960s and 1970s, partly because much Italian historiography was laico, meaning anti-clerical, at that time. Although the Italian reviews of the book were polite, my book did not fit in. As interest in the Inquisition and Index grew in the 1980s and 1990s, there were conferences of Italian and English-speaking historians on the Inquisition and Index every second or third year. I was not invited to participate. During the research for the book I made several trips to Rome to look for manuscripts concerning the Index, Holy Office, and anything else relevant in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Like other scholars, I knew that the archives of the Roman Congregations of the Holy Office and the Index were housed in the Palazzo del Santo Uffizio, the home of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, located at Piazza S. Offizio 11, just outside the walls of the Vatican. However, schol- PAUL F. GRENDLER 11 ars were denied access. Even Ludwig von Pastor (1854–1928), who wrote the indispensable The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, was denied access and criticized the policy.5 There were a couple of exceptions. Luigi Firpo (1914–1989) gained access to look for documents concerning Giordano Bruno in the 1940s, and Paul Oskar Kristeller was able to obtain a microfilm of a document written by Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529– 1597), a Platonic philosopher, in the 1960s. That was all. However, being young and foolish, I gave it a try. In my visits to the Vatican archive and library from 1970 through 1972, I asked librarians, archivists, and anyone one else willing to listen about how I might be able to gain access to the Index and Holy Office documents. The advice received was to ask a curial cardinal to plead my case for access. Since I did not know any cardinals, I gave up the quest. Fortunately, a number of Italian scholars kept trying and their efforts were eventually crowned with success. A few scholars gained informal access in the late 1990s, and in 1998 the archives of the Congregations of the Holy Office and Index were opened to all scholars. This was absolutely the right policy and it has resulted in considerable good research. Scholars can decide for themselves if the opening of the Inquisition and Index archives has produced any documents that change the story presented in The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press. Much more scholarship on the Index of Prohibited Books and the Inquisition followed my book. For the Index the most important was the Index des Livres Interdits project in eleven volumes of J. M. De Bujanda and his collaborators at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec. I was pleased to participate by writing the historical introductions for two of the volumes.6 Over time I developed some research habits. It would be an exaggeration to call what I do a scholarly method, nor is it another theory about what history is. I start with a question: what happened and why did it happen? I try to ask a question that has not been asked before about a significant event. After formulating the question, I do not immediately review all the previous scholarship on the topic. I read just enough to become 5. Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, trans. Frederick I. Antrobus et al., 40 vols. (London: Herder, 1898-1953, here 1950), XII, 507–08. 6. Paul F. Grendler, “Introduction historique,” in: Jesus Martinez De Bujanda et al., eds., Index de Venise 1549, Venise et Milan 1554, [Index des livres interdits, 3] (Sherbrooke: Éditions de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1987), 25–65; and, Paul F. Grendler, “Introduction historique,” in: Jesus Martinez De Bujanda et al., eds., Index de Rome 1590, 1593, 1596. Avec étude des index de Parme 1580 et Munich 1582, [Index des livres interdits, 9] (Sherbrooke: Éditions de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1994), 271–309. 12 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY familiar with the scholarly terrain. Then, as soon as possible I start to read the primary sources, because I want to approach the topic with a fresh mind. After working in the sources for a period of time, I return to the rest of the bibliography, which I can then go through quickly, because I know what is useful and what is not. I approach every Italian archive and library with trepidation, because each has different documents and a unique organization that reflects the state or institution it serves. The Archivio di Stato of Venice, a republic, houses Venetian state documents organized into governmental bureaus. Its documents and organization are different from what is found in the Archivio Gonzaga of the Archivio di Stato of Mantua, the archive of a princely house. Here much of the documentation consists of letters or reports to the prince. The Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu is the archive of a religious order, again organized in a different way. Consequently, I sometimes bumble and fumble at the beginning of my research. I search for any relevant scrap of information and constantly ask myself, where does this scrap fit? Often my initial question leads to better questions. After a while I form an hypothesis, a tentative reconstruction of events. But I also keep looking. If the hypothesis is a good one, additional pieces of information support and expand it. Or they force me to adjust it, or formulate a new hypothesis. When I am pretty certain that I understand what happened, I start to write an account that others can understand. History is still telling a story. Hence, I write a chronological and analytical narrative that tells the reader what happened and why. The next research encounter with the church in Italy concerned catechism schools and religious orders teaching lay students. In 1989 I published Schooling in Renaissance Italy. Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. It is a broad study of the development of Latin humanistic schools and vernacular schools in the Italian Renaissance. It documented an educational revolution. The Italian pedagogical humanists of the fifteenth century discarded the late medieval Latin curriculum of verse grammars and glossaries, morality poems, a handful of ancient poetical texts, and ars dictaminis. In its place they substituted grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history based on ancient Latin authors and texts just discovered or newly appreciated. They created the humanistic Latin curriculum that endured for centuries in Europe and North America. The book also describes the vernacular curriculum. That consisted of teaching various religious and secular vernacular texts plus mathematical, accounting, and writing skills needed for commercial PAUL F. GRENDLER 13 careers. The book received the 1989 Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association and has been translated into Italian. Schooling deals with the role of the church in education in two ways. First, it demolishes the old textbook myth that the church provided the bulk of education for lay students in the Middle Ages. Instead, most ecclesiastical schools in Italy disappeared by 1300. Communal schools and independent masters took their place. The former were schools operated by the comune, the town government. Each independent master taught in his home or in a rented room twenty-five to forty boys whose parents paid him for his services. Communal schools and independent masters dispensed almost all of the education that lay boys received through the Renaissance until the late sixteenth century. Next, the book describes how church organizations unconnected to the papacy or bishops created new schools in the middle of the sixteenth century. Associations of secular priests and laymen and women created the Schools of Christian Doctrine beginning in Milan. These were catechetical schools that taught prayers, Christian doctrine, and limited reading and writing to boys and girls (in separate classes) for two hours or so on Sundays and religious holidays. Their primary purpose was to teach religion. But the organizers also taught reading and writing as a work of charity, and because elementary religious instruction and learning to read were practically synonymous. Children learned to read by memorizing, then learning, the syllables and words of printed prayers. One might call it catechetical literacy. In addition, new religious orders of the Catholic Reformation dedicated to providing high-quality free education to lay boys rose in the second half of the sixteenth century. Unlike the Companies of Christian Doctrine, the religious orders established formal schools teaching about thirty hours a week in several classes of ascending difficulty. The Jesuits set the pace by founding their first school at Messina, Sicily, in 1548. The Piarists, the last of the four teaching orders, founded their first school in Rome in 1597. Some towns awarded operational control of communal schools to religious orders because the Jesuits, Barnabites, Somaschans, and Piarists provided a quality education to more students at a lower cost than the town could. Parents sent their sons to the religious order schools because the schools were free of charge and the teachers were good. The lower classes of the Jesuit, Barnabite, and Somaschan schools taught the same Latin humanistic curriculum, including the same texts beginning with Cicero’s Familiar Letters, as the fifteenth-century humanists did, albeit with a more structured organization. The Piarists taught the vernac- 14 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY ular literature and commercial arithmetic curriculum of the Italian Renaissance. The schools of the religious orders profoundly changed education in Italy, in Europe, and in other parts of the world that missionaries visited. An historian who studies religious order schools examines how they served students, parents, and civil society. In addition, he or she becomes in part a church historian in order to examine the relationship of the religious orders to the rest of the church. Although the schools of the religious orders in Schooling occupied only thirty-eight pages in a book of 501 pages, they came to be a focus of my research. My next major book was The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. It is an account of the sixteen Italian universities that were teaching between 1400 and 1601. It was written at the prompting of Paul Oskar Kristeller. Possibly the greatest of the German Jewish refugee scholars who created the field of Renaissance studies in North America, Kristeller wrote some pioneering articles on Italian Renaissance universities in the 1940s and 1950s. He intended to write a book on them, because the only one in existence appeared in 1880.7 But his many other projects prevented him from doing it. So he persuaded his extremely able former student, Charles B. Schmitt (1933–1986), to write the book. Charles was then teaching at the Warburg Institute of the University of London. He was the perfect choice because he had already published articles on philosophy and science in Italian Renaissance universities. He was also one of my closest friends in the profession. My wife and I met Charles and his wife in Florence in the academic year 1962–1963 when we were both Fulbrighters. In early April 1986 Charles wrote to me—a real paper letter—that he was about to start the book. But first he had to go to the University of Padua to deliver some lectures. He went, gave the first lecture, then collapsed and died in Padua on April 15, 1986, at the age of fiftythree. It was a great loss to scholarship and to me. Then one evening in July 1986 I received a telephone call from Professor Kristeller. He had never called me before. We were not close; I read his works and admired him from afar. Without preamble he strongly urged me to write the book that Charles could not write. I was very surprised, because this was three years before Schooling was published. But Kristeller seemed to know everything that was going on in the field. Taken aback, I only prom- 7. Ettore Coppi, Le università italiane nel medio evo, 2nd. ed. (Florence, 1880), and 3rd. ed. (Florence: Loescher & Seeker, 1886). PAUL F. GRENDLER 15 ised to consider his strong request. As I finished Schooling, the idea attracted me more and more. After I forwarded the Schooling manuscript to the press in 1987, I began research on The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. As I was researching and writing the Universities book, I realized that it would correct two major misunderstandings in university scholarship. The first was that Italian universities were the same academic animals as universities in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. Wrong. Italian universities were profoundly different. Italian universities concentrated on law and medicine; arts (meaning philosophy) was less important and theology hardly mattered until after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Northern European and Iberian Peninsula universities concentrated on arts and theology, and taught little law and medicine. Italian university students were eighteen to twenty-five years of age. Students at northern and Iberian universities were twelve to twenty-one. Italian universities awarded only doctorates. Northern and Iberian universities awarded many bachelor and master’s degrees, and only a handful of doctorates. Teachers in Italian universities filled academic chairs. Most teachers in northern and Iberian universities were regent masters, meaning students holding master’s degrees teaching younger students. Italian universities had hardly any structure. Northern and Iberian Peninsula universities were organized academic communities with deans. The culture in Italian universities was lay because most of the professors and students were laymen. The culture in northern and Iberian universities was clerical, because most of the teachers and students were clergymen or youths preparing for ordination. Overall, Italian Renaissance universities somewhat resembled today’s North American research universities, while northern and Iberian Peninsula universities were more like today’s liberal arts undergraduate colleges.8 A major reason for the mistake was that medievalists studying northern European universities, most often Paris and Oxford in the Middle Ages, dominated university research. Insofar as medieval scholars paid attention to Italian universities, they saw them as like northern universities. And being medievalists they were not inclined to believe that an Italian Renaissance existed, which meant Italian universities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not matter. A fresh look would provide an accurate picture and encourage more research. 8. This is explained in more detail in several of my publications. See Grendler, “The Universities of the Renaissance and Reformation,” Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004), 1–42 at 3–12. This is reprinted with the same pagination in Grendler, Renaissance Education Between Religion and Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), Study I. 16 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY A second common mistake was the view that Italian universities were bastions of Scholasticism and, therefore, hostile to Renaissance humanism and to new research generally. The famous Italian historian Eugenio Garin (1909–2004) made this argument repeatedly and it lingers today.9 The opposite was true. I discovered that Italian universities appointed major humanists to professorships in the middle of the fifteenth century and continued to do so through the sixteenth century. And humanism helped produce much new knowledge. Scholars influenced by humanism studying anatomy, medicine, and mathematics found inspiration and manuscripts from antiquity that spurred them to challenge received knowledge. Then they created new knowledge that left ancient learning behind. Short sections of the Universities of the Italian Renaissance deal with the impact of the Counter Reformation. It notes that a handful of professors were imprisoned briefly or left Italy because of their religious or philosophical views, or had to change passages in their books. And philosophers had to deal with the issue of how to approach the immortality of the soul. In 1513, before the Protestant Reformation began, the Fifth Lateran Council condemned the view that the human soul was mortal, the Averroist position of the unity of the intellect, and the position attributed to Aristotle that the world was eternal (and not God’s creation). However, it did not prohibit professors from discussing these propositions. It only directed them to demonstrate philosophically that the soul was immortal, in so far as this was possible. The last phrase was an escape clause that allowed philosophers to argue that the immortality of the soul could not be proven philosophically but was known through faith. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance briefly describes how Italian university philosophers adopted a variety of positions on the immortality of the soul and the other condemned positions. What is impossible to determine was the degree of self-censorship that may have resulted.10 9. Eugenio Garin, Scienza e vita civile nel Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1965), 119–20; English translation, Science and Civic Life in the Italian Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 90–91; Garin, La cultura del Rinascimento (Bari, 1961); second printing, (Bari: Laterza, 1971), 76–78, 85; Eugenio Garin, Portraits from the Quattrocento, trans. Victor A. and Elizabeth Velen (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 128–29; the original passage in Portraits is found in Eugenio Garin, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano (Florence: G. G. Sansoni, 1961), 325. 10. For this and the following paragraph see Grendler, Universities of the Italian Renaissance, 186–95, 281–97; and Paul F. Grendler, Humanism, Universities, and Jesuit Education in Late Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 310–40. PAUL F. GRENDLER 17 Universities also points out that Protestant students, especially from Germany and England, continued to attend Italian universities throughout the sixteenth century. Civil governments welcomed them, but expected that they would not practice Protestantism openly or show their contempt for Catholicism publicly. Naturally, some students did the latter. Nevertheless, civil governments in university towns did not allow local inquisitions to prosecute them. The book demonstrates that Italian professors lacked complete freedom of inquiry in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, professors in Protestant universities did not have complete freedom of religion and philosophical discourse either. It is likely that professors and students in Italian universities had as much, and possibly a little more, freedom of inquiry and religion, than their counterparts in the rest of Europe. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance received the 2002 Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association and a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book citation. In 1996 I was asked to be the editor-in-chief of a proposed encyclopedia of the Renaissance to be published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in association with The Renaissance Society of America. My first task was to decide, in consultation with the very able managing editor, Dr. Stephen Wagley of Scribner’s, what subject areas would be covered, and to choose distinguished scholars to serve as subject associate editors. I decided that it would cover all aspects of the Renaissance, which meant that I needed to find twelve associate editors, some with expertise in areas not always given detailed attention in encyclopedias, such as Jewish studies and the history of women. An area meriting an associate editor was church history, and we were fortunate that Nelson H. Minnich agreed to serve as associate editor for church history. The conception behind the encyclopedia is that the Renaissance was both a cultural movement and a period of history. The encyclopedia begins in Italy about 1350. It then broadens geographically to embrace the rest of Europe in the middle to late fifteenth century. The coverage ends chronologically in the early seventeenth century with a number of key transitional political events. And the artistic, intellectual, and literary Renaissance had mostly run its course by the early seventeenth century as well, with a few exceptions such as John Milton (1608–1674), whose works are studied in English Renaissance literature courses. The encyclopedia is intended for scholars looking for accurate information and basic bibliography on topics outside their specialities, plus university and upper-level high school students, and inquiring general readers. Preparation was exciting and stimulating, because it meant working with many distinguished scholars, an out- 18 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY standing group of associate editors, and a dedicated and very competent group of people at Scribner’s. Despite a few anxious moments when contributors did not produce articles and substitutes had to be found at the last moment, it was a satisfying experience. It appeared on Christmas Eve of 1999 as Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Edited by Paul F. Grendler et al. 6 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999. It consists of 3,000 pages with 1,188 articles written by 642 authors, many of them not based in North America, and 800 illustrations. It was both a scholarly and commercial success. It was awarded the 2000 Dartmouth Medal of the Reference Division of the American Library Association as the Best Reference Book of 1999, and the 2000 Roland H. Bainton Reference Book Prize by the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Other awards included CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book for 2000, American Library Association Outstanding Reference Title 2000, Library Journal Best Reference Source 1999, Reference Books Bulletin/Booklist Editor’s Choice Best Reference Title 1999, and RUSA Outstanding Reference Source 2000. It was reprinted in 2000. As of 2022, it has sold over 7,000 complete sets and an unknown number of individual volumes. Major purchasers have been university, college, high school, and public libraries. For the first year or so after publication, I received lists of the purchasers. I was pleased to learn that the Humboldt County, Iowa, public library, from which I benefitted as a child, purchased a set. A few years later I worked with the staff of Scribner’s to create a much shorter version intended for grade nine readers: Renaissance. An Encyclopedia for Students. Editor Paul F. Grendler. Four volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004, pp. 1,038, which contains 461 articles plus 243 illustrations, charts, and maps. The next book, The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga & the Jesuits, 1584–1630. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, is a study of the creation, short life, and violent death of a university. I saw tantalizing references to a civic-Jesuit university in Mantua in documents in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu in 1999. But I could find only a nineteenth-century article and a short article of 1972 based on a laureate thesis about such a university. So I spent a week at the Archivio di Stato of Mantua on my way to a conference in Parma in December 2001. I found a treasure trove of documents about a real and lively university and returned for more research in 2003. The Peaceful University of Mantua (Pacifico Gymnasio Mantuano), its official title, began to teach in early November 1624 and died in 1629–1630, PAUL F. GRENDLER 19 the victim of the War of the Mantuan Succession, the plague of 1630, and the terrible sack of Mantua on July 18–20, 1630. But it was worth a booklength investigation for several reasons. It was an original topic. It offered an opportunity to study in detail the creation of a university, as a Gonzaga duke organized the university, raised money, and recruited professors of law and medicine, including raiding other universities for star professors. Because the University of Mantua had some innovative professors, it offered a window into some new developments in medicine and other research areas in seventeenth-century Italy, a period less studied. The University of Mantua book also revealed information about how a religious order fit into an Italian civic university. Lay professors taught about sixty percent of the lectures at Mantua. They taught several branches of civil law, canon law, medical theory, medical practice, anatomy, surgery, medical botany, chemistry, and a course on Tacitus. The Jesuits taught about forty percent of the lectures. They taught Scholastic theology, cases of conscience, Scripture, metaphysics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, logic, Latin humanities, and Greek. The Jesuit professors were part of the larger university, but also retained their own academic culture. I became aware that Jesuits taught in different kinds of universities in Catholic Europe between 1553 and 1773. And I sought to explain this in my next two books. For the understanding of readers, the different forms of Jesuit universities are summarized here in the order of the extent of Jesuit control and involvement in the operations of a university. 1. 2. The first was the Jesuit university. That is, a university that the Society completely ruled and taught in without exception. In a Jesuit university the Jesuits did all the teaching. But because the Jesuits did not teach medicine and at most taught only a course in canon law but not civil law, Jesuit universities were not complete universities as Europeans understood them at the time. There were only a small number of Jesuit universities in Europe before 1773. The second was the civic-Jesuit collegiate university of northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The Jesuits and the civil government shared governance of the university and teaching responsibilities. Jesuits dominated the humanities and philosophy instruction and ruled this part of the university. They taught some theology but did not dominate the faculty of theology. The civil authority ruled law and medicine and appointed the professors in these disciplines. But because northern and Iberian Peninsula collegiate universities taught a limited amount of law and medicine, the Jesuits had a strong and often 20 3. 4. ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY dominant institutional role in the university. The majority of European Jesuit universities were civic-Jesuit collegiate universities. The third was the civic-Jesuit Italian law and medicine university. The Jesuits taught the humanities, philosophy, and theology, and governed this part of the university more de facto than de jure. The civil authority appointed all the law and medicine professors and governed the overall structure of the university. Because the greatest number of professors taught law and medicine, and the vast majority of students came to study and obtain degrees in law and medicine, the institutional and instructional position of the Society in the university was smaller and weaker than in a civic-Jesuit northern European and Iberian Peninsula civic-Jesuit collegiate university. The culture of the university was more civic than Jesuit. The fourth form of a university with Jesuit involvement was the civic university completely ruled by the civil government, either city or prince. However, the civil authority invited one, two, or three Jesuits to teach in it. But the Society had no institutional role in the university. It did not govern any part of the university. There were few such universities. My next book studied every Italian university in which the Jesuits participated, or tried to participate, between 1548 and 1773. As I sought a publisher for this book, I discovered that English-language university presses now wanted to publish only short books of a maximum of 250 to 300 pages, and they refused to do footnotes. Of course, university presses are suffering from diminishing sales and other problems. But such blanket prohibitions make no sense. A happy exception was The Catholic University of America Press led by Trevor Lipscombe which published The Jesuits and Italian Universities 1548–1773. Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017, a 525-page book with footnotes, and sold it at at the very low price of $35 in paperback. The book is a comprehensive history of relations between the Jesuits and Italian universities. It studies four successful civicJesuit Italian law and medicine universities (Mantua, Parma, Fermo, and Macerata) and three civic universities in which one or two Jesuits taught but the Society had no institutional position (Ferrara, Pavia, and Siena). It describes one bold but failed Jesuit attempt to obtain professorships in an established university (Turin) and two tentative attempts that also failed (Catania and Perugia). It chronicles failed attempts to create civic-Jesuit universities (Messina, Palermo, and Chambéry). And it describes the strong, sometimes extraordinary, hostility of the universities of Bologna, PAUL F. GRENDLER 21 Padua, and Rome against the Jesuits even though the Jesuits never tried to become professors in them. For the study of church history, the hostility of the universities of Padua and Bologna toward the Jesuits was instructive. In 1591 professors and some students from the University of Padua went to the Venetian Senate, and loudly claimed that the Jesuits in Padua had created a counter university in competition with the University of Padua and against the laws of the Republic of Venice. The Senate ruled that the Padua Jesuits could teach only fellow Jesuits. In similar fashion the University of Bologna in 1641 barred the Jesuit school in Bologna from teaching university-level courses (chiefly philosophy and theology) to non-Jesuits. This restriction was later partially eased. Because Italian universities were full of law professors and the Jesuits responded, the university-Jesuit conflicts generated many documents arguing church-state jurisdictional issues. There were also felicitous cooperative arrangements that enabled Jesuits and lay professors to work together. The book explores the philosophical and pedagogical similarities and differences between Jesuit professors and non-Jesuit professors. The book received the 2018 Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association. Jesuit Schools and Universities in Europe 1548–1773. Leiden: Brill, 2019, is a short book of 122 pages. It was written by invitation of my friend Robert A. Maryks for the series Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies that he edits. It presents an overview of Jesuit schools and universities across Europe with some detailed information about Jesuit colleges and schools in France. It continues to explore the different forms of Jesuit universities and schools across Europe. Humanism, Universities, and Jesuit Education in Late Renaissance Italy. Leiden: Brill, (May) 2022, reprints with light modifications nineteen articles previously published between 2006 and 2019 and one new article. Another friend, Cristiano Casalini of Boston College, who edits the Brill series History of Early Modern Educational Thought, invited me to prepare the volume. It begins with a programmatic definition of Renaissance humanism followed by nineteen chapters concerning themes, historical figures such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, modern historians, and events, connected with humanism, universities, and Jesuit education in equal measure. Some chapters deal with church history. Chapter twelve studies Giacomo Antonio Marta (1557 or 1558–1618), a professor of law who wrote exten- 22 ON THE ROAD TO ITALIAN CHURCH HISTORY sively about church-state jurisdictional matters. His upbringing and friendship with Jesuits should have made him a papal defender. But Marta strongly opposed papal jurisdictional claims and defended the state. Finally, I am preparing a comprehensive examination of Jesuit pre-university schools in Italy tentatively entitled “Jesuit Schools in Italy 1548–1773.” It is intended to be a companion to The Jesuits and Italian Universities 1548–1773 of 2017. I began to study Jesuit educational history because I realized that Jesuit lower school classes continued the humanistic curriculum that the Italian Renaissance pedagogical humanists pioneered. I continue to study Jesuit schools and universities because Jesuit schools were an early form of free public education that is so important to the modern world today and that I strongly support. And there is the thrill of uncovering new material. There is so much documentation for religious-order education, and the history of European education generally, that has never been examined. The excitement of searching for and finding new material, understanding it, and then writing a history that explains the story to others does not grow old. These are the steps of a church history journey. They describe how I became an historian of the Italian Renaissance and then a church historian. The Long and Stony Road to Union: The Intellectual Development of the Concept of Via Concilii from the Outbreak of the Great Western Schism to the Councils of Pisa and Constance ANSGAR FRENKEN* This paper will discuss the considerations of theological and canonical scholars from France and Italy during the Great Western Schism to solve the division of the Church using the via concilii. The main focus will be on the accentuation of conciliar thought, depending upon the various times and the places where the via concilii was discussed. While at the beginning of the schism a solution involving the two contenders was in the foreground, its continuation led to a rethinking—a search for a solution which did not require, and was indeed against, the resisting popes. No attempt will be made to discuss in this paper other issues treated by contemporary scholars such as the fundamental relationship between the pope and the council (although this is relevant to the question of the positioning of the council), or the reform. Keywords: Great Western Schism, via concilii, summoning a general council, papal heresy, deposition of pope The Double Election of 1378 and the Outbreak of the Schism: Introduction and Problem Gregory XI was to survive his return to Rome by no longer than a year. The hostilities with which he was met on his return from Avignon to Italy wore him out, and on March 27, 1378, he died of exhaustion. Soon after his death, the cardinals present in Rome went into a conclave to elect a successor. To the surprise of all, the archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano,1 * Dr. Ansgar Frenken is an independent scholar in Ulm. He would like to thank the anonymous readers for the Catholic Historical Review for some very useful suggestions to improve the text. His email address is ansgarfrenken@aol.com. 1. Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “Civil Violence and the Initiation of the Schism,” in: A Companion to the Great Western Schism, eds. Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 23 24 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION came off as the winner of this election. Urban VI, as he would call himself, was not a cardinal, but had spent many years in the papal administration in Avignon. In 1376, Gregory XI had appointed the renowned canonist the leader of the papal chancellery. His unexpected election on April 8, 1378 was carried out under the strong pressure of the Roman public, who demanded that a Roman, or at least an Italian, become the next pope. The tumultuous incidents2 accompanying the election later prompted the cardinals to distance themselves from the election: the annulment of Anagni occurred on August 2, 1378,3 after the pontiff began, without any tact or thoughtfulness, to restrict the cardinals’ privileges.4 Only a few weeks later, on September 20, 1378, a majority of the cardinals elected a fellow cardinal, Robert of Geneva,5 a relative of the French king, to be the new pope. This 2009), 9–65, here 57, called him “the ideal compromise choice.” For biographical information, see the articles of Ivana Ait, in Enciclopedia dei Papi (Roma, 2000), s.v.“Urbano VI,” and the recently published article by Ivana Ait, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 97 (2020), s.v. “Urbano VI, papa.” 2. The current state of research is presented by Andreas Rehberg, “Le inchieste dei re d’Aragona e di Castiglia sulla validità dell’elezione di Urbano VI nei primi anni del Grande Scisma. Alcune piste di ricerca,” in: L’età dei processi. Inchieste e condanne tra politica e ideologie nel ‘300, eds. Antonio Rigon and Francesco Veronese (Rome, 2009), 247–304 (with bibliographical references); Maria Consiglia De Matteis, “L’elezione di Urbano VI: un’interpretazione oltre le apparenze,” in: Arbor ramosa: Studi per Antonio Rigon da allievi amici colleghi, ed. Luciano Bertazzo (Padova, 2011), 77–86. On the tumultuous incidents accompanying the pope’s election, see Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism, 1378 (Leiden, 2008). As late as May, 1378, the University of Paris recognized Urban’s election, and shortly after June 12, 1378, the university sent him a rotulus; see Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain, eds., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols. (Paris, 1889–97, here 1894; repr. Brussels, 1964), III, 552–53 [nos. 1605, 1606]. 3. The annulment of Urban’s election was a procedural approach avoiding the deposition of a pope. Thereby, the cardinals hoped to prevent a general discussion as to who was allowed to depose a pope. In addition, they attempted to avoid condemnation by a general council: the summoning of a council was a prerogative of a pope, but with the annulment of the previous election, there was no pope (sede vacante), or at least not one who was undisputedly the only valid pope. This line of argumentation was later pursued by the Frenchman Pierre Flandrin, who was probably the most important defender of the line of argumentation the renegade cardinals followed. 4. The reasons that led to the cardinals’ abandonment of their election (a problematic election, the ability of Urban to exercise his office, the curtailment of the cardinals’ privileges) are judged differently in research and cannot be discussed further here. Cf. Ait, “Urbano VI, papa,” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 570; Heribert Müller, Die kirchliche Krise des Spätmittelalters (Munich, 2012), 6–7, 63–64; Ansgar Frenken, Das Konstanzer Konzil (Stuttgart, 2015), 45ns9–13. 5. On the person of Pope Clement VII, long neglected in historiography, see Philippe Genequand, Une politique pontificale en temps de crise: Clément VII d’Avignon et les premières années du Grand Schisme d’Occident, 1378–1394 (Basle, 2013). ANSGAR FRENKEN 25 Alessandro Casolani, Consignment of the Keys to Castel Sant’Angelo to Pope Urban VI, 1582–83, preserved in Siena, Santuario di Santa Caterina. [Source= http://www.viaesiena.it/es/caterina/itinerario/santuario-casa-di-santacaterina/oratorio-della-cucina/parete-destra.] In the public domain. election of Clement VII, as he would call himself, caused the outbreak of the Great Western Schism,6 which was settled only after several decades at the Council of Constance (1414–18).7 But until then, as it turned out, there was a long and stony road to travel. In the beginning, there was a variety of suggestions (compromise, resignations, use of force, or a general council) on how to overcome this 6. Cf. the collected studies edited by Michel Hayez et al., Genèse et débuts du Grand Schisme d’Occident: Avignon 25–28 septembre 1978, [Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 586] (Paris, 1980). A concise summary of the current state of research is presented by Howard Kaminsky, “The Great Schism,” in: The new Cambridge medieval history, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1995–2005, here 2000), VI, 674–96. From a broader perspective now, see Joëlle Rollo-Koster, The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417: Performing legitimacy, performing unity (Cambridge, U.K., 2022). 7. See Walter Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Konstanz 1414–1418, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Paderborn, 1991–97, first volume repr. 1999, here 1999) I; Phillip H. Stump, “The Council of Constance (1414–18) and the End of the Schism,” in: A Companion to the Great Western Schism, 395–442; Frenken, Das Konstanzer Konzil. 26 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION schism. The majority of these proposals were made by distinguished scholars, professors in French and leadig Italian universities of that time, or by jurists or theologians who had been educated there.8 Most of these suggestions were legal opinions (so-called consilia), as well as theoretical treatises and scholarly tracts. Each proposal differed in nature. These differences were in part because each had a different author and a particular place and date of origin. This range of suggestions, as well as their interdependence, will be at the center of this article, which also seeks to examine the extent to which these considerations led to practical consequences. First Calls for a Council Even before Cardinal Robert of Geneva was elected, there were calls in France for a council to solve the conflict between the pope and the cardinals. These calls arose shortly after Urban’s election. An assembly was held in Paris at which the participants demanded the summoning of a general council as the verus iudex. At the same time, however, it was not clear who was to call such a council: Pope Urban? The cardinals? The bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs? Or possibly the secular sovereigns?9 The swift election of Clement VII and the French king’s approval, which was to follow soon after this election, at first prevented the plan from being pursued any further. What did not stop, however, was the discussion about how to end the schism—not least because of economic threats. In this context, the via concilii was but one among many options. Nevertheless, one can note the following: the call for a council was triggered by the current crisis of the schism, but it was clearly not born out of this situation of emergency alone. As the investigations of the American scholar Brian Tierney have especially well shown,10 the conciliar notion 8. Hans Jürgen Becker gives a very helpful overview in his Konrad von Gelnhausen: Die kirchenpolitischen Schriften (Paderborn, 2018), 31–50. He includes a list of sixty-five texts relevant to the conciliar issue. A further list can be found at Bénédictine Sère, Les débats d’opinion à l’heure du Grand Schisme: Ecclésiologie et politique (Turnhout, 2016), 425–47. 9. Summoned by the king, the assembly took place on September 11–13, 1378. Cf. Michael Seidlmayer, Die Anfänge des großen abendländischen Schismas: Studien zur Kirchenpolitik insbesondere der spanischen Staaten und zu den geistigen Kämpfen der Zeit (Münster, 1940), 68–70, 181; the quoted document is printed on 303–07. See also Florian Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt: Das Konzil von Pisa und die Lösung des Großen Abendländischen Schismas (1378–1409) (Vienna, 2019), 52–54. 10. Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1955; repr. 1968; extended repr. Leiden, 1998, here 1998). Cf. Stump, “The Council of Constance,” 434n107: “part of long traditions of mainstream canon law.” ANSGAR FRENKEN 27 Coronation of Charles V of France, dated between 1375 and 1380, illumination, from the Grandes Chroniques de France, BNF, FR 2813. Artist unknown. Image available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. had already been a part of ecclesiastical law for a long time and merely had to be activated in the current crisis. Other options might have promised a more rapid success, but their failures continued to point towards the option of the conciliar way. The Discussions at the University of Paris after the Outbreak of the Schism until Their Prohibition in the Summer of 1381 Although the French King Charles V had decided in favor of his relative as early as November 16, 1378, the University of Paris announced its neutrality on January 8, 1379.11 This attitude of keeping one’s distance did not last long, however: by spring, individual faculties and nations accepted Clement VII as the legitimate pope. During May 22–24, the university by a majority vote agreed upon the resolution to obey fully their compatriot.12 11. Denifle and Châtelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, III, 560–61 [No. 1616]. 12. Ibid., III, 565–72 [No. 1624]. 28 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION But not everybody accepted this decision without a word of protest. In all probability, the Epistola pacis, which took the form of a supposed dialogue between a devotee of Urban and a devotee of his opponent Clement, was written shortly before the resolution of the University of Paris was agreed upon. It was authored by the theologian Heinrich von Langenstein, who at that time was teaching at the Sorbonne.13 In this tract, Langenstein emphatically argued in favor of neutrality towards the two pontiffs. According to him, the solution to the schism ought to be brought about— after some thorough preparations by the University of Paris—by a general council. It was surely not a coincidence that Langenstein favored his “alma mater” to be the perfect mediator, as, after the uncertainty over the papacy, its theological department was known to be the highest authority in the West for questions concerning the Church. Although Langenstein himself was not a jurist, he mainly argued in a canonical way, as both fictitious dialogue partners were to pronounce a judgment advocatorum more. But since it was impossible to determine who the legitimate pope was by conventional means, Langenstein introduced the idea of the epieikeia/ἐπιείκεια (according to Aristotle, general rules can be dispensed with in emergency situations),14 which he thought could achieve unity through the via concilii generalis. Above all, Langenstein adopted Occam’s ideas, a fact which is not surprising if one considers the educational tradition prevailing in Paris at that time.15 This was true for his definition of what a council should be like, including a council without a pope—a possibility and eligibility which had already been considered by Occam.16 13. Of essential importance: Georg Kreuzer, Heinrich von Langenstein: Studien zur Biographie und zu den Schismatraktaten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der «Epistola pacis» und der «Epistola concilii pacis» (Paderborn, 1987); on the adoptions to Occam‘s Dialogus, see 178–79. 14. See Kreuzer, Heinrich von Langenstein, 182–83, who assumes that Langenstein took his conception from Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae, II.II, q. 120, a.1: sed epieikes videtur iudicare de lege, quando eam aestiment non esse servandam in aliquo casu [Opera omnia, IX, Rome, 1897]). Cf. Arnold Angenendt, “Die Epikie: Im Sinne des Gesetzgebers vom Gesetz abweichen,” in: Der Fehltritt: Vergehen und Versehen in der Vormoderne, ed. Peter von Moos (Cologne, 2001), 363–76. 15. On the Ockhamist school tradition at the university of Paris, see William J. Courtenay, “Was there an Ockhamist School?” in: Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen (Leiden, 1995), 263–92. 16. Cf. Seidlmayer, Die Anfänge, 17. On Occam’s concept of the council, cf. Hermann Josef Sieben, Die Konzilsidee im Mittelalter (Paderborn, 1984), 410–69; on its reception in the course of the Great Schism, cf. Jürgen Miethke, “Konziliarismus—eine neue Doktrin einer neuen Kirchenverfassung?” in: Reform von Kirche und Reich zur Zeit der Konzilien von Konstanz (1414–1418) und Basel (1431–1449), ed. Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky (Constance, 1996), 29–59, at 52–53. ANSGAR FRENKEN 29 It is quite possible that there were associations between Langenstein’s pleading for a general council and the suggestions of the three Italian cardinals Simone da Borsano, Giacomo Orsini, and Pietro Corsini, all three of whom had turned their backs on Urban and who had also pleaded for the via concilii, in addition to being neutral towards the two contenders for the papacy. It seems that Borsano, a reputable canonist, had been the spokesman.17 To him it did not appear realistic from a political point of view that Urban could be removed that easily, simply because of the great number of those obedient to him. Nor, according to canonical law, did the cardinals have the authority to solve the crisis solely by themselves. Therefore, viri literati et bonae conscientiae, from Italy, France, and the other parts of Christendom, were to gather at a concilium particulare in Venice, Pisa, or Naples to look for a solution to the standoff.18 The fact that Borsano did not speak of a general council (concilium generale) is explained by the canonical problems associated with the summoning and holding of such an assembly.19 Borsano’s plan, however, met the approval of neither the partisans of Urban VI nor those of Clement VII. It is not very likely that Heinrich von Langenstein’s Epistola pacis had much effect, since the number of transcriptions of this rather labored and juridically not very concise text is quite marginal.20 Soon afterwards, however, Langenstein was joined by canonist Konrad von Gelnhausen. Being asked for his opinion by Charles V, he favored the via concilii, just like his German compatriot. In the exclusiveness of this path, which aimed to prevent all later legal difficulties, he went even beyond Langenstein. His proposal for a solution, which was recorded in the Epistola 17. Ingeborg Walker and Hans-Jürgen Becker, “Brossano, Simone da,” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 14 (1972), 470–74; Hans-Jürgen Becker, “Simone da Borsano, ein Kanonist am Vorabend des Großen Schismas,” in: Rechtsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Festschrift für Adalbert Erler zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Hans-Jürgen Becker et al. (Aalen, 1976), 180–81. 18. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder, “Zur Geschichte der großen abendländischen Kirchenspaltung: die Kardinäle Peter Corsini, Simon da Borsano, Jakob Orsini und der Konzilsgedanke,” Studien und Mitteilungen aus dem Benediktiner- und Cisterciernser-Orden, 24 (1903), 360–77 and 625–52 (split article), see 363; Becker, “Simone da Borsano,” 185n29, with reference to the statement of cardinal Pierre Flandrin, printed in Vitae paparum Avenionensium, ed. Etienne Baluze, 4 vols. (Paris, 1693), I, 1107. 19. On the problem of summoning a general council, see Bliemetzrieder, “Zur Geschichte,” 629. 20. Kreuzer, Heinrich von Langenstein, 236. In general, the number of readers of tracts concerning the schism might have been rather limited, such that one could speak of a “geschlossene Öffentlichkeit.” Cf. Jürgen Miethke, Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1992). 30 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION brevis, dates back to August 31, 1379.21 In May 1380 he submitted his comprehensive Epistola concordiæ,22 with which he tried to rebut, in a canonical way, the arguments that the partisans of Clement VII had aimed at his first written work. In the urgency of the schism, Gelnhausen also advocated the use of epieikeia (ἐπιείκεια).23 Furthermore, he advanced the opinion that “in certain situations a general council could also be summoned without papal authority.”24 Like Langenstein before him, Gelnhausen made reference to the maxim quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet (C. 7 X. I 23).25 His tract did make an impression on Charles V: on the king’s deathbed on September 16, 1380, the latter supposedly declared that a general council ought to convened— Gelnhausen’s attitude towards the schism.26 After the king’s death, his brother, Duke Louis d’Anjou, oversaw all governmental business for Charles VI, who was still under age. The duke’s position was wholehearted support for Clement VII, and he hoped others would join him. Controversy regarding how to end the schism, however, only continued to increase. The negative developments of the schism were affecting the university and its masters very strongly. The awarding of benefices, which secured the university members’ financial existence, became more and more precarious. This was one of the reasons why on May 20, 1381, the university demanded the summoning of a general council. A few weeks later, shortly after June 15, 1381, Langenstein once again joined the controversy with his Epistola concilii pacis, perhaps at the behest of the University of Paris.27 He supported his assertions with the canonical material which had been put together by Gelnhausen. In contrast to the Epistola pacis, the second tract was widely circulated in Western and Central Europe. Its reception spread—especially via Pierre d’Ailly—from the Council of Constance up to Trent. Already a well- 21. Recently printed by Hans-Jürgen Becker, Konrad von Gelnhausen: Die kirchenpolitischen Schriften (Paderborn et al., 2008), 161–79, c.f. ibid. 50–63. 22. Printed in ibid., 186–267; for exhaustive analysis, see ibid., 69–119. 23. Ibid., 78–79. 24. Ibid., 238–43. 25. Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Aemilianus Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1874–1881; repr. Graz, 1959), II, 152. Franz P. Bliemetzrieder, Literarische Polemik zu Beginn des Großen Abendländischen Schismas: Kardinal Petrus Flandrin, Kardinal Petrus Amelii, Konrad von Gelnhausen: Ungedruckte Texte und Untersuchungen (Vienne, 1910; repr. New York, 1967), 121. 26. Becker, Konrad von Gelnhausen, 64–65 (with bibliographical references). 27. Printed in: Johannes Gersonii Opera omnia, ed. Louis E. DuPin, 5 vols. (Antwerp, 1706; repr. Hildesheim, 1987), II, 809–40. On chronological dating and ascription, see Kreuzer, Heinrich von Langenstein, 56. ANSGAR FRENKEN 31 The Giac Master, Illumination depicting interview between the duke of Anjou with Pope Clement VII at Avignon, fifteenth century, illumination, located in BNF ms français 2664, fol. 10v, col. 1. Image is in the public domain. known master of theology at that time, d’Ailly himself had discussed different ways to end the schism in his disputation of 1381, Utrum indoctus in jure divino posset juste praeesse in Ecclesia regno,28 including the option of a general council, but did not clearly commit himself to one option. The refusal to commit himself, of course, leads to speculations: Was it for opportunistic reasons? Can one here trace something like a national feeling, which would soon lead him to take sides with the French compatriot in the papal office? His Epistola diaboli Leviathan, written at the same time, is a satirical critique of the prevailing circumstances, and had a clearly pro-conciliar orientation.29 This speaks against solely opportunistic 28. Printed in: DuPin, ed., Johannes Gersonii opera, I, 646–62. 29. Cf. Irwin W. Raymond, “D’Ailly’s ‘Epistola Diaboli Leviathan,’” Church History, 22 (1953), 181–91; Bernard Guenée, “Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420),” in: Between Church and State: 32 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION behavior. In any case, later the same year he retreated to his canonry in Noyon—given his attitude, Paris seems to have become too dangerous a place for him.30 Furthermore, not all scholars supported the via concilii as the straightforward solution. There was disagreement as to which was the one most likely to solve the problem. Was it the conciliar way (via concilii)? Or would it not be better if the two contenders for the papacy resigned (the so-called via cessionis)? A settlement via factae might have seemed worthwhile for some of them, and there had been numerous advocates for such a solution at the Curia of Clement VII and in the princely circles, but it appeared to others to be doomed to failure due to political realities. The latter evaluation was to be proven right by the further developments; a political-military solution was out of the question. Shortly afterwards, by the official order of his university, Parisian professor of theology Jean Rouce (Joannes Rousse de Abbeville) approached the young king and demanded the summoning of a general council. Louis d’Anjou, however, had him thrown into prison, from which he was only released on the condition that the university accept Clement VII as the legitimate pope. With this violent act, the duke could successfully enforce a ban which forbade any further discussions about the schism and how to end it. And by appointing his confidant Jean Blanchard Chancellor, Clement could further consolidate his position at the university. The consequence of all these restrictive measures was that many scholars left Paris, with considerable implications for Sorbonne’s prominence and its reputation. This act of extortion and the departure of the two German-born scholars Gelnhausen and Langenstein (along with other scholars who did not want to join the Clementist course) put the public discourse in the French capital to a temporary end; however, the writings of the university’s protagonists were not forgotten—quite the contrary! A few years later, Pierre d’Ailly and Gerson, the emerging stars among Sorbonne’s scholars, were to return to and The Lives of four French prelates in the late Middle Ages, ed. Bernard Guenée, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago-London, 1991 [original French edition 1987]), 102-258, at 123–24. Christopher M. Bellitto, “The Early Development of Pierre d’Ailly’s Conciliarism,” Catholic Historical Review, 83, no. 4 (1997), 217–32, here 220–23, analyses the content of the tract and discusses its significance. 30. Cf. Hélène Millet and Monique Maillard-Luypert, Le Schisme et la pourpre. Le cardinal Pier d’Ailly, homme de science et de foi (Paris, 2015), 28. ANSGAR FRENKEN 33 rely on their reasoning.31 Yet before the conciliar way was given a real chance, many a disheartening experience would come to pass, like the crushed hopes of a whole generation, and a more canonistically secured procedure would be required. Italian Reactions upon the Outbreak of the Schism Not only in Paris did scholars react promptly to the schism. Italian scholars and the universities of northern Italy also reflected upon how the papal schism, which was splitting Christendom, could be healed. Robert N. Swanson posits that “[t]he Italian lawyers and theologians must also have stimulated conciliarist theorizing at Bologna and elsewhere, although there is little surviving trace of such activity.”32 However, the circumstances were fundamentally different from those in Paris—and this was not due only to the different political conditions. Apart from the Angevin-dominated Kingdom of Naples, Italy was clearly on Urban VI’s side from the very beginning. His strong position meant that the urged solution of the crisis by means of a council was hardly considered in Italy at first. Even so, it did not harm Urban’s recognition of the possibility of this solution that the respected Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati demanded the cardinals summon a council.33 Apart from that single voice for the via concilii, scholarly treatises were composed for the benefit of the legitimacy of Urban’s claims. At the same time, Urban was advised to take every possible step in order to overcome the split. The first of these legal opinions (consilia) had been written even before the cardinals went to the “second” election. The influential jurist 31. This tends to contradict the statement of Helmut G. Walther (“Conciliarism als politische Theorie? Konzilsvorstellungen im 15. Jahrhundert zwischen Notlösungen und Kirchenmodellen,” in: Die Konzilien von Pisa (1409), Konstanz (1414–1418) und Basel (1431– 1449): Institutionen und Personen, eds. Heribert Müller and Johannes Helmrath [Ostfildern, 2007], 55), who attributed the failure of via concilii to the fact that it was initially propagated almost exclusively by theologians. 32. See Robert N. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, (Cambridge, 1979; repr. 2002), 57, for an assessment that refers to the first two decades of the schism. 33. Coluccio Salutati had written the cardinals, probably in the fall of 1378, asking why they refused a general council for the purpose of healing the schism (Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati Epistolae. . . , ed. Josephus Rigacci, 2 vols. (Florentiae, 1741–42), I, 18–39, epistola 9). For Salutati’s position, cf. Anna Maria Voci, “Alle origini del Grande Scisma d’Occidente: Coluccio Salutati difende l’elezione di Urbano VI,” Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano, 99, no. 2 (1994), 279–339; Daniela De Rosa, “Coluccio Salutati e il Grande Scisma d’Occidente,” in: Le radici umanistiche dell’ Europa: Coluccio Salutati cancelliere e politico: atti . . . celebrazioni del VI centenario della morte di Coluccio Salutati: Firenze-Prato, 9–12 dicembre 2008, ed. Roberto Cardini (Firenze, 2012), 197–238. 34 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION Baldus de Ubaldis (died in 1400) must be mentioned above all as one of the authors of this consilium.34 He was probably the most popular legal scholar during those times among those who had voiced support for the validity of Urban’s election, having done so first in 1378 and then again in 1380 (at the pope’s request). However, this position implied that a legitimate council could be convoked only by Urban himself. Given the situation at that time, this possibility was dismissed because it seemed unrealistic. A reexamination of the right to summon council was required in order to find a way out of the crisis, as with the Councils of Pisa and Constance, decades later. The Bolognese jurist Giovanni da Legnano (died on February 16, 1383) vigorously supported his compatriot in his Tractatus pro defensione electionis Urbani VI seu De fletu Ecclesiae (1379),35 as did other consultants like Bartolomeo di Saliceto,36 all of whom stressed Urban’s legitimacy. A glimpse 34. Still of great importance is Walter Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism: A study in fourteenth-century ecclesiastical history (London, 1948; repr. Hamden, CT, 1967, 1972), 143–60; James A. Wahl, “Baldus de Ubaldis: A study in reluctant conciliarism,” Manuscripta, 18 (1974), 21–29; Salvatore Fodale, “Baldo degli Ubaldi difensore di Urbano VI e signore di Biscina,” Quaderni medievali, 17 (1984), 73–85; Joseph Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge, 1987; repr. 1989), 41ff; Helmut G. Walther, “Baldus als Gutachter für die päpstliche Kurie im Großen Schisma,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Reihe, 92 (2006), 392–409. Cardinal Giacomo Orsini probably solicited the legal advice of July, 1378, which was written by Baldus in Padua (ibid., 400), but his consilium was not issued at that time (Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism, 143). In 1398–99 Baldus had, however, in a further legal opinion, put the role of the emperor as patron of the universal church in the foreground and had awarded him decisive assistance in the convening of a general council by the cardinals against the will of the two schism popes (cf. Walther, “Baldus als Gutachter,” 394). In so doing, the legist might have been recalling the role of the emperor in the imperial synods of the first millennium. 35. On the tract, see John P. McCall, “The Writings of John of Legnano with a List of Manuscripts,” Traditio, 23 (1967), 415–37, esp. 425–26; cf. Maria Consiglia De Matteis, “Giovanni da Legnano e lo schisma,” in: Conciliarismo, stati nazionali, inizi dell’umanesimo: atti del XXV Convegno Storico Internazionale, Todi, 9–12 ottobre 1988 (Spoleto, 1990), 29–45. A new edition, but not a critical one, is offered by Berardo Pio (Giovanni da Legnano: De Fletu Ecclesie [Legnano 2006]). On the significance of the author, cf. Id., Giovanni da Legnano: un intellettuale nell’Europa del Trecento (Bologna, 2018). Legnano’s writings provoked a strong echo on the Clementist side, especially the tract De Planctu Bonorum of Jean Le Fèvre, an adviser of the French king (see Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism, 148; Alessandro Fabbri, All’indomani del Grande Scisma d’Occidente: Jean le Fèvre canonista al servizio die Valois e il trattato ‘De planctu bonorum’ in risposta a Giovanni da Legnano [Firenze, 2013]). 36. Niccolò del Re, “Il ‘Consilium pro Urbano VI’ di Bartolomeo da Saliceto,” in: Collectanea Vaticana in honorem Anselmi M. Card. Albareda, [Studi e Testi, 219] (Città del Vaticano, 1962), 213–61. ANSGAR FRENKEN 35 at the authors shows that they all came from the universities of Bologna, Padua, and Florence, where they met either as colleagues or as students and mentors. These jurists could achieve an immediate effect only to a certain extent. Nevertheless, one should not forget that such legal opinions (consilia), as they had been developed by renowned experts of their field such as Baldus de Ubaldis or Giovanni da Legnano, harmed the Clementist cause. Baldus based his intervention on facts to which the cardinals referred shortly after, when they split from Urban. Despite this, the Bolognese canonists indirectly had significant influence on further developments: Giovanni’s students Pietro d’Ancarano, Francesco Zabarella, Paolo di Castro, and Giovanni Nicoletti de Imola (with reservation) made great advances in the conciliar solution. Back to France: Subtraction as an Interim Solution As early as in the late phase of Clement VII’s pontificate, there were signs that the court’s strict obedience to the Avignon papacy was gradually being relinquished. The reasons for the end of this policy centered on Avignon where changes in the political power structure after Charles VI had become incapacitated by his severe mental illness. In this context, it seems that the prohibition of discussion about the via concilii, which had been declared in 1381, started to crumble. Already in 1391, the theologian Gilles Deschamps37 had demanded the right for the University of Paris to contribute to the effort to overcome the schism. He explicitly quoted the university’s resolution from May 20, 1381, which had declared a general synod as the most sensible and most promising way to end the schism. Probably in the winter of 1392–93, the theologian defended a number of theses which demanded the abdication of both popes, even without their consent, if need be.38 Particularly important was the observation that a stubborn supporter of the schism was bound to become a heretic, which would give the council legal grounds to remove a pope unwilling to abdicate.39 This argumentation was supposed 37. On Deschamps, see Helénè Millet, “Le Cardinal Gilles des Champs (ca. 1350– 1414),” in: Les prélats, l’Église et la Société XI e–XV e siècles: Hommage à Bernard Guillemain, ed. Françoise Bériac (Bordeaux, 1994), 231–41; repr. in Helénè Millet, L’Église du Grand Schisme, 1378–1417 (Paris, 2009), 124–34. 38. Denifle and Châtelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, III, 597–98 [No. 1666]. 39. Cf. Decretum Gratiani, D.40 c.6 “Si papa”: . . . a nemine est iudicandus, nisi deprehendatur a fide devius, in: Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Friedberg, I, 146. 36 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION to give the participants of the councils of Pisa and Constance, nearly two decades later, the opportunity to remove the obstinate popes from office. At the beginning of 1394, the university produced a letter asking the king to act for the elimination of the schism.40 This letter mentioned the via concilii only as a third possibility, while the focus was now on the via cessionis. Success would have offered both sides the chance to save face: almost two decades after the beginning of the schism, the question regarding who the true pope was could be obviated. Both obediences and both popes (who had excommunicated each other) would have been offered an honorable way out to begin negotiations.41 Whoever stood behind this idea, it is sure to say that influential members of the university—for example, Deschamps, d’Ailly, and Nicholas de Clémanges— who adopted a rather conciliar position in the years to follow, were able to make use of their prestige and reputation to launch the proposal. A letter which was sent on July 17, 1394, by the University of Paris to Clement VII42 presents the same point of view. The activities that became visible here are a sign of the lively debate that was going on at the University of Paris in the final years of Clement VII’s pontificate. The death of the French pope and the election of Pedro de Luna as his successor, which obviously happened against the wishes of the French king and the university, increased the pressure on the newly-elected Pope Benedict XIII, culminating in the French withdrawal of obedience (1398). By this prompt election the cardinals who were gathered in Avignon wanted to get ahead of possible interference by the French king. Unlike his predecessor, Benedict could not rely on France’s unconditional support. The withdrawal of obedience, which had been decided at the Third National Council in Paris in the year 1398, and the siege of the papal palace in Avignon were intended to increase the pressure on Benedict in order to force him to abdicate voluntarily: before his election, he had promised to resign if his Roman opponent would also take this step. The intellectual leader of 40. June 6, 1394: Denifle and Châtelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, III, 617–25 [No. 1683]. Nicholas de Clémanges, author of the famous tract De ruina et reparacione Ecclesiae, had written the letter “Epistola quam Universitatis Paris. misit domino nostro regi Francorum de tribus viis per ipsam repertis ad exstirpacionem presentis Schismatis necesariis.” The bearer of the letter was Guillaume Barrault, see Swanson, Universities, 83–86. 41. Although it was without immediate consequences, this foreshadowed the path that would later be followed at the Council of Pisa—see the sixth section of this paper, “Italian Expertise and Statements in Favor of Conciliarism: Preparations for the Council of Pisa.” 42. July 17, 1394: Denifle and Châtelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, III, 631–33 [No. 1690]. ANSGAR FRENKEN 37 the French policy of subtraction was Simon de Cramaud, Titular Patriarch of Alexandria and for many years chancellor for Duke Jean de Berry. Cramaud had, with his tract De substractione obedientiae (1396/97),43 provided the basis for the decision of the Parisian Synod of 1398 to withdraw the French obedience, and he was the most devoted proponent of this policy. Despite the restoration of 1403, the pope never managed to regain his former influence in France. In 1408, France again declared itself neutral as a consequence of the visible unwillingness of the Spanish pope to take the path to union; once more it demanded the via cessionis. Although Benedict was granted some time due to a scheduled meeting with his papal opponent Gregory XII in Savona, with the failure of this meeting (at the end of September 1407), patience had finally run out. From the moment the failure of this declaration of subtraction was foreseeable, discussion favoring the conciliar way became widespread. Even d’Ailly and Gerson44 now unconditionally supported the via concilii. A first reaction is the Tractatus in quo exponit motiva ad concilium generale convocandum of 1400–01, written by Guy de Malesec of Poitiers.45 However, the tract De materia concilii generalis (1400–03) written by the former Chancellor of the University of Paris, Pierre d’Ailly, was of significantly higher importance.46 With the help of its author, this tract was widely circulated; he re-issued it in 1416 with the title Tractatus de ecclesiastica potestata.47 D’Ailly was an influential scholar, and together with his student and 43. Cf. Howard Kaminsky, Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983), passim; Howard Kaminsky, ed., De substraccione obediencie, (Cambridge, M.A., 1984). 44. Cf. Francis Oakley, “Gerson as Conciliarist,” in: A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. Brian Patrick McGuire (Leiden-Boston, 2006; repr. 2011), 179–204; David Zachariah Flanagin, “God’s Divine Law: the Scriptural Founts of Conciliar Theory in Jean Gerson,” in: The Church, the Councils, and Reform: the Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, eds. Gerald Christianson et al. (Washington, D.C., 2008), 101–21. 45 Printed by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum. . . , 5 vols. (Paris, 1717; repr. New York, 1968), II, 1193–200. The author was the Cardinal Guy de Malesec or “of Poitiers” (dr. decr.; †1412), who defended the subtraction of France in 1398 (cf. Guillaume Mollat, “Guy de Malsec,” Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, 22 (1988), 1278–79). 46. Francis Oakley offers a critical edition in his The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly: the Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven, 1964), 244–342. The circumstances of the time suggest that d’Ailly had had in mind a council of Benedict’s own obedience rather than a general council (Oakley, Political Thought, 250). 47. Edited by Du Pin, Johannis Gersonii Opera omnia, II, 925–60. Hermann Josef Sieben, Traktate und Theorien zum Konzil: Vom Beginn des Großen Schismas bis zum Vorabend der Reformation (1378–1521) (Frankfurt, 1983), 22, has emphasized the importance of this tract, especially because of its large circulation. 38 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION successor Gerson, he was considered to be the most important theologian of his time. He argues quite conservatively when he supports a council according to the traditional forma. For him, this meant following: “As a first option, that [the council] be conducted in consensus with and under the authority of the pope; as a second, that all bishops convene it; as a third, that the authority to define doctrines of faith and issue decrees be exercised by the bishops.”48 He thus refers to the definition of the general council by Huguccio and the Glossa of Bartholomaeus Brixiensis, following the tradition of canonistic sources.49 Remarkable is the date of the tract’s creation: at that time, d’Ailly was still strictly loyal to Benedict, and his council idea aimed only to confirm his own obedience. This example demonstrates the fact that scholars considered solutions that deviated from their personal loyalty to varying pontiffs. Particularly explosive in this situation was his assessment that even the pope must be committed to aedificatio ecclesiae and that, in case he caused destructio ecclesiae, he could be put on trial. Thus, d’Ailly provided a future council with additional arguments to override the canonistic principle that the pope could not be put on trial (Decretum Gratiani D.40 c.6),50 given certain circumstances. The exceptional circumstances and form of the convocation of the Council of Pisa (1408) demanded a justification which legitimized the cardinals’ course of action and above all protected the soon-to-be synod and its decisions against all attacks. This may be the reason why the claim that the council’s fullness of power was inherent in a general council appears here for the first time. Gerson had postulated this idea in his tract De auctoritate concilii,51 which he published prior to the council. He justified the claim to fullness of authority not only with the idea of representation, but also understood it as a special privilege granted by Christ, since he considered the church to be the mystical body of Christ. Similar ideas were used by d’Ailly in his memorandum Propositiones utiles from January 48. “. . . prima est, quod fiat de consensu et auctoritate papae. Secunda, quod omnes episcopi convocentur. Tertia, quod auctoritas statuendi et definiendi pertineat ad episcopos.” Bernhard Meller, Zur Erkenntnislehre des Peter von Ailly (Freiburg, 1954), 301. 49. The evidence was provided by Meller, Zur Erkenntnislehre des Peter von Ailly (Freiburg, 1954), 301. 50. Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Friedberg, I, 145f. 51. Edited by Palémon Glorieux, Jean Gerson: Œuvres complètes, 10 vols. (Paris, 1960– 1973, here 1965), VI, 114-23 [no. 269]. Cf. Zofia Rueger, “Le ‘De auctoritate concilii’ de Gerson,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 53 (1958), 775–95. A summary of the tract is given by Sieben, Traktate und Theorien zum Konzil, 158–59. ANSGAR FRENKEN 39 1409,52 which was dedicated to the cardinals and in which he clearly and convincingly summarized the arguments for the eligibility of the conciliar way which had been discussed for years. It can be noted, however, that although the call for a council found increasing support in circles of French scholars, the concrete implementation and the removal of obstacles to the convening and conducting of the council played a rather subordinate role53 in their discussions. Italian Expertise and Statements in Favor of Conciliarism: Preparations for the Council of Pisa The policy of subtraction which was practiced in France also had effects on Italy and encouraged Italian scholars to find new ways to hold a general council. It was not by accident that Baldus de Ubaldi, who in the beginning had strongly argued for the legitimacy of Urban’s election, now supported the via concilii to heal the schism.54 In so doing, he had not entirely changed positions, however. Rather, he was merely engaged in a new, updated problem. The discussions about the conciliar way gained new impulses, and it became clearer and clearer that the pontiffs and their respective obediences did not in the slightest consider the option of voluntary resignation (via cessionis) to solve the schism. All of the hopes which were placed on Urban’s successors Innocent VII and Gregory XII, both of them having sworn an oath to do anything to help overcome the schism before their respective elections (1404, 1406), were soon dashed. In 1407 Gregory tried to avoid an encounter with his adversary by resorting to pretextual reasons, and Benedict may also be assumed not to have been interested in an amicable solution.55 Thus, the disappointment was considerable, and formerly strong supporters amongst the cardinals were seen to turn their backs on the pontiffs. The parallels to France and the obedience to Benedict are unmistakable. The problem was no longer neutrality towards the 52. Translated in Francis Oakley, “The ‘Propositiones Utiles’ of Pierre d’Ailly: An Epitome of Conciliar Theory,” Church History, 29 (1960), 398–403. 53. Because of this, one ought to evaluate the French influence on the realization of the council rather more cautiously than in the older literature (cf. Stump, “The Council of Constance,” 401). See, however, Hélène Millet, “Pierre d’Ailly et le concile de Pise,” Comptes rendus de séances de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 158, no. 2 (2014), 809–27. 54. See Walther, “Baldus als Gutachter,” 399-400. 55. See Dieter Girgensohn, “Von der konziliaren Theorie des späteren Mittelalters zur Praxis: Pisa 1409,” in: Die Konzilien von Pisa (1409), eds. Müller and Helmrath, 61–94, at 71–72. 40 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION two who claimed to be the true pope. Only without them did a solution to the messy situation seem possible. Although there were some questions that needed to be answered first, the general council alone was to bring about a solution according to the path proposed on September 25, 1407, by da Castro and Raffaele Fulgosio at the request of Gregory’s cardinals.56 Their proposed solution was more or less supported by other Bolognese jurists including Antonio da Butrio, Matteo Mattesillani, Pietro d’Ancarano,57 and Bartolomeo da Saliceto. In his consilium, Butrio describes the persistence of the schism as a scandalous condition, a heresy.58 In doing so, he refers to the only criminal offense in canon law that justified the deposition of a pope.59 To the cardinals he attributed the competence to convene a general council in order to judge the pope. In addition, on February 20, 1408, at the request of Cardinal Baldassare Cossa, the Bolognese theologians judged that any prolongation of the schism would lead to heresy and that a council should therefore withdraw the obedience even from a verus apostolicus.60 Of particular importance was the comment of Francesco Zabarella, the celebrated canonist from Padua, who later at the Council of Constance (by which time he had been named a cardinal by Pope John XXIII) was to play a crucial role concerning the decree Haec sancta.61 His negative 56. Cf. Andrea Padovani, “Consilia e Tractatus di giurista italiani negli anni del grande scisma (1405–1409),” Glossae: European Journal of Legal History, 10 (2013), 430–46, at 443. Fulgosio’s Consilium, however, seems no longer to exist (ibid., 443n47). 57. John J. Sawicki, “The Ecclesiological and Political Thought of Petrus de Ancharano (1330?–1416),” (unpublished dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaka, N.Y., 1977). For biographical data, see Orazio Condorelli, “Pietro d’Ancarano,” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 83 (2015), 444–48. 58. For details, see Orazio Condorelli, “Antonio da Budrio e le dottrine conciliare al tempo del concilio di Pisa,” Rivista Internazionale di diritto commune, 27 (2016), 79–157, at 90–108. Cf. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 157–59; Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt, 86–88. 59. On this development, see most recently Stefan Schima, “Das Papstschisma— eine Häresie. Kirchenrechtliche Überlegungen,” in: Der Verlust der Eindeutigkeit: Zur Krise päpstlicher Autorität im Kampf um die päpstliche Cathedra, ed. Harald Müller (Munich, 2018), 55–73. 60 Cf. Padovani, “Consilia e Tractatus,” 445. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, ed., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collection, 31 vols. (Venetiis, 1759–1798, here 1784; repr. Parisiis, 1903, and Graz, 1961), XXVII, 219–23. 61. Cf. Thomas E. Morrissey, “The Decree ‘Haec Sancta’ and Cardinal Zabarella. His Role in its Formulation and Interpretation,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 10 (1978), 145–76; repr. Id., Conciliarism and Church law in the Fifteenth Century [Variorum collected studies series, 1043], (Farnham, 2004), part v (original pagination preserved); Brandmüller, Das Konzil von Konstanz 1414–1418, I, 237–59. Taking into account the extended textual ANSGAR FRENKEN 41 personal experiences with Boniface IX in late 1397 62 probably pushed him to find a practicable solution which, at the same time, did not violate canon law. In the tract De schismatibus (which was actually a legal opinion), composed in three drafts between 1402 and 1408, he presented a concrete solution to the schism that was in line with canon law.63 In the context of the approaching Council of Pisa—his last draft of this tract was finished after the summoning but before the beginning of the council— the learned canonist presented a way to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems of constituting a unification council. In contrast to Langenstein and Gelnhausen, he did not apply an extralegal version of epieikeia, but fell back on Aristotle’s concept of state governability, which he adapted to the Church: the council was pars valentior (potior),64 and in matters of faith, the general council, which was to represent the authority of the whole of Christendom, took precedence even over the pope.65 basis is Michiel Decaluwé, “A new and disputable text-edition of the decree Haec sancta of the council of Constance (1415),” Cristianesimo nella storia, 27 (2006), 417–45; Id., “Three Ways to Read the Constance Decree Haec sancta (1415): Francis Zabarella, Jean Gerson, and the Traditional Papal View of General Councils,” in: The Church, the Councils, and Reform: the Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, eds. Gerald Christianson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto (Washington, D.C., 2008), 122–39. Sebastián Provvidente, “The ‘Haec sancta synodus’ Decree: Between Theology, Canon Law and History. Judicial Practices and ‘Plenitudo Potestatis,’” Temas medievales, 20 (2012), 197–244. 62. Cf. Dieter Girgensohn, “Francesco Zabarella aus Padua: Gelehrsamkeit und politisches Wirken eines Rechtsprofessors während des großen abendländischen Schismas,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Reihe, 79 (1993), 232–277, at 243–44, 273–75. 63. Zabarella’s tract “De schismatibus auctoritate imperatoris tollendis seu De schismate pontificum tractatus” (“De eius temporis schismate tractatus”), is of preeminent importance. This tract is in the form of a legal repetitio. It has been edited by Simon Schard[ius], De jurisdictione, auctoritate et praeeminentia imperiali ac potestate ecclesiastica variorum auctorum scripta (Basileae, 1566), 688–711, but there is still no critical edition. See Girgensohn, “Francesco Zabarella aus Padua,” 273–74. On distribution of the manuscripts, cf. Fabrice Delivré, “Le De scismate de Francesco Zabarella: textes et contextes,” in: Diritto, chiesa e cultura nell’opera di Francesco Zabarella, 1360–1417, eds. Chiara Maria Valsecchi and Francesco Piovan (Milano, 2020), 19–88. A concise account of the tract is given by Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 151–53; a detailed analysis of the canonistic basis for Zabarellas conciliar idea has been presented by Walter Ullmann, “Cardinal Zabarella and his Position in the Conciliar Movement,” in: The Origins of the Great Schism, 191–231 (appendix); and also Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (1998), 199–214. 64. Cf. Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism, 195–99. 65. Cf. Thomas E. Morrissey, “Franciscus Zabarella (1360–1417): papacy, community and limitations upon authority,” in: Reform and Authority in the Medieval and Reformation Church, ed. Guy F. Lytle (Washington, D.C., 1981); reprinted in Morrissey, Conciliarism, XIV, 37–54, at 51–52. However, Zabarella stood firmly on the ground of the canonistic 42 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION Bernard Picart (designer) and printmaker (anonymous), Portrait of Francesco Zabarella, dated between 1713 and 1763, print. Image available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. According to his proposal, the whole of Christendom should refuse obedience towards the two competing pontiffs, since both of them stubbornly persisted in the schism and had therefore become heretics (Schisma vero inducit hæresim). Both of them should be tried and convicted at a general council, and deprived of their office (De haeresi autem papæ iudicat concilium),66 which would open up the possibility to elect an indisputable pope. With his legal opinion, Zabarella supplied a practicable basis for the actions of the cardinals in the Council of Pisa, especially the proceedings against the two claimants (processus)—in fact, they actually referred to the tradition; see Thomas E. Morrissey, “Canonist in Crisis ca. 1400–1450: Pisa, Constance, Basel,” in: Nicolas of Cusa and his Age: Intellect and Spirituality, eds. Thomas M. Izbicki and Christopher M. Bellitto (Leiden, 2002; repr. Morrissey, Conciliarism, as pt. IV), 63–75, at 69–70 (the original pagination is preserved in the reprint) 66. Quotations according to Franciscus Zabarella, Super primo Decretalium subtilissima commentaria (Venetiis, 1602), fol. 108’, stored in Bamberg; also cited by Dieter Girgensohn, “Über die Protokolle des Pisaner Konzils,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 18 (1986), 103– 27, at 123. ANSGAR FRENKEN 43 verdict written by the famous canonist just prior to the summoning and opening of the council.67 According to his idea, the cardinals should summon the council, as factually, there was a state of vacancy. If this did not succeed, the right to summon such a council should be passed on to the emperor. Most legal scholars of his time agreed with Zabarella’s approach, with the exception of Benedict XIII, who himself was a renowned canonist.68 Pietro d’Ancarano, a canonist from Bologna, also initially held a different view from his famous colleague from Padua. On the one hand, he argued that the decision which was to be made at the council was a question of faith and thus could not be handed over to a secular sovereign. On the other hand, he opposed Zabarella’s proposal of summoning a council because there were currently two claimants fighting over the Roman crown.69 Therefore, at that point in time, he felt he could not support a general council at all. In the Tractatus ad faciendam unionem tempore schismatis, which he had already presented in April 1405, he made six proposals for overcoming the schism, including the proposal to convene a council.70 Two years later, however, the tide had turned. Having been an advocate for papal rights for a long time, Ancarano became an important advocate for the Council of Pisa,71 after the failure of the negotiations between the 67. . . . cum scisma mater erroris existat et inveteratum transeat in heresim iuxta divina et canonica sancciones, cited by Girgensohn, “Von der konziliaren Theorie,” 76. Cf. Jürgen Miethke, “Concilium Pisanum (1409),” in: Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, editio critica, eds. Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni, 4 vols. (Turnhout, 2006–2016, here 2013) II, pt. 1, p. 477. The direct influence of Zabarella on the negotiations of the cardinals before Pisa was estimated much more cautiously by Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt, 191–92. 68. See Dieter Girgensohn, “Ein Schisma ist nicht zu beenden, ohne die Zustimmung der konkurrierenden Päpste. Die juristische Argumentation Benedikts XIII. (Pedro de Luna),” Archivum historiae pontificiae, 27 (1989), 197–247. 69. Cf. Deutsche Reichstagsakten: Ältere Reihe, eds. Julius Weizsäcker et al., 24 vols. (Gotha, 1867–present, here 1888; repr. Göttingen, 1956), VI, 521n6. Ancarano acted on an idea, which was at first cited by the Cardinal Pierre de Sortenac (†1390), who commented soon after the outbreak of the schism: Item quis convocabit istud concilium? Si dicatur, quod Imperator, non potest esse, cum re vera non sit hodie imperator (Baluze, ed., Vitae paparum Avenionensium, II, 864). 70. Padovani, “Consilia e Tractatus,” 13. 71. “Both Ancharano and his pupil, Antonius de Butrio, were to become important figures in the academic development of the conciliarist theory in the next few years, especially after their return to Bologna, where they rapidly assumed the leadership in the university discussion” (Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 154). On this context, cf. the two tracts of June, 1408 (printed in Johannes Vincke, Schriftstücke zum Pisaner Konzil. Ein Kampf um die öffentliche Meinung (Bonn, 1942), 112–21 [no. 18–19]). 44 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION papal contenders, and at the council he was the appointed defender of the cardinals’ proceedings. Apart from Zabarella, Antonio da Butrio and Giovanni de Imola ought to be mentioned for their important opinions. Giovanni de Imola composed his tract during or shortly after his stay in Padua, where he might have met Zabarella. While his reasoning on the conciliar solution corresponds with that of Zabarella, one cannot overlook his loyalty to Gregory XII. This loyalty also prevented him from explicitly advocating that the cardinals convene the council, which isolated him among Italian scholars.72 Not until 1413 was he to defend the Pisan action of the cardinals. Apart from opinions on open questions which were relevant to the realization of the upcoming Council of Pisa, other fundamental opinions were also being formulated, amongst which were those of the jurists who had already stepped forward during the first phase of the schism. Bartolomeo da Saliceto, for example, called upon the cardinals to oppose their pontiffs and to stand up resolutely for the union.73 It was no surprise that Bologna was once again in the center of the newly arisen discussions about the via concilii. On the one hand, it was home to the university with its law faculty, whose excellence—just as that of the theological faculty in Paris—was known in all of Europe. Moreover, the records for Bologna were the best of the Italian universities. On the other hand, the city was papal territory. The supreme administrator at that time was the cardinal legate Baldassare Cossa, later known as John XXIII, who was to become one of the most important promoters of the Council of Pisa. As pope, he would summon the Council of Constance in 1414, at the urging of Zabarella and others.74 For his plans he sought legal advice 72. Giovanni de Imola (ca. 1372–1436) further discussed the question of the legitimacy of summoning a council without papal approval in his tract “Super schismate” (see Dino Staffa, “Tractatus Johannis ab Imola super schismate occidentis,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia, 7 [1953], 181–224); cf. recently, Padovani, “Consilia e Tractatus,” 448–52, and Id., Dall’alba al crepuscolo del commento: Giovanni da Imola (1375 ca. –1436) e la giurisprudenza del suo tempo (Frankfurt am Main., 2017). On his biography, see Id., Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 78 (2013), 487–90. For classification, cf. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 161–62. 73. Written in autumn 1407. Printed in Vincke, Schriftstücke zum Pisaner Konzil, 30– 32 [No. 3]. 74. A critical biography of this man remains an urgent research desideratum. Cf. Francois-Charles Uginet, “Giovanni XXIII, antipapa,” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 55 (2000), 621–27, here 622; Id., in: Enciclopedia, II, 614–19; more recently Ansgar Frenken, “Johannes XXIII.,” in: Das Konstanzer Konzil 1414–1418. Weltereignis des Mittelalters, eds. ANSGAR FRENKEN 45 Ulrich of Richenthal, Miniature of Johannes XXIII, from the Chronicle of the Council of Constance (Konstanzer Konzilschronik), 1430. Image is in the public domain. from university scholars, and in some instances he is known to have been an initiator of consilia.75 Very important in this context are the two opinions of the legal faculties of the University of Bologna and the one of the theological faculty, requested by the Roman cardinals, which were published around the turn of the year 1407–08. They summarized the arguments of the tracts by Ancarano, da Castro, Butrio, and Mattesillani which had been composed in the fall of 1407.76 The demand for the withdrawal of obedience was disKarl-Heinz Braun et al. (Darmstadt, 2013), 47–51. A balanced assessment of his person is often obstructed by his later pontificate as well as by the events in Constance that led to his deposition. Cf. Walter Brandmüller, “Johannes XXIII. im Urteil der Geschichte—oder die Macht des Klischees,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 32 (2000), 106–45. 75. Morrissey, “Canonist in Crisis ca. 1400–1450,” 66–67. 76. [1]: Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand (eds.), Veterum scriptorum . . . amplissima collectio, 9 vols. (Paris, 1724–33; repr. New York, 1968), VII, 894–97; Mansi, Sacrorum 46 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION cussed. In the background was the view raised by Butrio that persistence in schism led to heresy; even further went his pupil Matteo Mattesillani, who considered Gregory in a state of heresy after his refusal to meet with Benedict. In their announcement about the council on June 24, 1408, the cardinals explicitly drew upon these two opinions. They referred to habitis et consideratis maturis consiliis universitatum magistrorum studii Parisiensis et Bononiensis, and wrote similarly in letters to the Avignon obedience.77 Butrio and Ancarano were also actively involved in the negotiations in Florence for the site of the Council. At this point, the Italian scholars who had been supporting a conciliar way similar to the one which now seemed to be established by the Council of Pisa did not stop publishing. At the end of 1408, Ancarano and Butrio published two new opinions;78 Ancarano dealt intensively with the question of a legitimate convocation of the council, a right that in the given situation fell to the cardinals. They were followed by Domenico da S. Gimignano,79 the teacher of Ancarano, who, also solicited by Cardinal Cossa, wrote a tract in March 1409 that addressed basic, procedural aspects for a general council such as were to be implemented a short time later in Pisa.80 Furthermore, there were numerous other opinions of Bolognese origin, which, in late 1408, supported the cardinals’ summoning of the council, as well as their right of judgment. Da Castro explicitly accused the two popes of perjury. Statements suggesting the deposition of the papal contendentes became more frequent: in 1409, Mattesillani, who completed Butrio’s treatise after the latter’s death, again stressed that Gregory XII’s behavior in 1407 made conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, XXVII, 219–23. [2]: Cesare Baronius and Odoricus Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, 21 vols. (Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1694), XVII, 334ab 334ab [ad annum 1408]. Cf. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 156–59; Condorelli, “Antonio da Budrio,” 110–13. 77. The date of issue of the letters was likely to have been predated (Girgensohn, “Von der konziliaren Theorie,” 77; now carefully considered by Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt, 240–55. The citation is printed in Reichstagsakten, VI, 382, lines 21–22. Cf. Dieter Girgensohn, “More sanctorum patrum alias utiliter in ecclesia observat: die Einberufung des Pisaner Konzils von 1409,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 27–28 (1995–96), 325–82, especially at 325–27; Condorelli, “Antonio da Budrio,” 115. 78. Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism, 150; recently Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt, 180–93, provides a detailed analysis of these proposals. On Butrio’s tractatus de scismate, cf. Condorelli, “Antonio da Budrio,” 123–31. 79. For biographical data, see Diego Quaglioni, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 40 (1991), 664–67; Id., “Un canonista nella nuova Roma papale. Appunti per la biografia di Domenico di San Gimignano († 1424),” in: Alle origini della nuova Roma: Martino V (1417– 1431): Atti del convegno Roma, 2–5 marzo 1992, eds. Maria Chiabò et al. (Rome, 1992), 367–81. 80. This is pointed out by Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt, 486–87. ANSGAR FRENKEN 47 him guilty of heresy, and that he should therefore be deposed in order to clear the way for the election of a new and generally recognized pope at the council.81 However, the initiative of the cardinals to take the via concilii was not triggered by this scholarly discussion. Rather, it was provoked from outside: by the appointment of four new cardinals and Gregory’s restrictive measures against the cardinals. Nevertheless, for their further action, they were strengthened argumentatively—the instruments for restoring the union were ready. The renewed withdrawal of obedience by the French crown (the subtraction decision of early 1408) also forced development on the side of the Avignonese cardinals. After first negotiations in Livorno, the now-united cardinals of both obediences were summoned to the Council of Pisa.82 The importance and esteem of the scholars are made clear by the fact that the universities were officially invited to Pisa.83 The importance of canonical expertise for the Council is made clear by the fact that it resembled a legal criminal trial in many respects: “the Council acted not as a deliberative body but as a court.”84 This is especially true of the deposition proceedings against the two opponents for the papacy, as explicitly stated in the more detailed version of the official protocol: “Trial in the matter of the Union of the Church, the Faith and Schism against the two papal Contendentes, namely those called by some Benedict XIII and Gregory XII. . . .”85 The form of the legal procedure also justified its awkward and clumsy implementation:86 there could be no procedural errors. 81. Padovani, “Consilia e Tractatus,” 447. The work is preserved as an eighteenth-century copy in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 17184, fol. 227r–56v. 82. For the details of its content, this paper refers to the study by Esser, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt. 83. For the list of university envoys in attendance, see Hélène Millet, “Les Pères du concile de Pise (1409): édition d’une nouvelle liste,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age—Temps modernes, 93 (1981) 713–90; repr. in Ead., Le concile de Pise. Qui travaillat à l’union de l’Église d’Occident en 1409? (Turnhout, 2010), 37–285, at 93–96. 84. Stump, “The Council of Constance,” 401, who refers here to Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela, El cisma de Occidente (Madrid, 1982), 230. 85. “Processus in causa unionis ecclesie, fidei et schismatis contra duos de papatu contendentes, videlicet dominos Benedictum XIII et Gregorium XII ab aliquis nuncupatos. . .” Johannes Vincke, “Acta Concilii Pisani,” RQ, 46 (1938), 81–333, at 86, cited by Girgensohn, “Von der konziliaren Theorie,” 86; additionally Girgensohn, “Über die Protokolle des Pisaner Konzils,” 110. 86. Cf. Girgensohn, “Über die Protokolle des Pisaner Konzils,” 110. 48 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION The fact that the solution found in Pisa (convocation by the cardinals, deposition of the two claimants, new election) could not end the schism, however, was not due to canonistic and theological clumsiness and errors, but to the political circumstances, and especially the protection granted by the king of Aragon and the Roman king, respectively, to those deposed at the council. A Carthusian chronicle reported soberingly: “[. . .] while the aforementioned cardinals wanted to restore the unity of the Church, they turned the twofold division into a threefold one.”87 Regardless of this, scholars’ interest in the issues surrounding the Council visibly waned; they turned more to other issues, especially reform. For its success, however, the union was a necessary precondition. A Short Glance into the Future: the Council of Constance (1414–18), or the Defense of the Conciliar Way The final solution of the schism was the main objective of the supporters of the via concilii. Nevertheless, the desired success was endangered once again by the flight from Constance of Pope John XXIII, who had succeeded the Pisan pope Alexander. In this situation, the main focus was set on maintaining the council’s capacity to act—a fact for which the decree Haec Sancta,88 despite all its interpretative ambiguity,89 serves as proof. Scholars who in earlier years had provided the theological and canonical tools for the restoration of the union were now instrumental in its implementation. Once again, it was up to the familiar French voices Gerson and d’Ailly to ensure the continuing work of the synod and to legitimize the actions of the council fathers. In addition, Zabarella, legal advisor of the council, ought to be mentioned. The guiding principle of 87. “. . . prefati cardinales dum vellent unionem ecclesie facere, ex divisionem fecerunt trivisionem.” “La Cronaca della Certosa di Montello,” Maria Luisa Crovato, ed., Miscellanea erudite, 46 (1987), 109, cited here after Girgensohn, “Von der konziliaren Theorie,” 91. 88. Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, 3rd. ed., eds. Giuseppe Alberigo et al. (Bologna, 1973), 409–10; Albergio and Melloni, eds., Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, editio critica, II, pt. 1, pp. 548–50. On the origin and development of the decree, see the references written down in footnote 61 of this paper, and recently Karl-Heinz Braun, “Die Konstanzer Dekrete ‘Haec sancta’ and ‘Frequens’,” in: Das Konstanzer Konzil 1414–1418: Weltereignis des Mittelalters, ed. Karl-Heinz Braun et al. (Darmstadt, 2013), 82–86. A concise overview of the research controversies surrounding Haec Sancta is given by Frenken, Das Konstanzer Konzil, 195–98. On the interpretation of the controversial conditional clause etiam si papalis exsistat, cf. Jürgen Miethke, “Via concilii: Der Weg des Konstanzer Konzils aus der Krise des Schisma,” in: ‘Et l’homme dans tout cela?’ Von Menschen, Mächten und Motiven: FS für Heribert Müller zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Gabriele Annas and Jessika Nowak (Stuttgart, 2017), 63–88, at 83n62. 89. Cf. Decaluwé, “Three Ways to Read the Constance Decree Haec sancta (1415).” ANSGAR FRENKEN 49 Ulrich of Richenthal, Meeting of scholars, bishops, cardinals and the Holy Father John XXIII (antipope) in the cathedral of Constance, from the Chronicle of the Council of Constance (Konstanzer Konzilschronik), between ca. 1460 and ca. 1465, colored pencil drawing, height: 39 cm (15.3 in); width: 29 cm (11.4 in). Image is in the public domain. their actions remained a “technically correct procedure and respect for legal rights.”90 In its second attempt, the conciliar way turned out to be difficult, but ultimately successful; the actual triumph of the Council of Constance can be likewise described.91 The deposition—respectively the removal of the three claimants for the papacy—had opened the way for the election of an undoubtedly legitimate pope. Martin V, as he called himself, found recognition almost everywhere. Benedict XIII, pertinaciously insisting on his claims, was nothing more than a puppet in the hands of Alfonso V, King of Aragon, who merely used him for his own political and financial inter90. Thomas E. Morrissey, “More Easily and More Securely: Legal Procedure and Due Process at the Council of Constance,” in: Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, eds. James R. Sweeney and Stanley Chodorow (Ithaca, N.Y., 1980).; repr. Morrissey, Conciliarism, IX, 234–47, at 246. 91. Cf. Frenken, Das Konstanzer Konzil, 262–63. 50 THE LONG AND STONY ROAD TO UNION ests. After almost four decades, the Great Western Schism had ended for all except for Benedict XIII, who stubbornly refused to accept its outcome. An important role in this epoch was played by scholars, who had looked for ways to overcome the schism. Their merit was to refer to canonistic traditions which they reconsulted and reinterpreted—for example, on the possibilities of convoking the council against the pope, especially in the circumstance of a quasi-absentee leader, or on the ways to deal with schismatic popes and their deposition. Thus, they set the legal basis for the Council of Constance to reunite successfully the Church. In Constance itself, the intellectual dispute shifted more towards the matter of defining the relationship between council and pope, and focused mainly on the question of whether or if the council owned a claim of supremacy over the pope, as well as on questions of faith, heresy, and, not least, the call for reform. Once again, scholars and intellectuals were at the center of the debate.92 These, however, are of course quite different issues, beyond the scope of this article. 92. See ibid., 195–98, 205–06. Pedro de Ribadeneyra and the First Ex-Jesuits: Jesuit Anxiety about Familial Interference to Vocational Perseverance THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA* This article examines a series of dialogues by Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1527–1611) that recount stories of men who left the Society of Jesus only to endure a wide variety of misfortunes thereafter. These dialogues reveal a certain anxiety within the Society of Jesus concerning men who abandoned their vocation. When compared with Jesuit hagiographies, the stories of these men who left the Society show that the Jesuits were concerned that proximity to family could present temptations too powerful to overcome for many Jesuits. Ultimately, the rhetorical and propagandistic nature of the text presents the defectors as foils to showcase the holiness of the Society and its saints. Keywords: familial obligation, Pedro de Ribadeneyra, hagiography, divine punishment, rhetoric, vice and virtue Introduction For centuries the historians of the Society of Jesus fell into two polemical parties. On the one hand, the apologists, composed primarily of Jesuits themselves, praised the Society’s holiness, rigid orthodoxy, excellence in preaching, teaching, confessing, moving souls from vice to virtue, and missionary zeal. On the other hand, the antagonists, who were both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, accused the Jesuits of introducing novelty into religious life, of laxity in hearing confession, of enriching themselves in mis- *Dr. Santa Maria (dean of Silliman College, Yale University, thomas.santamaria@ yale.edu) holds a doctoral degree in Renaissance Studies and History from Yale University. He is grateful to the Gritsch Memorial Fund for providing a generous travel grant that made archival research in Rome possible; to Mauro Brunello of Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter ARSI) for pointing him in the direction of this text; to Fr. Barton Geger, S.J. for sharing his insights as well as his extensive notes on the history, background, and transmission of the Diálogos, which provide much of the structure to this article; and to Alison Weber for her tireless and gracious assistance in reviewing this article. Translations from the first dialogue are Geger’s; the rest are the author’s, unless otherwise specified. 51 52 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS sion territories, and of promoting regicide, treason, and pro-papal bias.1 Given the antagonism directed against this new order of clerks regular, it was unsurprising that the first Jesuits expended much of their time, talent, and resources on promoting their own virtues. Their impulse for encomium reached a fever-pitch in the years leading up to the canonizations of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and Francis Xavier (1506–52) in 1622. For the Jesuits, the canonizations were a crowning achievement of their still young and unproven order. Today, historians fault both the detractors’ hyperbolic vitriol and the apologists’ enthusiastic encomia, yet none question the Society’s rapid growth or its wide proliferation throughout the world.2 Simply put, the spread of the Society and its ministries in Europe and around the globe cannot be denied. Among the early Jesuits, Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1526–1611) is a crucial figure whose work is worthy of close consideration.3 Ribadeneyra was born in Toledo, but came to Rome where he met Ignatius as a page in the court of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Ribadeneyra was so drawn to Ignatius that he joined the Society on September 18, 1540, mere days before Paul III Farnese (1468–1549; r.1534–49) officially approved the order. Ribadeneyra’s proximity to Ignatius, intimate knowledge of the early Jesuits, and the variety of administrative positions he held within the Society gave him stature, influence, and authority within the early Society. It was perhaps for this reason that the third Superior General of the Society, Francis Borgia (1510–1572), commissioned Ribadeneyra to write the life of Ignatius. Writing and rewriting that biography was his greatest literary achievement in the last decades of his life, which he devoted to writing. Rib1. One of the most damning associations these critics conjured was with alumbradismo; see Luis Fernández Martínez, “Iñigo de Loyola y los Alumbrados,” Hispania Sacra, 35, no. 72 (1983), 585–680. For a more recent analysis of this intra-Catholic opposition, see Terrence O’Reilly, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Contexts, Sources, Reception (Boston, 2021), 81–105. 2. See, for example, John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, 1993). Many religious orders expanded rapidly. The Franciscans swelled to 30,000 members within four decades of their founding, and similar patterns are evident in other orders, see Thomas Clancy, An Introduction to Jesuit Life (St. Louis, 1976), 121. 3. For a biographical sketch of Ribadeneyra, see Alison Fleming, “Ribadeneira, Pedro de, SJ (1526–1611),” in: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester (New York, 2017), 680–81. See also, Spencer J. Weinreich, Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the Schism of the Kingdom of England’: A Spanish Jesuit’s History of the English Reformation (Boston, 2017), for an edition and translation of Ribadeneyra’s history, and a lengthy introduction to Ribadeneyra and his works; and Jodi Bilinkoff, “The Many ‘Lives’ of Pedro de Ribadeneyra,” Renaissance Quarterly, 52, no. 1 (1999), 180–96. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 53 Theodoor Galle (attributed), Portret van Petrus Ribadeneira, 1610, engraving, 4.8 × 6.9 (122 × 176 mm). Image is in the public domain. adeneyra considered the rapid growth of the Society of Jesus to be the greatest miracle of its founder. What is more, Ribadeneyra believed no miracle could possibly be more important: “[T]his miracle is so great and so manifest that if the other miracles were to be lacking, this one alone should suffice to know and esteem the sanctity that God gave to this father.”4 Ribadeneyra’s insistence on the growth of the Society as Ignatius’s singular miracle was in keeping with his belief that “miracles were not a necessary sign of sanctity (whereas loving one’s neighbour was).”5 Later iterations of Ignatius’s life by Ribadeneyra increasingly emphasized Ignatius’s role as a miracle worker. The 1601 edition concluded with six chapters on the miracles of Ignatius.6 Therefore, even though Ribadeneyra 4. In Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley, 2004), 121. 5. Simon Ditchfield, “‘Coping with the beati moderni’: Canonization Procedure in the Aftermath of the Council of Trent,” in: Ite Inflammate Omnia: Selected Historical Papers from conferences held at Loyola and Rome in 2006, ed. Thomas McCoog (Rome, 2010), 415. 6. Ditchfield, “Coping with the beati moderni,” 422. 54 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS did much to modernize history and hagiography, it remains safe to suggest that he suffered from an inability to maintain a critical distance where the Society was concerned, preferring to interpret Ignatius and the Society of Jesus in favorable light.7 And yet, Ribadeneyra did write a text that explicates a phenomenon that the Jesuits avoided publicizing: departures and dismissals from the Society of Jesus. His Dialogues Containing Various Examples of Persons Who, Having Left the Religious Order of the Society of Jesus, Were Punished Severely by the Hand of the Lord, offers an intriguing counter narrative to the official encomiastic histories.8 It not only seems peculiar in the corpus of Jesuit histories, which promote lives of their holiest members, but it also stands out within Ribadeneyra’s oeuvre, since he publicized the proliferation of the Society of Jesus.9 It must be noted that Ribadeneyra’s Dialogues ought to be treated, not so much as a history that offers evidence about men who left the Society of Jesus, but as a work of propaganda, whose rhetoric exalts the Society by the via negativa, that is, by warning of the dangers of leaving the order, thereby encouraging Jesuits to remain.10 In this way, Rib- 7. See John O’Malley, Constructing a Saint through Images: The 1609 Illustrated Biography of Ignatius of Loyola (Philadelphia, 2008), 14. 8. Pedro de Ribadeneyra, “Diálogos en los quales se tratan algunos exemplos de personas que aviendo salido de La religion de La Compañia de Jesus han sido castigados severamente de la mano del Senor” (Unpublished manuscript, Alcalá, 1592), stored in Rome, ARSI, Fondo Gesuitico, ms. 67. This paper will use parenthetical citations from this manuscript of the Dialogues hereafter. Ribadeneyra had considered leaving the Society, but after he recovered from an illness in 1543 determined to remain. 9. Adriano Prosperi, La Vocazione: Storie di gesuiti tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Torino, 2016). 10. Numbers reflect Ribadeneyra’s rhetorical purposes and should not be considered historical statistical evidence. Therefore, the text confounds simple statistical analysis. Considering Nadal’s survey of Jesuits, Thomas Cohen similarly offered an argument against such statistical analyses on the basis that they obfuscate the individual responses and the lived experience of Jesuits; see Thomas V. Cohen, “Diversità nell’Esperienza Religiosa tra i primi 1259 Gesuiti,” Annali accademici Canadesi, 1 (1986), 7–25, here 10–12. Italian sources dating from 1540–60 indicate that 22% left as novices, 46% within the next seven years, and 29% left after having been in the Society for ten years; see O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 55–62. In other contexts, roughly 35% of men left the Society, where the majority were scholastics; see Austin Lynn Martin, “Vocational Crises and the Crisis in Vocations among Jesuits in France during the Sixteenth Century,” The Catholic Historical Review, 72, no. 2 (1986), 201–21, here 205. See also A. Lynn Martin, The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France (Ithaca, 1988), 116. Lack of education, misunderstanding of the nature of the vows, dislike of assignment, excess of freedom, desire to study elsewhere, call to hermitage, family reasons, and difficulties with community life were among common motivations for leaving; see André Ravier, S.J., Ignatius of Loyola and Founding of the Jesuits (San Francisco, 1987), 357. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 55 adeneyra’s Dialogues was a contribution to a larger genre of literature about admonishing people about the danger that befell the wicked.11 The text is also worthy of examination for the theme itself—departing or being dismissed from religious life—which remains an understudied topic.12 Recent historiography, especially scholarship concerning Jesuit missions, magnifies the exciting lives of Jesuits as intrepid missionaries and daring martyrs. According to these accounts, missionary heroism attracted men to the Society. What is more, many men who joined the Society of Jesus were disappointed to be assigned to the European missions, rather than those overseas.13 As a rhetorical text distributed among Jesuits for their edification, the Dialogues, and its survey of roughly seventy men who abandoned their vocations for one reason or another, offers an alternative picture of the early Jesuit mentality. The Dialogues demonstrates how Jesuits negotiated, or failed to negotiate, the tension between their religious vocations, paternal resistance, and the allures of family life, including the attractions of marriage and the draw of ancestral wealth. Examining 11. While this genre was popular amidst the polemics of the Reformation, its place in Christian literature was much older. The fourth-century Christian author Lactantius wrote a history of the tragedies that befell emperors who persecuted Christians, see Lactantius, De Mortibus persecutorum, ed. John L. Creed (New York, 1984). Similarly, Boccaccio recounted lives of notable women, who came to bad ends when they abandoned moral rectitude; see Giovanni Boaccacio, Famous Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Brown (Cambridge, 2001). The Jesuit Robert Persons wrote a short history of priests (some of whom were Jesuits), who left religion and died miserable; see Robert Persons, “An Observation of Certayne Aparent Iudgments of almighty God, against suche as have beene seditious in the English Catholique cause for these nine or ten years past. Written the first of December 1598,” in: Miscellanea II: Volume 2 of the Catholic Record Society, ed. John Hungerford Pollen, S.J. (London, 1906), 202–11. For more examples of Divine judgment befalling the wicked, see Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (New York, 1999), 65–115. 12. See Sabina Pavone, “I dimessi dalla Compagnia negli anni del generalato di Francesco Borgia: Una nuova questione storiografica,” in: Francisco de Borja y su tiempo: Política, religión y cultura en la edad moderna, eds. Enrico García Hernán and María del Pilar Ryan (Valencia, 2012), 465–79. Gaddo defines “dimessi” as a group that includes those who “defected from the order spontaneously or forcefully”; see Irene Gaddo, “Between Identity and History: Giovanni Antonio Valtrino and his Vocazioni meravigliosa alla Compagnia di Gesù,” in: Engaging Sources: The Tradition and Future of Collecting History in the Society of Jesus (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Boston College June 11–13, 2019), eds. Cristiano Casalini, Emanuele Colombo, and Seth Meehan (Boston, 2021). Martin prefers “departure”; see Martin, “Vocational Crises,” 205. It can be difficult to determine if a man left, was dismissed, or even exited the Society at all; see Thomas J. Morissey, S.J., “‘Almost Hated and Detested by All’? The Problem of David Wolfe,” in: The Mercurian Project: Forming Jesuit Culture 1573– 1580, ed. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (St. Louis, 2004). 13. See Jennifer D. Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in Early Modern Naples (Burlington, 2004), esp. chapters 3–4. 56 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS these cases in particular suggests an answer to the most glaring question behind the text: why did Pedro de Ribadeneyra, the ultimate promoter of the Society of Jesus and its rapid growth throughout the world, write a history of the opposite phenomenon? As noted, he hoped to encourage more men to remain within the Society by highlighting the divine punishments that men who left it received, and to underscore the dangers of disordered attachment to kin, but also, as here argued, he employed these fallen figures as a foil to the Society’s exalted holy men, especially Ignatius. Comparing the lives of those Jesuits who let families interfere in their vocations with hagiographies of those who remained stalwart in the face of family interference indicates that Jesuits were anxious about men leaving the Society for the enticements of family life. The following sections survey the history of the Dialogues, review ideal vocation stories notable for familial interventions, and recount some of the lives from the Dialogues.14 Reading the Dialogues against the stories of illustrious saints, some of whom Ribadeneyra refers to within the text, serves to clarify Ribadeneyra’s aim in reinterpreting the history of what were embarrassing failed vocations. Situating the Dialogues Ribadeneyra’s Dialogues narrates stories of men who left, or some who were dismissed from, the Society of Jesus after its formal founding in 1540. Men who left the Society are a distinct category from those who left with permission and those the Society dismissed.15 Most of the stories in the Dialogues are about men who abandoned the Society without permission. Unsurprisingly, his hagiographical biography of Ignatius silences these stories as well as those of two groups of men who abandoned Ignatius before the formal founding of the Society. Juan de Polanco (1517–76) referred to the failure of these early apostolic groups as stillbirths.16 The first group of 14. For Doris Moreno the Dialogues was part of a broader movement within the Society toward standardization and centralization; see Doris Moreno, “Obediencias negociadas y desobediencias silenciadas en la Compañía de Jesús en España, ss. XVI–XVII,” Hispania, 79, no. 248 (Fall, 2014), 661–86, here 665–69. 15. The Jesuit Constitutions permit the Superior General to release men from their first vows that bind the Jesuit to the Society, but not the Society to the Jesuit, see The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and their Complementary Norms: A Complete English Translation of the Official Latin Texts, trans. George E. Ganss et al. (St. Louis, 1996), ¶ 204–42. 16. See Barton T. Geger, “The First First Companions: The Continuing Impact of the Men Who Left Ignatius,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 44, no. 2 (2012), 1–38. See also Javier Osuna, Friends in the Lord: A Study in the Origins and Growth of Community in the Society of Jesus from St Ignatius’ Conversion to the Earliest Texts of the Constitutions (1521–1541), trans. Nicholas King (London, 1974), 42. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 57 Guillaume Postel, from tome III, folio 588 recto of Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens (1584) by André Thevet. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guillaume_Postel_-_Thevet.jpg. Image is in the public domain. Spaniards disbanded when Ignatius pursued study in Paris.17 A Parisian second group came to a similar fate: one follower joined the Carthusians, one became a canon in Toledo, and another simply disappeared from the historical record.18 The third attempt succeeded. Since then, Jesuits have fondly etched the names of ten men—Pierre Favre (1506–46), Francis Xavier, Diego Laínez (1512–65), Nicolás Bobadilla (1511–90), Alfonso Salmerón (1515–85), Simão Rodrigues (1510–79), Claude Jay (1504–52), Paschase Broët (ca. 1500–62), and Jean Codure (1508–41)—into their collective consciousness as the first Companions. At the same time, they con17. Geger, “The First First Companions,” 10. 18. Geger, “The First First Companions,” 13. Geger believes that these departures shaped Ignatius’s approach to admitting men to the Society; see Geger, “The First First Companions,” 7. In multiple instances, the Constitutions prohibits men joining from other religious orders and from transferring to other religious orders without the express permission of the Superior, see Constitutions 27, 30, 171, 172, and 99. Furthermore, the “‘Carthusian exception’ is not mentioned in the Constitutions, but rather in several papal bulls that predate the final document”; see Geger, “The First First Companions,” 8n27. 58 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS veniently forget the handful of men who had formerly been part of this revered group, including Jean Bochet, Guillaume Postel (1510–82), Diego de Cáceres, and Miguel Landívar.19 This lapse in the Jesuit memory is unsurprising. The departures alone were already a source of embarrassment to the Companions, but the subsequent allegedly nefarious activities of the ex-Jesuits made the case for consigning them to oblivion even more compelling. Ribadeneyra’s Vita mentions only Landívar, whom he discredits as a liar and disseminator of rumors.20 Ribadeneyra had good cause to do so. After all, at various points, Landívar had attempted to murder Ignatius in his sleep; he may have been sympathetic to Lutheranism; and he frequently besmirched the Society’s reputation, especially where sexual ethics were concerned.21 For Ribadeneyra and the first Jesuits, suppressing the history concerning men who left the Society meant protecting the order’s untried reputation. That reputation not only hinged on the excellence of its members but on the growth of the institution. As such there was an understandable desire to repress the history of failed vocations; however, the fate of the defectors was nevertheless of intense interest within the Society. In fact, Ribadeneyra was not the first to pursue the subject, although he was perhaps the earliest to examine it comprehensively. The manuscript copies of the Dialogues known to this author are all dated to 1592; however, Ribadeneyra mentioned the ill-fated ends of failed Jesuits as early as 1565 in a letter to a Jesuit defector.22 Beforehand, Petrus de Parada, who left the Society of Jesus, wrote to Ignatius on June 27, 1554, requesting readmission after suffering many punishments from God.23 Nicolas Gracida also sent a compilation of tragedies that befell absconders to Ignatius at the end of 1554. In the most gruesome of these stories, 19. Geger, “The First First Companions,” 14–16. In most instances Ribadeneyra does not offer his reader enough evidence to reconstruct a biography of his subject; see Pavone “I dimessi,” 472. 20. See Pedro de Ribadeneyra, The Life of Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Claude Nicholas Pavur, S.J. (St. Louis, 2014), 150, 532. 21. For more on Landívar, see Geger, “The First First Companions,” 16–19. 22. Monumenta historica Societatis Iesu Patris Petri de Ribadeneira, Societatis Jesu sacerdotis, Confessiones, epistolae aliaque scripta inedita, ex autographis, antiquissimis apographis et regestis deprompta Tomus Secundus, ed. Fathers of the Society of Jesus (Madrid, 1923), 9, hereafter MHSI Ribadeneira. 23. MHSI Epistolae mixtae, ex variis Europae locis ab anno 1537 ad 1556 scriptae: nunc primum a patribus Societatis Jesu in lucem editae. Tomus quartus 1554–1555, ed. Fathers of the Society of Jesus (Madrid, 1900) 240–42. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 59 Gracida tells Ignatius about a man who developed a condition that included the swelling of his foot. In their efforts to alleviate the pain doctors amputated the big toe, burned two more toes until they amputated them, and then set fire to the whole foot, cauterizing it in nine places. Gracida relates that the pain only subsided when the man finally submitted himself to the Jesuit superior.24 Polanco also addressed the issue in a letter to men considering departing the Society.25 He argued that persevering in vocation was a more secure, perfect, pleasant, and useful option than leaving it. Specifically referring to family interference, he suggested that the attachment to “flesh and blood” is an enticement from the devil, declaring that “it is the mark of an ignoble mind to be moved by these human feelings of flesh and blood” whereas “it is the mark of a noble mind to conquer these affections and to subordinate them to reason and a love for God.” 26 In many ways, this statement is part of a longstanding catechesis to value the spirit over the world. So apparent was the problem of departures from the Society of Jesus that Pope Pius V Ghislieri (1504–72; r.1566–72) issued a papal bull, Aequum Reputamus, against “apostates” of the Society on January 17, 1566.27 In it he refers to Pope Paul III giving the Jesuits the special prerogative of binding men to the Society, which prohibited the transfer of Jesuits to other orders without permission of the superior.28 In theory, the superior general had the power, with the help of civil authorities, to 24. MHSI Litterae quadrimestres ex universis, praeter Indiam et Brasiliam, locis. Tomus Quartus 1556, ed. Fathers of the Society of Jesus (Madrid, 1897), 683–87. Ignatius ordered the story, originally recorded in Spanish, translated into Latin and sent to the provinces. See José Manuel Aicardo, Comentario a las constituciones de la Compañia de Jesus, 6 vols. (Madrid, 1919–1935, here 1922), III, 652. 25. The document is undated; however, Geger posits a date before Ignatius’s death on the basis that Polanco would have referred to Ignatius as an exemplar of vocational perseverance after he had died. 26. MHSI Polanci complementa. Epistolae et commentaria p. Joannis Alphonsi de Polanco e Societatis Jesu; addenda caeteris ejusdem scriptis dispersis in monumentis, quibus accedunt nunnulla coaeva, aliorum auctorum, illis conjunctissima. Tomus Secundus, ed. Fathers of the Society of Jesus (Madrid, 1917), 811, 812. Translation from Barton Geger. “Flesh and blood” refer specifically to relatives. 27. For the full text, see Institutum Societatis Iesu: Volumen Primum Bullarum et Compendium Privilegiorum 3 vols. (Florentiae, 1886–1893, here 1886), I, 38–42. 28. This permission came in the papal bull, Licet debitum, promulgated on October 18, 1549, see Philip R. Amidon, “Papal Documents from the Early Years of the Society of Jesus in English Translation,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 52, no. 2 (2020), 36–48. 60 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS Portrait of Nicolás de Bobadilla, engraving from Praepositorium generalium imagines. . . Ad vivum deliniatae et in aes incisae a Philippo Gallaeo Antuerpiae, by Philippe Galle (attributed), engraving, 1557. Stored in the National Library of Spain, Hispanic Iconography, 1191-1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Retrato_de_Nicol%C3%A1s_Bobadilla.jpg. Image is in the public domain. excommunicate, capture, incarcerate, and discipline any man professed, student, or coadjutor, who left the order.29 At least one Jesuit, Nicolás Bobadilla, had a more moderate approach to men who left the Society.30 In a letter to Juan Jerome Domenech (1516– 1592), he urged Jesuits to express more charity toward them, and insisted that novices were not bound to remain within it as men who had professed final vows were.31 In the Dialogues, Cypriano asks Pedro what Ignatius taught about treating men who left the Society. Pedro replies that Ignatius: 29. Constitutions, 235–36. 30. Perhaps his disagreements with Ignatius shaped his perspective. 31. In Mario Scadutos, “Il ‘Libretto Consolatorio’ di Bobadilla a Domènech sulle Vocazioni Mancate (1570),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 43 (1974), 85–102, here 93– 102. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 61 didn’t like it when Ours have anything to do with them, or communicate with them, unless it was to straighten them out, and to guide them for the good of their souls. I am speaking about those who left of their own accord, or who were expelled by their own faults. Ignatius considered it a sign of frivolity, and a weak commitment to religious life, to continue to have friendships and conversations with such persons, as if they were still living in a house of the Society and were our brothers. Only rarely and reluctantly did Ignatius admit them (26r).32 It seems that Bobadilla’s position was unusual.33 In 1567, Francis Borgia (1510–72; r. Superior General 1565–72; canonized 1670), requested from Jerome Nadal (1507–80) a list of all men who left the Society after their initial vows. Here Ribadeneyra’s work, at least in a nascent stage, reentered history. In a series of letters from February to July of 1567, Nadal beseeched Borgia to copy and disseminate the stories collected by Ribadeneyra.34 Ribadeneyra referred to the text in 1590 when he assured Gundisalvo Dávila, a fellow Jesuit, that he had sent a copy of the Dialogues to the Jesuit rector of Villarejo. Thereafter, it seems that the text began to circulate more frequently as manuscript copies of the first two dialogues were dated to 1592.35 In little time, the genre exploded. Pedro de Guzman (1560–1620), a Spanish Jesuit, recorded cases of men who left the Society in the province of Castille. Oliver Mannaerts (1523–1614), a Jesuit superior in Upper Ger32. Some ex-Jesuits formed factions against the Society; see Louis Ponnelle and Louis Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of his Times (1515-1595), trans. Ralph Francis Kerr (London, 1932), 103–04. Although, as a letter from 1553 indicates, Nadal favored a caring approach; see Juan de Polanco, S.J., Year by Year with the Early Jesuits (1537–1556), trans. and ed. John Patrick Donnelly, S.J. (St. Louis, 2004), 312. Still, in 1554, Jesuits expressed their discontent with John III, a benefactor of the Society, for employing ex-Jesuits, see Polanco, Year by Year, 356–57. Overall, relations with dismissed Jesuits were strained, see Pavone “I dimessi,” 465–81. This reflects an atmosphere of internecine conflict within the early Society, see Michela Catto, La Compańía dividida: La oposición dentro de la orden Jesuita entre los siglos XVI y XVII, trans. Marlene Lelo de Larrea Arnal (Mexico City, 2016). 33. Ribadeneyra reported that Ignatius later regretted his relative laxity in admitting novices; see Treatise on the Governance of St Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz, S.J. (Oxford, 2016), 4. 34. MHSI Epistolae P. Hieronumi Nadal Societatis Jesu ab anno 1546 ad 1577 nunc primum editae et illustratae a patribus eiusdem Societatis. Tomus Tertius: 1566–1577 (Madrid, 1902), 380, 492. Perhaps Nadal also believed that publishing the text would be mistaken and encouraged dissemination of the document as an “in-house” text instead. For more on Nadal, see Wiliam V. Bangert, S.J., Jerome Nadal, S.J. 1507–1580: Tracking the First Generation of Jesuits, ed. Thomas M. McCoog, S.J. (Chicago, 1992). 35. Why this specific date is ascribed to the texts is unclear. 62 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS many and Belgium (1585–89), collected dozens of stories concerning defectors in northern Europe.36 Ultimately, Ribadeneyra added his own third dialogue in 1607.37 And then, as late as 1656, Alonso Andrade (1590–1672) wrote a supplemental fourth dialogue to Ribadeneyra’s text.38 Despite the apparent interest in the subject throughout the seventeenth century, Ribadeneyra’s work was never published, though his correspondence with Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615; r. Superior General 1581–1615) hints that he might have wanted to disseminate it further. However, Superior General Claudio Acquaviva curtailed those aspirations, suggesting that “a true edition of the dialogues will bring enemies to us.”39 The major concern seems to have revolved around the imprudence of embroiling the Society in charges of slander.40 Indeed, Ribadeneyra addressed the issue himself within the Dialogues: I will explicitly name some [. . .] since they are now either dead, or can be identified here without perjury to them. The identities of others who are still alive or who have relatives or persons who depend on them, I will not mention here, so that I can communicate the truth of the account without injury or prejudice to anyone. (4) Ribadeneyra contented himself with this solution to the scandal problem, noting his commitment to prudence. Still, the concern was enough to impede the publication of the Dialogues, but it did not hinder its distribution and use. That the Dialogues was read by and known to the Jesuits is clear insofar as some cited it in their work. Notably, the Jesuit spiritual author Alonso Rodríguez (1532–1617) refers to a story from the Dialogues in one of his 36. See Antonio Astrain, Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Asistencia de España, 7 vols. (Madrid, 1902–1925, here 1902), I, xvii. 37. Some of the manuscript copies dated to 1592 contain addenda added later. 38. Alonso Andrade, “Diálogo quarto de sucesos trágicos a los expulsados de la Religión, en especial a los que han salido de la Compañía de Jesús desde el año 1607 hasta el año de 1658” [“Fourth dialogue on the tragedies following those expelled from Religions life, and especially those who left the Society of Jesus from 1607 to 1658”], Ms. E-41-6868, stored in Madrid, Real Academia Española. This dialogue is but one example of a larger genre within Jesuit literature. For more on Andrade and his relationship to Ribadeneyra, see Doris Moreno Martínez, “Obediencias negociadas y desobediencias silenciadas en la Compañía de Jesús en España, ss. XVI–XVII,” Hispania, 75 (2014), 661–68. 39. “Dialogorum vero editio fore ut nos odiosos redderet,” MHSI Ribadeneira, 291. None of these texts about Jesuit deserters were published. 40. See MHSI Ribadeneira, 211n1, 291. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 63 spiritual classics.41 Furthermore, one Brother López, a self-proclaimed friend of Ribadeneyra for thirty-three years, relates in his appendix to Ribadeneyra’s Confessions that the text “is read in our refectories with much pleasure and benefit.”42 Even without publication, the text, or parts of it, seem to have been distributed, read, modified, and circulated.43 Translations of the Dialogues exist today in Latin, French, and Italian, in addition to many Spanish manuscripts. While Ribadeneyra was writing, editing, and expanding the Dialogues from 1567 to 1607, he was also writing and rewriting his Vita Ignatii Loyola (first published in 1572). The Dialogues considers defectors, and the Vita emphasizes the growth of the Society of Jesus, opposing subjects that work together, since the lives of deserters serve as a foil for Ignatius’s saintly model. The examples inform each other.44 Ignatius and the Jesuits who remained in the Society seem even more steadfast compared with deserters. For those considering abandoning religion, the bad ends of defectors and good ends of those who persevered provided strong encouragement to stay. For this reason, examining the ways in which saints responded to familial interference is a worthy digression. A Christian Trope: Renouncing Family Ribadeneyra was surely aware of the tension between religious vocation and family life presented in the Gospels through the teachings of Jesus Christ, who frequently set family ties against religious vocations (Lk. 2:49; Mt. 10:34–36; Mk. 10:28–30; Mt. 8:22). The expectations that Jesus set for his disciples were high and transgressed cultural values. He pitted discipleship against those norms. Therefore, it is no coincidence that some of the most beloved saints were famous for starkly rejecting their families. This was particularly true of two famous mendicant saints, Francis of Assisi 41. Alonso Rodríguez, Exercicio de perfecion i virtudes cristianas (Seville, 1615), 423. Alonso’s text was reprinted in more than three hundred editions in twenty-three languages. 42. “se lee en nuestros refectorios con mucho gusto y aprobechamiento.” MHSI Ribadeneyra, 476. 43. The manuscripts’ contents are not identical. They all seem to include the stories of the Dialogues, but many omit the moralizing lessons thereafter. 44. Both “negative” and “positive” connotations were inherent in the word example: “Exemplo. Lat. Exemplum, est virtus vel vitium, vel aliud quiduis, quod in alio nobis imitandum, vel vitandum proponitur: ex Valla lib. 6” [“Example. Latin Example, is virtue or vice, or anything else, that is offered to us either for imitating or avoiding: from Valla book 6”]; Sebastían de Covarrubias y Orozoco, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana, o Española, (Madrid, 1611), 391, s.v. “exemplo.” 64 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS Giotto di Bondone, Renunciation of Worldly Goods, 1295, fresco, 90.5 × 106.2 (230 × 270 cm), part of the “Scenes of the life of Saint Francis” in the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi, Assisi, Italy, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Giotto_di_Bondone_-_Legend_of_St_Francis_-_5._Renunciation_ of_Wordly_Goods_-_WGA09123.jpg. Image is in the public domain. (ca. 1181–1226) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), whose stories of conversion are memorable.45 In the case of Francis of Assisi, after a period of intense struggle with his family, he stood before his father and the bishop, and renounced the world entirely by stripping off his clothes.46 Could there be a starker image for the radical nature of embracing a vocation? The vocational call of Thomas Aquinas, as the story goes, is no less remarkable.47 Thomas dashed the high hopes that his father, Landulf of Aquino, and especially his mother placed in him by joining the Dominicans. At the height of the struggle, his mother kidnapped him, and his brothers hired a 45. For the full stories, see Saint Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis (New York, 1978), 187–94; see also Thomas of Celano, Thomas of Celano’s First Life of St Francis of Assisi (London, 2000), 16–20; Leonard Boyle, “Introduction,” in: Albert & Thomas: Selected Writings, eds. Simon Tugwell, Albertus, and Thomas, (New York, 1988), 201–353, here 204–6. 46. Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis,193–94. 47. See Boyle, “Introduction,” 204–6. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 65 Diego Velázquez, The Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1632, oil on canvas, 96 × 80 (244 cm × 203 cm), currently stored in the Cathedral Museum of Sacred Art, Orihuela. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_tentaci%C3%B3n_ de_Santo_Tom%C3%A1s_de_Aquino.jpg, uploaded by RandomShadow, February 5, 201. Image is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike 4.0 International license. prostitute to seduce him. When the prostitute visited Thomas, he hurled a burning log from the fire at her and drew a cross on the wall with the poker. In so doing, Thomas rejected his family and their wishes and embraced the cross. Ignatius knew the stories of Francis and Thomas well, and endeavored to be like the mendicants, but more so, as his so-called “Autobiography” claims.48 In his Life of Ignatius, Ribadeneyra drew parallels between the saintly detachment of Francis and Thomas and Ignatius’s own struggles with his family duties. Ribadeneyra describes how, intuiting that his family would object to his vocation, Ignatius planned to leave home under the pretext of visiting the Duke of Nájera.49 His eldest brother, Martin García, 48. Ignatius of Loyola, A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, trans. Joseph Tylenda (San Francisco, 2001), 47. 49. Ribadeneyra, The Life of Ignatius, 18. 66 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS became aware of Ignatius’s true intentions and urged him to remain in secular life, where he already had shown promise. As Ribadeneyra relates: You have everything that it takes: talent, good judgment, spirit, noble heritage, influence with princes, popularity with the citizenry, military experience, prudence [. . .]. Look, I am asking you, don’t even think about doing anything that would not only deprive us and our house of the honor that we have been counting on, but even brand us with disgrace.50 These words did not move Ignatius at all. He insisted that he would bear his family’s honor in mind, and he departed for Montserrat. After joining religious life, Ribadeneyra notes that Ignatius did not stay in his familial home in Loyola if he needed to return there, that Francis Xavier did not visit his family while he was en route to Portugal where he departed for India, and that Pierre Favre would not come within five leagues of his hometown. Ribadeneyra claims that they did this to “give us an example of stripping ourselves of all disordered love of our homeland” (31v). Ultimately, Ribadeneyra concludes that by spurning the worldly honors his family wanted him to pursue, Ignatius achieved greater ones as the founder of a religious order. In the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius remained true to his own experience by codifying his stance on abandoning family.51 He writes that men who enter the Society should bear in mind Christ’s teachings in Matthew 19:29 and Luke 14:25, where Christ demands that his disciples give up their father and come to him hating their own family members.52 Some of the early Jesuit saints took the example of their predecessors’ lives and Ignatius’s rule to heart when familial resistance forced them to fasten themselves to Ignatius’s example of rejecting ties to their kin. Four years after Ignatius died, Robert Bellarmine’s (1542–1621; canonized 1930) father, Vincenzo, objected to his vocation hoping that he would pursue a lucrative career, ecclesiastical or secular, as the nephew of Pope Marcellus II Cervini (1501–55; r.1555–55). Robert chose the Society of Jesus, and his obstinate father prohibited him from contact with the Jesuits even for the sacraments.53 Eventually, Vincenzo compromised with Robert and the Society, allowing him to begin his novitiate at home in hopes that his fervor would cool.54 Ultimately, Robert left his family to begin studies at Rome in 1560. 50. Ribadeneyra, The Life of Ignatius, 18. 51. See Constitutions, ¶ 36–38, 53–54, 61, 246, 256. 52. Constitutions, ¶ 61. 53. Prosperi, La Vocazione, 14. 54. Prosperi, La Vocazione, 15. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 67 Miguel Cabrera, The Conversion of Saint Ignatius Loyola, Eighteenth Century, oil on canvas, 118.50 × 101.18 (301 × 257 cm), currently stored in Mexico City, the Museo Nacional de Arte. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Miguel_Cabrera_-_The_Conversion_of_Saint_Ignatius_Loyola_-_Google_ Art_Project.jpg. Image is in the public domain. One of Bellarmine’s more notable accomplishments, among many, was being the spiritual advisor to the future saint Luigi Gonzaga (1568– 92; canonized 1726), who also encountered opposition to his religious vocation. Upon discovering the truth of his son’s vocation, Ferrante de Gonzaga (1544–1586) “flew into a passion, threatened him with the worst of treatment [. . . and] left no arts untried to prevail upon him to change his resolution.”55 Ferrante sent him to all the courts of Italy to tempt him with courtly pleasures, to no avail.56 Next, Ferrante enlisted churchmen to examine his son’s vocation.57 Even though they found Luigi’s calling beyond reproach, Ferrante remained obstinate. In response, Luigi gave his father an ultimatum: either accept his vocation to the Society of Jesus, or prepare to witness his son wander the world as 55. Virgilio Cepari, The Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, of the Company of Jesus (Philadelphia, n.d.), 23. 56. Cepari, The Life, 24–25. 57. Cepari, The Life, 31. 68 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS a penniless vagrant.58 With this threat, Luigi triumphed over his father and entered the Society of Jesus. It is worth noting that Luigi, perhaps the most famous of the so-called Jesuit “boy-saints,” had a notable precedent before him in the life of Stanislao Kostka (1550–1568).59 Following an ecstatic experience amidst a neardeath illness in 1566, Kostka resolved to join the Society. He approached Lorenzo Maggi, rector of the Jesuit College in Vienna, who insisted that the Jesuits could not accept Kostka without his father’s permission.60 Thereafter, Kotska fled Vienna in 1567 and traveled to Germany, where Peter Canisius (1521–1597) admitted him to the Society and sent him to the Superior General, Francis Borgia, in Rome. Though he rejected his family to pursue his vocation, Kostka died ten months after arriving in Rome in 1568.61 It is probable that Ribadeneyra counted on his audience’s familiarity with the stories of these Jesuit saints, who had triumphed over familial impediments. The stories of men who failed thus serve to highlight the saints’ heroic achievements. Scenes from the Dialogues The protagonists of the stories in the Dialogues lack the fervor, courage in the face of parental opposition, and vocational perseverance of these holy exemplars. The conversation of the Dialogues begins when Pedro, presumably Ribadeneyra himself, notices that Francisco, one of his two interlocutors along with Cypriano, appears sad and distressed. Francisco admits that he is perturbed by the departure of two men he knew from the Society of Jesus, lamenting: “Every time I see a man leave the Society, my blood freezes. Fear comes over me and my heart sinks, so that I don’t know how to describe it.” As consolation, Pedro insists that “Human weakness and 58. Cepari, The Life, 32. 59. The Jesuit historian, Daniello Bartoli, was among Kostka’s early hagiographers; see Daniello Bartoli, Compendio della vita del B. Stanislao Kostka della Compagnia di Giesu composto dal padre Daniello Bartoli della medesima Compagniai (Rome, 1681), esp. 36–58. Ribadeneyra also explained that Kostka’s parents “held him back” (i Padri lo trattenevano) from his vocation until he decided to flee to meet Peter Canisius; see Pedro de Ribadeneira, Vita del P. Francesco Borgia terzo generale della compagnia di Giesu tradotta dallu lingua spagnuola da Giulio Zanchini (Firenze, 1600), 179–86, esp. 180. 60. Bartoli, Compendio, 40–42. 61. The other Jesuit “boy saint,” John Berchmans (1599–1621) also spurned his family to follow his vocation, but joined four years after Ribadeneyra died; see Virgilio Cepari, Vita del Ven. Giovanni Berchmans Fiammingo Religioso della Compagnia di Giesú Descritta Dal P. Virgilio Cepari Della medesima Compagnia (Rome, 1717), 37, 39–40. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 69 misery are great, and many are the setbacks in this world that cause us to fall [. . .]. Thus wise and sensible people [. . .] neither wonder nor take fright that a person falls, or when one seems like such a saint today [. . .] is seen tomorrow wandering heartbroken and lost” (1r). As for the specific issue of men leaving the Society of Jesus, Pedro stresses that all religious orders have defectors (2v); that this even included the Apostles, men personally called by Jesus (11r–11v); that the Society benefits by losing men unable to persevere (11r); that the defectors are better for their time within the Society (13r); and that many more remain than leave (11v).62 Hereafter, Pedro explains the misadventures of some seventy men who abandoned the Society. Out of the seventy-one stories included in the manuscript, familial conflict or enticement is a factor in a Jesuit’s departure in thirteen of them. Many left for other religious orders, some departed to pursue worldly aims, others took up a life of espionage or crime, others still were dismissed for stealing from the church funds, and a fair number left the Society and pursued some combination of these activities.63 Ribadeneyra prefaces their lives by stating that it is better to “keep before our eyes the virtue of [. . .] strong and stalwart combatants” (2v). Yet, he justifies recording the deeds of these transgressors and the rigorous punishments they received as inspiration or, more accurately, cautionary advice for those vacillating in their vocation (4r–4v). Indeed, on numerous occasions the interlocutors urge the readers to take heed (escarmentar) of these punishments as benefit for themselves.64 The warnings implicit in Ribadeneyra’s stories were not enough to end the pattern of men leaving religion altogether; however, he seems to have believed that the bitter ends of these first ex-Jesuits would seem unsavory enough to give at least a few would-be deserters pause. The examples that Pedro offers his companions describe a wide variety of men. Some are old, others young. Some had lived many years as Jesuits, others only a few. They hail from nearly every part of Europe, though most of them are from the Iberian and Italian peninsulas. In his description of the men, Ribadeneyra 62. The Jesuits were perturbed by the notion that men could gain an education from the Society that they could direct toward profitable employment after they departed, see Martin, “Vocational Crises,” 211. 63. See the stories of Diego Romano (20v21r), Luca Corso (88v), Diego de Cáceres (19r–20v), and Miguel de Guzman (71r–73r). 64. Covarrubias defines escarmiento as “a warning and admonition to not err for fear of incurring penalty suffered by others and in some instances already suffered by oneself” (la advertencia y recato de non errar por no incurrir en la pena, executada en otros y algunas vezes excutada en la mesma); Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, s.v. “escarmiento.” 70 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS often remarks on how impressive they were in their piety, modesty, education, and demeanor before they fell from grace and left the Society. In so doing, Pedro conveys his warning: any man, at any moment, can fall, and therefore constant vigilance is necessary.65 Cypriano is entirely flummoxed by the idea that an “experienced man,” meaning a man who had been a Jesuit for many years, would abandon religion, as he remarks: The thing that amazes me is seeing that some of these that leave being priests and doctors and preachers both esteemed and revered are snatched by the sensual appetites, which disfigure and soil the nobility of their souls with vices so abominable and carnal that they put so many evident dangers on their soul, life, and honor. (44v) Pedro counters that, even those closest to God, like King David, fall: “The beauty of a woman captivated his sight and then conquered him [. . .]” (9r).66 Therefore, Jesuits needed to be more careful to guard their vocation, and therefore the health of their bodies and souls. Nevertheless, some, as summarized below, succumbed to the temptations of familial obligations. The stories surveyed here include instances of men abandoning the Society to return home and inherit family wealth, to marry, and, in one of the most jarring stories of the Dialogues, to commit parricide. In two somewhat amusing examples, the cases of Lorencio Velez and Nicholas of Sassoferrato, Pedro expounds on the potential danger of being drawn to one’s homeland. The former, whose first days in the Society were marked by devotion and unpretentiousness, eventually became notable for his desire for excessive penances to pursue greater holiness that he felt the Society lacked. But he subsequently abandoned his mortifications in favor of indulgence and returned to his native land. Ribadeneyra informs the reader that he lost his mind and wandered the streets naked, accompanied by a chorus of screaming children (26v). Similarly, Nicholas, whose life in the Society began in humility, ended in inconstancy and foolishness. When he became a favorite preacher in hospitals and prisons, he succumbed to pride, and thereafter began to take “many liberties.” Like Lorencio he returned to his native land, lost his mind, and wandered the streets completely naked and 65. The variety underscores Ribadeneyra’s rhetorical purposes and may not reflect historically significant statistical evidence. 66. Ribadeneyra also refers to King David’s failings in a letter to a Jesuit considering leaving the Society of Jesus; see Prosperi, La Vocazione, 220–22. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 71 shrieking (26v–29r).67 In both cases, these consequences of abandoning vocation were a stern warning: persevere or bring shame to yourself. Another young Sicilian Jesuit, Anthony, buckled under the “tender pleas” of his mother (32v). He returned home to her in Sicily, where he saw a Jesuit priest exorcizing a demon from a woman. He endeavored to help, but the demon mocked him saying, “Mamá, Mamá” (32v). Pedro explains that since “everyone knew the reason why he had left religious life, the retort of the demon left him humiliated and confounded” (32v). Instead of repenting he went to France, “committed grave misdeeds, and suffered great calamities, paying the price in this life for his faults” (32v).68 Similarly, a Spaniard named Quintanadueñas left the Society, conquered by the supplications of his mother. He went to Salamanca and reentered the Society, but left when the Jesuits there insisted his mother was a bad person. By the time he arrived home, she had died unexpectedly. In a bullfight in Seville, he was severely injured when gored by a bull, its horn entering under his jaw and exiting through his eye socket. Ribadeneyra informs the reader that he died without vocal confession, but with gestures of contrition (32v). Not only was his body disfigured, but his soul was also imperiled. One of the more complex stories involves Peter of Andalot, the son of a high-ranking Burgundian knight and confidante of Charles V. Peter entered the Society of Jesus with his father’s approval, after attending the University of Louvain. Throughout his early days as a Jesuit, Ribadeneyra insists that he was a model of Jesuit virtue, educated, well-mannered, and modest. When his father died a few months later, his older brother insisted that the Society permit Peter to return home in order to help him execute his father’s will. The Jesuits granted him permission to return provided he was accompanied by an older Jesuit, who was “more tested in religious life and who could assist him and protect his vocation” (30v). Once he got home, he decided not to return to the Jesuits, leaving Ribadeneyra to wonder whether it was the “gifts, or examples, or pleadings of his brothers and other relatives” that persuaded him to remain at home (30v–31r). Shortly thereafter, he got into a brawl and was wounded and disfigured from a slash to the face. According to Ribadeneyra, this was a warning from God encouraging Peter to return to the Society, but the divine admonition went unheeded and he “married a woman tainted with heresy” (31r). 67. The link between nudity, insanity and demonic forces recalls Jesus’s exorcism of the Gerasene Demoniac, which concludes with the townspeople finding the man “clothed and in his right mind” (Mk. 5:1–20). 68. Would that Ribadeneyra had specified what the “grave misdeeds” entailed. 72 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS In the end he became a Protestant and rebelled against Phillip II until he was captured and publicly beheaded in 1568.69 Ribadeneyra analyzes the story without sympathy. He cites the Gospels saying that men who return home in the guise of charity act “as if Our Lord had never warned us that our greatest enemies will be those in our own households. And he said to the man who had asked for leave to bury his father, ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’” (31v). To this, he adds examples from Ignatius’s life, noting that he “never wanted to stay in the house of his brother,” when he visited Loyola, and “did not want to be responsible for making arrangements for the marriage of his niece who was the inheritor and lady of their house, nor even write a letter for that purpose” (31v). Similarly, Francis Xavier, who was within four leagues of his home while en route to India, did not visit his family. These models of excellent behavior were perhaps all the more compelling because there was no official rule about visiting family, and such issues were left to the discretion of superiors. For Ribadeneyra, once a man chose religious life, he was required to strip himself of “disordered love of family and homeland” (31v). The temptation of family was so great that it had to be avoided altogether as the saints had done. Since tension between family and vocation was inevitable, it was better to avoid temptations that even authorized family visits might present. Perhaps the most jarring stories of all are two cases of parricide. The first concerns Julio Fantuchio, the son of a Bolognese knight, who met Pedro at the Roman College. In response to his “volatile disposition,” the Jesuits extended his probation period and sent him to Venice (53v). When he could not be tamed, they dismissed him and he returned to Bologna. His father, who had been displeased with his son’s vocation from the beginning, was nevertheless aggrieved to learn of his dismissal. Julio’s insolence at home became rage that eventually manifested itself in a desire to kill his own father. One day he shot at him with an arquebus, but his father managed to avoid the bullet. Julio was arrested, tortured, and condemned to life in prison (53v–54r). Francisco, Pedro’s interlocutor, responds to this story with astonishment, asking, “What kind of man do you have to be, to want to kill your own father [. . .]. How much of an enemy of human nature?” (54r). To this Pedro retorts, “Why does this surprise you? Even 69. Leaving the Society for Protestantism was common, see Pierre Antoine Fabre, “La conversion à la Réforme dans le première Compagnie de Jésus, in Les jésuites et la Réforme,” in: Jésuites et protestantisme XVIe–XXIe siècles: actes du colloque de Lyon (24–25 mai 2018), eds. Philippe Martin and Yves Krumenacker (Lyon, 2019), 39–49. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 73 worse is the story of another man who really did kill someone. He was an apostate who left religious life and then killed his father with his bare hands, the very man who had given him his life” (54r). Thus begins the gruesome story of Juan Gomez Pontano. As a virtuous, well-educated young man, he embraced religious life and joined the Society of Jesus, much to the chagrin of his father, who “had placed all his hopes in his son [. . .] the sole inheritor of his estate” (54v). His father left his village to meet his son and he begged him not to throw his life away, nor forsake his father in his old age, nor kill his mother, who undoubtedly would die of pure grief, nor leave behind a fortune that the parents had acquired through so much sweat and tears, and which they had maintained for the purpose of leaving it to him one day. (54v–55r) This plea echoes the protestations Martin García, Ignatius’s eldest brother, leveled at Ignatius when he pursued a religious vocation. But Juan was not like Ignatius. His father persuaded him to return home. Yet, his call to God continued to nag at his conscience until he joined the Franciscans, too embarrassed to return to the Society. His father pulled him from the Franciscans as well, gave him control of their family business, and sought out a wife for him. Juan Gomez had other plans. He married a woman of his own choosing against his parents’ wishes (55r– 55v). In response his parents made their displeasure clear to him until he found himself enraged against them. He made his unhappiness known to his father, who struck him with a cane, then lost his balance and fell. The son bent down to help his father up, but decided to choke him instead and then decapitated him with pruning shears. In the end, he was arrested, interrogated under torture until he confessed, and was sentenced to death by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Parricide, Ribadeneyra implies, is the absolute rejection of one’s family, and contrary to the model of holy detachment set forth by Ignatius and others for embracing religion. Conclusion From vaguely comical to positively disturbing, these stories about men who let their families interfere with their vocation leave us wondering: who was the intended audience of the Dialogues? Obviously, Ribadeneyra had not written the text for men who left the Society but rather for those who remained within it. To them it was supposed to be a true testament to the dangers of leaving the Society. As an acclaimed historian by the standards 74 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS of his day, Ribadeneyra insisted on the veracity of the text and emphasized his historical bona fides, declaring that I myself have witnessed, or I have spoken familiarly with many regarding those who received such punishments from the hands of the Most High [. . .]. And if I include some stories of men whom I did not know personally, they should be accorded the same trustworthiness as the others, for I learned of them through honorable witnesses of faith who knew the men in question, dealt with them, and knew well their stories and their ends. (3r–3v) Unfortunately, most of the stories in the Dialogues, which, by design, do not include the names or biographical information of individuals, are very difficult to trace or verify, barring a few famous examples such as that of Guillaume Postel or Diego Cáceres. Second, they are highly reminiscent of sermon exempla, that is, they are more important for their moral message than their historical significance. Ribadeneyra is less interested in who the men were or why they left than the fact that they left and were punished. The text was not written with posterity in mind, so future generations could understand what transpired with these men, but for Jesuits contemporary with Ribadeneyra, who struggled to reconcile familial affective ties and responsibilities with the demands of their vocation. The questionable reliability of the Dialogues as a historical document notwithstanding, it served a clear rhetorical end. To the Jesuits whom Ribadeneyra addressed, the text communicated three messages. First, leave the Society of Jesus and endure punishment on this earth in addition to the otherworldly punishments the choice merited. The seventy men about whom Ribadeneyra writes endured loss of their senses, public humiliation, horrific and disgusting illness, incarceration by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, capital and corporal punishment, and sudden death without confession.70 All of these were terrifying ends for early modern audiences concerned with personal and familial honor as well as salvation. Second, Ribadeneyra’s readers must maintain careful guardianship over their sensual appetites because any man, novice or experienced, can fall if he succumbs to the slightest temptation of the world, which families often presented. Pedro disabuses his companions of the idea that there is any place in the world that dangerous temptations do not permeate. He 70. These worldly torments should be read against those suffered by martyrs, who could expect heavenly rewards for their suffering. THOMAS J. SANTA MARIA 75 writes, “there is no place safe in this world, and [. . .] no place, as holy as it might be, is sufficient in itself to make a man holy and keep him from falling” (7r). Even so, Pedro’s third argument is that the Society of Jesus— and remaining within it—is the surest safeguard against the dangers of the secular world and against the snares of family entanglements. Furthermore, it would provide a reward in the form of a new spiritual family, as Ribadeneyra and many early Jesuits alluded to by referring to Ignatius as “our Father Ignatius” or the “brotherhood of the Society.”71 Cypriano echoes this point when he comments on one man who left the Society: “Had he followed his obedience he would have taught grammar in a city staying in his college with much comfort and gifts, having his health and good reputation” (44r). To him acquiring family wealth, appeasing one’s mother, or marrying are simply not worth abandoning a life in Society, which could provide physical comfort on earth and salvation in heaven. These three messages stand in harmony with the lessons drawn from the holy examples, especially from the life of Ignatius. By renouncing family and binding themselves to Jesuit exemplars like Robert Bellarmine and Ignatius Loyola, these men achieved worldly recognition, made their families proud, and secured themselves a place in heaven. Men who let familial relations inhibit their vocation wound up disgraced and damned. Ribadeneyra used the temptations of the family and the flesh to underscore the difficulty of the call to the religious vocation, which only the holiest achieved to the fullest. In its own time, the Dialogues was a rhetorical work with a purpose— to persuade men about the goodness and holiness of the Society—but what do these stories tell us about the early Society of Jesus? The Dialogues reveals a side of the Jesuit psyche that is underexplored: an intense anxiety among men who joined the Society of Jesus about the validity of their vocation and the still untried religious order itself. There were intrepid missionaries, but that did not define every man who joined the Society. The questionnaire developed and administered between 1561 and 1562 by Jerome Nadal, and a collection of ninety-two spiritual autobiographies from Polish Jesuits dating from 1574 and 1580, indicate as much.72 According to these documents, very few Jesuits were looking for the excitement of mission work; instead, they entered the Society to eschew sin or 71. See J. Carlos Coupeau, “Five personae of Ignatius of Loyola,” in: The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, ed. Thomas Worcester (New York, 2008), 32–51. 72. See: Thomas Cohen, “Why the Jesuits Joined 1540–1600,” Historical Papers / Communications Historiques, 9, no. 1 (1974), 237–58, 239. 76 PEDRO DE RIBADENEYRA AND THE FIRST EX-JESUITS temptation and the uncertainty and vanity of the world.73 In fact, only ten Jesuits responded that they joined to go to the Indies.74 Many Jesuits, including those who left, were also deeply preoccupied with their personal salvation. About fifteen of the seventy lives recounted by Pedro include men who abandoned the Society for other orders. In each of these instances, Pedro notes that the man in question sought greater rigors or mortifications, thereby rejecting Ignatius’s theory of mediocritas. It seems that they left the Society anxious that their lives and deeds in it would be insufficient for salvation. According to Ribadeneyra, few, if any, of these men persevered in the other congregations they joined, and all met with horrific ends. Polanco’s survey confirms the notion that men who entered the Society worried about their salvation. 108 men replied that they were motivated by the desire “to save oneself.”75 Another eighty-two joined in an effort “to leave the world.”76 To those who felt the Jesuits were not proven enough to remain within their institute, Ribadeneyra’s Dialogues demonstrated that the Society enjoyed God’s favor. The stories and the interlocutors of the Dialogues underscore that the Society could provide security, comfort, and safety outside of typical family bonds. Reading the Life of Ignatius and reading or listening to the Dialogues, as many Jesuits did, communicated that the Society offered the security, temporal and spiritual, that they sought. At the same time, it warned them about straying from their vocation. For early modern religious, obsessed with salvation and concerned about reputation, Ribadeneyra’s works were meant to assuage their fears about the holiness of the Society of Jesus. In this sense, the Dialogues are as pro-Jesuit as Ribadeneyra’s hagiography of Ignatius. Those who persevered in it were rewarded. Those who strayed from it, for one reason or another, were punished. Ribadeneyra’s works provided men with advice to avoid eternal damnation and promised to guide them to eternal salvation. 73. Cohen, “Why the Jesuits Joined,” 240. 74. Ibid., 249. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. Inside and Out: The Sisters of St. Joseph, Chief Pasqual, and the Education of Native Children in Yuma JOHN NATHAN MACK* As female celibate Catholic educators, the Sisters of St. Joseph who traveled to Yuma in 1886 to establish a school for the Quechan children stood apart from the cultural norms of the majority Protestant culture. In Yuma, Chief Pasqual of the Quechan nation decided to support the school and to work together with the sisters to maintain his political power, preserve the autonomy of his people, and secure much-needed government aid. In telling the story of their cooperative relationship, this article contextualizes the complex story of Catholic missionary work among native peoples in the nineteenth century. Keywords: Sisters of St. Joseph, Quechan Nation, women religious, religious education, Indian schools, native agency O n May 1, 1887, the feast day of St. Joseph, patron saint of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the first anniversary of the founding of the Yuma Indian School, the weak and enfeebled chief of the Quechan people, Pasqual, agreed to be baptized into the Catholic Church.1 Too ill to come to the chapel, Fr. John M. Chaucot performed the rite (with the aid of Pasqual’s interpreter) in a small private ceremony in the presence of several representatives of the Quechan people and the superintendent * John Mack is a senior lecturer in History at Georgia State University-Perimeter College. His examination of the Catholic Mission to the Osage peoples was published in The Catholic Historical Review in 2010. The author would like to thank Sister Patricia Rose, C.S.J., archivist of the Los Angeles Province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and Catherine Lucy, CSJA, CA, Director of the Carondelet Consolidated Archives, for their aid in procuring documents necessary for this project and for their overall guidance. The author would also like to thank H. Jill McCormick, Historic Preservation Officer of the Quechan tribe, for her willingness to give of her time and knowledge to help him better understand the experiences of the Quechan people. His email address is: jmack12@gsu.edu. 1. Although the spelling of the name in official documents is Quechan, many in the nation prefer the alternative spelling Kwatsaan. This paper will use the name Quechan with the understanding that it should be pronounced as Kwatsaan. 77 78 INSIDE AND OUT of the Indian School, Mother Ambrosia O’Neil.2 Eight days later, in a large public ceremony, his death was commemorated following the ancient rites of the Quechan people. Pasqual’s dead body was laid out on an elaborate funeral pyre while two of his favorite horses were slaughtered and buried next to him. When the pyre was lit, the large crowd of mourners gathered close and expressed their sorrow with loud laments and cries. His daughter, carrying her newborn infant, reached into the flames and pulled out a bundle of burning sticks, which she used to slightly tinge her daughter’s face to prevent the deceased from haunting it. As the pyre burned, members of the watching crowd threw valued possessions (including strips of calico, pottery, weapons, sacks of flour and mesquite beans, playing cards, beads, and trinkets of every description) onto the flames even as they continued to mourn his passing with deep cries of agony.3 These two events, one distinctively Catholic and one just as uniquely indigenous, challenge traditional historiographic narratives of missionarynative interactions which have, as Michelene Pesantubbee remarks, “tended toward one-dimensional renderings.”4 Historian Joel Martin has likewise explained that too often scholars have treated missionaries as “one-dimensional heroes or villains” while denying indigenous peoples “the capacity to play an active role in shaping history.”5 The story of Pasqual’s baptism and funeral moves away from these errors by pointing to 2. The question of how to describe the nuns (as “Sisters” or “Mothers”) is something about which the author has discussed in detail with the Archivist of the Community. The situation appears to be very fluid for the Sisters of St. Joseph in the nineteenth century; the same nun will be referred to as “Sister” and then as “Mother” in the same document. The advice of the archivist is that, when a nun is acting as head of a community, she should be referred to as “Mother.” Thus, Ambrosia (Mary) O’Neil was “Sister Ambrosia” at the time that “Mother Julia” was present in Yuma. But when Mother Julia left in July, Sister Ambrosia assumed leadership and therefore became “Mother Ambrosia.” The complications continue. For example, when Ambrosia O’Neil is speaking to the nuns working for her, she is “Mother Ambrosia” and referred to as such by them. But when she is speaking to the head of the Community (Mother Agatha), she sometimes refers to herself as “Sister Ambrosia” and sometimes as “Mother Ambrosia.” The author therefore understands the term “Mother” to refer to position within the community while the term “Sister” refers to vocation; all of them are “Sisters,” but a few are also “Mothers.” 3. The funeral scene is described in detail in Cyril Daryll Forde, Ethnography of the Yuma Indians (Berkeley, 1931), 211–12. 4. Michelene Pesantubbee, “Foreword,” in: Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape, eds. Joel W. Martin, Mark A. Nicholas, and Michelene E. Pesantubbee (Chapel Hill, 2010), xi. 5. Joel W. Martin, “Introduction,” in: Native Americans, 4. JOHN NATHAN MACK 79 This photograph by Elias Atkinson Bonine, undated, shows Chief Pasqual late in his life. Used with permission of the Yuma Library Archives. a complex relationship forged between the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Quechan people in the late nineteenth century. As appointed leader of the Quechan nation, Pasqual was attempting to find a way to fulfill the desires of his people to live autonomously while dealing with inter-tribal leadership rivalries, the United States’ governmental policy of enforced Americanization, and local settlers’ attempts to rid his people of their land. In response to these pressures, he forged a working relationship with Mother Ambrosia, who, as leader of the Sisters of St. Joseph, also found herself positioned between competing forces.6 The relationship which these two parties established between May of 1886 and May of 1887 requires the 6. In his analysis of the decision making of Mother Ambrosia and the sisters, the author is indebted to the work of scholars Kimberly Tsianina Lomawima and Teresa L. McCarty, who have articulated the “Safety Zone Theory” to explain the actions of school personnel who had to decide which actions of native culture and society were “safe” enough to be allowed to continue and which were so “dangerous” that they had to be opposed. See Kimberly Tsianina Lomawima and Teresa L. McCarty, To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (New York, 2006), Chapter 1, pp. 1–15. 80 INSIDE AND OUT reader to take seriously the choices and decisions of native peoples and to see them as “dynamic, historical actors changing others and changing themselves in the context of contact and colonialism.”7 It also provides the reader an opportunity to rehumanize Christian educators who were, in the words of Martin, “complex, ambivalent agents, often complicit with destructive anti-Indian forces, sometimes standing against those forces in solidarity with Native communities.”8 The Sisters of St. Joseph who came to the Arizona territory to establish schools for children entered a cultural world to which they only partially belonged. They shared similar convictions to that of President Ulysses S. Grant and the leaders of the Board of Indian Affairs who were sponsoring and funding missionary schools for native children.9 They agreed with these officials that native cultural beliefs and practices were significantly deficient and firmly believed in the superiority of their own culture and religion. Above all, they were committed to the transformative power of education to inculcate in children new ideas and practices. However, as female Catholic educators, they “lived in a world of ambiguities” as they, to use the insights of scholars Carol Coburn and Martha Smith, were forced to “cope with gender, religious, and ethnic bigotry in a patriarchal society.”10 As Catholics, the sisters faced intolerance and bigotry from many who both feared and distrusted them. And, as celibate women, they were removed from the gender norms of mainstream nineteenth-century American culture. In her work, Sandra Frink had documented that nineteenth-century Protestant Americans “considered the 7. Martin, “Introduction,” 8. 8. Martin, “Introduction,” 4. Of the scholars who have contributed to an ongoing reassessment of the complexity of Indian schools, the reader is encouraged to consult the following works: John R. Gram, Education on the Edge of Empire: Negotiating Pueblo Identity in New Mexico’s Indian Schools (Seattle, 2015); Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929 (Lincoln, 2010); and Clifford Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Loreen Sisquoc, Board School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences (Lincoln, 2006). 9. For an introduction to Grant’s Peace Policy, see David Sim, “The Peace Policy of Ulysses S. Grant,” American Nineteenth Century History, 9, no. 3 (2008), 241–68; and Donald Fixico, Bureau of Indian Affairs (Santa Barbara, 2012), 37–40. 10. Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920 (Chapel Hill, 1999), 95, 43. Additional insights into the particular difficulties encountered by Catholic educators in the nineteenth century can be found in Kathleen Holscher, “A Right No Power Can Take Away: Religious Freedom and the Fight for Catholic Schools Among the Osage,” The Catholic Historical Review, 106, no. 1 (2020), 1–26, and Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920 (Chapel Hill, 2012). JOHN NATHAN MACK 81 Catholic Church . . . inimical to American ideals of freedom and progress.”11 Nuns were of special concern. In rejecting the proper role of women to marry and bear children, and by becoming active publicly through their charitable institutions and schools, many Americans believed they threatened the moral fabric of the nation. This was certainly true for the sisters who traveled to the Arizona territory in the nineteenth century. An early entry in the journal of Sister Monica Corrigan, who chronicled the journey of the seven sisters who were sent from the Motherhouse in Carondelet, Missouri, to Tucson, Arizona, in 1870, indicates that from the beginning, they were aware of the challenges their ambiguous status brought them. In an entry, dated April 24, 1870, Sister Monica told of the nuns’ encounter “with four Protestant ministers and their ladies who were on their way to China.” Even though these ministers represented different denominations and thus, according to Sister Monica, vigorously debated each other on points of theology, they nevertheless agreed “only in one point[:] that ‘Catholicity is intolerable.’”12 Another significant passage in her diary is dated May 8. As the sisters made their way by carriage from San Diego to Tucson, they stopped at noon to rest in the shade. A rancher invited them to join him and his hands for dinner. They arrived to discover that they were the only women present. When the men became (to use the interesting words of Sister Monica) “sociable,” the sisters were forced to retire to the stable, “where our driver and only protector was.” The next day (May 9) the situation grew more dangerous. When they retired for the evening to the stable, they discovered that there were “upwards of 20 men” already there, “some of whom were intoxicated.” This time, Sister Monica’s words indicate that they were indeed in peril: “They annoyed us very much; some offered to shake hands with us, others trying to keep them off; and all swearing, etc.” As to the intentions of the men, the cook whom she described as a “very nice young man and well educated” informed them that “ladies seldom pass this way and when they do, the men wish to enjoy their company.” Sister Monica’s concluding comment speaks loudly: “we were exposed to fearful dangers in that ugly place. We will never be able to 11. Sandra Frink, “Women, the family, and the fate of the nation in American antiCatholic narratives, 1830–1860,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 18, no. 2 (2009), 237–64, here 240. 12. Sister Monica Corrigan, The Trek of the Seven Sisters, April 24, 1870. Available at Sister Monica Corrigan, “The Trek of the Seven Sisters,” Through Our Parents Eyes: History and Culture of Southern Arizona, The University of Arizona, accessed December 7, 2022, https://parentseyes.arizona.edu/index.php/node/71. 82 INSIDE AND OUT This is an undated photograph of the Seven Sisters who made the original journey to Arizona. The sisters are numbered as follows: 1, Sister Emerentia Bonnefoy; 2, Sister Euphrasia Suchet; 3, Sister Monica Corrigan; 4, Sister M. Hyacinth Blanc; 5, Sister Ambrosia Arnichaud; 7, Sister Maximus Croissat. Lay Sister Martha Peters is seated in the middle of the front row. Photographer unknown. Photo provided courtesy of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Los Angeles Province collection, Carondelet Consolidated Archives. tell our dear Sisters all the mortifications and humiliations we had to endure there.”13 Ten days after their arrival in Tucson, the sisters opened what locals called “The French School.”14 This school, the first to be established in the Arizona Territory, served the local Spanish-speaking Catholic population. Three years later, in 1873, the first Indian school serviced by the sisters was opened at San Xavier del Bac, sixteen miles south of Tucson, on Tohono O’odham land. Sisters Maximus and Euphrasia were sent to teach and 13. Sister Monica Corrigan, The Trek of the Seven Sisters, May 8–9, 1870. 14. While only two of the sisters were native English speakers, all spoke French fluently, but none were able to speak Spanish. JOHN NATHAN MACK 83 administer the day school.15 They were joined by a sister who had recently arrived from Carondelet, Sister Francesca Kelly. Government agents who visited sent positive reports to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, declaring that the school was a “success” primarily “due to the Christian kindness and the unceasing toil of the Sisters of St. Joseph.”16 Although this school only operated for three years until the Office of Indian Affairs transferred jurisdiction of the Tohono O’odham to the agency of the Pimas and Maricopas (Akimel O’odham and Pipash) and the spiritual oversight to the Dutch Reformed Church, many of the defining characteristics of the sisters’ approach to Indian education were in evidence.17 The next Indian school in Arizona to which the sisters were sent was in Yuma on the Arizona/California border. In 1884, the U.S. government established a reservation for the Quechan (called the Yuma by whites in the nineteenth century) on the banks of the Colorado River.18 The initial attempt at establishing a school for the purpose of “Americanizing” the nation failed due to the opposition of the Quechan people. In response, Commissioner of Indian Affairs John H. Oberly requested that the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions build and staff a school in Yuma. Fr. Joseph A. Stephan, Director of the BCIM, petitioned the Mother Superior (Agatha Guthrie) of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to send a group of sisters to Yuma. Mother Agatha initially denied his request. In her diplomatic reply, she stated several reasons for her refusal. First, she asserted that because the Quechan were unevangelized, it would be better to send first a priest to them who could do the work of converting them to the Catholic faith before opening a school. Secondly, she objected that 15. In the 1870s, there were three types of Indian schools supported by the BIA: reservation day, reservation boarding, and off-reservation boarding. The school at St. Xavier de Bac was the first type. 16. Letter of Indian Agent, John W. Cornyn, to Hon. Edward Parmelee Smith, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, September 14, 1875, stored in Washington, D.C. Archives CBIM. Quoted by Alberta Cammack, “The Sisters of St. Joseph at San Xavier: 1873–1963,” https://parentseyes.arizona.edu/node/67. 17. For an introduction to the history of the Tohono O’odham nation and their interaction with both the Federal Government and religious institutions, see Andrae M. Marak and Laura Tuennerman, At the Border of Empires: The Tohono O’odham, Gender, and Assimilation, 1880–1934 (Tucson, 2013), Chapter 1, pp. 12–30. 18. Although the majority of this reservation was on the California side of the river, the Quechan people lived on both sides of the river (in both Arizona and California). For a discussion of the history of the Quechan people, see Robert L. Bee, Crosscurrents Along the Colorado: The Impact of Government Policy on the Quechan Indians (Tucson, 2020). Bee explains that two of the five important settlements of the Quechan were in the Arizona territory east of the Colorado River. 84 INSIDE AND OUT because the goal was to establish a government school, the sisters would be limited in their efforts to teach the Catholic faith to their students. The correspondence which followed between Mother Agatha and Father Stephan’s administrative assistant, Fr. Zephyrin Engelhardt, is important in what it reveals both about the position of women religious within the structural hierarchy of the Church and their attitudes towards missionary work among native peoples. Fr. Zephyrin’s letter (dated February 4, 1886) discussed both of Mother Agatha’s objections in great detail. To her assertion that a priest should go first, only then to be followed by the sisters, he argued the opposite. It would be better if the sisters were free to “do the schooling anyway” they believed necessary without the meddlesome interfering oversight of “a narrow-minded man.” Moreover, in response to her fear that the sisters would be limited in their attempts to give religious instruction, Fr. Zephyrin assured her that the government would not interfere with their teaching. “The school will be in the hands of the sisters entirely and no Agent or official has a word to say about it except to inspect and suggest, and they can follow their own opinion any how.” Finally, he reminded her that his request was not being made in an empty vacuum. The reality was, he insisted, that if Mother Agatha maintained her refusal, the school would be given over to Protestants and she should be aware that “[I]f the school gets into Protestant hands and those Indians become nonCatholics, I do not think Our Lord would overlook that matter.”19 The logic of Fr. Zephyrin’s words was strong enough to overcome Mother Agatha’s initial hesitancy. On March 16, 1886, two sisters (Ambrosia O’Neil and Julia Littenecker) took up residence in Yuma to await official word from Washington entrusting them with the formation and administration of an Indian school.20 While waiting for official confirmation, they quickly realized that the situation was not nearly as peaceful as Fr. Zephyrin had depicted in his letters. The first indication of problems appears in a letter written by Mother Julia on March 22, 1866, when she informed Mother Agatha that the “devil has already tried to kick at the prospect of losing his Own.” Her reference, as manifested by an enclosed 19. Fr. Zephyrin to Rev. Mother Agatha, February 4, 1886, Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904, unpublished manuscript, retrieved from https://archive.org/details/letters-of-fort-yuma-ca-chronologically-arranged-1886-1904, (pages unnumbered). 20. Mother Julia was the assistant superior general of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Four more sisters from Tucson joined them in May: Sisters Aniceta Byrne, Alphonse Lamb, Mary Joseph Franco, and Leontine Bouchet. When Mother Julia departed from Yuma in June 1886, Mother Ambrosia assumed the leadership role as Superintendent of the School. JOHN NATHAN MACK 85 clipping from a paper in Yuma, referred to the opposition of whites to the establishment of a Catholic school run by nuns. Thus, she told the Mother Superior, “We do not like to show ourselves, however, as it might be imprudent to do so.”21 Several follow-up letters shed further light on the ongoing conflict. On April 15, Mother Julia reported that “there is still a good deal of opposition here.” The “chief of them,” the letter explained, “said that the Sisters won’t never go there.”22 The leader of the opposition to the work of the sisters was Abram Frank, who built a prosperous business in Yuma and was active in politics, serving as representative in the territorial legislature, mayor of Yuma, and probate judge. Mother Ambrosia, who assumed leadership of the school in the summer of 1886 after Mother Julia departed for health reasons, explained the reasons for his opposition in a letter to the assistant of the Mother Superior: “He told the gentleman who keeps the hotel here, that it was against the laws of the country for a woman to hold office, and more especially a religious.”23 Mother Julia described the meeting she and Sister Ambrosia had with the Indian agent who had come from Colton, California. The fact that the agent (described as “a nice man”) came to visit them “in the company” of Frank led Mother Julia to confess that she was “afraid of some secret plotting.” In addition, she concluded that Frank “has no very feeling heart for the poor Indians, a fact which impressed me very unfavorably.”24 That the work of the sisters was opposed by leading members of the white society in Yuma helps the reader to better understand the role played by Pasqual, chief of the Quechan, in the establishment of the school. Pasqual had been appointed tribal chief by Major General Stuart Heintzelman in 1853 as part of the treaty process which concluded the Yuma War.25 He had opposed earlier government attempts to establish a school 21. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, March 22, 1866, Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 22. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, April 15, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 23. Mother Ambrosia to the Mother Assistant, July 26, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 24. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, April 26, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 25. To learn about the history of the Quechan people and their interactions with EuroAmericans, see Robert Bee, Crosscurrents; Robert A. Sauder, The Yuma Reclamation Project: Irrigation, Indian Allotment, and Settlement Along the Lower Colorado River (Las Vegas, 2019); and Christopher William Sudol, “Dammed Conquest: Settler Colonialism, the Yuma Reclamation Project, and the Quechan Nation” (master’s thesis, University of Wyoming, 2019). 86 INSIDE AND OUT This photograph, undated, shows the school buildings on “Indian Hill.” These buildings were originally built for the Army but were transferred to the sisters after the military left. Photographer unknown. Used with permission of the Yuma Library Archives. for the children of his nation by refusing to allow them to attend.26 However, according to the reports of the sisters, he was supportive of their efforts from the beginning. As early as March 28, Mother Julia reported that “Pasqual has told all the Indians that they must all send their littles ones to the Sisters.” In an interesting explanatory comment, Mother Julia stated that “they [the Indians] say that now they shall surely get the ‘Santa Claus’ that the government will send them, because they know for certain that the sisters will not keep it from them as those ‘Americanus Mugeras’ have done.”27 In their first face-to-face meeting with Pasqual on April 15, 1886, Mother Julia stated that Pasqual (through an interpreter) relayed to them “the troubles and grievances of his people.” After hearing their answer to his questions about their intentions, Pasqual promised them that “if we came to do them good, he would be good to us and would also teach his people to be good to us.” He also warned them that “hitherto many fine promises had been made to him and his people by persons sent by the government, but they were never carried out.” Thus, Pasqual concluded, “they would like to see proofs.”28 26. It seems that the first attempt to establish a school involved local Protestants (either Methodist or Presbyterian). The “Mugeras” to whom Pasqual referred in all likelihood were the wife of a Protestant minister and her female companion. 27. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, March 28, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 28. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, April 15, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 87 Robert Bee, in his treatise on the impact of government policy on the Quechan, argues that Pasqual understood his role as leader was dependent on the support of government officials. The defeat of the Quechan in the Yuma Wars had convinced him that it was necessary for his people to work with the government in order to maintain and preserve their independent identity as a people. He also recognized that education was both a main emphasis of governmental leaders as well as necessary for the long-term survival of the nation. Bee explains, “Pasqual’s behavior as leader did not mean that he had sold out to the Anglo authorities, but that he recognized a need to learn their ways so as to fight further encroachment.” He also writes that Pasqual had learned to use “Anglo gambits to preserve Quechan autonomy.”29 This is also noted by Ian Michael Smith who writes that together with other members of the tribe, Pasqual “displayed a keen ability to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances they faced during the latenineteenth century.”30 Much of what is known about Pasqual comes from two articles published in 1889 in the California-based journal Overland Monthly. The author, Eugene Trippel, based his reports on his own engagement with the Quechan peoples. Written with the typical perspective of nineteenth-century anthropologists, Trippel’s writings (as noted by Smith) are characterized by disparaging remarks about “the limitations of Quechan’s subsistence-based farming” and their “deficient knowledge” of modern farming methods.31 Without supervision, Trippel reported, they “while their time away in idle pursuits.”32 Nevertheless, Trippel’s descriptions are significant in what they reveal about the leadership of Pasqual as well as confirming the reports of Mother Ambrosia. Trippel states that he had “several very interesting conversations” with Pasqual shortly before his death. Like Mother Ambrosia, Trippel believed that Pasqual was motivated by “deep concern for the welfare and progress of his people.” He described his leadership as “strict, imperious, and exacting.” He also acknowledged that “he ably discriminated between right and wrong . . . and consequently was universally respected and obeyed.” To illustrate this, he related a story also described by Mother Julia. When a member of the tribe was arrested in the 29. Bee, Crosscurrents, 25. 30. Ian Michael Smith, “From Subsistence to Dependence: The Legacy of Reclamation and Allotment on Quechan Indian Lands, 1700-1940” (master’s thesis, University of Montana, 1999), 40. 31. Smith, “From Subsistence,” 43. 32. Eugene J. Trippel, “The Yuma Indians,” Overland Monthly, Second Series, 13, no. 6 (January–June, 1889), 561–84, here 564. 88 INSIDE AND OUT city of Yuma and charged with drunk and disorderly conduct, Pasqual had him publicly flogged and was said to have stated, “I would rather see my people dead than drunkards.”33 Finally, Trippel confirms Pasqual’s conversion by noting that “he adopted Christianity and was baptized into the Catholic faith about a week before his death.”34 In a conversation with the editor of The Arizona Sentinel in 1886, Pasqual claimed to have been exercising leadership for his people since the time “Arizona was settled by whites, over 40 years ago.”35 In that time, the Quechan people had experienced significant challenges in their attempts to maintain their autonomy as a people. In the 1850s, contact with whites came in the form of steamboats which traveled along the Colorado River and fortune hunters who passed through the area on their way to California. In a sign of the growing significance of the area, the U.S. Army built Ft. Yuma in 1852 on what became known as “Indian Hill” overlooking the place where most crossed the Colorado. White settlers began to arrive in what would become the city of Yuma in the 1860s. The first plans for the city, originally called Arizona City, were laid out in 1866. By the 1870s, railroad lines were built for the Southern Pacific, which crossed from Arizona to California across the newly constructed railroad bridge in 1877. The Quechan found themselves increasingly hemmed in by white settlers who eagerly desired the rich river land on which the Quechan lived. As Bee explains, the commercial goals of “Yuma’s settlers and railroad interests . . . pressured the government to reduce the Indians’ holding.” Thus, in 1883, the Quechan were assigned to the Ft. Yuma Indian Reservation, an area of roughly 45,000 acres on the west side of the Colorado River. Under the leadership of Chief Pasqual, the Quechan people successfully retained their traditional way of life in the face of every-strengthening assimilationist forces for close to forty years (as Smith explains) by “skillfully adapting to the altered circumstances created by transportation development, the growth of non-Indian settlements, and the creation of a reservation in the confluence area.”36 The late 1880s, however, brought new challenges. Bee maintains that the establishment of the school, viewed by some as an unwarranted extension of government intervention, intensified debate within the tribe and renewed challenges to Pasqual’s leadership.37 33. Trippel, “The Yuma Indians,” 567; Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, July 25, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 34. Trippel, “The Yuma Indians,” 568. 35. The Arizona Sentinel, March 14, 1866. 36. Smith, “From Subsistence,” 46–47. 37. Bee, Crosscurrents, 24, 32. JOHN NATHAN MACK 89 Pasqual’s decision to seek common ground with the Sisters of St. Joseph and to support their efforts to educate Quechan children can only be properly understood within this larger context. A letter sent in early May 1886 reported to the Mother Superior that the “old man [i.e. Pasqual] is so pleased to see his children so happy. He watches them in play and in school . . . and whenever he has a chance, he gives them an exhortation to be good and obedient to the Sisters and to give no trouble.”38 Mother Julia explained her understanding of the reasons for this support in a letter sent in mid-June. Pasqual had requested a meeting with the sisters in order to talk to them about the school. 1886 was a difficult year for the Quechan as the flooding of the Colorado River had significantly delayed their spring planting so that “many of his people are actually starving.” Pasqual told the sisters that while he had attempted to limit dependency on government handouts by his people in the past, the exigencies of the current situation were forcing him to change his strategy.39 According to the sisters, he claimed that a similar process had forced him to rethink his support for the school. In his speech, Mother Julia stated that he told them that in the past he had opposed sending Quechan children to the school, even when urged by the government, because “he had no confidence in the teachers . . . and feared the influence of whites upon his children.”40 The situation now significantly had changed. Pasqual told the visiting sisters that as they “belonged entirely to God” and thus “would take care of the Yumas for God’s sake and would study their interest like their own,” he now “felt complete confidence in them and had urged his people to send all his children to them.” In exchange, Pasqual requested that the sisters serve as intermediaries between him and Washington. He stated that “he was not going to ask anything from Washington” but instead “would gratefully accept whatever the Sisters would obtain for him and his people.”41 38. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, May 10, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 39. Pasqual’s words here should be interpreted in light of earlier failed attempts to receive government goods for his people. As reported by The Arizona Sentinel on May 5, 1883, Pasqual had traveled to San Francisco to “try and induce the Government to issue them rations.” 40. Pasqual’s opposition to the first attempt to establish a school is recorded by The Arizona Sentinel on May 30, 1885 in their report that “Chief Pasqual, of the Yumas, complains of the Indian school at the Fort. Somehow the Indians are not satisfied and they keep their children from attending it.” A subsequent article, on May 2, 1883, the paper reported that “Chief Pasqual is opposed to having the Indian children schooled” and that he was stopping “a number of them from attending the Government school at the Fort.” 41. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, June 17, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. Because there was no official Indian Agent present in Yuma, the Superintendent of Schools controlled the distribution of all material goods that came to the tribe from the government. 90 INSIDE AND OUT This official report shows that Mary O’Neil (Mother Ambrosia) was the Superintendent of the Ft. Yuma Indian School. It also shows that she was the only woman to be “a bonded superintendent” in charge of a school in 1887. Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” 837. It is not difficult to see that this was one of (to use Bee’s poignant phrase) Pasqual’s gambits. This is in keeping with the insights of Robert Galler, who asserts that “[t]ribal leaders cultivated alliances with non-Indians to promote their own agenda, maintained a historical claim to their land base, and asserted influence in intercultural relations through the nineteenth century.”42 By 1886, Pasqual was aware that the autonomy of his nation was facing new challenges. Surrounded by whites who were eager to claim land for themselves that had traditionally been Quechan and severely lacking both means and opportunity to advance themselves economically or politically, Pasqual understood the strategic significance of supporting the Indian school. Pasqual also understood that, as Superintendent of the School, Mother Ambrosia “was the United States government on the reservation” and “the locus of administrative power.”43 Thus, in a reversal from his refusal to support the earlier effort to establish a school on the reservation, by 1886 Pasqual had become convinced that cooperating with the sisters was the best option available to him. As the Superintendent of Indian Education, John B. Riley, explained in his 1887 Annual Report, “the prejudices against education heretofore exhibited by the Yumas seem in a large measure to 42. Robert Galler, “Making Common Cause: Yanktonais and Catholic Missionaries on the Northern Plains,” Ethnohistory, 55, no. 3 (2008), 439–64, here 440. 43. Bee, Crosscurrents, 27. JOHN NATHAN MACK 91 have disappeared under the skillful management of the present superintendent.”44 According to Mother Ambrosia, the Quechan were also surprised by Pasqual’s decision. They say, “what has come over the old Chief, he never acted like this before, he would not allow us to send our children to school and now he is so anxious to have us send them.”45 An interesting account that reveals some of the reasons for Pasqual’s decision to support the school is found in an article published in The Arizona Sentinel on February 19, 1887. After recording the editor’s opinion that “under the Sisters’ careful and patient treatment the children, wholly in their keeping, have made considerable progress in their books,” the story discussed a recent meeting between Superintendent John B. Riley (misnamed “John P. Riley” in the article) and Chief Pasqual. In this meeting, Riley had inquired why some of the Quechan children were not attending the school. Pasqual’s response (as reported by the paper) highlights the connection in Pasqual’s mind between his willingness to support the school and government assistance. Pasqual insisted that some of the children were not in attendance because their “parents and grand parents [sic]” were “poor and feeble.” These children were forced to stay away from school “to contribute their labor to their support.” This could change, Pasqual told the superintendent, if “the Government gave them assistance.” He also repeated to the superintendent the claim made earlier to Mother Ambrosia that he would refrain from asking the government for help. However, should the government give aid “in charity to his old and helpless people,” Pasqual asserted, “all the children should come, if he had influence to secure such a result.”46 There are other indications that Pasqual was an expert negotiator who cooperated with the sisters in order to secure his people’s future. By September, Pasqual had moved his family to the fort compound to be near the school. One of his adult daughters was employed by the school to watch over the children. Pasqual also enrolled his younger daughter as a student. He explained these decisions to the Quechan by telling them that he wanted to be on hand to make sure that their children were treated properly. He offered a slightly different reason to the sisters when he told them 44. John D. C. Atkins (presumed; commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1887), “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” H.R. Exec. Doc. No. 1, 50th Cong., 1st Sess. (1887), 1381 pages, here 767. 45. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Julia, August 19, 1866, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 46. The Arizona Sentinel, February 19, 1887. 92 INSIDE AND OUT This photograph by Elias Atkinson Bonine, undated, shows Pasqual’s family outside his home near the School. Used with permission of the Yuma Library Archives. that he was “perfectly satisfied” with them and “wanted to be near them as long as he lives.”47 Both of these statements help the reader understand his decision. An interesting note in a letter, dated September 8, 1886, reveals that Pasqual possessed an additional motive in moving close to the sisters. Sister Alphonse reported that, when new shipments of goods arrived either from the motherhouse or from Washington, Pasqual insisted on being present when the shipment was opened. As Sister Alphonse noted, he “likes to see what is sent so Mother shows him every thing.”48 The Arizona Sentinel likewise reported that Pasqual was so intimately connected to the dispersal of government funds that he frequently ate at the same table with the sisters.49 As an insightful observer of character, Pasqual seems to have recognized a sincerity in the sisters he had not observed in others. According to 47. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Agatha, July 13, 1886. 48. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, September 8, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 49. The Arizona Sentinel, December 3, 1886 in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 93 This graph shows how much beef was delivered to the Quechan people through the Indian School in 1887. Similar graphs are given for the distribution of other foods. Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” 502. the reports of the sisters, Pasqual told his people that “the Sisters were not like that other woman.50 They were God’s own women—they were superior to all others.”51 That Pasqual was not “off the mark” in his judgment is revealed by the actions taken by the sisters in response to his speech outlining the difficulties faced by his people. The sisters had recently received $50 in alms from charitable benefactors. Moved by Pasqual’s speech, Mother Julia gave him the money. As she explained to Mother Agatha, “You may imagine our feelings[,] Dearest Mother[,] after listening to this appeal. . . . I must tell you now what I took on my self [sic] to do . . . I had the money with me and handed it to Pasqual in your name, telling him it was not from Washington but the Mother of all the Sisters.”52 50. It is not clear to whom Pasqual was referring, but, given the context of the discussion, it seems likely that he is talking about one of the two women who tried to establish the school before the sisters arrived. 51. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, May 17, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 52. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, June 17, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 94 INSIDE AND OUT Unlike the teachers who had been the first sent by the government to instruct Quechan children, the sisters embraced poverty and chastity. Their vow of poverty reduced the temptation to claim for themselves supplies sent from Washington to his people. Finally, Pasqual also clearly understood that he had a significant bargaining chip that he could use when dealing with the sisters. From the comments of the sisters in their many letters, it appears that the nearness of his baptism varied, depending on whether he was seeking to encourage what he perceived to be good behavior or discourage that which did not meet his approval.53 One thing, abundantly clear from their reports, is that the sisters dedicated themselves to their work even while living in what they considered to be “the hotest [sic] place on God’s earth.”54 A constant refrain in all of the correspondence is how devoted they were to their tasks. On May 10, just nine days after the school had been officially opened, Mother Julia wrote that “we are actually overwhelmed with work.”55 Since the school was established to serve all of the Quechan children who lived in settlements on both sides of the Colorado River, it was a hybrid operation that functioned as both a reservation day school and a reservation boarding 53. Not being priests, baptism (under emergency situations) remained the only sacrament the sisters could administer. As their letters demonstrate, it thus became for them the key indicator of their success as missionary nuns. Undoubtedly, they were enthused by the external trappings of catechetical success: children praying the Rosary, making the sign of the cross, etc. But nothing equaled the significance of baptism to these sisters. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that they referred to the first person they baptized as the “first-fruits of our Mission to Yuma” (May 17, 1886). Theologically, baptism was the moment that the pagan Indian died, and the new Christian Indian was born. The moment of transition was symbolized by the granting of a Christian name. The letters abound with stories that emphasize this singular moment. On June 17, 1886, a “fine noble lad” was brought to the sisters “apparently dying of sheer starvation.” Afraid that “he would drop off without baptism,” Sister Mary Joseph “instructed him” and Sister Julia “baptized him Anthony” (Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, June 17, 1886). Towards the end of the summer of 1886, when a wave of serious illness crashed through Quechan villages, the sisters assumed the role of caregivers and administered medicinal help to mothers and their children. According to Mother Julia, this sickness revealed the “hand of God” because as the mothers came for medicine, “God sent them just to be baptized.” (Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, All Saints Day, 1886). As an interesting insight into the complex cross-cultural dialogue that occurred, Mother Julia also reported that they had to baptize many secretly because their practice of baptizing dying infants had led many of the Quechan to believe that the baptisms were causing the deaths of their children. 54. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, June 10, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 55. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, May 10, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 95 school.56 Thus, the sisters taught school during the day (from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) and then, after the day students had left, oversaw the care of the boarding students who remained. The five sisters were responsible for the education of the sixty to seventy children who attended each day and for the constant care of the smaller number of children who boarded during the week.57 As noted by Mother Ambrosia (who signed her reports in her secular name of Mary O’Neil) in her report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1887, all of the students received instruction in “spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic.” The older girls were also taught to “wash and iron, cook and sew” while the older boys were taught “mechanical pursuits.”58 In addition, since many of the Quechan parents had followed the example of Pasqual and moved to be close to the school, the sisters encouraged them to come with their children to school and offered to teach them in the evenings. Mother Ambrosia, with the help of Sister Aniceta Byrne, was responsible for the correspondence with Washington which she claimed was so “voluminous” that it “will keep one busy all the time.”59 Sister Modesta oversaw work in the kitchen (which provided both breakfast and lunch to the school children). Sister Selicia60 was responsible for teaching the girls how to use the sewing machines. The sisters also operated an infirmary for sick children and adults and frequently visited sick people in their homes. In addition to her assignment to teach the youngest students, Sister Alphonse was the chief administrator of medical care. Mother Ambrosia reported that “every little ache they have, they come to her, to make it known.” An interesting story in The Arizona Sentinel confirms Mother Ambrosia’s report. When measles broke 56. The number of children attending the school fluctuated, as did the number of boarding students. According to the number stated in letters sent to Mother Julia by Mother Ambrosia, the school opened in May of 1886 with fifty-two students (forty-one boys, eleven girls). At the beginning of the school session in September of 1886, there were sixty-five children (forty-three boys, twenty-three girls). By the end of September, that number had grown to seventy-five. In her official report, Superintendent Mary O’Neil (Mother Ambrosia) stated the following: “The individual enrollment was 122 out of a scholastic population of less than 200, notwithstanding we had no coercive power whatever to enforce attendance. The average attendance ranged from 60 to 70.” This report can be found in Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887” (1887), 500, https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ details?id=362635. 57. They were aided in this effort by a male industrial teacher who taught the older boys. 58. Report of the Superintendent, Mary O’Neil, dated July 26, 1887. This report can be found in Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” 500. 59. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Agatha, June 17, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 60. Sisters Modesta’s and Selicia’s surnames are unknown. 96 INSIDE AND OUT This statistical report shows the number of students attending boarding schools in 1887. Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” 794. out at the school in March (1887), Pasqual ordered the children to leave. Six students were allowed to remain and were thus treated by Sister Alphonse. When Pasqual noted that all six recovered while many who had left the school died in their homes, he issued a command that the children, some of whom were so ill that they had to be carried “on stretchers,” immediately return to be treated by the sisters.61 Sister Alphonse’s skill, apparently, extended beyond that of treating humans, for “they even have her treat their horses.”62 Finally, the sisters were responsible for the care and upkeep of the sacristy, the priest’s room (for when he visited), priestly vestments, and chapel facilities. In short, as Mother Ambrosia related to Mother Julia, “the poor sisters here do not have a spare moment.”63 Although the sisters never strayed from their belief that the Quechan were pagans in need of spiritual conversion, they nevertheless were able to 61. The Arizona Sentinel, March 26, 1887. 62. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Agatha, June 8, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 63. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Julia, November 1, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 97 This undated photograph shows the girls of the school gathered in front of the girls’ dormitory. Photographer unknown. Photo provided courtesy of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, Los Angeles Province collection, Carondelet Consolidated Archives. recognize a shared humanity. In March of 1886, Mother Julia reported that “of all the Indian tribes I have ever seen (and I think I have seen a good many in the East, North, and West and all around those parts) the Yumas are the noblest and most graceful type. The more we see of them, the more we feel inclined to like them.”64 Other comments reveal the respect the sisters developed for the Quechan even while considering them to need salvation. The following are offered by way of example: • “Our poor Indians are very good, pagan though they are (May 10, 1886). • “Himself and his squaw were dressed in Adam’s fashion; so were the generality of the Yumas. And oh! their faces are beauties—enough to scare anyone, who does not view beneath them an immortal soul (St. Joseph’s Eve, 1886). 64. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, March 28, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 98 INSIDE AND OUT • “They appear so happy and contented. I know it would make you happy to see those poor little pagans (June 8, 1886). • “I wish you could see our poor Yumas . . . they seem so happy. I am pleasantly disappointed in them. They are good, kind, and respectful to the sisters. . . . I feel much safer with them, than with some of the whites who live near us” (June 26, 1886).65 • “The children are all around me and jumping and playing so I cannot do any better with all their faults[;] there is something about them that draws one to them. I could not be unkind to one of them no matter what they say” (All Saints’ Day, 1886). In his analysis of Presbyterian mission work among native peoples, Michael Coleman stresses that the Protestant Board of Foreign Missions “had more than strictly religious goals. Indians were to be stripped of their own life-styles, to be ‘civilized’ as well as Christianized.”66 He also states that, in his examination of a voluminous amount of correspondence, “almost none of them made any attempt to go beyond formula denunciations of Indian life and to attempt a more dispassionate view.”67 This cannot be said of the Sisters of St. Joseph who labored in the Arizona Territory, who were instead quick to recognize and encourage positive aspects of Quechan culture. It is true that they do express a typical nineteenth-century Victorian middle-class disdain for “filth,” but this is expressed equally at the perceived squalor of both lower-class whites (i.e., tramps) and natives.68 They also were distressed by the perceived Quechan lack of concern for clothing, and thus frequently mentioned their labors to provide dresses, shirts, and pants for them (both children and adults). But importantly, their explanation of this work is couched in religious (not civic) terms.69 They described it as an 65. The sentiment reported in this statement can be found frequently in their letters. For example, on August 11, 1886, Sister Alphonse told the Reverend Mother that “they never think of leaving us alone. . . . They will not allow any white man that looks at all like a tramp to come near. Which is a cause of great safety to us, for tramps in this country bear a very hard name.” 66. Michael C. Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes toward American Indians: 1837–1893 (Jackson, MS, 1985), 15. 67. Coleman, Missionary Attitudes, 18. 68. Tanya L. Rathburn notes the particular attention of the Sisters of St. Joseph to “cleanliness” which was (according to her) second in emphasis only to the teaching of religious doctrine. See Tanya L. Rathburn, “Hail Mary,” in: Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, eds. Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc (Lincoln, 2016), 155–73, here 165. 69. This is not to deny that their concerns are reflective of nineteenth-century Victorian attitudes towards clothing and morality. JOHN NATHAN MACK 99 opportunity “of doing all the corporal works of Mercy” of which “clothing the naked” was one.70 Throughout all of their labors, their primary concern remained spiritual. Their work was aimed at increasing the number of citizens in heaven, not expanding the citizenry of the United States. A clear example of this attitude can be seen in their explanation for their practice of giving Christian names to Indian students.71 Instead of explaining this as a step away from “savagery” towards “civilization,” the sisters explained that they had given the children “Christian names in hopes that the patrons to whose care we confided them may hasten the day on which they can be made Christians and children of the Church.”72 Another example can be seen in the sisters’ attitudes towards the language spoken at the school. Even though the Indian Bureau had officially outlawed the use of any other language than English at its schools in 1880, the sisters not only allowed native children to continue to speak their own language, but also focused their attention on learning the Quechan language themselves. For the sisters, language was a tool that was to be used, not in turning Indians into Americans, but rather (as Mother Ambrosia explained) “in making Christians of them” which could be done without “much trouble,” she assured her Mother Superior, if “we could only speak their language.”73 Sister Alphonse agreed, noting that “speaking through an interpreter is not the thing where religion is concerned.”74 The dual facts that the sisters were seeking to build a school in the face of opposition from leading white settlers and their concerns were fundamentally spiritual (rather than political) incentivized them to work together with the Quechan. Aware that government support for their work was dependent on the school’s success and equally cognizant that this success was judged primarily by the number of children who were educated, 70. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, June 18, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 71. It should be noted that many of the Quechan in 1866 had already begun to use nonindigenous names to refer to themselves. The interpreter, a member of the Mohave nation, is called “Bill”; the leader of one of the Quechan settlements in the Arizona Territory called himself “Tom”; etc. 72. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, May 13, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. Note that in making the point that the sisters were spiritually motivated in renaming the students, this paper is in no way downplaying the negative and injurious effect this may have had on many of the children who were thus renamed. 73. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Agatha, June 8, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 74. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, August 11, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 100 INSIDE AND OUT the sisters looked to Chief Pasqual to support their endeavors by mandating attendance.75 Their correspondence also reveals that the sisters had developed a deep love for the Quechan people. As Sister Alphonse explained, “M. Julia will tell you [how] much attached we are to the poor Indians.”76 Their affection began with Pasqual, who is mentioned frequently in their letters as they give updates on his health, his support for the school, his closeness to baptism, etc. They also expressed solidarity with the suffering Quechan people. In June, when the sisters heard that “some American men have bought land on the Arizona side, which they claim to be Government land, and it really belongs to the Indians,” they were outraged. Mother Ambrosia’s frustration with being able to do very little to advance their cause overflowed in her next words, “If the poor Indians treat the whites cruelly, in many cases, they have good reason, only the Yumas are so good and peaceful.”77 But above all, it was the children who captured the hearts of the sisters the most. Thus, pressured both by their spiritual zeal and their compassion for the Quechan, the sisters were motivated to make accommodations in building relationships with Pasqual and his people. However, Mother Ambrosia was aware that Bureau officials were insistent that the school follow official policy exactly. In fact, Mother Ambrosia consulted the “book sent from Washington containing all the rules pertaining to the school” so frequently that the sisters teased her that it had become “her rule of life.”78 The sisters lived in perpetual fear that government authorities would withhold aid and/or withdraw their approval. In April (1886), Mother Julia confessed that an “indefinable dread has taken possession of me, lest by some incendiarism those enemies of ours might strive to do us mischief.”79 Exclaiming in early July (1886) that “it is truly a great trial to 75. A letter sent by Sister Alphonse to the Mother Superior on All Saints’ Day (1886) confirms this. After explaining that a wave of sickness had greatly reduced the number of children attending the school, Sister Alphonse noted that “what Mother fears is that an Inspector is liable to walk in any day and see such a poor attendance.” Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904 76. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, June 18, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 77. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Agatha, June 26, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 78. As reported in her letter to Mother Agatha, June 8, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. It should be explained that the term “rule of life” is laden with religious significance in the Catholic tradition. 79. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, April 26, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 101 have to deal with the ‘White House,’” Mother Ambrosia declared herself to be overwhelmed both by the amount of paperwork she was required to submit and by the delay experienced in receiving the supplies she had requested. “They left us,” she explained, “for a long time without any money, and I am sure it will be some time before we get it. They promised to give us a hearty cooperation in our work, but in our opinion out here they are anything but encouraging.”80 Anxiety was also compounded by rumors. For example, in September of 1886, the sisters heard that new orders had been given to Inspectors to examine the teachers for proficiency. Since the sisters had not been officially trained as teachers, they were in great fear even as they were “looking up books to study for our examination.” When the Inspector arrived, no examination was made, but this did not keep the sisters from worrying that “the next one that comes will.” Sister Alphonse confessed, “I felt very low spirited until I knew he had left town for I knew I could not answer him one question.”81 Government agents had made it clear that the goal of the Indian school was to “Americanize” Indian children. At the very least, this required external modifications to the traditional Quechan appearance. All indications are that the Quechan were willing to make modifications to their attire when required to do so.82 While their fashion sense frequently amused the sisters, in theory they were not opposed to wearing shirts, dresses, etc. In fact, Pasqual had requested a “new suit” from the sisters when they first arrived and there are stories of others wearing “odd” assortments of American clothing.83 Sister Alphonse related what she considered to be an “amusing” story when she told of a mother who brought a sick child to be treated by the sisters. The mother arrived in her “native dress” 80. Mother Ambrosia to Mother Julia, July 25, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 81. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, September 8, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 82. A story continues to be circulated among the Quechan today of a time when a pair of pants was left hanging on a tree for any man who was leaving the Reservation and going into town. The town of Yuma had strict regulations regarding appropriate clothes, so the Quechan adapted to their demands by sharing a pair of pants amongst themselves. 83. In a letter dated August 8, 1886, Sister Alphonse, after reporting that the Quechan “are getting very anxious to be dressed,” stated “they will be just like the colored people all for style and Jewlry (sic).” She also added that while they were very pleased to wear clothing on the upper body, they were not as keen to wear pants: “They think they are fit for any society when they get a shirt and vest on. They don’t care about pants in this warm weather.” A further letter sent on September 6, 1886, explained that Chief Pasqual “appeared in full dress, nothing on him but a shirt.” Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 102 INSIDE AND OUT This photograph by Elias Atkinson Bonine, undated, shows a Quechan man wearing traditional attire and western attire. Notice that he is not wearing pants in the western attire photograph. Used with permission of the Yuma Library Archives. but at the urging of Mother Ambrosia was willing to be redressed in “Mother Hubbard wrapper and apron.” Sister Alphonse then related that while “she was pleased as also her husband,” when the child “woke up and the Mother went to take her the poor little thing nearly went in a spasm” until the “poor Mother was obliged to appear in her original costume.”84 It is impossible to say whether the sister was correct in her assessment of the pleasure the man and his wife took in wearing such unusual clothing, but it is part of a larger pattern reported consistently of the Quechan being willing to wear western clothing. What the Quechan did find to be most objectionable was the American insistence that they cut their hair. In their first meeting with Pasqual, one of the lower-level tribal leaders welcomed the sisters but warned them not to “make them cut off their long hair of which they are very proud and 84. Sister Alphonse to Mother Agatha, June 18, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. JOHN NATHAN MACK 103 This photograph by Elias Atkinson Bonine, undated, shows the long hair of a Quechan man. Used with permission of the Yuma Library Archives. in which they fancy their strength consists.” Mother Julia was not offended by this but rather remarked in her comment to the Reverend Mother that she thought they looked “very graceful with their long hair.”85 There is evidence that the sisters did not require students to cut their hair before attending, but pressure from government officials who exercised oversight through periodic visits and (more importantly) by controlling the purse strings did not allow the sisters much room for compromise.86 In spite of these pressures, and indeed perhaps because of them, a cooperative working relationship was established between Mother Ambrosia and Chief Pasqual. His decision to work with the school, his 85. Mother Julia to Mother Agatha, March 28, 1886, in Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 86. In her annual report (1887), Superintendent Mary O’Neil (Mother Ambrosia) reported that only a “few” of the pupils “have . . . cut their hair.” This report can be found in Atkins, “Annual Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1887,” 500. According to a letter sent by Sr. Aniceta to Mother Julia on May 15, 1899, the sisters did not require the students to cut their hair until mandated to do so by the Indian Agent in the Spring of 1899. Letters of Fort Yuma, California, Chronologically Arranged, 1886–1904. 104 INSIDE AND OUT willingness to be baptized, and his preparations for a traditional death ceremony show his skill at negotiating room for his people to be both “inside” and “out” of American society. Likewise, Mother Ambrosia demonstrated similar qualities as she worked to create space for the Catholic education of indigenous children by celibate women within a white, culturally Protestant institutional structure. In this unique historical situation, they needed each other and were able to find common ground that allowed each of them to advance their own agendas. The limited source material that exists indicates that these joint efforts were recognized by members of the Quechan people who developed a fondness and appreciation for the sisters and their work.87 According to the published report of the Commissioner, in the 1894 talks between the Quechan people and the U.S. government over how best to introduce allotment to the reservation, “before the Indians agreed to the cession of any portion of their reservation, and before one would sign the agreement, they asked that the Sisters of Saint Joseph be given the buildings and land” so that they could continue to “remain with them, to teach their children, to nurse their sick, and to look after their spiritual welfare.”88 A few pages later in the published document, the words of Chief Palma are recorded: “The chief said he had not much to say, but that they would like to have the sisters get the hill and land to make their homes there because teaching the children is a help to us.”89 Additional confirmation comes from a series of letters sent over a number of years by a former student of the Indian School in Yuma, Agnes Jeager, to her former teacher, Sister Mary Joseph.90 Written after the sisters had left Yuma, these letters show the deep affection that at least one student had for the sisters. The initial letter was occasioned by the death of 87. There are multiple reasons for the lack of source material. The Catholic presence at the School only lasted fifteen years (1866–1900), and a fire at the school in 1899 destroyed most of the school records that had been kept. In addition, this author has discovered in interviews that there is little living memory of the School among the Quechan people today. 88. Michael Smith (Secretary of the Interior) and D. M. Browning (Commissioner of Indian Affairs), “Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, transmitting a copy of an agreement with the Yuma Indians, with a report from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and accompanying papers,” S. Exec. Doc. No. 68, 53rd Cong., 2nd Sess. (1894), 11. 89. Smith and Browning, “Letter from the Secretary of the Interior,” 18. 90. These letters were preserved because they were forwarded to Mother Julia by Sister Mary Joseph and thus are preserved in the Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Carondelet, Missouri, Los Angeles Province Indian Missions, St. Louis Province Series, Series 400.1, Box 25, Folder 3. JOHN NATHAN MACK 105 her sibling and was written to “extend my thanks to the sisters” for the instructions they had given to her family which enabled them to “[know] the joy which we will have in heaven.”91 Agnes had been transferred to the Phoenix Indian School after the closing of the Yuma Indian School. In her letters, she shared with Sister Mary Joseph that she found the situation in Phoenix to be difficult. “Today I am all alone in the room thinking of my hard future days to come which I have to struggle through,” she wrote in one letter. The theme of feeling isolated is prominent as Agnes recalled with pleasure the experience of going to school with “her fellow Yumas” and then sorrowfully noted that in Phoenix “Sylvester and I are the only two from Yuma.” She has heard, she told the Sister, that her experience is not unique as “the girls say Yuma is just as lonesome as ever.” A primary cause of the loneliness was that the young people had been separated from each other: “Some boys went to Carlisle and some (are) at Riverside.” Even though “we have so many new children from different parts of the country now,” she lamented that there were “no more Yumas though.” A second cause of the isolation, at least for Agnes, was the lack of opportunity to practice her Catholic faith. She reported in the letters that a Catholic priest came only “every other Sunday” to hear confessions and say Mass. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, for Agnes the atmosphere of the Phoenix school was cold and restrictive. She repeatedly stated that she wanted to visit Sister Mary Joseph (who was working at St. John School in Komatke, about twelve miles from Phoenix) but had been given neither the time nor the permission to do so.92 According to a letter written by Sr. Mary Joseph to Mother Julia, Agnes was finally allowed to visit her in November of 1904. She was accompanied by her father, Jim Jaeger, and mother, Mary, who had made the 190-mile trip from Yuma to Komatke. Sister Mary Joseph reported that “when Mary (his wife) saw me, she threw her arms 91. Agnes Jeager to Sister Mary Joseph, March 8, 1903, stored in Carondelet, MO, Archives for the Sisters of St. Joseph, Los Angeles Province Indian Missions, St. Louis Province Series, 400.1, Box 25, Folder 3. 92. Agnes Jeager to Sister Mary Joseph, September 11, 1904, stored in Carondelet, Missouri, Archives for the Sisters of St. Joseph, Los Angeles Province Indian Missions, St. Louis Province Series, 400.1, Box 25, Folder 3. Additional information about the struggles faced by former Yuma students in the very different atmosphere of the Phoenix Indian School can be found in a letter written by Sr. Mary Joseph to Mother Julia on July 13, 1905 where she states that she thinks letters from the Yuma children are not being sent to her, for “you would be surprised how much bigotry there is at the Phoenix school and I only wonder how a child keeps a spark of faith there at all.” She then relates that she had visited the school in Phoenix only recently and that “the children when they saw [us] they flocked to us from every direction. Poor little Mary Jaeger when she saw me, she threw herself at my feet and cried bitterly.” 106 INSIDE AND OUT around me and cried like a child and said, ‘Oh, Sisters, why did you leave the Yumas?’ She says the Yumas are always talking and wishing the Sisters were back.”93 The leaving, mentioned by Mary Jaeger, occurred in 1900 when the School came under the direct control of the U.S. government. After Pasqual’s death in May of 1887, his successor, Miguel, adopted a more combative and oppositional strategy in dealing with the school.94 This, combined with waning political support for government-funded religious schools at the end of the nineteenth century, ended the Sisters’ tenure in Yuma. However, the story of the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Indian School in Yuma from 1886 to 1887 is important for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the complexity of indigenous and non-indigenous relationships in the late nineteenth century and forces the reader to move past the historiographic dichotomy of glorification and vilification. Second, it restores agency to native actors. There can be no doubt that Chief Pasqual’s options were limited by the actions of government officials who were acting on federal policy informed by structural racism. He and his people were victimized by the government’s policy of enforced education. At the same time, he exercised his own will, made decisions for the good of his people, and creatively sought to find autonomy for himself and his people by aligning himself with the Sisters of St. Joseph. The fact that he chose to work with Catholic educators when he had previously refused to do so with Protestant ones demonstrates his own strategic decisionmaking. Finally, this story highlights the importance of women religious in the history of the American Southwest. As members of a society controlled, governed, and to a large extent funded by women, the Sisters of St. Joseph made autonomous decisions, interacted with men as equals, and operated in positions of economic, political, and religious power. While not denying that they lived in a patriarchal world and faced opposition from many quarters, it is nonetheless true that these religious women made a significant impact on both the lives of those they served as well as the larger narrative of U.S. history. 93. Sr. Mary Joseph to Mother Julia, November 28, 1904, stored in Carondelet, Missouri, Archives for the Sisters of St. Joseph, Los Angeles Province Indian Missions, St. Louis Province Series, 400.1, Box 25, Folder 3. 94. To learn more about what happened after Pasqual’s death, see Teresa McNeil, “SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH UNDER FIRE: Pioneer Convent School on the Colorado River,” The Journal of Arizona History, 29, no. 1 (1988), 35–50. Devotees Participate in Story and Painting: Bernardo Alcocer’s Novena to Madre Santísima de la Luz BERNARD CESARONE* In 1737, Jesuits in Mexico City published texts recounting the origin of a new painting and advocation of the Virgin Mary, Most Holy Mother of Light. In the following decades, many devotional texts dedicated to this advocation were composed in Mexico, one of which was a novena by Bernardo Alcocer. Partly following a meditational tradition, this work was exceptional in encouraging practitioners, in prayers across nine days, to simultaneously participate in the origin narrative and enter the visual elements of the painting, such that thereby a holy story and the iconography of a painting could be integrated into practitioners’ religious discipline. Keywords: Bernardo Alcocer, Madre Santísima de la Luz, text and image, novenas, religious discipline Introduction In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, Jesuit-educated parish priest Bernardo Alcocer composed a novena in honor of a new advocation of the Virgin Mary, Madre Santísima de la Luz (Most Holy Mother of Light, to be addressed here as Madre). Padre Alcocer served a parish in Pénjamo, then in the diocese of Michoacán in New Spain (as Mexico was known in the colonial era). This essay examines Alcocer’s novena, which is one of several devotional texts celebrating Madre de la Luz that were composed by Jesuits and members of other orders and that were published and reprinted in Mexico into the early nineteenth century. Novenas and texts in other devotional formats sometimes guide the religious practitioner through a sacred narrative, from scripture or other sources. However, * Bernard Cesarone is a retired data manager for the Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map project at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). The author would like to thank Dr. Oscar Vázquez, Dr. Paula Carns, and three anonymous readers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. His email address is: cesarone@illinois.edu. 107 108 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING Padre Alcocer’s novena is unique among devotional texts on Madre de la Luz in its double task of encouraging novena practitioners not only to insert themselves into a narrative—in this case, the origin story of the advocation and its image—but also simultaneously to enter into the visual elements (that is, the iconography) of Madre’s painted image itself. While other devotional texts sometimes advise the reader to enter either a narrative or an image, Padre Alcocer’s novena uniquely integrates the two functions over an extended series of exercises. In doing so in such an intimate and consistent manner, the novena practitioner becomes a character in a narrated story and a figure in a painted scene. This function of Alcocer’s novena has received no scholarly treatment; nor indeed has any other aspect of Padre Alcocer’s life or work—a lack of attention that this paper seeks to address. Bernardo Alcocer: Life and Writings A document of 1736 provides some information about the life of Bernardo Alcocer, parish priest of Pénjamo, in the then-diocese of Michoacán. This report praises his education, religious dedication, and good qualities, pursuant to an episcopal recommendation for his promotion to a prebendary. He seems to have been born around 1700, given the dates in the document, such as his entry in 1717 into the Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City to study rhetoric. Over the next several years, he studied philosophy and theology in the Real y Pontificia Universidad de México and was ordained a priest. With his studies completed, he returned to Pénjamo, where he taught Christian doctrine for three years. His good work earned him the bishop’s appointment as Lenten preacher in Irapuato in 1730. That same year he was granted a benefice in Pénjamo, where he began his new office as parish priest in September 1731. He was also noted for his work in other nearby towns during the 1730s, such as preaching a novena in the Santuario de Santa Cruz and a sermon in a Jesuit church, the latter task suggesting that he maintained a connection with that order from his school days.1 Later reports indicate his work for the bishop of Michoacán in 1747, and historians note that he signed the document indicating to the godparents of Miguel Hidalgo (future father of Mexican independence, who was born in Pénjamo) their religious responsibilities to the young Miguel, at the time of his baptism in 1753. Padre Alcocer defended the indigenous 1. Relación de méritos de el bachiller don Bernardo Alcocer y Bocanegra, cura. . . (Madrid, 1736). BERNARD CESARONE 109 FIGURE 1. Title page from: Bernardo Alcocer, Novena de la Madre Santissima de la Luz. . . (n.p., n.d.). Berkeley, CA, University of California, Bancroft Library, Colección de artículos religiosos, call no. xF1207.C515 no.5. people against administrative abuses in his parish, where he remained as priest until his death in 1767.2 Two bibliographers note that Alcocer published a devotionary on Madre Santísima de la Luz, which they stated was printed several times in Mexico, without providing dates or indicating the inclusion of a novena in the collection.3 The source for the novena used in this study was an edition 2. Lucas Alamán, Historia de Méjico [sic], desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon su independencia. . . (Mexico City, 1850), 75; José Sergio Hernández Rodríguez, Pénjamo: “lugar de sabinos” (Guanajuato, 2010), 89; and Enrique Carvajal Ayala, “Quiringüicharo, Michoacán: Historia: Capítulo 3: Un tío del Cura Hidalgo habla de Quiringüicharo” Quiringüicharo, Michoacan, published July 29, 2006, accessed January 18, 2023, https://quiringuicharo.webs.com/historia3.htm. 3. The work was titled Noticia del origen y maravillas de la imagen de Nuestra Señora de Luz, con un devocionario en culto de la Santísima Virgen María. See José Mariano Beristain de Souza, Biblioteca hispano americana septentrional, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Amecameca, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile, 1883–1897, here 1883), II, 43; and José Toribio Medina, La imprenta en México: Epítome (1539–1810) (Seville, 1893), 11. 110 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING FIGURE 2. Frontispiece, La Madre Santísima de la Luz, print, in: Alcocer, Novena de la Madre Santissima de la Luz. whose title page indicates that it was a reprint but provides neither date nor place of publication (see Figure 1).4 This edition includes a frontispiece image of Madre de la Luz (Figure 2), under which is a text with a partially legible date that appears to be 1765 (Figure 3). Given his Jesuit connections, Padre Alcocer likely acquired his affection for this advocation from its Jesuit promulgators, especially Lucas Rincón and José Maria Genovese, whose 1737 publications (discussed below) he would have known. Thus his novena would have been composed sometime between 1737 and 1765. Though the precise publication details are not relevant to the overall devotional use that Alcocer makes of the origin story and painting, they might be relevant to his specific reference to the dragon of hell and to the iconography of the frontispiece that displayed the dragon (also discussed below). These suggest a heterodox view that some churchmen believed could lead 4. Bernardo Alcocer, Novena de la Madre Santissima de la Luz, en cuyas oraciones se da noticia del origen, y maravillas de esta sagrada imagen, stored in Berkeley, CA, University of California, Bancroft Library, Colección de artículos religiosos, call no. xF1207.C515 no.5. The novena, with updated spelling and some changed words, is included in: Gabino Chávez, Devocionario dedicado a nuestra Madre Santísima de la Luz. . . (Mexico City, 1901), 132–45. BERNARD CESARONE 111 FIGURE 3. Detail of publication date, frontispiece, La Madre Santísima de la Luz, print, in: Bernardo Alcocer, Novena de la Madre Santissima de la Luz. to the dogmatic error that the Virgin (like Christ) saves souls. A controversy over this “error” arose around the advocation during the middle decades of the century, became heated in the years before the Jesuits’ expulsion from the Spanish realms in 1767, and aroused vociferous criticism at the Fourth Mexican Provincial Council in 1771.5 Because Alcocer shows no defensiveness in regard to the figure of the dragon, and because he maintained a connection with the Jesuits at least through the 1730s, it seems likely that he composed his original text closer to the beginning than the end of the date range. Then, in the reprint edition, because the frontispiece still includes the dragon, Alcocer—or his editor or printer— ignored the criticism that was by then well known.6 The Origin Story of the Cult and Painting of Madre Santísima de la Luz Alcocer drew his story from earlier accounts of the origin of the image and cult of Madre Santísima de la Luz. The first of these was a two-volume work by a Sicilian Jesuit, published in Palermo in 1733. The cult had arrived and begun to grow in New Spain by the time that Jesuit Lucas Rincón’s Spanish translation appeared in Mexico City in 1737 and 1738. A short account of the origin story was also published in 1737 by Rincón’s Jesuit colleague José María Genovese.7 Given Padre Alcocer’s repeated references to the origin account, he certainly read Rincón’s translation, and was likely familiar with the summary by Genovese, a popular author in 5. For a discussion of criticisms of the possible dogmatic error, and related points, see Bernard J. Cesarone, “A Mother of Light in the Age of Enlightenment. . .” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018), 169–84. 6. Other (though not all) devotional texts on Madre de la Luz from later in the century (1760s on) also included a print without the dragon, thereby ignoring the criticism. 7. [Emmanuele Aguilera], La divozione di Maria Madre Santissima del Lume. . . , 2 vols. (Palermo, 1733); Lucas Rincón, La devocion de Maria Madre Santissima de la Luz. . . , 2 vols. (Mexico City, 1737–38); José María Genovese, Antídoto contra todo mal. . . (Mexico City, 1737); reprinted as Genovese, Antídoto. . . (León, Mexico, 1937). In each of the two-volume works, the origin story is told in Part 1, Chapter 1. For a fuller discussion of the origin story and additional issues, see Cesarone, “A Mother of Light. . . ,” Chapter 1. 112 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING Jesuit circles. The synopsis presented here, which follows much of the original tenor and wording, is taken from Padre Rincón’s first volume. It was around 1722 when a religious priest in Palermo determined to consecrate his life to apostolic mission work.8 After having chosen the Virgin as protectress of his endeavors, the Jesuit priest desired to carry with him her image on canvas but was uncertain what advocation should be portrayed in the painting. Therefore, he approached a virtuous sierva di Dios (servant of God, i.e., holy woman) who was known to receive visionary visits from the Virgin, and he requested that she ascertain the Virgin’s will. One morning shortly thereafter, the sierva was praying in a corner of a church, when the Queen of Angels appeared to her in a torrent of light that wounded her heart with flames of love. The Virgin was surrounded by a troop of seraphim who held a crown over her head, and she was attended by a squadron of courtesan angels. In her left arm she held her divine child. The Virgin spoke, reminding the sierva of the request of the religious priest. She agreed to be protectress of his work and to be portrayed as she now appeared. Saying this, the Virgin bent down slightly and upheld in her hand a sinner-soul who was at the borders of hell, in order that he might not fall into it. At this point, the sierva remembered an idea that the Jesuit priest had about the proposed painting, that of a scene of converted sinners’ hearts being presented to the Virgin. Madre responded to the sierva’s thought: “I approve the design.” Then an angel appeared, holding in his hands a basket of hearts. He knelt on the Virgin’s left and offered them to the holy child in his mother’s arm. The child took them one by one and enkindled them in his love. The Virgin stated that this is how she wished to be portrayed. Further, she thrice commanded the sierva that this portrayal should be known as Madre Santísima de la Luz. The sierva visited the priest and described to him the apparition, after which he commissioned a painter to create a canvas based on the description. Sometime later, when they went to view the finished canvas, priest and sierva were dismayed to see that it had not turned out well. The priest advised the sierva to make a second request of the Holy Lady. Again, in the same church, the Virgin Mother appeared to her, and she agreed to be 8. Religious priest in this case means a member of a religious order. Although unnamed in the source texts, the priest was identified by later writers as the Jesuit father Giovanni Antonio Genovesi. The apostolic missions were part of Counter-Reformation efforts to strengthen the commitment of Catholics. BERNARD CESARONE 113 portrayed a second time as this new title. However, in this second effort, she instructed the sierva to be present with the painter as he worked. At that time she (Madre) would appear to her (the sierva) so that she could carefully describe to the painter the details of the portrait, while she (Madre) would invisibly guide the artist’s brush and govern his imagination so that all would know, upon seeing the superhuman beauty of the finished canvas, that a superior intelligence had directed the design and the colors. All this happened as Madre instructed, such that a beautiful oil-on-canvas painting was produced. (This second successful attempt—not the artist’s first failed attempt—is the image for which Madre’s devotional authors use the term “original.” This essay follows that usage.) She herself then blessed the painting by making the sign of the cross over it. Rincón continues the story, reporting events that occurred after the completion of the portrait. With the painting blessed, he tells us, the devil now feared that the new holy image would bring many Christians back to good practice of their faith. Therefore, he assaulted both the painting and the Jesuit such that ill events befell them. However, Madre or her angels beat back these assaults. Subsequently many oil-on-canvas copies as well as printed engravings were produced and distributed in the Jesuit apostolic missions in Sicily. At this point in his book, Rincón ends the origin story and moves on to discuss other motives for devotion to Madre de la Luz. These are not relevant for the present study, but some additional explanation is warranted for an understanding of the relation of the painting to the story, and for an acquaintance with the future history of the image. With regard to the narrative and image, the painting corresponds to one event (the sierva’s vision) within the origin story. Further, the painting’s iconography follows closely the description in the story (see Figure 4). Madre appears in a blaze of light. She is surrounded by a crowd of putti angels, two of whom hold a crown above her head. She holds a sinnersoul suspended in front of the border of hell. An angel holds a basket of hearts that is offered to the Christ child, who takes the hearts and blesses them. Besides the replacement of seraphim by putti, another artistic interpretation is that of an open-mouthed dragon representing the mouth of hell. Minor artistic inventions are the addition of clouds at the sides and bottom of the painting, indicative of visionary experience, and putti heads beneath Madre’s feet. With regard to the painting’s further history, according to the account most commonly told and accepted at the time, the original oil-on-canvas 114 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING FIGURE 4. Miguel Cabrera, Madre Santísima de la Luz, ca. 1750, oil on canvas, 78 × 58.5 in., Santa Fe, NM, Collection of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. Reproduced by permission. Photograph by author. painting was sent to Mexico City around 1730,9 where it was briefly kept by Jesuit José María Genovese until he gifted it to the old Jesuit house in León, Guanajuato in 1732. After the order’s expulsion from Mexico, the painting remained in the new Jesuit church, which became the cathedral. It is displayed high over the altar to this day. With regard to the history of the cult of Madre de la Luz, it spread rapidly through Sicily as a result of the Jesuit missions, and then through the rest of Italy, Spain, and the Spanish New World. In Mexico, the spread of Madre’s devotion was fostered by Jesuits and Dominicans, who published numerous devotional texts in her honor, varying widely in their format and the intensity of the devotional disciplines they proposed.10 9. This account is based on a letter affixed to the reverse of the painting, in which four Jesuit fathers, including J.M. Genovese, affirm that the painting is the original sent from Sicily. Almost all devotional authors and later scholars follow this account, although there are a few exceptions in both groups. Regardless of any uncertainty today, the painting was believed by Mexican devotees to be the original. 10. See notes 29 and 30 in the section entitled “Jesuit devotional texts. . . .” BERNARD CESARONE 115 Alcocer’s novena was one of these texts. Before attending to his novena, it will be useful to review previous scholarly research on devotional texts and to highlight a few examples of earlier devotional texts that exhibit the functions of encouraging devotees to participate in a narrative and to insert themselves into a visual image. Scholarly Studies and Precursor Devotional Texts The advocation of Madre Santísima de la Luz provides an ideal case to examine connections between sacred imagery, devotional text, and visionary experience, because this vision, painting, and text arose together. Many scholars have discussed this Marian advocation in passing; only a few have done so in depth. In either case, the principal focus has been on the heterodox implications of the image’s iconography—that is, whether the figure of the dragon indicates that hell is not eternal and that the Virgin can remove a soul from hell—and on the controversy about whether to retain or censure (and remove) this heterodox iconographic figure. The most extensive study is by Venezuelan scholar Janeth Rodríguez Nóbrega, who examined several ecclesiastical decisions to censure or not censure the image of Madre de la Luz in a wider context of artworks censured for their heterodoxy. Lenice Rivera Hernández considered the apologetic nature of devotional texts to Madre de la Luz in New Spain and critiques of its principal Jesuit promotor. William Taylor noted the controversy over the iconography.11 The present essay attends to the topic of disciplined devotional practice in one devotional text dedicated to Madre de la Luz, as part of a larger study of these texts. As such, it is in response to Mexican philosopher Ramón Kuri Camacho who bemoaned, in a 1999 book, the lack of scholarly study of sermons and devotionaries for colonial Mexico.12 Such texts have frequently been cited but rarely examined in depth. He made a start of this examination in an analysis of six treatises by New Spanish Jesuits, to the purpose of understanding certain points of Jesuit theology.13 11. Janeth Rodríguez Nóbrega, Las imágenes expurgadas: censura del arte religioso en el período colonial (León, Spain, 2008); Lenice Rivera Hernández, “La novísima imagen de la Madre Santísima de la Luz . . . una devoción jesuítica, 1717–1732” (B.A. thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010); William Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico before the Reforma (Albuquerque, 2010), 52–56. 12. Ramón Kuri Camacho, La Compañía de Jesús, imágenes e ideas: scientia conditionata, tradición barroca y modernidad en la Nueva España (Puebla, 2000). 13. These are scientia media (intermediate knowledge), by which God knows certain contingent future events based on whether certain conditions apply; and minus probabilismus 116 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING Kuri Camacho’s complaint was somewhat exaggerated, given several earlier works on Guadalupan sermons. In 1994, David Brading published and analyzed seven sermons from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, seeking to identify Jesuit Guadalupan theologies, a project he continued in Mexican Phoenix.14 That same year, Francisco Raymond Schulte published his study of a hundred Guadalupan sermons from 1661 until approximately 1800, attending to that Virgin’s role in the evangelization of the New World.15 A number of scholars have studied other types of texts (besides sermons) to understand various qualities of popular devotional practices. Terry Rugeley examined nineteenth-century Yucatecans’ reading of devotional texts in order to understand to what goal they aspired in religious reading, such as contacting the sacred without elite guidance, or feeling situated within history.16 Other scholars have studied texts that are not, strictly speaking, devotional. Brian Larkin examined nearly a thousand wills and testaments across the long eighteenth century in New Spain to note changes in “performative piety” resulting from enlightened reforms.17 These studies, and the Guadalupan studies previously mentioned, survey a large number of texts. By contrast, William Taylor, in several projects, undertook a close reading of a single text hitherto ignored by scholars, to show that incipient popular devotions, begun through eccentric miracles, sometimes faded without support from ecclesiastical authorities.18 In their study of texts from eighteenth-century New Spain, some scholars, such as Pamela Voekel and Brian Larkin, found a move away from a supposed exteriorizing devotion characterizing baroque Catholicism toward interiorizing discipline prevalent in reformed Catholicism.19 (least probabilism), by which persons, in choosing among moral options, are considered prudent even if they choose the least probable option. 14. David A. Brading, ed., Siete sermones Guadalupanos 1709–1765 (Mexico City, 1994); and Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge, UK, 2001). 15. Francisco Raymond Schulte, O.S.B. Mexican Spirituality: Its Sources and Mission in the Earliest Guadalupan Sermons (Lanham, MD, 1994). 16. Terry Rugeley, Of Wonders and Wise Men: Religion and Popular Culture in Southeast Mexico, 1800–1876 (Austin, 2001). 17. Brian R. Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque, 2010). 18. William B. Taylor, Marvels & Miracles in Late Colonial Mexico: Three Texts in Context (Albuquerque, 2011). 19. Pamela Voekel, Alone before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity in Mexico (Durham, NC, 2002); Larkin, Very Nature of God. BERNARD CESARONE 117 In actual practice, such distinctions are not so clear cut, as Larkin himself implies. Indeed, Kuri Camacho even suggests a reverse trend in his call for scholars to investigate New Spanish devotional texts, believing that such investigation would revise the view of the Church as retrograde in the century of lights.20 Among the devotional texts written in New Spain, there are a number, including Alcocer’s novena, that propose practices within an interiorizing disciplined devotion. These practices, as explained by mystical theologians, include mental prayer, meditation, visualization, the presence of God (that is, directing the mind to God throughout the day), restraint of passions and affects, short vocal prayers, and recollection (that is, interior calmness).21 Given Alcocer’s incorporation of some of these practices in his novena, the present study responds to the philosopher’s call and supports his argument against claims by reformed clerics and some modern scholars that baroque spirituality lacked interiority. Most of the scholars’ works hitherto cited examine an abundance of texts from which they derive characteristics of devotion, but they do not pay concerted attention to the details of one or a few texts; and though they seek to understand the nature of devotional activity, none carefully attends to interiorizing disciplines. Such disciplines that involve participatory meditation on narrative began certainly by the late Middle Ages. Ida Ragusa and Rosalie Green, in the introduction to their translation of Pseudo-Bonaventure’s late thirteenth-century Meditations on the Life of Christ, point out how the author encourages the reader to be present at and attentive to the events of the Lord’s life described in the text, thereby teaching a visualization technique in meditation. For example, the Poor Clare nun is advised, when reading about the nativity, to kneel and adore the Christ child, kiss his feet, and hold him, as though she is an additional character in the story.22 Similarly, Charles Conway, in his study of Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi (fourteenth century), shows how the author’s text fosters meditation as readers make present (in their mind) what is past (events from Christ’s life). Ludolph advises the reader to visualize the general scene (e.g., a location in the Holy Land) and then to visualize and participate in the event described in the text.23 This latter tech20. Kuri Camacho, Compañía de Jesús, 460. 21. These interiorizing practices are described by Miguel Godínez, Practica de la theologia mystica. . . (first published Seville, 1682; repr. Lisbon, 1741), and Antonio Arbiol, Desengaños místicos a las almas detenidas. . . (Zaragoza, 1713). 22. [Pseudo-Bonaventure], Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and eds. Ida Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (Princeton, 1961). 23. Charles Abbott Conway, Jr., “The Vita Christi of Ludolf of Saxony,” Analecta Cartusiana, 34 (1976), 123–24. 118 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING nique was adopted by Ignatius of Loyola as the “composition of place” in his Spiritual Exercises.24 Subsequently, Jesuit practice associated meditational texts and images, one example of which is highlighted by Gauvin Bailey. Jesuit Louis Richeome’s La Peinture Spirituelle of 1611 served as a handbook for Jesuit novices on making a spiritual journey. Richeome associated meditations with paintings (no longer extant) in several rooms of the Jesuit novitiate church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome. For example, when discussing paintings in the refectory, Richeome advises the novice to use the senses of taste, sight, and hearing in the composition of place. Bailey directs a tour of Richeome’s spiritual journey, though he favors descriptions of paintings over meditations.25 For colonial Spanish America, Carmen Fernández-Salvador highlights connections among published sermons, religious paintings, and interior spiritual states of the faithful in seventeenth-century Quito.26 One effort that is exemplary for its attention to the play of textual meditation and meditative image, and which carefully examines a single devotional text—again, a Jesuit work outside colonial Mexico—is the series of substantial introductions by Walter Melion to each of the three volumes of a translation of Jerome Nadal’s Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels.27 Melion provides a thorough and brilliant discussion of the meditations on the gospel stories, the visual elements in the associated prints, and the relationship between the two. His brilliance consists in the way that his sensitive explications lead his readers through a progressive experience of the text and pictures, propelled by art historical insights, in the same way that Nadal’s meditations lead his Jesuit novices through a progressive experience of text and pictures, saturated with contemplative insights. Similarly, the present study seeks to progress through one mideighteenth-century novena, alongside its practitioners, to gain insights— both art-historical and devotional. 24. Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, trans. George E. Ganss, S.J. (Chicago, 1992). 25. Gauvin A. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit art in Rome, 1565–1610 (Toronto, 2003), 38–106. 26. Carmen Fernández-Salvador, “Imágenes locales y retórica sagrada: una visión edificante de Quito en el siglo XVII,” Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia, 25 (2007), 79–91. 27. Jerome Nadal, S.J., Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, trans. Frederick A. Homann, S.J., 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 2003–2007). BERNARD CESARONE 119 Jesuit Devotional Texts on Madre Santísima de la Luz: Readers’ Insertion into the Origin Story and Painting Later Jesuit authors, including those in New Spain, continued to compose devotional texts that counseled meditation and visualization. A generation prior to Madre de la Luz’s arrival in Mexico, the learned Jesuit preacher and mystic, Father Joseph Vidal, dedicated a book to the Virgin of Sorrows in which he taught both Ignatius’s composition of place and a visualizing participation in the Virgin’s sorrows during the passion of her son.28 This tradition, from before Ignatius through Vidal and others, is the tradition that Jesuit authors of devotional texts on Madre Santísima de la Luz, and Jesuit-educated Bernardo Alcocer, inherited. Some of these texts guided a meditation on the narrative of the origin of the advocation. In order to attend to the other element in Padre Alcocer’s counsel to practitioners, that is, that they enter into the visual image of Madre de la Luz, a series of late colonial novenas in honor of this advocation was examined, composed by Jesuits and others.29 This examination would determine the uniqueness of Alcocer’s approach. Though Madre’s devotional authors taught disciplines in other formats, for the sake of focus, this essay concentrates on the novenas.30 Among the dozens of novenas to Madre de la Luz in eighteenth-century New Spain, three in which participants—by reading the author’s words—insert themselves into the visual image will be highlighted here. Note that various editions of these and other novenas often (but not 28. Joseph Vidal, Memorias tiernas . . . con los dolores de la Santissima Virgen. . . , 2nd ed. (Antwerp, 1695). 29. Dominican novenas consulted included those by an unnamed Dominican (1746) and by Antonio Claudio Villegas (1760, 1796, 1806). Among Jesuits, novenas included those by Francisco María de Arámburu (1760 and others); Pedro de Echávarri (from before 1742 to at least 1766); José María Genovese, included in devotionaries (one in 1737, another from sometime before 1755, and two more in 1755 and 1767); Bartolomé José de Cañas, in an Italian devotionary (variously titled editions from 1781, 1786, 1830); and an unnamed Jesuit (1764 and later). Others consulted were novenas by Franciscan José Francisco Valdés (various editions 1792 through 1816), by an unnamed Guatemalan priest, and by several secular priests. 30. A devotion across three days was included in Joseph de Tobar’s La invocación de Nuestra Señora. . . (Madrid, 1751; repr. Mexico City, 1763); across a week was published by an unnamed Franciscan friar, Semana devotísima . . . Madre Santísima de la Luz. . . (Guadalajara, 1807); across seven Saturdays was published by Dominican Antonio Claudio Villegas de la Blanca, Siete sabados en que se celebran. . . (Mexico City, 1751; and other editions, 1763, 1766, 1790). Other examples of the latter format are by Jesuits José María Genovese (1737 and 1745 through 1780), Pedro de Echávarri (1763), Bartolomé José de Cañas (1781, 1786), and by Dominican Diego Rodríguez de Guzmán (1742, 1782). 120 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING always) included a frontispiece print of Madre which practitioners could use to assist their visualization or even cut out and place upon a home altar. One early novena to Madre de la Luz, by Pedro de Echávarri, was first published sometime before 1742. In the second prayer on Day One, this Jesuit father has the devotee beseech “Most sweet Jesus, at the left hand of Mary your most bright Mother, you who receive from an angel the human hearts, repented of their faults and enflamed in your Love,” asking that He would “make . . . my heart detest all the errors and sins that it has committed . . . that I might be worthy for my Guardian Angel to present it to you. . . .” Saying so, the devotees identify their hearts with those taken by the Christ child from the basket, and their guardian angel with the kneeling angel in Madre’s painting. Practitioners continue with a petition to Madre de la Luz: “Powerful Queen, make my soul, free from the mouth of the Abyss and its infernal Dragon, live eternally in your company. . . .”31 Here the devotee identifies with the sinner-soul dangling before the jaws of the dragon. Repeating these words, practitioners bring incidents in the narrative and scenes in the painting into their minds, thereby entering and participating in the story and image. In Jesuit Francisco María de Arámburu’s novena, the prologue begins with a careful description of the iconography of Madre’s painting. Then, in one of the prayers to be recited for all the nine days, he too, like Echávarri before him, equates the devotee’s guardian angel with the figure of the kneeling angel in the painting and places the devotee’s heart into the offered basket of hearts.32 In his collection of devotional readings, exiled New Spanish Jesuit Bartolomé José de Cañas begins by instructing the brothers of Madre’s confraternity to observe the visual elements in the painting in her chapel in Bologna. He proceeds to a novena, in which one of the daily prayers recalls directly the iconography of the painting: Most Sweet Child Jesus. . . , seated in the arm of your Immaculate Mother Mary[,] receive joyfully from the Angel human hearts that are repentant of their faults and enflamed in your love, ah! Make it so that mine might yet be among these. [R]ender my heart contrite . . . to the end that my Guardian Angel might present it to you.33 31. Pedro de Echávarri, Novena a Maria Santissima Madre de la Luz. . . (Madrid, 1753), 18, 20–21 (editions also exist from before 1742 and for 1742, 1763, 1766). 32. Francisco María de Arámburu, Novena en obsequio de . . . Madre Santísima de la Luz . . . (Puebla, 1817), fol. 7r (editions also exist for 1760 and 1777). 33. [Bartolomé José de Cañas], La sacra immagine della Madre Santissima del Lume. . . , 4th ed. (Rome, 1830), vii, 27–32, 89, 92–93. Earlier editions of this work, such as the 1781 edition, were titled Breve notizia della sacra immagine. . . . BERNARD CESARONE 121 Here again the devotee locates his guardian angel and his own heart in the incidents of the story and the visual scenes of the painting. These few examples will suffice to show that novenas to Madre de la Luz occasionally made references to the details of the painting and, to a lesser extent, the origin story. Sharing the tradition in which these Jesuit devotional authors wrote, the Jesuit-educated Alcocer composed a work in which the novena participant meditates on a narrative and a visual image. Unlike the other authors, he offers this guidance consistently across the entire period of the novena. Bernardo Alcocer’s Novena: Day One Alcocer’s text follows the typical novena format, involving various prayers or readings for each of the nine days, of which one prayer varies from day to day. The daily readings encompass six parts. First, each day commences with a “prayer for all the days,” directed to Madre de la Luz, and then continues with the daily changing prayer that begins, “Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz, I give you infinite thanks.” Third, the novena practitioner is to recite three Salve Reginas, after which he or she recites a second prayer to Madre. Following this, the fifth part is the petition, or request for a benefit that the practitioner wishes to receive from undertaking the novena. Finally, the novena concludes with a prayer to Jesus. All the prayers are fairly short so that the devotee, practicing slow reading and allotting an extra few minutes to meditate on the content, might spend half an hour or so on each day of the novena. The prayers are written in the first person; this is Padre Alcocer’s voice. But the practitioner, reading the author’s words, is also speaking in his or her own voice. Further, each changing prayer includes a narrative of part of the origin story, some of which report the words of Madre de la Luz to her devoted sierva; that is, they speak in Madre’s voice. Given the prayers’ address to a holy personage, the writer has two audiences: Madre’s devotees and Madre herself. The devotees have Madre de la Luz as their sole audience.34 In the opening prayer, which is to be said on all the days of the novena and is directed to Madre Santísima de la Luz, Alcocer sets the stage for the nine days by alluding to the origin story and the painting, as noted for the novenas mentioned above. In these allusions, he suggests the ideas expressed by the painting—offered heart, enkindled heart, darkness of sin, saving light—to prepare for the practitioner’s involvement in the story and 34. These nested first-person accounts and other narrative elements warrant some analysis in the narratology of prayer. However, this is a task for another study. 122 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING painting that he will propose in the changing prayer to Madre de la Luz across the nine days. While reading this prayer, the practitioner can turn to the frontispiece print to be reminded of the iconography of Madre’s image. In the changing prayer for the first day of the novena, Padre Alcocer—as he will do for all the days—presents details excerpted from the origin story, here the commencement of the vision. On this first day, to Madre Santísima de la Luz he gives infinite thanks that she deigned to appear to the sierva, was accompanied by angels, shone more beautifully than usual, and acquiesced to the apostolic priest’s request for protection and a painted portrait. The author—and with him, the practitioner—responds to this refined vision by expressing his confidence that Madre will admit him under her protection, such that “the image of your virtues [will] be stamped on the canvas of my soul, with the colors of permanent grace, until . . . [I will be] adoring in heaven the sacrosanct original of your almost Divine Being . . . for the glory of God, and yours.” In saying this, Alcocer associates the practitioner with the missionary priest in the story and also introduces an artistic metaphor into his prayer, making the creation of the original painting a prototype for the development of virtue in the devotee’s life. Still in Day One, Alcocer moves on to the day’s next non-changing prayer to Madre de la Luz. He references the origin story and painting when he addresses her: “you appeared, upholding with one hand your divine Son . . . and with the other taking out from the throat of the infernal dragon the soul of a sinner.” He associates himself with the sinner-soul and hell with the dragon, as depicted in the painting, when he cries to her, “how my great sins so many times have merited hell for me. . . .” Building on these suggestions, he then inserts himself more definitively into the origin story, following the iconography of the painting, when he prays, “most clement Mother, extend the powerful hand of your patronage in order to take me out from the abyss of my sins . . . that it [her grace] might entirely dissipate the black darkness of my spirit. . . .” Thus, on the first day of the novena, Alcocer has outlined part of the origin story of the apparitions and painting, identified several iconographic elements of the painting, and encouraged the practitioner to enter the image in the figure of the sinner-soul upheld by Madre’s hand. The role that the narrative incidents and the visual elements will play in the novena practitioner’s devotional life will be elaborated over the next eight days. Bernardo Alcocer’s Novena: Changing Prayers for Days Two through Nine From this point, the present analysis proceeds through the eight days, examining each day’s changing prayer to Madre de la Luz. In these exami- BERNARD CESARONE 123 nations, first a passage is quoted in which Padre Alcocer highlights selected events from the narrative and scenes from the image, then another passage is quoted in which he associates the events and scenes with aspects of practitioners’ devotional lives, and finally comments are offered on how this association has encouraged practitioners to enter the narrative and the image. In the changing prayer for Day Two, the author (and the novena practitioner) prays: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks because, having permitted your devotee [sierva] to see you, so resplendent and beautiful . . . you wanted your Most Holy Son to appear in your sovereign arms in the figure of a tender Child, with the countenance of extreme joy, affable and smiling. . . . Here Alcocer has recapitulated some of the incidents of the origin story and visual elements of the painting that were mentioned in the prayers from the previous day: Madre’s apparition, her beauty, the Christ child in her arms, the child’s smiling face filled with love. The author (and the practitioner likewise) beseeches his holy mother, I beg you that you do not permit that, on the day of judgment, I see angry the face of your Sovereign Son, my God and Lord; but that, being through your intercession one of the chosen ones at his right hand, I might merit to hear from his divine lips the sentence of my eternal happiness. . . . The author and practitioner enter the story and the painting by taking the role of the sinner-soul gazing on the Christ child’s face. In this case, however, Alcocer deviates from the story and painting by replacing the sierva’s vision of the child’s smiling face with his imagined sight of the adult Savior’s angry face. But knowing the power of her grace, he expects to avoid that wrathful countenance. On the third day, he continues the origin story of the advocation: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks and praises for having appeared . . . holding up in the air, with your right hand, the soul of a sinner exposed to fall into the jaws of the infernal dragon, teaching us thus that, if you take back a little the hand of your protection, I would stay . . . miserably burned in that abyss of flames. Again he personalizes the story, knowing that without her he is lost. “Mother and my Lady . . . I humbly beg that you do not permit my obstinacy and rebelliousness to oblige you to take me out of your hand, because 124 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING I will lose myself without remedy. . . .” His flaws (or sins), are what has put him in the state of dangling before the dragon’s maw—that is, he plays the role of the sinner-soul in both the origin story and the painting—and it is Madre’s gracious hand that takes him back from this condition: [M]ost pious Queen, pity my misery, separate me from every occasion of sin, with your most liberal hand offering me the lights of efficacious aids that might take me back from the misfortunes of the world and might make straight for me, through the path of virtue, the road of heaven. . . . However, the efficacious aids comprise a grace that requires a serious response: a change of behavior that replaces flaws or sins with virtue. Following the now-established pattern, the origin story proceeds on Day Four: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks because, having approved the design that the hearts of men were painted for you . . . you deigned to send an angel with a basket of hearts that, presenting them to your Son, he took them one by one, enkindling them in his divine love such that with your celestial wisdom solicitous of new forms with which to accommodate yourself to our rustic manner of understanding, you would want to persuade us how much Son and Most Holy Mother were on our side, anxious for the love of sinners. Here he recalls the iconography of the angel offering hearts to the Christ child—that is, the “design” that had been in the Jesuit priest’s mind—who enkindles them. He also acknowledges that Madre wishes the “new form”—that is, the painting of this new advocation—to be a vehicle for expressing her concern for sinners, who are represented in the soul precariously snatched from the open jaw of hell by Madre’s hand. Once again, he (and, throughout, the practitioner) enters into the story and the image, and takes his guardian angel with him, as he prays “that you send my guardian angel who, untying my heart from the knots of my rebellious passions, he might offer it to your Most Holy Son in order that he inflame it in his love. . . .” As he enters the story and the painting— that is, as his heart is in the basket and his guardian angel kneels by Madre’s side—he has elaborated somewhat on the cause for his position in front of the dragon’s fiery mouth: passion and sin are related. On the fifth day, Alcocer prays, Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks for having revealed to your devotee [sierva] how much the title of Madre Santísima BERNARD CESARONE 125 de la Luz pleases you, in which . . . there are summed up all the praises and glorious renown that the Holy Fathers have given you, repeating to her [sierva] three times the command that they had to name you with this admirable title, not revealed in past centuries to so many holy souls. . . . The references are to Madre’s pleasure over her new self-proclaimed title and to her forceful command to the sierva not to forget it. Further, there is an implication that the new title is more glorious than all the other titles by which she has been called across the centuries. After noting this triple command, the author moves on to laud his favored Madre. Because of the spiritual benefits that he or she receives from Madre, the novena participant—reading Padre Alcocer’s fervent words—here promises to sing her praises, just as did the sierva, the religious priest, and the Sicilian Jesuit fathers in the apostolic missions, as described in the origin story. “I hope . . . that you imprint them [the spiritual benefits] on my soul for the stimulation of my gratitude . . . exerting myself to proclaim your glories and to procure that all might . . . celebrate you with this new title. . . .” With these words, Alcocer expresses a metaphor of image making (as he did on Day One), with the printing of spiritual benefits on his soul alluding to the painting of Madre’s image on canvas. Further, with their gratitude, he and the practitioner participate in the Jesuit missionaries’ celebration of the glory of the new title. However, on this day Alcocer deviates from the chronology of the story, given that the proclaiming of Madre’s glories occurred after the completion of the painting and the crushing of the devil’s assaults, which in proper sequence, would occur after the events described on the final two days of the novena. The story continues on Day Six: “Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks because with your Image not having turned out according to the design that you had given to your devotee [sierva] . . . you saw fit to return to reveal yourself, and again to command that the portrait be made entirely in conformity to your sovereign order. . . .” With this reference to Madre’s acquiescence, and indeed command, to be painted a second time after the palermitano artist’s inaccurate first effort, the lesson that her devotees are to learn is “to understand the manner with which we should dedicate ourselves to obey unreservedly the divine commandments.” His lack of obedience has spoiled the image in his soul, as the painter’s lack of skill and attention spoiled the first painting. Alcocer directs his Holy Mother’s gaze to the spoiled image in his soul—which has become the spoiled image in the story—as he asks that she turn “the eyes of your mercy toward my soul, and look at the image of 126 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING God . . . as my disobedience . . . has placed it, that seems more the image of the devil, for the black stains of sin. . . .” He takes the sierva’s role and beseeches Madre that she “be moved piously to retouch it [the image of God in his soul] by your hand with the brush of your grace and light of efficacious aid . . . not permitting that my sins return to erase that beautiful Image. . . .” On this day, the devotee’s soul, with its errors, enters the story, though not the faulty image (by now discarded and replaced). Moreover, when Madre’s retouching is accomplished, the practitioner, beyond merely entering into the origin story, will become the perfected painting itself. The changing prayer for Day Seven attends to that part of the origin story which recounts the artist’s second effort at painting Madre’s image: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks and praises for having seen fit to find yourself present at the second painting of the Image, having condescended piously to the supplications of your devotee [sierva], by whom you let yourself be seen, in order that holding you before her eyes, she [sierva] might guide the painter vocally, with you invisibly guiding his brush, in a way that, with the work being concluded, it was known in its superhuman beauty that your superior art had disposed the idea and copied your Image. As the first spoiled painting was replaced by a beautiful canvas in the origin story, so too the practitioner’s spoiled soul-image (on Day Six) now might be corrected with Madre’s renewed intervention. In Day Seven’s prayer, the devotee’s directors stand in for the sierva and the painter, as Alcocer continues, I humbly pray to you that you direct my . . . superiors and confessors, putting to them salutary and efficacious teachings . . . [to] guide me to practice holy works . . . with such perfection, that all might know through their supernatural beauty that the superior light of grace gave them being and beauty for the adornment of my soul. . . . Given this result, the beauty of the practitioner’s soul—now identified with the perfected image—would be a sign to others of Madre’s grace and light, just as was the second beautiful canvas (the “original” painting) in Palermo. Alcocer continues on the eighth day with his account of the events after the original painting was completed: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks because having seen your sacred Image so beautiful and graceful, that robs the hearts of whoever looks at it . . . showing your pleasure, you lifted up your right hand and with the sign of the cross you gave it [the image] your blessing, BERNARD CESARONE 127 communicating thus to your sacred portrait the virtue of continuous miracles in benefit of sinners. The participant contemplates the blessing that Madre conferred upon the finished painting and is reminded of the miracles that were done in the subsequent Jesuit missions in Sicily. On the previous day, the author (and the practitioner) identified the perfected image of Madre with the renewed image of beauty in his soul. Today he continues, beseeching Madre’s blessing on the latter. “I humbly ask you that you turn another time to look at the image of your son, my God, imprinted on my soul and give it . . . your sacrosanct blessing, with the sign of the holy cross, in order that it might be perfected and made beautiful. . .” and “that, through your mercy and piety, may I come to have it engraved on my forehead, as an indelible sign of my eternal salvation. . . .” He thus makes yet another artistic analogy with the engraving of a copy of the image in his soul upon his (metaphorical) forehead; in the same way that many engravings and painted copies were made of the original Palermo image of Madre. Though he speaks of the painted portrait in this day’s prayer, Alcocer attends to its artistic qualities (beauty, grace) rather than to iconographic details. The devotee enters the story insofar as Madre is now asked to bless the image of God in his or her soul. Thus, Padre Alcocer associates the origin story with the devotee’s spiritual life. He again uses Madre’s image painted on canvas as a prototype for the image of God imprinted on the devotee’s soul (and forehead), which is, if not the image itself, a copy of it. The author brings the origin story to its end on Day Nine: Oh Madre Santísima de la Luz! I give you infinite thanks because with all hell having armed itself whether against the religious author . . . or against your same portrait, exerting itself to destroy him with continuous assaults. . . ; You, Most Holy Mother, have made disappear all the insults of Satan, freeing your sacred image and [freeing] whoever praised and venerated you from his infernal furies with portentous miracles, for the greater confusion of the prince of darkness. Alcocer now calls for Madre’s aid in the face of the devil’s assaults against his own soul with its now beautiful image: [W]ith all my heart I beg you . . . do not permit the demon to execute in my soul the havoc that tries his malice, defending me from his diabolic arms with the shield of your protection and with the lights of your refuge, 128 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING that they [the shield and lights] might exile the infernal enemy and oblige him to make known that he has no power nor forces to fight with those who have invoked your protection: this I implore, my Lady and Mother. . . . Here Padre Alcocer, with his retelling of the devil’s assaults, brings the story to a close. Again, the devotee enters this concluding part of the story while begging Madre’s protection against the devil’s assaults on his or her soul, which takes the place of the painting in the origin story. Here some of the praises from Day Six are recapitulated. Then the author and the novena practitioner conclude their nine days’ discipline with a final lauding appeal, beseeching Madre to “carry me . . . to the celestial fatherland, to add to the number of your devotees, to see you and praise you eternally. Amen.” Summary and Implications These excerpts have shown how Bernardo Alcocer has used the daily changing prayer to recapitulate the sequence of events of the origin story of the cult of Madre Santísima de la Luz. On the novena’s first day, he retold much of the story (in abbreviated form, after Rincón’s version). On subsequent days, he highlighted selected details as points for meditation. These were Madre’s first apparition, her beauty, the Christ child in her arms, and his smiling face (Day Two); her upholding the sinner-soul before the jaws of hell (Day Three); Madre’s approval of the design of the hearts, the angel with a basket of hearts, and the child’s taking and enkindling the hearts (Day Four); Madre’s command to call her by the chosen name, and the proclaiming of her praises (Day Five); her command that a second portrait be made (Day Six); the making of the second portrait (Day Seven); Madre’s blessing of the completed portrait (Day Eight); and the devil’s assault against the portrait and the missionary priest (Day Nine). With each of these events of the origin story, Alcocer has associated them to the spiritual life of the novena practitioner to such an extent that, with varying levels of intensity, devotees become both participants in the origin narrative, whose text they are reading, and figures in the painting, whose details they can view in the frontispiece print. Thus, with regard to the narrative participation, there is a similarity between the devotional technique proposed by Alcocer, according to which the devotee enters the narrative, and that proposed by the early authors up to Ignatius, by Ignatius himself, and by Jesuit authors after Ignatius. However, there are also some differences. Compared to the meditations in the earlier texts, which were meant to be sustained through reading over a long time, Alcocer’s advice applies to short periods, perhaps half an hour, on each of the nine days. BERNARD CESARONE 129 Another difference is found in the narrative’s source material. The late medieval accounts are well-known and extensive celebrations of the lives of Christ and the Virgin, taken from scripture and apocrypha. In comparison, the story that Alcocer tells is neither so well-known (having occurred but a few decades previous) nor so temporally extended a narrative (having occurred over just a few months). The fact that the story is entirely an extra-scriptural account based on the visions of a female was a concern to suspicious ecclesiastical authorities. These differences are noteworthy, but Padre Alcocer’s unique contribution is most significant to the purpose of this essay. In contrast to earlier texts in which the reader entered the story as an extra character (as in Pseudo-Bonaventure) or imaginatively constructed a setting for an episode (as in Ignatius’s exercises and in Vidal), Alcocer has his readers identify with a character in the story, the sinner-soul held by Madre (and likewise for the reader’s guardian angel and heart). Then, to this narrative participation, Alcocer adds advice by which the reader participates as a figure in the iconography of the painting itself. In contrast to other novenas on Madre de la Luz in which the reader is occasionally encouraged to participate in both the story and the image (as noted above), Alcocer does this consistently and systematically across the entire nine days. He advises more concentrated visualizations than do other authors in his simultaneous guiding of readers through a story and into an image. Further, his readers participate as a figure in a painting, not as an additional character entering a scene. The advocation of Madre Santísima de la Luz itself presented her to her devotees in a single, intensely familiar, composition (repeated in many paintings and prints). Finally, for the origin of this devotion, the principal event (the sierva’s vision) in a series of historical events, and its painted expression, arose simultaneously. To a large extent, the painting is the principal event. Under Padre Alcocer’s guidance, the devotee becomes a visual element (sinner-soul, heart, angel) in the painting.35 The fact that the historical event is a visionary experience is also significant. The painting shows the interior of a visionary mind, excerpted from the story. The novena practitioners who look upon Madre’s image are, of course, not visionary saints. But standing before a painting of Madre de la Luz, the devotee assumes the role of a visionary; he or she sees anew what the sierva once saw in a church in Palermo. When Padre Alcocer of 35. The differences pointed out here apply to late medieval texts, to some earlier Jesuit texts, and to contemporary texts on Madre de la Luz. The uniqueness of Alcocer’s contribution in comparison to texts on other advocations or holy personages requires further study. 130 DEVOTEES PARTICIPATE IN STORY AND PAINTING Pénjamo advises, across the nine days, that the practitioner enter into the origin narrative and into the painting, he impels the devotee to step inside a Marian vision. The sierva entered the visionary state through meditation after communion; for the novena practitioner, the act of meditation is the entering into the vision. There are some implications of this guided action of entering inside a Marian vision, both for devotees of Madre de la Luz and for students of religious visionary art and of sometimes provocative Marian theology. Although the original Marian vision occurred in the context of events that are “historical,” they are not part of “salvation history” as usually understood. The story, painting, and novena acknowledge (though in this they are not unique) the possibilities of divine intervention in the present and of salvific spiritual experience through Marian devotion. Another implication concerns the nature of the devotee’s soul. When Alcocer speaks of the soul, he compares it to a canvas (especially on Days Six and Seven). As the artist applied Madre’s image to canvas with his brush, first inaccurately, then beautifully, likewise the devotees color their soul ill or well with the brush of vice or virtue. When devotees step into Madre’s painting during the novena, they enter the sierva’s vision, now their own vision, and they enter their own soul colored with Madre’s virtue. This soul preexisted the devotee’s spiritual life. Presuming a resolve to a well-lived life, the soul assumes Madre’s virtue, the devotee who possesses the soul is lost in Madre’s vision, and soul and devotee become like unto divinity—but not a patriarchal divinity. Of course, while practicing the novena, devotees will not torture themselves over this sort of theology. Neither does Alcocer. It is theologians or curious scholars who seek to explain with words the devotee’s heart. Devotees simply fill their hearts with love for Madre. A final insight—perhaps not, strictly speaking, an implication—is that, wonderful as it is to step inside a Marian vision, that is still not the point of the novena exercise. As mystical theologians warn their readers, visions and such experiences can be no more than spiritual ostentation.36 36. One example of this warning comes from Jesuit Miguel Godínez, a seventeenthcentury writer whose most important work was popular in eighteenth-century New Spain. One chapter of his treatise on mystical theology discusses extraordinary effects such as visions and ecstasies. Here he says that spiritual life consists in the exercise of virtues and in fulfilling one’s obligations, and since extraordinary experiences have nothing to do with this, they are not an integral part of spiritual life. See: Miguel Godínez, Practica de la theologia mystica. . . , 423–24. BERNARD CESARONE 131 The point is the even subtler change of repentance and conviction, and then of behavior, on the part of the devotee. This change is sometimes stated, sometimes implied, in Alcocer’s novena prayers, in which he speaks of Madre as queen, lady, protectress, guide. True, for a lazy Christian, these prayers can be excuses to avoid religious discipline. But for an energetic practitioner, they can lay out a path of ego surrender. Alcocer identifies some of the steps on the path: cultivating virtues, imitating the life of the Virgin (in the manner of Kempis’s Imitation of Christ), assuming responsibility for (and thereby correcting) one’s faults and sins, and undertaking holy works as counseled by one’s spiritual director. Text by itself could encourage the practitioner to undertake these activities, but here, Alcocer’s text also impels the devotee to identify with scenes in a painting (familiar through its many copies and the frontispiece image included with the novena). In so doing, Alcocer demonstrates a strong confidence in the power of the image to effect these understandings and changes in behavior. Both a general attitude of surrender and the practice of particular disciplines are set before the novena practitioner. Even a casual practitioner will get some benefit. Yet, for one who intensely and diligently concentrates the mind on the incidents of a holy story and on the elements of a holy painting to the point of entering into them, as advised in the novena, his or her concentrated mind—along with the virtues and the works—is itself a spiritual benefit granted by Madre Santísima de la Luz. Miscellany Digital Scholarship in the Field of Church History LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON A s we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the economy of knowledge exchange is now securely situated in the online medium. As the landscape of academic knowledge sharing continues to shift, scholars now rely upon the online medium in their everyday working lives, even if they do not consider themselves digital scholars. Every time a scholar searches through a database or internet-based catalogue from the library, he or she is entering into a computer-based approach to knowledge acquisition and production. The powers afforded to us by digital tools in turn shape our expectations about how we work; likewise, the more borndigital material we consume, the more likely it is that we will expand upon and express our scholarship in digitally-inflected formats. Online academia has changed how we receive, reuse, and cite scholarship in our own subfields. Nowadays, we are more likely to follow up on a footnote by searching for pdfs in an online library than to spend hours in the periodical reading room of the brick-and-mortar one, searching out those same materials. Additionally, we also rely upon born-digital finding aids, curated online corpora, and even projects that explore a particular research question that might open the door to other avenues of scholarly activity. Electronic communication has transformed how we share knowledge because it is both instantaneous and remains open to ongoing modification. No matter how analogue one’s practice may be, scholarly ideas are now shared, refined, and expressed in a digital world. Like colleagues in all scholarly communities, historians of the Church have witnessed the proliferation of computer-based work, and many have come to depend upon resources and research outputs that are available only in online formats. Although this scholarship does indeed trace its origins to traditional forms of research and learning and shares many of its same motivations, digital work is distinctive in a number of ways. With the power to organize and present large amounts of data, it is also interactive, communal, and team based, and it promotes accessible and open knowledge sharing. Given the importance of digital scholarship, it should 132 LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 133 be more fully incorporated into systems of rewarding scholarly productivity, and those who produce it should be granted due recognition. With this in mind, the editorial board of the Catholic Historical Review is adding a review section for born-digital scholarship that addresses the journal’s purview, that is, “the history of the universal Church.” What is digital scholarship? 1 Since peer review remains fundamental to all serious intellectual endeavors, the CHR section dedicated to born-digital scholarship both recognizes these newer expressions of knowledge and integrates them within the more traditional format of the scholarly journal review. Digital work is not an either/or proposition. It does not replace previous forms of scholarship, but rather accompanies and relies upon them even as it ushers in and facilitates new ways of considering, aggregating, and analyzing the materials that serve as witness to our collective pasts. Digital scholarship transcends mere digitization or database construction; instead, scholars are now using online tools and resources to study previously unknown or inaccessible materials and to use older sources in ways that were previously unimagined. Like many approaches to scholarship, machine-aided historical analysis has its own backstory. An AHA-sponsored blog post from the early 2000s put forth an early definition of digital history with an emphasis on the analytical possibilities of the medium as well as its power to disseminate information.2 Over time, the origin story of digital history has become more detailed and complete, so that it now encompasses the quantitative history movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These movements were subsequently bolstered by advances in personal computing and the development of the Internet in the last decades of the twentieth century and early decades of the twenty-first.3 The proliferation of personal 1. Michael Piotrowski, “Ain’t No Way Around It: Why We Need to Be Clear About What We Mean by ‘Digital Humanities,’” SocArXiv, April 14, 2020. doi:10.31235/osf.io/ d2kb6. 2. Douglas Seefeldt and William G. Thomas, “What is Digital History?,” Perspectives on History, May 1, 2009, historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/ may-2009/what-is-digital-history. For a more recent discussion, see Stephen Robertson and Lincoln A. Mullen. “Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation,” Journal of Social History 54, no. 4 (2021): 1005–1022, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shab015. 3. William G. Thomas, “Computing and the Historical Imagination.” A Companion to Digital Humanities (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004), 56–58. For a more nuanced version of this narrative in which the pioneering role of women in digital history is recounted, see Sharon M. Leon, “Complicating a ‘Great Man’ Narrative of Digital 134 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY computers has allowed digital scholarly methods to go beyond merely computational exercises to encompass a fuller range of historical work, including dissemination of texts, access to and manipulation of images, and networking of geographic or prosopographical data.4 Computationallyoriented and digitally-inflected history is therefore not a recent phenomenon, but has rather evolved over the past three-quarters of a century. Much of the same quantitative historical work that was undertaken in an analogue fashion in the past is now executed by computers that are far more efficient and accurate in completing such tasks. However, the integration of digital practices into historical work has not been strictly linear. Instead, technologies and methods of history writing have evolved together, with more traditional forms both relying upon and promoting the work done in the digital realm. Using Domesday Book as an example, Robin Fleming’s seminal 1991 work, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, relied upon data that had been encoded using computer-based tools.5 Fleming’s book promoted new ways of thinking about a well-known source, which in turn inspired new digital versions of Domesday, geared to more popular consumption.6 As Fleming’s work suggests, there has been an evolution from the digitized texts and databases created during the first age of computerized historical studies, which were often accessible only to the scholars who had done the work. This was in part due to the expense of the hardware and the expertise needed to run the software upon which so much of this work depended. With advances in both hardware and software, we can now disseminate material almost effortlessly and organize our computer-based data efficiently, often relying upon older models of information management like dictionaries and indexes, as per finding aids.7 History in the United States,” in Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities, edited by Losh Elizabeth and Wernimont Jacqueline, 344–66 (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), accessed September 1, 2021. doi:10.5749/ j.ctv9hj9r9.22. 4. For geodata, see historical gazetteers like Pleiades, https://pleiades.stoa.org/, or the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online, https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/ vocabularies/tgn/. 5. Wikipedia, BBC Domesday Project, “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_ Project,” accessed September 1, 2021. 6. Robin Fleming and Andrew Lowerre, “MacDomesday Book. Review Article,” Past & Present, 184 (2004): 209–32. 7. Dennis Duncan, Index, a History of the: a Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age, first American edition (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2022). LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 135 Like traditional scholarship, digital work calls upon a wide range of disciplinary methodologies to pose and answer historical questions. Among the most common genres of computer-enabled scholarship are mapping projects, searchable databases (similar to analogue finding aids), network visualizations (plotting connections among people, places, or things that are presented in graph or chart form), and source collections or corpora assemblages.8 All of these rely on long-standing practices in humanities inquiry, yet the digital medium supports these efforts in ways that are often more efficient, more democratic, and more cohesive than was possible in the era of print-alone scholarship. Computer-enabled methods allow us to employ new modes of analysis, whether we are examining millions of pieces of information at once, identifying and isolating individual examples from among a large data set, or making connections across our materials in ways we have never been able to before. Digital methodologies also draw their power from an ability to bring together scholars from different fields. Subject-area specialists, librarians, and experts in information technology—oftentimes working in several sub-specialties—are crucial to all high-quality digital work. Digital workflows promote collaboration among experts from different scholarly fields that were previously accessible to the subject-area specialist in one field alone. Consequently, this new collaborative orientation shapes the work from the start, both in how it is initially conceived and created, and later, in how the material is received, used, and reused. The future clearly belongs to team-based projects that can draw on diverse expertise to deepen the effect of these research efforts. Historians of the Church have been active participants in born-digital scholarship since its inception, and have continued to employ computerbased methods in team-based projects on topics that cross time and geography.9 These range from a study of Christian settlements in modern day China (China Historical Christian Database) to an examination of Synodal Decrees and their application in fifteenth-century European diocesan courts 8. TaDiRAH (Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities), downloadable at http://tadirah.dariah.eu/vocab/index.php, accessed November 10, 2021, offers a helpful classification system for digital methods. 9. See, for example China Historical Christian Database, BU https://chcdatabase. com/, Dictionary of African Christian Biography, BU https://dacb.org/; The Corpus Synodalium, https://corpus-synodalium.com/; and those mentioned by Kyle Roberts, in: “What is the future of CatholicDH?,” The Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project, January 8, 2017, https://jesuitlibrariesprovenanceproject.com/2017/01/08/what-is-the-future-of-catholicdh/. 136 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY (The Corpus Synodalium), surveyed here below, to a repository of materials about African-American Catholics for classroom use. We have even evolved to the point that we have guidebooks on digital methods and various subfields of interest to CHR readership.10 These projects have already contributed enormously to our understanding of the topics they address, yet their potential to enter into scholarly discourse has been curtailed due to the lack of a normalized citation and preservation system. Why is digital scholarship important, particularly for historians of the Church? Because much born-digital research originates as collaborative work, it often achieves a deeper and more visible penetration into public spaces, if only because the participating scholars’ networks help expand awareness of the final product from the outset. Moreover, online scholarship is designed to be outward-facing and interactive. Computer-based projects anticipate a user just as an author anticipates a reader, but the metrics of digital impact–how often users sign on to a project and how long they stay–are powerful motivators for project initiators to make their work engaging, since they will ultimately help determine its success. Access to user metrics means that project directors can not only quantify the work’s impact, but also argue for long-term maintenance and expansion of their scholarship. For example, Fordham University’s Internet History Sourcebook Project, which began as a means to disseminate sources from the medieval world, receives upwards of 11 million visitors per year; by citing these statistics, project directors were able to secure funding to support the project’s ongoing maintenance and even to expand the site’s content beyond the Middle Ages.11 Directors of digital projects are thus able to build upon their own quantifiable success to make their work even more accessible and functional as they seek to expand their target audience. Scholarship flourishes when ideas are shared widely, and individual scholars benefit when their work is read and cited by others. The digital medium not only supports easy knowledge-sharing; it excels at it. 10. Tim and Claire Clivaz Hutchings, Digital Humanities and Christianity: An Introduction (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2021). https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/ 10.1515/9783110574043 11. The exact number for the period between November 2011 and November 2012 was 11,688,246, accounting for nearly one third (32.56%) of all hits to the Fordham University website; Laura Morreale and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Web Analytics for the Internet History Sourcebook Project (IHSP) Summary Report,” December 2012, Fordham University (no pub.). The number of annual hits to the site has not diminished considerably since. LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 137 Hyperlinking resources, copying and pasting directly from the screen to another text-based program, and downloading text or spreadsheet-based data with one click of the mouse are just some of the ways that born-digital scholarship promotes knowledge refinement and reuse. The interactive nature of online scholarship even allows for continuous improvement of what has been presented, based on user input. And finally, because borndigital scholarship is often open-access, it offers an entryway to interested learners who may not have access to the often exclusionary university-bound structures of knowledge creation and dissemination. Crowd-sourced scholarship, often moderated by a team of researchers or historians, is another example of how the online medium can create an audience of willing participants who come to understand and promote scholarly ideas through an investment of their own time and intellectual labor.12 Citation Despite the ease with which scholarship can be disseminated, shared, and even created via the digital medium, challenges remain as to how that material can be located and cited by scholars on a reliable ongoing basis. For this reason, best practice suggests that project initiators should catalog all the materials used in their online scholarship so that others can relocate and refer to their work with confidence. To do so, digital scholars should upload all the files used to create their project, including word documents, spreadsheets, images, audio files, pdfs of web pages, and any other digital objects to a public-facing digital repository, so that other scholars can see the data supporting the project’s historical argument. In the process, project leaders should create a permanent digital object identifier (doi) that will ensure secure citation in the future, just as was the case in more traditional systems of scholarly citation in the past.13 Moreover, citation is also a means to grant credit to all of the members of the team who worked to create a project.14 Granting credit for work done thereby provides all of the participating scholars–from graduate students to those working off the 12. For an example of crowdsourced scholarly activity, see Monica Keene, Laura Morreale, Christine Kralik, and Benjamin L. Albritton, “Image Du Monde Transcription Challenge Project Archiving Dossier Narrative,” BodoArXiv. February 22, 2021. doi:10.34055/osf.io/ep3b6. 13. https://zenodo.org/, https://hcommons.org/. For guidance on how to catalog digital projects, see Katherina Fostano and Laura K. Morreale. The Digital Documentation Process, 2019, accessed May 3, 2022, https://digitalhumanitiesddp.com/. 14. The model of scientific publications that grant credit to multiple authors is promising, but given the differing research aims, adopting this model wholesale is not a perfect solution for the humanities. 138 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY tenure track to full professors to independent scholars—a means to be recognized as a part of the scholarly discourse that journals hope to promote. Standardized titles that correspond to the type of work done in digital humanities projects have recently been established, so that project directors can indicate the work done by each contributor.15 The CHR reviewers will prioritize projects that are fully cataloged because we hope to promote a reliable system of digital citation and to ensure that both our reviewers and our readers can access the materials over the long-term. By fostering greater durability of the projects under consideration we will encourage the proper acknowledgment of those who have contributed to the final product and make our readers more aware of the most current work in the field. In doing so, we hope to set a standard for digital scholarly reviews that other journals will imitate. Criteria for Reviews of Digital Scholarship Reviews will evaluate projects based on their scholarly contribution, including their engagement with current historiography and primary historical materials, their relevance to the field of Catholic historical studies, and the suitability of the digital medium for the subject of inquiry. Particular attention will be paid to the analytical caliber of digital projects and to their scope, which should transcend mere digitization of texts or data.16 Reviews will address how well a project makes use of the digital medium, considering visual and design elements as well as user experience. A reviewer might ask, for example, whether the project makes effective use of non-verbal forms of communication (icons, page design, color choice) to navigate through the material and support the project’s overall argument, or whether instructions on how to interact with the project are clearly indicated or self-evident. As with any scholarly product, the less obtrusive the apparatus, the better. In text-based argumentation, a complex series of footnotes and endnotes can distract from an author’s otherwise compelling prose; likewise, multiple click-throughs or buried menu-items can interrupt the intellectual impact of born-digital argumentation. 15. “[M]any digitization projects also represent significant intellectual investment, such as the work done by the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, with its rich collection of nonwestern manuscript sources.” CASRAI, https://casrai.org/credit/. 16. We acknowledge the enormous amount of work and expertise required in the digitization process, and the skill needed from librarians and cataloguers to make materials available online. It is only thanks to their work that historians have access to these works and an opportunity to analyze them according to their own disciplinary training. LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 139 Similarly, text should be concise and limited compared to other scholarly formats, since hyper-linking and the ease of integrating multi-media are among the advantages of digital as opposed to print media. Moreover, any digital initiative should be transparent about its methodologies, its data, and the nature of its sources. The technological aspects of creating the project should be spelled out and available on the project interface. We have commissioned four reviews of web-based scholarship, chosen from across the time periods traditionally covered by the Catholic Historical Review. These reviews should serve as a model for future reviews, which we hope will be a standard feature of the journal going forward. We see this initiative as a way to appreciate digital scholarship for what it contributes to the ongoing conversation about Catholic history. Joel Kalvesmaki’s review of the HMML Authority File from the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) in Collegeville, Minnesota, highlights the important work done by libraries and manuscript repositories to increase access to sources and create standardized citation systems for the scholars who use them. As Kalvesmaki explains, this is far more than a plan to re-catalogue the Library’s materials or to add HMML-specific information for those who travel to the collection or use their materials online. Rather, the HMML Authority File employs recognized methods for establishing controlled vocabularies to refer to the “persons, works, families, organizations, and places” that appear in their holding’s materials, which will allow them to link their holdings to other libraries, repositories, and citational authorities. The foundational work of building these vocabularies and creating links among institutional holdings will translate into greater reliability for scholars as they identify historical actors, entities, or locales and refer to them in their scholarship. One example of a project that might in the future benefit from such a standarization of terminology is the Migration of Faith project, here reviewed by Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent. The project is the work of a team of scholars led by Julia Hillner, Joerg Ulrich, Jakob Engberg, and Dirk Rohmann that plots both the movements and networked relationships of exiled bishops in Late Antiquity. Migration of Faith enables its users to create maps and diagrams based on their own research queries. As Saint-Laurent notes, the project takes advantage of the digital medium to offer a logical accompaniment and extension of previous and ongoing research on clerical exile that appears in a more traditional format. Miri Rubin’s review of the Corpus Synodalium project, which grew out of doctoral research conducted by the editor, Rowan Dorin, lays out the 140 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY many historiographical tasks that can be better accomplished when it is possible to search the synodal decrees that grew out of the many councils held at every level of the church, from the local to the ecumenical. Rubin cites Dorin’s own monograph on mass expulsions of Jews, which was deeply informed by his research in the synodal decrees, and suggests that other scholars will be able to use the database to answer their own research questions. Rubin rightly commends the project for making its technical specifications accessible to those who are interested in peeking behind the digital curtain while remaining accessible to users of all levels of experience with online research tools. Finally, it is important to note that digital history work can serve the needs of teachers as well as scholars, as in the American Catholic History Classroom project, created by Maria Mazzenga and reviewed by Fr. Stephen M. Koeth. Fr. Koeth praises this project for making available a wide array of primary materials on Catholic history that are typically omitted from the more secularly-oriented texts that most American students are exposed to, along with helpful timelines and introductory essays that will surely be a boon to educators as well as students, while also noting some areas where the site could take better advantage of the capacity to reproduce images in digital form. The wide variety of projects under review in this inaugural section—from databases to social network diagrams to curated teaching resources—speaks to the exciting range of projects currently being undertaken by scholars across the many subfields of church history. We look forward to highlighting more such work in future issues of the Catholic Historical Review. HMML Authority File. Hill Museum and Manuscript Library. HMML Authority File. 2002. https://haf.vhmml.org. When writing about antiquity and the medieval period, scholars, publishers, libraries, archives, and museums rely heavily upon controlled vocabulary lists to avoid confusion arising from ambiguity or vagueness. Such lists allow us to disambiguate persons or things with the same name (e.g., Caesarea), and to correlate multiple names or alternative spellings for the same entity (e.g., Caesarea/Keysariya/Qesarya/Καισάρεια). In digital scholarship, controlled vocabulary is handled through unique identifiers (commonly known as Universal Resource Identifiers, or URIs) that are related to each other through the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a model that stipulates rules to allow people and projects to make simple assertions. When those assertions are built upon shared URIs, or LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 141 URIs that are known to be synonymous, our datasets become interoperable, meaning that information produced in one context can be reused and cited elsewhere, for example. In the ecosystem that relies on RDF, commonly called the Semantic Web or Linked Open Data (also known as LOD), there tend to be two types of activities: (1) building, coordinating, and curating controlled vocabulary, and (2) using vocabulary to make assertions. The first type of activity typifies the bulk of material provided by the HMML Authority File (HAF; https://haf.vhmml.org/), a database of persons, works, families, organizations, and places. HAF grows out of the work of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. HMML is home to a very significant international manuscript digitization project, now holding more than 300,000 manuscript scans. If one were to include digital surrogates when comparing manuscript collections by size, HMML would be the world’s largest manuscript repository. Although focused on endangered Christian manuscripts, HMML’s domain also covers Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu manuscripts. Artefacts come from Africa, Asia, and Europe, and preserve texts in more than seventy different languages. Premodern print culture is of primary concern, but their holdings include valuable modern manuscripts that uniquely preserve older texts. Given HMML’s ambitious goals, one might find HAF at first glance to be a mere shadow of its parent. For example, the database of persons has, at present, only 6,437 entries, representing only a tiny fraction of the works that no doubt populate the manuscript collection. The disappointment might be deepened by clicking on any given HAF entry. The information is rather sparse, isolated to some basic metadata about the person, work, family, place, or organization, along with links to related authority lists (VIAF, Library of Congress, Getty, Wikidata, WorldCat, etc.). But HAF is not intended to be a traditional reference work. Rather, it is a foundation for reference works. As an authority (the A in HAF), it exhibits itself as a reliable and stable naming authority. The encoded metadata is the result of scholars reading the manuscripts carefully. The authority list is intended primarily to assist in cataloging HMML’s digital assets, an activity that will inevitably extend HAF. But HAF is secondarily intended to benefit third parties. Persons and groups working with material that intersects with HMML’s collections can rely upon HAF as an authority and should begin to incorporate HAF URIs as part of their data curation. By doing so, their projects will benefit from RDF-based associa- 142 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY tions stored in the HAF database. Upon the basis of Linked Open Data, HAF-engaged data sets can be used to address larger, complex questions that are unforeseen. HAF contains five databases that allow users to search for persons, works, families, organizations, and places. The persons database, with 7,898 records, provides life dates, gender, occupation, fields of activity, titles, language, variant names, and sometimes a brief description of each person. Names are commonly supplied in both Latin and native script. The works database, with 6,446 records, provides a normalized uniform title along with a version in the native script when appropriate. Also included are creation date, languages, genres, incipits, alternate titles, names of associated persons, and sometimes a brief description. The families database, with thirty-four records, provides a description, name and variants, dates and places where the family flourished, as well as cross-references to prominent members of the family mentioned in the persons database. The organizations database, with 2,644 records, covers various groups, churches, institutions, businesses, and other corporate entities. Each entry includes names in standard and variant spellings, locations, languages, fields of activity, dates, and normally a brief description. Cross-references are provided to parent organizations. Cross-references from parent to child organizations is a desideratum. The places database, with 1,837 records, supplies geocoordinates, variant names, and sometimes a brief description. It is hoped that in the future this data will incorporate URIs curated by the ancient world gazetteer Pleiades. For all five databases, cross-references are made when possible with controlled URI vocabularies curated by the Library of Congress, VIAF, and Getty. The relationships between entities is defined by the HMML Authority Description Schema, which defines HAF classes and properties through an OWL (Web Ontology Language)-style ontology. Relationships are coordinated closely with Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloging standards. HAF data is exposed on a REST-ful API as JSON-formatted data. The API is supported with ample documentation for developers. The search function on HAF is elegant, clean, and highly functional. A user can search in any Unicode-supported script across all five databases, and include advanced filters on the various fields. Any record can be downloaded in a variety of formats, or shared as desired. Because the data is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, it can be liberally reused and repurposed. LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 143 By tethering its databases to the Library of Congress’s Linked Data Service and their Name Authority Cooperative Program, HAF positions itself squarely within a cataphatic branch of digital humanities that assumes that entities can be noncommittally distinguished and named. Thus, for example, Dionysius has two entries, one for the first-century persona and the other for the fifth-century writer. The question of how many Hippolyti or Origens there are is skirted with a single entry for each author. HAF’s objective is to support as broad a range of perspectives as possible, without committing to any particular perspective. As a result, specialists may regard some HAF vocabulary as unsuitable for their RDFbased assertions. Sustainability is always a vexing topic in the digital humanities. Although there are no guarantees, the tethering of HAF to the fortunes of HMML and St. John’s University is promising, and raises hopes that the resource will mature in years to come. If HAF is developed and curated commensurate to HMML’s holdings, it will become one of the most significant authority databases of its type in the world. The Catholic University of America JOEL KALVESMAKI Julia Hillner, Dirk Rohmann, et al. The Migration of Faith:Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity. 2018. www.clericalexile.org. Between the fourth and sixth centuries, Christianity changed significantly in response to Christological controversies. Beginning with Constantine, emperors sought to foster unity among the Christian bishops. However, if a bishop did not conform to their articulation of Christology, one legal sanction open to the leaders was to exile the offending clerics. The exiles and reformation of the late antique hierarchy of Christian bishops had a lasting impact on ecclesial organization and structure, for even from their places of exile, these bishops built new networks. This topic has recently received significant interest in late antique Christian studies, as highlighted in Jennifer Barry’s recent monograph Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2019). Julia Hillner, Joerg Ulrich, and Jakob Engberg published a printed volume on the topic (Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity [Berlin, 2016]). In 2018, building on this work, Hillner and Rohmann and a team of scholars published the Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity database www.clericalexile.org, which charts these relationships both on a map of the late antique world and in a social network diagram. In doing so, the project explores the nexus 144 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY of legal circumstances, social connections, and spatial worlds that linked clerics with one another and the loci of their exile, thereby illuminating the late antique intersection between theology and politics. Drawing on over two-hundred ancient sources, this database contains 497 exile cases, 1177 persons or groups, and 422 locations. This impressive number of linked entries demonstrates the value of the project for understanding the dynamics of late antique Christian leadership, and the impact of the exiles on ecclesial organization and structures. This database provides scholars and students with an entrée to the study of exiled late antique clerics and is straightforward to use. The editors have mined normative documents to chart “institutional developments of the late antique Church in light of the quantitative information on spatiogeographical networks of banished clerics provided by the database” (https://blog.clericalexile.org/themes/). Although the database contains a robust amount of information, it still manages to present the user with a simple interface and design. The landing page leads one to a carousel on top of the page with links to “search,” “browse,” “map,” “network,” “list of sources,” “citation guide,” “download the data,” and “about.” The links work effectively. One can browse by person/group (entities of individuals or as collective peoples), location of exile, or exile case. Each person or collective entity (when an ancient author identifies groups of people who were exiled) has a uniform resource identifier or URI. The assignment of URIs to people, places, entities, etc., conforms to best practice in database design. URIs allow other databases to link to this database’s data. As a test case, I searched in the browse feature for “Peter the Fuller,” a Chalcedonian dissident from the end of the fifth century. He is identified in their database as “Petrus Fullo.” On the display page of his data, one can click on his name and then see when he was exiled, the location of exiles and previous bishopric (with a URI), the ancient sources of the data, the sources that mention the exile, interactions of this person with other individuals, and the nature of this interaction (supportive or hostile), and all the places in which this interaction took place. The database also links dates of arrival of the exile, places from which he was exiled, and places to which he was exiled. It provides the length and duration of the exile. It classifies the reason a person was exiled. It also documents what writings (if any) the person wrote in exile, whether he died while in exile, and any legal proceedings about the case. It also shows whether any one of the exiled was eventually honored as a saint in the Church. The editors note that the project allows legal historians, cultural historians, and theologians to study how banished clerics interacted with com- LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 145 munities and individuals. It shows that exile was a formative component of ecclesial development in late antiquity, particularly when we examine the established social networks and exchanges. It is not clear to me that the database has partnered or linked to other databases of ancient people and places, which could perhaps be explored in the future. The editors have also not explained the technical design of the database of what lies “under the hood” for interested digital humanists. However, this database sheds essential light on a topic of recent scholarly interest in an easy-to-use and open format. Marquette University JEANNE-NICOLE MELLON SAINT-LAURENT Rowan Dorin. Corpus Synodalium:Local Ecclesiastical Legislation in Medieval Europe. 2021. www.corpus-synodalium.com. This review of a digital project marks a new direction for this section. It is also the first such review I have ever written. It is fortunate to be starting with Corpus Synodalium, a user friendly database, aimed at helping users make the best of its content. Professor Rowan Dorin and his team have thought carefully about the content—synodal statutes, a rich source for the study of rules and practices that shaped church policy and religious life—but also about the usage. He has in mind scholars of varying levels of digital literacy, and exhibit an understanding of how in practice most scholars use digital platforms. First, let us consider the content. The decrees of church councils are the most ancient and formative sources for the study of ecclesiastical history. They have offered the basis for histories of the institutions of the Church—of its doctrine, pastoral provision, and church reform—in an always-changing Christian world. Church councils were understood as gatherings inspired by the Holy Spirit, and hence as being of authority that endured even when their decisions had been superseded by later councils; they formed part of canon law as understood by Gratian, and were even contemplated as an alternative to papal authority by some reformers of the later Middle Ages. Be it Byzantine iconoclasm, Carolingian liturgical reform, Gregorian political theory, or Innocent III’s vision of the societas Christiana, conciliar canons were communicated beyond the exclusive group of initiators at councils. All these ideas, about how Christian leaders should govern, teach, and fight the enemies of the faith—Jews, heretics, usurers, independent women in religion, venal priests, Turks, witches— were discussed and disseminated through the church councils: local, provincial, or ecumenical. 146 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY In recent decades, conciliar decrees have been used by historians in their studies of an even wider range of phenomena. My own work on the Eucharist and its reception relied a great deal on conciliar decrees through which new ideas about the sacrament—developed at the University of Paris—were disseminated. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 made these ideas law for all Christians in its canons 1 and 21, and these in turn inspired a cascade of diocesan councils that effectively spread the decrees across England, France, and Iberia, later to Flanders, and even later to central Europe. These synodal decrees mined ecumenical councils for important new regulations and adapted them to local traditions and needs. They cover a vast array of concerns and practices: priestly responsibilities in religious instruction, the provision of liturgy, and the maintenance of fabric; there is much attention to the spaces in which the sacraments were celebrated, and to the objects present at the altar: a metal chalice silvered or gilt, a pyx, a missal, lights, a sacring bell, and altar-cloths. In this manner synodal statutes aimed to spell out the normative expectations for Christian worship. Bishops’ visitations, and other documents of practice, record how often parishes fell short in the provision of this ideal environment for worship. Yet conciliar provisions created the framework within which priests and parishioners, donors and churchwardens, all worked. Hence the decrees of councils and synods, large and small, have a great deal to offer historians in many fields. For all these reasons, it is so useful for many of us scholars now to have access to the synodal materials through an inviting database such as Corpus synodalium. What then does the Corpus offer its users? This is not an editorial project, but one which makes available a body of texts already in print, albeit in editions of varying ages and styles. The project was forged in the course of Professor Dorin’s doctoral research at Harvard University into later medieval expulsions of moneylenders from European polities, research recently published as No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe.17 As he searched for traces of episcopal legislation on moneylending, Doran was struck by the variety in the quality of editions, translations, and scholarly discussions of synodal statutes from Europe’s regions. Projects of edition and scholarship over centuries reflect the religious and political cultures of European states since the Middle Ages, including attitudes to religious institutions, the embeddedness of the 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 147 study of canon law in higher education, and more recently, on the structure of European research funding for digital projects. From this vast diversity Dorin has gathered—and is still collecting—some 1450 entries, councils for the period c. 1215–c. 1500.18 He did so over his doctoral and postdoctoral years, with support of his home institutions, Harvard and Stanford. In creating the Corpus synodalium Dorin was fully aware of the many tempting possibilities for work to be done in developing the database: coding, editing, adding rich metadata; he experimented with mapping, too. But he settled for a database useful for scholars who are likely to approach it with a variety of interests and digital capacities. The drop-down menu entitled “Using the database”—a feature that often puzzles rather than assists users—is here a welcoming and swift entry to the database; yet it allows digital historians to explore further since syntactic issues are explained, along with transcription and editorial guidelines, and a comprehensive technical overview. The searchable platform enables users to learn more about the underlying manuscripts and scholarly editions. It also helps scholars in future research, by providing a repertorium of sources, and an ample bibliography. In sum, this project offers rich data, that is of interest to many scholars, in an approachable manner, free of access, easy to search. Corpus Synodalium is a model—an ever-growing, resilient, and responsive digital project. It will enable research rather than overwhelm it. Queen Mary University of London MIRI RUBIN Maria Mazzenga. The American Catholic History Research Center. The Catholic University of America. American Catholic History Classroom. 2022. https://cuomeka.wrlc.org. For decades, American Catholic historians have lamented that the story of U.S. Catholicism has been insufficiently integrated into general histories of the United States. Even in Catholic high schools and colleges, where textbooks produced by Catholic publishers once situated Catholic history within the context of U.S. history, students now use secular texts which largely ignore Catholic subjects.19 The American Catholic History 18. The project originally stopped c. 1400, hence at the moment the coverage of the fifteenth century is rather sparse. 19. Maria Mazzenga, “The American Catholic History Classroom Project,” American Catholic Studies 117, no. 4 (Winter): 55–69 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/44195012). 148 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY Classroom, a web-based project curated by Dr. Maria Mazzenga of The American Catholic History Research Center at The Catholic University of America, is well-suited to help teachers and students address this need and unite their study of Catholicism with their study of U.S. history. Originally funded by a 1997 grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute, The American Catholic History Classroom aims to be “a continuouslyupdated primary document site” for both educators and researchers (cuomeka.wrlc.org—accessed December 20, 2022). As its name indicates, the website’s greatest strength is its usefulness for high school and college teachers and students. From its original five websites, the Classroom has expanded to nearly thirty thematic websites covering numerous aspects of American Catholic history. Each website includes an introduction, a timeline, a bibliography of suggested reading, some twenty to forty primary documents, and a discussion of how the website’s topic connects to various themes and current debates. Written by historians and educators, the introductions provide users with background information and context, drawing from general histories of the U.S. Church, including those by James Hennessey and Leslie Tentler, as well as classic texts and recent scholarship by Cyprian Davis, John McGreevy, Andrew Preston, and many other scholars. Timelines supplement this introduction, quickly and helpfully contextualizing key moments in history. Bibliographies referring users to suggested further readings focus principally on articles and monographs on American Catholic history and might profitably be expanded to include a few crucial texts by historians not focusing on American Catholicism. “So What?” pages include prompts for reflection and discussion and admirably connect the topic to broader historical themes and to current debates likely familiar to student users, including labor issues among Starbucks employees, for example. The majority of the websites also include an explanation, for instructors, of how each website connects to the National History Standards. At the heart of the Classroom’s websites, however, are primary source documents illuminating the topic under consideration. The websites make the most of the strengths of the Catholic University Archives: its collection of documents from various national Catholic organizations including the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Catholic Daughters of America; the personal papers of crucial American Catholic figures, including Fr. John A. Ryan and Msgr. George Higgins; and unique collections, including its audio recordings of Catholic responses to Kristallnacht, and its LAURA MORREALE AND JENNIFER PAXTON 149 collection of Treasure Chest comics. But the websites also direct users to numerous other archives with collections pertinent to the study of American Catholicism, including not only Catholic repositories like Georgetown, Villanova, and Marquette Universities, but also secular archives such as the Library of Congress, the Library and Archives of Canada, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Researchers, especially those new to archival work or to topics in American Catholic history, will benefit from the introductions provided by the Classroom, and the vast majority of primary source documents are accompanied by full citation information for future scholarly reference. The Classroom has steadily expanded its offerings since its inception, but there remain numerous opportunities for expansion even of the websites currently on offer. The website entitled “Catholics and Politics” is currently limited to discussion of Catholics and the New Deal. The website on “Catholics, Refugees, and Resettlement” focuses on refugees from World War II but could eventually include postwar documents on Cuban, Vietnamese, and Haitian refugees, for example. Maintaining a website of such ambitious scope will, however, prove challenging. On a recent exploration of the site, numerous links both internal to the Classroom and to other websites and archives were found to be broken. The websites are undeniably text heavy and not especially interesting visually. Shortening the introductory texts or redistributing their content across subsections of the website would likely make the sites less daunting, especially to younger users. Greater use of historical images would also improve the appeal of the websites to the student audiences the Classroom is attempting to serve and could provide yet more opportunities for historical analysis. Greater attention to the organization and structuring of the websites and subsections, and more cross-referencing links between them, would also improve site navigation. Altogether, the Classroom’s websites might have more profitably been organized into thematic groupings accessible directly from the project homepage. These challenges and growing pains should not, however, detract from the tremendous service provided by The American Catholic History Classroom. The great promise of the project, as stated by the editors themselves, is that students in high school and college survey courses have the opportunity to “become their own historians,” reading the introductions and documents, answering the reading prompts and reflection questions, and coming to their own conclusions about the documents they are viewing (https://cuomeka.wrlc.org—accessed December 20, 2022). The websites of 150 DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE FIELD OF CHURCH HISTORY the Classroom provide high school and college instructors with easy access to curated documents which can help them to craft in-class exercises and writing assignments introducing students to archival research, to the difference between secondary and primary sources, and to major themes in American and Catholic history including colonialism and Native peoples, immigration and nativism, racism and civil rights, and industrialization and labor relations, among many others. University of Notre Dame STEPHEN M. KOETH, C.S.C. Forum Review Essay Jennifer Scheper Hughes, The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas. (New York: New York University Press, 2021. Pp. xviii, 245. $35.00. ISBN 10987654321) INTRODUCTION J u l i a G . Y o u n g (The Catholic University of America) In April 1576, a deadly plague of hemorrhagic fever began sweeping through colonial Mexico, claiming almost two million victims—most of them Indigenous—until it subsided in 1581. It was not the first such pandemic, nor was it the most deadly: Indigenous communities had already seen multiple waves of epidemic sickness and death since the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, most famously the 1520 smallpox epidemic. Yet the mortandad, as it was called by the Spanish at the time, brought the population of New Spain to its lowest point yet, and seemed to many to herald a watershed event. The resonance of the 1576 plague, and its impact on the Catholic Church in the Americas, is the subject of Jennifer Scheper Hughes’s The Church of the Dead: The Epidemic of 1576 and the Birth of Christianity in the Americas. After a brief preface (Mortandad: Requiem) in which Scheper Hughes discusses the ways that the demographic collapse of indigenous populations in the Americas has profoundly marked the geological record, the book’s Introduction (Eccelsia ex mortuis: Mexican Elegy and the Church of the Dead) describes the key questions under study. It asks how American Christianity was shaped by the “epidemic cataclysm” and argues that the epidemic was a formative event for the Church in the Americas. The aim of the book, according to Scheper Hughes, is to explore the “religious ideas, practices, emotions, and structures that emerged in response to the mortandad” for both Spanish and Indigenous people (p. 2). While the Spanish felt “apocalyptic despair” at the collapse of the Indigenous population (p. 5), Scheper Hughes argues that Indigenous people responded with “survivance” (a term that combines the concepts of ‘survival’ and ‘resistance’). Indeed, she asserts, “. . . the Mexican church endured the mortandad because communities of Indigenous Christians asserted a rival theological and institutional scaffolding that carried into the 151 152 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY future” (p. 7). By centering the Indigenous role in this history, Scheper Hughes challenges the myth that Europeans were the sole drivers of Christianization of the Americas. Rather, Indigenous people played an active role in shaping Christianity from the Colonial period onward. To substantiate her arguments, Scheper Hughes draws on a wealth of primary sources in Spanish and Nahuatl; these include 135 unpublished letters written by church officials in New Spain between 1576 and 1581, as well as Indigenous Mexican texts, especially indigenous-authored maps. In her analysis, Scheper Hughes takes a theological approach that includes a “search for densely layered meaning in reference to the long Christian tradition” (pp. 26–27). The rest of the book is structured in two parts. The first part, Ave Verum Corpus: Abject Matter and Holy Flesh contains two chapters. Chapter 1, Theologica Medicinalis: Medicine as Sacrament of the Mortandad, analyzes missionary writing in order to describe how religious orders came to see themselves as medical practitioners responsible for saving the bodies—and therefore the souls—of Indigenous people. The processes of conversion (religious conversion) and conservación (preservation) became inextricably linked in the minds of Spanish priests, friars, and bishops in Mexico. Chapter 2, Corpus Coloniae Mysticum: Indigenous Bodies and the Body of Christ describes how the Spanish in Mexico “reimagined and remade” the preexisting theology of the mystical body of Christ “in response to the spiritual and political demands of the emerging global imperial church” (p. 64). In particular, they developed specific interpretations of blood, autopsies, and a concept of indigenous people as the feet of the body of Christ, all of which incorporated the dramatic reality of the mortandad. The second part of the book, Roads to Redemption and Recovery: Cartographies of the Christian Imaginary also contains two chapters, which compare Spanish and Indigenous cartographies of Mexico. Chapter 3, Walking Landscapes of Loss after the Mortandad: Spectral Geographies in a Ruined World describes the 800-league walking journey of Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras, who surveyed his diocese in the aftermath of the epidemic. His observations were in line with many other Spanish contemporaries who sorrowfully viewed the post-mortandad land as an empty terrain, a desert wilderness, and a “necroscape.” These missionaries “saw everywhere a world, a dream, in ruin” (p. 133). A very different vision is explored in chapter 4, Hoc est enim corpus meum/This Is My Body: Cartographies of an Indigenous Catholic Imaginary after the Mortandad. Here, Scheper Hughes investigates the lives and per- FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 153 ceptions of Indigenous survivors by examining their own territorial vision as expressed in numerous maps that they made after 1576. In these images, she finds evidence that Indigenous people did not see a world in ruin, but rather one of “vitality and presence” (p. 165), in which roads, temples, and ancestors “became the animating life force of the church in Mexico” and Indigenous people “contributed to the church’s projection into the next age—but in their own image, not in the image of the mortandad ” (p. 173). Scheper Hughes reiterates this message of Indigenous survivance in the conclusion (The Church of the Living: Toward a Counterhistory of Christianity in the Americas). She closes by arguing that the story of Mexican Catholicism may be relevant for understanding the origins of Christianity throughout North America. REVIEWS L id ia E r n e st in a G ó m e z G a r c ía (Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Colegio de Historia) Recent scholarship on Indigenous Christianization has begun to reconsider the process of conversion as a religious practice that included affective interaction between Spanish clergy and native population. Jennifer Scheper Hughes’s proposal is one of these new approaches that is part of the analysis of religious practices that link Indigenous people with the clergy, as proactive participants in the process of evangelization. The circumstance that allowed this intense affective interaction was a catastrophe produced by the terrible mortality of the cocoliztli (salmonella: bacterium S. enterica Paratyphi C), that endangered the native population almost to the degree of extinction, which the author considers a transformative cataclysm of the religious life for the native population. The analysis focuses on a decade of the sixteenth century, 1570–80, particularly in the year of the outbreak of the cocoliztli epidemic in 1576, although there had been a previous outbreak in 1545–48. Testimonies embodied in letters, codices, and chronicles of Spanish and native authorities were produced as a result of the cocoliztli outbreak, which brought mortandad and despair that the author considers a transformative cataclysm of the religious life of the native population. The ecclesiastical body, a corporation that built a new cosmology regarding the sacred link between death and church, was therefore a Christian concept associated with mortandad produced by cocoliztli. In the aftermath of the first outbreak, in 1545–48, a congregation process was carried out by forcing the survivors´ displacement to new set- 154 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY tlements. In the 1550s the Indigenous people had to abandon their own lands and the lands of those who perished. This process was supervised by the friars and priests, who acted as interpreters and advisors of the Spanish authorities. The new settlements were distributed in the doctrines administered from the convents, centers of the new doctrinas (jurisdictions). Furthermore, the first ecclesiastical organization of Indigenous parishioners, fiscalías de iglesia and cofradías (brotherhoods) were established, which incorporated Indigenous nobility in the ecclesiastical body of authorities. That is why, in the second epidemic of cocoliztli in 1576, analyzed in this book, the link between the clergy (regular and secular) and the native population was implemented through this new ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In the first part of the book, chapters 1 and 2, this catastrophe is portrayed as the moment in which the sacramental Catholic ritual was embodied in the service of the friars in caring for the sick. The suffering native population became the ecclesiastical body, the parishioners who needed medicine and nutrition for their sick body and soul in pain. In this chaotic moment, the destabilized Indigenous people—overwhelmed by the death of relatives and acquaintances—found in the friars, their different missionary strategies, and hospitals, the refuge to receive medical treatment and help to bien morir (to die with dignity) and in reconciliation after the confession of sins. This caring support was symbolized emerging from the convents and churches, as new guiding centers of collective confraternity, where the image of Christ as redeemer and creator established the Christian consciousness of a new age. The hospitals and missionary vocation of the friars was manifested in medical care and medicinal nourishment, which articulated the management of this cataclysm as the core point from which an Indigenous Christian parishioner was generated. The rituality of these friars, who conceived their mission as protectors of Indians, in charge of providing medical care in the midst of the death of the cocoliztli, constituted the point of origin of a new concept of the body, as a corporation of belonging and identity. The sick, abandoned body, in his transit towards death, was depicted in pictography and described in the text of the Códice Aubin. It symbolizes this cataclysm as a painful transit to a new Christian stage: the sound of the bells that is transformed into silence, the medical care of the missionary that becomes abandonment, and the gift, that is, the medicinal food that is transformed into a sacrament. This way of conceiving a new era recalls la leyenda de los soles (cosmogonic myths of the ages or suns), where the existence of the cataclysm preludes the gestation of a new age, in this case the Christian one. Sickness, FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 155 missionary medicine and mortality were the chaos that preceded a new social body: the Indigenous church, the church of the dead. In the tragedy of mortandad arose the seed of new corporate life, symbolically linked to the sacramental gift of the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, generator of New Spanish Indigenous Catholicism. Mortality is the sign of this process, even in testimonies such as that of the archbishop of Mexico, Moya de Contreras, and other ecclesiastical authorities, who in various letters asked the king for his support and help in the face of the fatality of the near-disappearance of Indigenous populations. The presence of the Indigenous parishioners in the care of the sick in hospitals and monasteries presents us with an image of the food offered in a ritual of mutual service, not only the service of the friars to the Indians, that recalls the sacrament of spiritual food symbolized in the body and blood of Christ. In the second part of the book, chapters 3 and 4, the author analyzes the landscape of death that followed the epidemic, in which she inscribes the congregations of native populations as part of the landscape of the dead and desolation that followed the epidemic. The scenario of the abandoned lands as large desolate spaces and the urgency of the Indigenous workforce requested by the Spanish authorities, motivated Archbishop Moya de Contreras to propose new congregations, “an embodied landscape practice or the ecclesia ex mortuis, a way of moving bodies to create a more perfect Christian territorialization, and of shaping the geographic contours of social arrangements upon the earth in the context of cataclysm” (p. 231). It was at the beginning of 1580s, when an important documentary group of maps and memories of the towns already congregated in the 1550s, contrasted with the image of desolate landscapes, abandoned churches, and ghost towns reported by Moya de Contreras. The expected mortality after an epidemic and the disarticulation of the social body marked as a seal in cities, towns, valleys and mountains are not represented. It was a time when the devastation spread not only to the Indigenous people, but also to the Spaniards who had no encomiendas (land and labor grants) and were in need of labor force. None of that was depicted on the maps or in their texts. It was in memory and in the cartographic representation that the desolate landscapes gradually began to show the population recovery of the survivors, and the image of their towns full of life represented in the maps of the Geographic Relations. The author argues that the maps are not nostalgic but oriented towards the future, the Christian altepetl that refuses to die and claims the new stage of its existence in the construction of a new foundational narrative centered on the church, from which the Christian identity emerges. 156 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY Ramón A. Gutiérrez (The University of Chicago) The Church of the Dead is a dazzling book. Hughes offers readers brilliant insights on Indigenous “survivance,” developing further the concept of contraconquista (counterconquest) she first articulated in her Biography of a Mexican Crucifix (2010), upending almost a century of scholarship modeled on Robert Ricard’s 1933 La “conquête spirituelle” du Mexique. The Church of the Dead studies native and Franciscan representations of cocoliztli, a lethal bacterial epidemic that ravaged Mexican communities in 1576. Mexico’s Indigenous population is estimated to have numbered between twenty to thirty million in 1519. By 1600 two million remained. European diseases account for this decline but equally important were warfare, famine, and the debilitating labor and tribute demands levied by the Crown and conquering encomenderos. This marvelous book would have profited from a deeper discussion of how Franciscan lamentations in 1576 fit into the Order’s longer history. The friars certainly were distraught over the death of their “children,” but more was roiling them. A host of rivalries had emerged within their ranks as the Crown shifted its focus from Christianization to Hispanization. When St. Francis founded the Order of Friars Minor in 1209 his rule was simple: “live in obedience, in chastity, and without anything of their own, and follow the teaching and footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Days were to be spent preaching and nights consumed by communal penitence, prayer, and meditation. After Francis’s death, under the leadership of St. Bonaventure, the Order gave increasing attention to contemplative monastic life, resulting in the emergence of Observant and Conventual spiritualities. Which of the two resembled Francis’s original rule was temporarily settled through Ferdinand and Isabel’s episcopal interventions at the end of the fifteenth century, forcing Conventuals to adhere to Observant practices. When Cortés requested that Charles V dispatch priests to New Spain to begin the evangelization, he requested Observant Franciscans because of their professed poverty. Fray Francisco de los Angeles, the Order’s minister general, on October 4, 1523 gathered the “Twelve Apostles” he was dispatching to Mexico under the leadership of fray Martín de Valencia, ordering them to preach “the faith with much poverty and difficulty, lifting the banner of the cross in foreign lands, giving their lives happily for the love of God.” Since several of the Twelve had led monastic lives, Quiñones recited the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 9:1–10), a short, wealthy tax collector who climbed a tree to behold Jesus’s entry into Jericho. Jesus said to Zacchaeus. FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 157 “Come down, for I intend to stay in your home.” Zacchaeus descended and eventually gave away his wealth. De los Angeles ordered the Twelve to climb off their monastic trees, “descend with haste to the active life. And if you have defrauded any of the enemies of man by contemplating the deeds of the cross, return fourfold to your neighbors through the active and contemplative lives together, shedding your own blood for the name of Christ.” By 1576 the original twelve Franciscans were dead, replaced by peninsular, creole, and mestizo friars, each trained differently with distinctive goals. The Twelve may have initially shared a vision of how evangelization should progress, confident that Indigenous conversion would hasten Christ’s millennial return. But the scope of their task was far greater than their abilities. On arrival they were dispatched “two by two,” no longer able to congregate nightly into larger communities for penitence and prayer. Fray Valencia, the original superior, who was fifty years old in 1524, devoted little time to proselytizing, insisting that he was too old to learn Indigenous languages, retreating frequently to a cave for flagellation and meditation. Fray Juan de Ribas fled with eleven others (three of them of the original Twelve) to form a monastic community in Nueva Galicia called Insulana, so escaping evangelization’s rigors. Even Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, who was twenty when he arrived in 1545, during a 1570 visit to Spain vowed that he would return to Mexico only if “God takes me as if by the hair, under obligation.” He returned in 1571, began writing Historia eclesiática Indiana, his Franciscan mission history, which he finished in 1596, but was embargoed until 1870. New Spain’s Franciscans by 1576 were struggling to forge a unitary identity buffeted constantly by competing internal and external demands. Observant friars trained in peninsular monasteries were overwhelmed. Doctrinas (Indigenous parishes) often were staffed by only two friars, requiring one to stay put as pastor, while the other travelled to widely dispersed villages called visitas. By 1528 the Order was having difficulties recruiting Spaniards for Mexican posts because those who returned described their assignments as exhausting “slaughterhouses” for their souls. Creole friars who had never experienced monastic life and served primarily as pastors, nourished their souls differently. Observants believed that these men were corrupting the Order, reviling them as relajados (lax). At the end of the fifteenth century, Rome’s popes entrusted church governance in Spain’s empire to its monarchs. The Franciscans insisted that they were legally accountable only to the pope, whose authority was exercised locally through prelates. Ferdinand and Isabela and Charles V 158 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY indulged this interpretation. When Philip II became king in 1556, he did not. What followed were anti-Franciscan policies, initiated by Philip’s bishops in Mexico. Pedro Moya de Contreras, an experienced letrado (court lawyer) arrived in Mexico City in 1571 to establish the Inquisition, became archbishop in 1572, was ordained a priest in 1573, and served as the viceroy between 1584 and 1586. From the crown’s perspective, the Franciscans exercised unfettered control over the Indians, refusing to cede territorial jurisdiction despite their numeric inability to minister effectively across vast expanses, exploiting Indigenous labor building unnecessarily enormous churches, haltingly learning native languages but refusing to teach Spanish, and abusing their charges physically and sexually. To whittle at this power, Moya invited the Jesuits to establish schools to educate elite boys for clerical vocations in 1572, thus improving the quality and quantity of secular priests. Moya issued the Ordenanza del Patronazgo in 1574, imposing sterner episcopal governance over the Mexican Church, despite clerical protestations. Moya proceeded adiabatically with the Franciscans. Cognizant of their internal cleavages, he welcomed Conventuals retreating to monasteries, dispatched Observants to the northern and southern frontiers of New Spain, allowing creole and mestizo friars to minister as relajados. Moya next convened the Third Provincial Council of the Mexican Catholic Church in 1585, presiding “as Governor (Viceroy) and President of the Royal Audiencia . . . in the name of his Majesty,” imposing Trent’s reforms for the administration of the sacraments, the regulations of benefices, the punishment of abusive priests, barring indios and the children of Moors, negros, and first-generation mestizos from ordination. Archbishop Moya traversed his diocese in 1578 conducting one of his many institutional visitas (audits / visitations). Based on models he fashioned as a crown lawyer first in the Canary Islands, then in the recentlyconquered Muslim province of Murcia, regions evangelized shortly before those in Mexico, he recommended the concentration of surviving indios into larger congregaciones (communities) near Spanish towns, secularizing doctrinas, thus ending Franciscan control, quickening native Hispanization while simultaneously intensifying their immiseration through newly imposed rotational repartimientos (labor drafts). Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, the foremost Franciscan historian of New Spain, characterized Philip II’s reign as the end of the Indian church’s golden age fueled by newly discovered silver mines that would surely deteriorate to an iron age wrought by Indian slavery. Philip’s avarice had taken FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 159 precedence over the souls of his vassals, who to Mendieta were Mexico’s “eternal and spiritual silver mines.” “O Prince of Spain,” Mendieta wrote, “would that you might begin your reign all over again . . . O false servants and wicked flatterers, you who deceive kings under the pretext of serving them . . . to increase royal revenues.” The end of the Franciscan golden age certainly was quickened by cocoliztli, but also by conflicts between peninsular and creole friars over what fidelity to St. Francis’s rule meant. Some Observant Franciscan clung to the medieval Joachimite apocalyptic prophecy that the conversion of the globe’s pagans would usher Christ’s millennial return. Having failed in Mexico, they sailed to the Philippines in 1578, and from there on to China. J . M i c h e l l e M o l i n a (Northwestern University) Jennifer Scheper Hughes’ book is a sensitive historical meditation on how the founding of the Catholic Church in Mexico was built upon the catastrophic loss of indigenous life due to pandemic in the wake of the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century. She tells a story about the ways that cocolixtli shaped novohispano imaginations, kindling anxieties and recasting vision about what futures might be gained and lost. In so doing, she surprises her readers: In a field of study that casts colonial aims in terms of the gold, land, and souls to be gained, here we see missionaries worry about the loss of universal Christian empire, while indigenous communities build a futureoriented vision of how autonomy might be gained via the new religion. The friars’ deep concern about the impact the mortandad had on their mission was registered in the letters they wrote to the Spanish Crown. Their missives describe, with profound emotion, the disappearance of the members of the new mystical body of Christ in the Americas. Given their theological vision for the indigenous inhabitants of New Spain, the mendicants’ imagined future for this “new world” was at risk. So too, in the wake of the late sixteenth-century epidemics, did indigenous communities worry that what remained of their communities was at risk. But here Hughes surprises again, showing how pueblos de indios experienced Catholicism as a source of spiritual and political power that could accrue to their communities. Accordingly, they demanded their due from the Catholic Church by forging a vision in which they claim belonging and autonomy as sovereign indigenous Catholic communities. Here Hughes’ innovative and convincing reinterpretation of the maps of the Relaciones Geograficas demonstrates how the churches and monasteries that are painted into the landscapes signal that pueblos de indios merged 160 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY old ways and new, forging a future-oriented vision. Neither simple placemarkers, nor a mere symbolic nod to the new institution in town, the church’s place in the landscape marks a more complex engagement with Catholic theopolitics. The maps, often mined for knowledge about preColumbian pasts, or read as signaling a falling away of prior knowledge forms, instead signal a covenantal pact that found community claims to be central players in shaping Catholic futures. Catholic indigenous futurism, she writes, entails a theopolitical insistence that missionary promises be kept, that their churches be tended and rebuilt, and that local communities be made whole in the wake of cocolixtli. I have been re-reading Hughes’s book alongside The Scaffolding of Sovereignty, a collection of essays edited by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Nicole Jerr. The authors draw attention to the aesthetic scaffolding of sovereignty. I see in Hughes’s work an important study of multidimensional sovereignty that is “[a] t times vibrant, at others precarious, almost always negotiated even for the maintenance of stability.” The maps of the Relaciones Geograficas do the important aesthetic work of shaping sovereignty, not only because they are a Crown project of control, and not only because they are intertwined with other devotional, artistic, literary, and architectural tools. Rather, the complexity of colonial sovereignty lies in the work that the colonized do to shape and take some control of this “complex aesthetic scaffold” (Scaffolding, 5) In the context of New Spain, hegemonic colonial religious forms wrought a contested and entangled devotional terrain, and its scaffolding includes this very history of how indigenous communities sought to master and control these aesthetic tools whenever possible. The history that Hughes presents here shows how claims to sovereignty in indigenous Catholic communities were key to the way in which the body of Christ on the altar became rooted in Mexican theopolitics. We cannot make sense, for example, of twentieth-century Cristero violence in defense of local churches from the encroachment of the Mexican Revolutionary state if we do not read into this the long history of competing modes of sovereignty that take place around the altar. The Church of the Dead, then, is a wonderful provocation that asks those of us in the field of Latin American studies to reconsider colonial sovereignty as precarious, subject to continuous restructuring, and thus stable not only because it was a top-down state power, but rather because colonial Catholicism set up a terrain in which competing sovereignties circled around the altar. All players on this Catholic American stage vied for power around the body of Christ incarnate and as members of the body of Christ. FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 161 The Church of the Dead confirms my own view that coloniality is a tangle of densely knotted threads. Accordingly, scholars ought to be cautious about reading colonial sources with the goal of disentangling an “authentic” pre-Columbian past from a colonial present. I appreciate that Hughes is sensitive to the paradoxical ways that a desire for continued autonomy often leads humans to make profound social and cultural transformations. True, some significant structures remained partially intact—the altepetl is a case in point. But thinking semiotically, all elements have shifted in relation to one another and thus meaning and power have been restructured. Best to trail after actors, as Hughes does, since both sets of historical subjects—missionaries and indios—were trenchant observers of and participants in the ways of being that were unfolding in Catholic Mexico. To close, in my view it is the congregational aspects of Catholic colonialism that need to be better appreciated. Colonial theopolitics took place around the body of Christ on the altar and this location of power is key to scholarly understanding of how racialization and community formation unfolded in ways that are radically different in the Spanish Americas than in the United States. Whether or not this was her intention, I see the work as complicating current demand that scholarship be attuned to the present and work toward decoloniality. We have to ask, whose colonialism? Whose present? Whose future? P a u l F . R a m í r e z (Northwestern University) The Church of the Dead describes in rich detail a moment of crisis for Christianity in colonial Mexico, in which millions of indigenous people perished in an acute epidemic, or mortandad. The Church nearly collapsed in these years of death and dying, as enthusiasm for the evangelizing project waned and missionaries clamored to return home or move elsewhere. Scheper Hughes invites us to walk with the bishops and missionaries who surveyed the destruction, feel with them the desolation that attended an epidemic of such magnitude, and witness the efforts of indigenous survivors to walk their own territories in acts of ritual (re)possession and protest. Provocative and pulsing with creative energy, the book is at once an indictment of the policies and ruination wrought by European colonialism, a celebration of the resilience of survivors, and an assertion of the lasting impact and legacies of disease and death in Mexican ecclesiastical history. The search for origins has long been modish but seems these days to be undergoing a revival—witness the recent furor over attempts to locate the birth of the United States in 1619, or 1776. The Church of the Dead is a 162 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY different kind of project, but it too makes assertions about the centrality of an event, an outbreak of cocoliztli, as epoch-making and seminal. The claim is that “the birth of Christianity in the Americas” can be found in 1576 and the eventful years that followed and that certain long-lasting structures, institutions, and schemas emerged from this devastating episode. How well does the evidence support this claim? Leaving aside the fact that the book is mainly concerned with Mexico, as distinct from the Americas, individual chapters make a compelling case for the 1576 cataclysm and its aftermath as a defining historical event. These years saw the rise of the archdiocese of Mexico as a unit of ecclesiastical administration, marked in the visitación or pastoral survey undertaken by the archbishop—notably the first time that survivors of the outbreak experienced firsthand the authority of a bishop. Other processes, including congregación, the policy of resettlement of indigenous populations, seem to have accelerated around the time and to have been undertaken as a direct consequence of demographic decline. It was undoubtedly a momentous time in the social and religious history of Mexico, and one that requires careful attention. Nevertheless, questions of interpretation and analysis linger, above all the likelihood that the study limns uniquely revealing sources to illuminate processes that were already in motion. At issue is the book’s reliance primarily on two types of documentary evidence to advance its argument: a cache of more than 100 letters authored by ecclesiastical officials between 1576 and 1581 and a set of maps composed as part of a royal survey of the Americas. These are exceptional records that express competing worldviews and contrapuntal narratives, even as they pose challenges for the scholars who use them. How does one distinguish the strong light thrown by the documentary record from the events being described? As in other crises, the materials tempt scholars to assign too much weight to the moments and circumstances in which they were created. Scheper Hughes avoids this outcome by situating her sources within broader chronological and social context, stretching over decades, regions, and ethnolinguistic groups to explore other moments of death, dispossession, and colonial violence. The effect is to draw attention to experiences of mortality, healing, suffering, exploitation, and loss as constituent components of early modern empire beyond any single disease epidemic. We find multiple references to the more demographically consequential disease outbreak of 1545, for instance, which serve as a reminder that 1576 was one of many instances, and not without precedent. Discussions of ecclesiastical structures and reforms in the archdiocese of Mexico draw on materials in subsequent centuries, including maps, and suggest ongoing institutional change rather FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 163 than calcification. In the final chapter, where construction of missionary churches and convents becomes central, the relaciones geográficas maps provide visual evidence of indigenous conceptions of sacred space and structures, and especially the vital importance of church buildings as sources of orientation in settled towns. But communal construction of churches and convents likely began to peak before the 1576 mortandad, while struggles to reclaim or defend territory besieged by the onslaught of Spanish colonialism were happening persistently, perennially, and well beyond cocoliztli, as communities learned to manage European livestock and foreign agricultural crops, in addition to deadly pathogens. In the end, it may be that acute disease hastened or accentuated familiar processes, somewhat undermining the book’s emphasis on a single episode. The Church of the Dead is at its most convincing in challenging readers to consider the role of disease as an integral experience of the early formation of Catholics and the colonial Church. One need not ascribe a single point of origin to the phenomenon. Here it is worth noting a recent surge in studies of Nahua Catholicism that have explored other aspects of this formation, including the acquisition of writing; theater and musical practice; personal shrines and saint veneration; the expansion of confessional practice; the concern for souls in the afterlife; and shifting gender relations under Spanish rule. These studies have shown that Catholic practice was in flux throughout these centuries but have generally correlated change with other variables, leaving mortandad on the sidelines. This was true of Scheper Hughes’s previous work, which followed the miraculous Cristo Aparecido through time in search of its multivalent and shifting meanings. Refuting claims that suffering was foundational to the faith of the Cristo’s indigenous devotees, she observed, “the story of their military conquest and death by epidemic disease is absent from the historical record treating the origins of the Cristo” (Biography of a Mexican Crucifix, p. 51). What do we make of this observation? It seems that other designs, dynamics, and meanings must be adduced to explain the remarkable multiplication and spread of Catholic devotional images and sacred materials in early colonial Mexico. No less important is the need to reconcile and relate these other approaches to conversion, adaptation, and worship to the realities of mortandad. A more complete understanding of the contingent and multifaceted nature of indigenous Christianities surely demands synoptic approaches to the topic. As for the great mortandad as a major turning point, or even the origo et fons of Christianity in the Americas, it will be up to future studies rooted 164 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY in other archival documentation (wills and testaments, shrine and confraternity papers, hospital records, and so forth) to confirm the evidence in favor. What is undeniable is the author’s ability to evoke people, places, and feelings from this eventful time with ethnographic skill and sensitivity. The resulting study is disquieting, and purposefully so. In leading us through Mexico’s unsettled landscape it invites us to look and listen, surfacing new perspectives in our ongoing efforts to appreciate disease as a salient motor of change in early modern histories of the Americas. RESPONSE J e n n i f e r S c h e p e r H u g h e s (University of California, Riverside) To my esteemed colleagues, Lidia Ernestina Gómez García, Ramón Gutiérrez, Michelle Molina, and Paul Ramírez—I am thankful for the honor of your time and attention. It is a deeply gratifying experience to feel that colleagues in the field have puzzled out one’s intended purposes to then offer meaningful reflection on those discerned aims. I respond to these queries and concerns (or inquietudes, in Spanish) in three notes. The inquietudes from Paul Ramírez concern what is lost (in historical nuance) and what is at stake in fixing a singular point of historical origin for something as complex and fluid as the Church in the Americas, as I have done in The Church of the Dead. Ramírez’s comparison to the 1619 project is suggestive: 1576 similarly refers to a European wrought cataclysm, the catastrophe of pandemic outbreak. To be clear, I do not mean to identify an origin point for the hemispheric Church in the colonial cataclysm itself, but rather in Indigenous Mexican communities’ strategic negotiation of that crisis which I describe as both acutely experienced and drawn out over centuries. Boldly stated, without their purposeful navigation the Mexican church, arguably the oldest, extant church in the Americas, would not have survived. From Ramírez’s reflections emerge a deeper and perhaps ultimately unresolvable set of questions regarding the historian’s task. Is it the historian’s purpose or purview to search the past for stories of origin? To narrate stories that people can live by and from which we might project ourselves into the future? Are we storytellers or something else entirely? And as Molina asks, whose past? Whose future? Related to this fixing of origin at a single point, both Ramírez and Gómez García correctly remind us that the processes of church-making that I refer to were already well in motion at the time of the pandemic out- FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 165 break in 1576. In locating the “birth of Christianity in the Americas” in this moment, I do not mean to suggest creatio ex nihilo but rather critical juncture. I find helpful the language of “scaffolding,” introduced into this roundtable discussion by Molina (from Benite, et al). In this moment of crisis, Indigenous communities shored up and fortified the scaffolding of the church, a scaffolding of their own design powerful enough to frame and sustain the church for four centuries. In this labor, Mexican pueblos did not just lay claim to the church but also claim over it. Neither does founding necessarily imply sedimentation or calcification: the contests I describe (between Spanish and Indigenous ecclesiologies, between colonial power and local authority) also persisted, yielding reiterations, renegotiations, and revised settlements at other key moments of historical crisis. With respect to founding and origins of the Church in Spanish America, the stories of the missionary friars have predominated. This brings us to a second set of inquietudes, from Gutiérrez and Gómez García, regarding the representation of the Franciscan order in the history of Christianity in the Americas. Here we confront again their seductive power: they do not typically tolerate being relegated to the margins of the story. The Mexican church has long been regarded as a “Franciscan Church,” a testament to a dream of an “Indigenous-Franciscan millennial kingdom” (from John Phelan). Gutiérrez is correct in pointing out that Franciscan anxiety was not just for the lost possibility of a global imperial church, but also for their own loosening hold on Mexico, which was, in any case, always tenuous. He also rightly reminds us that, against their own fantasy self-understanding, their “fervor” for mission was fleeting from the beginning. In The Church of the Dead, I reckon with the missionary orders and interrogate their fantasy self-understanding, even as I try to push them into the background. In deference to mendicant self-histories, scholars of colonial New Spain have taken great pains to distinguish among the major religious orders in Mexico, to give each its proper place and identity. The field has been perhaps obsessively attentive to divisions and dissimilarities between distinct religious orders and, even more granularly, within the religious orders themselves, between observant and conventual or lax friars, for example, as Gutiérrez remembers. As a case in point, in my first book, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix (OUP 2010) I reflected on the particularities of the Augustinian order over the Franciscans. But in The Church of the Dead, I deliberately homogenize the orders into a collective of “missionaries” (a term that is rarely applied by historians of New Spain). In the final analysis, the Catholic orders shared a common vision and religio-cultural self-understanding (they had more in common than not). In my telling, 166 FORUM REVIEW ESSAY even the archbishop Moya de Contreras, antagonist of the Franciscans, is (I hope) ultimately rendered anonymous, “an unnamed, generic Spanish missionary body, an ecclesial human form, walking the earth (108). Moya was the architect of a church that would never come to be, a phantom church, a settler church: a church of the dead. Still, the pull of the Franciscans is mighty, and the seductive power of their story is hard to resist. And so, both Gutiérrez and Gómez summon our minds back to them. Is it possible to tell a story of Christian origins for Mexico in which the Franciscans fade into the background, so that other voices and stories might be better heard? The third set of inquietudes concerns the shape of Indigenous sovereignty in histories of hemispheric Christianity, which Molina brings the fore. In Church of the Dead, I attempt to tell a story that reflects Indigenous sources and shifts the locus of historical agency to the survivors of the mortandad. I describe the sovereignty of the Indigenous Mexican Catholic “altepetl” as “nested,” following Audre Simpson: that is, embedded within colonial and imperial structures but nevertheless intact. Molina sees that at the center of my book is the question of how Indigenous communities preserved self-rule, even under European invasion. Their purpose was not just to survive the cataclysm (indeed, I do not see in the historical record evidence that they ever thought that they were “endangered . . . to the degree of almost extinction,” as Gómez García writes), but instead to define the core social structures and settlements of their post-pandemic future. Molina invites us to think about the relationship of transformation and sovereignty, specifically, Indigenous communities’ willingness to engage in radical change in the pursuit of self-rule and autonomy. As a point of clarification, from my read of the historical sources, the Indigenous Mexican project of church-making in the sixteenth century was never solely, or perhaps even primarily, utilitarian or practical: the church was never simply a means to an end, something that could leveraged for self-preservation. The church was never simply a vehicle for the pursuit of autonomy. Shoring up the church was not just a defensive action but also an aesthetic one (as both Molina and Ramírez allude). Historian William B. Taylor has described the colonial church as a “yielding” institution. I have preferred to look at the processes and efforts through which Indigenous communities compelled the church to yield to Indigenous purposes. In fomenting the field of Critical Mission Studies, I am inspired by new scholarship from California Indian scholars and allies that revisits the history of the California missions in centering Indigenous stories that have the capacity for healing and future building. “Franciscan FORUM REVIEW ESSAY 167 fathers aspired to hold (and often claimed to hold) unquestioned power over California Indians, but the missions they founded were pockets of colonial ambition appearing relatively briefly within the longer duration and geographies of ancient national territories.”1 1. Tsim D. Schneider, Khal Schneider, and Lee M. Panich, “Scaling invisible walls: Reasserting Indigenous persistence in mission-era California,” The Public Historian 42, no. 4 (2020), 97–120, here 101. See also Nathan P. Acebo, “Survivance storytelling in archaeology,” in: The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY, 2021), 468–85. Book Reviews GENERAL The “Sense of the Faith” in History: Its Sources, Reception, and Theology. By John J. Burkhard, OFM Conv. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic. 2022. Pp. xiv, 442. $59.95. ISBN: 9780814666890). John Burkhard taught ecclesiology at the Washington Theological Union from the 1990s until the Union’s closure in 2015, with service as its President in 2006 and 2008–09. Theologians will know Burkhard’s ample bibliographies of post-Vatican Council II studies of the sensus fidei published in Heythrop Journal in 1993, 2005, and 2006. The volume reviewed here is also extensive bibliographically, offering a chronological list of nearly 400 studies of the sensus from 1940 to 2000. The importance of Burkhard’s work rests on the centrality of the sensus fidei in Vatican II’s teaching, as brought out recently in several passages of Ormond Rush’s theological summa of the Council, The Vision of Vatican II (Liturgical Press, 2019). For the sensus fidei is a key dimension of a basic theological principle of the Council, namely, faith’s graced adherence to God’s saving revelation. The sensus is the capacity, sometimes called an “instinct,” given by the Holy Spirit’s “anointing” (1 John 2: 20.27), to enable the believer and the believing community to lay hold of God’s word in its true meaning while dismissing inauthentic versions. It is at the heart of living faith in personal adherence, penetration of revealed meaning, and the application of God’s word to life in the Lord (so, Lumen gentium 12, also 35, with Dei verbum 8, and Gaudium et spes 44 and 62). In ten substantial chapters, Burkhard presents the history of treatments of the sensus fidei in Catholic teaching, both by theologians and the magisterium, beginning with scattered references to doctrines held by an unexplained “sense of the church” both before Trent and in that council’s decrees. Learned accounts treated the sensus in nineteenth-century works by Johann Adam Möhler, Giovanni Perrone, and John Henry Newman, with its importance being sealed by Pope Pius IX’s consultation of the Catholic people’s consensus in adhering in faith to Mary’s Immaculate Conception, as a step toward the dogmatic definition of 1854. In the twentieth century, two Dominicans treated the sensus, first as a major factor in doctrinal development (Francisco Marin-Sola) and then as the instinctive wisdom of the believer’s graced sensibility (Mannes D. Koster). After the dogmatic definition of Mary’s Assumption in 1950, the Alsatian Redemptorist Clément Dillenschneider promoted attention to the sensus fidei while relating it to the Church’s lex orandi, while Yves Congar’s Lay People in the Church (originally 1953) situated the 168 BOOK REVIEWS 169 sensus in God’s spiritual endowment of the whole Church to enable it to carry out its share in Christ’s prophetic office. Burkhard relates the iter of the sensus fidei through the labors of Vatican Council II, beginning textually with a later chapter of the 1962 schema De ecclesia, which contrasted public opinion in the Church with the grace-effect that enables the believing people to respond obediently to proposed teaching and understand its meaning. In early 1963 a transformed ecclesiology schema located the sensus in a new second chapter on the whole people of God, who are indefectible in believing, taught and anointed as they are by God (Jn. 6:45; 1 Jn. 2:20.27), for carrying out in the world Christ’s offices of priest, prophet, and royal servant. The aula discussion of 1963 led to several refinements now in Lumen gentium 12, which distinguishes sharply the one sensus of all believers from the great variety of charisms for special callings, with the former leading believers to adhere to what is truly the word of God (1 Thes. 2:13), both grasping its depths and applying it more completely in life. Burkhard treats the reception of Vatican II’s doctrine of the sensus fidei in several venues, as in ecumenical dialogue documents, in the new codes of Catholic canon law, in papal teaching, especially by John Paul II and Francis, and in the admonitory Donum veritatis of 1990 issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Something of a climax comes with the International Theological Commission’s comprehensive study-document of 2014, “Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church.” In a final more reflective chapter, Burkhard assembles “components of a possible synthesis,” while leaving the work itself of synthesis to those who are well prepared by following the narrative of his work. A reviewer has to express gratitude to Father Burkhard for his sustained work across the ample field of this problematic. Theological students, teachers, and educated lay readers will gain much by study of what he offers. Some sections are a bonus, in excurses from the main narrative, for example, by moving from the Marian dogma of 1854 into reporting recently developed accounts of the fall and original sin, or similarly, from treating Mary’s bodily Assumption into surveying new views of the passage into God that is human death. Along the way, however, the present reviewer experienced some desires not fulfilled by the narrative, which in many places is really describing a great ressourcement process concerning God’s grace given the believer and the church. But works of biblical theology, say, of the Johannine “anointing which teaches” (1 Jn. 2:20.27), do not appear in the book. From the First Vatican Council, one misses even a brief treatment of the Constitution Dei Filius, with its several brief references to the grace-dimension of divine revelation’s coming to be personally possessed by faith’s assent. Typically, when Burkhard treats Vatican II’s 1963 revised De ecclesia, in par. 24 on the sensus, he gives no account of the dense set of biblical and patristic references, given in the schema’s backnotes to illustrate and ground the new text which gained the hearty approval of the Council Fathers (see Vatican 170 BOOK REVIEWS II’s Acta Synodalia, vol. II/1, pp. 259 and 265–66). These issues point to a work of further penetration of the sensus fidei, for which this book prepares its readers well. Colombiere Center, Clarkston, Michigan JARED WICKS, S.J. Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change. Edited by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2022. Pp. xi, 286. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-826-36367-1.) Jesuits and Race is an important and timely book. Catholic thinking about race has become a central concern of historians of the early modern and modern church in recent years. As leaders of the global missionary enterprise, members of the Society of Jesus developed close ties to racial and religious minorities in Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the time of the founding of the order in 1540. In the process, they produced a distinguished body of work on race and the global church. Six of the book’s nine chapters focus on the early modern Society. These include strong contributions by Liam Matthew Brockey, Emanuele Colombo, Susan Deeds, J. Michelle Molina, Andrew Redden, and Erin Kathleen Rowe. A common theme is the rejection, by some important Jesuit writers and missionaries, of the racism and anti-Semitism that pervaded the early modern Church and that caused deep and lasting divisions within the Society. Emanuele Colombo’s essay about Antonio Possevino (1533-1610) provides a perceptive analysis of these divisions, especially those surrounding the decision by the Fifth General Congregation in 1593 to prohibit the admission to the Society of men of Jewish or Muslim descent. In practice, this decision affected mainly New Christians, as men of Jewish descent were known (few men of Muslim descent sought admission to the Society). Many of the most distinguished Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—including Pedro de Ribadeneira, Juan de Polanco, José de Acosta, and Francisco Suárez—were New Christians. The campaign to exclude New Christians nearly provoked a schism in the Society. The prohibition was not rescinded until 1946, in the wake of the Holocaust. Discrimination against Jews and New Christians was inextricably linked to discrimination against Africans and people of African descent. Erin Rowe cites the seventeenth-century historian and bishop Prudencio de Sandoval, who asked, “Who can deny that the descendants of Jews . . . persist in the evil tendencies stemming from their ancient ingratitude and poor understanding, just as Black people are inseparable from the accident of their blackness?” Rowe analyzes a widely-circulated treatise by the Jesuit historian Martín de Roa, who rejected his contemporaries’ denigration of blackness and affirmed, in what Rowe notes is an “extraordinary passage,” that “Black Christians were as endowed with heavenly light as white ones.” Liam Brockey writes that although Jesuits throughout the Portuguese empire benefitted from unfree labor, they rarely referred to this labor in their writings, an BOOK REVIEWS 171 absence that he suggests is likely due to the pervasiveness of slavery in colonial societies, and to “the unquestioned assumption that owning slaves or indentured servants was permissible, even for members of religious communities.” Like the New Christian question, the question of unfree labor divided Jesuits in Asia. Alessandro Valignano, the Visitor who played a decisive role in shaping the Asia missions, tried to steer a middle course, insisting on the need for unfree labor but cautioning the Jesuits against the excessive use of such labor: “moderation was essential if the Jesuits were to avoid the appearance of pomp while still projecting autoridad y reputación.” Sean Dempsey, Nathaniel Millett, and James M. O’Toole contribute chapters on the restored Society. In “A Challenge to Our Sincerity: American Jesuits Discover ‘The Negro,’” O’Toole takes as his point of departure a circular letter that the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe sent in 1967 to all American Jesuits. Arrupe acknowledged the Jesuits’ ownership of slaves before the Civil War, which is the subject of Millett’s chapter, “The Memory of Slavery at St. Louis University.” Arrupe then “laid out the political and religious case against any form of racism” and called on the Jesuits to expand their ministries to include not only the white Catholics whom they had traditionally served but also African Americans. Arrupe’s letter produced far-reaching changes. O’Toole focuses on the Society’s sustained efforts to welcome Black Americans into Jesuit high schools and universities from which they had been excluded. He underscores the courageous work of George Dunn and Claude Heithaus, who were punished by their superiors in the Society when they demanded that Jesuit institutions be integrated. Sean Dempsey takes up Dunne’s story in postwar Los Angeles, where in 1945 he “provided an unambiguous theological and intellectual foundation for Catholic interracialism by becoming the first Catholic cleric to declare segregation a sin against charity.” Dempsey provides a superb analysis of Dunne’s demand—presented in articles in Commonweal magazine—for desegregation in all sectors of American society, including within the Catholic community. Dunn linked this demand to a powerful critique of the assumptions that underlay American society during the years immediately following the war. “It is difficult to understand,” Dunne wrote, “how anyone could have imagined that with the day of liberation there would come pouring out . . . an army of capitalists bent upon restoring the old order of things that had preceded conquest.” He looked to a coalition of Christian Demo-crats and Socialists to transform the postwar world. Dempsey nonetheless cautions us not to view Dunne as a liberal Catholic in the Vatican II mold. Dunne was instead “a rather traditional figure who tried to forge a different path through the thickets of Cold War politics from that of many of his contemporaries in the Church. Dunne’s vision of racial justice, labor activism, and a more capacious anticommunism would not come to define the mainstream of Catholic Cold War politics as did the darker visions of Spellman, McIntyre, and McCarthy.” Dunne’s vision would prove, however, to have lasting influence. As John T. McGreevy notes in his excellent epilogue, South Asia has replaced the United 172 BOOK REVIEWS States as the region that produces more Jesuits than any other. Inculturation, which informed the work of many Jesuits long before the term was coined, has become a guiding precept of the Society, which is strongly committed to pursuing peace and justice in its ministries throughout the world. THOMAS M. COHEN The Catholic University of America ANCIENT The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. By Stuart Squires. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019. Pp. xxii, 366. $42.00. ISBN: 9781532637810). The ample bibliography given by Stuart Squires—the “secondary literature” alone extends to almost 30 pages—is witness to the fact that study of the Pelagian Controversy is flourishing, and also to the need for an introduction such as this to help the reader, whether student or scholar in the field (xxii), to see both the whole picture of the debate and evaluate the many details that contribute to the whole. The account is divided into two parts: part I (3–180) takes us through the history of the controversy. Chapter 1 (3–40) paints in broad strokes the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire before focusing on the more immediate context of the development of the ascetical movements in the fourth century in which the Pelagian debate emerged. The dispute between Jerome and Rufinus of Aquileia over the thought of Origen, which would mutate into the Pelagian debate, serves as a necessary introduction to the main account. The following chapters (2–4) introduce us in historical succession to Pelagius, Caelestius, and Rufinus the Syrian. Then the anti-Pelagian reaction as formulated by Augustine, Jerome, and Orosius is outlined (chapters 5–7). Some readers may think that Orosius is given more attention than he deserves, but the Spaniard played a significant role in how the early debate in Africa was presented in Palestine, and subsequently in reporting to the West (Africa) the Pelagian victory at Diospolis. Chapter 8 is a sober attempt to unravel the intricacies surrounding the condemnation of Pelagianism by Rome in 418. The disquiet caused by this found independent expression in the writings of Julian of Eclanum (chapter 8) and of John Cassian (chapter 9). Part II (pp. 183–277) gives a condensed but clear account of “the theology of . . .” the various protagonists in the controversy is an account of the theology of the protagonists insofar as it pertains directly to the debate. Clearly the theology of Augustine or the influence of Jerome cannot be outlined in a few pages. Squires divides his presentation of Augustine into two parts: Augustine in debate with Caelestius and Pelagius in the first phase of the debate, and his unfinished dispute with Julian of Eclanum in the later years. By concluding with Cassian at the end of the account in both parts, Squires reminds us that the controversy that had seemed to end in a fruitless impasse in the Julian-Augustine wrangle only set the scene for a fruitful tension between grace and nature that would imbue western Christendom. BOOK REVIEWS 173 This is a welcome addition to the bibliography on Pelagianism that lacks thorough overviews in English of the course of the whole controversy, and of the current scholarly consensus on a host of disputed details. Nanzan University WALTER DUNPHY Urban Developments in Late Antique and Medieval Rome:Revisiting the Narrative of Renewal. Edited by Gregor Kalas and Ann van Dijk. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 2021. Pp. 342. €128,00. ISBN: 9789462989085.) In this model volume of collaborative scholarship, editors Gregor Kalas and Ann van Dijk have assembled an all-star list of scholars to address, in nine masterclass case studies, one gradually emerging central question. As imperial Rome’s circle of influence diminished and other global centers of culture and commerce emerged in Asia and the Islamic worlds, with the Italian peninsula growing ever more insular by the minute, how did life in the city of Rome change over the third through twelfth centuries? Under the editors’ orchestration and jointly-authored introduction, the seemingly parochial theme reveals surprising insights into the legacy of Rome’s capacity for “creativity” (p. 26) in art, poetry, architecture, music, ritual and even financial matters, underscoring the city’s legacy of pursuing “productive responses to evolving circumstances” (p. 7). Rome as a symbol of apocalyptic disaster, this is not. Claims of liveliness across any city or community over a long stretch of nearly a thousand years, of course, can easily drain any analysis of historical specificity. The search for stability during a time of change becomes a sentiment just bland enough to keep all problematic or extenuating circumstances out of the scholar’s focus. Too sagacious to settle for trite and tired frameworks, however, editors Kalas and van Dijk have pushed their contributors toward precision, and what emerges here quite sharply is how important the seventh century was, in particular, in marking the gateway toward many of the new social and cultural realities that distinguished the classical city from the medieval one. The century that saw the last meeting of the Roman Senate (p. 28) would witness, as in Erik Thunø’s essay, the indisputable establishment of the popes as “martyr-saint impresarios” in church building, while Dennis Trout’s study of church inspirations under Pope Honorius, whose underappreciated artistry is rendered by Trout in original verse translations, reveal a papal city “renewed and embarking on a novel course” (p. 162). In a city “deeply committed to curating its past for present purposes,” the seventh century, Trout writes in epigrammatic fashion marked “yet another renaissance” (p. 150). Where the contributors excel—Kristina Sessa on war, finance, and the clergy; Dale Kinney on the nuanced collaboration between lay and ecclesiastical stakeholders in illuminated manuscript production and architectural renovation; Luisa Nardini’s fascinating account of manuscript changes in musical notation, charting the “permeability” of Roman chant, replete with Frankish, Gallican, and Beneventan 174 BOOK REVIEWS influences—is to bring a radical or unorthodox way of seeing old material which asks scholars to consider it anew, to see even this later Rome still shaped by factors beyond its walls, and to study complex processes outside the traditional boundary divisions of time. Jacob Latham’s nod to the Jewish contexts for the study of early Christianity in his essay on public rituals, as well as William North’s discussion of Hebrew Scripture in the eleventh century, shows a welcome sensitivity to religious inclusion in an otherwise excellent volume that misses an opportunity to engage directly with the history and archaeology of Rome’s Jewish community on the eve of the Middle Ages. When the Roman Empire withdrew from its control of Dacia in the third century—a stunning retreat—foreigners threatened the empire’s borders, exposing what would become a lingering issue of who possessed citizenship and whether these rights and judicial protections might be acquired by outsiders. Kalas’s own study of the monuments of the fifth-century city reminds us that Romans frequently lived in a “denial of conflict” (p. 103). In his analysis of the medieval guidebook, the Mirabilia, John Osborne goes a step further. In Rome always lay a “wonderful blend of possible fact and utter fantasy” (p. 209). Saint Louis University DOUGLAS BOIN Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital. By Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos. [Christianity in Late Antiquity Series, 9.] (Oakland: University of California Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 221. $95.00. ISBN: 9780520304550.) This study addresses the Christianization of Constantinople from its foundation by Constantine in 324 to the death of Theodosios II in 450. It examines the growing presence of Christianity within the framework of three intertwined areas of theoretical inquiry, viz., ritual, conflict, and memory, to suggest three phases of Christian development. The first, in the 320s and 330s, saw Christianity as one cult among many. In a second, late-fourth-century phase, Christianity was the dominant religion. By the mid-fifth century, it predominated. The purpose in charting this course is twofold: to analyze public ritual activity in Constantinople and to create a model for addressing Christianization elsewhere (p. 9). Five chapters document this progression. Chapter One examines the religious landscape of late antiquity and continuities between pagan and Christian practice. Chapter Two considers these practices in the context of Constantinople, arguing that the city was not a Christian foundation. Chapter Three looks at violence among the city’s Christian factions, and Four outlines the ways in which ritual performance established individual religious communities within the city. Finally, Chapter Five observes the emergence of a specifically imperial Christianity. The book is puzzling. Although well-grounded in theoretical approaches, its historiographical understanding is problematic. The author emphasizes that the BOOK REVIEWS 175 city was not a Christian foundation, and claims that this study is the first to challenge the idea of Constantinople as such (p. 180). This assertion is incorrect. Arguments over the nature of the foundation go back to the nineteenth century. More recently, others, this reviewer included, have made the case for a non-Christian foundation.1 Source materials are also misrepresented, as with the assertion that the fifth-century Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae omits the Column of Constantine (pp. 104–05). It does not. The column appears in the sixth region as “Columnam purpuream Constantini.”2 There is also misunderstanding of the city’s topography in the assertion that pagan temples would have loomed over the city center (p. 80). While it is true that temples survived in Constantinople, most stood on the slopes leading down to the sea. They would not have been visible from the higher, enclosed space of the Augusteion, nor do they appear to have been on Christian processional routes. The more interesting question with respect to such activity is what the backdrop of the city’s monumental colonnaded boulevards, classic examples of empire architecture, or the presence of a Capitolium along the Mese, a welltrodden processional route leading away from the city center, brought to Christian urban movement. These mistakes matter because argumentation hinges upon them. At the same time, they reflect a laudable desire to engage the material evidence for Constantinopolitan topography. It remains therefore all the more unfortunate that attention to evidence for and scholarship pertinent to the built environment was not more careful, as this material would have bolstered the book’s claims. For example, the fifth century saw an increase in church building documented not only in the Notitia, but also by archaeological excavation.3 Misunderstandings aside, the sense of Christianity’s growing presence and its increasingly imperial manifestation is convincing. In this respect the book achieves its end and stands as a welcome contribution to the understanding of Constantinople’s early development. Indiana University SARAH BASSETT The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma, Christian Asceticism, and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine. Edited by Johannes Hahn and Volker Menze. (Oakland: University of California Press. 2020. Pp. x, 324. $95.00. ISBN: 9780520304147.) The fifth-century Life of Barsauma is one of the longest and most intriguing Syriac hagiographical texts to survive from Late Antiquity. Until this volume, only excerpts had been published in a modern language, by François Nau in French in 1. Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinoplem (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 17–18, for historiographical discussion. 2. 7.7 in Otto Seeck, Notitia Dignitatum (Berlin, 1876), p. 230. 3. Thomas Mathews, Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy. University Park, PA. 176 BOOK REVIEWS 1913/14. With this volume we now have, in addition to seven excellent chapters on the text, an English translation of the full work, made by Andrew Palmer (pp. 187– 271), based on his forthcoming critical text of the Life. This book thus represents a fantastic success both in bringing the Life to a larger audience while also exploring some of the nuanced aspects of a largely unknown (or misunderstood) work. Toward the end of this book, Daniel Caner remarks in his chapter “Wandering Monks Remembered” that the Life of Barsauma is a “hagiographical masterpiece” (p. 151). Elsewhere, Jan Willem Drijvers, in his chapter “Barsauma, Eudocia, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount,” calls it a “fascinating hagiographical report” (p. 103), and Günter Stemberger, in his chapter “Barsauma’s Travels to the Holy Land and Jewish History,” lauds its “consistently literary character” (p. 74). Almost across the board this book praises the high quality of this long Syriac text. At the same time, these scholars strike a discordant note: Stemberger calls the Life “pure fiction” (p. 88); Drijvers “predominantly fiction” and “a literary construct and a historical fabrication” (p. 103). Simon Corcoran, in his chapter “Barsauma and the Emperors,” puts it more delicately: “When [the author] gives sufficient details for his account to be checked, he is often found wanting” (p. 49). The Life of Barsauma is fascinating in a number of ways and repays close reading. It defies genre characterization, being structured by ninety-nine “signs” and not written with precise chronology in mind—its closest analogues would be the familiar miracle collections from the Greek world, of which we have no other examples in Syriac. In it we gain a full picture of one of the most rigorous fifth-century holy men of the vaunted Syriac tradition, a contemporary of Simeon the Stylite’s, and, according to Simeon himself in this Life, even more holy. He was a “chief of mourners (risha d-abile)” and achieved ascetic perfection (gmiruta), in technical Syriac parlance. But that full picture also includes close relationships with both the emperor Theodosius II and his empress Eudocia, four violent pilgrimages to Jerusalem, repeated assaults on Jews, pagans, and fellow Christians, and the complete destruction of a synagogue. The Life, therefore, claims a great deal for its saint that, if verifiable, would transform our understanding of the social category of holy man in Late Antiquity. Alas, much of the Life appears to have been written from thin air. Theodosius II certainly invited Barsauma the archimandrite to Ephesus II in 449, and he played a role there and at Chalcedon, where he was the only attendee to speak on the floor in Syriac (as we learn from the Acta). But his relationship to the imperial house and formal leadership in the Miaphysite movement were minimal. The anti-Judaism of the work is significant, but his direct actions against the Jews in Palestine cannot be proven and seem to be echoes of anti-Julian rhetoric which had a long half-life in Syriac. As Johannes Hahn explains in his excellent conclusion to this very stimulating volume, “What we can primarily gain from the Life is an artfully crafted image or rather remembrance of Barsauma the saint, not a representation of the historical person” (p. 172). The book (and Life) are, however, a goldmine for readers interested in the exploration of genre, Syriac ascetic categories, and, further, BOOK REVIEWS 177 how hagiographical tropes could, at times, serve to countenance violence in an age of doctrinal and social unrest. SCOTT JOHNSON University of Oklahoma MEDIEVAL Writing History in the Community of St. Cuthbert, c. 700-1130: From Bede to Symeon of Durham. By Charles C. Rozier. (York: York Medieval Press. 2020. Pp. 235. $99.00. ISBN: 9781903153949.) Charles C. Rozier’s book Writing History in the Community of St Cuthbert, c. 700–1130, offers a new account of historical production and culture in St. Cuthbert’s community. This flourishing of writing from the eighth to twelfth centuries happened not at Lindisfarne, where Cuthbert was thought to have worked many a miracle, but at Durham, where his cult and community made their home. Rozier’s book takes the reader through a detailed analysis of Durham’s medieval tracts and chronicles, its works in progress, its libraries, and the arguments made by its monks. This book would be of interest to anyone working on identities of Christian communities over the long term, the manuscript and writing tradition of Durham, medieval historical writing, and the study of time in the pre-modern past. Durham history writing was self-conscious: in each new era, it mattered what had happened before. Several themes re-emerged repeatedly in the multi-century history of rewriting at Durham: the miracles and memory of St. Cuthbert, the figure of Bede as a writer on history and time (and as proof of the value of the north in its contributions to Christian and national history), attacks from Scandinavian peoples at multiple points in the past, and the studious investigation of time with reference to models from the British Isles and as far away as Mainz. The book opens new avenues for exploring the meaning of local and community identities. One of the key points is that Durham writing centered on the experience of St. Cuthbert, rather than the place itself. The community had moved, but writers remained keen to stress that this community, and its own particular legacy, was the same. As Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio (the book on the church of Durham’s beginnings, and where it went after that) illustrates, brutal attacks on and disaster in Lindisfarne prompted a translation of St. Cuthbert’s relics to Chester-le-Street and Durham. Chapter 2 explores how writers in Durham for centuries after understood this dynamic move as part of their community’s history. They grappled with how to understand what it meant that Lindisfarne’s remote, insular perfection as a spiritual home had become a wasteland. Symeon recalled Bede’s remark about Cuthbert’s spiritual justification of choosing the lesser of two evils: even something as macabre as digging up the grave of a saint—a place meant to be his final resting place—and moving his bones to a new home, was preferable to yielding them up to Viking invasions. Rozier’s book shows that, rather than tracing the history of a place, tracing the dynamic history 178 BOOK REVIEWS of a community as it saw itself—even if it was uprooted, threatened, or moved— is a fruitful research endeavor. Cuthbert remained a powerful presence at Durham, even in—or perhaps because of—the compelling story of his removal. Chapter 3 examines the circumstances in which St. Cuthbert’s cult was established at Durham, the sources for this event, and how the Norman Conquest and church reform influenced the memory of Cuthbert at Durham. Rozier accomplishes this close study of change over time by examining the manuscript evidence, showing why reconstructing a chronicle of Durham’s monastery helps us understand their historical projects, and exploring why Durham writers added continuations to older sources. In Chapter 4, we move into the long eleventh century, in which both conflicts and coalitions erupted among local people and reform-minded Norman bishops. By tracing Durham’s acquisition of books, the work of its scribes, and the reading of its writers, Rozier shows that a new intellectual culture emerged in Durham at the same time. By reinforcing Durham’s legitimacy through arguments for continuity, strong family connections, and carefully ordered lists of names and liturgical events, members of the Durham community projected their history into a confidently anticipated future. The fifth chapter introduces, outlines, and analyzes several key primary sources critical for understanding Durham’s historical projects in this period. These include: splendidly detailed new miracles of St. Cuthbert invoking the Book of Exodus and its connection with Durham’s own displaced origins; lesser-known tracts by Symeon that pointedly asserted Durham’s service to Rome rather than to Canterbury; and detailed personal and legal arguments that both responded to aggressive attacks and pressed the importance of Durham on its own merits. These works include what are really some quite sensational titles, which evoke the acute import of these matters for monks living in Durham and remembering their community’s past. For example, we encounter the tract On the unjust persecution of Bishop William I, which Rozier argues was written to stage a spirited defense of Bishop William’s character and of the community of Durham itself. The tract was aimed directly at John of Worcester and his fellow detractors at Worcester, who considered the bishop tainted by his role in the political rebellion of 1088. But Bishop William had been the founder of the cathedral priory at Durham, and in the first quarter of the twelfth century, an anonymous Durham monk felt the need to revisit the story and reiterate Symeon’s positive account of him. Another work, On the siege of Durham and the character of Earl Uhtred who succeeded him, also reveals the importance of marriage alliances and disputed inheritance for the community at Durham. As Rozier suggests, we can see that oral tradition, including local history and genealogy, were valuable for writers seeking to argue a case for lawful ownership, and for Durham’s critical role in local family politics. Rozier shows in this chapter that the recent past, as well as the much older stories of ancient origins and displacement, prompted Durham writers to turn to more writing and interpretation in service of their community. In a community conscious of its past, willing to promote and defend its unique value, there were plenty of cases in which writers construed stories of us and them, BOOK REVIEWS 179 or of punishment and defense. The sources offer examples of thought and sympathy that transcended boundaries. In one case of Cuthbert’s miracles, there is a story in which Prior Turgot forgave a penitent horse thief and offered kindness to pirates, caring for them and even hosting them on the Durham monks’ land. This case is especially interesting given Durham’s long and fraught history with Viking invasions, and shows where some writers advocated moral examples for grace and generosity even while remembering a troubled past. At Durham—as Rozier shows clearly in chapter 6—timing was everything. Especially in the first third of the twelfth century, the community became a locus for in-depth, intellectual exploration of time: time as an abstract idea, and how to measure it; the pitfalls and possibilities of different chronologies; methods (and even technologies of layout) for ordering historical events on the manuscript page. Rozier demonstrates that writers in Durham who engaged in these kinds of temporal reckonings—which often had major political and religious implications— made an impact on the international scene of thought about time. Importantly, too, Rozier considers the implications of unfinished works of temporal study, which are generally less well known. With a focus on the evidence of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 139, he shows how unfinished works reflect changing interests in time and the broadening of ambition for connecting local and world history in ways both rigorous and dazzling for a wider audience. The chapter explores a rich range of time-work activities happening in Durham’s scriptoria and libraries: interacting with the ideas of Mainz chronicler Marianus, taking inspiration from Bede’s temporal treatises, importing copies of continental annals, experimenting with annalistic style and layout, and building a new chronology in the text “On the Coming of the Saxons”—one which highlighted Northumbrian and northern history, with a conscious focus on Scandinavian influence and invasion. The community may have moved from where it felt its origins to be. Certain themes, however, never left the medieval community. As Rozier demonstrates, medieval Durham offers a case study in medieval identity, a thorough analysis of how collective memory in a community actually worked, and a study of Christian historical writing of northern England that consciously sought to link local experience with universal history. University of Oxford EMILY A. WINKLER Codex Epistolaris Carolinus: Letters from the Popes to the Frankish Rulers, 739–791. Translation, introduction, and notes by Rosamond McKitterick, Dorine van Espelo, Richard Pollard, and Richard Price. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2021. Pp. xi, 546. £125. ISBN: 9781800348714). The tools for teaching the Carolingian age to new generations of students proliferate apace. Paul Dutton’s Carolingian sourcebook (2nd edition, 2004) stands at the head of this class, alongside the four royal biographies translated by Thomas Noble (2009), but these are but the start of the array of high-quality translations of 180 BOOK REVIEWS Carolingian sources now available. Given the range of Carolingian material available in recent translation, new students of this essential early medieval moment are positioned to study the period in a depth that was hardly imaginable even a few decades ago. To this formidable arsenal of accessible Carolingiana comes this very welcome and in all respects definitive translation of the Codex Epistolaris Carolinus, the latest it-eration in the series “Translated Texts for Historians” from Liverpool University Press. Between 739 and 791 a series of popes sent just shy of a hundred letters on matters great and small to the rulers of the Frankish kingdom, from Charles Martel to Charlemagne. Surviving in a single manuscript copy of the ninth century, the Codex Epistolaris Carolinus, as its contemporary preface tells us, stemmed from an initiative of Charlemagne to collect and preserve the letters sent to the rulers of his family by the Roman see. The subjects on offer in the letters are rich and varied and often right at the heart of key issues to the dynasty and papacy, both in a period of rapid and intertwined change and development. In the letters of the Codex Epistolaris Carolinus we are treated to glimpses of Carolingian mayors inching toward a coup against the Merovingians, negotiations over how to handle the shifting balance of power in Italy from Lombards to Franks, an armature of Old Testament ruler ideology in the making, canon law avant la lettre, and much more. Until now the letters have been best known to scholars through the problematic 1892 edition of Wilhelm Gundlach for the MGH. Of the editorial decisions that made that edition unsatisfactory was Gundlach’s adherence to a nineteenthcentury instinct to rearrange the medieval order of the letters into a (purportedly) strict chronological sequence, as well as his banishing of the lemmata, the often-discursive explanatory titles given to each letter by the Carolingian compilers of the text. To use the Gundlach edition is to encounter a Carolingian document with much of its Carolingian logic removed or hidden. All that is thankfully swept away here, and readers of this translation encounter the text as it appears in the manuscript and as its Carolingian compilers intended it to be read. This is the first complete English translation of the letters, and it is an important service to the field to make them so easily and accessibly available. Four introductory sections precede the translation. After a general introduction (Part I, pp. 1–15), individual sections set the compilation and its manuscript in context. Dorine van Espelo (Part II, pp. 16–79) considers how the eighth century went about the business of diplomatic correspondence, the tradition into which we should set the letters, and the logic of the lemmata. Richard Pollard and Richard Price explore the collection’s Latinitiy in Part Three (pp. 80–101). In Part Four (pp. 102–140) Rosamond McKitterick breaks new ground in her chapter on the Franks and the eighth-century papacy, and what role papal correspondence had to play in the interdependence of the Carolingian rulers and their papal supporters. There is a crisp introduction for each letter, which is also provided with helpful notes that send readers to parallel issues elsewhere in the letter collection and to further scholarship on issues of interest. An appendix (pp. 437–454) tracks down BOOK REVIEWS 181 the names and key biographical detail for all the individuals in the letters, while a glossary (pp. 463–468) assists newcomers with some of the collection’s technical vocabulary. This translation of the Codex Epistolaris Carolinus is deservedly the new standard point of entry to this important early medieval text for new students and seasoned scholars alike and a very welcome addition to any medieval bookshelf. George Mason University SAM COLLINS Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire: Paschasius Radbertus’ Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie. Translated and annotated by Mayke de Jong and Justin Lake. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. Pp. xx, 264. £19.99. ISBN: 9781526134844.) Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire presents a welcome new translation of one of the ninth century’s more enigmatic literary texts, the “Funeral Oration for Wala” (Epitaphium Arsenii) by Paschasius Radbertus. Until now, Anglophone Carolingianists have appreciatively consulted the venerable, if sometimes eccentric, translation by Allen Cabaniss, Charlemagne’s Cousins (Syracuse, 1967). Mayke de Jong and Justin Lake offer scholars a new alternative to Cabaniss that manages to be at the same time more consistently legible and more stylistically representative of Paschasius’s original Latinity. Abbot Wala of Corbie (d. 836) was a cousin and close confidant of Charlemagne, who served that emperor and his imperial successor, Louis the Pious, in sundry roles before being implicated in the two rebellions against Louis that took place in 830 and 833. The Epitaphium represents Paschasius’s attempt to rehabilitate his former abbot’s reputation. De Jong and Lake argue that Paschasius wrote the Epitaphium in two parts at two distinct political moments. The first part, written during the 830s soon after the rebellions, makes a case for Wala’s exemplary life and virtues as a servant of God and empire. The second part, very different from the first, comprises a fiery retrospective of Wala’s final years that Paschasius wrote during the 850s, when he felt freer to speak openly and to pillory Wala’s former detractors and enemies. The full text of the Epitaphium provides, therefore, a unique witness to the troubles of this period, reflecting both the chaos of Louis’s final decade and the sorrowful modes by which Carolingian society later made sense of it. After a useful biographical index of the Epitaphium’s dramatis personae, a scholarly introduction offers a summary of the text’s narrative, a history of its central figures and events, and a brief overview of relevant research to date. Sections ably analyze the text’s distinctive composition, style, and language within the broader context of the early Carolingian literary corpus—Paschasius chose to write his account as a prose dialogue, and his characters often borrow wholesale from the language of ancient Roman theater. Specialist readers will wish to read the intro- 182 BOOK REVIEWS duction alongside De Jong’s most recent monograph, Epitaph for an Era (Cambridge, 2019), in which she presents her extended research on the text and the historical moment to which it speaks. Of particular interest to Latinists, furthermore, will be De Jong and Lake’s discussion of the Epitaphium’s parallels with Ambrose of Milan’s De excessu fratris sui Satyri, a funeral oration that Ambrose composed in the year 378 on the occasion of his own brother’s death. Connections to this earlier text have gone virtually unnoticed by previous editors and translators of the Epitaphium. Yet Paschasius’s extensive intertextual borrowing (made patent in extensive notes to the body of the translation) proves crucial to De Jong and Lake’s arguments for Paschasius’s planned composition of the two books. In sum, De Jong and Lake have provided a readable and erudite update and companion to Cabaniss’s earlier work. Carolingian scholars will welcome with open arms both the new translation and the fresh scholarship that it will no doubt facilitate and inspire. Paschasius Radbertus’s literary art is certainly rich enough to sustain further scholarly attention. New York University ANDREW ROMIG Last Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century. By Katherine Allen Smith. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020. Pp. 306. $24.99. ISBN: 9781783275236). Katherine Allen Smith uses the lens of exegesis to uncover a novel twelfth-century practice of biblical hermeneutics that profoundly shaped early narratives of the First Crusade. Many of Allen Smith’s arguments will be familiar to students of medieval history, but The Bible and Crusade Narrative is anything but redundant. Allen Smith’s work offers new insights into the construction of early crusade narratives and the process whereby the First Crusade passed from memory to written record. Chapter 1, “History and Biblical Exegesis in the Latin West,” argues that medieval narrators saw the First Crusade as a miraculous text that was meant to be glossed. First Crusade writers used their exegetical training to create a new kind of historical narrative that was better suited to record events that seemed to have been ordained in heaven. Allen Smith illustrates that the widespread use of biblical references in early crusade accounts differed from the nearly contemporary accounts of the Norman invasion that predominantly used classical references to record the event. Allen-Smith’s comparative analysis is more comprehensive than previous studies and is able to restore “early crusade historiography to its original context in which the concerns of history and theology were inextricably linked” (p. 47). In Chapter 2, “The Bible in the Chronicles of the First Crusade,” Allen Smith uses quantitative data to “understand the relationship between scriptural study and history, and the ways in which the Bible mediated memory and lived experiences in the medieval Latin West” (p. 91). The author suggests that medieval scriptural study is the key to understanding “the chains of associative thinking that . . . hint at what the twelfth-century writers were thinking as they wrote” (54). Allen BOOK REVIEWS 183 Smith’s analysis of contemporary scriptural practice shows that early crusade accounts were written against “a backdrop of lively . . . debate about the crusade’s historical, allegorical, and eschatological significance” (p. 54). In Chapter 3, “Into the Promised Land,” Allen Smith argues that crusade authors displayed their exegetical training when they used biblical typologies to cast crusaders as Jerusalemites, apostles, and virtuoso performers of Christo-mimesis. Typological practice conditioned the portrayal of Muslims as well. Allen Smith demonstrates that crusade authors made use of the adversos iudeos tradition to cast Muslims according to typologies commonly found in anti-Jewish polemic. Allen Smith’s discussion is enlightening but ignores critical parts of the scholarly tradition. As Pollard and others have shown, medieval anti-Jewish polemic is strongly informed by the Latin tradition of Flavius Josephus, but Allen Smith ignores Josephus almost entirely. This illustrates a problem that results from Allen Smith’s tight focus on biblical allusion: it can create a blindness to other important narratological elements found in these same texts. These elements are important because we can’t fully understand biblical allusion until we consider how the Bible works in conjunction with other traditions that inform crusade accounts. Chapter 4, “Babylon and Jerusalem,” analyzes the impact of Augustinian ideology on early crusade accounts. Allen-Smith suggests that early crusade texts made use of Augustinian dichotomies because “the crusade actualized the conflict between the two cities” (156). Crusade authors applied Augustinian convention when they placed the crusade on the long arc of salvation history: “the crusaders’ literal fulfillment of the Gospel . . . set into motion a new apostolic age” (p. 171). The analysis sheds new light on the use of Augustine in early crusade narratives, but Allen Smith’s tightly focused analysis displaces other important textual considerations. For example, in Allen Smith’s analysis of Augustinian dualism in Baldric of Dol’s Historia, Baldric clearly frames the section of text according to Josephus’s Jewish War and “the deeds of Titus and Vespasian,” rather than Augustine’s City of God,as Allen Smith claims. Overall, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century is a muchneeded addition to crusade studies and Allen Smith’s work will be a model for analyzing the impact of the Bible on medieval accounts of the First Crusade. Work still needs to be done to understand biblical allusion in relation to other texts that framed medieval crusade accounts, but Allen Smith’s study offers a solid foundation upon which to build. University of Wisconsin–Stout CHRISTOPHER FREEMAN The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative. By Beth C. Spacey. (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press. 2020. Pp. xvi and 198. $25.95. ISBN 978-178327-518-2.) The field of crusade studies remains one of the most prolific, and at times also one of the most vibrant, fields of modern medieval historiography. Perhaps one of 184 BOOK REVIEWS its most important developments of late, pioneered most obviously by Marcus Bull, is the adoption of analytical techniques related to the “literary turn” and, in particular, narrative theory. Through this, scholars have built on the foundations of theorists like Hayden White—with varying degrees of religious observance—to better treat the textual sources for the crusades as cultural artefacts: as windows onto the authors and audiences by, and for whom, they were created. It is in the context of this that we should view the book under consideration here, Beth C. Spacey’s insightful and important The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative. As Spacey notes, this book is not concerned with reality, or even with the question of whether authors believed what they were writing was true; rather, it treats various aspects of the miraculous as “narrative ingredients”—components of a wider literary arsenal through which an author could provide meaning (pp. 9–10). Here, Spacey is aligning herself with other recent works with a specific literary focus, like Stephen J. Spencer’s Emotions in a Crusading Context, c. 1 0 9 5 – c. 1 2 9 1 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019). The book itself covers narratives written c. 1099–c. 1250, albeit within this timeframe there is discussion only of sources relating to events between the First and Fourth Crusades (1096–1204). It is divided into three parts, each containing two chapters. Part I explores two interrelated—if still demonstrably differentiated—narrative themes: “Miracles and Marvels.” Chapter 1 demonstrates how each contributed to authorial explanations for divine agency on crusade, especially the First Crusade, which is said to have witnessed such miraculous events as a heavenly host intervening at the Battle of Antioch in June 1098. Chapter 2, by contrast, turns to how the divine could intersect with moments of failure. For texts relating to the disastrous Second Crusade, for example, they helped communicate that the manifold dead had at least ascended to heaven. Part II, “Visions and Dreams,” begins with chapter 3, which is dedicated largely to the stories that surrounded the two visionaries whose experiences led, in the case of Peter Bartholomew, to the finding of a relic of the Holy Lance at Antioch in June 1098, and, in the case of Stephen of Valence, to the expectation of divine assistance in the aforementioned battle outside that same city. Chapter 4 pushes further into the themes of intercession and insurance, wherein it is shown how moments of saintly appearance were used by authors as validating mechanisms for certain expeditions— and the actions of their leaders. Part III, “Signs and Augury,” leads with chapter 5’s examination of, among other things, the representation of the use of so-called superstitious practices to both define the religious “other” and explain their defeat. Finally, chapter 6 turns to signs of divine approval and disapproval, and how celestial phenomena helped to lend a further legitimising gloss to victorious events (again, seen most especially in the sources for the First Crusade) or to presage disaster, like the 1186 planetary conjunction that occurred just a year before Jerusalem fell to the Sultan Saladin in 1187. Intrepid readers will also find a helpful appendix offering further details on many of the narratives discussed. This is a valuable contribution not just for those in crusade studies, but for anyone interested in medieval European literary and religious cultures. The slightly top-heavy nature of the book’s temporal focus—that is, the extent to which the BOOK REVIEWS 185 First Crusade is discussed compared with the other campaigns—is clear, but also to be expected: few events attracted quite the same level of literary output or created the canvas onto which authors could paint such vivid miraculous images. Indeed, what is most important to note is that, through the close and careful reading of the sources, Spacey is able to tease out fresh and significant conclusions regarding the role the miraculous played in creating and legitimizing the imagined narrative world of the crusades: a world that, in its turn, would greatly influence the lived behaviors of those who took the cross. Cardiff University ANDREW D. BUCK L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312). By Damien Carraz. (Lyon: Lyon University Press. 2020. Pp. 608. €35,00. ISBN: 9782729712129.) Originally published in 2005, this edition offers an updated re-issue of one of the most important recent contributions to the history of the military orders and the Crusades. While Dr. Carraz’s work centers on the lower Rhône region, the implications of his detailed study show how Templar activity in the region rippled through the medieval world. As an area that provided both rural economic opportunities, access to Mediterranean trade routes, a legacy of Carolingian culture, and persisting Roman urban centers, the Rhône valley offers an ideal case study for Templar activity outside of the Holy Land. Carraz brings together a comprehensive study of the documentary records (1,600 documents) of the Knights Templar along with archeological and narrative sources. Such exhaustive research allows Carraz to examine nearly every aspect of Templar life. He estimates numbers of written transactions, populations of Templar houses, tenure of individual commanders, internal organizational structures for house, and patronage relationships with regional elites to name just a few (chapter 5). The sources for the Templars in the south of France are especially rich and unique as local houses compiled cartularies, like their northern counterparts, but also drew from the local notarial culture and the more routine written transactional practices that accompanied it. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Templars were an omnipresent feature of the social and geographical landscape of the south of France. Their earliest establishments are recorded in donations dating to 1124, five years before the official foundations of the order in the Council of Troyes (p. 82). As much as the nobility supported the Templars, who were able to tap into a fervor of crusading support, much of the property attained by the Templars came by way of purchase. Templars consolidated land, making the most of donations by buying and selling to maximize efficiency. Carraz distinguishes the activities of urban houses from their rural and semi-urban counterparts, showing how urban houses were able to draw on trade networks and greater access to capital from ports, markets, and roads, while rural houses focused on natural resources. Templars similarly utilized their diversity of houses to appeal to different types of supporters. 186 BOOK REVIEWS The Templars played an important role in the religious landscape of southern France. Part of the early enthusiasm for the founding of local Templar houses came from the experience of inter-religious conflict and specifically the fear of Muslim piracy (p. 55). But Templars also offered a way to engage in religious life beyond traditional monasticism. In this capacity, they performed many similar functions as traditional Benedictine houses, such as memorializing donors and offering Masses, for a community that extended beyond the ranks of the nobility. Carraz explains the downfall of the Templars in the trials of 1307 and the subsequent Council of Vienne as an abrupt change, but one that was foreseeable. He dismisses the heresy charges that were leveled against them but does point out how the Templar membership had declined by the end of the thirteenth century. Estates were often inhabited by only a few brothers. While some Templars persisted even past the trial, their popularity seems to have waned as other types of popular religious movements, such as the mendicants, rose to replace them. Carraz’s work is essential reading for those interested in the Templars and the Military Orders, but his real contribution comes in the way he connects the activities of the Templars to the wider medieval context. In working from such an abundance of documentary sources, he elucidates the intersection of Templar history and nearly every aspect of medieval life, from religious devotion to royal and papal politics. In this, Carraz clearly shows how the military orders should not be thought of as a peripheral part of medieval history, but rather as the embodiment of many of its most important conceptual innovations, economics changes, and religious movements. University of Oregon MICHAEL PEIXOTO A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of Righteousness in the Crusading Near East. By Uri Zvi Shachar. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.2021. Pp. x, 320. $65.00. ISBN: 9780812253337.) In the year 1211, according to various Hebrew sources, several hundred Frenchspeaking Jews, mostly from France and England, landed in Acre, principal port of the kingdom of Jerusalem and de facto capital since Saladin captured the Holy City in 1187. They had come to live in the Holy Land; some of them settled in Jerusalem, although when the Ayyubid sultan al-Mu‘azzam dismantled the defensive walls of the city to prevent crusaders from taking and holding it, many of these Jews resettled in Acre. Various writers from this community of immigrants presented their aliya (return to the Holy Land) as what Uri Shachar calls a “Jewish Crusade.” The return to the Holy Land of these pious Jews would play a key role in purifying the world, and would herald the emergence of the Messiah, who (according to at least one source) would be a member of this European Jewish community in the Holy Land. The voyage itself was an act of piety and renunciation, which purified the immigrant Jews (in comparison with those who chose to remain in Europe to pursue base earthly interests). And these Jews would purify the Holy Land itself, sullied or “polluted” by the occupation of infidels, Christians, and Muslims. BOOK REVIEWS 187 Shachar carefully analyzes a rich and complex group of texts associated with these European Jews in the Holy Land. Some of these Jewish authors refashioned apocalyptic texts first composed five or six centuries before, complex and layered treatises that were continuously reworked by Hebrew authors who sought to inscribe their current hopes and tribulations into an apocalyptic scenario of the last days. They “stylize historical events into common apocalyptic structures” (pp. 140–1). One of the great strengths of Shachar’s work is that he does not limit himself to analyzing these Hebrew works from European Jewish immigrés, but places them in the broader political and cultural history of the thirteenth-century Near East, where conflicts between Frankish princes, Ayyubid sultans, and crusaders created a fragmented political landscape and continual military and political struggles. This forged an atmosphere propitious to apocalyptic speculation on the part of Christians and Muslims as well as Jews. In the wake of the death of Saladin in 1193, the territory he had dominated, stretching from the Jazira (in Iraq) to Egypt, was fragmented in a power struggle between the late sultan’s brother, sons, and nephews. Meanwhile, the Franks of the Levant (kings, princes, knights, and military orders) were often at odds with one another. Add to that the periodic arrival of crusaders from Europe who had their own agendas, which did not necessarily coincide with those of local Franks. This led to alliances between Muslim and Frankish principalities: as Shachar shows, numerous battles in the region over the course of the thirteenth century pitted one alliance of Muslims and Christians against another alliance of Muslims and Christians. Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, arrived from Europe and was consternated at what he saw: Christians, Muslims, and Jews mixed together, speaking a Babel of languages. The eastern Christians had a confusing variety of rites, doctrines, and habits; he was at a loss to establish who was to be considered a true Christian and who a heretic. As Shachar shows, the new bishop was particularly critical of the “Poulains,” as he calls the Franks settled in the Holy Land: They had become corrupted and effeminate; they entered into alliances with infidel Muslims instead of combatting them. The new bishop pinned his hopes on forthright crusaders fresh from Europe, uncorrupted by contact with the Orient, though as he stayed on in the East after the failure of the Fifth Crusade, he tempered his criticism of the Poulains. It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to this rich study. Shachar presents subtle and nuanced analyses of historiographical and apocalyptic works in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, and French. The authors of these texts trumpeted their religious differences, yet they shared a common culture and a common vocabulary of apocalyptic hopes and fears. Université de Nantes JOHN TOLAN Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church: The Career of Philippe of Cahors. By William Chester Jordan. [Medieval Academy Books.] (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2020. Pp. xi, 128. $28.95. ISBN 978-1-487-52461-6.) This short biography of Philip of Cahors, bishop of Évreux (c. 1220–81), examines the character and career of an important—if hitherto only regionally 188 BOOK REVIEWS recognised—figure in both French royal administration and the Norman Church. With his characteristically admirable archival scrutiny and attention to illustrative detail, William Chester Jordan has produced a succinct but illuminating account of a member of the reformist circle surrounding King Louis IX of France and an exemplary shepherd of his diocese. As with all good biography, this concentration on Philip of Cahors also brings more fully to light the wider field of northern France in the latter half of the thirteenth century. The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 reconstructs Philip’s early life from what hints are available from the evidence and wider context. Offspring of a Cahorsin family that made good as creditors to the Albigensian Crusade (1208–29), Philip became a clerk and almost certainly a student of law, probably at Orléans after preparatory schooling in Cahors, before serving as an officialis for the archdeacon of Rheims—and future pope—Ottobuono Fieschi. Much of the information about Philip’s life before his appearance in Rheims is presented as conclusions rather than argument, as the latter appears in a chapter of Elizabeth A.R. Brown’s Festschrift. While understandable, the need to consult a separate volume may frustrate a reader hoping to consult immediately the reasoning behind the claims made for this less thoroughly documented period of Philip’s life. Philip’s effective service in the archdiaconal court recommended him to royal service in 1256/7, the subject of chapter 2. As a legal clerk of the Parlement, Philip investigated claims competing with royal jurisdiction on a host of issues and assisted in rendering judgements. His skill and reliability earned him the post of keeper of the royal seal—‘chancellor in all but name’ (p. 31)—in the early 1260s. He emerges from Jordan’s study as a skilful diplomat and disinterested judge, marked by strict fidelity to both the structure and the content of custom, as in his ruling against the peasants of Ézy, a Norman village, who in 1263 pleaded without (written) proofs for exemption from a triennial hearth tax, a case again dealt with by Jordan at greater length elsewhere, this time in the Haskins Society Journal. Chapter 3, the longest of the book, treats Philip’s career as bishop of Évreux from his election in 1269. As the head of an important Norman see, he leaves a greater personal impression on the sources. Philip’s recommendation to the episcopate by his friend, Louis IX, was swiftly followed by the king’s death before Tunis on his final crusade. His decade as bishop therefore took place under the reign of Louis’ son, Philip III, and was spent upholding the saintly king’s legacy (including in a literal sense, as one of the dead crusader’s executors). Amidst disputes and controversies with the powerful interests of his diocese—such as the abbey of Saint-Taurin d’Évreux and various knightly families—and despite his reduced role in the new court, Philip of Cahors maintained the reforms introduced in Louis’ reign, though Jordan may too confidently read the silence surrounding the bishop’s attitude toward the important Jewish population of Évreux as benevolent. The ‘formalism’ (p. 28) of Philip’s earlier years seems to have been tempered by an inclination toward mercy, though still exercised within the bounds of procedure. For instance, Jordan interprets Philip’s warning of the widowed BOOK REVIEWS 189 mother of one of his wards against an unauthorised betrothal of her daughter as sparing the family from the crippling fine to which he would have been entitled had the marriage gone ahead. Elsewhere, Philip relinquished his rights to the goods of orphaned minors who died intestate in Verneuil in 1280, though whether this surrender was given wholly with the goodwill of the bishop is impossible to tell. He also contributed to the beautification of his cathedral and reinforced the financial health of the see through the targeted acquisition of profitable property in Évreux, though the latter was apparently not motivated by hard-nosed greed. Jordan relates the telling example of a pair of (probably minor) siblings who contested the bishop’s title to property owned by their late father; Philip won the case, but reimbursed the legal expenses of the plaintiffs on the grounds that they had been misled or manipulated in their suit. The final chapter examines Philip’s final days in 1281, on the eve of the investigation into the canonisation of Louis IX. Jordan imagines the old bishop conversing with Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres, Louis’ Dominican biographers, about their old friend after the possible retirement of the latter two to the friary commissioned by the king in Évreux. Such speculative scenes are complemented by Jordan’s careful unearthing of documentary evidence and expertise on the period as a whole. Alongside the intrinsic interest found in a such a successful thirteenth-century career, Jordan implicitly demonstrates how Philip of Cahors represents a very different class of ‘men raised from the dust’ by Louis IX than those elevated in the previous century by Henry II of England. Written with sympathy and imagination and supported by meticulous research, this brief study is an excavation of one of George Eliot’s ‘unvisited tombs’ that also uncovers a good deal about power and probity in the Middle Ages. University of Exeter GREGORY LIPPIATT The Medieval Dominicans: Books, Buildings, Music, and Liturgy. Edited by Eleanor J. Giraud and Christian Thomas Leitmeir. [Medieval Monastic Studies, 7.] (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Pp. 405. € 100,00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56903-1.) A product of one of several conferences celebrating the eight hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Order of Friars Preachers, this collection “. . . examines the material, liturgical, and cultural (in music and art) aspects of Dominican life which rarely come to the fore in studies of the Dominican Order” (p. 15). These thirteen essays expand current scholarly views of Dominican cultural influence, both internal and external, by including fresh investigations into topics where new evidence augments or alters established perspectives alongside studies of subjects that had not been fully fleshed out by previous scholars. These authors rely on theological reflection and devotional practice as they seek to cement the Dominican character of the influences. Although collections of essays exist for this purpose, the essays in this volume manage to connect to and build on each other across traditional disciplinary lines 190 BOOK REVIEWS in a manner that grants the reader a truly multivalent understanding of the subject. To wit: Mary and Richard Rouse dive into Dominican influences on book culture, including Dominican education and the methods of knowledge production and dissemination, a topic which connects to Laura Albiero’s essay, “The Spread and Circulation of the Dominican Pocket Breviary,” since the two show that the increased need for portable books, including pocket breviaries and bibles (with their companion interpretive tools for voracious, scientific study of the scriptures), is linked to the mendicant life in the thirteenth century, especially at Paris. These discussions connect to Alison Stone’s essay on illustrated books, focusing on Dominican devotional life, in turn joining well together with aspects of Emily Guerry’s contribution on Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns, and the two friars who brought the relics from the East to Paris. Panayota Volti’s essay on Dominicans’ work as seen in the remnants of their life in the Eastern Mediterranean helps expand on some mutual influences within the Eastern networks covered briefly in Guerry’s essay, but also resonates with the topic of Haude Morvan’s discussion of architectural influences in Italy through the Reformation. Barbara Walters’ essay, “Reading Eschatology in the Feast of Corpus Christi,” builds interpretation onto the historical-theological depth of source analysis in “Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Theology and the Feast of Corpus Christi,” by M. Michèle Mulcahey. Two essays on Jerome of Moravia’s Tractatus de Musica seek to determine its character and its intended use: Christian Thomas Leitmeir’s work provides historical source analysis to determine the Dominican antecedents of De musica, while Blazej Matusiak elaborates Jerome’s interpretation. Finally, Innocent Smith’s contributions, “The Orations of the Medieval Dominican Liturgy” and his essay on Dominican liturgy and pastoral care of Dominican nuns, bookend Eleanor Giraud’s “Dominican Mass Books before Humbert of Romans.” Giraud and Smith move beyond established narratives concerning the early Dominican liturgy and the rationale for its reform, showing that the consistency of uniformity would have benefitted both friars and the nuns in their pastoral care. Or further, that the reform allowed the friars to tailor some prayers to fit their charism, privileging both prayer and study, rather than the monastic privileging of prayer over study. Although some overlap exists between several of the essays, these relative connections are not redundant, nor do they offer competing visions. Rather, taken together, the connection between the essays and the breadth of the source material allows the reader to experience some of the richness of the influence of the Dominican Order on medieval culture. University of Notre Dame JULIA A. SCHNEIDER Notre-Dame of Amiens:Life of the Gothic Cathedral.By Stephen Murray. (New York: Columbia University Press.2021. Pp. xii, 440. Numerous color and blackand-white illustrations. $40.00. ISBN 9780231195768.) Beginning with the first stories, writers have guided readers through the built environment. The author of The Epic of Gilgamesh transports us to the third BOOK REVIEWS 191 millennium BC and the Mesopotamian city of Uruk urging us to, “Look at its wall which gleams like copper, inspect its inner wall, the like of which no one can equal! (Tablet 1 )” Some, like Abbot Suger in his “little books” (libelli), or Frank Lloyd Wright in the Autobiography, take center stage to explain the political and spiritual motivations or the creative processes that informed their active roles in building projects. Others offer a shared experience emulating Pliny the Younger, who wrote of his Tuscan villa to his friend Domitius Apollinaris: “I . . . set out in this letter to take you with me round every corner of my estate. . . (Pliny, Epistulae, 5.6), ” or John the Evangelist, who reports the vision of “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven” shown to him by an angelic chaperon (Rev. 21: 10-21). Scholarly writers, on the other hand, tend to stand discreetly in the wings directing buildings to tell their stories supported by a cast of patrons, craftsmen, documents, and institutions. Stephen Murray, in Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral, inspired by John Ruskin’s The Bible of Amiens (1864), revives the role of the interlocutor—“the person who points and talks and guides” (p. 14)—to narrate the long life of an edifice that has been called “the Parthenon of Gothic architecture.” In an earlier book, Notre-Dame, Cathedral of Amiens: The Power of Change in Gothic (Cambridge, 1996), Murray foregrounded construction of the thirteenth-century structure, significantly refining understanding of the sequence of building and the sources behind its design. The present volume recalculates the narrative path while extending coverage into the sixteenth century to include the additions and urgent repairs that created the cathedral that, by and large, we see today. Chapter 1, “Visiting the Cathedral” (pp. 14–98) briskly reviews the history of the city from its Roman origins as Samarobriva to its florescence as a prosperous and strategically vital node of the Capetian kingdom. With the historical background in place, Murray then steps across the temporal threshold to tour the present cathedral as a whole, first circling the exterior, then moving into the interior, and finally ascending to thread through the triforium and around the flying buttresses. Black-and-white plans and photographs, many of them also reproduced as color plates, follow the verbal commentary, but the true companion to the text is the Columbia University Media Center for Art History website (https://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/amiens-arthum/content/home-page), which contains a comprehensive and dynamic dossier of high-resolution photographs, panoramas, and sound recordings. The panoramas, especially, afford a measure of independence, permitting the viewer to look up and down, zoom in and out, or explore space in a non-sequential route. Chapter 2 (pp. 99–158) surveys the five portals of the cathedral. The three west portals capture the arc of history from the Old Testament prophets on the outer faces of the buttresses to the Virgin portal and the Incarnation of Christ on the right, Saint Firmin the Martyr, venerated as the principal saint of the city, to the left, culminating with the Last Judgment in the center. Here, Murray stresses 192 BOOK REVIEWS the active relation of sculptural subjects to the liturgical life of the cathedral. For example, the Invention and Translation of the relics of Saint Firmin on January 13 was staged in procession, while the lush foliate band that rings the cathedral interior recalls the accompanying miracle of the leaves. As past and present, sculpted images and living actors merge across space, the cathedral reveals “the wider power of the Gothic to transform physical observation and sensation into religious and spiritual affect” (p. 226). Chapters 3, 4, and 5 reverse the holistic encounter with the cathedral’s architecture and sculpture by introducing its “makers and users”—the clergy, artisans, and laity—then following the “great enterprise” from 1220 to the 1530s through episodes of purposeful planning, improvised response, and changes in devotional practice as well as taste. The productive relationships between bishops, deans of the chapter, the urban laity, and artisans ensured efficient translation of a unified scheme into a building whose construction was largely completed in about fifty years (pp. 217–62). However, that initial design, based on a vision of spaciousness and lightness, led to a series of structural issues that required emergency interventions in the years around 1500 to save the building from collapse: eight chains of Spanish iron were inserted to lash the buckling crossing piers into place, a rank of arches was added to the choir flyers to counter the thrust of the high vaults, and the south transept rose was rebuilt. These crucial projects were the work of Pierre Tarisel, also likely the author of the new west façade rose window, who joins his thirteenth-century colleagues, Robert de Luzarches and Thomas and Renaud de Cormont, as one of the key masters of the cathedral. Even as architectural ruin threatened, Dean Adrien de Hénoncourt and the chapter masterminded the ambitious embellishment of the choir enclosing it with a clôture featuring sculpted reliefs of the lives of Saint Firmin the Martyr and John the Baptist, a visual program that dramatizes the Amiens clergy’s prestigious spiritual ancestry and the cathedral’s most important relics. Extravagantly carved stalls, fashioned between ca. 1508 and 1522, interweave Old and New Testament scenes to follow divine history from Adam and Eve to the redemption of humanity offered by the patron of the cathedral, the Virgin Mary. Echoing themes of the west portal sculpture, these sixteenth-century programs remind us that Notre-Dame of Amiens remained a work-in-progress throughout its medieval life, accruing meaning layer by layer as chapels, tombs, monuments, and furniture expanded and enriched the initial building. All of this, structure and space, figures in stone and glass, came alive at the performance of the divine offices, discussed in chapter 6, that renders the church “like the Celestial Jerusalem” (p. 333). In Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral, Stephen Murray reveals a building that captures the image and idea of the Church as an edifice made of living stones, “built,” as Paul wrote, “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone . . . in whom you are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19–22). Mount Holyoke College, emeritus MICHAEL T. DAVIS BOOK REVIEWS 193 Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy. By Guy Geltner. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2019. Pp. x, 320. $65.00. ISBN: 9780812251357) In Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy, Guy Geltner challenges the received wisdom regarding public health in the premodern world that suggests early urban governments were, at worst, self-interested and indifferent to the health of their citizens or, at best, simply unable to understand the correlation between health and public policy, at least until the Industrial Revolution or possibly at the earliest as a reaction to the Black Death. Geltner encourages the reader to reexamine these assumptions and their theoretical models as well as the selective evidence on which they are based. Using urban statutes and court and fiscal records from north and central Italy between 1250 and 1500, Geltner argues that civic authorities in these urban areas understood the need for promoting health and well-being among the citizenry as a means of maintaining political control. By considering both normative and descriptive sources, he is also suggesting that, in addition to being employed earlier than generally thought, communal health initiatives were also more effective than previously understood. Geltner frames his study using Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics as applied to the eighteenth century (regulating private behaviors for the public good). Geltner employs the term “health-scaping” to the actions of urban governments which he defines as “the physical, social, legal, administrative, and political process of providing urban environments with the means to promote residents’ health” (p. 20). He argues that if one looks broadly at the policies of the medieval urban governments, including monitoring activities and regulating behavior in areas such as waste disposal, animal conduct, and proto-industrial waste, it is possible to see a conscious effort at health-scaping and the creation of preventative public policy that was consistently and effectively enforced well before the Industrial Revolution. After a general introduction to the theoretical construct for his arguments and a consideration of the breadth of archival sources for public health regulation, the main body of the book outlines findings for three case-studies from Lucca, Bologna, and Pinerolo. The study primarily focuses on these cities’ roads officials, viarii, fango, and comparii, respectively, who were tasked with maintaining the infrastructure and policing communal activities along the public roads with regard to sanitation and safety. Geltner provides an exhaustive study of the statutes for the employment, regulation, and activity of these officials. Beyond prescriptive statutes, he also finds detailed records of assignments, building and labor expenses, violations, fines, and witness accounts, which testify to the commitment and effectiveness of the efforts of the officials. Geltner’s last chapter suggests the possibility of applying his methodology even further chronologically and geographically, citing, for example, ancient Roman policy efforts and those of other non-western civilizations in order to “fun- 194 BOOK REVIEWS damentally alter the prevalent narrative of public-health history and thereby interrogate an entrenched paradigm of Euro-American modernity” (p. 144). While commendable, and opening many avenues for further exploration, some of the suggested analysis presents too great a methodological stretch for his argument. Also, Geltner’s focus on intentional efforts of the civic authorities in health-scaping overlooks the fact that this effort was also driven, in part, by popular communal demand. Individual citizens, tertiary religious orders, nascent private hospitals, and other civic constituents actively sought a civic response to communal need forcing the hand of civic authorities in many cases. These slight critiques do not detract from the overall importance of Geltner’s work, and Roads to Health is an important addition to the recent body of scholarship that is reassessing the evolution of health care and social assistance in urban areas of medieval Europe. In this highly readable study, Geltner successfully proves that health-scaping was indeed a civic value already fully entrenched in urban Italy in the high Middle Ages. Shepherd U niversity SALLY MAYALL BRASHER Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics: Disputed Sanctity and Communal Identity in Late Medieval Italy. By Janine Larmon Peterson. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. xii, 270. $58.95. ISBN: 9781501742347) Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics uses thirteenth- and fourteenth-century disputes over local saints’ cults as a means of examining the conflicts that arose between an imperial papacy and the independently minded communes of northern and central Italy. Janine Larmon Peterson thus engages with several historiographies, including the late medieval cult of the saints, heresy and inquisition, the centralization and bureaucratization of papal administration, and the Guelf-Ghibelline conflicts that wracked the region throughout this period. By taking a comparative approach which examines several saints’ cults and by remaining focused on points of conflict, Peterson expands our appreciation for the extent to which the question of who had the right to define the sacred was often contested in the Later Middle Ages, and closely tied to the vicissitudes of papal and local politics. The book is divided into two parts. The first, in four chapters, delves into the evidence provided by more than twenty cases of disputed sanctity. These chapters outline a typology of four different kinds of disputed sainthood. The first, tolerated saints, were those individuals who were venerated by the local community but never received papal canonization; suspect saints were those whom inquisitors suspected of heresy but never successfully condemned them for it, thus enabling local veneration to continue; heretical saints included figures who received local veneration, but whom inquisitors eventually condemned as heretics and whose cults they sought to suppress; finally, holy heretics were individuals whom members of the local community venerated even though they had already been condemned for heresy. The second part, also divided into four chapters, explores the broader rationales, trends, and strategies that lay behind the conflicts surrounding the cults, BOOK REVIEWS 195 whether those be economic interests, anti-mendicant and anti-inquisitorial sentiments, or communal resistance to papal ambitions. The eighth chapter, examining “methods of contesting authority,” is especially interesting in that it demonstrates how local agents understood and had recourse to legal methods and judicial venues when challenging the actions of inquisitors. Throughout the work, Peterson is persuasive in her framing of the disputes as between local communities and the imperial papacy, rather than between lay and clerical social orders. She shows how the local clergy, both regular and secular, often allied with the local laity in combatting the efforts of the papacy’s typically mendicant and inquisitorial agents. Peterson also clearly demonstrates how orthodox members of local communities continued to venerate certain figures after inquisitors had expressed their suspicions or even condemned those figures of heresy. One of Peterson’s goals is to contribute to recent scholarship that seeks to correct a historiography that has over emphasized the “hegemonic” position of the late medieval church (p. 4). In particular, by exploring cults which were never canonized, she hopes to contrast her work with that of Vauchez, which centered the papacy by examining documents produced within the machinery of the papal bureaucracy. Yet the papacy looms large throughout her book. Indeed, the very categories Peterson uses to classify a saint (tolerated, suspect, heretic) depend on the cult’s relationship to papal authority. Some of the strategies communities used to contest inquisitorial authority participated within what Peterson calls an “oppositional inquisitorial culture” (p. 197) by accepting the logic of the inquisitorial office and its methods. This, to me, seems to be the very definition of hegemonic. Nonetheless, this is a careful study of a wide range of texts, including a great deal in manuscript sources. Peterson provides nuanced readings of the evidence and intervenes in numerous scholarly discussions. What she has produced is a text that is essential reading for all scholars interested in the religion and politics of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy. AUSTIN POWELL University of California,Davis EARLY MODERN A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal.Edited by Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte. [Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, vol. 91] (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020, Pp. xviii, 705, 43 figures and 7 tables. € 252,52. ISBN: 9789004310964). Obviously, recent Anglophone publishers successfully continue to produce expensive collective volumes on many different subjects. Most outstanding is Brill’s extensive series of Companions which includes the present impressive volume on early modern cardinals. The several thousand cardinals of the Roman church have always fascinated historians because of their many different activities and social roles. This big handbook presents some thirty different important aspects of the cardinals’ typology. But does it integrate these details successfully? 196 BOOK REVIEWS (1) The first of the eight parts of the book concerns the concept and functions of the cardinal. It starts with a chapter on medieval legal history. In the early modern period the College of Cardinals lost much of its collective power, but often this loss was compensated by an increase of power of individual cardinals. The popes simply needed cooperators. Next, after the rites of promotion and the activities in conclave the formal and informal roles of the hybrid quasi-institution of the cardinal-nephew are analyzed. (2) The significance of cardinals’ ecclesiastic and ecclesiologic activities in the Church can certainly not be covered exhaustively. The handbook selects chapters on ecumenical councils and theology, on the Inquisition and the Penitentiary, and on the protectorate of religious institutions. (3) In continuation, one reads on the secular power which the cardinals wielded as legates, as protectors of nations, as political leaders of the Richelieu type, and in their specific role as prince-bishops of the Empire. (4) The chapters on property and wealth besides an analysis of the income of cardinals include additional contributions on their social background and education, on their household and on the strategic consequences of their testaments. (5) The city of Rome is concerned when cardinals act as administrators of the Papal States or as governors of the vacant see. They also left their mark on their titular churches and on their sumptuous palaces. (6) “Mission” starts with an overview of cardinals in global history concerning in particular the Islam, the religions of Asia, the Jews, and the primal religions. Special chapters concern Eastern Churches, the church of Spanish-America, and, in contrast, the activities of the Propaganda Fide. (7) “Cardinals and literature” presents early modern historiography on early modern cardinals, which first of all consisted in collections of biographies, but also includes treatises on the ideal cardinal and some biographies of saintly cardinals, in addition, cardinals profiled as book collectors and even as founders of libraries. (8) On the other hand, they profiled as patrons of the visual arts and music. After an analysis of their wardrobe, the book demonstrates how their portraits and their tombs left an extensive impact on the scenery of early modern Rome. With equal balance of gender 31 authors produced 35 chapters. The three editors wrote more than one. According to their institutional affiliation eight contributors originate from Italy, seven from England, five from Germany, four from the USA, two from Scotland and France respectively, and one each from Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. Considering their names, however, we may assume that at least four of them were no natives of the countries of their universities—an additional demonstration of the international character of this endeavor. Nevertheless, I could discover only one or two theologians on the list, but several historians of art—another remarkable fact. A selection from the long list of contributors is an impossible task and unjust, because they are all equally proven experts, who have already published in the field of their special competence. Extensive notes demonstrate the high level of their learnedness. When for example sometimes evidence might be missing as in the case of Markus Völkel’s book in chapters 16 and 22, then this defect is compensated in the brilliant general bibliography of 70 pages. Nevertheless, the book’s strength is also its feeble point, because specialized knowledge needs general perspectives. Sometimes, one forgets that papal rule is the BOOK REVIEWS 197 simple purpose of everything. Because first of all the continuous interaction of popes and cardinals presents the unique model of a particular stable circularity of effective elite government: electors appoint the ruler and participate in his government whereas the ruler appoints the future electors and participants of his rule. Freiburg im Breisgau,Germany WOLFGANG REINHARD Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain. By Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2018. Pp. xix, 351. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-268-10321-7.) With implications in the New World, the Carvajal-Santa María family of early modern Spain ranks as one of the most resilient and in many ways emblematic of the period. The book begins in the early sixteenth century as the family is on the verge of grasping the papacy, in spite of their deep converso roots, with partial origins in the person of Solomon ha-Levi, a leading rabbi in Burgos who became the bishop of that city as Pablo de Santa María in 1415. Martínez-Dávila traces the emergence of a converso family and its dispersal throughout Castille, notably to the western city of Plasencia. There the conversos began a series of marriages and alliances with the Old Christian family of the Carvajals to emerge as leaders in both the political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. From there the family would expand to prominence on the Iberian Peninsula and eventually to the colonial outposts of Mexico and Bolivia. This fascinating tale is written in nine chapters, tracing the family from its origins to his success and expansion to the empire. The first two chapters trace the beginnings of the clan in Burgos and its eventual spread to other communities but focusing especially on Plasencia. The turbulence of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries created the necessary precondition for the blurring of ethnic lines and the ability of some individuals to gain prominence in spite of their ethno-religious background, creating what Martínez-Dávila calls the New Noble houses. While the Old Christian knights (caballeros) had political power, and with it a degree of economic power as well, the Church through its collection of the tithe clearly had access to much of the economic sphere. In the third chapter, MartínezDávila explores the wake of the anti-Jewish riots at the end of the fourteenth century. Focused on larger cities, small places like Plascencia emerged largely unscathed. At the same time the Trastámara dynasty began to reward other important New Noble houses, which provided unexpected opportunities in Plascencia. In Plascencia, in Chapter Four, we read of the growing success of the Santa MaríaCarvajal alliance. On the Jewish side, the family had been royal treasurers, and rabbis; while on the Old Christian side they had been important local caballeros. Combined, they came to dominate the cathedral chapter of the city and create a different kind of local environment for conversos and moriscos. By the fifteenth century two patterns emerged. Some of the New Noble houses pursued virulently anti-Semitic policies, hiding their own origins and join- 198 BOOK REVIEWS ing in anti-Jewish campaigns. The Plascencia-based Carvajal house continued to encourage a more open society of multi-ethnic populations. Castille, as a whole, turned to a more exclusionary policy with the promulgation of limpieza de sangre requirements for an increasingly large number of offices. This, in turn, required these New Noble houses to emphasize their Old Christian roots and downplay, if not hide, their converso origins. In Chapter Six, Martínez-Dávila explores the methods whereby the Santa María-Carvajal house imbued themselves with all of the hallmarks of Christian piety creating ecclesiastical foundations and other good works to burnish their reputation, while reaching the highest level of Catholic hierarchy with the appointment of Juan de Carvajal as a cardinal. As Spain entered the sixteenth century, the house had come to control the very highest levels of politics, the Church, and the local economy. They had successfully blurred their converso origins, emphasized the Old Christian mantle of the Carvajal clan, and weathered the storm of additional anti-converso and morisco politics with the fall of Granada and the triumph of Castilian Christianity. As the overseas empire became an important feature of the Spanish political and economic world, the Carvajal clan joined the enterprise of the Americas. But there, at least in Bolivia and New Spain, they would eventually run afoul of the Inquisition, for having held onto some parts of their ancient Jewish heritage. In that moment, some members of the house actively persecuted others to cut off the Judaizers from the main family. In many ways, this was a repudiation of the more tolerant and open course of action that had led to their success in Plasencia in the fifteenth century. This is a fascinating work. It is based in archival materials from Spain and the New World. It is strongly based in the genealogy of the Santa María–Carvajal house. While focused on Plasencia, it offers a deep look into Castilian politics and policies of the period. The Santa María–Carvajal house is representative of many others to be found throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Yet Martínez-Dávila is careful also to contrast it with the house of the Lords of Oropesa (the Álvarez de Toledo clan) and the Counts of Béjar (the Estúñiga [Zúñiga] clan). University at Albany JOHN F. SCHWALLER Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition. Edited by Nelson H. Minnich and Michael Root. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press. 2021. Pp xix, 289. $75.00. ISBN: 9780813235325.) This collection of conference lectures provides valuable stimulation for further consideration of ecumenical issues from historical and systematic points of view. Particularly helpful are the historical studies of the medieval theological setting of Martin Luther’s deconstruction of certain elements of the theology he had learned at the university and in the cloister and his construction of the evangelical way of thinking that formed the center of his preaching and teaching. Several studies effectively present Luther’s own way of formulating the doctrines of justification, the Eucharist, and the Church; others offer insights into the ecumenical discussions and their implications for the life of the Church today. Two essays dedicated BOOK REVIEWS 199 to the relationship of Eastern Orthodoxy to sixteenth-century developments in the Western Church explore Luther’s references to Eastern churches in the Leipzig debate between Luther and John Eck in 1519. They point to possibilities for developing a trilateral discussion of ecclesiological issues. An essay on “The (Slight) Sensitivity to Eastern Christianity in Trent’s Condemnation of Luther on Marriage and Clerical Celibacy” seems out-of-place in the volume. Assessments of the state of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in the light of sixteenth-century developments around Luther by Cardinal Kurt Koch, Eero Huovinen, Wolfgang Thönissen, and Kenneth Appold lay the foundation for further assessment of the issues discussed in other essays. Vital were questions raised by late medieval teaching on justification, sensitively sketched by Theodor Dieter. Lutheran (Timothy Wengert) and Roman Catholic (Michael Root) analysis of the Wittenberg professor’s understanding of the center of the biblical message provide perceptive insights into his teaching’s intention, structure, impact, and significance for today. Bruce Marshall’s detailed account of medieval teaching on the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and on the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass sets forth the issues debated in the sixteenth century clearly. Essays by Lee Palmer Wandel and Robert Trent Pomplun present Luther’s critique of medieval doctrine and practice of the Lord’s Supper and Catholic response to this critique. Wandel correctly sees Luther’s understanding of the sacrament as verbal, that is, the promise conveying the forgiveness of sins in the body and blood “given and shed for you,” although the richness of his enhancing the earlier understanding of “promise” is missing. Nelson Minnich sets forth medieval “models” of the Church that gave rise to the actual situation in the 1510s and 1520s, as Luther’s appraisal of abuses in practice and flaws in fundamental concepts of authority, presented with skill by Dorothea Wendebourg, contested what remains the “evolving” and “responsive” formulation of the doctrine of the Church on the Roman Catholic side. Johanna Rahner incisively sets forth current Catholic discussion of ecclesiastical issues. The volume’s valuable resources for mutual exploration of how we best witness to Jesus Christ in the twenty-first century give basis for necessary further discussions. Unfortunately, the underlying differences in defining the orientation for theology, “the article of faith on which Christ’s church stands or falls”—for Luther, the justification of sinners through absolution and faith in Christ, for Roman Catholics the doctrine of the Church—are not clearly addressed. Nonetheless, the challenge of these perceptive presentations remains a task for the heirs of the Old Faith and the Reformation in our time. Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis ROBERT KOLB 200 BOOK REVIEWS Glaube(n) im Disput: Neuere Forschungen zu den altgläubigen Kontroversisten des Reformationszeitalters. Edited by Karl-Heinz Braun, Wilbirgis Klaiber, and Christoph Moos. (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2020. Pp. ix, 404. €68,00. ISBN: 9783402116074.) This volume of proceedings from a 2017 conference brings together research on the multifaceted nature of Catholic resistance to the Reformation. Attempts in the first half of the sixteenth century to respond to evangelical challenges sought to emphasize a unity and coherence in a tradition that beneath the surface was variegated and contentious. The papers in this volume are the products of close reading in little-known sources, guided by an awareness that “believing is a communicative process” (p. 7). In an introductory essay, Peter Waller describes the evolution of the medieval disputatio from its beginnings in early Scholasticism to its expansion, beyond the academic form, to a mode of engagement with Judaism and Islam as well as a genre within Humanism. Karl-Heinz Braun offers an incisive critique of modern conceptions of terms like “mystical’ or “Augustinian” with a reminder that they were less clear in the sixteenth century than they seem after a half-millennium. Kenneth Appold’s paper on the relationship of disputation and consensus provides valuable nuance to the tension between difference and unity, especially in the 1540s; while Kai Bremer’s close analysis of the debate about the authorities Luther invoked in An den Adel shows how that dispute shaped later controversies, especially the extent to which these involved the authority of the tradition. A section dedicated to contexts includes Axel Gotthard on the political priorities behind protecting the Roman Church and the specific threats to order that the Diets sought to counter, a discussion that raises the question of whether religious dissension leads to political disintegration. The role of the University of Paris in setting (and enforcing) norms for Catholic orthodoxy is ably detailed by Andreas Sohm’s depiction of the tensions among the many colleges and between many of them and the Sorbonne. Sohm’s discussion is followed by Peter Walter on the question of the priority of the theological tradition over the authority of the papacy (and, by implication, hierarchical order) as sources of authority. The section on patronage and professional networks includes Gabriele Jancke on the social relations that sustained Johannes Cochlaeus and his work and that illustrate what she calls Konfliktkultur, a world defined by its affinities and antagonisms. Christoph Moos offers a similar contextualization for Johannes Fabri, bishop of Vienna and the friend and patron of a wide circle of humanists, including Erasmus. These two papers are followed by Markus Wriedt on networks of the learned during this period, defined both in printing affiliations and by geography, with attention to theology (especially the controversial form) as its own community of discourse. Wilbirgis Klaiber’s discussion of the Franciscan Johannes Nas shows us a controversialist’s self-presentation to his readers. Women rarely figure in histories of polemical theology, but Anne Conrad describes the work of nuns and lay BOOK REVIEWS 201 teachers as part of the polemical enterprise, the Orders being their own networks and schools. Just as composers of Protestant pamphlets frequently relied on images, so did the Catholic resistance, though on the larger scale of church décor. Andreas Tacke describes confessionalizing elements in pre-Tridentine church iconography fostered by a patronage system of dukes and bishops. Theoretical perspective is offered by Bent Jörgensen’s discussion of confessional self-fashioning and his depiction of the tension between the “old” and the “new” faithful as reflected in pejorative epithets, many meant to delegitimize the Reformers as unchristian. Defining the old faith was a point of contention within the Church, as Martin Hille demonstrates in his study of the polemical exchange between Georg Nigrinus and Kaspar Franck the Younger about pastoral duties. The definition of the Church is the topic of a comparison by Thomas Dietrich on the ecclesiologies of Luther and Bellarmine. A final essay by Herman Selderhuis on directions for future research offers a view of church history from a Reformed perspective. Since the postwar work of Hubert Jedin, the debate over the most accurate term for Catholicism during this period has brought to light the problematic nature of identifying this epoch as either Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. Other terms have tended to be adaptations of these; yet all have sought a single unifying concept for an era that, as these essays show, was too complex for a single overarching term. These papers point to a distinct tradition in which elements of both polemic and reform are defining characteristics. University of Illinois Chicago RALPH KEEN Jesuit Art. By Mia M. Mochizuki. (Leiden: Brill. 2022. Pp. 219. $168.00. ISBN 9789004462519). A volume in the series Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies, edited by Robert Maryks, this book offers a review and overview of recent work on the history of Jesuit art and to some extent more broadly on Jesuit topics, especially Jesuit culture, from papal approval of the Society of Jesus in 1540 to its suppression in 1773. The author does a good job of showing how even if scholars continue to associate Jesuit art with the Baroque period, they also agree more and more that there is no single Jesuit style: in artistic production as in many other areas, Jesuits responded to varied circumstances and needs. There was no typical kind of Jesuit art. Jesuit art did appeal very frequently to the emotions and to the five senses. Jesuit-produced and/or Jesuit-commissioned works were intended to instruct viewers or hearers in the Catholic faith, and to move them to repent for sin and to embrace a life of virtue, a life nourished by the Church’s sacraments, and by heartfelt imitation of Jesus and the saints. Already in the first decades of the Society of Jesus, Jesuits were spreading out across the globe, and Mochizuki devotes much of her fine discussion and extensive 202 BOOK REVIEWS bibliographies to the global reach of Jesuit art, how it brought European art to the rest of the world, and how Jesuits engaged with and collaborated with the art of other continents though hybridization. If they returned to Europe, Jesuits often brought non-European art back with them, thus fertilizing and broadening the European artistic imagination. A book like this is enhanced by judicious use of images, reproduced clearly and when appropriate and possible in color. The author and the publisher merit praise for a large number of high-quality images. A stunning color photograph of the Church of the Gesù, in Rome (p. 41), is but one example. Another is a detailed photograph (p. 137) of a seventeenth-century Portuguese reliquary that includes a copy of the anonymous Salus Populi Romani, a painting of the Madonna and child, much appreciated by St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, a painting long housed in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. Though painting, and to a lesser extent architecture, dominate this book, prints and images in printed books do also share in the author’s attention. Many scholars have studied Jerónimo Nadal’s Evangeliae historiae imagines, published in 1593 in Antwerp, a work focused on the life Jesus, and intended as an aid for Jesuits and others in doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. With 153 folio images, the multi-volume work connected biblical texts with images in a way designed to help a kind of prayer in which imagination (“composition”) of place was central, indeed foundational (pp. 78–99). The one disappointment in this book is that it offers almost nothing beyond the late eighteenth century, except for a 2013 image of Pope Francis (p. 14) in prayer before the Salus Populi Romani. Pius VII had restored the Jesuits in 1814, and since the 2014 bicentennial of that seminal event, significant numbers of scholars of Jesuit history have been turning more and more to the period 1814 to the present. What about art history? Mochizuki states that in recent times art historians have moved beyond a singular focus on masterpieces of elite art to a more inclusive study of material and visual cultures (p. 29). Does not such an approach deal with the modern era of the Society of Jesus? If not, why not? Fordham University THOMAS WORCESTER, S.J. Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule. By Christina H. Lee. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,. 2021. Pp. xii, 216. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-190-91614-5.) A small statue of the Christ Child with a darkened face towers above the blurred images of devotees’ hands holding the divine image aloft. The main title (Saints of Resistance) in large white font against an orange background anchors the eyes as they travel below to the secondary title and author’s name. The evocative title and book jacket design entice the reader to explore the contents within. The book is organized in six chapters including the introduction (chapter 1) and conclusion BOOK REVIEWS 203 (chapter 6). Each of the four main chapters focuses on a particular Philippine devotion: Santo Niño de Cebu (chapter 2), Our Lady of Caysasay (chapter 3), Our Lady of the Rosary (chapter 4), and Our Lady of Antipolo (chapter 5). The font is readerfriendly, and the photographs, though black and white, are well chosen. The author, Christina Hyo-Jung Lee, is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. Her work addresses cultural productions of Iberian Spain and the Spanish Pacific. Born in South Korea and raised in Argentina, she immediately engages the reader with her introductory statements: My first visit to the Philippines was laced with simultaneous feelings of eerie familiarity and strangeness. I encountered reverberations of my Hispanic and Asian upbringing wherever I went (p. 1). The introduction includes a useful review of studies on iconographic devotions in the Spanish world in general, and in Spanish colonial Philippines in particular. Lee’s transpacific background, native fluency in the Spanish language, and meticulous scholarship generate important new interpretations and insights into popular Philippine devotions heretofore unexplored. For example, her careful rereading of primary sources interrogates conflicting translations of sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s chronicler Antonio Pigafetta’s original account of their encounter with the ruler Humabon and his wife on the Philippine island of Cebu. An important point of contention is whether the image now venerated as the Santo Niño de Cebu is indeed the icon that Magellan had gifted Humabon’s wife in 1521 (pp. 19–21). Combining contemporary field research in Cebu with critical re-reading of early Spanish accounts, Lee calls attention to competing narratives where local inhabitants claim the statue as their own, all versions claiming that the Spanish usurped a pre-existing local devotion by snatching the image away. The next three chapters on Our Lady of Caysasay, Our Lady of the Rosary, and Our Lady of Antipolo similarly explore how foreign icons and narratives are purposely appropriated as autochthonous phenomena and subsumed into the corpus of Filipino culture. Closely reading primary sources, Lee points to mechanisms that transform the narrative of European images into counter-hegemonic narratives and strategies of resistance. Lee concludes with the general observation that the santos discussed “were widely embraced by their followers . . . because their devotions embedded narratives that memorialized their communities’ survival and resistance amid impossible situations” (p. 132). Lee’s intriguing interpretations and engaging writing style, free of jargon that often plagues academic writing, encourage the reader to read the entire book in one sitting; and to re-read and ponder the ideas presented anew. I have advocated in previous publications for scholarly dialogue between “cultural insiders” and “cultural outsiders” to de-colonize and move forward the dis- 204 BOOK REVIEWS course on global history. In studying Spanish colonial Philippine iconographic devotions, Lee occupies a liminal space between cultural insider and outsider, creating an intellectual bridge for both to meet. This book is useful for students and scholars of cultural history, art history, religious studies, and material religion. It is a must read for scholars of the sixteenth-to-nineteenth-century Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. Ayala Museum Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines FLORINA H. CAPISTRANO-BAKER Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II. By Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2020. Pp. xi, 264. $106.95. ISBN: 9780271086019). The recusants—those early modern British Catholics who kept the faith despite the best efforts of Tudor and Stuart regimes to dislodge them—are familiar figures in the study of the Reformation. But what of those who chose exile? Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez’s thoughtful study centers the experiences, ideas, and especially books of these Catholics, specifically those who operated out of Habsburg Spain. Radicals in Exile homes in on the polemical battles waged in the heady years between 1585, when the Armada began to take shape, and 1598, when Philip II died, taking English Catholicism’s most immediate hopes with him. This decade and a half constituted a period in which “the most radical efforts to re-Catholicize England seemed to match Habsburg willingness to do so” (p. 16). Part I, “History in Action,” examines the life and afterlives of Nicholas Sander’s De schismate Anglicano, a scabrous history of the English Reformation that sensationally claimed Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s own daughter. Domínguez closely tracks the text’s transformations through subsequent editions, as its editors used it to demonize Elizabeth I and Protestantism, and to promote Spanish military action against Elizabeth. The section concludes with the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Spanish adaptation of De schismate Anglicano, by which “an exile version of the English past [. . .] became deeply rooted in the Spanish world” (p. 92). The seamlessness with which Domínguez can integrate Spanish protagonists alongside English ones, as well as translations and adaptations in multiple languages, showcases the power of centering books, rather than authors. The second part, “The King’s Men,” further pursues the Spanish digestion of the English exiles’ polemical fare. In the wake of the Armada, English Catholic writers carved out relevance for themselves within Spain—promoting the English seminary at Valladolid, flattering and admonishing the king, linking heresy and rebellion to shore up the regime in restive Aragon—and abroad, as propagandists defending Philip II and his policies against Protestant attacks. The king himself cannily exploited this abundant literature, favoring those portions of Joseph Cresswell’s Exemplar literarum that identified the monarch with his nation, for example, BOOK REVIEWS 205 while deprecating the second part of Ribadeneyra’s history that dwelt upon Spanish (and royal) sins. In Part III, “(Habsburg) England and Spain Reformed,” Domínguez examines the public component of the exiles’ campaign for a second invasion attempt, through two texts by the Jesuit Robert Persons reimagining the English political and religious settlement. The Conference vindicated Habsburg claims to the English throne, while the Memorial set out a program for the re-Catholicization of the kingdom once it had been conquered. Throughout, Domínguez places these texts in a rich intellectual landscape, as the project to reclaim England adapted to shifting geopolitical realities, intra-Catholic tensions, and disparate audiences in Spain and abroad. A brief, forceful conclusion emphasizes the exiles’ success in influencing early modern Spanish thought, while arguing against the prevailing assumption “that early modern secular and spiritual matters were hopelessly intertwined” (p. 209). Quite the contrary: Domínguez interprets his authors as deeply concerned to delineate the distinct logics of state and church, of politics and piety. This is strong and persuasive stuff, fostering a greater respect for the clarity of our subjects’ thinking; it is unfortunate that it remains an “ideological undercurrent” in Radicals in Exile (p. 209), rather than an explicit claim, articulated upfront in what is otherwise a lucidly organized book. Domínguez handles the textual and political complexities of his sources with aplomb, deftly drawing out theological implications and hidden tensions. Radicals in Exile is a compelling study of texts as instruments of political action in the Reformation, of the close relationship between writing and invading. Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University SPENCER J. WEINREICH Images of Purgatory: Studies in Religious Imagination and Innovation (The Czech Lands, 1 6 0 0 –1 8 0 0 ). By Tomáš Malý and Pavel Suchánek. Translated by Stuart Roberts. (Rome: Viella. 2021. Pp. xviii, 260. €36,00. ISBN: 9788833137421.) This detailed and densely argued study examines images depicting Purgatory in Catholic churches in the early modern Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia). The analysis of these images is placed in the context of the evolving theology of Purgatory, as well as the religious practices and popular beliefs that were linked to Purgatory. The authors show how Purgatory provides an excellent window into the nature and evolution of baroque piety in Early Modern Catholicism. The book is structured as a kind of top-down analysis of Purgatory. Chapter One discusses doctrine, Chapter Two the images, and Chapter Three pious practices around Purgatory. Chapter Four examines “popular culture,” that is unofficial beliefs and practices, sometimes called here “debatable” practices. This simple and somewhat old-fashioned structure does not do justice to the nuances of this study. The authors 206 BOOK REVIEWS are always interested in interactions between different media, social groups, and cultural traditions. Developments in the Czech lands are examined in the context of international Catholicism, with reference, for example, to pious literature from Germany, Spain, and France. The interactions between written texts and the images found in churches and chapels is also central to the study. The study is informed by wide reading in Czech, German, English, and French-language historiography and is methodologically sophisticated, particularly in its discussion of images. This study will open the eyes of historians who only know about the doctrine of Purgatory from Martin Luther’s critique of indulgences. Purgatory was confirmed at the Council of Trent, and gained importance in Catholic religious practice in the seventeenth century. Maly and Suchánek link much of the growing role of Purgatory to the Jesuits. From the beginning of the Society, the Jesuits promoted meditative practices that focused on imagination and emotion, most famously in the Spiritual Exercises. Purgatory, and images of Purgatory, were good for this kind of piety, with visions of tormented souls in Purgatory stoking the fears of punishment and appealing to the sympathy of the faithful. Pious practices around Purgatory were supported by, and in turn encouraged, other aspect of baroque piety. The authors highlight the growing importance of “privileged altars” (or indulgence altars), where people could pray for the release of family members and friends from Purgatory. The altars were often founded by confraternities and religious orders, important promoters of baroque religion. “The new altar allowed everyone, regardless of social status, to take an active part in commemorative rituals and was a reflection of the post-Tridentine concept of requiem culture with the principle of the exchange of merits between the living and the deceased” (p. 157). This “requiem culture” was also important in pilgrimage piety and processional practices, other important elements of Catholic culture in this era. The images of Purgatory drew on early modern ideas about the emotions. Emotions were understood to stimulate the “passions of the soul” and lead people to piety. Furthermore, the authors emphasize that “. . . in the case of Purgatory, negative emotions (fear, pain) and positive emotions (hope, the certainly of salvation–joy) were combined” (p. 88). The images presented in the book show the intensity of emotions as well as the “extraordinary multi-layered nature and diverse variety of the post-Tridentine iconography of Purgatory” (p. 81). This iconography reinforced Catholic doctrines of the Eucharist, the Passion, the cult of Mary, and the cult of St. Joseph, as the patron saint of the good death. Maly and Suchánek insist nevertheless, that the images of purgatory, while often didactic, also responded to the beliefs of the common people. For example, although fire was officially the only punishment found in Purgatory, the images also depict snakes, demons, dragons, and other creatures tormenting the souls in Purgatory. An important conclusion of Images of Purgatory is that the engagement with Purgatory changed perceptively over the period of this study. As the doctrine of BOOK REVIEWS 207 Purgatory gained in importance in the seventeenth century, the emphasis was on the pain and suffering of souls. But during the peak of the cult of Purgatory, between 1660 and 1730, the focus of the iconography and religious practice increasingly emphasized what the living could do to help the dead. “In our view indeed the seventeenth and eighteenth-century depictions of Purgatory does explicitly contain within it an element of ‘hope’ and therefore ‘optimism’” (p. 196). This study provides clear evidence of this “optimism of the Catholic baroque” (p. 196) and provides a valuable window on Catholic culture between 1600 and 1750. Connecticut College MARC R. FORSTER National Thanksgivings and Ideas of Britain, 1 6 8 9 –1 8 1 6 . By Warren Johnston. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press. 2020. Pp. xviii, 413. $115.00. ISBN: 9781783273584.) Thanksgiving days were undoubtedly significant occasions in Britain and its colonies, which celebrated national occasions with church services, bonfires, and processions. Thanksgiving and fast days have received increasing attention, particularly with the publication of National Prayer: Special Worship since the Reformation, edited by Natalie Mears, Stephen Taylor, Philip Williamson and others (3 vols., Woodbridge, 2013–2020), which compile and analyze the royal orders and special prayers for these occasions. However, Johnston’s book is the first full-length study of the eighteenth-century British thanksgiving-day sermons. Johnston draws on 587 thanksgiving sermons printed in the British Isles and the British colonies between 1689 and 1816 to explore how preachers engaged with “ideas of Britain,” particularly British exceptionalism. National Thanksgivings highlights the unique political contexts of these occasions, declared in response to wars, rebellions, peace treaties, or royal accessions, which invited preachers to comment on current affairs in Britain. Johnston argues that thanksgiving-day sermons are particularly revealing because these occasions permitted a “much more spontaneous” (p. 1) and forward-looking response to these issues than other political occasions, such as national anniversary days. Thanksgiving days also were more widely observed than other political occasions by the various Protestant denominations, and even some Catholics, in the British Atlantic, and thanksgiving-day sermons were published in large numbers. Nevertheless, Johnston recognizes the complexities in the formation of national identities and emphasizes that purpose of the book “is to show what was being attempted from thanksgiving-day pulpits and publications, but not to determine how successful such efforts were in establishing British identity” (p. 10). Thus, he does not attempt to assess the sermons’ impact on their readers. National Thanksgivings instead carefully analyzes the preachers’ views on a range of issues, including providential interpretations of current events, political ideologies and conflicts, the conduct and costs of war and peace, the expansion of trade and empire, the relationships between British denominations, the challenges posed by Enlightenment ideas to Britain, and views of “the other” at home and abroad (chs. 3–10). Johnston also effectively uses recent scholarship to discuss the 208 BOOK REVIEWS nature of eighteenth-century preaching and printed sermons and the cultural context of thanksgiving days (chapters 1–2). He identifies much continuity in preachers’ ideas of Britain and uses examples from sermons that span the period to illustrate his analysis. However, the strongest chapters are those highlighting changes and continuities in partisan conflicts, attitudes towards Dissenters and Catholics, and perceptions of war and empire during the period. In fact, the extent of continuity in preachers’ arguments over the period is not always clear. For example, although Johnston notes differences in preachers’ interpretations of providence, it is unclear whether he detected any changes in these interpretations. It also would have been helpful if Johnston had consistently identified preachers’ partisan and religious persuasions when analyzing controversies, such as Anglican preachers’ views of Catholics and Dissenters, which frequently were influenced by their political opinions. It is difficult to keep track of preachers’ affiliations, even with the useful table of preachers in the appendices. More crucially, Johnston does not address the broader significance of thanksgiving-day sermons—to what extent were “ideas of Britain” addressed in sermons on other occasions? How closely did preachers’ ideas mirror ideas of Britain presented in other media? The existing scholarship on eighteenth-century sermons and national identity considers many of these ideas, and the book would have been more impactful if Johnston had attempted to answer these questions. Nevertheless, Johnston’s book offers a well-researched overview of what preachers told their audiences about Britons and their nation(s). It will be useful to scholars of religion, politics, and the development of Britain’s national identity. Hopefully, National Thanksgivings will provoke further research on sermons and their impact on society. University of Regina JENNIFER FAROOQ The Incomparable Monsignor: Francesco Bianchini’s world of science, history, and court intrigue. By John L. Heilbron. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022. Pp. vi, 327; 16 color plates. $27.95 hardbound. ISBN: 9780192856654.) Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729) was Superman. “Was there nothing Monsignor Bianchini could not do better than anyone else?” (p. 227) Apparently not. He did archaeology, history, diplomacy, spy craft, engineering, astronomy, and more. J. L. Heilbron has brought us church history through books on Galileo (2010) and on cathedrals as solar observatories (1999)—the latter provided many a Catholic apologist with a cherished quotation in its bold opening statement about the Church’s long support of science. The Incomparable is a readable, illustrated, informative addition to those books. Particularly appealing are The Incomparable’s sections about the meridian line (meridiana) that Bianchini built at Santa Maria degli Angeli church in Rome, and about Bianchini and Isaac Newton each reckoning a date for the sailing of Jason’s ship, BOOK REVIEWS 209 the Argos. The meridiana discussion shows Bianchini’s care for science and for making science interesting to others. He builds the meridiana to be both precise and beautiful. He works on its construction “night and day” (p. 94) for six months, thanks to his abilities (beyond those of ordinary men). He fits it with markers to indicate dates that interest important people. The Argos discussion shows how even supermen reflect their times (pp. 140–156). Newton was sure that all civilization derives from the ancient Jews; thus his dating efforts had to both fit that axiom and satisfy his keen mind. Bianchini had similar interests. Newton kept his to himself, but Heilbron thinks the English superman shared his secrets with the Italian (p. 151)—two keen minds (similarly keen, The Incomparable hints) undertaking an interdisciplinary labor that sought to pull archaeology, astronomy, ancient texts, and faith into a coherent narrative. Heilbron admires his Superman. Upon quoting Bianchini on how well-regulated minds following experts can approach truth, Heilbron marvels, “There spoke a senator of the Republic of Letters” (p. 205). Yet he burdens Superman with the old Kryptonite curse: Copernicus—of course. When the Kryptonite appears, the senator, the mind that thought with Newton, grows weak. He forgets truth. He capitulates to powerful people “unwilling to concede a lost game” (p. 13) who wield “soft arguments” (p. 11) against Copernicus. He accepts “the incomprehensible dogma” (p. 14) of the Church. Why? The Incomparable is a refreshing portrayal of a Catholic man of many talents, supported by and on good terms with his Pope and his Church, none of whom behave incomprehensibly—except for this. At times Heilbron does back off the trope, discussing Tycho Brahe and the parallax of stars and hinting at the complexity of the question of Earth’s motion and the evolving science of Bianchini’s lifetime that all might have made the game seem less than lost. Still, the index of The Incomparable has an entry for “spitoons” but none for “stars,” where lay the hard scientific arguments involved in that complexity. Heilbron treats Argos dating with more sympathy than Bianchini’s (supposed) Kryptonian flaw. The Incomparable’s own Kryptonite is its editing. There are technical errors that should have been caught, most obviously in the description of the meridiana (p. 92): Polaris in AD 2100 is closest to the celestial pole, not farthest; this scrambles at least a paragraph. There are also figures that contain letters indicating details, to which Heilbron often refers at length. The figures are small; the letters are nearly invisible. Some, such as Fig. 23, I could make use of, thanks to my large magnifying glass. Others, such as Figs. 30 and 31, defeated even the magnifier. There are no figures at all of Bianchini’s drawings of Venus, despite much discussion of those drawings. These hurt multiple paragraphs. The overall hurt to the book is not too great, however. Read The Incomparable—with a microscope, and a little skepticism, at hand. Vatican Observatory CHRISTOPHER M. GRANEY 210 BOOK REVIEWS LATE MODERN Confiscating the Common Good: Small Towns and Religious Politics in the French Revolution. By Edward J. Woell. (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2022. Pp. xi, 304. £80. ISBN 9781526159137.) The title requires some explanation, which the author immediately initiates in the epigraph to the book’s Introduction. “A law should be written not for private profit, but for the common benefit of the citizens” (Isidore of Seville, writing about the year 600). For “confiscate,” the common dictionary definitions will presumably do: “to seize as forfeited to the public treasury” or “to seize by or as if by authority.” The book, then, is a study of who was confiscating what in France during the early revolutionary years: local authorities in the small towns contending for the revenues of churches and monasteries by closing, seizing, or consolidating them; and national authorities ordering the closings, seizing, and consolidations in accordance with their own religio-political programs. Edward Woell vividly portrays citizens and their passions in Saint-Gaudens, on April 4, 1790, when town council members complained that any real and possible trifling with the bishopric, the seminary, and the collèges would cause spiritual as well as financial harm to the town. His thesis is that “the French Revolution`s religious politics tattered the social fabric of small towns to such an extent that it unraveled their democratic character,” because by 1789 their “institutions had become their communities` heart and soul” (p. 8). The “religious politics” of the book’s subtitle hindered the democratic process of nation building by polarizing financial and religious partis pris. Woell studies the “small towns”—five in number—of the book’s subtitle to show that their local divisions over religious politics were as salient as, or more salient than, the great nation-wide fights over the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in the religious history of France. These latter are the subject of the quasi-definitive study of Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France: The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Earlier events in Pont-à-Mousson, Gournay-en-Bray, Vienne, Haguenau, and Is-surTille were the vitally important harbingers of, and the key to understanding, the 1791 dramas. In Pont-à Mousson, the contribution of the religious orders was sorely missed, especially at the university, which was in the main staffed by religious. Seizure of church property was financially problematic for many of the townspeople, whether they benefitted directly or were slated to benefit from the sale of the property. The bishop of the region strongly opposed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the majority of the priests accepted it, but the townspeople had no voice in the election of their parish curés. Local interests, then, were primarily personal and private, which may have accounted for the lack of major public resistance to or promotion of the Civil Constitution. BOOK REVIEWS 211 In Gournay-en-Bray, the reduction of parishes ineluctably brought on competition for survival of two parishes, Notre-Dame and Saint-Hildevert, which had begun hundreds of years earlier. When authorities decided in favor of Saint-Hildevert, the parish leaders were first of all wary lest Notre-Dame’s parishioners turn against them, but subsequently anxious when the closure was delayed. Woell highlights this drama in light of a present-day controversy about the significance of parish closures, Tackett counting about two hundred parishes and Jean de Viguerie about four thousand. The number that Woell forefronts—warning that only estimates are possible—was 1,400–1,700. It would certainly seem that parish closure was the source of more religious tension than the oath or the two clergies. In Vienne, the “decimation of the town’s religious institutions by other reforms” (p. 121) was at the center of the town’s divisions rather than the Civil Constitution. The institutions most at issue here were the two ecclesiastical chapters with their member canons. These were originally episcopal advisory boards but had taken on their own independent lives in the 1700s. Given their reputation as dated artifacts, their authority to distribute properties and funds available after the secularization of all church holdings attracted widespread criticism. The other problem was the presence of the rebarbative refractory bishop Charles François d’Aviau du Bois de Sanzay and the powerful personality of the curé, Henri Reymond—later the constitutional bishop of Grenoble—who advocated one large parish for this town of 12,000 inhabitants. This goal was pursued by local, in conjunction with, national authorities, but in view of dissenting voices, it was pursued haphazardly and slowly. In the Alsatian town of Haguenau “linguistic exceptionalism and religious diversity” (p. 149) underlay the 1790 violent factionalism. Inhabitants spoke Alsatian, a German dialect, and were divided, if very unevenly, by adherence to Catholicism (vast majority), Protestantism (only about seventy) and Judaism (about 5,000). In spite of linguistic uniformity, there were religious tensions specific to Alsace, in particular the attempts to diminish if not destroy the financial clout of the Jewish money-lenders. The Archbishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Louis-René Édouard de Rohan-Guémené, complained that Protestants and Jews, who should have little cause to bemoan their past treatment, are freed from all restraints, whereas Catholic clergy and believers are disenfranchised and subject to the whims of the anticlerical government. With the arrival of the constitutional bishop, FrançoisAntoine Brendel and the prevailing of cooler heads among local authorities—or was it a “double game” among local authorities (p. 164)—mitigated the strife between district and local authorities if not between the Catholic factions. At the very end, the arrival of Jacobin extremists determined to obliterate both Catholicism and Alsatian identity, effected an at least minimal unity in Haguenau, but the local power struggle lived on for decades. In his chapter on Is-sur-Tille, Woell features the indefatigable constitutional curé, Denis Chauchot, “on the one hand, an ordinary priest counterattacking a local campaign of repression, and on the other, the same cleric employing elements of 212 BOOK REVIEWS his faith, revolutionary political cultures, and powerful emotion as rhetorical weapons against state-led efforts to curtail Catholic belief and practice in one community” (p. 194). His youthful Gallicanism provided the spiritual centering of his religious politics. In both erudite essays and poetic hymns he manifested Catholic commitment and openness to the new political era. Woell offers a lively and sympathetic presentation of this little-known constitutional priest. The profiles of religious politics in each small town were similar to and different from the other towns. Woell discusses these, occasionally at length, a complex though necessary exercise. Clearly, though, it was not possible to genuinely measure whether the individuals and groups were defending material interests or spiritual interests or a combination of both in each town. He does not try to hide the struggle necessary handle all this. So, we are back to the mainline story of the acceptance and rejection of the religious reforms and nationwide turmoil presented in Timothy Tackett’s Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in Eighteenth-Century France. Woell states that his goal is to make “modest repairs” (p. 21) to this quasi-definitive narrative. At very least, readers will return to the narrative armed with a list of caveats and nota benes. The author has a remarkable mastery of the contemporary literature on religion and politics across the revolutionary years, and his five appendices supply information on small towns—general statistics as well as parish openings and closings from 1790 through 1793. Given that financial interests play such an important part in the book, one wonders if some discussion might have been in order of Rafe Blaufarb’s The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), although this might have further weighed down an already heavily burdened metanarrative. Oklahoma State University JOSEPH BYRNES Finding Order in Diversity. Religious Toleration in the Habsburg Empire, 1792–1848. By Scott Berg. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2022. Pp. xviii, 344. $59.99. ISBN: 9781612496962). In this deeply researched and engaging study, Scott Berg demonstrates conclusively that Austria before and during the Metternich years may have been an international symbol of conservatism but, in terms of the Empire’s confessional policy, it had all the hallmarks of a continuing Enlightened regime. Francis I was not his uncle Joseph’s nephew for nothing. Despite intensive pressure from Catholic activists clerical and lay, the Josephist inheritance founded on the 1781 Edict of Toleration was upheld by the bureaucrats driving policy even to the Revolutions of 1848. A multinational and multi-confessional empire had to function efficiently and that required a qualified throne and altar alliance and respect for the rights of non-Catholics (about 30 per cent of the Empire), including confirmation of citizenship under the Austrian Civil Code of 1811. The principle of toleration was upheld, albeit one that rejected a Josephist drive for uniformity in favour of BOOK REVIEWS 213 respecting difference in a composite monarchy. Censorship was in force and it was impossible for Catholic activists such as Hofbauer to agitate openly agains the Toleration Patent because they risked expulsion from Austria. Under ultramontanist pressure, in his last years as Chancellor before 1848 Metternich pushed for a rapprochement with the papacy that would loosen restrictions on the Church but not much was achieved before the Revolutions transformed the political landscape and brought an end to Josephist policies in religion. Prior to that, as Berg shows in Chapter 3, Protestants in Hungary had been integrated into the life of the Empire under Archduke Joseph, the representative of the Emperor in Budapest for half a century down to 1847. Legal curbs were evn imposed on Protestants who opted to convert and mixed marriages were officially discouraged. Only the Tyrol did not follow the loose interpretation of the Toleration Patent and the few Protestants resident there endured popular repression. The Habsburgs also reckoned with a sizeable Orthodox presence. It was left undisturbed though the price exacted was the discouragement of contacts with foreign governments, notably Russia, whose amity pre-1848 was a priority for Imperial officials. Francis I and his successor, the mentally impaired Emperor Ferdinand, ruled over the second largest Jewish population after Russia in Europe and they were keen, mainly through education, to integrate Jews into Habsburg society. And this despite much anti-semitism among the general population and the opposition of some Jews, especially in Galicia, the largest and poorest community. As Berg neatly expresses it: ‘If Liberalism was the best friend of the Jews in the nineteenth century, then Josephist absolutism was its bodyguard’ (p. 153). But the Revolutions of 1848 brought the end of Josephism. The régime finally made concessions to popular Catholicism and restored the Church’s privileged political status in relation to the state by 1850 as Emperor Franz Josef put in place a counter-revolutionary, neo-absolutist regime with internal order as the priority: competitors to ultramontanism were crushed, and the Concordat of 1855 granted the Catholic Church unprecedented rights in Austria. Scott Berg charts with assurance this half-century of Austrian confessional policy in a volume based on solid archival evidence and he ranges across the whole Empire noting territorial divergences where appropriate. There is a nice opening touch to each chapter by way of reference to a building or a statue in the old Imperial lands that recalls this era. University of York NIGEL ASTON Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and “Revolution,” 1891-1956. By Piotr H. Kosicki. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2018. Pp. xxviii, 424. $40.00. ISBN: 9780300225518). Writing a transnational historical monograph about Polish and French intellectuals, lay activists, and ecclesiastical figures alike, who formed the twentieth-century “Catholic avant-garde,” the personalist current, is not an easy task. First, the collective biography of these figures is likely to appeal to highly specialised audi- 214 BOOK REVIEWS ences; secondly, the current climate around the Roman Catholic Church, with its internal conflicts, sexual-abuse cases, and the Vatican’s inconsistent approach toward international and social affairs may diminish some readers’ appetite for the story of Catholic revolutionaries who sought a just society, engaged in dialogue with Marxism and its Stalinist branch, and paved the way for the groundbreaking Vatican Council II. Fortunately, Piotr Kosicki’s book is a tour de force, expertly researched, elegantly written, and likely to be compared with and favorably contrasted against such titles as Zeev Sternhell’s Neither Right nor Left (1983/1987) and Tony Judt’s Past Imperfect (1992). Kosicki begins his story in the 1890s with Catholics’ reactions to Marxism, capitalism, and nationalism and concludes it in the mid-1950s, when Polish and French personalists and Catholic socialists faced the end of Stalinism, liberating themselves from the ideological corsets (if not straitjackets) of anti-Germanism, Soviet-sponsored and one-sided, anti-Americanist peace activism. The liberating effect of the thaw coincided with the death of Pius XII and the subsequent convocation of the Second Vatican Council. The book’s French characters illustrate the vicissitudes of Catholic thinkers and activists, including Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, or worker-priest Jean Boulier, and impact they made in France and beyond. Their Polish counterparts constitute an equally diverse company of groups and individuals who adopted the personalist core, tried to implement and modify it in prewar, wartime, and postwar communist-dominated Poland, often paying for their actions with their lives, imprisonment, or moral compromises. The book focuses mostly on the Polish part of the story, giving the fascinating portrayals of fascists and nationalists turned into pro-communist “progressive” Catholics (Bolesław Piasecki and his entourage of Dziś i Jutro millieu). We also meet their young adept, Catholic radical Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first Polish democratic prime minister after the collapse of communism, and a young cleric and priest named Karol Wojtyła, better known as John Paul II. Lastly, Kosicki pays close attention to the Cracow-based disciples of Mounier from the Tygodnik Powszechny weekly that were turned down by their spiritual master, vowed to abstain from the communist-dominated political life preserving their integrity and defending independent culture, and later joined forces with Mazowiecki and gay catehumen Jerzy Zawieyski to form the Znak circle of more independent Catholic activists in the post-Stalinist era. For Kosicki, the link between the Polish personalist groups and the Solidarity movement, which served as an icebreaker of communism in the 1980s is obvious. However, the autor is at his best while discussing less-known and researched phenomena such as the peculiar nature of French intellectuals’ involvement in the Soviet-sponsored Peace Movement; the role of anti-Germanism shared by both the French and the Poles in cementing their collaboration with Moscow; and the opposition of Esprit editors to European integration in the 1950s. Kosicki’s work does not contain any flaws or errors. If anything, I view it a bit apologetic toward John Paul II, one of the protagonists of this book, much revered in the past, and currently under posthumous re-examination. Another issue concerns the real BOOK REVIEWS 215 impact of intellectual Catholicism on Polish religiosity, which under the tutelage of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, also a frequently evoked figure, moved away from open Catholicism. Lastly, I would advise the author to pay more attention to the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign and the effect it had on the collapse of the Znak group. Still, Piotr Kosicki authored an excellent work, which will top the readingg lists of students of Polish and European history for years to come. Universytet Wrocławski MIKOŁAJ KUNICKI Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic Aid to Jews under the Occupation]. By Limore Yagil. (Montrouge: Bayard. 2022. Pp. 359. €21.90. ISBN: 9782750914448). French-Israeli historian Limore Yagil is well-equipped to write about how Catholic Christians under the Occupation helped Jews living in France. The author of at least eight books about World War II, she has examined Christian resistance to Nazism, both Catholic and Protestant, in numerous venues. The present volume concentrates specifically on Catholic efforts undertaken in France. Examinations by other authors have highlighted Protestant endeavors, so Yagil’s focus on Catholic interventions is a welcome addition to the literature about righteous gentiles— those non-Jews who came to the aid of Jews during World War II. Yagil begins by noting the paradox of Jewish survival in France compared to other European nations. Although almost a quarter of the Jews in France—especially foreign-born Jewish refugees—were deported to death camps, an astounding 75 percent survived. This is in contrast to neighboring countries like the Netherlands (with 80 percent deported) and Belgium (with 45 percent deported). Although part of the explanation may lie in France’s topography and politics, a large part of Jewish survival according to the author was due to the efforts of bishops, priests, seminarians, men and women religious, and lay Catholics. An important distinction that Yagil makes throughout the book is between public pronouncements condemning anti-Jewish laws, internment camps, and deportations, and the secret—and more important in her view—actions that occurred in church sanctuaries, behind convent and monastery walls, and with church approval. These covert undertakings required formal church involvement, such as issuing baptismal certificates, work permits, enrollment documents, identity cards, and travel authorizations. While the creation of paperwork may appear trivial, these documents were required for employment, education, travel, and obtaining basic necessities under the Nazi Occupation. Other activities, which frequently required church oversight and funding, included offering housing, providing schooling, hiding refugees, and, on occasion, smuggling Jews out of the country. The heart and soul of the book comprises seven chapters that recount the actions of each and every diocese before and during the war. This is a monumental body of research, which Yagil obtained by scouring diocesan records, ledgers, let- 216 BOOK REVIEWS ters, speeches, and other documents. She begins in the south of France, on the border with Spain along the Pyrenees. This was the most dangerous location for rescue given the fact that most of the French internment camps were located here, and the Gestapo patrolled the border for those in flight. Networks of clerics, religious, and lay Catholics, working with Jews, Protestants, and Communists, ran large and small operations. She concludes with consideration of the diocese of Paris and dioceses in the west. Yagil discusses the question of conversion, especially of Jewish children, throughout the book and asserts that ecclesiastical leadership strongly condemned conversionary efforts. The historian could find no directive to convert in any of the archives she examined, and takes pains to reiterate the claim that a false baptismal certificate was not considered a conversion. She states that no more than forty or fifty children were converted, out of 10,500 rescued. Like the issue of baptism and conversion, the question of Pope Pius XII’s role during World War II is also addressed. According to Yagil, the pontiff provided financial help and tacit support to the dioceses of France. The pope’s silence, she writes, “hides concretely the many discreet initiatives of rescue and mutual aid” that occurred in Italy, other European countries, and in particular, France (p. 333). The great strength of Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation, however, is its detailed presentation of the actions of ordinary, and extraordinary, Catholics in every diocese in France. Limore Yagil relates countless stories of heroism, based on meticulous research. One comes away from this book with deep appreciation for the leadership shown at all levels of the Church. It is to be hoped, therefore, that an English translation of this valuable book will be available in the near future. REBECCA MOORE San Diego State University AMERICAN Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State, 1692–1800. By Suzanne M. Stamatov. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2018. Pp. 256. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-826-35920-9.) Suzanne Stamatov’s instructive, well documented Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State, 1692–1800, offers readers an even-handed view into the pragmatic interactions among New Mexicans during the second half of the Spanish colonial period. The text centers on family and community interactions— marriage, inheritance, domestic conflict—as recorded in civil and religious records. Stamatov consulted the archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the New Mexico State Archives, centering her work on U.S.-based collections pertaining to colonial New Mexico. Since this documentation arises from exchanges between individuals and institutions, the negotiations it relates pertain to processes, rules, BOOK REVIEWS 217 and appeals. Stamatov skillfully and selectively extrapolates conflicts and relationships from the bureaucratic shadows they cast in the archive. Colonial New Mexican Families is divided into six content chapters. two, “The Setting” and “Civil Authorities, Civil Law and the Family,” establish the historical context and explain the relationship between community expectations and the law. Stamatov outlines this dynamic balance: “community members in New Mexico intervened in the ‘private matters’ of neighbors, becoming involved when they perceived injustices or transgressions of community standards” (p. 28). The next four chapters explore various facets of family-church-state-community interactions: “The Sacrament of Marriage,” “Sexuality and Courtship,” “Marriage,” and “Domestic Life and Discord.” In each, the book approaches the primary documentation from the established perspective of dynamic balance between community and the law. One of the book’s strengths is in the appealing and historically accurate vignettes Stamatov crafts of out of archival materials. She opens and closes the book in this manner, with an extended exposition of a 1766 legal case brought by a grandmother, María Luisa de Aragón, against her son-in-law, who had attempted to block a marriage proposal for his daughter. Stamatov unfolds the testimonies of the two contestants, as well as reports of the villagers from the community of Tomé, where María Luisa had raised her granddaughter. Drawing historical individuals out of the record and providing them with carefully chosen detail makes what could have been a dry archival analysis lively and engaging. The tables, figures, and charts presented in the index provide a synthetic presentation of the ideas explored in the book. They include information regarding household composition, surname clusters, and data for ages of marriage. All of this is very interesting, though one might ask why there are no charts explaining household composition for homes headed by women, as widows made up a substantial proportion of the population. This small gap surprises, as Colonial New Mexican Families ably demonstrates the extent to which Hispana women in New Mexico possessed agency in their private and public affairs and employed ecclesial and civil systems to assert it. Further, Stamatov makes clear that nuevomexicanas controlled their own estates and did not suffer from the male-centered inheritance laws that would later plague the region once it came under American rule: “documentation shows that [New Mexican] parents tried to implement inheritance laws fairly and endow their male and female children equally” (p. 6). Colonial New Mexican Families is restrained in its conclusions, prudent rather than sweeping. This is one of the book’s noteworthy features: it favors a measured perspective over grand generalizations. When Stamatov asserts that “overall, people recognized that their community’s strength lay in living together peacefully . . . they interpreted the laws flexibly to avoid alienating the neighbors whom they needed in order to survive in the remote Kingdom of New Mexico” (p. 8), the argument is convincing rather than overextended. This quality makes the book an excellent 218 BOOK REVIEWS choice for history scholars of the Southwest, Mexico, and the Spanish colonial period, of course. However, it will also hold appeal for students and researchers in the fields of Latin American studies, gender and women’s studies, and Catholic studies. The book’s accessible language and appealing anecdotes mentioned above would make its chapters instructive for undergraduate classroom use as well, as the breadth of its primary research substantiates its claims. Colonial New Mexican Families is vital reading for scholars of New Mexico’s colonial epoch, offering valuable perspective into the fundamental inner workings of its communities. University of New Mexico ANNA M. NOGAR Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism. By Nicholas T. Pruitt. (New York: New York University Press, 2021. Pp. 296. $45. ISBN: 9781479803545). When we encounter Protestantism in the US immigration debates of the early to mid-20th century, it is usually backing up Nordic supremacy and anti-Catholicism. In this context, Protestantism equates with nativism and restriction. This book argues that as well as fuelling anti-immigrant sentiments, over the 40 years between the harsh quotas of 1924 and their overturning in 1965, moderate, mainline, Protestant activists played a leading role in promoting religious and racial tolerance and multi-culturalism. When Pruitt calls his subjects “mainline”, he’s referring to “a collective label applied to numerically predominant, largely white denominations driven by ecumenism.” Their Protestantism was driven by “home missions, mid-century sensibilities, and internationalist views . . . to confront long-standing racial prejudice . . . and incorporate diverse immigrant groups into their churches” (p. 3). Driven by humane theoretical and practical responses to the refugee crisis of the 1930s, WWII, de-colonisation and the Cold War, they were highly instrumental in dismantling restrictions on both European and Asian migration. One of the central themes of the book is the irony that the cultural pluralism inherent in opening US borders to increased diversity was the inevitable decline in the influence of Protestantism itself. Yet, as Pruitt points out Protestantism retained its key role in defining the national identity, even as its authority seemed to wane. The shift in Anglo-Protestantism’s leadership from cultural, racial and religious gatekeepers to staunch advocates of E Pluribus Unum reflected, reinforced and drove the post-war Liberal consensus. Yet as Pruitt also points out, this was not necessarily the stance of the rank and file. He cites a Harris poll taken in 1965. On the eve of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which largely did away with the discriminatory quotas of the 1920s, 65% of American Protestant Americans objected to any increase in immigrant numbers. This thinking highlights—to my mind—one big gap in the book’s coverage of the declining influence of Anglo-Protestantism. If white Protestantism lost author- BOOK REVIEWS 219 ity over these years, the influence of African-American Protestantism powered ahead. Yet, this is barely mentioned. There is some attention paid to Mexican and Latin American immigration and migration. There is some commentary on Asian immigrants and Asian Americans. This is in spite of the fact that more than twothirds of African Americans still identify as Protestant—and the figure for the period of the study was undoubtedly higher—their influence is largely skated over. It is also important because although church attendance generally declined over these years, that trend was slower in Black churches than in white. This is an anomaly. For if, as Pruitt argues, Anglo-Protestantism’s liberalism cost it influence, Black Protestantism’s humane stance made it far more visible and powerful, far more important, both within its own communities and on the national stage. Not only were Black churches and Black ministers vital to first the defense, then advance of civil rights, but they also formed crucial communal links in the continuing Great Migration from the Deep South. There is no analysis of liberal Protestantism’s failure to support federal anti-lynching measures, or the Federal Council of Churches for Christ’s (FCC) and National Council of Churches’ failure to make any significant inroads into integration. Professor Pruitt makes no mention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While these are not immigration policy matters, they do show that vaunted ideals of racial equality only went so far. This omission is serious, but in general, this is a keenly observed book. It is richly researched and clearly—if densely—written. It represents a vital counterargument and revision of the standard narrative of nativism and its reverse in the twentieth century. I will certainly order a copy for Exeter University’s library. University of Exeter KRISTOFER ALLERFELDT The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist. By Donna T. Haverty-Stacke. (New York: New York University Press. 2020. Pp. 312. $50.00. ISBN: 9781479802180.) This is a well-researched and nicely written account of a compelling and largely overlooked figure. It was in the 1930s, not long after Dorothy Day entered the Catholic Church, that Grace Holmes Carlson, then about thirty years old, found her way out the door. Where Day discerned a path from radical politics to the Catholic Church, Carlson did the opposite. Still, each continued to labor mightily to reconcile spiritual and political convictions which seemed, at times, to conflict. Ultimately, Carlson’s sojourn from Catholicism, which began before she became a founding member and national leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1938, concluded upon her return to the Church in 1952. Part of what makes Carlson so interesting is that, while her return spelled an end both to her SWP membership and to her second shot at a vice presidential candidacy on the Party’s national ticket, she never so much as hinted at renouncing her erstwhile comrades or her radical political commitments. An enduring vision of human BOOK REVIEWS 220 dignity, whose dual sources Donna T. Haverty-Stacke effectively locates both within the young Carlson’s working-class family and within the parishes and church-affiliated educational institutions of her youth, supplied what Carlson would call the “unified philosophy of life” (p. 35) which undergirded her spiritual and political values—and ultimately imparted a continuity to the long arc of her biographical narrative. It should come as no surprise that Carlson, a key Party leader and a sometime candidate for public office, found it untenable to maintain formal links both to the Church and to the SWP. Given the mutual antagonism between Catholicism and Marxism in this era, the pairing was remarkably difficult to square during the height of her involvement in the 1930s and 1940s—the more so since the very idea of a “radical Catholicism” simply failed to compute for many U.S. Catholics prior to the 1960s. Still, Haverty-Stacke spotlights a vital early twentieth-century network of radical Catholics and their fellow travelers in Carlson’s native City of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Notably, it was women religious who, as schoolteachers and professors, sowed seeds that later grew into Carlson’s full-fledged socialist and feminist critiques. And after her return to the Church, it was religious sisters who provided precious moral support, as well as gainful employment as a college instructor and administrator, that sustained her over the final four decades of her life. In spotlighting these elements of Carlson’s story, Haverty-Stacke highlights how educational institutions sponsored and led by women religious nourished multiple generations of twentieth-century Catholic women in their left-leaning political commitments and feminist consciousness, even if few alumnae (or their instructors) ever reached Carlson’s level of engagement. Haverty-Stacke underscores that, though her return to Catholicism was an act of central importance in her subject’s 85-year life, Carlson’s “story was more complex than just coming full circle” (p. 182). In the early 1960s, she spearheaded the founding of an innovative Catholic women’s junior college geared toward expanding higher education access to members of the working-class. 1960s and 1970s, she focused particularly on mentoring young women, imparting her signature “hybrid Catholic Marxist approach” (p. 193) when it came to feminism and an array of other topics. Predictably, she opposed the War in Vietnam and the rise of the nuclear arms race, but she also critiqued fellow radical Catholics such as Daniel Berrigan for the direct-action protest tactics, which she pegged as sure to turn off the working-class due to their “mistaken, individualistic, petit bourgeois approach to social problems” (p. 191).                       important story and to the insights she developed in the crucible of radical Catholicism across the span of the twentieth century. Fordham University JAMES P. MCCARTIN BOOK REVIEWS 221 Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. By Theresa Keeley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 352. $49.95. ISBN: 9781501750755.) Awarded the John Gilmary Shea Award by the American Catholic Historical Association in 2021, Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns is an important work. It richly illuminates multiple dimensions of post-conciliar divides in the Catholic community in the United States: the movement away from the Cold War alliances with conservative political structures in Latin America; the emergence in the 1960s of a leftward critique of U.S. foreign policy; the importance of missionary experiences and international exchanges as shaping internal divisions within the American Catholic community; the mirroring in the United States of polarized views on the presence of the Church in society, and different implementations of the Council in the 1980s. All of this is done through a singular focus on developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua (with some reference to other Latin American countries) and the role of the Maryknoll sisters. The bulk of the work covers the period from the murder in El Salvador of Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, the Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and the lay missionary Jean Donovan (December, 1980) to the murder of the members of the Society of Jesus and their co-workers in November, 1989. After a very comprehensive and summary Introduction, Keeley breaks the period up into chapters. Chapter One describes the evolution of the missionary vision and its alliance with the option for the poor, while Chapter Two covers the opposition in Nicaragua between the Maryknoll congregation and U.S. backed strong man and the familial consortium of Anatasio Somoza. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters describe developments in El Salvador leading up the killing of Archbishop Romero and the strong alliance between the missionaries, liberation theology, and the Sandinistas. Here, the politically driven divide between the Reagan administration and its support by conservative Catholics fuels the domestic image campaign against allegedly pro-communist, radical religious women, liberation theology, and left-wing Catholicism. Politics and theology begin to blend as the various sides take different approaches to liturgy and the understanding of the “people’s Church.” Chapter 6, entitled “Real Catholics versus Maryknollers,” details the alliance between Tip O’Neill and the sisters. In doing so, it brings the divisive picture into particular sharpness by analyzing the gender bias of the conservative campaign when it paints a picture of the relationship between developments in Nicaragua and the role of women in society and Church. The last two chapters (7 and 8) cover the Nicaraguan Iran-Contra affair and the murders in El Salvador. The epilogue moves beyond the careful attention to documented historical data that marks the whole work and attempts to identify analogous divisions in the debates over the Catholic Church and the government’s health-care directives in the second decade of the twenty-first century. 222 BOOK REVIEWS e author is to be congratulated for providing a close analysis of how presidential policies, international developments, and religious perspectives crisscrossed and enabled the solidification of political Catholicism in the United States. While the argument is for the most part sound, it is also provocative and probably awaits modification. Attention to the economic disparity in Latin America is hinted at but never treated as a component part of the right-left divide. Relying on newspaper reports, the interpretive methodology offers little critique of the virtual reality created by the press, both left and right, for its own purposes. e analysis may also be modified when other archival depositories become available: the religious and political interventions of the Holy See, the discussions among the bishops, government sources that remain untapped. Still, this reviewer recommends Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns for all students of contemporary Catholicism and its divides. Franciscan School of Theology at the University of San Diego JOSEPH P. CHINNICI Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. By Frederick W. Marks. (np: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Pp. 204. $29.75. ISBN: 1545234973, 9781545234976). Frederick Marks is an accomplished historian who has explored the nuances of the foreign policy of selected American presidents. Here in Pro-Life Champion Marks travels a different path, describing the inspiring life of pro-life activist, Monsignor Philip Reilly. Part biography, part apology, Marks’s 2017 book is a welcome addition to the growing list of memoirs of leaders published in recent years. Marks’s book contains a few blemishes. with the author jumping from topics. It is not as chronologically arranged as expected. Because Reilly’s ministry is sidewalk counseling, Marks draws inspiration from activist groups like Pro-Life Action League and American Life League while totally ignoring larger organizations like the National Right to Life Committee and Americans United for Life despite their superior roles in helping to enact pro-life laws and leadership in the movement. Having expressed the negatives, the positives far outweigh any deficiencies. Philip Reilly is pictured almost larger than life. A man of humble beginnings, Reilly became a priest, a teacher, and later a high school principal in New York City. Even while administrator at Cathedral Prep, in October, 1989 he formed Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, a pro-life ministry that centers on prayer outside abortion clinics, not Operation Rescue-style civil disobedience. Marks explains that Reilly formed Helpers to counter the disastrous image presented by “pro-life” terrorists whose exploits included bombings, arson, and later murder at abortion clinics, a strategy that was not only detrimental to the movement’s peaceful message, but counter-productive in trying to win the hearts and minds of the American BOOK REVIEWS 223 public. Reilly’s many dedicated and committed Helpers, armed with prayers and rosaries, do not block clinic entrances and are not arrested. Several times a week in all kinds of weather, they counsel women not to abort their babies. Much to the frustration of abortion clinic personnel, Reilly’s Helpers lead many women to choose life for their babies. Monsignor Reilly traveled the world preaching his message of prayer and compassion and Helpers expanded internationally. Here in America 60 chapters have formed in 37 states. Marks provides many historical events in the final third of the book. 1990 prayer vigil at New York’s largest abortion clinic included 1,000 Helpers. Another vigil in June, 1992 featured Reilly and Cardinal O’Connor and thousands more, an event dutifully reported by the New York Times the following day. In 1996 another clinic sued Reilly and Helpers for $117 million. Reilly won the case. In 2001 the New York City Council tried to pass a buffer-zone restriction on Helpers. Again, Reilly diffused the effort with an impassioned statement. Reilly, while preaching peace and love, holds strong convictions about those who advocate for abortion. He has little regard for pro-choice Catholic politicians who vote for abortion rights, endorsing the policy of denying them Communion unless they repent. Marks also notes that Reilly believes America is in deep spiritual decline and quotes Bishop Fulton Sheen with an appropriate comment about a decaying civilization and man’s unwillingness to see his own wickedness. Marks gives the reader a glimpse of the Monsignor’s character through many quotes. In challenging abortion’s legality, Reilly said, “Evil is evil and good is good whether the law permits it or not. You cannot make evil good by legislating it. Neither can you make good evil by making it illegal.” Seeing victory in the future, Marks quotes Reilly, “A culture of life will be restored,” while referring to abortionrights as “the tree of death.” Pro-Life Champion applauds Monsignor Reilly’s heroic life and his Helpers’ dedication: lives saved, women restored, God victorious. ROBERT N. KARRER Kalamazoo,MI LATIN AMERICAN Aztec and Maya Apocalypses: Old World Tales of Doom in a New World Setting. By Mark Z. Christensen (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 2022. Pp. xii, 252. $55.00. ISBN: 978-0-806-19035-8.) Writing amid our current apocalypse, the global COVID-19 pandemic, historian Mark Z. Christensen has offered a complete reimagining of the fundamental role the idea of “Doomsday” played in the Christianization of the Indigenous pop- 224 BOOK REVIEWS ulations of the American continents in the early modern period. The author—an ethnohistorian who is renowned for his translation abilities in both colonial Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and Yucatec Mayan (the Mayan dialect spoken in most of the Yucatan Peninsula)—clearly outlines in his Introduction three goals for his tome. His overarching goal is to translate and analyze relatively obscure eschatological texts, composed in these two Indigenous languages, to convey their creative adaptation to serve the idiosyncratic spiritual needs of the evangelical endeavors in New Spain. Secondly, Christensen strives to complicate the historiographical tendency to approach native responses to Christianity in one of two modes: to assume the wholesale adoption of the European religion, or on the more extreme end of this continuum, envision that all Indigenous interpretations of Christianity were inherently subversive. Christensen’s approach is much more nuanced than either of these, as he stresses the importance of a scholarly appreciation of both contributing religious traditions, an academic method that ultimately allows for Indigenous Christianity to be the result of active and ongoing negotiations between Indigenous neophytes and their resident friars. The importance of Christensen’s approach cannot be overstated as it serves to reinscribe agency onto native communities of New Spain. His final articulated goal is to offer his readers English translations of his textual source base. After providing an overview of Spanish and Mesoamerican worldviews of the early modern period, Christensen spends his first body chapter succinctly synthesizing contemporaneous eschatology, explaining how and why millenarianism was a pragmatic worldview for the Spaniards responsible for New World conquests of both territory and of souls. chapters along an eschatological chronology. Chapter 2 turns to the topics of the first judgement, limbo, and purgatory, using Juan Bautista Viseo’s Confesario (1599), Ignacio de Paredes’s Promptuario (1759), Juan Coronel’s Discursos (1620), and the anonymous Sermones en lengua Maya (18th century) to analyze how these moments of “personal apocalypses” were conveyed to Nahuatl and Mayan-speaking audiences. Chapter 3 moves on to the Apocalypse proper, providing translations of such important texts as the “Fifteen Signs” from an anonymous Maya sermons copybook (which can be partially correlated with texts and images from the 15thcentury German book, Der Antichrist und die fünfzehn Zeichen) and Bautista’s Nahuatl Sermonario (1606). Personal resurrection following the Final Judgement is the topic of the next Chapter, which analyzes the Seven Articles in the Dominican Martín de León’s Camino de cielo (1611) and in Coronel’s Discursos predicables. Chapter 5 finishes the body chapters, focused on four texts (Fabián de Aquino’s 16th-century copybook, Coronel’s Discursos and Discursos predicables, and the “Teabo Manuscript”), which describe heaven and hell.      !"# $% & '%( %%)$ ) )* "% #" (+ !% , Latin American religious studies and ethnohistory; Christensen’s analytically rich translations of Nahuatl and Mayan documents are a true gift. It also bears noting that beyond the relatively small circle of Mesoamerican ethnohistorians, this book speaks to the larger field of Catholic studies, evidencing, as it does, one of the most BOOK REVIEWS 225 creative examples of religious localization and native negotiation in global history. Moreover, this text could be easily incorporated into an undergraduate or graduate syllabus as Christensen’s conversational writing style makes for a very enjoyable read, despite his apocalyptic subject matter. The Pennsylvania State University AMARA SOLARI Editor’s Report for 2022 Volume CVIII (2022) consisted of 912 pages. It published sixteen articles, one essay in the series “Journeys in Church History,” one ACHA Presidential Address, two miscellanies, one Forum Review Essay, two review essays, eighty-seven book reviews, and five obituary notices. The sixteen articles were distributed as follows: one general, two medieval, five early modern, three late modern, one American, three Latin American, and one African. Of the sixteen articles, nine came from authors outside the United States (one from Chile, one from the Czech Republic, one joint authorship from Croatia, one from Israel, four from Poland, and one from Tanzania). An author from England provided the “Journeys in Church History” essay and one from Poland a miscellany essay. Subsidies allowed five authors to exceed the page limits. The editor is grateful to His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan and to Professor Emeritus Paul F. Grendler for their generous gifts in support of the journal. During the Covid period over three hundred books piled up in the office awaiting reviews. To bring this number down to a manageable level, books published before 2017 were listed in the Other Books Received section and donated to Mullen Library. With the help of a returnig staff, the processing of books for review has resumed. The eighty-seven book reviews published in the 2022 volume were distributed among the following areas: general and miscellaneous (eight), ancient (four), medieval (twenty-seven), early modern (eight), late modern (eight), American (sixteen), Latin American (thirteen), and Far Eastern (one). The authors of the book reviews came from institutions in the following countries: the United States (sixty-five or 75 percent), England (nine or 10 percent), Scotland (three or 3 percent), and one each from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, and Poland. One of the review articles was by an Australian resident. As the table below reveals, the editors received twenty-five article submissions during 2022. They fell into the following categories: general (one), early modern (nine), late modern (six), American (seven), and Latin American (two). Of these twenty-five articles, four were published, three accepted for publication, five rejected, one withdrawn, and twelve are in the process of being evaluated and revised. Of the thirty-one articles submitted in 2021, twelve were published, twelve were rejected, three withdrawn, and four are still pending. The editorial staff functions efficiently. While Msgr. Robert Trisco continues to be responsible for the Book Reviews, Periodical Literature, and Other Book Received sections, he is assisted by Dr. Robin Darling Young regarding books on 226 EDITOR’S REPORT FOR 2022 227 ancient topics, by Dr. Jennifer Paxton for books in the medieval area, and by Dr. Julia Young for Latin American books. They have been ably assisted by the graduate student Ms. Julia Sedlack who will leave her post in December. The processing of book reviews has been placed on the Scholastica platform. Ms. Madelyn Reichert continues to serve as a careful copy editor. For their excellent service to the journal, the editor is deeply appreciative. The Board of Advisory Editors has provided invaluable advice on a number of important issues. The editor is grateful to Dr. Simon Ditchfield of the Univeristy of York for rejoining the Board. Dr. Christopher Korten of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań has graciously agreed to join the Board. And to Father Stephen Schloesser, S.J., a special word of thanks for stepping in to assist when needed. Last year the annual Board meeting was conducted by Zoom and so too was this year’s meeting. T A B L E 1 Manuscripts submitted in 2022 Area Rejected or Conditionally Withdrawn Published Accepted Accepted (W) Pending in 2022 TOTAL General Ancient Medieval Early Modern Late Modern American Latin American 1 TOTAL 1 1 2 2, 1W 1 2 4 4 2 2 1 1 1 9 6 7 2 3 6 12 4 25 TABLE 2 Book reviews published in 2022 Area Winter Spring Summer Autumn TOTAL General Ancient Medieval Early Modern Late Modern American Latin American Canadian Far Eastern/ Australian African 2 0 7 5 3 3 3 0 1 0 1 1 3 0 1 6 4 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 3 3 6 0 0 0 4 3 14 3 1 4 2 0 0 0 8 4 27 8 8 16 15 0 1 0 TOTAL 24 16 16 31 87 Notes and Comments ASSOCIATION NEWS ACHA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, January 4–6, 2023 The American Catholic Historical Association held its 103rd annual meeting from January 4–6, 2023, in Philadelphia. The program committee consisted of Catherine Osborne, chair; Thomas Rzeznik, chair for the 2024 annual meeting (San Francisco); and Monica Mercado, chair for the 2025 Annual Meeting (New York). In total, 136 people registered for the conference, and there were many additional guests from the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Society for Church History (ASCH). The program featured ninety-seven speakers organized into thirty-three daytime panels, with one additional off-site evening panel sponsored jointly with the ASCH. While the program consisted primarily of traditional panels (three speakers presenting individual research) several roundtables were also well received. Topics of particular interest—judging both by numbers of submissions and by panel attendance—included the histories of laywomen; the body; sexuality; race and racism; anti-Catholicism; the material culture of Catholics; and the material culture of scholarly inquiry in both formal and informal archives. The majority of papers focused on United States or modern European topics, but Latin America was well represented and several pre-modern panels were developed from individual paper submissions. Brenna Moore’s presidential address “Rethinking Catholic Intellectual History” and a subsequent roundtable discussion “Why Catholic History? Why Now?” sparked lively discussion. The academic part of the program concluded on Saturday evening at 5:00 PM, after which many members made their way to Old St. Mary’s Church for the annual ACHA Mass in remembrance of deceased members; Father Richard Gribble, C.S.C. presided. Following the liturgy, a social was hosted by the American Catholic Historical Society at their townhouse across the street from the church, where participants were able to preview the Society’s new exhibit “That 70s Catholicism.” At the Presidential Luncheon on January 6, Executive Secretary Dr. Charles Strauss announced the establishment of the Association’s newest prize: The Robert F. Trisco and Nelson H. Minnich Prize for Editing a Work in Catholic Church History. As the announcement explained, Edited works are frequently excluded from book prize competition. Yet the work of editing a book deserves recognition. Editors make others 228 NOTES AND COMMENTS 229 look good from behind the scenes: correcting errors (factual, grammatical, spelling, etc.), calling on authors to provide context and clarifications, putting their work into a proper and attractive format. Editors of documents need to be able to decipher difficult handwritings, be experts in languages (grammar, spelling, etc.), knowledgeable about the historical context in which the document was created, able to identify persons and events mentioned, have good judgment regarding preferred readings, etc. It is often meticulous work that goes unappreciated by the casual reader. The prize will give proper recognition to high quality editing. The winner(s) of the prize may be an editor(s) of a published book or editor(s) for at least five continuous years of a periodical devoted to the history of Catholicism. The luncheon program also included the announcement of this year’s recipients of the ACHA prizes, awards, and grants: A. The Msgr. John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award is given annually to a graduate student in the final stage of a degree program who has demonstrated excellence in their dissertation research and writing to date. This year’s Ellis Award committee consisted of James P. McCartin (Fordham University), Mary Dunn (Saint Louis University), and Jennifer Scheper Hughes (University of California, Riverside). This year’s winner is Richard T. Yoder of Pennsylvania State University for “Unorthodox Flesh: Gender, Religious Convulsions, and Charismatic Knowledge in Early Modern France.” The citation read: Jansenism and its enduring influence in the history of modern Catholicism has been the subject of many outstanding scholarly studies. But Richard T. Yoder’s dissertation on a French Catholic sect called the convulsionnaires promises to shed new light on Jansenism’s enduring significance, not only through the approaches of religious and gender history, but also of intellectual history and disability studies. Yoder’s research focuses on how, during the long eighteenth century, convulsionnaires’ experience of bodily convulsions and their practice of rites of sacred violence (including stabbing, searing, burning, breaking, crushing, and crucifying themselves) precipitated a crisis of epistemology around claims to religious authority and conceptions of illness. Among the largely female community of convulsionnaires, these experiences were understood as episodes of divine possession in the context of worship— experiences that wrought miracles and affirmed their sect’s position as the “true remnant” of the Catholic faithful. Among outsider critics, however, their rites were condemned as self-harm, drawing accusations of diabolism, fraud, and “hysteria.” At the heart of the convulsionnaires’ story, Yoder suggests, is a controversy over the status of “charismatic knowledge” and “new ways of knowing”; such controversy both disrupted structures of religious authority and helped to shape conceptions of mental illness and physical disability in the eighteenth century and beyond. 230 NOTES AND COMMENTS Consequently, Yoder’s work promises to connect important strands of religious and “secular” history and illuminate the role that Jansenism played well beyond its seventeenth-century roots. B. The Cyprian Davis, O.S.B. Prize is given annually in recognition of a work in progress that promises to make significant contributions to the study of the Black Catholic experience. Now in its third year, the Davis Prize is co-sponsored and administered by the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. This year’s committee consisted of ACHA representative Cecilia Moore (University of Dayton) and representatives of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. The winner of this year’s prize is Dr. Julia Gaffield of Georgia State University for “The Abandoned Faithful: Sovereignty, Diplomacy, and Religious Jurisdiction After the Haitian Revolution.” The citation reads: This project studies the role that Catholicism played in state-building processes and transatlantic relations following Haiti’s declaration of independence in 1804. The evidence reveals that Catholicism was central to Haiti’s self-identity and to its status as a new country. Catholic authorities in the Vatican, however, claimed religious dominion over new American jurisdictions in the nineteenth century and they refused for decades to establish normal relations with Haiti, despite the fact that they recognized its political independence. By systematically analyzing the competing assertions and practices of religious dominion in Haiti, this project presents a deeper understanding of the complex interrelations of sovereignty, diplomacy, and state formation in the Age of Revolution. C. The Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize is given annually to the author of a book, published during a preceding twelve-month period, which is judged by a committee of experts to have made the most original and distinguished contribution to the knowledge of Italian history or Italo-American history or relations. This year’s Marraro Prize committee consisted of ACHA representative Thomas Behr (University of St. Thomas–Houston) and two scholars named by the AHA and the Society for Italian Historical Studies. The 2022 Marraro Prize is given to Dr. Margaret Meserve of the University of Notre Dame for Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The citation reads: Meserve portrays the complex—scholarly, political, and religious— markets that printers and printmakers populated. Meserve fully shows how the Church employed the new media, and demonstrates that if printing did not of itself revolutionize society and launch Luther’s career, it did, as Fernand Braudel asserts, speed up everything that was already underway. D. The John Gilmary Shea Prize is given annually to the author of a book, published during a preceding twelve-month period, which is judged by a committee of experts to have made the most original and distinguished contribution to the NOTES AND COMMENTS 231 knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church. This year’s Shea Prize committee consisted of Massimo Faggioli (Villanova University), Emma Anderson (University of Ottawa), and Shaun L. Blanchard (National Institute for Newman Studies). The 2022 Shea Prize is given to Dr. Brenna Moore of Fordham University for Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism, published by the University of Chicago Press. The citation reads: Moore’s portraits of early twentieth-century Catholic intellectuals have a profound thematic, historical, and even spiritual unity. In the relationships between these Catholic and philo-Catholic thinkers she describes—white, black, Anglophone, Francophone, Jewish, Islamicists, mystics, poets, scholars—Moore builds crucial complement to the heavily white, male, and clerical story of the roots of Vatican II and twentieth-century Catholic intellectual renewal. From a geographical and spatial point of view as well, Kindred Spirits contributes in a fundamental way to a global Catholic history of the twentieth century: Paris serves as a loose focal point, but the book spans overseas to Argentina and the United States—the Maritains and Simone Weil are considered alongside the African/African-American experience in Jamaica, Marseilles, and Chicago. Kindred Spirits opens our eyes to a history made of a web of relationships and friendships at the global level that still have not come to the fore in the mainstream understanding of the renewal and aggiornamento of Catholicism in the second half of the century. It is an incredibly rich, insightful, and nuanced book. It is intellectual and political history, but also history of spirituality and of Catholic views on family, marriage, and sexuality, that opens a new chapter in the way we understand twentieth-century Catholicism. E. 2 0 2 2 R e s e a r c h a n d P r e s i d e n t i a l T r a v e l G r a n t s : Christine Hwang is a Ph.D. candidate in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan studying the role of religion in shaping urban form. Jorge Puma is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Paris-Saclay. Daniel J. Rietze is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian Studies at Brown University, where he is also completing an MA in Religious Studies. F. 2 0 2 3 P r e s i d e n t i a l ( C o n f e r e n c e ) T r a v e l G r a n t s : Elise Abshire is a Master’s student at the University of Dayton in Theological Studies. Joshua Madrid is a Ph.D. student at University College London. G. Th e A C H A D i s t i n g u i s h e d T e a c h e r A w a r d recognizes excellence in teaching and mentoring in the field of Catholic history. This year’s recipient is Dr. Kristy Nabhan-Warren of the University of Iowa. The citation reads: 232 N OTES AND COMMENTS At every level, from the undergraduate classroom and Ph.D. mentoring at the University of Iowa to her detailed letters of recommendation, review, and promotion to support young scholars, to her mentoring new authors’ emerging scholarship with her University of North Carolina Press book series, “Where Religion Lives,” Dr. Nabhan-Warren’s teaching makes a difference at every level. Perhaps most striking is Dr. Nabhan-Warren’s consistent use of her own considerable success in our field at the service of students, always reaching back with an outstretched arm to support the work of the next generation. She has expanded our understanding of classroom education, research, and scholarly life to be more capacious and inclusive. H. The ACHA Distinguished Service Award is bestowed on the Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS) at Xavier University of Louisiana. The citation reads: The IBCS is led by Dr. Kathleen Dorsey Bellow and her amazing team at Xavier University of Louisiana. For over five decades, the IBCS has provided truly extraordinary historical, theological, and pastoral training in Black Catholic Studies to the Black Catholic community, the broader Church, the scholarly community, and the wider public. We celebrate the IBCS’s remarkable work of advancing scholarship and ministry through its rich archival holdings, its summer program, and its incredible research projects and programming. These projects have revealed to us the moral and spiritual power of uncovering the Black Catholic experience for a truer, more capacious understanding of our past and present. This has strengthened the work of the American Catholic Historical Association, and we are indebted to their intellectual and pastoral work and the breadth of their vision. I. The ACHA Distinguished Scholar Award is bestowed on Dr. Caroline Walker Bynum for a lifetime of excellence in research and scholarship in the field of medieval history. The citation reads: Dr. Bynum is a groundbreaking scholar whose work has profoundly transformed our understanding of the depth and complexity of religious ideas from antiquity to the sixteenth century. Over the past four decades, Dr. Bynum has inspired countless scholars to do history that is at once attentive to disparate, strange details and, at the same time, unafraid to illuminate whole systems of thought and practice. Since the 1980s, Dr. Bynum’s scholarship has opened up new pathways of thought for scholars working in Catholic history, first turning our attention to issues of gender and embodiment in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, and later, Fragmentation and Redemption and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom. Her scholarship has also helped us think through the complexity of symbols and materiality with books such as Jesus as Mother and Wonderful Blood and her extraordinary essay on violence and the wound in Christ’s NOTES AND COMMENTS 233 side in late medieval devotion. So many are inspired by Dr. Bynum’s discussions of historical method in her essays such as “Wonder” and “Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology.” Her autobiographical article, “Why Paradox?: The Contradictions of My Life as a Scholar,” is particularly meaningful to members of our guild, published in our own journal, the Catholic Historical Review. J. Th e N e l s o n H . M i n n i c h P r i z e recognizes the best article published in last year’s 2022 Catholic Historical Review. This year’s Nelson H. Minnich Prize committee was comprised of members of the journal’s editorial board, Jennifer Paxton (Catholic University of America), Joseph M. White (Independent Scholar), and Robin Darling Young (Catholic University of America). This year’s recipient is Maureen C. Miller of the University of California, Berkeley for “Abbot Balsamon’s Book: The Origins of Administrative Registers at Cava dei Tirreni.” The citation reads: This article makes a major scholarly contribution by demonstrating that the so-called “documentary revolution” in thirteenth-century Italy affected not just the well-studied northern cities but also the southern Italian territories under Hohenstaufen rule. Miller argues that monastic leaders produced a new class of administrative records in the thirteenth century that owed more to secular models than to papal ones, revealing “the limits of papal influence in a period usually heralded as the apex of papal power in the Middle Ages.” Rather than being a sign of religious reform, these registers reveal the importance to monasteries of disputes over lordship in a politically and economically unstable landscape. Miller’s article combines the incisive framing of important historiographical questions with meticulous scholarship in difficult primary sources. F e ll o w s h i p s a n d W o r k s h o p s The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) awards eight to ten fellowships for doctoral students in European history, the history of religion, and other historical disciplines. While the February 15 deadline has passed, the August 15 deadline is still open. The IEG funds Ph.D. projects on European history from the early modern period to contemporary history. It is particularly interested in projects with a comparative or cross-border approach, on European history in its relation to the wider world, or on topics of intellectual and religious history. IEG Fellowships provide a unique opportunity to pursue an individual Ph.D. project while living and working for six to twelve months at the Institute in Mainz. The monthly stipend is €1,350. Additionally, one can apply for family or child allowance. During the fellowship one is required to reside at the Institute in Mainz and to participate actively in the IEG’s research community, the weekly colloquia, and scholarly activities. Fellows are expected to present their work at least once during the time of their fellowship. Applicants must have been pursuing their doctorate for no more than three years at the time of the application deadline; substantiated exceptions to this rule are possible. The IEG preferably supports the writing of dissertations; it will not provide 234 N OTES AND COMMENTS funding for preliminary research, language courses, or the revision of book manuscripts. Ph.D theses continue to be supervised under the auspices of the fellows’ home universities. Proficiency in English is expected. The IEG encourages applications from women. Applications may be written in either English or German and should be sent electronically to application@ieg-mainz.de. Application forms are available at https://buff.ly/3VCq6da. Questions concerning the IEG Fellowship Program should be directed to Joke Kabbert: fellowship@ieg-mainz.de. For more information on the fellowships, visit http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellowships. The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago announces the 2023 Summer Institutes: one in Spanish paleography (July 10–21), the other in the Nahuatl/Nawat language (July 24–27). The application deadline is March 1, 2023. Each institute will enroll fifteen participants by competitive application. Applications are accepted from advanced graduate students and junior faculty from universities, professional staff of libraries and museums, and from qualified independent scholars. First consideration will be given to applicants from CRS consortium institutions. Applications will only be accepted online through Slideroom. The application should include: 1) an essay of no more than 500 words; 2) a current curriculum vitae (CV) of no more than three pages; and 3) one letter of reference. One may apply for both institutes. The Spanish paleography program will be directed by J. Michael Francis (University of South Florida). Participants will be provided with practical training in reading and transcribing documents written in Spain and Spanish America from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. This graduate-level institute is taught entirely in Spanish; advanced language skills are required. The introduction to Nahuatl/Nawat will be taught by Abelardo de la Cruz de la Cruz (University of Utah and University at Albany, SUNY) and Edward Polanco (Virginia Tech). This week-long intensive will offer an introduction to Nahuatl/Nawat language study for scholars. Prerequisite: Proficiency in Spanish would be helpful but is not required, but one’s fluency level should be indicated on the application. San Gemini Preservation Studies (SGPS) is a program of the International Institute for Restoration and Preservation Studies, based in New York. An academic relationship has been established with West Virginia University (WVU) that offers students the opportunity to apply for and receive credits through the WVU Art History Department. The Institute has established cooperation agreements with the Museo della Storia di Bergamo and the Parco del Colosseo to study and conserve artworks and archaeological objects held in their museums, as well as a collaboration with the Historic Archives of the Commune di San Gemini for SGPS participants to study and conserve archival documents. The deadline for the S ummer 2023 field school in Italy is March 15, 2023. The journal Archivum Historiae Pontificiae inaugurates a permanent seminar on the history of the Papacy and the Popes, understood both in its universal and local dimension, with the aim of offering the scientific community a space for meeting and discussion. The meetings, on a monthly basis and coordinated by Dr. Andrea Verardi, NOTES AND COMMENTS 235 will involve established scholars and young researchers who, for study reasons, find themselves staying in Rome at the national research institutes present in the city. “For sixty years the journal Archivum Historiae Pontificiae has been dealing with the history of the Papacy and the Popes,” explains Don Roberto Regoli, director of the journal and of the Gregorian Church History Department. “Since its foundation, the interest of the magazine has been to enhance the Papacy and the Popes as a point of historical observation, recognizing them as having great importance for the knowledge of general history. In the last decade, compared to the initial marked interest in ecclesiological and socio-political aspects, the journal has also broadened its horizons to the historical-artistic and archaeological dimension. Today the magazine adds to its initiatives a permanent Seminar on the history of the Papacy and the Pontiffs, i.e. a container open to seminars, presentations of volumes, round tables that foster relations between experts in the sector and aims at a wide diffusion also through direct stream. The proposal is open to all those who, in the various fields of historical and archaeological research, devote their research to the Papacy and the city of Rome over a broad chronological span ranging from antiquity to the present day.” The first Seminar, entrusted to Prof. Samu Niskanen (University of Helsinki), will take place on Friday 20 January and will address the theme of the drafting by the subdeacon and poet Aratore of the Historia Apostolica and what role Pope Vigilius played in choosing the theme and of the editing strategies of this paper. It will also be possible to follow it in live streaming on the Youtube channel @UniGregoriana. Conferences Flagler College, Saint Augustine, Florida, announces its Fourth Conference, titled: “Landscapes and Languages: Exploring the Cultural Contours of La Florida and Beyond” scheduled for March 24–26, 2023. The Tibesar Keynote Lecturers are: Jennifer Scheper Hughes (University of California–Riverside) with “Franciscan Affects and Landscapes in Sixteenth-Century Mexico,” and Mark Christensen (Brigham Young University) speaking on “The Tears in My Eyes Do Not Allow Me to Speak: Maya Performance of the Passion.” Subsequent sessions feature Jennifer R. Saracino (University of Arizona), “The Spiritual Landscape of Sixteenth- Century Mexico City: Franciscan & Indigenous Collaboration in the Uppsala Map (c. 1540)”; John F. Schwaller (SUNY Albany), “The Franciscans and the Stations of the Cross”; Helmut Flachenecker (University of Wuerzburg, Germany), “Mission and Kivas—a Cultural Landscape as Symbol of Coexisting of Old and New Religious Cultures?”; Jane D. Tar (University of Saint Thomas, Saint Paul), “Mother Luisa de la Ascensión and the Missionaries”; Anna Nogar (University of New Mexico), “Sor Maria’s Intellectual Reach: A Circumoceanic View”; Timothy J. Johnson (Flagler College), “Eros, Ministry, and Motherhood: The Gendered Landscape of Franciscan Evangelization”; Keith Ashley ( University of North Florida) and Denise I. Bossy (University of North Florida), “Unearthing Mocama Landscapes, Writing Mocama History”; George Aaron Broadwell (University of Florida) and Alejandra 236 NOTES AND COMMENTS Dubcovsky (University of California–Riverside), “Who (or what) is Utina? Understanding Timucua Names and Titles”; Doug Henning (University of North Florida) and Seth Katenkamp (University of Florida), “The Corrections: Pareja’s 1614 Arte”; Francisco Javier Rojo-Alique (Instituto Teológico de Murcia O.F.M.), “‘Learned’ Friars who Rejected Study? Learning and Education among the First Generations of Franciscans in the Americas”; Viviana Díaz Balsera (University of Miami), “The Timucua as Implied Audience in Fr. Gregorio de Movilla’s Explicacion de la Doctrina, 1635”; Thomas Hallock (University of South Florida), “Locating the Epic: Translating Genre in Alonso Gregorio de Escobedo’s La Florida”; Carlos Clemente (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares), “The First Franciscan Convent in the Americas”; Lee Newsom (Flagler College/Pennsylvania State–University Park), “Fish, Fowl, and Fruit: Foodways and Subsistence Interactions Associated with the Franciscan Mission System in North Florida”; and Lori Lee (Flagler College), “Race, Grace, and Place: Contested Landscapes at Fort Mose.” Providence College is sponsoring a conference on June 21–24, 2023 on the theme “Las Casas: Transatlantic Reformer.” The keynote speakers are Mariano Delgado (Professor of Church and Mission History, University of Freiburg, Switzerland) and Paola Uparela (Assistant Professor Spanish & Portuguese Studies, University of Florida). The conference welcomes other speakers in English, Spanish, and French languages. Submissions should be sent to submissions@lascasianstudies.org with “Conference 2023” in the subject line. The Lancasian Studies group has been asked to organize an special issue of the distinguished Spanish journal Estudios Filosóficos on the theme “Reevaluating the School of Salamanca in Transatlantic and Global Perspective.” The novelty of the encounter with new peoples and unknown lands challenged jurists, economists, natural scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, writers, artists, architects, artists, linguists, architects, musicians, and historians to reformulate various traditions in creative and unexpected ways. Submissions in either Spanish or English should be sent to submissions@lascasianstudies.org with “Estudios Filosóficos” in the subject line. The Institute for the Study of Religions and Interreligious Dialogue of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland announces the seventh “Bartolomé de Las Casas” Prize for doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral-professorial dissertations. Welcomed topics include missiology / history of missions, religious studies / comparative history of religion with special consideration of the encounter of Christianity with other religions, interreligious and intercultural dialogue / theology of religions, contextual (or intercultural and comparative) theology, history of the church and of the theology of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and peace ethics in connection with the questions of globalization. See the requirements in English or Spanish. Deadline is February 28, 2023. R e s e a r c h T o ol The Redemptorist Archives Library Catalog, sponsored by the Baltimore and Denver Provinces, is now available online. Eventually, any book or pamphlet con- NOTES AND COMMENTS 237 tained in the Redemptorist Archive Library collections in Philadelphia can be identified with an internet connection and a few key strokes. The catalog currently holds records for more than 6,000 books in our 25,000 volumes collection. Records are being added daily. The library augments other outstanding collections, including over a million paper documents. It is strong in Redemptorist and American Church history, moral theology, and local history in places where Redemptorists have had a presence. It also houses special collections that include one of the largest sets of books anywhere on the Shroud of Turin. The new catalog is being built with the intention of sharing records through other key research portals in the United States and abroad. Its platform is being hosted by Lucidea, an information technology leader, using its GeniePlus software for the library’s searchable database. In October 2022, thanks to the generous support of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, the Redemptorist Archives retained Ms. Lorena Boylan to help catalog the library. One can visit the Redemptorists’ library catalog at: https://1590.sydneyplus.com/gen.../final/Portal/ Default.aspx. PUBLICATIONS The papers presented at the conference of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Konziliengeschichtsforschung that was held in Dresden from September 30 to October 2, 2021, have been published in Heft 1 of Volume 51 (2021) of the Annales Historiae Conciliorum. Following the introduction by the organizers of the conference, Johannes Grohe and Thomas Prügl (pp. 1–10) are: ”Monks and Monasticism at the Early Ecumenical Councils,” by Richard Price (pp. 11–20); “The Reception of Nicaea and the Development of Monasteries under the Arian and Nicene Bishops,” by Luise Marion Frenkel (pp. 21–38); “Conciliar Vigilance and Monastic Property in Visigothic Hispania,” by Pablo C. Díaz (pp. 39–52); “Consecrated Women, Monks, and Priscillianism in the Hispanic-Roman/SuevicVisigothic Councils,” by Alberto Ferreiro (pp. 53–82); “Der Mönch Maximus Confessor (662) und die Autorität von Synoden,” by Heinz Ohme (pp. 83–110); “I concili carolingi e la genesi di alcuni trattati anti-eretici. Il caso di Rabano Mauro, Gotescalco e Ratramno di Corbie,” by Lukasz Zak (pp. 111–32); ”Il ruolo dei monaci al concilio di Pisa del 1135,” by Filippo Forlani (pp. 133–58), and “Generalkapitel der Orden und Konzilien im Mittelalter. Ein struktureller Vergleich,” by Gert Melville (pp. 139–71). “Building Bridges and Paving the Way: Dominicans at the Frontiers of Catholic Christianity” is the theme of Volume XL (2022) of Dissertationes Historicae, published by the Institutum Historicum Ordinis Prædicatorum (Angelicum University Press, Rome). The editors are Viliam Štefan Dóci, O.P., and Thomas Prügl, with the collaboration of Gabriel Jordan Theis, O.P. Following the editors’ introduction (pp. 9–18) are “Albert the Great on Aristotelian Political Vocabulary: Three Examples from the Commentarium in octo libros politicorum Aristotelis,” by Andrea Colli (pp. 21–38); “Ordnung und Anzahl der Tugenden: Thomas von Aquin als Brücke zwischen Aristotelischer und moderner Tugendethik,” by Kathi 238 NOTES AND COMMENTS Beier (pp. 39–56); “Űber das Denken hinausdenken. Die henologische Űberwindung der Metaphysik bei Berthold von Moosburg,” by Martina Roesner (pp. 57–76); “Der Dominikanerorden und die ‘Bosnische Kirche’ im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert im historischen Kontext,” by Petar Vrankiċ (pp. 77–129); “Francisco de La Cruz OP (ca. 1529–1578): ‘Prophet’ einer neuen Christenheit in der neuen Welt und erstes Opfer der Inquisition in Lima,” by Mariano Delgado (pp. 129– 48); “Physical Body Culture as Part of the Education of the Youth: A ‘Cross-Frontier’ Apostolate by the Dominicans in France and beyond (ca. 1850–1950),” by Dries Vanysacker (pp. 149–66); “Dominican Parishes in the Province of Colombia: A Matter of Discussion and Misunderstanding between French and Colombian Friars in the Period 1938–1949,” by Juan Francisco Correa Higuera, O.P. (pp. 167–82); “Die Inkarnationstheologie von Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895– 1990)—Dogma und Pastoral diesseits und jenseits der Grenzen der ‘Chrétienté’,” by Michael Quisinsky (pp. 183–204); “At the Frontiers of Dialogue: The Contribution of Remi Hoeckman OP to Ecumenical and Jewish-Christian Relations,” by Anton Milh, O.P. (pp. 205–28); and “The ‘Muslim tradition’ of the Dominican Order,” by Jean Jacques Pérennès, O.P. (pp. 229–42). The Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique has presented three articles under the heading “De la cathèdre aux cathedrals” in its issue for October-December, 2021 (Volume CXXII, Number 4). After a liminaire by Robert Le Gall, “La cathèdre de l’évêque” (pp. 5–7) are “La cathédrale, cœur spirituel du diocèse. Approche canonique,” by Éric Besson (pp. 9–26); “Quelques réflexions autour du chevet de la cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Toulouse,” by Christophe Balagna (pp. 27–56); and “Huysmans, la cathédrale de Chartres et la littérature (ecclésiastique) du XIXe siècle,” by Gaël Prigent (pp. 57–82). A dossier organized by Florian Gallon, Yoan Mattalia, and Isabelle Réal on “Le monachisme féminin dans l’Europe Méridionale au Moyen Âge” has been published in the issue for July-December, 2021 (Volume 133) of Annales du Midi. The articles are divided into three sections after an introduction by Isabelle Réal: I. Le monachisme féminin au haut Moyen Âge: Italie, péninsule Ibérique, Midi de la Gaule: Eleonora Destefanis, “Monastères féminins vie économique et culture matérielle au haut Moyen Âge (VIe–Xe siècle): un apercu sur le cas italien” (pp. 313–16); Florian Gallon, “Les femmes au monastère dans la péninsule Ibérique du haut Moyen Âge: forms de vie sexuée et cohabitation sexuelle” (pp. 337–62); Isabelle Réal, “Le monachisme féminin dans le Midi de la Gaule au très haut Moyen Âge (Ve–début VIIIe siècle)” (pp. 363–96); II. Topographie et architecture des monastères féminins: Christian Geensbeitel, “Topographie et architecture des monastères féminins en Aquitaine (XIe–XIIIe siècle): un dossier lacunaire” (pp. 397–424); Claude Andrault-Schmitt, “La matérialisation de la subordination et de le stricte cloture à Coyroux d’Obazine: XIIe ou XIIIe siècle?” (pp. 425–48); Haude Morvan, “Une architecture monastique au féminin: les dominicaines et les clarisses dans le Sud-Ouest de la France au Moyen Âge” (pp. 449–84); III. Les monastères de femmes: des affaires de famille”: Cécile Treffort, “De Radegonde à Audégarde: les premières fondations monastiques féminins d’Aquitaine du Nord (VIe–début du NOTES AND COMMENTS 239 XIe siëcle)” (pp. 485–508); Yoan Mattalia, “Beaulieu, une maison fëminin de l’Ordre de l’Hôpital de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem dans le diocese de Cahors (XIIIe–XIVe siècles)” (pp. 509–34); and Mèlanie Chaillou, “Sous la garde des nonnes: le cimetière privilégiéde la ‘tour des Lautrec’ dans l’abbaye de Vielmur (XIIIe–XVesiècle)” (pp. 535–62). The eighth centenary of the Franciscan presence in Portugal is commemorated in thirteen articles in the issue of Itinerarium for January–June, 2018 (Volume LXIV). “1622–2022, IV Centenario di Fondazione della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli” is celebrated in three articles in the first number for 2022 (Volume LXV) of Urbaniana University Journal: Roberto Regoli, “Lo stato dell’arte degli studi sulla Congregazione di Propaganda Fide tra XIX e XX secolo” (pp. 217–50); Mariano Delgado, “Josef Schmidlin und die Propaganda: von der Festschrift zur Dreihundertjahrfeier (1922) zum Konflikt” (pp. 252–62); and Mario L. Grignani, “Unità, universalità ed efficacia. Il progetto di riorganizzazione dell’Opera della Propagazione della Fede discusso a Propaganda Fide il 12 gennaio 1920” (pp. 263–310). Volume 88 (2022) of Historical Studies, “The Journal published by the Canadian Catholic Historical Association,” contains three articles in English: Melissa Davidson, “With the Intention of Victory and Peace: Catholic Devotions and Attitudes toward the First World War in Quebec, 1914–1918” (pp. 7–21); Rosa Bruno-Jofré, “Veronica Dunne, Canadian RNDM: A Biography in First Voice Placed at the Intersection of Macro and Micro-history and Embedding Multiple Temporalities” (pp. 23–43); and Robert Dennis, “The Project of Hegemony: The Canadian Church Engages the Liberal State, 1840s–1890s” (pp. 45–63). The same fascicle also contains the Études d’histoire religieuse (Volume 88 [2022], “Revue publiée par la Société canadienne d’histoire de l’Église catholique,” which begins with an entretien avec les historiennes Denyse Baillargeon, Aline Charles et Marie-Claude Thifault, La Révolution tranquille fut-elle une entreprise de masculinization de la société Québécoise? Réflexions sur l’histoire des religieuse catholiques avant et après la laïcisation” (pp. 7–20). Three articles follow: Shawn McCutcheon, “Éclairer et perfectionner l’esprit: l’éducation libérale et la délicat compromise entre raison et foi dans les écoles classiques de langue anglaise au Bas-Canada (1800–1840)” (pp. 21–37); Emmanuel Bernier, “«Mes habits laïcs font tomber une barrière»: costume religieux et sécularisation au Québec Durant les années 1960 et 1970” (pp. 39–61); and Anthony M. Lafontaine, “La question de confessionnalité scolaire dans la revue catholique Maintenant (1965–1975)” (pp. 63–83). A “Special Issue—Part 2, 2021” of Philippiana Sacra (Vol. LVI) continues the commemoration of the quincentenary of Christianity in the Philippines, the 800th dies natalis of St. Dominic, and the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Dominican Province in the Philippines with eight articles on the history of the University of Santo Tomas and some individual friars who were professors there. Obituaries S i s t e r M a r g a r e t P h il o m e n a G a n n o n , I . H . M . ( S i s t e r M a r y A n i n a ) ( J u n e 2 , 1 9 3 7 –O c t o b e r 2 4 , 2 0 2 2 ) Sister Margaret Gannon, I.H.M. (Sister Mary Anina), died October 24, 2022, at Our Lady of Peace Residence, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Until her retirement in 2014, she had been a faculty member in the Department of Social Sciences at Marywood University in Scranton. She is survived by two brothers, several nieces and nephews, and members of her religious congregation. Margaret Philomena Gannon was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 2, 1937, to John and Josephine Gannon. In 1956, during her freshman year at what was then Marywood College, she entered the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton), and professed her final vows on August 15, 1963. Sister Margaret received a B.A. in history and English from Marywood, and later earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from St. John’s University, New York. Prior to joining the faculty at Marywood, Sister Margaret served in several elementary and high schools, including Holy Angels (Pittsburgh), Our Lady Queen of Martyrs (Forest Hills, New York), and St. Joseph’s High School (Williamsport, PA). 240 OBITUARIES 241 In addition to her work as a tenured professor of history at Marywood University, Sister Margaret held the positions of dean of the Undergraduate School for Women, coordinator of diversity efforts, and chair of the Social Science Department; she also founded the women’s studies minor at the university. Sister Margaret was awarded membership in Marywood’s Order Cor Mariae–Pro Fide et Cultura in recognition of her service and dedication to the university. Sister Margaret was especially interested in the life and work of Sister Theresa Maxis Duchemin, I.H.M., a founding member of both the Oblate Sisters of Providence (OSP) and the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the IHM’s erased the role Maxis, a Black sister, played in their establishment and history. As the three IHM congregations began to reclaim their history during the latter decades of the twentieth century, however, Sister Margaret (along with other members of the congregations) was instrumental in correcting the narrative to include Sister Theresa Maxis as one of the congregations’ founders. Paths of Daring Deeds of Hope: Letters By and About Theresa Maxis Duchemin (independently published, 2022) and Pilgrim: Let Your Heart Be Bold: Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, IHM (independently published 2018) lead to a better historical understanding of both Mother Theresa Maxis and the founding of the three congregations of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Along with her academic and administrative responsibilities, in 1995 Sister Margaret helped found the African Sisters Education Collaborative (ASEC), an organization that helps to educate African women religious planning to teach in their local communities. Sister Margaret participated in the ASEC’s first service trip to Tanzania and served as a board member for many years. After her 2014 retirement from Marywood University, Sister Margaret volunteered for Catholic Relief Services as a refugee resettlement volunteer and served on the board of directors of the United Neighborhood Centers of Northeast Pennsylvania. She was a prayer minister at Our Lady of Peace Residence from 2021 until her death. Sister Margaret Gannon, I.H.M., devoted her life to her students, her congregation, and social justice. May she rest in peace. La Salle University MARGARET M. MCGUINNESS 242 O BITUARIES Reverend Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley (May 4, 1937–November 14, 2022) Reverend Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, priest of the Archdiocese of New York, historian of American Catholicism, popular professor, and prolific author, died on November 14 at Nassau University Medical Center. The cause of his death was stated to be cardiac arrest. Thomas Shelley was born in the Bronx on May 4, 1937. He attended St. Angela Merici School in that borough and then Cathedral College. He studied for the priesthood at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, New York, from which he received the B.A. (1958) and M.A. (1962) degrees. He was ordained a priest on June 2, 1962. After his ordination he taught at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains from 1964 to 1969 and at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx from 1969 to 1984. For high school students he wrote Empire State Catholics. Having earned an M.A. degree in history from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1966, he taught church history at St. Joseph’ Seminary from 1986 to 1996. In 1993 he published Dunwoodie: The History of St. Joseph’s Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y. (Christian Classics, Westminster, Maryland). Monsignor John Tracy Ellis perduaded his friend Cardinal John O’Connor to let Father Shelley work for a doctorate at the Catholic University of America. Since Ellis had resigned from the faculty in 1963 and, after spending several years at the University of San Francisco, had only recently returned to Washington, he was given the title of professorial lecturer and needed special authorization to direct a doctoral student. He advised Shelley to write a doctoral dissertation on the life of Paul Hallinan, who had died in 1968 and whom Ellis greatly admired. After Shel- OBITUARIES 243 ley received the degree in 1987, he published the work in 1989 under the title Paul Hallinan, First Archbishop of Atlanta (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier). Father Shelley was appointed professor in the Department of Theology at Fordham University in 1996. The next year he and Michael Glazier as editors published The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press). He also brought out a pictorial book, The History of the Archdiocese of New York, in the Ěditions du Signe (Strasbourg) series. Cardinal O’Connor appointed him historian of the Archdiocese of New York, and upon the cardinal’s nomination Shelley was elevated to the rank of Prelate of Honor of His Holiness in 1999. The next archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, commissioned Monsignor Shelley to write the history of the archdiocese for the two hundredth anniversary of the erection of the see. The result was The Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of New York, 1 8 0 8 –2 0 0 8 (Ěditions du Signe, 2007). Also in the twentyfirst century he wrote histories of three parishes in the archdiocese: Slovaks on the Hudson: Most Holy Trinity Church, Yonkers, and the Slovak Catholics of the Archdiocese of New York, 1894–2000 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002); Father Shelley had been temporary administrator of the parish in 1993; Greenwich Village Catholics: St. Joseph’s Church and the Evolution of an Urban Faith Community, 1829–2002 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003); and Upper West Side Catholics: Liberal Catholicism in a Conservative Archdiocese: The Church of the Ascension, New York City, 1895–2020) (Fordham University Press, 2019, and Imperial State Editions, New York, 2020). He also contributed twelve articles to the Catholic Historical Review between 1989 and 2016, as well as many articles to other historical journals and to the American National Biography (2000). In 2008 a younger cousin of his, Joseph McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, asked him to write the history of the university from its founding by Bishop John Hughes as St. John’s College to the beginning of Father McShane’s administration. Eight years later Monsignor Shelley produced Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York, 1841–2003 (New York, NY: Fordham University Press; 536 pages). In 2019 he added a chapter on Father McShane’s years in office. In 2012 Monsignor Shelley had retired from the Department of Theology in Fordham University and was given the title of professor emeritus. His last major work is a biography of his Doktorvater. It will be published by the Catholic University of America press in 2023 with the title John Tracy Ellis: An American Catholic Reformer. It is not only a study of his subject’s thinking and motivation and his influence on younger historians, but also an overview of American Catholic historiograhy in the twentieth century. His archbishop and fellow historian of American Catholicism, Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, was the principal celebrant of the funeral Mass in the Church of the Ascension. The interment was in Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury. Mon- 244 OBITUARIES signor Shelley was predeceased by his sister Helen and is survived by his sister Miss Mary Shelley, to whom condolences may be sent at 2408 Eighth Street, East Meadow, NY 11554. The Catholic University of America (Emeritus) ROBERT TRISCO Remembering Monsignor Thomas Shelley Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, Ph.D., priest, author, and university professor, died from cardiac arrest on November14, 2022, at Nassau University Medical Center. He was 85. Monsignor Shelley was a professor emeritus of theology at Fordham University, a Fordham alumnus, and the author of Fordham, A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016), which is seen by many as the go-to source on matters of Fordham’s founding and first 175 years. Tania Tetlow, Fordham’s president, said Monsignor Shelley’s book would “forever help me continue the work of my predecessors.” Tom was my first cousin, and as Fordham’s longtime president, I knew him to be master of tale and story, a compassionate priest whose serious scholarship was balanced by an avuncular personality that endeared him to students, and a man deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Tom took his work very seriously, he took his students very seriously, he took his colleagues very seriously. He took being a priest very seriously. The only thing he didn’t take seriously was himself. In 2008, I commissioned Tom to write a warts-and-all history of Fordham from its founding to 2003, the year I became president of the University. It was a project that would take him eight years. The 536-page history, complete with black and white and color photos, was published just in time for the University’s 175thanniversary celebration. Among the conclusions he came to was that Fordham Founder Archbishop John Hughes “anticipated the work of the Second Vatican Council by a whole century.” Tom said the Jesuits made his work easy because they preserved so much of Fordham’s history in their archives, both in New York City and Rome. Prior to 1907, Fordham’s history (which was still called St. John’s College at the time) was the story of a small liberal arts college in the rural Bronx. After 1907, with the establishment of the first graduate schools (and the transition from college to university status), the plot thickened considerably. (Each of the graduate schools has its own distinct identity and history. Therefore, its history became more complex and nuanced.) In the history of the University, the history of the archdiocese, and in the parish histories he wrote, the people to whom he was most drawn were people who OBITUARIES 245 were most authentic, who were true to mission, who watched out for the poor, were not flatterers, nor were they flattered. Tom was twelve years older than me, and lived four miles away in Melrose, but he loomed large in the life of our family. He was the first on the Shelley side of the family to attend college and was among the first to join “the family business” (the priesthood, a vocation that attracted two Shelley’s and four McShane’s). My cousin was born in 1937 to Thomas and Helen Walsh Shelley, the oldest of three children. (His twin sisters, Helen and Mary, were born seven years later.) He attended Cathedral College high school in Manhattan, received a B.A. in philosophy in 1958 and an M.A. in theology in 1962 from St. Joseph’s Seminary and College, and was ordained a priest in 1962. He served as a parish priest for the Saint Thomas More Church in Manhattan, and after retiring, he served as a Sunday associate at The Church of the Ascension, also in Manhattan. In 1966, he earned an M.A. in history from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He earned a doctorate in church history at Catholic University in 1987. After thirty years of teaching history and religion at both the high school and seminary levels—including Stepinac High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, Cathedral College and Saint Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie)—in 1996, he joined Fordham’s theology department. He taught courses such as Nineteenthcentury Catholicism, The Church in Controversy, and Faith and Critical Reason for sixteen years, and in 2012, he retired, and was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at Fordham. He specialized in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Catholicism, particularly in New York City. In 1993, he published Dunwoodie: The History of St. Joseph’s Seminary, Yonkers, New York (Christian Classics), and in 2007, as a part of the Archdiocese of New York’s commemoration of its 200th anniversary, he was commissioned to write The Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of New York: 1808– 2008 (Editions Du Signe, 2007). The Monsignor was also a prolific contributor to America Magazine (which honored him with a tribute in November), and continued to work on behalf of the University and the Church. In 2019, he published Upper West Side Catholics: Liberal Catholicism in a Conservative Archdiocese (New York, NY: Fordham University Press), and last April he delivered the homily at a Mass celebrating the opening of Fordham’s new Campus Center. In June, at my request, he completed a final chapter of Fordham’s history that tackles my own time in office. Next spring, his last book, John Tracy Ellis: An American Catholic Reformer, will be published by Catholic University Press. Monsignor Shelley is survived by his sister Mary Shelley. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister Helen. Fordham University JOSEPH MCSHANE, S.J. Periodical Literature GENERAL Il rito della professione religiosa in occidente: Excursus storico. Francesco Scialpi, OFMConv. Miscellanea Francescana, 118 (3–4, 2018), 487–505. Algunas propuestas para comprender el aspecto político del pontificado de san Juan Pablo II. Paweł Skibiński. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 31 (2022), 431–56. ANCIENT Books, Scribes, and Cultures of Reading in the Shepherd of Hermas. Travis W. Proctor. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 73 (July, 2022), 461–79. Autorità profetica e amministrazione dei sacramenti. Il caso della profetessa nella lettera di Firmiliano di Cesarea a Cipriano. Gaetano Spampinato. Cristianesimo nella Storia, 43 (2, 2022), 547–62. A Struggle for Consensus: Constantine’s Intervention in the Christian Quarrels of His Time. Almudena Alba López. Philippiniana Sacra, 58 (Jan.–Apr., 2023), 23–52. Lo scisma luciferiano e le relative comunità tra occidente e oriente. Daniele Dessì. Antonianum, 97 (Dec., 2022), 791–826. Armenia’s Treasure Trove: Its Liturgy Revisited. Gabriele Winkler. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 88, (1, 2022), 25–64. MEDIEVAL Das Schweißtuch der Veronika im Petersdom und der Volto Santo von Manoppello. Versuch einer Neukontextualisierung zweier römischer Christusacheiropoíeta.Veronika M. Seifert. Collectanea Franciscana, 92 (3-4, 2022), 613–66. Western Europe in the Age of Abbot-Bishop Oliba: persistence and transformation after the Carolingians. Early Medieval Europe, 30 (Nov., 2022), 499–513. Remembering St. Brictius: Conspiracy, Violence and Liturgical Time in the Danish Massacre of 1002. Benjamin Savill. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 73 (July, 2022), 480–504. Faith and Society on the Border: Reinterpreting the Roda d’Isàvena Passio Imaginis Domini in an Iberian Context. Early Medieval Europe, 30 (Nov., 2022), 606–29. 246 PERIODICAL L ITERATURE 247 Cuthbert’s Relics and the Origins of the Diocese of Durham. Neil McGuigan. Anglo-Saxon England,48 (Dec., 2019), 121–62. An Anglo-Saxon bishop, his book and two battles: Leofric of Exeter and liturgical performance as pastoral care. Robert K. Upchurch. Anglo-Saxon England, 48 (Dec., 2019), 209–70. Echoes of the past: St Dunstan and the heavenly choirs of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, in Goscelin’s Historia translationis S.Augustini.Sophie SawickaSykes. Anglo-Saxon England,48 (Dec., 2019), 271–99. Making Masculine Monks: Gender, Space, and the Imagined “Child” in TwelfthCentury Cistercian Identity Formation. Jacob W. Doss. Church History, 91 (Sept., 2022), 467–91. An Herb for Speaking to The Dead: The Liturgical and Magical Life of Hyssop in the Latin Middle Ages. Michael Barbezat. Church History, 91 (Sept., 2022), 492–512. Fashioning Abbot Geoffrey: Geoffrey of Gorron’s Copes, The Life of Christina of Markyate, and the St. Alban’s Psalter. Heather Blurton. Viator,52 (2, 2021), 35–60. Cartularization and Genre Boundaries: Reflection on the Nondiplomatic Material of the Toledan Cartularies (End of the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century). Hélène Sirantoine. Speculum,98 (Jan., 20223), 164–212. Roman Women: Female Religious, the Papacy, and a Growing Dominican Order. Mary Harvey Doyno. Speculum,98 (Oct., 2022), 1040–72. I frati Minori a Verona nel Duecento: dai primi insediamenti al trasferimento nel complesso di San Fermo Maggiore. Emanuele Fontana. Collectanea Franciscana,92 (3-4, 2022), 519–57. Illuminating Rituals for the Dead in the Mortuary Roll of Prioress Lucy of Castle Hedingham. Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis. Viator,52 (2, 2021), 61–94. Violent Saint-Making: Ritual Resonances of Violence in the Vida of Douceline of Digne. Samantha Slaubaugh. Viator,52 (2, 2021), 95–130. The Sounds of Sin: Episcopal Noise Regulation in the Later Middle Ages. Lane B. Baker. Viator,52 (2, 2021), 131–78. First Tonsures in England in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century. David Robinson. Journal of Ecclesiastical History,73 (July, 2022), 505–24. Una serie di “exempla” francescani nel codice Vaticano latino 4354: un’aggiunta alla “Compilazione di Avignone.” Aleksander Horowski. Collectanea Franciscana, 92 (3–4, 2022), 469–518. “Itaque determinatum est quod fr. Petrus Iohannis fuit catholicus…”. La dottrina sull’anima dell’Olivi e la condanna di Vienne. Francesco Vermigli. Collectanea Franciscana,92 (3–4, 2022), 559–612. 248 PERIODICAL L ITERATURE Lo sposalizio mistico di santa Caterina da Siena tra fonti agiografiche e modelli narrativi e iconografici. Michele Carosi. Antonianum,97 (Dec., 2022), 827–53. The Foolish Confounding the Wise: The Defense of Female Prophecy during and after the Council of Basel. Frances Kneupper. Viator,52 (2, 2021), 261–92. Giovanni Pesce frate minore conventuale vescovo di Catania (1431–1447). Francesco Costa, OFMConv. Miscellanea Francescana,118 (3–4, 2018), 362–78. Word as Bond in an Age of Division: John Eugenikos as Orator, Partisan, and Poet. Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Krystina Kubina. Speculum, 98 (Oct., 2022), 1101–43. SIXTEENTH CENTURY Beneficia Dei, Beneficium Christi: Ortodoxia, heterodoxia y herejía en el pensamiento hispano de la primera mitad del XVI. José Manuel Díaz Martín. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 317–41. La práctica del gobierno diocesano en la Edad Moderna: una aproximación a través del estudio de los expedientes y sus documentos. Francisco Luis Rico Callado. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 343–67. Der Versuch einer spirituellen Erneuerung abseits der Reformation: Das freie weltliche Stift Gernrode unter Elisabeth von Weida, 1504–32. Finn SchulzeFeldmann. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 7–35. The Words of Forgiveness: Luther, the Keys, and the Nuremberg Absolution Controversy. Terence McIntosh. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 113 (1, 2022), 36–69. Pictorial Renaissance Bookbindings and the Domestication of Lucas Cranach’s Iconography: An Overlooked Medium of the German Reformation. Daniel Gehrt. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 70–108. Omnis utriusque’s Conflicted Reordering: Pastoral Theology and Admission to the Lord’s Supper in View of Wittenberg-Related Church Orders (1523–1528). Brandt Klawitter. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 109–36. Women and the Reformation in Tudor Ireland. Henry A. Jefferies. Journal of Ecclesiastical History,73 (July, 2022), 525–51. Conversos, Accommodation and the Goan Inquisition: The First Five Decades of the Society of Jesus in India, between Theory and Practice. Bradley T. Blankemeyer. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu,91 (1, 2022), 83–119. Staging Reformation: John Bale and the Performance of Protestantism. Alexander Whitley. Anglican and Episcopal History,90 (Dec., 2021), 333–59. Heavenly Ascent: The Relation of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Preface to the Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist to the Introduction of the Edwardian Prayer Books. Daniel F. Graves. Anglican and Episcopal History, 91 (Dec., 2022), 406–28. PERIODICAL L ITERATURE 249 Reconocimiento de la santidad de Ignacio de Loyola, 1556–1622.Wenceslao Soto Artuñedo S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu,91 (1, 2022), 9–82. Pious City: Community and Charity in Calvin’s Geneva. Esther Chung-Kim. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 168–97. Beredtes Schweigen: Basler Theologen und der Hexenwahn. Christine Christ-von Wedel. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 198–232. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen konfessioneller Koexistenz: Briefwechsel, Studienund Druckorte Oberlausitzer Geistlicher in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Martin Christ Saskia Limbach. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 233–64. Programa visual de la capilla del Espíritu Santo en la Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba. María Ángeles Jordano Barbudo. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 369–402. SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (EASTERN HEMISPHERE) La vida del clero parroquial en la España moderna. Maximiliano Barrio Gonzalo. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 21–47. La fuerza del parentesco y la cotidianidad doméstica en las casas del bajo clero secular de Murcia durante los siglos XVII y XVIII. Antonio Irigoyen López. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 49–74. Los capuchinos de Cataluña y las tradiciones populares de Cuaresma y Pascua. Valentí Serra de Manresa. Collectanea Franciscana,92 (3–4, 2022), 697–756. “Of Blessed Memory”: The Recasting of Elizabeth I as England’s Patron Saint, 1603–1645. Heidi Olson Campbell. Anglican and Episcopal History,91 (Dec., 2022), 429–54. Remember, Remember the Sixth of November: British Messianism and the Mourning for Henry, Prince of Wales. Bryan Givens. Viator, 52 (2, 2021), 313–55. Francescani e politica al femminile nel XVII secolo: Euristica, diplomazia e pietà. Giuseppe Buffon, OFM. Miscellanea Francescana,118 (3–4, 2018), 379–93. El Convento de Santa Catalina: Una Iniciativa Fallida Intramuros Manila, (1632– 1635). Ostwald Sales-Colín Kortajarena. Philippiniana Sacra,58 (Jan.–April, 2023), 105–47. Altar of Print, Altars of Stone: George Herbert’s “The Altar” and the Fabric of the English Reformed Church. Jarrell D. Wright. Anglican and Episcopal History, 91 (Mar., 2022), 1–23. Conquering the Idols: English Iconoclasm in Ireland, 1649–1660. Joan Redmond. Church History,91 (Sept., 2022), 535–54. 250 PERIODICAL LITERATURE Religion and the Royal Society in Early Restoration England. W. B. Patterson. Anglican and Episcopal History,91 (Sept., 2022), 323–41. Incidente de Makeng: la reconstrucción de la identidad y la integración cultural de los franciscanos españoles en China del siglo XVII. Junyang Ye. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 403–29. Francis Cherry, Patronage, and the Shottesbrooke Nonjurors. John William Klein. Anglican and Episcopal History,89 (Dec., 2020), 361–81. “Holy Handkerchiefs!” A Study of St. Lawrence of Brindisi’s Eucharistic Spirituality and Mass Handkerchiefs. Andrew J. G. Drenas. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte,113 (1, 2022), 265–90. A Concealed Reading for Early Chinese Christians: Text, Context, and Circulation of the Discourse on Vegetarianism (Su Shuo 素說) in the Early Modern Period. Antonio De Caro, Zhenxu Fan, and Thierry Meynard S.J. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu,91 (1, 2022), 121–58. Attribuire un significato a “muliebris habitus.” I personaggi femminili nel teatro dei Gesuiti. Mirella Saulini. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 91 (1, 2022), 159–86. Jesuit Printing and Hiragana Books. Sasaki Takahiro. Monumenta Nipponica,77 (1, 2022), 27–75. A “Holy Relique Preserved from Ages and Generations Past”: The De Facto Act and the Afterlives of Henry VIII’s Will in English Historical Thought, 1709– 1715. Christopher Petrakos. Anglican and Episcopal History, 91 (Dec., 2022), 455–80. Nuevos Datos Sobre Los Orígenes Del Clero Nativo Secular De Filipinas Y Clérgios Seculares Del Siglo XVIII. Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes, OFM. Philippiniana Sacra,58 (Jan.–April, 2023), 187–234. Un memorial impreso sobre la depredaciones moras en las misiones recoletas de Filipinas (1736). Jorge Mojarro. Philippiniana Sacra, 57 (Sept.–Dec., 2022), 565–95. NINETEENTH TO TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES (EASTERN HEMISPHERE) I libri delle cappuccine di Castello e delle cappuccine di S. Maria della Neve a Parma nel 1810. Federica Dallasta. Collectanea Franciscana, 92 (3–4, 2022), 757–822. La tomba di san Francesco: Storia del bicentenario della sua scoperta (1818–2018). Felice Autieri, OFMConv. Miscellanea Francescana, 118 (3–4, 2018), 394– 439. The Cost of Democracy: The Church of Ireland and Its Ritual Canons, 1871–1974. Alan Ford. Church History,91 (Sept., 2022), 575–95. PERIODICAL LITERATURE 251 The Social World of a Catholic Woman and Her Jewish Family in Fin-de-Siècle Europe: Polish Culture, National Identity, and Religious Change. Karen Auerbach. Journal of Modern History,94 (Dec., 2022), 822–56. Conciliarity in the Borderlands: the Riga Orthodox Council (Sobor) of 1905 and the Church Reform Movement in Imperial Russia. Irina Paert. Journal of Ecclesiastical History,73 (July, 2022), 572–94. De Hemptinne, the Benedictines and Catholic Assimilation on the Congolese Copperbelt, 1911–1960. Reuben A. Loffman. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 73 (July, 2022), 552–71. Beyond the Underdog Mentality: Philo-Semitism amongst Protestant Rescuers in Wartime Ukraine. Raisa Ostapenko. Harvard Theological Review, 115 (Oct., 2022), 538–65. A Tembel Hat in the Streets of Nazareth: Paul Gauthier’s Israeli Experience. Silvana Kandel Lamdan. Harvard Theological Review, 115 (Oct., 2022), 566–90. Antioch’s Last Heirs: The Hatay Greek Orthodox Community between Greece, Syria and Turkey. Ioannis Ν. Grigoriadis. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 46 (Oct., 2022), 263–79. Pontifical Diplomacy in the East Asian Region: A Pre-Pope Francis Era (1964– 2013). Angeli Francis S. Rivera. Philippiniana Sacra, 57 (Sept.–Dec., 2022), 463–89. Historical Revision in Church: Reexamining the “Saint” Edward Colston. Anglican and Episcopal History, 89 (Sept., 2020), 225–54. AMERICAN Huguenot Anglicans in Seventeenth Century Virginia. Lonnie H. Lee. Anglican and Episcopal History, 91 (Sept., 2022), 323–41. A New Jerusalem: Flavius Josephus in Early America. Kristofer Stinson. Church History, 91 (Sept., 2022), 555–74. “Our Congregation Has Joined the Synod of Muehlhaeuser.” Benjamin T. Phelps. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 95 (Winter, 2022), 37–52. Waldensianism Before Waldo: The Myth of Apostolic Proto-Protestantism in Antebellum American Anti-Catholicism. Samuel L. Young. Church History, 91 (Sept., 2022), 513–34. Church, Cotton, and Confederates: What Charles Todd Quintard’s Fundraising Trips to Great Britain Reveal about Some Nineteenth-Century AngloCatholics. Benjamin J. King. Anglican and Episcopal History, 90 (June, 2021), 109–35. St. Alban’s Church in New York City: The First Avowedly Ritualistic Church in the United States. Warren C. Platt. Anglican and Episcopal History, 91 (Mar., 2022), 24–47. 252 P ERIODICAL L ITERATURE Mobilizing the Spiritual Resources of the Nation: The 1918 United War Work Campaign. Jeanne Petit. Church History,91 (Sept., 2022), 596–625. What Has Athens to do with New York? Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Meletios Metaxakis and the 1918 Conference on Unity with the American Episcopal Church. Alexander Pavuk. Anglican and Episcopal History, 90 (Sept., 2021), 223–50. The Contentious Conferences of 1924: A Study of the Proceedings of the AngloCatholic Priests’ Convention and the Thirty-eighth Episcopal Church Congress. Jene J. Lee. Anglican and Episcopal History, 89 (Sept., 2020), 281– 301. The Making of the American Prayer Book of 1928. Lawrence N. Crumb. Anglican and Episcopal History,89 (June, 2020), 123–42. Charles Colcock Jones Carpenter and the Sewanee Integration Controversy. Brandt L. Montgomery. Anglican and Episcopal History,90 (Mar., 2021), 17– 40. The Cost of Civil Rights: White Supremacist Violence and Economic Resistance against Koinonia Farm during the Civil Rights Era. William Robert Billups. Journal of Southern History,89 (Feb., 2023), 89–130. Reflecting on Ten Years of Mercy—LCMS World Relief and Human Care, 2001– 2011. Jeni Miller. Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly,95 (Fall, 2022), 9–25. LATIN AMERICAN The pauper’s paradise: Franciscan perspectives on American diets in sixteenthcentury New Spain. Marlis Hinckley. Colonial Latin American Review, 31 (Sept., 2022), 411–32. The vanishing Inquisition: an inquisitor’s visit and its repercussions in seventeenthcentury Brazil. Carole A. Myscofski. Colonial Latin American Review, 31 (Mar., 2022), 74–92. “They Have Been United as Sisters”: Women Leaders and Political Power in Black Lay Confraternities of Colonial Lima. Marcella Hayes. The Americans, 79 (Oct. 2022), 559–86. Of Madres and Mayordomas: Native Women and Religious Leadership in Colonial Chiapas. Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara. The Americans, 79 (Oct., 2022), 587–617. El clero parroquial en Puebla durante el gobierno de Palafox: Siglo XVII. Ana de Zaballa Beascoechea. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 31 (2022), 113–40. Los hombres del obispo: vicarios y jueces eclesiásticos regionales. Mchoacán, 1633– 1666. Jorge E. Traslosheros. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 31 (2022), 141– 71. PERIODICAL L ITERATURE 253 El espacio arquitectónico privado del clero secular en la Nueva España. María Angélica Martínez Rodríguez. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 31 (2022), 173–200. Espacios públicos y privados del clero secular de la Honduras del siglo XVII: estudio comparativo de dieciséis sacerdotes seculares. José Manuel Cardona Amaya. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 201–21. ‘Los curas no sean codiciosos’: Las actividades lucrativas del clero secular peruano y la normatividad eclesiástica (siglos XVI–XVII). Gabriela de la Cerda. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 223–48. Espacios de movilidad en el altiplano: permutas y ausencias de los doctrineros de La Paz (1634–1639). Pilar Latasa. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,31 (2022), 249–74. Un catedrático combativo en la Nueva España: el jesuita Diego Marín de Alcázar (1639–1708). Trilce Laske. Colonial Latin American Review,31 (Dec., 2022), 504–25. Imprinting exemplarity: a culture of print in Mexican nuns’ portraits. Kelly Donahue-Wallace. Colonial Latin American Review,31 (Mar., 2022), 4–30.