THE CATHOLIC
HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOL. 109

AUTUMN 2023

NO. 4

Rigorism and Clericalism in the
Vocational Discernment Culture of the
Nineteenth-Century Catholic Revival
CHRISTOPHER J. LANE*
Seventeenth-century reformers had developed rigorist approaches to
vocational discernment and the choice of a state of life (marriage, religion, or the priesthood) that endured in western Catholic religious culture. The author argues that, during the nineteenth-century Catholic
revival, clerical leaders adapted this tradition in a manner that
strengthened the culture of clericalism. While maintaining the principle that one’s salvation depended on choosing the state of life to which
one was called, they downplayed the concept of lay vocation, since the
revival of Catholic institutions demanded that large numbers of youth
voluntarily enter religious life and the priesthood. This strengthened
the perception, in the pre-Vatican-II era, that vocation was not a concept relevant to the laity.
Keywords: Vocation; Clericalism; Rigorism; Laity; Catholic
Revival; Transnational
Introduction
In 1844, Amédée Vignolo, a priest who served youth in the diocese of
Marseille, published his own French translation of an Italian translation of
a work originally published in French in 1667 under the title Le bon chois,
ou instruction pour bien choisir un estat de vie.1 Vignolo had sought in vain
* Christopher J. Lane is an associate professor in the Department of History at Christendom College, Front Royal, VA; email: clane@christendom.edu.
1. Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, ou instructions propres à diriger une âme dans le
choix d’un état, trans. Amédée Vignolo (Lyon, 1844); Emanuel de la Croix, Le bon chois, ou
instruction pour bien choisir un état de vie (Lyon, 1667). Vignolo worked from an Italian

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Emanuel de la Croix, Le bon chois, ou instruction pour bien choisir un estat de vie
(Lyon, 1667), cover page.

the original French and never discovered significant identifying information about the author, who was almost certainly the Discalced Carmelite
Emmanuel of the Cross (1611–71).2 This work had been a guidebook for
Vignolo’s own youthful discernment, and he earnestly wished to make it
available again in French.3 He proclaimed it to be superior to all other
vocational discernment guides in its clarity and concision, its completeness
and order, and its firm grounding in scripture and Catholic tradition. In
translation by “C. G. G.,” a Barnabite, and he was likely unaware of a 1669 Italian translation
by “priore Eugenio Nesciotti.” See Emanuel de la Croix, La buona elezione, o sia istruzione per
ben eleggere uno stato di vita, trans. C. G. G. (Milan, 1718); Emmanuele della Croce, La buona
elettione, overo, instruttione per eleggere uno stato di vita, trans. Eugenio Nesciotti (Bologna,
1669). Spellings and capitalizations of the author’s name are as they appear in the respective
editions. Translations of this text are the present author’s own from the 1844 edition.
2. Amédée Vignolo, trans., “Préface du traducteur,” in: Emmanuel de La Croix, La
Vocation (1844), xi–xix, here xi–xii. On this identification, see Christopher J. Lane, Callings
and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational Culture in Early Modern France (Montreal,
2021), 131n28.
3. Amédée Vignolo, “À l’Oeuvre de la Jeunesse de Marseille,” in: Emmanuel de La
Croix, La Vocation (1844), v–ix, here ix.

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661

short, he believed, it was the best tool for teaching young Catholics how to
hear and respond to God’s call.4
As Vignolo noted, many other works on vocational discernment were
available in his nineteenth-century era of Catholic revival in Europe and of
Catholic expansion globally. Previously, seventeenth-century reformers like
Emmanuel of the Cross had sought to build a culture of vocation, a world
wherein all young Catholics would hear and respond to God’s call to a state
of life—the lay or married state, the religious state (of those in religious
vows), or the clerical state (restricted to men). This early modern vocational
culture had been marked by four characteristics: first, a sense of urgency that
can be called “vocational rigorism” (the claim that one’s happiness on earth
and salvation in heaven depended on accepting one’s call from God);
second, inclusiveness (the claim that all, including lay people, were called by
God, and that discerning a vocation from God was necessary even to enter
into marriage); third, method (the claim that systematic discernment practices were necessary for choosing rightly); and, fourth, liberty (the insistence that this choice must be free from coercion, especially by parents).
This message had been addressed to both men and women, through sermons, catechesis, devotional treatises, and spiritual direction.
These ideas developed in the context of the “rigorist turn” in seventeenth-century France, a tendency related to the Jansenist movement but
not reducible to it. Many of the supposedly “lax” Jesuits—usually opponents
of the Jansenists—were leading advocates of this vocational rigorism. While
they drew some of their ideas from various older sources, Jesuits and their
fellow travelers—including Emmanuel of the Cross, whose brother was the
controversial Jesuit Louis Cellot—especially rooted themselves in the vocational discernment principles of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises,
refracted through a rigorist lens. Proponents of vocational rigorism included
many others, however, including diocesan priests, female religious, Sorbonne theologians, French Oratorians, and Jansenist-friendly bishops.5
Nineteenth-century Catholic clerical leaders adopted this tradition of
vocational discernment as a component of their own instruction of the
faithful, and they adapted and propagated it to various national, regional,
and linguistic audiences. They made seventeenth-century vocational culture a prominent feature of the shared “repertoire” of transnational
4. Vignolo, “Préface,” xii–xiv, xvi–xix.
5. These last two paragraphs summarize extensive material from Lane, Callings and
Consequences.

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Catholic revival.6 And yet, with the demise of the European Old Regime
and with the post-revolutionary need to mobilize voluntary participation in
traditional religion, recruitment of clerical and religious personnel for
domestic and overseas purposes was a higher priority than ever before. This
led Catholic leaders to downplay the role of lay vocation inherited from the
seventeenth century. The resulting vocational culture was more clericalist,
characterized by a stronger urgency regarding clerical and religious vocations but a weaker inclusiveness regarding lay callings. This helps explain
why, even though ideas about lay vocation had a long tradition, many
twentieth-century Catholic commentators treated it as new or as long-forgotten. In service of these claims, this article will analyze evidence from
vocational discernment advice texts in French and English, either composed or republished during the nineteenth century.
Nineteenth-Century Catholic Revival: Texts, Personnel,
and a Shared Transnational Repertoire
Scholars have long questioned depicting the nineteenth century as an
era of “linear dechristianization” in religion.7 Although the Church’s wounds
from eighteenth-century anticlericalism, the French Revolution, and the
Napoleonic era were deep and numerous, there was a marked Catholic resurgence across most of Europe. The chronology of peaks, reversals, and further
revivals differed according to national and local circumstances, not to mention demographic distinctions such as gender, class, and age.8 This revival
was not anti-modern so much as it was a sign that “Catholic modernity” is
simply part of modernity or, alternatively, one of many “modernities.”9
6. Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic
Village (Berkeley, 2013), 207.
7. Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (London, 1989), 227.
8. Works exploring various aspects of this Catholic revival and renewal include Edward
Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984); Jonathan
Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, 1984); Gibson,
Social History; Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, 1995); Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “The Limits of Secularization: On the Problem of the Catholic
Revival in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” The Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 647–70; Vincent
Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831–1859) (Leuven, 2001);
Carol E. Harrison, Romantic Catholics: France’s Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a
Modern Faith (Ithaca, 2014); Roger Price, Religious Renewal in France, 1789–1870: The
Roman Catholic Church between Catastrophe and Triumph (Cham, Switzerland, 2018).
9. See Charles Taylor, “A Catholic Modernity?,” in: A Catholic Modernity?, ed. James
M. Heft (New York, 1999), 13–37; Christian Smith and Brandon Vaidyanathan, “Multiple
Modernities and Religion,” in: The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity, ed. Chad Meister
(Oxford, 2010), 250–65.

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663

Two foundational elements of this revival were the recruitment of personnel and the production of texts. Especially where government policy
had recently been highly anticlerical or anti-Catholic, the church hierarchy
needed to rebuild public Catholic life, and the relative lack of clergy and
religious was a formidable challenge. Most French priests, for instance,
survived the Revolution’s most radical phases, but many—whether due to
exile, execution, or abandonment of clerical status—never returned to
active ministry following either the 1801 Concordat or the 1814–15 Bourbon Restoration. By 1814, more than 40% of French diocesan priests were
over sixty years old. Yet by 1847, only about 6% were over sixty—a remarkable sign of successful recruitment.10 A similar resurgence occurred in the
numbers of male and female religious, both those firmly rooted in France
and those whose orders were transnational in character.11
The success of the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century Britain similarly entailed extensive clerical recruitment. Catholic Emancipation in
1829 enabled the Church to become a much more public institution after
longstanding missionary status and irregular relations with the state. Revival
in Britain was complex and challenging, but there was clear growth over the
century in priestly ordinations, professions of religious vows, churches built,
and schools established over the course of the century.12 In the optimistic
words of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle to his friend Charles de Montalembert
in 1840, “Catholicity in England is proceeding at a railroad pace”—a pace
that demanded clerical and religious personnel in great numbers.13
Concurrent with—and partially enabled by—the increase in personnel
was a proliferation of texts, as Catholics participated in a print culture
explosion in Europe. Several decades of technological innovations, culminating in the 1840s, enabled vastly higher volumes of print at lower cost,
and accelerating demand linked with ever-expanding literacy was both a
cause and an effect of this production boom.14 Socioeconomic status also
10. Price, Religious Renewal, 21; Gibson, Social History, 63–64, 67–68.
11. Price, Religious Renewal, 40–47; for the related revival of regulars in Belgium, see
Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 171–78.
12. Norman, English Catholic Church, especially chapters 1–2.
13. Louis Allen, “Letters of Phillipps de Lisle to Montalembert,” Dublin Review, 228,
no. 463 (1954), 53–64, here 57; Norman, English Catholic Church, 201.
14. Price, Religious Renewal in France, 134–38; Gibson, Social History of French Catholicism, 233–35; R. Howard Bloch, God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and
Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne (Chicago, 1994), 113–19; Norman, English Catholic
Church, 289–90; Jennifer J. Popiel, Heroic Hearts: Sentiment, Saints, and Authority in Modern
France (Lincoln, NE, 2021), 66.

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became less determinative of habits of religious reading. Seventeenth-century texts which had been the spiritual food of wealthy or high-born dévots
achieved a wider readership.15 Texts by or rooted in the gentle, laityaffirming spirituality of Francis de Sales, for instance, found a surge in editions, for audiences across national and linguistic barriers.16 The mediation
of clergy and religious was essential to the diffusion of religious texts.
Parish priests often became unofficial agents of Catholic publishers, and
parish libraries proliferated. Visiting missionaries within Europe promoted
pious books, to form the faithful long after the mission ended. French
Jesuit preacher Adrien Nampon, in his Manuel du missionaire, especially
emphasized early modern texts when he advised fellow missionaries to distribute pamphlet extracts from great spiritual works and to keep lists of recommended books for different spiritual needs.17 Clergy and professed religious were also leading players in Catholic publishing, as is evident in
examples such as Jacques-Paul Migne, Henry Benedict Mackey, and the
Visitation sisters at Annecy.18 The Catholic book press, then, was just one
of many contexts in which the surge of clerical and religious personnel was
integral to Catholic revival.
None of this is to deny that members of the lay faithful were also agents
of revival, and Charles Taylor’s concept of “mobilization” helps explain the
experiences of both laity and clergy alike. Taylor contrasted “ancien régime”
forms of life and religion—marked by pre-existing social structures to
which individuals belonged (usually by birth) and could not easily change—
with those forms based in “mobilization,”wherein “people have to be
induced, or forced, or organized to take their parts in the new structure” and
“have to be recruited into the creation of the new structures.”19 Mobilization
per se was not new in the nineteenth century, and the term applies to any
major movement—such as that of Catholic reformers in seventeenth-century France—that seeks that people “adopt new structures” and “alter their
social imaginaries, and sense of legitimacy, as well as their sense of what is
15. Philippe Martin, Une religion des livres (1640–1850) (Paris, 2003), 447–62, 569;
Popiel, Heroic Hearts, 42–43.
16. Martin, Religion des livres, 460–61; Wendy M. Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart: The
Salesian Tradition (Maryknoll, NY, 2004), 157–63; Viviane Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, “Four
Centuries of Editions of the Introduction to the Devout Life: Bibliographical Lessons,” in:
Encountering Anew the Familiar: Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life at 400
Years, ed. Joseph F. Chorpenning (Rome, 2012), 1–22, here esp. 2–7.
17. Martin, Religion des livres, 447–62, 478–87.
18. Bloch, God’s Plagiarist; Wendy Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart, 157–60;
Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, “Four Centuries of Editions,” 7.
19. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 459–60.

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665

crucially important in their lives or society.”20 But the postrevolutionary era,
in Taylor’s view, was the beginning of an “Age of Mobilization,” because the
Old Regime’s “wider social context, that of Kingdom and Church”—a
seemingly “unchanging and unchangeable backdrop of all legitimacy”—had
lost much of its political and cultural power.21 The “new structures” into
which people were mobilized included schools, youth groups, sports clubs,
sodalities, confraternities, and laborers’ organizations.22 These voluntary
communal structures were often directed and staffed by clergy and religious,
even if lay leadership was paramount in some instances.
Furthermore, this key role of clergy and religious in Catholic revival
was intertwined with the development of an increasingly international religious culture. The “global salvific Catholicism” of the early modern period,
based in a desire to save souls throughout the world, served as a foundation
for nineteenth-century global Catholicism.23 In the latter period, internationalism was expressed not only in overseas missions but also within
Europe. Collaboration, via “an international network of voluntary organizations that mediate[d] the presence of the Church in civil society,” was
connected to the Holy See but not directed by it.24 Fundamental to this
transnational network were religious congregations, starting with the old
orders re-founded or revitalized during the postrevolutionary era. New
congregations also flourished, especially in France and Belgium, and many
of these became transnational enterprises.25 Importantly, two-thirds of the
500,000 professed religious in Europe around 1900 were women, who thus
provided much of the labor force and leadership behind Catholic revival.
Religious life overseas was also burgeoning, with about 100,000 religious
in North America, for example, at the end of the nineteenth century. Anticlerical decrees and resultant exile often strengthened these transnational
networks, as congregations were forced not to base their organizing principles on any one government’s favor.26
20. Taylor, A Secular Age, 445.
21. Taylor, A Secular Age, 445 (emphasis added).
22. Ibid., 460, 471–72.
23. Luke Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge,
UK, 2008), 9–10, 248–57; Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700: A
Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (Washington, DC, 1999), 11–12, 147–49, 174, 204–06.
24. Vincent Viaene, “Nineteenth-Century Catholic Internationalism and Its Predecessors,” in: Religious Internationals in the Modem World: Globalization and Faith Communities
since 1750, eds. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene (New York, 2012), 82–110, here 83.
25. Viaene, “Catholic Internationalism,” 90; Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 170.
26. Viaene, “Catholic Internationalism,” 91–92; Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See,
171–74.

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Internationalism was not limited, however, to the religious orders, and
many diocesan clergy and lay faithful developed a global vision and served
as points in the Catholic matrix. Bishops, though often frustrated by their
limited control over the activities of religious orders, also facilitated the
latter’s influence by promoting their presence in parish missions and
entrusting seminaries to their care.27 Most clergy were still diocesan (in
1845 Belgium, three-quarters of all the ordained), and Vincent Viaene has
argued that these were key agents of revival: “A mission was in fact useless
without the active cooperation of the local clergy. It was the parish priest
who prepared the ground; it was he who ensured the follow-up in Sunday
schools and confraternities, hundreds of which were founded in the wake
of the missions.”28 Catholic periodicals also increasingly connected clergy
and faithful to one another and to the papacy.29 The papacy itself took on
a greater mediating and promotional role among diocesan bishops, various
competing religious congregations, and lay organizations such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.30 The latter, though a lay organization, exemplifies these transnational networks insofar as it cooperated locally with
parish priests and internationally with Jesuits and Redemptorists.31
The transnational nature of Catholic revival thus led to converging
mentalities. In the words of Henrietta Harrison: “Catholics share in a vast
and intensely debated repertoire of ideas and practices.”32 The sharing of
“ideas and practices,” not only within the West but across the globe, has
come in large part through the sharing of texts, personnel, and institutions.
Anne O’Connor has noted that texts circulated in translation, such as those
considered in this article, helped “to create links to a global religious community” while also aligning national identity more strongly with Catholicism.33 This shared repertoire did not stem from high-level imposition
from the Holy See. Rather, transnational networks encouraged national
and local communities to draw upon one another’s texts and practices, in
27. Gibson, Social History, 82, 250–51; Price, Religious Renewal, 142; Joseph M.
White, “Perspectives on the Nineteenth-Century Diocesan Seminary in the United States,”
U.S. Catholic Historian, 19, no. 1 (2001), 21–35, here 25; Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See,
172–73.
28. Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 178–79.
29. Gibson, Social History, 59; Norman, English Catholic Church, 289–90, 304-05;
Price, Religious Renewal, 34, 100, 135.
30. Viaene, “Catholic Internationalism,” 98.
31. Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See, 181.
32. Harrison, Missionary’s Curse, 207.
33. Anne O’Connor, “Popular Print, Translation and Religious Identity,” Religion, 49,
no. 3 (2019), 439–57, here 439.

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667

ways conformable to their existing Catholic cultures.34 In this context,
vocational discernment culture became a major component of the nineteenth-century shared repertoire of Catholic revival, a component that
suited the increasingly voluntary nature of Catholic mobilization and the
need to recruit priests and religious.
Vocational Rigorism: The Urgency of Choosing Rightly
Many agents of nineteenth-century Catholic revival embraced vocational rigorism, the principle that right discernment of God’s call—and the
resultant good choice of a state of life—was essential for the young
Catholics of their day. This conviction led Amédée Vignolo, for instance,
to publish his translation of Le bon chois by Emmanuel of the Cross. Evidence from vocational discernment advice texts demonstrates the vitality of
vocational rigorism, even as other forms of Catholic rigorism were on the
decline.35 Unless otherwise noted, quotations and translations are taken
from nineteenth-century French-language and English-language editions,
to highlight the transnational currency of these texts.
The core of this vocational rigorism, a sense of urgency, is expressed
starkly in the first chapter of Vignolo’s back-translation of Emmanuel’s
book. Emmanuel declared that “the greatest and most infallible” means of
saving one’s soul was choosing rightly a state of life, for “the conduct of life
depends almost always on the state one embraces; on the manner in which
one has lived depends the death which one will make, and on the moment
of death depends eternity.”36 He went on: “This one will save himself more
or less easily in such-and-such state, and perhaps never in some other one;
. . . that one will be miserably lost in that way [of life], as much as in this
other one, he would happily arrive in harbor.”37 While one’s natural dispositions would affect one’s fitness for a state of life, above all it was a question
34. Mary Heimann, “Catholic Revivalism in Worship and Devotion,” in: World Christianities, c. 1815–c.1914, eds. Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley (Cambridge, UK, 2006), 70–
83, here 74–75, 79–83.
35. Ralph Gibson, “Hellfire and Damnation in Nineteenth-Century France,” The
Catholic Historical Review, 74, no. 3 (1988), 383–402.
36. “De tous ces moyens, le plus grand et le plus infaillible c’est le choix d’un état: car
. . . la conduite de la vie depend presque toujours de l’état qu’on embrasse; de la manière don’t
on aura vécu depend la mort que l’on fera, et du moment de la mort depend l’éternité.”
Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 2.
37. “Celui-ci se sauvera plus ou moins facilement dans tel ou tel état, et peut-être jamais
dans tel autre; . . . celui-là se perdra misérablement par cette voie, tandis que par cette autre
il serait heureusement arrivé jusqu’au port.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 3.

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of supernatural graces, “which [God] never will have granted to those rash
ones who commit themselves to a state of their own choosing against the
will of God.”38 One who was “faithful to his call” would receive “powerful
graces, which would preserve him from all evil in the midst of dangers.”39
One who had taken up a state to which he or she was not called would have
only “ordinary means,” which were in themselves “sufficient to reach
Heaven.”40 Yet such “sufficient” means were often quite insufficient, since,
without extraordinary graces, “all will become for him an occasion of sin”:
[His soul] will walk in a dark night; it will harden itself. . . . It will enter
into the moment of death in the greatest of frights, and torn by remorse,
it will infallibly descend to the depths of hell, if God does not work a
miracle to save it at the last hour.41

“Hence,” he concludes, “after the grace of Baptism, . . . and that of a good
death, . . . the grace of vocation is the most important of all, that which
most directly influences each of our actions, that which unites the first
grace to the final grace, and which makes us arrive happily in harbour.”42
“Vocation,” he wrote, “is to our salvation like the keystone of an arch.”43
Emmanuel’s vocational rigorism, it should be noted, did not stem from
alliances with Jansenist-leaning contemporaries, as both the text itself and
the priest behind it were quite Jesuit-friendly.
A much more widely diffused text expressing the same principles was
Charles Gobinet’s 1655 treatise, Instruction de la jeunesse en la pieté chrestienne.44 Gobinet, a priest and doctor of the Sorbonne and rector of a collège
38. “Et qu’il n’accordera jamais à ces téméraires qui s’y engageront d’eux-mêmes et
contre sa volonté.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 3.
39. “Grâces puissantes, qui le préserveront de tout mal au milieu des dangers.”
Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 4–5.
40. “Des moyens ordinaires, suffisants pour arriver au Ciel.” Emmanuel de La Croix,
La Vocation, 5.
41. “Tout viendra pour lui occasion de péché.” “Elle marchera dans une nuit obscure;
elle s’endurcira; . . . elle entrera au moment de la mort dans de grandes frayeurs, et déchirée
par ses remords, elle descendra infailliblement dans le fond des enfers, si Dieu ne fait pas un
miracle pour la sauver à cette dernière heure.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 5, 7.
42. “De là cette conséquence: après la grâce du Baptême, qui est la première de toutes
les grâces que le Ciel nous accorde, et celle d’une bonne mort, qui en est comme le complément, la grâce de la vocation est la plus importante de toutes, celle qui exerce l’influence la
plus directe sur chacune de nos actions, celle qui unit la première à la dernière grâce, et qui
nous fait arriver heureusement au port.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 7–8.
43. “La vocation est à notre salut ce qu’est à une voûte la clef qui la soutient.”
Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 8.
44. Charles Gobinet, Instruction de la jeunesse en la pieté chrestienne (Paris, 1655).

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Gerard Edelinck, Portrait of Charles Gobinet, 1691, engraving, plate edge 15 × 11.5”
(379 mm × 292 mm), after a painting by Nicolas de Largillière, stored in the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object no. RP-P-BI-7517. https://commons.wiki
media.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_Charles_Gobinet,_RP-P-BI-7517.jpg. Image is
in the public domain.

in Paris, dedicated a large part of this text to the choice of a state of life, as
the culmination of youth. The work was frequently reprinted and was available in at least seven languages by 1768.45 During the nineteenth-century
Catholic revival, Gobinet’s Instruction was promoted at French parish missions, recommended by the bishops of Philadelphia and Boston, used by
an English Catholic schoolmaster in Bristol, cheaply printed by James
Duffy in Dublin, and published in Arabic by Franciscans in Jerusalem.46
Continually republished in several languages and on at least three continents, it serves as a striking example of transnational Catholic print culture.
Like Emmanuel of the Cross, Gobinet espoused vocational rigorism
without having Jansenist leanings. His voting record as a sorbonniste was
45. Lane, Callings and Consequences, 153n68, 153n1.
46. Martin, Une religion des livres, 461–62; Charles Gobinet, The Instruction of Youth in
Christian Piety, trans. Anonymous (Boston, [1850?]), 2; Kenneth Miles Wardle Hankins,
“‘The Contention of Power’: The Role of the Jesuits in the Catholic Life of Bristol, 1700–
1830” (PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 1998), 170–71; O’Connor, “Popular print,” 443–44,
447; Edward J. Quigley, “Dr. Murray of Maynooth (III),” The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Fifth
Series, XVI, no. 2 (1920), 94–99, here 97–98; Lane, Callings and Consequences, 153n1.

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consistently anti-Jansenist, and his approach was indebted to the gentle
Francis de Sales.47 He wrote:
God endows men with different inclinations, and various natural abilities . . . ; he also distributes amongst them his graces diversely, as according with the several necessities of the respective states to which he calls
them. . . . This choice is of such consequence, that on it depends all the
good of man, both for this life and the next.48

The lack of a “vocation from God” would “occasion an infinite number of
sins, which would not have happened in another state,” and make one’s ultimate salvation much more doubtful.49 The consequences were also communal, in that individual wrong choices of state gave rise to “the disorders
reigning in every state” of life.50 Gobinet here implied a core theme of the
Catholic Reformation, that institutional Church reform was impossible
without the widespread inculcation of individual holiness, but he added the
specific principle that vocational reform was the condition of all other
reform. And, even if the work is largely forgotten today, it was a tool for
forming young Catholics for over two centuries, used by diocesan clergy,
professed religious of various orders and congregations, and laymen alike.
Nineteenth-century Catholic reformers did not merely republish older
texts; they also wrote new texts rooted in seventeenth-century principles.
In 1860, Jean-Baptiste Malou (1809–64), the bishop of Bruges, published
his Règles pour le choix d’un état de vie, which came out in German in 1863
and in English in 1874.51 Malou’s vocational rigorism was even more
exacting than that of Emmanuel of the Cross and of Charles Gobinet.
47. See Lane, Callings and Consequences, 130n19.
48. Gobinet, Instruction of Youth, 200–01. “Il donne aux hommes des inclinations différentes, tants de corps que de l’esprit; et il leur distribue aussi diversement ses graces, selon
les différentes nécessités des états auxquels il les appelle. . . . Ce choix est de telle consequence,
que tout le bien d’un homme en depend, tant pour cette vie que pour le salut éternel.” Charles
Gobinet, Instruction de la jeunesse en la piété chrétienne, édition retouchée, ed. [Meneret],
(Paris, 1804), 354–55.
49. Gobinet, Instruction of Youth, 201. “Vocation de Dieu. . . . Il commetra un nombre
infini de péchés qu’il n’auroit point fait dans un autre état.” Gobinet, Instruction de la jeunesse
(1804), 355–56.
50. Gobinet, Instruction of Youth, 201. “Des désordres que nous voyons en chacun des
états.” Gobinet, Instruction de la jeunesse (1804), 356.
51. Jean-Baptiste Malou, Règles pour le choix d’un état de vie (Brussels, 1860); Jean-Baptiste Malou, Regeln für die Wahl eines Lebensstandes, trans. J. B. Jungmann (Mainz, 1863);
Jean-Baptiste Malou, On the Choice of a State of Life, trans. Aloysius Del Vittorio [Louis
Charles Casartelli] (London, 1874). (Casartelli, born in Manchester to Italian parents, translated this work under the pseudonym Aloysius del Vittorio)

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Some of the language is familiar: “The good or bad behaviour of men
depends almost entirely upon the state they have embraced. . . . If . . . they
embrace, through outward attraction, passion or thoughtlessness, a state to
which God does not call them, or which he forbids them, their behaviour
will be blameworthy and evil.”52 While this resembles what had come two
centuries earlier, other passages in Malou reflect greater systematization
and theological sophistication in discussions of vocation from more recent
times. Malou defined vocation as “a disposition of Divine Providence,
preparing, inviting, and sometimes even obliging a Christian soul to
embrace one state of life in preference to another.”53 Vocation was sometimes a “precept” (a strictly obligatory command from God), rather than a
“counsel” (a divine invitation that could be declined without sin), and in
such cases disobedience would be gravely sinful.54 He noted that “certain
souls . . . cannot save themselves in the world,” but “they can find in the
priesthood or in the religious state sure and plentiful means of salvation.”55
Malou’s vocational rigorism was also not a product of friendliness with
Jansenists. He wrote with great approval of Jesuits (who had been responsible for much of his education) and of the papal condemnation of a rigorist proposition from the Jansenist-leaning of Pistoia.56
The incongruity of finding vocational rigorism promoted by otherwise
anti-rigorist figures comes into greater focus when we consider the influence of St. Alphonsus de Liguori (1696–1787). His moral theology, positions on sacramental discipline (such as frequent communion), and affective spirituality undermined the rigorist milieu, in his own day and still
more during the nineteenth century. On vocation, however, he was as
much of a rigorist as the seventeenth-century anti-Jansenists this article
52. Malou, On the Choice, xl. “La conduite bonne ou mauvaise des hommes, dépend
presque toujours de l’état qu’ils ont embrassé. . . . S’ils embrassent . . . par entraînement, par
passion, ou par irréflexion un état auquel Dieu ne les appelle point ou qu’il leur interdit, leur
conduite sera repréhensible, mauvaise.” Jean-Baptiste Malou, Règles pour le choix d’un état de
vie, 2nd ed. (Brussels, 1865), ii. French quotations in these notes are drawn from this second
edition.
53. Malou, On the Choice, 14. “Une disposition de la divine providence qui prépare,
invite, et quelquefois oblige moralement une âme chrétienne à embrasser un état de vie de
préférence à un autre.” Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 21–22.
54. Malou, On the Choice, 17–18; Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 25–26.
55. Malou, On the Choice, 19. “Certaines âmes . . . ne puissent se sauver dans le monde;
tandis qu’elles trouvent dans le sacerdoce ou dans l’état religieux des moyens sûrs et abondants
de salut.” Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 27.
56. Aloysius del Vittorio, “Sketch of the Life of Mgr. Malou, Bishop of Bruges,” in:
Malou, On the Choice, xxxiii–xxxvii, here xxxiii. Malou, On the Choice, 67. Malou, Règles pour
le choix (1865), 82.

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Joseph Nauwens, Malou, Jean-Baptist (1809–1864); bisschop, 1864, lithograph, 300
× 230 mm, stored in FelixArchief (municipal archives of Antwerp, Belgium), acc.
no. 12 # 12870, http://zoeken.felixarchief.be/zHome/Home.aspx?id_isad=331966.
This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public
Domain Dedication.

has considered. The opening lines of his “Instructions on the Religious
State” were often printed and quoted during the nineteenth century:
Our eternal salvation principally depends on our choice of a state of life.
Father Louis of Granada calls it ‘the main-spring of life.’ In a watch, if
the main-spring is out of order, the whole is injured; so, as regards our
salvation, if we fail in following our vocation, our whole life, . . . will be
disorderly and wretched.57
57. St. Alphonsus Liguori, Instructions & Considerations on the Religious State, trans. by
an anonymous priest of the Order of Charity (London, 1848), 7. A French translation from
an edition of Liguori’s complete works: “Notre salut dépend principalement du choix d’un
état. Le père Louis de Grenade appelait le choix d’un état la maîtresse roue de la vie. Ainsi, de
même que, dans une horloge, la maîtresse roue étant endommagée, toute l’horloge est
dérangée, de même dans l’ordre de notre salut, la vocation étant manquée, toute la vie est
manquée aussi. . . .” St. Alphonsus Liguori, “Avis sur la vocation religieuse,” in: Oeuvres complètes du bienheureux A.-M. de Liguori, ed. Octavien-Adolphe Vidal et al., 31 vols. (Paris,
1834–45, here 1835), IX, 247–83, here 247.

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His doctrine here is fundamentally derivative of seventeenth-century vocational rigorism, often from Jesuit sources.58 He recounted in his text an old
Jesuit story of a promising young man at the Roman College whose rejection of his calling led to a dissolute student life in Macerata. One night, the
young man was attacked and killed by a rival, just after leaving the home
of a disreputable woman.59 The Jesuits had taken an interest in such vocational cautionary tales from the earliest decades of their history.60 Beginning around 1815, Liguori’s own Redemptorist congregation underwent
significant reorganization and expansion across the Continent, in the
United Kingdom, and in overseas missions.61 The order helped to ensure
that Liguori’s works were published in multiple languages, especially
beginning in the 1830s and 1840s.62 And wherever those works were
spread, vocational rigorism was further strengthened.
Jesuits and Redemptorists were not the only standard-bearers of
Liguori’s vocational rigorism during the era of Catholic revival. St. John
Bosco (1815-88), in preaching notes for a spiritual retreat he conducted
in 1869 for early Salesians, drew extensively on Liguori’s “Instructions on
the Religious State” and specifically mentioned the old Jesuit cautionary
tale.63 A work published in 1876 by the Brothers of the Christian
Schools, entitled Quelques conseils sur le choix d’une carrière, likewise
quoted at length from Liguori’s text.64 Quelques conseils was later itself
highlighted across the Atlantic as an “excellent little work” for the for58. John Sharp, “The Influence of St Alphonsus Liguori in Nineteenth-Century
Britain,” The Downside Review, 101, no. 342 (1983), 60–76, here 62.
59. Liguori, Instructions & Considerations, 12. Liguori, “Avis sur la vocation religieuse,”
250. For the original story, see Mikołaj Łęczycki, Nicolai Lancicii e Societate Iesu Opusculorum
Spiritualium, 2 vols. (Antwerp, 1650), I, 5–6. On Łęczycki, see Massimo Leone, Saints and
Signs: A Semiotic Reading of Conversion in Early Modern Catholicism (Berlin, 2010), 77–78,
77n145.
60. Thomas J. Santa Maria, “Pedro de Ribadeneyra and the First Ex-Jesuits: Jesuit
Anxiety about Familial Interference to Vocational Perseverance,” The Catholic Historical
Review, 109, no. 1 (2023), 51–76.
61. See Francesco Chiovaro, Joseph Robert Fenili, and Otto Weiss, eds., The History of
the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, trans. Joseph Robert Fenili, 2 vols. (Liguori, MO,
2010–22, here 2022), vol. II, book I.
62. Gibson, Social History, 260–65; John Sharp, “The Alphonsian Mission in Britain
and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century,” Spicielgium Historicum Congregationis S Smi Redemptoris, 45 (1997), 291–307, here 305–06; John Sharp, “The Influence of St Alphonsus Liguori
in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” The Downside Review, 101, no. 342 (1983), 60–76, here 67–
68; O’Connor, “Popular Print,” 446–47, 451, 453.
63. Aldo Giraudo, “Gli esercizi spirituali predicati da Don Bosco a Trofarello nel
1869,” Ricerche Storiche Salesiane, 32, no. 60 (2013), 97–149, here 146.
64. Quelques conseils sur le choix d’une carrière (Paris 1876), 6–7.

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mation of youth, in a Canadian book promoting the Brothers of the
Christian Schools.65 Vocational rigorists of the seventeenth-century had
thus established in the Catholic repertoire rhetorically powerful tropes
about the consequences of failing to enter the state of life to which one
was called by God, and their work had been carried on through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Clericalism and the Partial Eclipse of Lay Vocation
Perhaps surprisingly, seventeenth-century vocational rigorists had
developed a clear concept of lay vocation, though this concept was marked
by ambivalence. Their texts often affirmed that God called men and
women to remain in the world and, typically, to enter marriage. When
combined with vocational rigorism, however, this meant the gravest dangers to salvation came to those who embraced life in the world without
being called by God to do so. Rather than elevating the laity to equal spiritual status with clergy and religious, this form of vocational rigorism
emphasized that extraordinary graces—graces that only came with God’s
call—were needed to fight the temptations inherent in marriage and in the
world.66 Such ambivalence was replicated during the nineteenth century,
whenever seventeenth-century vocational advice was republished. Postrevolutionary Catholic revivalists, however, tended to downplay even this
ambivalent place for lay vocation. The recruitment needs of nineteenthcentury church leaders led them to strengthen the association of the concept of vocation with the clerical and religious states. Although the idea of
lay vocation did not disappear, it lost some of the limited Catholic cultural
currency that seventeenth-century reformers had given it.
Texts by Emmanuel of the Cross and by Jesuit preacher Louis
Bourdaloue (1632-1704) exemplify some of the republished seventeenth-century works’ ambivalent approach to lay vocation. Emmanuel noted that God
called most men and women to live in the world, but he went on to state that
“compared to the infinite number of those who lose themselves in the world,
the number of the elect is, alas!, very small.”67 At the end of a long discourse
about the dangers of the world, he urged readers to “bless” God and to “confess to him your thanks,” if they are called to flee the world and enter “a more
65. Joseph-Camille Caisse, L’Institut des frères des écoles chrétiennes: son origine, son but et
ses oeuvres (Montreal, 1883), 296.
66. See Lane, Callings and Consequences, chapter 3.
67. “Comparé au nombre infini de ceux qui se perdent dans le monde, le nombre des élus
est, hélas! bien pétit.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 62, 63–64 (emphasis original).

CHRISTOPHER J. LANE

675

sure state of life.”68 By contrast, the religious life was “the most sure, the easiest, the shortest road to pass from this land of exile to the heavenly Jerusalem”
and the state that “offers the greatest helps for . . . assuring one’s eternal salvation.”69 Although Emmanuel affirmed that entering religion without a
vocation would also be dangerous, his rhetoric emphasized the much greater
likelihood of salvation for those in religious life as a general rule. Louis
Bourdaloue’s “Instructions on the Choice of a State of Life” opened with an
argument for the fundamental principle that “there is nothing on which salvation depends more than on the choice of a state of life.”70 Among the discernment methods he proposed was one drawn from St. Ignatius of Loyola’s
Spiritual Exercises, imagining the state of life one would “wish to have chosen
at the hour of death.”71 Just after explaining that exercise, he ended the text
with an exhortation in favor of the religious state, quoting St. Paul’s praises of
virginity.72 Structurally, therefore, this text culminated its extended argument
with a careful but powerful recruitment pitch for religious vows.
Newly written nineteenth-century vocational advice often exhibited
still stronger clericalist tendencies and still less interest in lay callings.
Malou stressed the Church’s present needs:
God has need of able and devoted pastors, men according to His own
heart, for the service of the Church; wherefore He has the right to call
them and to make use of them according to His plans. To resist Him
when one is called to a mission both sublime and necessary is to offend
Him, to fail in an undoubted duty.73

68. “Si . . . Dieu . . . vous invite . . . pour entrer dans un état plus sûr, bénissez-le,
témoignez-lui votre reconnaissance.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 72.
69. “Le chemin le plus sûr, le plus facile, le plus court pour passer de cette terre d’exil à
la Jérusalem céleste. . . . C’est de tous les états celui qui offre les secours les plus grandes pour
. . . assurer son salut éternel.” Emmanuel de La Croix, La Vocation, 122.
70. Louis Bourdaloue, “Instructions on the Choice of a State of Life,” in: Instructions
on the Holy Communion; On the Choice of a State of Life; and On Death, trans. by an anonymous
Catholic priest (Dublin, 1874), 95–115, here 96. “Il n’y a rien don’t le salut dépende davantage que de bien choisir l’etat où l’on doit vivre.” Louis Bourdaloue, “Instruction IX. Sur le
choix d’un état de vie (1),” in: Collection intégrale et universelle des orateurs sacrés, ed. JacquesPaul Migne, 99 vols. (Paris, 1844–66, here 1845), XVI, 395–402, here 396.
71. Bourdaloue, “Instructions on the Choice,” 112–13. “Entre ces différents états lequel
voudrais-je avoir pris, lorsque je serai à l’article de la mort?” Bourdaloue, “Instruction IX,” 401.
72. 1 Cor. 7:34, quoted in Bourdaloue, “Instructions on the Choice,” 115; Bourdaloue,
“Instruction IX,” 401.
73. Malou, On the Choice, 19. “Dieu ait besoin, pour le service de son Église, de pasteurs
capables et dévoués, d’hommes selon son coeur: dès lors il a droit de les appeler et de les
employer selon ses vues. Lui résister, lorsqu’on est appelé à une mission sublime, nécessaire,
c’est l’offenser, c’est manquer à un devoir certain.” Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 27.

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He spilled much ink on “the sublimity and advantages of the priesthood,”
which was “a great honour and a great happiness” and “the most noble and
the greatest” of all the states in life.74 “Vocation to the ecclesiastical state,” he
further writes, is “a great benefit, whether we consider the grace with which
the elect is loaded, or the consolations he obtains, or the merits he acquires.”75
Not that the priesthood was open to all, for he also warned against taking the
cloth for worldly motives.76 Although the Church was “stripped of her honours and goods” and “the clergy are almost everywhere rejected and persecuted,” she was still well-off enough to tempt a man of “vulgar ambition.”77
Even in a time of need for clerical personnel in great numbers, each worldly
priest without a true vocation did more harm than good.
Despite such concerns, Malou still strongly promoted the celibate,
“perfect” callings throughout the book. What he called the “common vocation” of marriage and of lay life in the world merited only passing commentary, rather than any dedicated chapters. Instead, he devoted an entire
chapter to “signs of Non-Vocation to the Ecclesiastical State.”78 The religious state, for its part, was closed to only a few, open to virtually all, and
commanded as the particular calling of many.79 Despite rare mentions that
marriage was a vocation to be discerned, he also labelled it “common” and
made it seem like a mere “non-vocation.” By contrast, the seventeenthcentury treatises by Gobinet and Emamnuel of the Cross each included
extensive sections on the vocation to marriage as such. Malou’s near silence
on marriage undermines the supposed comprehensiveness of his vocational
discernment manual.
The ongoing Catholic revival gave Malou ample reason to privilege discussion of clergy and religious. After briefly praising contemplative monasticism as “sovereignly useful to the Church,” Malou expressed his priorities
74. Malou, On the Choice, 41, 53. “La sublimité et les avantages du sacerdoce.” “Un
grand honneur et un grand bonheur.” “Le plus noble et le plus grand.” Malou, Règles pour le
choix (1865), 53, 66.
75. Malou, On the Choice, 57. “La vocation à l’état ecclésiastique est donc . . . un grand
bienfait, soit que l’on considère les grâces don’t l’élu est comblé, soit que l’on considère les
consolations qu’il obtient, soit que l’on considère les mérites qu’il acquiert.” Malou, Règles pour
le choix (1865), 71.
76. Malou, On the Choice, 20, 47; Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 28, 60.
77. Malou, On the Choice, 87–88. “Dépouilleé de ses honneurs et ses biens. . . . Le clergé
est presque partout repoussée et persécuté.” “Ambitions vulgaires.” Malou, Règles pour le choix
(1865), 106–07.
78. Malou, On the Choice, 20, 76. “La vocation commune.” “Des signes de non-vocation
à l’état ecclésiastique.” Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 28, 94.
79. Malou, On the Choice, 153. Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 186.

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via extensive attention to the active life.80 Even the contemplative Benedictines, he notes, had always engaged in the active life through study,
teaching, and preaching.81 But, in a brief history of the religious state,
Malou highlighted the thirteenth-century rise of the mendicants and the
multiplication of active orders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
dedicated variously to preaching, education, poor relief, medical care, and
the like. The Jesuits were—rightly in his view—the most celebrated. A
mention of the Redemptorists rounded out his history, from which he concluded that “the religious state, always the same in its essence, . . . has always
adapted itself to the wants of the Church and the necessities of the times.”82
Following on this last principle, Malou dedicated a large final section
of his treatise to the vocation to foreign missions. He had no doubt that
the recent explosion of foreign mission vocations was God’s will, even
though Europe’s Church continued to struggle. Indeed, it was a sign of
God’s providence that he could raise up so many missionaries in such
straitened circumstances. Moreover, missionary vocations greatly benefited
the faithful at home, and Belgium’s illustrious role in foreign missions
helped to demonstrate this.83
Malou’s treatise sparked interest in the anglophone world, where its
content was adapted for significantly different circumstances. The original
French edition was the subject of a notice in an early issue of The Irish
Ecclesiastical Record, in 1864. The editors of this publication (primarily by
and for Irish diocesan priests) felt it “a kind of duty to bring it under the
notice of the clergy of this country” and noted that “the prelate who wrote
it expressed to us his earnest desire that it might be translated for the use
of the Catholics of Ireland, for whom he ever professed warm esteem and
admiration.”84 They stated that, due to an abundance of vocations, almost
every Irish priest sometimes felt “the want of some help to enable him to
80. Malou, On the Choice, 148–50, 152. “Souverainement utile à l’Eglise.” Malou, Règles
pour le choix (1865), 180–82, 184.
81. Malou, On the Choice, 146; Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 177.
82. Malou, On the Choice, 146–48, quotation at 148. “L’état religieux, toujours le même
quant à l’essence, . . . s’est toujours plié aux besoins de l’Eglise et à la nécessité des temps.”
Malou, Règles pour le choix (1865), 178–79, quotation at 179.
83. The reference to Belgium is omitted from the English translation and replaced with
praise of England’s recent entry into the foreign mission field, through the founding of the
Mill Hill Missionaries (193). Malou, On the Choice, 191–93. Malou, Règles pour le choix
(1865), 229–32.
84. Jean-Baptiste Malou, “Review of Regles Pour Le Choix d’un Etat de Vie,” The Irish
Ecclesiastical Record, 1 (1865), 151–52, here 151.

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Tomb of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan in Westminster Cathedral, June 2008,
photograph by Gryffindor (user). Image is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

determine with confidence the state of life to which some youthful member
of his flock may have been called.”85 Among books on vocations, they
claimed that this one was to be singled out for its “accuracy of doctrine,
clearness of style, unction of Catholic spirit.”86
The book was eventually published in English in 1874, in London
rather than Dublin, with a preface that spoke especially to the concerns of
English Catholic diocesan clergy. This preface, by Herbert Alfred Vaughan
(1832–1903), bishop of Salford and later Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, echoed key principles of the main text; for example: “When a youth
makes his final choice of a state of life, he knows that he is staking his happiness in this world and the next upon that act.”87 Vaughan soon moved
from these principles to his own national ecclesiastical context. Concerned
85. Malou, “Review of Regles Pour Le Choix,” 151.
86. Ibid., 152.
87. Herbert Alfred Vaughan, “Preface,” in: Malou, On the Choice, vii–xxx, here viii. Not
coincidentally, the translator Louis Charles Casartelli (who would himself later become
Bishop of Salford) reiterated this in his own short preface, declaring that this choice was
“indeed the crisis, the Rubicon of a lifetime: a person’s happiness for this world and the next
is hanging in the scales.” Aloysius Del Vittorio [Louis Charles Casartelli], “Preface [of the
Translator],” in: Malou, On the Choice, xxxi–xxxii, here xxxi. On Vaughan, see Norman,
English Catholic Church, ch. 8.

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about recruitment competition from the religious orders, he spent a good
bit of space defending the excellence of the diocesan clergy and the fittingness of barring them from leaving their state to enter religious orders. Many
English seminarians of Pontifical Colleges had long been forbidden under
oath from subsequently taking religious vows, regardless of any interior
desire to do so. This legislation was based on the need for diocesan priests
who would contribute to “the greater glory of God and the salvation of
souls.”88 Quoting an 1871 instruction of the Holy See, Vaughan noted that
it was fitting that such men stay true to one path and “swear to give themselves up for life to labour in the mission to which they have been . . .
appointed.”89 The bishop also cited a Jesuit theologian, who had written that
such oaths were protections of “the public good” of the faithful, since “society . . . is more benefited by him who, after the example of the apostles,
devotes himself wholly to the salvation of his fellow men, than by him who
shuts himself up in certain enclosures to attend to himself alone and his own
salvation.”90 Vaughan further argued that diocesan priests could live lives of
preeminent charity, expressed by means of the evangelical counsels of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, which were “not the exclusive property of
religious orders.”91 Diocesan priests were already bound by oath to chastity
and obedience, and, he added, they would “find a thousand opportunities at
his hand in daily life” for voluntary poverty.92
If Vaughan’s position as a diocesan bishop in quasi-mission territory
were not enough to explain his defense of the secular priesthood, then his
personal history certainly sheds further light. The secular priesthood,
though largely consisting of normal diocesan priests, also included communities of clerics who worked and often lived together without taking
religious vows. Such communities were often directly under the authority
of the diocesan bishop. As a young priest, Vaughan had been on the
ground floor of one such priestly society, the Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo.93 In 1866, he had founded the Mill Hill Missionaries, also a society
of secular priests. His desire to recruit men for the secular priesthood was
88. Vaughan, “Preface,” xvii.
89. Vaughan, “Preface,” xvii.
90. Vaughan, “Preface,” xvi. The Jesuit is called “Father Cordara” in the text, presumably Giulio Cesare Cordara (1704–85).
91. Vaughan, “Preface,” xx. See also xxii–xxiv for mentions of lay men and women
living the counsels, including the evangelical counsels, esp. in England, as another swipe
against the special status of religious.
92. Vaughan, “Preface,” xxiv–xxvi; quotation at xxvii.
93. See Vincent Alan McClelland, “O Felix Roma!: Henry Manning, Cutts Robinson
and Sacerdotal Formation 1862–1872,” Recusant History, 21, no. 2 (1992), 180–217.

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based not only on his “self-interest” as a bishop, and he did not reject the
value of religious vows. He did, however, fear that many fervent young
men would seek religious vows as the only way to holiness.94 Ultimately, he
asserted, he needed to dwell so long on the role of the evangelical counsels
among diocesan priests precisely “because this little volume is destined to
fall into the hands of many persons who have no vocation to the religious
state.”95 His contemporary St. John Henry Newman had similar concerns.
He also admired the transnational religious orders but defended the distinct place of seculars, including his own Oratorians (priests in community
without religious vows). He urged young men discerning a vocation clearly
to distinguish the priestly from the religious calling, as the latter option
often confused the question.96
Conclusion
Evidence from vocational culture brings further nuance to our picture
of nineteenth-century Catholicism. Despite a Liguorian, post-Jansenist
decline in rigorist pastoral care generally, vocational rigorism endured and
grew. This emphasis on obedience to God may at first seem simply to echo
the drumbeat from the post-revolutionary Church on obedience and
authority.97 Vocational matters, however, sometimes entailed disobedience
to both parents and governments, especially governments seeking to
restrict clergy and transnational religious orders. Pious disobedience had
already been enjoined by seventeenth-century writers, but it was still more
possible after the demise of the Old Regime society of orders. And despite
an apparent siege mentality and dim view of “the world” in nineteenthcentury Catholic culture—an attitude reflected in the claim that the clerical
and religious states were “safer” from the world’s dangers than was the lay
state—vocational culture also exhibited a confidence about renewal. This
confidence was at least partly validated by quantitative growth in clerical
and religious recruitment and closer approximation of qualitative ideals,
such as that of “the good priest.”98 Changing emphases in vocational culture over time show us how this post-revolutionary age of mobilization and
revival differed from the early modern Catholic Reformation. Facing
94. Vaughan, “Preface,” xviii–xix.
95. Vaughan, “Preface,” xxix.
96. Peter C. Wilcox, John Henry Newman: Spiritual Director, 1845–1890 (Eugene, OR,
2013), 213, 215–17, 222–23, 226.
97. See Michael J. Schuck, That They Be One: The Social Teaching of the Papal Encyclicals,
1740–1989 (Washington, DC, 1991), 32.
98. See Price, Religious Renewal, 215–17; Marcel Launay, Le bon prêtre: le clergé rural au
XIXe siècle (Paris, 1986).

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Catholic populations better-educated and more socially free, nineteenthcentury Catholic leaders chose to spread their vocational doctrines more
frequently beyond elite circles than had their seventeenth-century forbears.
And precisely because so much post-revolutionary rebuilding was needed,
nineteenth-century Catholic vocational culture was both more activist
(with a downplaying of contemplative life) and more clericalist (with a
downplaying of lay vocation) than that of the past.
“Clericalism” is often a term of abuse, variously defined. That said, a
culture of clericalism (here inclusive of women religious) was an important—even necessary—aspect of nineteenth-century Catholic revival. This
revival exemplifies the intersection of a more voluntary “age of mobilization” with the bureaucratizing tendencies of modernity. Catholic rebuilding in the post-revolutionary era demanded strong institutions with massive numbers of full-time professionals. Centuries of experience,
ecclesiastical law, and theological conviction made it clear that those institutional roles would be filled by celibates rather than married laity. On the
practical measures of mobility, single-mindedness, and expense, a growing
lay activism could never match the potential of (educated, professionalized,
and celibate) clergy and religious to staff church institutions. Lifelong
promises of obedience facilitated the success of collective, centralized
efforts, within hierarchical structures of dioceses and religious congregations. State-sponsored anticlericalism, beginning in the eighteenth century, included attacks on institutions of religious and clerical celibates,
especially those which transcended national borders. Significant numbers
of individual celibates had abandoned their commitments, especially
during the height of the French Revolution. These losses took their toll not
only on morale but on the practical operation of almost all ecclesiastical
life, and any recovery thus had to focus on reversing these trends.
It would be reductionist to claim that the seventeenth-century concept
of lay vocation was abandoned during the nineteenth century for merely
instrumental reasons, as if practical personnel needs trumped all considerations. For starters, lay vocation was never entirely abandoned, and the
concept was promulgated especially in some of the reprinted seventeenthcentury works. Furthermore, theological claims about the greater dignity of
clergy and religious were of much older vintage.99 Aspects of these theo99. One support of clericalism was a deeply held and nuanced ambivalence about the
married state, an ambivalence that reached back to the New Testament. This ambivalence
continued to be encouraged throughout the nineteenth century in works aimed at a youthful
audience; for example, see Popiel, Heroic Hearts, 37–39, 41, 45–50.

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RIGORISM AND CLERICALISM

logical claims might be emphasized loudly or quietly, and with greater or
lesser nuance, by various parties in various ages, but they remained matters
of sincere conviction. Moreover, although aspects of pastoral care could be
performed by non-ordained persons, the parish priest’s core duties of
sacramental administration could not be delegated, hence the ongoing anxiety of bishops over recruitment of diocesans.100 Ultimately, it should be no
surprise that nineteenth-century Catholic reformers emphasized concepts
that fit the church’s situation on the ground. As noted above, Malou commented that the religious state had “always adapted itself to the wants of
the Church and the necessities of the times,” and Vaughan noted that
canon law defenses of the diocesan clergy (against excessive recruitment by
religious orders) in England were for the “public good” of the church.101
The practical recruitment needs of Catholic revival were part of divine
providence, to be integrated into pastoral care of the young. A renewed
culture of vocational discernment, with a strong emphasis on clergy and
religious, therefore, served as one of the ways to bring young men and
women to the point of choosing to dedicate their lives in service.102
That said, this partial eclipse of lay vocation was real, and it profoundly
influenced an increasingly transnational Catholic culture. This eclipse
strengthened a clericalist social imaginary in which the lay state and marriage were thought to be “non-vocations.”103 Much pre-Vatican-II reflection saw in this clericalism a disorder that demanded bold new thinking on
the laity as such. According to an American priest and seminary professor,
writing in 1942, ordinary Catholics had the false “impression that vocation
is something reserved for priests or nuns, and that it has nothing to do with
a man or woman in the world.”104 Dominican theologian Yves Congar,
writing in 1953, noted a sign of hope: in recent decades there had been a
“rediscovery . . . that lay people are fully ‘of the Church.’”105 New
approaches to lay vocation, seeing some of their fullest expression in the
100. See, for example, Félix Dupanloup, “Lettre au clergé sur la rareté des vocations
sacerdotales,” in: Oeuvres choisies de Mgr. Dupanloup, 4 vols. (Paris, 1862), III, 562–90.
101. See notes 82 and 90, above.
102. Although the same core principles of vocational doctrine (especially the obligation
to obey God’s call) were taught to both men and women, more research might reveal distinctions of emphasis and of modes of dissemination, depending on the genders of various historical actors (preacher, writer, schoolboy, novice mistress in a convent, etc).
103. See note 78, above.
104. William R. O’Connor, The Layman’s Call (New York, 1942), 2.
105. Yves M.-J. Congar, Lay People in the Church: A Study for a Theology of the Laity,
trans. Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD, 1959), xxviii. “Redécouverte . . . : les laïcs sont
pleinement d’Église.” Yves M.-J. Congar, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (Paris, 1953), 8.

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683

An illustration from a Catholic children’s catechism shows a boy and a girl
discerning their vocations. On the left, a boy discerning a vocation to the
priesthood tells his parents “See the stole I’ll wear some day!” On the right, a girl
discerning a vocation to the religious life tells her teacher “Some day I’ll be a sister
like you and teach.” The center panel shows Christ telling his disciples “The harvest
indeed is abundant, but the laborers are few,” a reference to the need for religious
vocations. Louis La Ravoire Morrow, My Catholic Faith (1949), illustration.

Vatican II documents Lumen Gentium and Apostolicam Actuositatem, did
not draw strongly from the models of vocational discernment so prevalent
during the nineteenth century. The renaissance of lay vocation during the
twentieth century was not simply a return to the somewhat more inclusive
seventeenth-century models of choosing a state of life. Seeing the clericalism to which early modern developments had led, writers like Congar
sought to rethink the entire framework regarding vocation and the states
of life that held sway in the Church. He and other luminaries of Vatican
II asked different questions about lay vocation than those that had preoccupied early modern writers.
Despite the council documents’ repeated use of words such as “vocation” and “calling,” they said little to nothing about how to choose one
state of life or another, and thus the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century
tradition of vocational discernment has continued to fulfill that need. A
subset of Catholics still seek religious clarity in these life choices. From the

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RIGORISM AND CLERICALISM

institutional side, dioceses and religious congregations need new blood in
order to survive, and older approaches to vocational discernment remain a
key tool for engaging with potential new members. Even if “vocations ministry has now moved from recruitment to discernment,” “offices of vocation,” for example, tend to serve primarily those interested in the priesthood or the religious life.106 This institutional structure may serve
important pastoral needs of the faithful, as there must be some formalized
way to connect with potential candidates. Yet this structure also suggests
that seventeenth- to nineteenth-century approaches to vocation persist and
that those approaches subtly reinforce the idea that “vocation is something
reserved for priests or nuns.”107 Vocational discernment, clericalism, lay
vocation—whatever their present manifestations, all of these aspects of
Catholic modernity have histories, and those histories were integral to the
Catholic Reformation in the seventeenth century and the Catholic revival
in the nineteenth.

106. Christopher Jamison, “Introduction,” in: The Disciples’ Call: Theologies of Vocation
from Scripture to the Present Day, ed. Christopher Jamison (London, 2013), 1–5, here 5; see
also Christopher Jamison, “A Culture of Vocation,” in: The Disciples’ Call, 225–39.
107. See note 104, above.

Was Rolf Hochhuth’s Play, The Deputy,
the Result of a KGB Plot?
Assessing the Merits of a Decades-old
Conspiracy Theory
MARK EDWARD RUFF*
Abstract: This article seeks to debunk a conspiracy theory regarding the
origins of the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s incendiary play
from 1963, The Deputy, which denounced Pope Pius XII for his
alleged silence about German crimes in the Holocaust. According to
these conspiracy theories, this play’s success was the result of a masterstroke by Soviet intelligence, which had infiltrated the Vatican and
stolen documents from the Vatican archives. By examining letters and
correspondence pertaining to the play’s origins, including its original
drafts, this article argues that this conspiracy theory is chronologically
implausible. Hochhuth’s own account of the play’s origins remains more
or less correct, some inaccurate details notwithstanding.
Keywords: conspiracy, Rolf Hochhuth, Ion Mihai Pacepa, The
Deputy, Pius XII
Introduction
This article seeks to debunk a conspiracy theory regarding the origins of
the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy.1 This incendiary
play was premiered at the Free People’s Theater in West Berlin on February
* Mark Edward Ruff is Professor of History and Interim Chair of the Department of
History at Saint Louis University. A specialist in modern German and modern religious history, he received his Ph.D. in 1999 from Brown University. His email address is:
Mark.Ruff@slu.edu.
1. Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter. Schauspiel. Mit einem Vorwort von Erwin Piscator
(Reinbek, 1963). A later edition from 1998 contained a number of alterations. Rolf
Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter, Mit einem Vorwort von Erwin Piscator und Essays von Karl
Jaspers, Muschg, Piscator und Golo Mann, (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1963, 1998). In the following citations, the author is indicating the use of the editions as follows. Rolf Hochhuth, Der
Stell-vertreter (1963) and Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998).

685

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

BlackIceNRW (user), Rolf Hochhuth after a reading of his book “McKinsey is Coming“
in Duisburg, 2005, photograph (modified from original by provider), April 25,
2005, accessed October 31, 2023, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=12307815. Photo is used with permission of the copyright holder.

20, 1963 and directed by Erwin Piscator, a renowned director from the
Weimar era and former Communist who had spent part of the wartime years
in Moscow. The Deputy’s run at the peak of the Cold War between 1963 and
1966 on stages in more than a dozen Western nations from Switzerland to
the United States and from 1966 onward in Eastern Europe left a trail of
public controversies—and a papal reputation in tatters.2 Accusing Pope Pius
XII of refusing to issue a ringing public denunciation of Nazi genocide
against Jews, Hochhuth’s play, more than any previous criticism, fundamentally altered public perceptions of the recently deceased pontiff, changing his
moniker from the “Pope of Peace” to the “Pope that was silent.”3
2. Nadine Ritzer, Alles nur Theater? Zur Rezeption von Rolf Hochhuths “Der Stellvertreter”
in der Schweiz, 1963/1964 (Fribourg, 2006), 61–85; Newspaper Clipping, “Italiens Linke
gegen den Papst. ‘Der Stellvertreter’ und ein Bombenanschlag in Rom,” Der Tagesspiegel,
February 23, 1965, and “Hochhuths Papstdrama in Rom verboten,” Frankenpost, February
18, 1965, and “Schauspieler legte Bombe am Vatikan: Volonte spielt in Hochhuths ‘Stellvertreter’ mit,” Westdeutsche Rundschau, Wuppertal, February 20, 1965, Rowohlt Theater
Archive (hereafter referred to as RTA), Reinbek bei Hamburg. Mark Edward Ruff, The Battle
for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945–1980 (New York, 2017).
3. See Mark Edward Ruff, “Die Auseinandersetzungen über Rolf Hochhuths ‘Stellvertreter”’: Ein Historisierungsversuch,” in: Eugenio Pacelli als Nuntius in Deutschland.
Forschungsperspektiven und Ansätze zu einem internationalen Vergleich, ed. Hubert Wolf
(Paderborn, 2012), 111–25.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

687

His career launched by the success and notoriety of The Deputy, Rolf
Hochhuth (1931–2020) went on to gain fame and notoriety as both a public
intellectual and a conspiracy theorist who accused Winston Churchill of
engineering the death of the Polish resistance leader, Władysław Eugeniusz
Sikorski, in an airplane crash.4 In a remarkable irony, decades later, The
Deputy was alleged to have been the poisonous fruit of a nefarious conspiracy. The allegations came from another inveterate conspiracy theorist, the
former high-ranking Romanian intelligence agent and high-profile defector
to the United States in 1978, Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa (1928–
2021), who had gained prominence for claiming that the KGB stood
behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.5
In January 2007, Pacepa published an article, “Moscow’s Assault on
the Vatican,” in the conservative American newsmagazine, The National
Review.6 Pacepa alleged that Hochhuth’s surprising success was actually a
masterstroke by Soviet intelligence, which had infiltrated the Vatican.
According to his account, in February 1960 Nikita Khrushchev signed off
on “a super-secret plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in
Western Europe.” The deceased Pacelli was to be “the main target” in a
mission that had been given the code name “Seat-12.” A Vatican representative allegedly working for the KGB, Agostino Casaroli, allegedly gave
Pacepa access to the Vatican archives, and “hundreds of documents connected in any way with Pope Pius XII” were smuggled out of the Vatican
Archives and the Apostolic Library.”7 At some point in 1963 after the
operation had been wrapped up (Pacepa did not give the precise date), he
was told in Bucharest by General Ivan Agayants, the “famous chief of the
KGB’s disinformation department,” that these efforts “had materialized
into a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII.” Agayants, Pacepa wrote,
“took credit for the outline of the play.” The Deputy’s print edition also contained an unconventional extensive historical appendix entitled “Sidelights
4. Rolf Hochhuth, Soldaten: Nekrolog auf Genf (Reinbek, 1967).
5. Obituaries duly noted how both men were engulfed in conspiracy theories. See Willi
Winkler, “Der Lautsprecher,” Süddeutsch Zeitung, May 14, 2020, retrieved on October 29,
2023, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/rolf-hochhuth-gestorben-tot-nachruf-1.4907526;
Clay Risen, “Ion Mihai Pacepa, Key Cold War Defector, Dies at 92,” New York Times, March
16, 2021, retrieved on October 29, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/obituaries/
ion-mihai-pacepa-dead-covid.html; Ion Mihai Pacepa, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey
Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination (Lanham, 2007).
6. Ion Pacepa, “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican,” The National Review, January 25,
2007, retrieved on October 26, 2023, https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/01/moscowsassault-vatican-ion-mihai-pacepa/
7. Ibid.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

on History.” This extended historical essay provided an exegesis of the documentary material—the memoirs, trial proceedings, letters, diary entries,
documentary editions, press reports—from which the play was derived.8
These appendices, Pacepa claimed, had been “put together by his experts
with help from the documents we had purloined from the Vatican.” The
director, he added, was Erwin Piscator, a “devoted Communist who had a
longstanding relationship with Moscow.”
Generating headlines in leading international newspapers and newsmagazines, Pacepa’s revelations became grist for the culture wars over Pius
XII that had first broken out in 1963 as a result of Hochhuth’s play and
had resumed in the late 1990s in part over the question of whether Pope
Pius XII should be canonized.9 Not surprisingly, opinion quickly divided.
Thomas Brechenmacher, a well-known German scholar of the Vatican,
expressed deep skepticism about the merits of Pacepa’s claims.10 They
nonetheless made the rounds on a number of Roman Catholic websites,
which embraced them as part of their larger defense of the beleaguered
pontiff.11 Without having read Pacepa’s article, the CDU delegate, Norbert Geis, immediately proclaimed that “if only half of these allegations
turn out to be true, this would be one of the greatest scandals of postwar
history.”12 The German historian, Michael Feldkamp, offered vocal support for Pacepa’s claims, labeling them “wholly credible.”13
8. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 381–469.
9. For examples of the headlines generated, see Matthias Matussek and Alexander
Slotczyk, “Ein Satanischer Feigling: Rolf Hochhuth über die neuen Kontroversen zu seinem
Papst-Stück ‘Der Stellvertreter’ und Pius XII,” Der Spiegel, May 26, 2007. See “Die Stellvertreter: Die Debatte um Pius XII. im Licht eines Geheimdienstgeständnisses,” Neue
Züricher Zeitung, February 24, 2007. See also “Der Stellvertreter Krieg. Von Strohmännern,
Strohhüten und Strohfeuern: War Rolf Hochhuth ein Werkzeug des KGB, als er sein Drama
über Papst Pius XII schrieb?” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 14, 2007.
10. Thomas Brechenmacher, “Hochhuths Quellen. War ‘Der Stellvertreter’ vom KGB
inspiriert?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 26, 2007.
11. See e.g. George Ryan, “Unmasking the Cold War Communist Conspiracy to
Undermine the Vatican,” Catholic, May 9, 2023, retrieved on October 29, 2023,
https://ucatholic.com/blog/unmasking-the-cold-war-communist-conspiracy-to-underminethe-vatican/. See also the support of the distinguished scholar, George Weigel, for Pacepa’s
claims in “The KGB campaign against Pius XII,” Denver Catholic, February 14, 2007,
retrieved on October 29, 2023, https://denvercatholic.org/kgb-campaign-pius-xii/.
12. Adelheid Wedel, “Die ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ beschreibt…,” Deutschlandfunk
Kultur, March 13, 2007, retrieved on October 26, 2023 from https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/von-adelheid-wedel-1070.html.
13. See William Oddie, “A Securitate General says that Hochhuth’s play was part of a
KGB plot against Pius XII’s reputation: The National Catholic Register attempts to discredit
this: but serious historians believe it,” Catholic Herald, February 13, 2014, retrieved on

MARK EDWARD RUFF

689

Anghel Pasat / Agerpres Arhiva, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Seful Serviciilor Secrete din România—1975 [Ion Mihai Pacepa, Head of the Secret Services of Romania—1975],
photograph, 1975, accessed November 6, 2023, form https://commons. wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Ion_Mihai_Pacepa_1975cr.jpg. Image is in the public domain.

But it was the American legal scholar and University of Mississippi
law professor, Ronald Rychlak, who most ardently embraced the former
Romanian intelligence officer’s claims.14 Initially skeptical, he ultimately
found them so persuasive that he incorporated them into two books. The
first was a revised edition from 2010 of his 2000 original, Hitler, The War
and the Pope; the second, Disinformation, was a work co-authored with
Pacepa in 2013.15 Bearing a laudatory forward from R. James Woolsey, the
CIA director from 1993 through 1995, Disinformation expanded on
October 24, 2023, https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-securitate-general-says-that-hochhuthsplay-was-part-of-a-kgb-plot-against-pius-xiis-reputation-the-national-catholic-registerattempts-to-discredit-this-but-serious-historians-b/.
14. See Ronald Rychlak, “Lt. Gen. Io Mihai Pacepa and the Plot against the Pope,”
August 17, 2012, retrieved on October 26, 2023, from http://www.ncregister.com/blog/
edward-pentin/the-framing-of-pius-xii-from-skepticism-to-belief
15. Ronald Rychlak, Hitler, the War and the Pope, Revised Edition (Huntington, IN,
2010); Ion Mihai Pacepa and Ronald J. Rychlak, Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals
Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism (Washington, DC, 2013), 110–82. For a controversy aroused by this work, see the review by Victor
Gaetan, “‘Disinformation’ and a Dubious Source,” and the rebuttal by Father Peter Gumpel,
in the National Catholic Register, National Catholic Register, August 10, 2013, retrieved on
October 26, 2023, from http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/disinformation-and-adubious-source.

690

ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Pacepa’s allegations from 2007 in roughly 70 of its 438 pages. Dismissing
Hochhuth’s account of his play’s origins, Rychlak and Pacepa drew extensively on revelations about The Deputy’s origins and production run that had
come to light in public controversies about the incendiary play in Germany, the United States, and Switzerland in the 1960s and early 1970s.
They used these to argue that The Deputy was likely “produced by the
KGB’s framing experts.”16 Since its publishers (the Rowohlt Verlag and
the Grove Press), director (Erwin Piscator), its stage (the Free People’s
Theater in West Berlin), its American producer (Herman Shumlin), many
of its translators (Jorge Semprún, for one), and champions around the
world (Ramparts magazine) had Communist ties or pasts, the play, they
held, must have been the result of a KGB-led “disinformation” campaign.17 In this conspiratorial retelling, Erwin Piscator played a much more
central role than before.
Is there substance to Pacepa’s and Rychlak’s claims? Determining
whether their claims are more than hearsay and circumstantial is the central task of this article. Rychlak’s and Pacepa’s accounts draw almost exclusively on English-language literature, most from the 1960s and 1970s, and
the latter’s recollections. Neither made use of the original German-language sources, including Hochhuth’s extensive personal and working
papers housed at the Swiss Literature Archive in Bern, the holdings of the
Free People’s Theater (Freie Volksbühne) housed in the Archiv der Künste
in Berlin, and documents from Hochhuth’s publisher found at the
Rowohlt Theater Archive in Reinbek. This analysis draws on these collections, including the original sketchbooks and manuscripts of The Deputy,
Hochhuth’s correspondence with the historians, librarians, and literati who
assisted him, and interviews with Hochhuth’s co-workers and first wife,
Marianne Heinemann.18

16. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 131. For his dismissal of Hochhuth’s account,
see 180–82. It is difficult for the reader to determine decisively which pages were written by
Pacepa and which by Rychlak in this double-authored account.
17. Rychlak, “Lt. Gen. Io Mihai Pacepa and the Plot against the Pope.” Rychlak also
wrote: “Today, however, a closer examination of The Deputy through the magnifying lens supplied by Wolff’s revelation and by documents and first-hand testimonies leads to the
inescapable conclusion that The Deputy was a product of dezinformatsiya.” Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 175.
18. This analysis is rooted in research into seventy-seven archives in six countries over
eleven years. It draws on findings from the author’s recent monograph, The Battle for the
Catholic Past in Germany, 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 2017). It makes extensive use of Rolf
Hochhuth’s personal papers which are housed in the Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv in Bern,
Switzerland. This collection has been re-organized and re-catalogued since the author first

MARK EDWARD RUFF

691

Analyzing the merits of Pacepa’s allegations might nonetheless seem
to be an impossible task without access to the archives of the KGB and the
DIE, the Romanian foreign intelligence service for which Pacepa had
worked. To their credit, both Rychlak and Pacepa acknowledge this: “No
smoking gun has yet been found to prove the Kremlin’s hand in this new
war against the Judeo-Christian world, because the KGB archives are still,
unfortunately, sealed.”19 But there are fortunately other methods to gauge
the accuracy of Pacepa’s and Rychlak’s claims. The first is to examine the
controversies of the mid-1960s over Hochhuth’s use of sources. The second
is to scour Pacepa’s accounts for inconsistencies, omissions and inaccuracies by comparing it with archival evidence that he did not use. The third
is to analyze the source material appearing in Hochhuth’s “Sidelights on
History,” which informed the text of his play.
This strategy is admittedly not foolproof. Most sensible recipients of
papers smuggled out of church archives in Rome would have destroyed any
evidence of relationships to intelligence agents. Hochhuth`s own private
and public accounts of how he constructed The Deputy, moreover, contain
inconsistencies. But as we shall see, the archival discoveries belie Pacepa’s
claims. The errors, omissions, and chronologically impossible claims in
Pacepa’s and Rychlak’s accounts far outweigh any small inconsistencies in
Hochhuth’s telling of the tale and alone render their central claims highly
improbable at best.
Controversies in the 1960s about Hochhuth’s Sources
It is no surprise that Hochhuth found himself facing tough questions
about sources amid the explosive controversies set off by productions of
The Deputy between 1963 and 1966. The young playwright, born in the
eastern Hessian town of Eschwege in 1931, was a historical autodidact. In
a formal interview with Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsmagazine, he
admitted that he was “no historian.”20 He had not received an Abitur, the
degree granted after completing the course of study at an academic high
school (Gymnasium). He lacked a formal university education, although he
used it in 2007 and 2008. Not only do the documents bear different folder numbers (Signaturen); many additional letters, newspaper clippings and correspondence have been added to
it. Unless indicated by the phrase, “New Record Number,” the author is providing the original
folder and box numbers, using the SLA’s designation for box, “Schachtel.”
19. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 202.
20. “Mein Pius ist keine Karikatur: Spiegel-Gespräch mit Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth,”
Der Spiegel, no. 17, April 24, 1963, p. 90.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

had audited courses in Munich and Heidelberg. Instead, he had pursued a
career as a bookseller. Only in 1955 did he become a house editor for the
Rütten und Loening publishing company, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann.21
That an unknown young playwright with no formal historical training
could have carried out the audacious research necessary to put together this
work stretched the imagination. What were his sources, the press sought
to know?22 Already in 1963, rumors flew that Hochhuth “had gotten his
material in East Berlin.”23 The young author subsequently told the press
that though he had not had any access to archives in the Vatican, he had
interviewed Vatican dignitaries during a three-month sojourn to Rome in
the fall of 1959 and had even been received in the Secretariat of State of
the Vatican.24 But to protect these officials from recrimination, he refused
to divulge their names.25 The press speculated about the identities and
motives of his informants—and whether the playwright had actually
spoken with any such officials.26 These officials turned out to be the Aus21. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to die Redaktion, Die Zeit, Hamburg, n.d. but most
likely April 4, 1963, Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv (hereafter SLA), Nachlass Rolf
Hochhuth (hereafter NL), Schachtel 269.
22. “Mein Pius ist keine Karikatur: Spiegel-Gespräch mit Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth,”
90. See also: Newspaper Clipping, “Ein absurdes Bühnenwerk gegen das Friedenswerk Pius
XII,” April 1, 1963, Archiv der Katholischen Nachrichten Agenture (hereafter KNA
Archive), Dokumentation Rolf Hochhuth. This archive, however, no longer exists; some of
its contents became part of the archival collections of the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte in
Bonn. See the critical comments raised in a public discussion that were aired by the Sender
Freie Berlin (hereafter SFB). See SFB, Das Thema, April 3, 1963, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv
DRA Pressearchiv (hereafter DRA), Potsdam, Personalia Hochhuth, St. R.K., Abteilung
Information, SFB.
23. Herman Nickel, The Hochhuth Controversy, October 11, 1963 (recd. October 14,
1963), ADK, Piscator-Center 182, 5. Alan Nickel, The Hochhuth Controversy, October 11,
1963 (recd. October 14, 1963), Archiv der Akademie der Künste (hereafter AAK), Berlin,
Piscator 5.
24. “Mein Pius ist keine Karikatur: Spiegel-Gespräch mit Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth,”
90; Newspaper Clipping, Aktueller Dienst Kultur, “Vatikan: Hochhuth nicht bekannt,”, no.
37, February 22, 1961, Archiv der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte (AKZG), Bonn, Nachlass
Walter Adolph, WA 16D1. Please note that Adolph’s papers are now located in the Diözesanarchiv Berlin.
25. Helmut Koischenreuther, “NRZ-Gespräch mit Bühnen-Autor Rolf Hochhuth,
‘Ich hasse Papst Pius XII. nicht,’” Neue Rheinzeitung, March 9, 1963, Historisches Archiv des
Erzbistums Köln (hereafter, HAEK), Cologne, Gen II 22.13, 35.
26. Koischenreuther, “NRZ-Gespräch mit Bühnen-Autor Rolf Hochhuth, ‘Ich hasse
Papst Pius XII. nicht’”; “Mein Pius ist keine Karikatur: Spiegel-Gespräch mit Dramatiker
Rolf Hochhuth,” 91–92. For attempts by the KNA, the Catholic wire services agency, to discern their identities, see “Presse-und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung,” Spiegel der
Katholischen Kirchenpresse, March 30, 1963, p. 5, HAEK, Gen II 22, 13, 34.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

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trian bishop and Nazi sympathizer, Alois Hudal, and Monsignor Bruno
Wüstenberg, both of whom, it seems, had been nurturing grudges against
Pope Pius XII.27 Hudal, who died on May 13, 1963, was outed as one of
his two informants later that year.28 Hochhuth kept Wüstenberg’s identity
concealed for years, however.
Just as many eyebrows were raised by the seventy-page documentary
appendix. Its first edition lacked formal citations.29 Subsequent editions
added barebones footnotes, but even these were few in number.30 Responding to criticisms from a peer-reviewed report on his play, Hochhuth justified these omissions to the head of his publisher, the Rowohlt Verlag, by
noting that citing every detail would result in an appendix longer than the
text of the play itself.31 In his appendix’s epilogue, he accordingly noted that
he was naming only “a few” of his sources.32 The press nonetheless reported
that Hochhuth had corresponded and conversed with the Jewish pioneer of
research into anti-Semitism, Léon Poliakov, the English historian of the
Final Solution, Gerald Reitlinger, and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich. Hochhuth had indeed used
quotations from their works to corroborate his papal portrait.33
In sum, the controversies engulfing the play enshrouded both author
and his brainchild in mystery, one mostly but never fully uncovered during
that time. It was not in the interest of either the press, the author, or the
director to do so. Mystery heightened sales.

27. For speculation about Hudal’s motives, see Hans-Jakob Stehle, “Der Historiker
Hansjakob Stehle antwortet auf die Kritik des ‘Stellvertreter’-Autors Rolf Hochhuth,” Fokus,
35 (1998), retrieved on October 26, 2023, from https://www.focus.de/wissen/mensch/
geschichte/warum-pius-xii-schwieg-zeitgeschichte_id_1906945.html.
28. “Ein Kampf mit Rom,” Der Spiegel, no. 17, April 24, 1963.
29. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1963).
30. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1963). Only two of the 140 footnotes were annotated,
and even these annotations were pithy. The English version, published in paperback form in
1997, numbered only seventy-eight footnotes. See Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, with a Preface
by Albert Schweitzer, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Baltimore, 1997). The hardback
version had been published in 1964.
31. Letter from Hochhuth to Heinrich-Maria Ledig-Rowohlt, January 8, 1963, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth. Hochhuth was responding to the Gutachten of Frau Dr. Wild.
32. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 463.
33. “Ein Kampf mit Rom,” 83; “Mein Pius ist keine Karikatur: Spiegel-Gespräch mit
Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth,” 92. See also Newspaper Clipping, “Hochhuth weist ‘Rufmord’
zurück: Kontroverse zwischen Katholischer Nachrichtenagentur und dem Autor des ‘Stellvertreter,’” Abendzeitung, February 25, 1963, RTA. See Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution:
The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (Elstree, 1953).

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Problems with Pacepa’s Allegations from 2007
Arriving more than forty years after the controversy had ebbed,
Pacepa’s allegations from 2007 were seemingly out of the blue. The controversies over The Deputy had ebbed, although not in the way that Pacepa
claimed. The former intelligence agent insisted that “toward the mid
1970s, The Deputy started running out of steam.” The play, in fact, had
ceased generating headlines and controversies already in early 1966 following a controversial run in Brussels, although occasional performances did
continue throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Pacepa’s claims arose decades
later in the 2000s after Pope Pius XII’s conduct during the wartime years
had come under renewed fire. Dozens of books, articles, and reviewers
contributed to the so-called Pius Wars starting in the late 1990s, and
Pacepa’s claims might well be understood as a reaction against charges of
papal collusion, antisemitism, and cowardice.34
The problems with Pacepa’s allegations are fundamental. Pacepa erroneously asserted that The Deputy’s central thesis was that “Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust.”
Hochhuth, in fact, said no such thing. Instead, the central thesis of The
Deputy was that Pius XII chose to remain silent in the face of the Jewish
genocide. Or, as Hochhuth put it in the appendix of his play: “Perhaps
never before in history have so many human beings paid with their lives for
the passivity of a single statesman.”35 Though Hochhuth's rendition of Pius
presented him as welcoming Hitler's war against Bolshevism, he had not
directly “supported” Hitler nor encouraged him to go ahead with the
Holocaust, which by the time of the play’s climactic scene in October,
1943 had been underway for more than two years. Hochhuth, moreover,
took pains to point out Pius’s efforts to rescue individual Jews in Rome. In
the immediate aftermath of The Deputy’s premiere, he responded angrily to
accusations that placed the “major” responsibility for the murder of six million Jews on the shoulders of Pius XII.36 In a statement that the Rowohlt
34. For examples of this literature, see: John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of
Pope Pius XII (New York, 1999); Susan Zuccotti, Under his very Windows: The Vatican and the
Holocaust in Italy (New Haven, 2000); Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust,
1930–1965 (Bloomington, 2000); Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the
Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York, 2002); Joseph Bottum and
David G. Dalin, The Pius War: Response to the Critics of Pius XII (Lanham, MD, 2004).
35. Hochhuth, The Deputy (1998), 402.
36. Newspaper clipping, “Hochhuth und Rowohlt weisen Vorwürfe zurück,” Der
Tagesspiegel, 24 February 1963. Press clipping, “Rowohlt verteidigt Hochhuth,” Telegraf,
February 24, 1963, AKZG, NL Walter Adolph, WA16D1.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

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Verlag submitted to the Deutsche Presse Agentur, a leading German wire
services agency, Hochhuth alleged that such accusations amounted to
“character assassination.”37 Of course, one could construe Pius’s silence as
an indirect mechanism of support, but this is a philosophical issue concerning the relationship between bystanders and perpetrators that does not represent the thrust of Pacepa’s article.
In addition to misunderstanding the very premise of The Deputy,
Pacepa based his claims on hearsay. Pacepa described meeting Agostino
Casaroli, “an influential member of the diplomatic corps,” who gave him
“access to the Vatican archives” on the spot.38 Yet Pacepa then noted that
it was not he but “three young DIE undercover officers posing as Romanian priests” who were digging in the “papal archives” and sending the “hundreds of documents connected in any way with Pope Pius XII” back to the
KGB via special courier during “1960–62.”39 Seemingly contradicting his
earlier boast of having received facile access to the archives, Pacepa noted
that he and his fellow agents “encountered almost insurmountable difficulties in penetrating the Vatican secret archives, even though they had airtight cover as priests.”40 But it was not Pacepa but Ivan Agayants who subsequently boasted “in 1963” of the KGB’s propaganda coup that allegedly
had steered these documents to Rolf Hochhuth. Nowhere did Pacepa
recount meeting Hochhuth personally. Nowhere did Pacepa mention that
he personally witnessed these documents make their way directly into the
background documents “put together by his experts with help from the
documents we had purloined from the Vatican.”41
Was, then, Agayants a reliable informant? Pacepa clearly thought so.
He cited Agayants’ apparent success in two previous disinformation missions. In 1943, Agayants allegedly infiltrated Franklin Roosevelt’s headquarters at the Tehran Conference of 1943 and fabricated a manuscript
in 1962 purporting to have come from Maxim Litvinov, the former
37. Ibid.
38. On Casaroli, see George Weigel, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The
Victory of Freedom, The Last Years, the Legacy (New York, 2010). See also George Weigel, “The
Ostpolitik Failed: Get over it,” First Things, July 20, 2016. Weigel too noted that the Vatican’s
Ostpolitik led to the infiltration of the Vatican by Communist intelligence agencies. Because
of his willingness to work with Communist regimes, Casaroli was a direct target.
39. Pacepa, “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican.” Pacepa’s chronology does not entirely
work here, since Casaroli did not become the Undersecretary of the Sacred Congregation for
Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs until February, 1961 and its Secretary until 1967.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Soviet commissar for foreign affairs. But it would be fallacious to conclude that Agayants’ claims about the apparent success of the Seat-12
mission were therefore accurate. In spite of Agayants’ boasts, Pacepa
himself concluded that its intelligence gathering operations in the Vatican were failures. “In actual fact,” he wrote, “no incriminating material
against the pontiff ever turned up in all those secretly photographed documents. Mostly they were copies of personal letters and transcripts of
meetings and speeches, all couched in the routine kind of diplomatic language one would expect to find.”42 Why would a general in the KGB
have taken credit for a work in which the documents allegedly smuggled
out amounted to routine correspondence and trivia? This stunning
admission of failure leaves one to consider whether Agayants’ braggadocio before his DIE operatives may have been little more than grandstanding or an attempt to save face.
Agayant’s account, as reported by Pacepa, also contains troublesome
omissions. How would Romanian thieves have even known where to find
salient materials in the Vatican? Since Pius XII had just died in 1958, it is
exceptionally unlikely that the materials from his pontificate would have
been sorted through, separated into binders, inventoried, and cataloged in
a boon to Romanian kleptomaniacs. Pacepa also seems to be conflating the
“Vatican Archives and the Apostolic Library” with the Secret Vatican
Archives. But the materials from Pius XII’s pontificate regarding matters
of state and diplomacy were still being held in the separate archive of the
Secretariat of State in 1960.43 Casaroli worked from 1950 to 1961 as a
Minutant in the Secretariat of State, a fact which at first glance might seem
to give credence to Pacepa’s account.44 But there is no evidence that
Hochhuth met Casaroli or even went to the Archive of the Secretariat of
State. How would a layman like Hochhuth have known about the distinction between the different archives and to seek out Casaroli there?45
Hochhuth’s command of foreign languages in general, including English,
Italian, and French, was poor. It was certainly not at the level of the schol42. Ibid.
43. This is a point also raised by Thomas Brechenmacher. See Brechenmacher,
“Hochhuths Quellen. War ‘Der Stellvertreter’ vom KGB inspiriert?”
44. Brechenmacher, “Hochhuths Quellen. War ‘Der Stellvertreter’ vom KGB
inspiriert?”
45. For an example of Hochhuth’s mediocre command of Italian, see the document
from Eitel Friedrich Moellhausen (presumably from the Wilhelmstrasse trials), in which
German translations were written above the Italian words. These translations do not appear
to be in Hochhuth’s handwriting, however. Bombe sul Vaticano, Exhibit. No, Weizsäcker
Doc. No. 147, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, no Schachtel number.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

697

ars working in the field.46 How could he have incorporated “hundreds of
documents,” many, if not most, presumably written in languages other
than German, into his play given the tremendous demands already put on
his time by his job as a house editor? It stretches the boundaries of plausibility to assume that the Romanian DIE agents were instructed to seek out
only German-language documents. Were these agents, moreover, well
versed in all of the languages necessary for such a task, including Latin,
German, Italian, French and English? Did they provide him with
German-language translations?
As a result, Hochhuth himself was almost entirely reliant on Germanspeaking contacts in the Vatican. He himself admitted this. On July 10,
1959, approximately two months before he left for Rome, he wrote to Dieter
Sattler, an official in the Culture Division of the German Foreign Office
asking for help not only in finding a room in Rome but in locating German
speakers in Rome with contacts to eyewitnesses from the early 1940s. “. . . I
know of no other way,” he wrote, “to reach my goal, since I have no connections to any persons or officials in Rome.”47 For the same reasons, he wrote
Prelate Josef Höfer in Rome after a Catholic official in Gütersloh where
Hochhuth worked had given him Höfer’s contact information.48 He misleadingly told Höfer that he had been working for some time on a “novel”
describing the doings of the Nazis in Rome and the sacrificial efforts of the
Salvatorians and other church organizations to help the besieged.
It was no surprise that it was German speakers who forged his connections to Bishop Alois Hudal and Monsignor Bruno Wüstenberg.
Hochhuth sought out Dr. Gerd Kloeters, a fellowship recipient of the
Görres-Gesellschaft, a society formed in the nineteenth century to support
Catholic academics. Hochhuth had apparently known Kloeters in Germany.49 Kloeters lived together in Rome with Ludwig Hammermayer,
now an emeritus professor at the university in Munich, and Bruno
46. See Birgitt Lahann, Rolf Hochhuth—der Störenfried (Bonn, 2016). Author interview
with Marianne Heinemann-Sideri, Basel, June 2009, transcript in the Archive of St. Louis
University.
47. Letter from Hochhuth to die Kulturabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes, z.Hd.
Herrn Staatssekretär, Dr Dieter Sattler, Gütersloh, July 10, 1959, SLA, NL Hochhuth (New
Record Number), B-04-a STELL-03-d, Recherchen, Rom.
48. Letter from Hochhuth to den Botschaftsrat, Herr Prälat Professor, Dr. Josef Höfer,
Eschwege, July 17, 1959, SLA, NL Hochhuth, (New Record Number), B-04-a STELL-03d, Recherchen, Rom.
49. Telephone interview between the author and Ludwig Hammermayer, Eichstätt,
2007—transcript in the Archive of St. Louis University.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Wüstenberg. Kloeters helped arrange for Hochhuth to provide Wüstenberg with a list of four questions in advance of an interview with the monsignor.50 The correspondence between Hochhuth and Hammermeyer
makes it clear that his German-speaking contacts were unaware of the
extent of Hochhuth’s ambitions.51 No one in Hochhuth’s position would
have dared jeopardizing such potentially valuable contacts by revealing
plans to place the deceased pontiff in an unflattering light center-stage.
Hochhuth told them instead that he was writing a literary work whose
central protagonist was a young priest who was following the example of
the Berlin prelate, Bernard Lichtenberg, who in Hochhuth’s words, was
planning “to let himself be deported to Poland to share the fate of the
Jews,” headed for the gas chambers in Auschwitz.52 Decades later,
Hochhuth admitted to regret at having misled Wüstenberg whom he
described as a “nice man.”53
Tellingly, both Rychlak and Pacepa discounted Hochhuth’s claims to
have interviewed Vatican officials. It was almost impossible, Pacepa
asserted, to get a “talkative bishop” to speak. As Rychlak wrote:
Both my coauthor and I have visited the Vatican many times, armed with
impressive official credentials, but neither of us has been able to push a
bishop into a corner and persuade him to reveal secret Vatican documents. Maybe Hochhuth got lucky. Maybe he made the story up (his
reputation for veracity is not good), or maybe he referred to the Vatican
documents obtained by the three DIE agents involved in “Seat-12.54

None of these assertions are sustainable. Hochhuth not only interviewed both Hudal and Wüstenberg, but also left behind detailed proto50. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Bruno Wüstenberg, October 23, 1959, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. For the protocol of Hochhuth’s interview, see the letter from
Rolf Hochhuth to Marianne (Hochhuth), October 26, 1959, SLA, Schachtel 5. The latter
document is a letter to his wife, which contains his protocol for the interview.
51. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Ludwig Hammermeier (sic), March 12, 1960, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 269. This letter, which showed off Hochhuth’s wit and charm,
consisted mostly of pleasantries. Hochhuth did ask Hammermayer “how a young priest would
have addressed a general in his order—and vice-versa.”
52. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Bruno Wüstenberg, October 23, 1959, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5.
53. Lahann, Hochhuth: Der Störenfried, 44–45.
54. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 130. For a similar skeptical case, see Ion
Pacepa, “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican.” Pacepa wrote: “In interviews he claimed that in
1959 he took a leave of absence from his job and went to Rome, where he spent three months
talking to people and then writing the first draft of the play, and where he ‘posed a series of
questions’ to one bishop whose name he refused to reveal. Hardly likely!”

MARK EDWARD RUFF

699

cols of both interviews.55 Contrary to Rychlak’s and Pacepa’s claim that
Hochhuth never identified the “chatty “bishop” at the Vatican,
Hochhuth did out his source publicly as Hudal.56 But neither Hudal nor
Wüstenberg, both of whom were comparatively low in the Vatican hierarchy, furnished Hochhuth with “secret Vatican documents.” They
merely corroborated Hochhuth’s suspicion that Pius XII had not issued
a ringing public protest against the deportation and murder of Jews.
Nowhere did Hochhuth use “Vatican documents obtained by the three
DIE agents.” As we shall see, his play did not depend on the use of any
such documents.
Besides failing to explain how Hochhuth made his contacts in the
Vatican, Pacepa’s story does not account for how the KGB allegedly discovered, vetted, recruited, and “handled” this relatively unknown young
German playwright. By any measure, Hochhuth would have been a most
unlikely and improbable agent. He was not active in any of the left-wing
circles in the labor movement or in the universities that might have comprised fertile recruiting grounds for Communist agents. He was not a
student. He was not a Communist. It is unclear whether there exists a
Stasi file on him. He was known not as an author (he had not yet published any original work) but as the editor of the collected works of the
nineteenth-century German satirist and caricaturist, Wilhelm Busch.57
Most significantly, Hochhuth himself was no orthodox and doctrinaire
left-winger. As much as he identified as a socialist, his own world-view
was also shaped by the German liberal heritage in which he grew up as
the son of a factory-owner in Eschwege.58 He was an admirer of Bismarck, maintaining a devotion that no card-carrying socialist would have
entertained. He condemned both Adenauer and Walter Ulbricht, the
East German leader, as “ideologues” and “high traitors” for their role in
dividing Germany.59 After becoming spectacularly wealthy from book
55. For the protocol of the interview with Wüstenberg and Hudal, see the letter from
Rolf Hochhuth to Marianne (Hochhuth), October 26, 1959, and Protokoll des Gesprächs
mit Hudal Schachtel, SLA, NL Hochhuth, Schachtel 5, Ausstellungsdokumente, Ringhefte.
56. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 130, 179; Rolf Hochhuth, “Der “Stellvertreter” und seine Kronzeugen. Die wahren Quellen des kirchenkritischen Klassikers,”
Focus, 6, no. 31, July 27, 1998.
57. Rolf Hochhuth, ed., Wilhelm Busch, Sämtliche Werke in zwei Bänden (Gütersloh,
1959).
58. For the reference to his “socialist heart,” see the letter from Rolf Hochhuth to
Erwin Piscator, 18 October 1963, ADK, Freie Volksbühne (hereafter, FVB), 186.
59. Rolf Hochhuth, “Friedhöfe und Eiserner Vorhang,” in: Eschwege: Ein Lesebuch, eds.
York-Egbert König and Karl Kollmann (Husum, 1996), 97–116, 112.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

and play royalties, he moved to Switzerland to avoid paying burdensome
taxes in Germany.60
Worse yet: he became a longstanding friend of the notorious rightwing British historian and Holocaust denier, David Irving. As a teenager,
Hochhuth had been outraged by Allied bombings of German cities, and
since the late 1950s, Irving had been chronicling the destruction of
German cities like Dresden at the hands of the Allies. Rychlak and Pacepa
themselves seized on Hochhuth’s friendship with Irving in a series of ad
hominem attacks against the playwright as evidence of Hochhuth’s dubious character.61 These attacks, in turns out, echo similar criticisms of
Hochhuth in the press when Irving faced charges by Austrian authorities
for his Holocaust denialism.62 “It is not easy to pin down where Hochhuth
stands on anything,” Rychlak and Pacepa concluded.63 If so, why would
someone so ideologically unreliable have been recruited or chosen by Eastern-bloc intelligence officials?
Adding to his unreliability was the fact that Hochhuth was choleric
and querulous. He confronted, quarreled, and excoriated, privately and
publicly. In a pattern dating back to his youth, he left a trail of broken
friendships, failed marriages (he was married four times), and severed
working relationships, including with Hermann Shumlin.64 He repeatedly
60. On the tax advantages of Switzerland, see: Kreuzfeuer mit Herrn Hochhuth am
15.6.65, Historisches Archiv des Westdeutschen Rundfunkes (hierafter, HAWDR), Cologne
#05790. He initially sought to establish his residence in the canton of Uri because its taxes
were amongst the lowest in Switzerland. Receiving residency, however, required an affirmative vote from the canton citizens. The voters in this heavily Catholic canton did not vote for
Hochhuth, and he opted to reside in the more heavily Protestant city of Basel. Intelligence
officials sometimes target those in financial hardship as potential agents, but Hochhuth himself came from a comfortable upper-middle-class and bourgeois (gut bürgerlich) Protestant
household (his father ran Eschwege’s oldest grocery and seed company) but had struggled to
establish a career as a writer in the 1950s.
61. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 163–65, 170–73. Hochhuth’s friendship
with Irving originated in several shared interests. Hochhuth despised the British and
American officials for having bombed German cities; Irving first gained his reputation for
chronicling the devastation of Allied bombing raids. Hochhuth also relied on Irving’s support when researching Soldiers, his play accusing Churchill of having engineered Sikorski’s
plane crash.
62. Joachim Güntner, “Streit um neues Hochhuth-Buch,” Deutschlandfunk, March 23,
2005, retrieved on October 24, 2023, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/streit-um-neueshochhuth-buch-100.html
63. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 173.
64. Hochhuth quarreled with Piscator, Shumlin, Reinhard Mohn, and Joseph Wulf.
Tellingly, his first wife, Marianne Hochhuth-Sideri, whose tumultuous marriage to the

MARK EDWARD RUFF

701

found himself threatening or being faced with legal action. Against the
wishes of those promoting The Deputy in New York City because of his
lack of understanding of the American legal system, he launched a lawsuit
against the Austro-Hungarian born film director, Otto Preminger, who
had publicly called him a “Nazi.”65 Would not a person so obviously unstable and facing public interrogation and disclosure have posed a risk to
intelligence officials seeking to keep their operation under wraps?
There is an additional problem with Pacepa and Rychlak’s account.
Hochhuth was convinced that The Deputy’s premiere would be a failure.
His escort driving him to the premiere, Winfried Ziemann, spent the
entire day trying to talk him out of these fears.66 Why would Eastern-bloc
intelligence officials have sponsored a work likely to fail? Or, did they not
share the author’s bleak assessment? To be sure, these objections do not
“disprove” Pacepa’s claims—but they certainly render them less plausible.
Chronological Problems with Pacepa’s Allegations
More damning is that Pacepa got the story wrong about how
Hochhuth came up with the idea for the play. Pacepa’s account is chronologically improbable, if not outright impossible. As we have seen, Agayants
took credit for the outline of Hochhuth’s play. For this to have been the
case, he would have had to have met with the playwright at some point
before July, 1959. Hochhuth’s papers, however, indicate that he came up
with the idea for the play on his own in the late 1950s, and most likely in
late 1958 directly following the death of Pius XII in October, 1958. In
early 1958, Hochhuth met a cabinetmaker in Southern Germany who
while serving in the German army had been given an assignment in
Auschwitz as punishment.67 Keenly interested in the mass murder of the
Jews, Hochhuth had discovered a most unusual report about the gas chambers in a documentary volume from 1955 about the extermination of the
playwright ended in divorce and who had every reason to be vengeful, scoffed at accusations that
the play bore the thumbprint of the KGB, regarding them as “nonsense.” Author interview with
Marianne Sideri, Basel, June 2009—transcript in the Archive of St. Louis University.
65. Letter from Sanford Jerome Greenberger to Klaus Juncker, Rowohlt Verlag, October 28, 1964, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 269.
66. Email from Benjamin Ziemann (son of Winfried Ziemann) to the author, June 20,
2019—transcript in the Archive of St. Louis University.
67. “Die Frage wurde dem Papst 1943 gestellt,” Werra-Rundschau, March 23, 1963.
Rychlak also cites an interview with Hochhuth in which he discussed meeting in 1956 an
Austrian who had helped with gassing in Auschwitz. Rychlak noted critically that Hochhuth
never identified this man. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 179.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Jews. It had been compiled by Leon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, two Jewish
pioneers of research into the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.68 This report
was from Kurt Gerstein, a Protestant opponent of National Socialism who
joined the SS to sabotage the Nazi war effort and unsuccessfully attempted
to blow up the gas chambers in Birkenau. Mesmerized by this find,
Hochhuth attempted to write a novella about Gerstein but quickly realized
that Gerstein was far better suited for the stage than a short story.69 After
the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, he delved into further historical texts.70 His edited editions of Wilhelm Busch’s work had proven so
successful that his boss, Reinhard Mohn, granted him a reward in the form
of a three month sabbatical in the fall of 1959 devoted solely to his own literary output.71 By July, 1959, Hochhuth began contacting libraries, publishing companies, and archives for access to the documentary material he
planned to incorporate—books, photos, and the proceedings of the Wilhelmstrasse and Nuremberg trials.72 He spent approximately six weeks in
Rome in September and October, 1959, taking in the scenery of the Vatican in order to describe the setting of Act IV and its climactic papal
scene.73 During this sojourn, Hochhuth began penning the first version of
his play in a small bound notebook which is preserved in the Swiss Literature Archives.74
The problem with Pacepa’s account, then, is fundamental. According
to Agayants, Khrushchev issued his directive to initiate the disinformation
campaign only in February 1960. Pacepa and Rychlak also suggested that
the decision to make Pope Pius XII the chief subject “was made not by
68. Léon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, “Augenzeugenbericht über Massenveragsungen,” in:
Das Dritte Reich und die Juden (Berlin, 1955), 101–15. For Hochhuth’s discovery of this, see
the following press dispatch. From: Paul Moor, Berlin stringer, filing through Bonn Bureau,
February 19, 1963, ADK, Erwin-Piscator Center, 182, F66.
69. Interview mit Hochhuth, aus Grümmer, Magisterarbeit, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth,
No Schachtel Number.
70. Rolf Hochhuth, Lebenslauf (no date), SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 396.
71. On the successful sales, see letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Reinhard Mohn, June 9,
1959, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 396.
72. Letter from Frau Dr. S. Noller, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, to Rolf Hochhuth, July
9, 1959, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5; letter from Rolf Hochhuth to den Verlag
Volk and Welt, June 16, 1959, Schachtel 296; letter from Rolf Hochhuth to das Bayrische
Staatsarchiv z.Hd. Herrn Prof. Memmsen, August 24, 1959, Schachtel 296; letter from Rolf
Hochhuth to Elfriede Gerstein, August 26, 1959, Schachtel 296.
73. For evidence, see the library cards he was issued in Rome. Biglietto di Libero
Ingresso ai Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, September 26, 1959, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth,
Schachtel 296.
74. Ringbuch mit Recherchenmaterial, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel Ausstellung.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

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Hochhuth, but by the play’s first producer, KGB influence agent Erwin
Piscator.”75 Hochhuth, however, did not even meet Piscator until the
spring of 1962; the first version of the play already featured Pope Pius XII
as its chief protagonist. A photograph of the playwright from his sojourn
in Rome in the fall of 1959 shows him wearing a papal cap.76
Are Pacepa’s accounts devoid of a factual basis? There are several ways
that those wishing to hold on to conspiracy theories might still be able to
reconcile Pacepa’s accounts with what we know about The Deputy’s origins.
On February 18, 1960, Hochhuth wrote to Bruno Wüstenberg and
informed him that his literary work was proceeding slowly. Not only was
it taking on greater dimensions than he had first envisioned, but his fulltime work as an editor left little time available to write.77 Is this, then, the
smoking gun, proof that the KGB had just decided to take Hochhuth
under its wings and supply him in the coming months and years with purloined documents? Once again, no. How could Agayants, or more likely
his underlings, have discovered, vetted and recruited Hochhuth within just
days—or at most seventeen days—after Khrushchev’s directive? This also
assumes, of course, that Khrushchev issued his directive in the first half of
February and not the second half. Pacepa provided no specific date.
At some point between the fall of 1959 and February of 1961,
Hochhuth made what was possibly the most significant addition to his
play. He worked out the climax of Act 4, where Pius washes his hands
after smudging them in ink while writing a feeble, watered-down statement that pointed out that the pope “knows no limits, neither of nationality, nor of religion nor of race.” The first drafts and sketches do not
include this obvious allusion to Pontius Pilate. That this scene was added
later is made clear by the fact that he added the following instructions in
bright-blue ink to the first draft preserved in the small bound notebook:
“The Pilate scene—perhaps—a wash basin, which will be brought to him,
because he will have dirtied his hands while signing his (illegible word)
statement. . . . Hand-washing.”78

75. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 180.
76. Lahann, Hochhuth: Der Störenfried.
77. Letter from Hochhuth to Prälat Bruno Wüstenberg, February 18, 1960, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5.
78. Ringbuch mit Recherchenmaterial, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel Ausstellung. The original draft reads: “Die Pilatusszene: vielleicht—ein Waschbecken, das ihm
gebracht wird, weil er sich beim Unterschreiben seine (illegible word) die Finger bekleckert
hat’ und ‘Hände waschen.”

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

An image from the play showing Pius XII washing his hands. Billy Rose Theatre
Division, The New York Public Library, “The Deputy (Hochhuth),” 1964, in the
New York Public Library Digital Collections, Image ID: TH-08051, accessed
October 31, 2023. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-c337-a3d9e040-e00a18064a99.

In his play’s epilogue, Hochhuth stated that this scene was inspired
not by the publication in France of the memoirs of the papal physician,
Galeazoo-Lisi, who noted Pacelli’s extreme obsession with personal
hygiene and hand-washing and his germophobia.79 Hochhuth observed
that this idea had “forced itself” upon him after he read the papal address
of June 2, 1945, in which Pacelli extolled the church’s resistance against the
Nazi onslaught and praised the Reichskonkordat as a shrewd defensive
measure. For Hochhuth, this was an obvious act of self-exculpation on the
part of Pius.80 But it is also possible that this scene was inspired by the
work of the anti-clerical French journalist, Edmond Paris, Le Vatican contre
Europe, from 1958. The book was translated from French into English and
published in 1961 by Macmillan in London. A promotional flyer for the
English-language book, which is preserved in Hochhuth’s papers and was
probably printed in 1960, contained the following sentences:
79. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1963), 273.
80. Ibid. For the text of this address, see Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche,
1933–1945, VI, 1943–1945, ed. Ludwig Volk, (Mainz, 1985), 884–93. This address had been
available in many other documentary editions already in the late 1940s.

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Chapter II—Genocide. The official figure—25 million dead in the concentration camps. An interview with the Holy Father: why was he silent
in the face of so many atrocities? ‘We were never informed. . .’—Washing of hands after the manner of Pontius Pilate, or the deaf man who
does not wish to hear.81

In other words, it is extremely doubtful that Agayants stood behind
the structure of the play.
Rendering Pacepa’s account even less plausible is the fact that
Hochhuth completed his draft in February, 1961.82 He submitted it and
sixty pages of documentation to the Rütten and Loening Verlag on May
23, 1961.83 But he continued to carry out research, as he made additions
and alterations to both the text of the play itself and the historical commentary.84 By August, he had signed a contract and by November, he had
made corrections to the page-proofs.85 At this point, the work was
intended to appear in book form only; on account of the high production
costs involved, no provisions were made for a stage production.86
At the end of December 1961, Hochhuth’s superior at Bertelsmann,
Reinhard Mohn, abruptly broke the contract after the advance copies had
been printed.87 He justified this measure with the argument that fortyseven percent of the readership of the Bertelsmann Book Club consisted of
81. Edmond Paris, The Vatican Against Europe (P.R. Macmillan Limited, London,
Geneva, 1960), SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 269.
82. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Professor Dr. Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964,
SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 352.
83. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Herrn Leonhardt, May 23, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 6. These dates for completing and printing the manuscript proofs do
not correspond to those provided by Birgit Lahann, who puts them at 1959 and 1960 respectively. Lahann’s account is based on interviews with the playwright; this is based on the written correspondence from Hochhuth’s papers. Lahann, Hochhuth: Der Störenfried, 56.
84. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Léon Poliakov, May 24, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 5.
85. August was the date that he gave to Friedrich Herr. See the letter from Rolf
Hochhuth to Friedrich Herr, January 23, 1962, Österreichisches Literaturarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Wien (hereafter, ÖLA), NL Friedrich Herr, ohne Signatur;
letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth,
Schachtel 352.
86. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Willy Haas, Die Welt, January 1, 1962, SLA, NL
Hochhuth, (New Record Number) B-04-a-STELL-01-U bis W, Der Stellvertreter, Korrespondenz U bis W.
87. On the breaking of the contract, see the letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Friedrich
Herr, January 21, 1962, ÖLA, NL Friedrich Herr.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Catholics, who would be none too happy to encounter a work sharply critical of the deceased pope. Hochhuth was furious with Mohn but unwilling
to speak out against his boss who had granted him a sabbatical and generously financed his research stay in Rome.88
As Hochhuth began frantically writing literary figures and agents for
help, Hochhuth’s champion at Rütten & Loening, Karl Ludwig Leonhardt, surreptitiously submitted these page proofs, apparently even without
Hochhuth’s prior knowledge, to the left-leaning publishing company,
Rowohlt.89 Having put together the contract for The Deputy, Leonhardt
was angered at the shabby treatment Hochhuth had just received.90 Like
Hochhuth, he was convinced that the crimes of National Socialism were
being suppressed and needed to be brought to light.91
The readers at Rowohlt’s Theater Publishers (Rowohlt Theaterverlag),
however, initially expressed reservations. The work, they noted, suffered
from stylistic deficiencies and would have difficulty finding a stage because
of its seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties. They nonetheless
praised its rich historical documentation and considered publishing it as a
documentary.92 In spite of these weaknesses, the head of Rowohlt, Heinrich
Maria Ledig-Rowohlt, passed it to Erwin Piscator on February 26, 1962 for
his verdict, noting that he alone would have the requisite courage to pull off
a production.93 After deliberating for less than twelve hours, Piscator, who
88. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Willy Haas, Die Welt, January 1, 1962, SLA, NL
Hochhuth, (New Record Number) B-04-a-STELL-01-U bis W, Der Stellvertreter Korrespondenz U bis W.
89. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Herrn Pfarrer Hans-Jürgen Ehlers, July 29, 2007,
Private Collection, Margaret Osthus. The author would like to thank her for sending him a
copy of this letter.
90. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Willy Haas, Die Welt, January 1, 1962, SLA, NL
Hochhuth. (New Record Number) B-04-a-STELL-01-U bis W, Der Stellvertreter Korrespondenz U bis W.
91. Author’s Telephone Interview with Margaret Osthus, August 2007—transcript in
the Archive of St. Louis University.
92. On the reservations, see the letter on Rowohlt Verlag letterhead with no name
given (but probably Heinrich M. Ledig Rowohlt to Karl Ludwig Leonhardt), February 26,
1962, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 396. See also the letter from Heinrich M. Ledig
Rowohlt to Erwin Piscator, February 26, 1962, ADK, FVB, Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter.
93. Letter on Rowohlt Verlag letterhead with no name given (but probably Heinrich
M. Ledig Rowohlt to Karl Ludwig Leonhardt), February 26, 1962, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 396. Letter from Hochhuth to Herrn Ledig Rowohlt, March 3, 1962,
ADK, FVB, Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter. For a fuller version of these
events, see Ruff, The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 166–69.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

707

was about to take over the direction at the Free People’s Theater in West
Berlin, chose to take on the new work.94 The stage was set for the play to
premiere in West Berlin and be published as a paperback on the same day.95
Once again, this brief chronological overview renders Pacepa’s account
extremely implausible, if not downright impossible. How would documents smuggled out of the Vatican as late as mid-to-late-1962 have found
their way into a manuscript that had been set for print in November, 1961
and whose first draft had been completed already in February, 1961? There
are, however, two possible escape routes for those who would believe
Pacepa’s claims to be credible. Firstly, one could point the finger at Erwin
Piscator and credit him with receiving smuggled documents. As Pacepa
rightly points out, Piscator had been a Communist who was in exile in
Moscow between 1933 and 1936 before departing for Paris in 1936 and
New York in 1939.
In fact, Rychlak and Pacepa go so far as to imply that Piscator was a
secret author and arbiter of The Deputy. They quote from Piscator’s introduction to The Deputy from November 1962: “In any event, I have agreed
with the Rowohlt publishing house that the book will reach the public at
the same time as the initial Berlin production, as necessary underpinning
supplement.”96 They conclude: “Note that Piscator promised that he would
have the book ready for the public at the play’s opening, apparently including the ‘documentary supplement.’. . .” They then claim that “as he had
promised, Piscator delivered the script—including the Sidelights—to the
Rowohlt publishing house in time for the book to be released together with
the play’s opening.”97 They subsequently refer to The Deputy as “Piscator’s
play,” and credit him—or rather “his play”—with introducing “an allegorical figure, a nameless doctor (likened by some to Josef Mengele) who
played an important role in the dramatic action.”98
94. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 352.
95. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to H.M. Ledig Rowohlt, March 8, 1961, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 269.
96. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 181, as quoting from Erwin Piscator, “How
the play got produced: Introduction to Deputy,” in: The Storm over the Deputy, ed. Eric Bentley (New York, 1964), 15. The German original reads: “Jedenfalls habe ich mit dem Rowohlt
Verlag vereinbart, daß gleichzeitig mit der Berliner Uraufführung die Buchausgabe an die
Öffentlichkeit gelangt als notwendige Unterstützung und Ergänzung.” Hochhuth, Der
Stellvertreter (1998), 15.
97. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 181.
98. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 182.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

These claims rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of Piscator’s
statement. Piscator was referring to his long-standing desire to have the
book release take place on the same day as the premiere in Berlin in a bid
to increase publicity and heighten sales.99 But as Piscator’s use of passive
voice—“the book will reach the public”—makes clear, it was Hochhuth—
and not Piscator—who as the author delivered the script to the Rowohlt
publishing house. Piscator, moreover, did not “introduce” the character of
the Doctor: in fact, he sought to cut the character from the stage version
of the play as much as possible. Piscator even wrote that Hochhuth “stubbornly” insisted on retaining “the false, fatal and somewhat romantic
Doctor.”100 Piscator, moreover, did not alter the printed text of
Hochhuth’s play, the version scheduled to appear in print as a paperback
on the same day as the premiere. He insisted on altering the stage version
of the play. When staged in its entirety, Hochhuth’s original play ran for
between seven and eight hours. Unless directors opted to run the play over
two evenings, every production required massive cuts. Hochhuth, in turn,
struggled ferociously with Piscator over these—and later with the New
York director, Hermann Shumlin.101 For literary reasons, Piscator insisted
on cutting out almost in its entirety the fifth act, which featured a confrontation in Auschwitz between three main characters: Kurt Gerstein (a
real-life opponent of National Socialism who joined the SS in order to sabotage National Socialism), Riccardo Fontana, S.J. (the fictional hero of the
play), and the Doctor.102 Piscator forced Hochhuth to rework and rewrite
the third scene of the third act and substitute it for the original fifth act.103

99. Letter from Erwin Piscator to Rolf Hochhuth, August 3, 1962, ADK, FVB,
Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter. Piscator also wanted the book release to
take place simultaneously with the premiere, since the staged version would contain significant cuts: the book publication would allow readers to have access to the full text of the play.
100. Notizen von Herrn Piscator für Herrn Hochhuth vom 16.12.62. ADK, FVB,
Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter.
101. The Deputy . . . Content . . . Notes, SLA, NL Hochhuth (New Record Number),
A-1-a-02-b, Umarbeiten fuer New York.
102. Piscator had objected to the reappearance of Jacobsen, a Jew whom Fontana had
unsuccessfully attempted to rescue earlier in the play by providing him with this soutane. Piscator apparently also insisted that Gerstein should be allowed to free Jacobsen. Hochhuth
objected strenuously, arguing that it would be absurd to allow the one Jew with whom the
audience had developed a sense of trust to be freed from a camp where 2.5 million Jews had
been murdered. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 352.
103. For the altered version of the fifth act used during its premiere, see Hochhuth,
“Eine Variante zum fünften Akt,” in: Der Stellvertreter (1998), 471–92. For Hochhuth’s
description of how these changes were forced upon him, see letter from Rolf Hochhuth to
Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 352. For Hochhuth’s

MARK EDWARD RUFF

709

In the midst of these disagreements, less than ten days before opening
night, Hochhuth grabbed a telephone out of the hands of Piscator’s secretary and smashed it to the ground, leaving it in smithereens.104
These changes were prompted above all by Piscator’s desire to maintain the classical rules of drama and address what he perceived to be literary
weaknesses in the original.105 Piscator in no way altered the documentary
appendix or the scenes for which historical research into church history or
the ecclesia was necessary. In other words, it is nearly impossible that Piscator could have been the conduit through which stolen documents from
the Vatican informed either the printed paperback text of the play or the
version staged at the premiere in Berlin.
The second possibility is that KGB documents arrived late in 1962.
Hochhuth continued updating and making revisions to the appendix from
the time the work was formally accepted for publication in March, 1962
through at least October, 1962, but possibly as late as November 20, when
Hochhuth was requested to submit the final page proofs.106 But once
again, almost all of these changes pertained to the fifth act in Auschwitz,
in which the Pope does not appear.107 There is one exception, however.
Hochhuth also appended an epilogue to the appendix in late 1962, even
after the page proofs for the main text and appendix had been completed.108 But even here, the changes were minor.
Hochhuth’s Use of Historical Documents
But let us, for the moment, suppose that Pacepa’s account is correct
and that the KGB did hand over documents, however banal and non-germane, to the young playwright, who used them to construct his historical
agreement to these changes, see the letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Erwin Piscator, January 24,
1963, ADK, FVB, Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter, Aktennotiz, Zur
Kenntnis f. Herrn Piscator.
104. “Die Frage wurde dem Papst 1943 gestellt,” Werra-Rundschau, March 22, 1963.
105. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Eric Bentley, December 5, 1964, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 352.
106. Letter from Rowohlt Verlag to Rolf Hochhuth, 9 November 1962, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 2. These may have come in as late as the end of November, or the
beginning of December. See the letter from H.M. Ledig/Rowohlt to Rolf Hochhuth,
November 27, 1962, ADK, FVB, Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter.
107. Letter from Erwin Piscator to Klaus Juncker, September 24, 1962, ADK, FVB,
Schnellhefter, Vorkorrespondenz, Der Stellvertreter.
108. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1963), 270–73.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

appendix. The next question is unavoidable: which specific documents did
he use and where? Both Pacepa and Rychlak never indicated which stolen
documents Hochhuth allegedly used. At first glance, these questions are
superfluous. Hochhuth`s appendix contains no references whatsoever to
any official Vatican documents, except for those like the addresses of Pope
Pius XII already available in published form.109 This is hardly surprising.
As Hochhuth was quick to point out, the Vatican Archives had not
released any materials from the pontificate of Pius XII. And hence,
Hochhuth asserted in a press statement from 1963 that he had not “found
documents in the Vatican that he had been the first to work through.”110
Two years later in an interview with Friedrich Luft in 1965, Hochhuth
reiterated this assertion: “I must say that I worked through almost no new
documents in my play. The archives in Göttingen, in München, in Nuremberg, in London, in Paris as well, in the Institute for Contemporary History had long made these documents available for viewing. They appeared
in book form already long before ‘The Deputy.’”111
Hochhuth’s claim that he had drawn on almost no new documents is
indeed borne out by the evidence. He drew on a mixture of published
memoirs, documentary anthologies, and historical works, including journal
articles, monographs, and magazine articles. He duly corresponded with
scholars, librarians, archivists, and historical chroniclers who gave him
additional tips on sources. As we have seen, he carried out interviews with
Alois Hudal and Bruno Wüstenberg while in Rome.
Before we examine each of these source-bodies in greater depth, it is
necessary to point out that Hochhuth’s task was not as daunting as it might
seem today. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, research into the Holocaust
and the Roman Catholic Church during the Nazi era was only just beginning. Scholarly bibliographies amounted only to several pages. It is thus
incorrect to assume that an ambitious autodidact and amateur historian
with a full-time day-job would have been incapable of carrying out research
for as monumental a work as The Deputy. Hochhuth possessed the ability
to digest information and write with astounding rapidity. How he interpreted these sources and gauged their credibility is a different matter altogether, one that has been the subject of extensive critical commentary.
109. For one example, see the following book, Aperçu sur L’Œurvre du Bureau d’Informations Vatican, 1939–1946 (Tip. Vat, 1948), as cited in Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 422.
110. Press clipping, “Rowohlt verteidigt Hochhuth,” Telegraf, February 24, 1963.
111. Interview with Rolf Hochhuth, Fernsehen I Pr. 21.34 h, March 21, 1965, DRA
Pressearchiv, Personalien, Hochhuth.

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To come to the first body of sources to which he turned: Which historical works did Hochhuth exploit? Since his work also implicated
German big business in the Holocaust, Hochhuth sought documents that
exposed the role of firms like Krupp.112 Let us put aside those sections of
his historical sidelights, since Vatican documents could not have come into
play there. Hochhuth exploited memoirs and diaries. He drew extensively
on the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, which were available already in 1948,
and on Hitler’s Table Talks.113 He turned to the published diaries and
memoirs of the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, the ambassador of
the Polish government in exile in Washington, Jan Ciechanowski, Lucius
Clay, Ulrich von Hassell, Ernst Jünger (the heir of a family of East Prussian diplomats), Ursula von Kardorff, Harry Graf von Kessler, Franz von
Papen, Rudolf von Rahn, Walter Schellenberg, and the Staatssekretär of
the Foreign Office and the German ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von
Weizsäcker.114 Some of these memoirs, like those of Ciano, von Papen,
Schellenberger, and von Weizsäcker, were notoriously self-serving. They
arose out of the need for exculpation or personal rehabilitation following
their prosecution by war crimes tribunals between 1945 and 1949.
More than any other source, Hochhuth relied on published documents. He devoured the relevant volumes of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, particularly the documentation of the Wilhelmstrasse trials of
German diplomats, in which Ernst von Weizsäcker found himself on the
side of the accused.115 Aside from the main trial of the major war criminals,
112. For one example, see the declaration under oath of Karl Firsch, a Krupp employee.
Copy of Document, Mr. Mik, 10543, Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, Erklärung unter Eid, Karl Firsch, SLA, NL Hochhuth, (New Record Number), A-01-a-04-d bis
e, Folder, V. Akt, Typoskripte und Manuskripte, Dokumentation.
113. Louis P. Lochner and Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher aus den Jahren
1942–42. Mit anderen Dokumenten (Zürich, 1948). For Hochhuth’s use of these, see
Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 401, 403, 412. On the table talks, Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 410, 412.
114. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998). For Ciano, see 405, 439; for Ciechanowski,
415, 418, 439; for Clay, 447; for von Hassell, 441, Jünger, 413; for Ursula von Kardorff, 417;
for von Kessler, 392, 467; for Rahn, 429; for von Schellenberger, 410; for von Weizsäcker,
404, 423, 425–27, 434.
115. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals, October 1946–April
1949, 11 vols. (Washington, 1949-1953, here 1950), IX, as cited in Hochhuth (1998), 447–
452. On Hochhuth’s interest in the Wilhelmstrasse trials, see the following letters by
Hochhuth: letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Frau. Dr. S. Noller, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, July
9, 1959 SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5; letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Herrn Prof.
Mommsen, Bayerisches Staatsarchiv, August 24, 1959, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel
269. For his used library card for the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, see SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 396.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

the Wilhelmstrasse trials were the only trials whose transcripts had been
translated into German and published in book-form by the late 1950s.116
Other documents came from the Foreign Relations of the United States
series and the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, the notable historical journal launched in 1953 and published by the Institute for Contemporary
History in Munich.117 Several of these documents, like the report by Kurt
Gerstein published in Poliakov and Wulf’s volume from 1955, The Third
Reich and the Jews, served as the play’s inspiration and premise.118 Portions
of the Gerstein report appear almost verbatim in the play’s text itself with
only slight changes to accommodate the play’s free verse.119 The following
year, Poliakov and Wulf published a follow-up volume on the Third Reich
containing a set of seven remarkable documents focusing on the role of
Pius XII and the Ernst von Weizsäcker.120 These documents from the
German Foreign Office featured telegrams between Berlin and Rome and
the translation of an article from October 25–26 from the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, in which the Pope declared that his mercy and
charity knew “no boundaries of nationality, religion or race.”121 Hochhuth
not only devoted more than seven pages in his appendix to an exegesis of
these documents. He also allowed this statement to set up the climax of
Act IV. In the process of writing this statement, the pope smudged his
hands with ink from his fountain pen, forcing him to wash his hands in an
unmistakable allusion to Pontius Pilate.122 Just prior to the curtain-fall, the

116. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Dr. (Robert) Kemper [sic], June 14, 1963, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 269. The letter should have been addressed to Dr. Robert
Kempner.
117. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 412, 438.
118. Poliakov and Wulf, “Augenzeugenbericht über Massenveragsungen,” 101–15.
119. For two examples: the Gerstein report contains the lines: “Dan setzt sich der Zug
in Bewegung.Voran ein bildhübsches junges Mädchen, so gehen sie die Allee entlang, alle
nackt, Männer, Frauen, Kinder, ohne Prothesen.” Hochhuth wrote: “Und die Kinderleichen.
Ein junges Mädchen ging dem Zug voran, nackt wie alle. Mütter, alle nackt.” The report contains the lines: “Wie Basaltsäulen stehen die Toten aufrecht aneinander gepreßt in den Kammern. Es wäre auch kein Platz hinzufallen oder auch nur sich vorüber zu neigen. Selbst im
Tode noch kennt man die Familien. Sie drücken sich, im Tode verkrampft, noch die Hände,
so daß man Mühe hat, sie auseinander reißen, um die Kammern für die nächste Charge
freizumachen.” Hochhuth wrote: “Wie Basaltsäulen stehn die nackten Leichen da, im Tode
noch erkennt man die Familien. Sie haben sich umarmt, verkrampft—mit Haken reißt man
auseinander.” Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 37, 38. Poliakov and Wulf, “Augenzeugenbericht über Massenveragsungen,” 101–15.
120. Léon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener: Dokumente
(Berlin, 1956), 79–86.
121. Ibid, 86.
122. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 425–33, 282–86.

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playwright arranged for a “well-bred elder statesman” to read Weizsäcker`s
statement from his telegram of October 28, 1943 noting that Pope “has
not allowed himself to be carried away into making any demonstrative
statements against the deportation of the Jews.”123
Hochhuth also directly incorporated into his play an expose on the
Vatican’s finances that appeared in 1958 in Der Spiegel, West Germany’s
leading news-magazine that was becoming increasingly critical of the
Roman Catholic Church. Its details about the Vatican’s stock-holdings,
factories, and the Jesuit ownership of four American airplane factories
made their way directly into dialogue between Fontana, the cardinal, and
the pope at the opening of Act IV.124 In the epilogue to the original edition
of The Deputy, Hochhuth even mentioned Der Spiegel by name as the
source of this information.125 A former confidante of Pius XII and ardent
defender of the deceased pontiff, Robert Leiber, S.J., pointed out that
Hochhuth had uncritically appropriated these claims from Der Spiegel and
that some of the magazine’s claims were factually incorrect.126 In a later
edition, then, Hochhuth excised a remark noting that the Vatican had
never disputed one of Der Spiegel’s assertions. The newsmagazine had
maintained that three nephews of Pacelli, who did not hail from a wealthy
family, had in their possession assets estimated at more than 120 million
German marks.127 Hochhuth also gleaned from Der Spiegel eyewitness
accounts of the Warsaw ghetto that became the subject of additional analysis in his appendix.128
For information on the Vatican during the wartime years and in the present, Hochhuth turned to a number of books on the Vatican, some critical.129
123. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 378–79.
124. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 260–61.
125. Ibid., 465.
126. Certified copy of a letter (Begl. Abschrift) from Robert Leiber, S.J., to Frau Dr.
Schaub, June 4, 1963, SLA, NL Hochhuth (New Records Number) B-4-a-STELL-01-R bis
T–Korrespondenz, Stellvertreter, R-T.
127. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1963), 273. For the changed version, see Hochhuth,
Der Stellvertreter (1998), 465.
128. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 421.
129. Alberto Giovanetti, Der Vatikan und der Krieg (Cologne, 1960), as cited in
Hochhuth Der Stellvertreter (1998), 390, 395, 400, 439; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt und
Hopkins (Hamburg, 1950), as cited on 400; Domenico Kardinal Tardini, Pius XII: Als Oberhirte, Priester und Mensch (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1961), 34, as cited on 436 and 454; Bernard
Wall, Der Vatikan: Reich ohne Grenzen (Stuttgart, 1957) as cited on 422; Hubert Tichy, Auf
einem Hügel der Ewigen Stadt . . . Erlebter Vatikan (Vienna, 197), as cited on 423; Corrado
Pallenberg, Hinter den Türen des Vatikan (Munich, 1961), as cited on 462.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Hochhuth also made use of an attention-grabbing article by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, who in the Catholic journal, Hochland, pointed out the
support given by prominent German Catholics to the Nazi party in
1933.130 Though these did not pertain to the Vatican, he drew on works by
Fritz Hesse, Eugen Kogon, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Hugh TrevorRoper.131 But as he himself admitted, the most significant work was the
German translation of Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution, the first
major historical narrative of the Holocaust in the German language.132
Informing several pages in the appendix, its depiction of religious opposition to the deportation of the Jews in Italy and Hungary allowed
Hochhuth to assert that “the Vatican, the German bishops and the nuncios
represented” the only authorities left that Hitler respected after the entry
of the United States.133
One book did not appear in Hochhuth’s appendix. This was Avro
Manhattan’s, The Vatican in World Politics.134 Manhattan was a professional anti-Catholic who published this compendium of conspiracy theories in 1949 in English. It was translated into German and published by
an East German publisher, Volk and Welt, in 1958 as part of a propaganda offensive against the Roman Catholic Church towards the height
of the Berlin crisis.135 Hochhuth wrote twice to the East German publishers in the summer of 1959 to ask for a copy. “I can only congratulate you
that you have been the first German publisher to bring up the courage to

130. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Der deutsche Katholizismus im Jahre 1933,”
Hochland, 53 (1960–1), 215–39, as cited in Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 394.
131. Fritz Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland (Munich, 1953), as cited in Hochhuth, Der
Stellvertreter (1998), 396, 403; Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Munich, 1946), as cited, 410; Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, Wissenschaft ohne Menschlichkeit: Medizinische und eugenische Irrwege unter Diktator, Bürokaratie
und Krieg (Heidelberg, 1949), as cited on 406; Hugh Trevor-Roper, Hitlers letzte Tage
(Zürich, 1948), as cited on 409.
132. Gerald Reitlinger, Die Endlösung: Hitlers Versuch der Ausrottung der Juden Europas,
1939–1945 (Berlin, 1956). This was a work more than six hundred pages long. For its citations, see Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 389, but above all, 396–99. Hochhuth’s relatively weak command of English may help explain why he never drew on Raul Hilberg’s landmark volume, The Destruction of the European Jews, which was published in 1961.
133. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 398–99.
134. Avro Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics (London, 1949).
135. On this offensive, see the following commentary, Grundsätzliches Gespräch über
die Religionspolitik in der DDR, April 6, 1961, Archiv des Zentralkomittee der deutschen
Katholiken (ZDK), Bad Godesberg, 4231/1. For an account of the SED’s Kirchenpolitik, see
Bernd Schaefer, The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945–1989 (New York, 2010),
64–84.

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715

publish this book.”136 After reading it, however, he inquired about the
author’s address, finding a number of points “that did not quite square
away with the protocol of the Nuremberg trials against Ernst von
Weizsäcker and comrades.”137 It is not clear whether Hochhuth actually
wrote to Manhattan, but it is almost certain that he appropriated nothing
from this book: nothing in the text or verbiage of this book has a counterpart in The Deputy. A radio commentary from 1963 even discussed the fact
that Hochhuth had read this controversial book but correctly noted that
he “disregarded it as a source.”138 One can discern only one commonality
between Manhattan’s and Hochhuth’s respective works: a tendency to
ascribe heightened power to the Vatican as a “diplomatic and political
center.” Manhattan wrote that its diplomatic influence and power
increases in wartime, since, as a neutral power, it receives information and
services from both sides.139
Hochhuth certainly shared this conviction which informed the premise of his play. But Manhattan’s East German publishers saw it differently.
In their forward to Manhattan’s book, they criticized the author for overestimating the might of the Vatican in the past. Imperialism—and not the
Roman Catholic Church—was “the worst enemy of mankind.” Their position was consistent with that taken in the past by Communist regimes,
which ascribed power and might not to moral authorities but to armies on
the battlefield: “How many divisions does the Vatican have?” Stalin had
famously quipped. These observations raise additional questions: if
Pacepa’s account is correct, did Khrushchev’s Seat-12 plan represent a fundamental shift in the Kremlin’s attitudes and stance towards the Roman
Catholic Church?
As this example makes clear, Hochhuth had no qualms about contacting the authors of the books he deemed most salient. He wrote the former
ambassador of the Polish government in exile to the United States, Jan
136. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to den Verlag Volk und Welt, Gütersloh, June 16,
1959; letter from Verlag Volk und Welt to Rolf Hochhuth, August 6, 1959, SLA, NL
Hochhuth, Schachtel 269. “Ich kann Sie nur beglückwünschen, daß Sie als erster deutscher
Verlag den Mut aufgebracht haben, dieses Buch zu veröffentlichen.
137. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to den Verlag Volk und Welt, z.Hd. Herrn Rych,
September 1, 1959, SLA, NL Hochhuth, Schachtel 269. The original quote reads: “verschiedene Punkte fand, die nicht ganz übereinstimmen mit dem Protokoll des Nürnberger
Prozesses gegen Ernst von Weizsäcker und Genossen.”
138. Radio Commentary, Herman Nickel, The Hochhuth Controversy, October 11,
1963 (recd. October 14, 1963), 5, AAK, Piscator-Center 182.
139. Avro Manhattan, Der Vatikan und das XX. Jahrhundert (East Berlin, 1958), 18.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

Ciechanowski, to determine whether the ambassador had forwarded a
report by Jan Karski about the ongoing mass murders to the Vatican.
Ciechanowski told him that he had kept representatives of the American
government and the American Catholic church constantly informed about
the extermination of Polish Jews, a statement that made its way into the
appendix in a mildly edited form.140
Hochhuth carried on an extensive correspondence with Léon Poliakov, who played an active role in the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, a documentary center in Paris founded in 1943 which by the
1950s had become a nexus for research into the Shoah. Poliakov supplied
Hochhuth with additional leads, contacts, and source-material, including
the quotation from François Mauriac which gilds the opening pages to the
paperback version of The Deputy.141 Poliakov made Hochhuth aware of a
crucial article in the Jesuit magazine, Stimmen der Zeit, from 1961.142 A
close confidante and adviser of Pius XII, Robert Leiber, S.J., penned this
essay in response to the publication in 1960 of one of the first German-language documentaries on the Holocaust, Der Gelbe Stern.143 This work not
140. Letter from Jan Ciechanowski to Rolf Hochhuth, December 18, 1961, SLA, NL
Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. Ciechanowski had authored a book, which had been translated
into German: Jan Ciechanowski, Vergeblicher Sieg (Zurich, 1948). Ciechanowski wrote:
“From March 1941, when I took over the duties as Ambassador of Poland to the United
States, until July 5th 1945, when I resigned, I took full advantage of every opportunity to keep
the President, the Vice President, the Department of State, the United States Congress, the
American Press, the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Apostolic Delegate and the American Universities constantly informed about the unprecedented acts of barbarity of Hitler’s Nazi
oppressors in Poland, particularly of their treatment and extermination of the Jewish population.” Hochhuth wrote: “Der ehemalige polnische Botschafter in Washington antwortete . . .
daß er nicht nur dem apostolischen Delegaten in Washington (dem heutigen Kardinalstaatssekretär Cicognani), sondern auch dem amerikanischen Kongreß, Bischöfen und Universitäten diese Nachrichten über die Ausrottung der Jugend zugeleitet habe—und zwar hat
er bis zu seiner Abberufung am 5. Juli immer und immer wieder diese und neue Informationen aus Polen an die Erwähnten gegeben.” For its appearance in the appendix, see Hochhuth,
Der Stellvertreter (1998), 416. Hochhuth informed the reader that he had raised this information in a letter from Ciechanowski.
141. See Letter from Léon Poliakov to Hochhuth, April 27, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. In this letter, Poliakov gave him the address of J. Czapski, who had
been during the war a contact man in the Polish government in exile. Letter from Poliakov
to Hochhuth, May 26, 1961. For the quote by Mauriac, see Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter
(1963), 6.
142. Robert Leiber, “Pius XII und die Juden in Rom, 1943–1944,” Stimmen der Zeit,
167 (1960–1961) 428–36, as cited on 427, 429, 433, 435, 436.
143. Gerhard Schoenberner, Der gelbe Stern (Rütten & Loening, 1960). For Schoenberner’s response to Leiber’s article, see Gerhard Schoenberner, “Fälschung der Geschichte?”
Die Zeit, March 15, 1963. Hochhuth himself was well aware of the fact that Schoenberg’s

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717

only featured dozens of graphic black and white photos, some covering an
entire page. It also juxtaposed the statement of protest against Jewish
deportations from the Dutch Catholics from July, 1942 with Ernst von
Weizsäcker`s telegram to Berlin from October 28, 1943. Hochhuth had
befriended the author, Gerhard Schoenberner, and had helped him put
together this documentary edition for Rütten & Loening.144 Describing
Poliakov`s individual act of assistance as “priceless,” Hochhuth devoted
pages in his appendix to refuting Leiber’s account.145 These amounted to
some of the most substantial revisions that Hochhuth made in his appendix between April and November, 1961, when the manuscript was typeset.
These additions were not triggered by the sudden arrival of new documentary material smuggled out of the Vatican.
It is not difficult to discern Poliakov’s motives for helping a German
Protestant author. Poliakov was an individual of impeccable integrity.
Born in Russia in 1910, he was a French Jew who, after escaping as a prisoner of war, worked to rescue Jews in south-central France together with
the Protestant pastor, André Trocmé, from the village of Le Chambon.146
Poliakov too had wrestled with the Pope’s unwillingness to issue a ringing
public protest against the murder of European Jewry, although both his
public and private musings on the topic consistently exhibited a more cautious tone.147 He was also hoping that Hochhuth, from his perch at Rütten
documentation had served as the trigger for Leiber’s response in Stimmen der Zeit. See Letter
from Rolf Hochhuth to Gerhard Schoenberner, n.d., SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5.
144. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Robert Kemper (sic), June 14, 1963, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 269. In this letter, Hochhuth noted that he had given assistance to
Schoenberner. How much assistance Hochhuth actually gave is open to some question, since
he was not thanked by name in the acknowledgements.
145. Hochhuth to Poliakov, May 24, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. For
the relevant pages in the appendix, see Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 427–36.
146. The rescue efforts launched at Le Chambon have been the subject of numerous
books. See Philip Hailie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed (New York, 1979); Caroline Moorhead,
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France (New York, 2015).
147. This became the theme of several books. See Léon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate: The
Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe (Westport, CT, 1954), 296–305. This
was a translation of Léon Poliakov, Brévaire de la Haine (Paris, 1951). For examples of this
correspondence, see the letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, October 27, 1960, SLA, NL Rolf
Hochhuth, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, December 28, 1960, Schachtel
257; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, December 16, 1960, Schachtel 257; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, November 12, 1960, Schachtel 257; letter from Hochhuth to Poliakov,
April 10, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, April 15, 1961, Schachtel 5;
letter from Hochhuth to Poliakov, April 19, 1961, Schachtel 269; letter from Poliakov to
Hochhuth, April 27, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, May 12, 1961,
Schachtel 5; letter from Hochhuth to Poliakov, May 24, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

and Loening, would be able to help him secure a German language translation and publication of his recent work, Histoire de L’antisemitisme.148 His
assistance, however, was most certainly not part of a quid pro quo, for their
correspondence continued for more than two years after Rütten and Loening rejected his manuscript in 1961.149
Not least, Hochhuth carried out research at the Wiener Library in
London, the first and oldest archive and institution devoted to the study of
the Holocaust. He bombarded a German-speaking archivist, Ilse Wolff,
herself a Jewish refugee who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933, with question after question, requests to borrow books via the 1960s equivalent of
Interlibrary Loan, and apologies for those that were overdue.150 Thanking
her profusely for her assistance in the spring of 1961, he even offered to
make a modest annual financial contribution to the library, a promise he
fulfilled. “I have such a guilty conscience,” he wrote her, “for constantly
relying on your help but I don’t know to whom else to turn.”151
Acknowledging these published sources allows us to rule out vast portions of the appendix and the text of the play itself where purloined documents might have been thought to have been decisive in their creation. But
what about the places where Hochhuth failed to provide citations for his
sources or provided inadequate documentation? Were these sites where the
young playwright might have brought to bear documents stolen originally
by the DIE and forwarded to the KGB? Let us go through three of the
most salient sites in detail. As we shall see, these sites were often those
Poliakov to Hochhuth, May 26, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth,
December 4, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, January 9, 1962,
Schachtel 5. These letters represent only part of the correspondence; not all of the letters have
been preserved. In addition, Poliakov and Hochhuth had at least one telephone correspondence, which is referred to in the letter from December 16, 1960.
148. Letter from Hochhuth to Poliakov, May 24, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth,
Schachtel 5.
149. Letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, May 26, 1961, SLA, NL Rolf Hochhuth,
Schachtel 5. For additional correspondence, see the letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth,
December 4, 1961, Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, January 9, 1962,
Schachtel 5; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, February 9, 1963, Schachtel 271; letter from
Poliakov to Hochhuth, April 8, 1963, Schachtel 271; letter from Poliakov to Hochhuth, May
16, 1963, Schachtel 269.
150. Letter from Hochhuth to Ilse R. Wolff, The Wiener Library, London, April 8,
1961, SLA, NL Hochhuth (New Record Number), B-04-a-STELL-01-U bis W: Stellvertreter Korrespondenz U bis W.
151. Letter from Hochhuth to Ilse R. Wolff, The Wiener Library, London, June 13, 1961
(New Record Number), B-04-a-STELL-01-U bis W: Stellvertreter Korrespondenz U bis W.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

719

where Hochhuth incorporated comments stemming from his interviews
with Hudal and Wüstenberg.
In what would become a bone of contention in the subsequent controversies over his play, Hochhuth took issue with arguments that had been
raised by the German diplomat, Albrecht von Kessel, in the Wilhelmstrasse trials. Kessel claimed that the pope feared that Hitler might directly
occupy the Vatican and take him prisoner, had the pontiff spoken out
forcefully against Nazi mass murder. Hochhuth labeled this argument the
height of folly. He asserted that he had repeatedly been told at the Vatican
that no one would have considered Hitler possible of such an act of “stupidity.”152 He, however, did not disclose which Vatican officials had told
him this. We now know that Hochhuth drew almost verbatim from the
formulations given to him by Hudal and Wüstenberg. On October 22,
1959, Hudal had told Hochhuth that Hitler “wasn’t that stupid.”153 On
October 26, 1959, Wüstenberg told Hochhuth that von Kessel’s testimony
was ridiculous, as “no one in the Vatican for a minute expected a German
occupation.”154 In the same breath, Wüstenberg told Hochhuth that
“someone had told the Pope to go to South America, but it (this suggestion) was not at all discussed.”155 Hochhuth subsequently wrote in his
152. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 428. See the original: “Es war nicht so, daß
der Vatikan sich noch ernstlich vor Hitler hätte fürchten müssen. Dem Verfasser ist im
Vatikan wiederholt bestätigt worden, daß dort niemand ernsthaft Hitler die Dummheit zugetraut hat, den Vatikan zu besetzen und etwa Pius XII in eine Avignonische Gefangenschaft zu
entführen, so viele Gerüchte dieser Art damals auch einige harmlose Gemüter erhitzt haben.”
153. Protokoll des Gesprächs mit Hudal, SLA NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel,
Ausstellungsdokumente, Ringhefte. The text from Hochhuth`s protocol reads as follows.
“Eine etwas unbestimmte Formulierung, aber seine Zustimmung ermunterte mich, weiter zu
fragen: “Hat man im Vatikan je ernsthaft gefürchtet, daß Hitler ihn besetzen oder den papst
entführen wurde?“ “A—mi, nae, so dumm war der Hitler nit, a solche Weltmacht gegen ihn
aufzubringen. . .—ist—. . . die Westfalen und so viele Katholiken waren doch mit seine
besten Soldaten.”
154. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Marianne (Hochhuth), October 26, 1959, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. This letter contained the protocol of Hochhuth’s conversation with Wüstenberg. Hochhuth wrote: “Wüstenberg ging sofort auf meine 3. Frage ein,
und sagte, Kessels Aussage sei lächerlich, man habe im Vatikan nicht eine Minute eine Besetzung durch die Deutschen erwartet, im Gegenteil.” Hochhuth had posed the following question to him: “Halten Sie v. Kessels Argumentation für stichhaltig: der Papst habe fürchten
müssen, daß bei einem Protest die SS den Vatikan besetzt und sich der Person des Papstes
bemächtigt habe?” Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Bruno Wüstenberg, October 23, 1959,
SLA, NL Hochhuth, Schachtel 5.
155. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Marianne (Hochhuth), October 26,1959, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. The original reads: “Irgendwer habe ihm empfohlen, nach
Südamerika zu gehen—es sei gar nicht diskutiert worden.”

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

appendix: “not for fifteen minutes did the Vatican seriously discuss a proposal that the Curia move to South America for the duration of the occupation of Rome.”156 Six paragraphs later, Hochhuth wrote that “it is said
in the Vatican nowadays that (von Kessel) was the only unequivocal and
resolute anti-Nazi in the German embassy.”157 This assertion also stemmed
directly from Wüstenberg, who apparently thought highly of von Kessel
and whom he knew well.158
Statements from Hochhuth’s protocol of Hudal’s first conversations
also found their way directly into the main text of the play. Hochhuth
noted that “. . . the bishop is still rather infected by the Nazi ideology. . . .
He still regrets today that National Socialism and Christianity didn’t work
together and cites a phrase of Molotov from around 1934, according to
which Communism is finished if National Socialism and Christianity
come to terms with each other. The decision lies in Germany. Hitler, however, didn’t grasp that.”159 Hochhuth inserted part of this commentary
almost verbatim into the mouth of the papal nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo. In Act I, Hochhuth had Orsenigo opine: “Mr. Molotov grasped in
1934 that if the church in Germany should strike up an accord with the
Hitler folks . . . then Communism in Europe would be finished.”160 Once
again, there was no need for Hochhuth to turn to smuggled documents.

156. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 428. The original reads: “Ein Angebot, die
Kurie solle für die Dauer der Besatzung Roms nach Südamerika emigrieren, ist im Vatikan
keine Viertelstunde ernstlich diskutiert worden.”
157. Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 431. The original reads: “Man sagt heute im
Vatikan, er (von Kessel) sei der eindeutige scharfe Anti-Nazi in der deutschen Botschaft
gewesen.”
158. Letter from Rolf Hochhuth to Marianne (Hochhuth), October 26, 1959, SLA,
NL Rolf Hochhuth, Schachtel 5. The original reads: “Und er erzählte sehr ausführlich von
Kessel, den er schätze und gut kenne: Kessel sei die einzige Nicht-Nazi in der Botschaft
Weizsäckers gewesen, im Gegensatz zur Darstellung in Weizsäckers Memoiren.”
159. Aperçu sur L’Œurvre du Bureau d’Informations Vatican, 1939–1946 (Tip. Vat,
1948). See also Protokoll des Gesprächs mit Hudal, SLA, NL Hochhuth, Schachtel, Ausstellungsdokumente, Ringhefte. The original reads: “Im übrigen ist der Bischof eher noch von der
NS-Ideologie infiziert. . . . Er bedauert auch neute noch, dass Nationalsozialismus und Christentum nicht zusammengingen und zitiert ein Wort Molotovs aus etwas 1934, der Kommunismus sei erledigt, wenn Nationalsozialismus und Christentum sich verständigten. Die
Entscheidung fällt in Deutschland. Hitler habe das aber nicht begriffen. . . .”
160. The original reads: “Herr Molotov hat’s längst begriffen: er hat ihm im Jahre
vierunddreißig eingestanden, wenn es in Deutschland zur Verschmelzung der Kirche mit den
Hitler-Leuten komme—und damals sah es ja so aus, es war ein segensreicher Anfang—dann
sei der Kommunismus erledigt in Europa.” Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (1998), 32.

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Conclusions
As they themselves admit, Pacepa’s and Rychlak’s claims are based on
circumstantial evidence.161 Hochhuth identified with the left. Piscator was a
former Communist. Fritz Raddatz, who helped oversee the public relations
campaign at Rowohlt, had spent much of the 1950s in Communist East Germany as a literary editor. But to conclude on the basis that all three therefore
received KGB assistance and that The Deputy was the result of a “disinformation” campaign is not borne out whatsoever by the written records about the
play’s origins, evidence that Pacepa and Rychlak did not use.
On the contrary, a careful analysis of both supports the original version
of the tale: Hochhuth was a lone wolf who came up with the idea for The
Deputy on his own, carried out his own research based on published books
and published documentary evidence, and integrated this research both into
the play itself and into the appendix. In the process of researching, writing,
and editing, he did receive assistance and historical tips—but from librarians, archivists, scholars, and contemporaries, not intelligence agents.
Tellingly, much of this account of The Deputy’s origins (with the
exception of the internal deliberations at Rowohlt) had come to light in the
torrent of news-coverage between 1963 and 1965.162 An extensive coverpage story in Der Spiegel from April 24, 1963, for instance, retraced most
of these steps.163 Normally quick to respond to what he saw as unjustified
attacks on his work, Hochhuth never denied this account.164
As the available evidence suggests, the allegations put forward by
Pacepa that documents purloined from the Vatican found their way into
Hochhuth’s play and that a KGB disinformation campaign was responsible
for The Deputy’s success appear to have no merit. There is nothing in the
161. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 131, 177.
162. For one example, see Newspaper Clipping, “Gespräch mit einem jungen Bühnenautor,” Telegraf, February 17, 1963, DRA, Inszenierung, der Stellvertreter, #333.
163. “Ein Kampf mit Rom,“ Der Spiegel, no. 17, April 24, 1963.
164. After Der Spiegel devoted its cover story on Rolf Hochhuth, the young playwright
wrote a letter to the editor, which Spiegel published two weeks later, on May 8, 1963.
Hochhuth discussed the role of Ernst von Weizsäcker and also introduced a quote from the
Catholic historian and musicologist, Dr. Hans Kühner-Wolfskehl. But nowhere in this threeparagraph letter did he dispute the accuracy of Spiegel’s profile of him and his work, which, in
fact, offered a critical commentary and was not a glowing tribute. There exists, of course, the
possibility that Spiegel might have chosen not to print such an article, but no copy of such a
letter exists in Hochhuth’s personal papers, a letter that he would no doubt have saved.

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ASSESSING THE MERITS OF A DECADES-OLD CONSPIRACY THEORY

archival record or in the text of The Deputy that would corroborate his
claims. On the other hand, there is no evidence that would indicate that the
Seat-12 mission did not exist or that Romanian intelligence agents disguised as priests did not attempt to gain access to the Vatican Archives. As
George Weigel has shown, the KGB and other Eastern European intelligence agencies had remarkable success in infiltrating the Vatican.165 But
their efforts postdated the premiere of Hochhuth’s play. Pacepa may simply
have been fed a bunch of falsehoods that originated in a macho culture of
intelligence gathering where bragging rights were a passport to success.
The challenge for scholars wrestling with conspiracy theories such as
those raised by Hochhuth, Pacepa, and Rychlak is that their claims not
only cannot be conclusively proven: they also cannot be disproven. One
sentence in Disinformation exposes this method of argumentation. On the
subject of whether Pacelli and the liberal Protestant theologian, Adolf von
Harnack might have met in Berlin, the authors opine: “Whether factually
verifiable or not, it is entirely plausible that the two religious leaders might
have met. . . .”166 By their very nature, conspiracy theories constantly
mutate and evolve. If one plank of a conspiracy theory is disproven or
called into question, another claim arises to take its place.
Crucially, there will never be a shortage of historical raw material from
which to erect new and ever more elaborate conspiratorial edifices. This is
particularly true for The Deputy for several reasons. For one, the literati associated with its creation and production in dozens of countries tended to be
outspoken public intellectuals on the left, many with a penchant for inflammatory and embarrassingly naïve public utterances. For another, The
Deputy’s improbable success was made possible by a vast network anchored
in Germany but with an international reach. Based out of Rowohlt publishing house, it arranged for copyrights, theater stages, directors, public relations, ticket sales, and publicity internationally. These editors, publicists,
and directors were ultimately responsible for transforming an unknown
work by an obscure German playwright into an international sensation
staged in dozens of nations on both sides of the Iron Curtain by 1966.
For Rychlak and Pacepa, the existence of this left-wing network
explains why a conspiracy had to be behind The Deputy and why they partially shifted the focus of their theories from Hochhuth to Piscator
between 2007 and 2013. They duly noted the prominent role played by
165. Weigel, The End and the Beginning, 99–109.
166. Pacepa and Rychlak, Disinformation, 177.

MARK EDWARD RUFF

723

left-wingers and Communists like Piscator who were involved in nearly
every stage of the production process for the premiere in Berlin in February, 1963. The existence of these networks, however, predated and postdated Hochhuth. They would have existed regardless of whether Karl
Ludwig Leonhardt had surreptitiously sent a copy of Hochhuth’s discarded
page proofs to Rowohlt. As it turns out, Piscator played no role in subsequent performances of The Deputy following its premiere in Berlin. Different directors were found.
To cite the old adage: correlation does not mean causation. Rychlak
and Pacepa have yet to provide evidence to establish causation. The only
way to prove their claims is to provide conclusive written evidence from the
intelligence archives of the former Eastern bloc. Until Rychlak can do so,
his claims cannot be substantiated. In light of the massive evidence to the
contrary, they have to be regarded as improbable, and, in some cases,
chronologically impossible.
Drawing on the papers of Hochhuth, Piscator, and the papers of
Rowohlt Verlag and the Free People’s Theater, this article has provided a
more “innocent” explanation for the origins of The Deputy, one in keeping
with the version already brought to light between 1963 and 1966. For it to
be supplanted by a conspiratorial retelling, dozens of individuals in multiple countries would have had to be employed as intelligence operatives in
libraries and archives, in publishing venues from Bertelsmann to Rowohlt,
and in countries from Germany to Israel to the United Kingdom. Even
worse: tens of thousands of pages of historical records and correspondence
from multiple business, state, and literary archives would need to be shown
to be falsifications or deliberate plants that were meticulously prepared over
years with the intent of misleading historians sixty years later. The original
handwritten drafts and typed manuscripts of Hochhuth’s play might have
to be shown as forgeries, Piscator or multilingual Eastern bloc intelligence
agents having served as the “true” author. The dates on these manuscripts
would have to be shown to be falsified. Since those promoting these conspiracy theories have not examined these relevant archival records which
require a versatility in multiple languages, their judgments about the origins of The Deputy must be regarded as speculation and wishful thinking
until new evidence comes to light.

Searching for Ecclesial Compromise:
The Role of Juan Landázuri Ricketts,
Archbishop of Lima (Peru), during the
Preparatory Phase of Vatican II (1961–1962)
ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ*
This article studies the participation of Juan Landázuri Ricketts, archbishop of Lima (Peru), in the Preparatory phase of Vatican II, as a
member of the Central Preparatory Commission (CPC). It argues that
Landázuri’s involvement at the CPC exemplifies how an archbishop
from the Catholic periphery positioned himself with his own interpretation of the Church and her necessity for doctrinal and pastoral
renewal. Landázuri was a Father in search of compromises in his
interventions at CPC sessions, and pursued a balance between the
necessity of Church renewal and the importance of gradually implementing any reform to avoid doctrinal abuses and giving scandal to the
faithful. The article seeks to contribute to the history of Vatican II
through the knowledge of Landázuri’s participation in the conciliar
preparatory phase.
Keywords: Juan Landázuri Ricketts; Preparatory Phase; Council
Vatican II; Peru; Catholic Church
Introduction
The research up to this point on the preparatory phase mainly studies
the Central Preparatory Commission and the other preparatory commissions.1 These studies share an approach to the Vatican II historiography,
* Rolando Iberico Ruiz is a Doctoral Researcher at the KU Leuven and the Australian
Catholic University and a Faculty Member at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru.
His email addresses are: ribericor@pucp.pe; rolando.ibericoruiz@kuleuven.be
1. Antonino Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina o annunciare l’evangelo: Il dibatitto nella
Commissione centrale preparatoria del Vaticano II (Genoa, 1992); Giuseppe Alberigo and
Alberto Melloni, eds., Verso il concilio Vaticano II (1960–1962) (Genoa, 1993); Riccardo Burigana, Maria Paiano, Giovanni Turbanti, and Mauro Velati, “La messa a punto dei testi: le
commissioni nella fase preparatoria del Vaticano II,” in: Vatican II commence. . . Approches francophones, ed. Étienne Fouilloux (Leuven, 1993), 28–53; Alexandra Von Teuffenbach, “La

724

ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ

725

which is interpreted by the hermeneutics of the majority and minority theological and juridical positions during the conciliar period. They also focus
for the most part on the notable protagonists of the debates. Even the
preparatory phase is analyzed from these approaches.
As its title announces, the impressive work of Antonino Indelicato,
Difendere la dottrina o annunciare l’evangelo (1992), also focuses on the
leading two positions taking place in the Central Preparatory Commission
(CPC). On one side were the defenders of the juridical and disciplinary
orientation of the schemas. These were mainly members of the Roman
Curia. On the other side were the supporters of a more pastoral and theological re-elaboration of the schemas. Therefore, Indelicato aims his attention at the well-known actors of the CPC, like Cardinals Augustin Bea,
Alfredo Ottaviani, Léon-Joseph Suenens, or Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre.
An analogous outline is also shared by Joseph Komonchak’s chapter on the
preparatory phase in the first volume of History of Vatican II, edited by
Giuseppe Alberigo.2
Although this dualistic outline is valid—with some nuances—in
understanding the historical development of Vatican II, it neglects the participation of the majority of Fathers, whose stances were complex and
reflected their own interpretation of the Church and its necessity for doctrinal and pastoral renewal. Hence, this study of the participation of Juan
Landázuri, the archbishop of Lima, Peru, at the CPC sheds light on his
understanding of the Catholic Church and her need for doctrinal and pastoral renewal.
From a prudent approach, Landázuri believed that the Church should
renew herself, but gradually, in order to avoid affecting the faithful’s sense
of piety and ecclesial belonging. However, Landázuri favored a new theological and doctrinal understanding of the Church because of the increasing ecclesial collaboration of laypeople. Hence, in his intervention in the
CPC and his pastoral position in Lima, he always remarked on the necessity of reform. Far from resisting the changes, even the theological ones,
Landázuri favored adapting the Church to the new times to foster her
Commissione Teologica preparatoria (Concilio Vaticano II),” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia,
21 (2012), 219–43.
2. Joseph Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio durante la preparación,” in: Historia del
Concilio Vaticano II, vol. I, eds. Giuseppe Alberigo and Evangelista Vilanova (Leuven, Salamanca, 1999), 155–330. The chapter title in English is “The Struggle for the Council during
the Preparation of Vatican II (1960–1962).”

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

presence in society. Although there are studies on the archbishop’s role
during the council, they do not analyze the preparatory period.3
The article begins with a profile of Monsignor Juan Landázuri Ricketts from his formation up to the submission of his vota to the Council in
1959. The second part analyzes Landázuri’s intervention and theologicalcanonical positioning during the CPC meetings. Focusing mainly on his
participation during the fifth and sixth sessions, this paper examines the
archbishop’s understanding of ecclesial renewal and the necessity of a doctrinal, theological, and pastoral adaptation of the Church. His positioning
illustrates the theological and pastoral complexity of a prelate from a
peripheric Church in contact with the doctrinal trends in the context of the
preparation of a council. Likewise, through examining Landázuri’s stances,
this paper draws a broader picture of the history of the preparatory phase
of Vatican II in order to make this history more global and Catholic.
Hence, the article concludes with illustrating the importance of focusing
on non-European actors to obtain a more global approach to theologicalhistorical studies of Vatican II.
A Profile of a Franciscan Archbishop: Who was Juan Landázuri Ricketts?
Juan Landázuri Ricketts was born in Arequipa, in southern Peru, on
December 19, 1913. His birth name was Guillermo Eduardo Landázuri
Ricketts. He was a member of a very traditional and well-known Catholic
family in Arequipa. His uncle Alberto Ricketts Murga and his cousin
Alfredo Barreda Landázuri were doctors and members of the Society of
Saint Vincent de Paul. The pair were very well known for attending to ill
poor people for free as a form of their lay apostolate in Arequipa.4 After
being rejected from the Navy, he had as a spiritual director the Spanish
Franciscan and priest Francisco Cabré, who was the advisor of the Catholic
Circle of Workers in Arequipa and a diffuser of Social Catholicism in the
city through public talks and the newspaper La Colmena. Cabré was a
moderate thinker who criticized the social and economic inequalities, even

3. Serapio Ríos Juárez, “El cardenal Landázuri y el Concilio Vaticano II” (master’s
thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2013); Massimo Zorzin, Il cardinale Juan
Landázuri Ricketts: La Chiesa Peruviana e Latinoamericana nel periodo del Concilio Vaticano II
(Roma, 2018). Ríos Juárez’s thesis does not study the preparatory phase, while Zorzin devotes
only seven pages to a descriptive analysis of the CPC.
4. Rolando Iberico Ruiz, “El cardenal Juan Landázuri Ricketts, arzobispo de Lima:
pastor de la recepción conciliar y de la unidad (1955–1989),” in: Obispos de la Patria Grande:
Pastores, Profetas y Mártires, ed. Ana María Bidegaín (Bogotá, 2018), 103–30, here 104.

ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ

727

considering strikes as necessary under certain circumstances, such as preserving social order.5 The Spaniard Franciscan was an example of the third
way of Social Catholicism that criticized social inequality and fostered
social reforms in order to reach social harmony.
Landázuri joined the Order of Friars Minors of the Franciscan
Province of San Francisco Solano in 1932. After joining the order, he took
Juan as his religious name. The same year, he began his one-year philosophical and four-year theological training in the Convent of Ocopa in the
central highlands (Junín, Perú).6 On April 16, 1939, Landázuri was
ordained a priest in the Convent of Ocopa, where he was assigned to teach
liturgy and canon law.7
During the Second World War, in 1943, the Minister General of the
Franciscan Order named a General Definitor for the South American
provinces in Lima. Juan Landázuri was named as his advisory member.
After being part of the government of his Order, Landázuri’s ecclesiastical
career took off. In 1946, he participated in the World Congress of Pax
Romana and remained in Rome to study canon law in the Pontifical
Athenaeum Antonianum. There, he obtained the doctorate summa cum
laude in canon law in 1949.8 In 1950, Landázuri was named Master of
Studies at Ocopa and professor of canon law. However, very soon after,
Landázuri was elected Provincial of the Province of San Francisco Solano
and gained the right to participate in the General Chapter of the Franciscan Order in Assisi in 1951. During the Chapter, Landázuri was elected as
the General Definitor of the Order for Latin America.9 As a new member
of the Franciscan Curia, he remained in Rome and was invited to teach
canon law at the Antonianum.10
However, Landázuri’s governmental mandate was short-lived. In
March 1952, the Holy See elected him as auxiliary bishop of Lima, and in
5. Iberico Ruiz, “El cardenal Juan Landázuri,” 104–05. In 1918, Cabré criticized the
“heartless Capitalism” that destroyed the life of the workers and their families. See: Francisco
Cabré, La unión de la clase obrera: Conferencia dada en el “Círculo de Obreros Católicos” en el cine
Arequipa, el día 27 de enero de 1918 (Arequipa, 1918), 15–16.
6. Zorzin, Il cardinale, 100–01. The Convent of Ocopa was at that moment the
Provincial House of Higher Studies.
7. Ríos Juárez, “El cardenal Landázuri,” 32.
8. Ríos Juárez, “El cardenal Landázuri,” 33. In 1950, his doctoral thesis “De alienatione bonorum temporalium religiosorum” was published in Rome by Desclée de Brouwer.
9. Ríos Juárez, “El cardenal Landázuri,” 33.
10. Ríos Juárez, “El cardenal Landázuri,” 33.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

April, as coadjutor bishop of the archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Gualberto Guevara y Cuba. In August 1952, the Franciscan friar was consecrated bishop in the Cathedral of Lima.11 The newly ordained bishop faced
the conflict between the archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Guevara, and the
Apostolic nuncio Giovanni Panico, regarding the organization of the
Eucharist Congress. After resolving the conflict, Landázuri reached a conclusion that led his episcopal ministry: the importance of the search for
“unity inside and outside the Church.”12 In May 1955, after the death of
Cardinal Guevara, Pius XII appointed Landázuri as archbishop of Lima.
He was put in charge of a large territory of more than 34,000 kilometers
squared, with a population of 1,420,000 inhabitants and a total of 527
priests (121 diocesan priests and 406 religious priests).13
At the beginning of Landázuri’s episcopal ministry, the archdiocese of
Lima had the pastoral and social challenge of the growing slums. In his
first pastoral letter of June 1955, he expressed his awareness of the sociopolitical and economic changes in the country and the physical transformation of the territory due to the expansion of the cities, while requesting the
Catholics to remain faithful to God and the Holy Church.14 The same
year, as archbishop of Lima, Landázuri participated in the First General
Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Conference identified the four main problems of the region: 1) the
scarcity of clergy; 2) the religious education of the faithful; 3) the socioeconomic inequalities; and 4) the situation of indigenous people.15
The pastoral visits to rural and urban parishes were crucial for
Landázuri’s position in favor of a social pastoral committed to the underprivileged realities of the archdiocese. He asserted that by visiting slum
parishes, he “touched the reality.”16 To answer the pastoral challenge of

11. Serapio Ríos, “Juan Landázuri Ricketts. Apuntes biográficos,” in: Caminando en el
amor: El pastor de una Iglesia viva Homenaje al cardenal Juan Landázuri Ricketts en el centenario
de su nacimiento, ed. Carlos Castillo (Lima, 2014), 55–72, here 61–62.
12. Juan Landázuri Ricketts, Recuerdos de un Pastor al servicio de su pueblo (Lima,
1994), 48.
13. Armando Nieto Vélez, “La obra memorable de un pastoral ejemplar,” in: Caminando en el amor: El pastor de una Iglesia viva: Homenaje al cardenal Juan Landázuri Ricketts en
el centenario de su nacimiento, ed. Carlos Castillo (Lima, 2014), 27–33, here 27–28.
14. El amigo del clero, no. 1562 (July, 1955), 213–14.
15. I Conferencia General del Episcopado Latinoamericano: Río de Janeiro—Brasil, 1955
(Rio de Janeiro, 1955), 5–8, retrieved on September 10, 2023 from https://www.celam.org/
documentos/Documento_Conclusivo_Rio.pdf.
16. Landázuri, Recuerdos de un Pastor, 59.

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729

The first Maundy Thursday of Juan Landázuri Ricketts as Archbishop of Lima in
1956. Photograph from the Historical Archive of El Comercio, Lima, Peru.

shanty towns, the archbishop founded the Mission for Lima (“La Misión
de Lima”) in May 1957 to attend to 120,000 Lima inhabitants.17 The Mission for Lima gathered a group of male and female religious, parish laypeople, Catholic school students, and Catholic Action members under the
direction of the laywoman Maria Rosario Aráoz, a school teacher. She
described the Mission as “the fulfillment of social justice in the slums
through the dignification of the human person and the attainment of
common good.”18
The archbishop’s pastoral approach included the development of
neighborhoods through the promotion of health and education services.
Thus, pastoral work was understood not only as the expansion of the
Church’s presence, but the improvement of the faithful’s living
conditions.19 As a consequence of this pastoral approach, Landázuri organized, together with the Episcopal Assembly, the First Social Week in
17. Jeffrey Klaiber, La Iglesia en el Perú: Su historia social desde la independencia, 2nd ed.
(Lima, 1988), 347.
18. Maria Rosario Araoz, La Misión de Lima (Lima, 1967), 19.
19. Iberico Ruiz, “El cardenal Juan Landázuri,” 108.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

1959. Under the title “The Social Exigences of Catholicism in Peru,”
Landázuri’s closing speech asserted that the Church was “the strongest
advocate of social justice,” promoting that “the current socio-economic
order must be reformed and improved.”20
Between November 16 and 18, 1959, Landázuri convened the Eighteenth Archdiocesan Synod to renew the canonical, liturgical, and pastoral
aspects in the archdiocese of Lima. Following the spirit of renewal of the
convocation to the council, Landázuri’s call to the synod also shared the
“desire of renewal, of general improvement, or adequate preparation to the
new times.”21 The archbishop, facing the pastoral challenges, considered
that “the ecclesial conditions have changed and there are new necessities
regarding the cult, discipline, organization, so on, [. . .] it is mandatory to
adjust the ecclesial legislation.”22 Landázuri’s idea of renewal to face pastoral challenges involved introducing legislative changes in the ecclesiastical organization. This was a hallmark of his canonical training.
The Votum to the Council Prepared by Archbishop Juan Landázuri
Ricketts and His Auxiliary Bishops
Despite the first steps taken by Landázuri on the social dimension of
pastoral work and his awareness of the necessity of an ecclesial renewal, his
proposition or votum—prepared along with his auxiliary bishops Fidel
Tubino and José Dammert—for the Antepreparatory Commission for the
Ecumenical Council was mainly a doctrinal and canonical proposal.
Landázuri and his auxiliary bishops never mentioned the rural and urban
contexts of Lima, but the proposals advocate for renewals to improve the
sense of religious belonging of the faithful. Moreover, the proposal sought
to improve pastoral work and care from a canonical perspective similar to
aims of the Eighteenth Archdiocesan Synod. The votum had a canonical
and doctrinal focus, but its background was pastoral.
Thus, one proposition recommended the reform of canon law to
extend the time granted to a priest to confess in a different diocese than his
own without renewing it every three days. The bishops also asked for a
more precise doctrine on penitence in the cases in which people remained
20. Juan Landázuri Ricketts, “Discurso de clausura en nombre del Episcopado del
Perú,” in: Primera Semana Social: Exigencias sociales del catolicismo en el Perú (Lima, 1959),
245–55, here 248.
21. El amigo del clero, no. 1615 (Dec., 1959), 380.
22. Ibid., 381.

ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ

731

for a long time without the benefit of the sacrament because many rural
communities only received a priest once a year.23
Another canonical and doctrinal proposal was related to the sustained
increase of population and the lack of clergy. A first solution was the
restoration of the minor orders for “honest and well-educated laypeople.”
A second proposition was the elimination of celibacy for sub-deacons and
deacons. Both ordained ministers could be in charge of catechesis, the
administration of baptism and the Eucharist, and the administration of the
temporal goods of the Church. Presumably, the reality of the unattended
slums and rural parishes was the background of the penitential issue and
the restoration of sub-deacons and deacons.24
A more socio-doctrinal proposition recommended as penitence that
people should abstain from “unnecessary pleasures” and share their income
with poor people. Landázuri and his auxiliary bishops also proposed that
employees whose jobs require no physical effort may donate part of their
incomes to poor people and workers. These two proposals clearly referred
to the spirit of solidarity and social conscience regarding the reality of slum
and rural parishes of the archdiocese of Lima.25
Landázuri and his two auxiliary bishops also included three recommendations for improving the Church’s management and presence in
Latin America. The first was the creation of a Roman congregation with
layman experts who could advise about the conditions of life on the continent or the increase of faculties of the Pontifical Commission for Latin
America. The second was the creation of regional offices for the service of
the community, such as universities for the clergy and the laity, and
Catholic mass media via the press, cinema, radio, and other areas. The
third was the elaboration of new norms for the collaboration between secular and religious clergy, laws to engage secular and religious clergy to promote the common good, and the partnership between both clergies.26
Compared with other Peruvian vota, Landázuri’s votum shared the
primary concern of the necessity of ecclesial renewal to face the pastoral
23. Acta et documenta concilio oecumenico Vaticano II apparando: Serie I (Antepraeparatoria): Volumen II Consilia et vota Episcoporum et praelatorum: Pars VII America meridionalis—
Oceania (Vatican City, 1961), 505, 507. (Hereafter AD I: II: VII.) All translations from Latin
were done by the author.
24. Ibid., 506.
25. Ibid., 507.
26. Ibid., 506.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

challenges. Jeffrey Klaiber considered the Peruvian vota as a whole as proposals for the preparation for the Council of Trent; however, his analysis
does not recover the complexity and particularity of the Peruvian vota to
the council.27 The recovery of these diverse and complex pastoral concerns
means acknowledging the different backgrounds of the mindsets and positions of the prelates. For some Peruvian Fathers, behind the ecclesial-pastoral concern, there were theological reasons, apologetic reasons, and
canonical reasons. Despite the different reasons, the Peruvian episcopate
desired the renovation of the Church to face the ecclesial challenges, which
were mainly the socio-political crisis, the spread of Protestantism, and the
fear of Communism.28
In sum, for the votum, Landázuri and his auxiliary bishops proposed
mainly canonical and disciplinary reforms. Although there is no mention
of the social context, they provided evidence of the need for reforms to
adapt the Church to the new pastoral care situation. Hence, the proposals
emphasized the reform of canon law to improve pastoral care according to
context and the need of local churches. This feature of the votum is plausibly connected with the fact that the three bishops were canonists. Additionally, it is in contrast to the theology of church renewal at that time,
which separated theological reflection on the Church from the social context. This lack of attention to the historical roots of every theology and
church model was a predominant idea at the time. This idea of theology
27. Jeffrey Klaiber, “Perú,” in: Cristianismo e Iglesias de América Latina en vísperas del
Vaticano II, ed. José Oscar Beozzo (San José, 1992), 153–64, here 162. Klaiber’s conclusion is
consistent with the analysis of the vota presented by Étienne Fouilloux’s chapter, “La fase
antepreparatoria (1959–1960): El lento camino para salir de la inercia,” in: Historia del Concilio Vaticano II, eds. Giuseppe Alberigo and Evangelista Vilanova, 5 vols. (Leuven and Salamanca, 1999–2008, here 1999), I, 63–154. In this chapter, Fouilloux classified the Hispanic
American vota within the intransigent block because they paid little attention to John XXIII’s
objectives of the ecclesial renewal. This conclusion needs to be revised, respecting the complexity and diversity of episcopal understanding of theology, canon law, and ecclesial reality.
For a new approach to the studies of the vota, see Rolando Iberico Ruiz, “The Vota of the
Episcopate of the Andean Region on Ecclesiology and Laity,” in: Vatican II After Sixty Years:
Developments and Expectations Prior to the Council, eds. Mathijs Lamberigts, Antonia Pizzey,
and Karim Schelkens (Turnhout, 2023), 131–54.
28. For instance, there were fifteen requests for the vernacular for different reasons.
Thus, the introduction of vernacular was proposed for theological reasons, such as by Antonio Kühner, prelate of Tarma, who wanted a more active involvement of the faithful in the
liturgy. There were also apologetic reasons, such as offered by Martín Elorza, prelate of
Moyobamba, who exposed his concerns about the spread of Protestantism. There were practical reasons, as well, such as the use of vernacular in the Mass because Latin was an
unknown language, expressed by Federico Pérez, archbishop of Trujillo. See: AD I: II: VII,
515, 519, 521.

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733

and church renewal was in Landázuri’s mind when he was named a
member of the Central Preparatory Commission in 1961.
The Pontifical Central Preparatory Commission and the Nomination
of Monsignor Juan Landázuri Ricketts, Archbishop of Lima (Peru)
On June 5, 1960, on the occasion of the Feast of Pentecost, Pope John
XXIII issued the motu proprio Superno Dei nutu, which marked the end of
the ante-preparatory phase and the beginning of the preparatory period of
the council. Superno Dei nutu recalled the image of a “new Pentecost”
because, for John XXIII, the council should be a new phase in the Church’s
life with a renewal coming directly from the Holy Spirit.29 It should promote the “restoration and renewal of the Universal Church.”30 Through
Superno Dei nutu, the Pope created ten commissions which corresponded
to the Roman Congregations, except for the Preparatory Commission for
the Lay Apostolate. John XXIII also established three secretaries: the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians, the Secretariat for Press and Media,
and the Administrative Secretariat.31
The motu proprio also erected a Pontifical Central Preparatory Commission for Vatican II (CPC) presided over by the Pope. Its secretary was
Pericle Felici, a member of the Roman Curia since 1947. The principal
tasks of the CPC were to coordinate the work of the preparatory commissions, analyze and evaluate their results, and prepare a rule for the council.32 Finally, according to the pope’s desire, Superno Dei nutu involved
bishops and prelates of different countries in these preparatory efforts. For
him, it was a clear sign of the catholicity of the Church.33 The Holy See
invited the archbishop of Lima, Juan Landázuri Ricketts as a member of
the Central Preparatory Commission.

29. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 5–6.
30. Quoted in Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio,” 158.
31. Alberto Melloni, ed., Vatican II: The Complete History (New York, 2015), 58–59.
The correspondence between the preparatory commissions and curial offices produced power
plays. Each commission sought to elaborate a draft that confirms the doctrinal definitions
declared before 1959. Hence, as Melloni asserts, “seventy drafts and documents were produced that claimed to standardize all the material with which the Roman Curia had been
engaged over the years.”
32. Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio,” 159.
33. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 4. The distinction among the members and consultors who lived in Rome and outside the city was problematic. Even Felici spoke of the
members and consultors from outside Rome as “honorary members” (membra honoraria). See
Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio,” 163.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

On July 5, 1960, the archbishop of Lima, Juan Landázuri Ricketts,
was named a Central Preparatory Commission member.34 However, the
Central Preparatory Commission (CPC) only began its work in June 1961.
The CPC held seven sessions in Rome between June 1961 and June 1962.35
A group of CPC members complained that the commission’s work was
unclear. The reasons for their criticism were various. The first was that the
meetings dealt with particular canonical and disciplinary issues instead of
theological themes. A second reason was that the members discussed similar or identical problems two or three times because the schemas came
from different commissions without coordination. According to the plenary, a third issue was that many topics were not appropriate for a council,
but rather for a canon law revision.36 From the beginning, many CPC
members considered that the council should renew the Church in canonical and theological terms.
Despite the lack of clear orientation of the CPC’s work, the commission
was a preparatory laboratory of the theological debates which would appear
during the first session of Vatican II.37 The debates in the CPC meetings displayed in advance the different theological positions at Vatican II. Some of
the future council Fathers were very critical of many schemas prepared by the
preparatory commissions. Among them were Cardinals Bernardus Johannes
Alfrink, Julius Döpfner, Josef Frings, Franz König, Paul-Émile Léger,
Achille Liénart, Giovanni Battista Montini, Léon-Joseph Suenens, Patriarch Maximus IV Saigh, and Archbishop Denis Hurley. They were the pillars of the so-called majority during the conciliar years. On the other side,
among the main supporters of the schemas, who had a more Roman mindset, were Cardinals Michael Browne, Alfredo Ottaviani, Ernesto Ruffini,
Giuseppe Siri, and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
In the middle of the two defined groups were the majority of the
members of the CPC, whose theological and canonical positions were
expressed in brief or long observations or animadversiones during the
34. Letter, Landázuri accusa ricevimento della nomina a membro della Commissione
Centrale, Lima, July 21, 1960, stored in Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV),
buste 396, fasc. 18, fol. 175.
35. The sessions were held on June 12–19, 1961; November 7–17, 1961; January 15–
23, 1962; February 20–27, 1962; March 26–April 3, 1962; May 3–12, 1962; and June 12–20,
1962.
36. Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio,” 162–63. During the preparatory phase,
there was not a clear orientation about what to expect from the revision of canon law. Possibly
for this reason, many schemas included canonical items.
37. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 334–39.

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735

Meeting of authorities at the Pontifical Catholic University of Lima (PUCP) in
1960. From left to right: Monsignor Fidel Tubino, auxiliary bishop of Lima and
rector of the PUCP; an unknown priest; Juan Landázuri Ricketts, archbishop of
Lima; and Alfredo Silva Santiago, archbishop of Concepción and rector of the
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Landázuri and Silva were also members of
the CPC. Photograph from the PUCP Archives, Lima, Peru.

debate. Komonchak affirmed that the alliances of this majority with one of
the two main positions depended on the topics covered during each session.38 The archbishop of Lima, Juan Landázuri Ricketts, tended to vote in
favor of the critical position regarding the schemas. However, he also supported views in favor of the schemas to create a balanced perspective
regarding the schemata.
Landázuri was involved in the first, second, fifth, and sixth sessions of
the CPC. The archbishop submitted his response for the first session
because he could not attend. Nevertheless, he participated in the congregations of the second, fifth, and sixth sessions. After the discussion, the
members of the CPC submitted their animadversiones, where they displayed their canonical and theological stances regarding the schemas. In
38. Komonchak, “La lucha por el concilio,” 284–85.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

his animadversiones, Landázuri delineated his theological and canonical
standpoint defending a gradual renewal of the Church and her structures.
Renewal and Adapting the Church with the Episcopal Conferences:
Landázuri’s Intervention in the First, Second and Fifth Sessions
of the CPC
Archbishop Landázuri had minor interventions for the first and
second sessions. For the first session, Landázuri sent a votum answering a
seven-item questionnaire prepared by Pericle Felici, secretary of the CPC.
The questionnaire had canonical inquiries on different issues, such as who
had the right to participate in the council, the voting system, the council’s
language, and other topics.39 Landázuri’s proposition was coherent with
the Code of Canon Law of 1917. However, on the question regarding the
procedure of discussions and voting, Landázuri considered it crucial that
the minority position should be expressed and pondered.40
Landázuri attended the second session. The questions on the nonCatholic observers and the new formula for the profession of faith were the
critical issues at stake. On the first topic, Landázuri supported Cardinals
Augustin Bea’s and Amleto Cicognani’s views on non-Catholic observers
without making a distinction between both positions. He also recommended pondering Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani’s observation, who considered that the issue was not ready to be solved.41 On the issue of the new
formula, Landázuri did not include any observation and only suggested
sending the formula back to the Theological Commission, which should
assess the entire animadversiones.42
The second session was a moment of recognition and training for
Landázuri. He experienced the diversity of the Church. According to his
own pastoral and theological position, he tried to gather different opinions
in his observations. However, considering the need for a change in doctrinal
and pastoral terms, Landázuri supported the critical stances of many
39. Acta et documenta concilio oecumenico Vaticano II apparando: Serie II (Praeparatoria):
Volumen II Acta pontificiae commissionis centralis praeparatoriae concilii oecumenici Vaticani II:
Pars I: Sessio prima—sessio secunda (Vatican City, 1965), 21–22. (Hereafter AD II: II: I.)
40. Ibid., 394.
41. Ibid., 490–91; Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 62–63. Cicognani’s position displayed a traditional view on the problem of Christian unity as the reconciliation with the
Catholic Church under the papal authority.
42. Ibid., 521. On the debate on the formula, see: Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina,
67–77.

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737

members of the CPC. For him, the only limit for any renewal was its speed.
Therefore, he believed a gradual renovation was needed to avoid bringing
scandal to the faithful and damage to the Church’s image. Landázuri’s
interventions in the fifth and sixth sessions illustrate his theological and
canonical position regarding his expectations for a reform council.
In March 1962, Juan Landázuri arrived at the fifth session43 as a cardinal, created by John XXIII. During the fifth session, two themes were
relevant to the discussion: the schema De sacra liturgia, and the seven
schemas prepared by the Commission De missionibus. The schema De sacra
liturgia was discussed in five congregations.44 Landázuri’s votes were for
each section of the schema placet iuxta modum, that is to say, “in favor but
with reservations.” During the debates on De sacra liturgia, the Peruvian
archbishop endorsed various CPC members’ observations.
For the discussion of the preface and chapter one, the Peruvian cardinal endorsed the observations of Cardinals Browne, Giuseppe Ferretto,
and Ernesto Ruffini (Palermo).45 Ferretto showed skepticism regarding the
liturgical change because the “innovations on sacred rites” could be against
the ecclesiastical traditions and canon law. For him, the schema clashed
with canons 2 and 1257 of the Code, which kept its mandatory force over
any attempt to reform the liturgy. Ferretto also remarked that the desire to
foster Bible reading could collide with the faithful’s religious culture.46
Ruffini was critical in many details, such as the use of the term
“progress,” which he thought should be changed for “adaptation” or
“recognition.” Without quoting canon 1257, he also warned about the risk
of granting the authority to the episcopate to adjust the liturgy.47 On the
other side, Browne positively assessed the schema. For him, the schema
43. The fifth session gathered between March 26 to April 3, 1962.
44. The order of discussion of the schema De Sacra Liturgia was as follows: Proemium
and chapter one, De principiis generalibus ad S. Liturgiam instaurandam atque fovendam (first
congregation); Proemium and chapter two, De Sacrosancto Eucharistia mysterio (second congregation); chapter three, De Sacramentis et Sacramentalibus (fourth congregation); chapters four,
De officio divino, and five, De anno liturgico (seventh congregation); and chapters six, De sacra
supellectile, seven, De musica sacra, and eight, De arte sacra (twelfth congregation).
45. Acta et documenta concilio oecumenico Vaticano II apparando: Serie II (Praeparatoria):
Volumen II Acta pontificiae commissionis centralis praeparatoriae concilii oecumenici Vaticani II:
Pars III: Sessio quinta—sessio sexta (Vatican City, 1968), 94. (Hereafter, AD II: II: III.)
46. Ibid., 64–5. Canon 2 asserts that the Code did not include provisions on rites, ceremonies, and liturgical books. Canon 1257 clearly expressed that the Holy See had exclusive
authority on the approval of liturgical books and the regulation of the liturgy.
47. Ibid., 68–69. Ferretto was also concerned about the term progressus.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

“clearly appears useful for the renovation of liturgical life.”48 As a canonist,
Landázuri supported Ferreto’s and Ruffini’s observations because they
emphasized the canonical limitation for any liturgical renewal. However,
he acknowledged the importance of renewing the liturgy. For Landázuri,
this apparent entrapment between the limitation of the Code and the need
for reform was progressively unraveling during his participation in the
CPC sessions.
During the second congregation, Landázuri’s observations revealed his
ideas of church renewal and the importance of the pastoral context in his
ecclesiology. For Landázuri, the renewal came from the hierarchy and the
institution towards the faithful; in other words, it came from reforming
structures and laws to foster pastoral care. This juridical and hierarchical
vision of the Church was commonplace for most Catholic prelates then.
Hence, for Landázuri, the ecclesial and pastoral renewal should indeed be
done, but carefully and gradually, because they could scandalize and confuse the faithful.
For the debate of chapter two, Landázuri highlighted that the schema
was “praiseworthy” because it was concise, insightful, and prudent. It was
also “related to this day’s liturgical longings.”49 However, he noticed a discrepancy between chapter two and canon 1248. While the chapter emphasized the “active participation” of the whole assembly, the priest and the
faithful as a whole, canon 1248 highlighted the dimension of the “passive
listening” of the faithful.50 Landázuri agreed with the new liturgical terminology “active participation.” Therefore, according to the Peruvian prelate,
to preserve coherence, the schema’s approval should lead to reforming the
canon law and other general Church laws.51 The consequences of this liturgical renewal were that more faithful would have a more active, conscientious, and pious participation in the sacrifice of the Mass.
In chapter three, Landázuri posed an objection. The archbishop recognized that the schema responded to the desire for reform expressed by
many bishops and liturgists because the secular conditions had changed the
people’s pastoral needs. However, he was afraid that the proposals for
48. Ibid., 77.
49. Ibid., 124.
50. Canon 1248 referred to the obligation to listen to the Mass on certain prescribed
days. Landázuri commented on the first sentence: Festis de praecepto diebus Missa audienda est.
The faithful were invited to listen to the Mass.
51. AD II: II: III: 124–25.

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739

reforming the Roman Rite for the Latin Church could harm some people’s
and regions’ pastoral conditions and customs. Hence, he believed that the
Council should only propose general criteria on this topic. Furthermore, he
believed that the Council should let the episcopal conferences reform the
Roman Rite according to the local situations and send them to the Holy
See for approval.52 Although Landázuri feared a general reform of the rite,
he supported the key idea that the episcopal conferences might have the
authority to propose locally-adapted reforms for the liturgy.
Landázuri’s stance in favor of the episcopal conference indirectly
acknowledged local churches’ identity and traditions. During the debate
of the last three chapters of De sacra liturgia, Landázuri again supported
the positions in favor of a significant role of episcopal conferences in the
liturgical renovation. Endorsing Cardinals Paul-Émile Léger’s and
William Godfrey’s animadversiones, Landázuri defended the idea that the
episcopal conferences could adapt the liturgical vestments and objects.53
For Landázuri, the defense of a more active function of the episcopal conference probably was associated with his role as president of the Peruvian
Episcopal Conference. As president, he favored collegial declarations of
the Peruvian Episcopal Conference on key issues related to the sociopolitical situation of the country.54
Another issue was the use of Latin. The fourth chapter, De officio
divino, kept Latin as the official language of the divine office, but proposed that the episcopal conferences could suggest the use of vernacular
language.55 On one side, Alfrink stood for translating the divine office
into the vernacular, not as a desire for novelty but to fill it with more
attention and devotion. On the other side, Cardinals André-DamienFerdinand Jullien, Godfrey, and Ottaviani supported Latin as the official
language of the Church.56 Like many CPC members, Landázuri desired
a new, shorter version of the divine office, considering the demands of
priests’ pastoral work in contemporary times. In his observation, he
52. Ibid., 305.
53. Ibid., 490. Godfrey proposed that the episcopal conference avoid bishops’ “individual peculiarities” regarding liturgical reforms. See also ibid., 481–82.
54. For instance, the Peruvian Episcopal Conference prepared three statements on the
socio-political crisis in Peru in 1958, 1961, and 1963. The three statements are found in Documentos del Episcopado Peruano, stored in the Repositorio Institucional PUCP, Departamento Académico de Teología, Voces peruanas del Vaticano II, retrieved on December 27,
2022, from https://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/124161.
55. AD II: II: III, 317–23.
56. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 196 n. 49.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

endorsed Cardinal Jullien’s “wise opinion.”57 Jullien favored the reform of
the divine office but disagreed with the possibility of vernacular language.
He wondered: “do not the new priests learn other vernacular languages
other than their own? Why do they not learn Latin?”58 Landázuri
endorsed a prudent renovation of divine office: reducing it but keeping the
Latin, as the bulwark of Tradition.
During the fifth session, the Commission for the Missions also submitted schemas. Regarding the implementation of reforms, Landázuri
agreed with the importance of the role of episcopal conferences for an
adapted renewal of ministry, discipline, and pastoral approach. The missionary schema De disciplina cleri proposed the permanent diaconate, even
for married men, and a more active involvement of lay people in missionary
jurisdictions. The schema also proposed that on these issues the episcopal
conferences should have authority.59 The Peruvian cardinal recommended
being cautious about the implementation of the diaconate. He believed
that the Holy See should undertake it directly, or allow some regional and
national episcopal conferences to deal with this topic ad experimentum.60
A second schema, De sacramentis ac de Sacra Liturgia, in accord with
the Commission for the Sacred Liturgy, proposed the diversity of rites, the
use of vernacular, and adaptation to local customs with the approval of the
episcopal conferences.61 Landázuri endorsed the animadversiones of Cardinals Francis Spellman (New York), Oswald Gracias (Bombay, India),
Ruffini, and Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre. These members emphasized the
importance of changing the sacramental discipline to contemporary
times.62 Gracias and Lefebvre remarked on the importance of adapting
sacramental practices to local culture in missionary territories. However,
Gracias affirmed that adaptations to local cultures should be done as in the
early days of Christianity, when pagan symbols were incorporated into the
sacraments. At the same time, Lefebvre criticized the authority of the episcopal conferences and proposed, instead, the authority of provincial or
regional councils.63 Although Lefebvre’s opinion was against the jurisdiction of the episcopal conference, once again, Landázuri endorsed the opin57. AD II: II: III, 363.
58. Ibid., 354. “Et sane novi sacerdotes nonne discunt linguas vernaculas alias quam
suam propiam? Cur non discunt latinam?”
59. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 201.
60. AD II: II: III, 245.
61. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 201.
62. AD II: II: III, 380–85.
63. Ibid., 383, 385.

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741

ions in favor of an episcopal body, like provincial or regional councils, to
discern the appropriateness of any ecclesial renewal to local circumstances.
The Reform as a Compromise: the Participation of Juan Landázuri
in the Sixth Session of the CPC (May 3–12, 1962)
On February 2, 1962, Pope John XXIII issued the motu proprio Consilium diu, establishing the opening of the Council on October 11, 1962.
The pressure on the preparatory commissions and the CPC increased. As
Indelicato mentioned, a tsunami of schemas arrived during the sixth and
seventh sessions of the CPC. In addition, many members and consultors
were under the impression that the schemas were not pertinent to a
council.64 For the sixth session, a total of nineteen schemas were dropped
off by the Commission for Bishops and the Government of Dioceses, the
Commission for the Discipline of the Clergy and the Christian People, the
Theological Commission, the Commission for Religious, the Commission
for the Discipline of the Sacraments, and the Commission for the Oriental
Churches. This section focuses on Landázuri’s position towards the pastoral
and doctrinal changes proposed through the schemas prepared by the Commission for Bishops and the Government of Dioceses and the Commission
for the Discipline of the Sacraments, and the debate on De Ecclesia.
The schemas prepared by the Commission for Bishops and the Government of Dioceses contained an implicit ecclesiological and pastoral
approach. The first part of the schema, Praecipuae de animarum cura quaestiones, developed doctrinal principles and applicable rules for the pastoral
office of the bishops.65 According to Landázuri, the schema was laudable but
required some additions like the observations made on the pastoral care of
workers, which was a “major question of today’s times.”66 The Peruvian cardinal agreed with Liénart’s observations regarding the pastoral work. For the
French cardinal, pastoral care for workers was a crucial ecclesial commitment
in the cities. The workers were a challenging pastoral target for the Church,
hence Liénart recommended organizing workers’ communities in parishes.67
Landázuri’s emphasis on pastoral work expressed his concern regarding the social and economic changes in Lima and Peru. The proposed
schema was an opportunity to introduce a local pastoral situation into a
64. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 216.
65. Ibid., 220.
66. AD II: II: III, 717.
67. Ibid., 700–01.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

larger debate on the bishops’ pastoral duty. Based upon his pastoral experience during “The Mission for Lima,” Landázuri held the importance of
attending to the new social situation as a crucial commitment for the
Church in his times. As he affirmed in 1959, the most important and
urgent task for the Church was the social situation.68
In the same schema, Landázuri also recommended the canonical
observations made by Cardinal Francesco Roberti,69 who defended the
existence of the cathedral chapter and the gradual process of adapting this
institution to the contemporary situation. Roberti considered that the
cathedral canons could have the roles of episcopal advisers, diocesan consultors, and parish priests.70 Landázuri’s agreement with Roberti displayed
his notion of renewal of ecclesial structures. For him, it implied a process
of updating and simplifying the canonical roles of canons and bishops to
fulfill the mission of the Church. The archbishop also rejected the schema
De praevia librorum censura eroumque prohibitione dropped by the Commission for the Discipline of the Clergy and the Christian People. This document explained the Church’s right and duty to the censorship and interdiction of books and spectacles. Landázuri voted non placet with the
recommendation to send the schema to the doctrinal commission.71
The second section of the same schema contained chapters concerning
the pastoral care of marriage, aeronautics, migrants, tourists, and Christian
faithful “infected by communism.” The debate was intense on the last topic
because it dealt with social justice. Cardinal Gian Battista Montini claimed
the need for an ecclesial assessment of the motives for the attraction of
communism among Christians and non-Christians. For him, the social
doctrine of the Church lacked a concrete application. Alfrink also added
that the social doctrine needed a substantial commitment of Christians to
social justice. Moreover, Catholics who participated in social injustices fostered the attraction towards communism.72 In line with his episcopal ministry, Landázuri recommended carefully considering Montini’s and
Alfrink’s observations focused on a pastoral care for social justice.73

68. Landázuri, “Discurso de clausura,” 249.
69. AD II: II: III, 717.
70. Ibid., 710.
71. Ibid., 860. Other CPC members rejected the schema. For instance, Cardinals
Montini and Frings remarked that the task of the Church (munus Ecclesiae) was evangelization and that the Church should educate the faithful’s conscience. AD II: II: III, 856–58.
72. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 228.
73. AD II: II: III, 757, 783.

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The most relevant debate revolved around De Ecclesia. For the sixth
session, the Theological Commission sent the first six chapters of the
schema.74 Landázuri did not propose any theological ideas, but his observations referred to other CPC members who were more trained in theology and canon law. Thus, for chapters one and two, Landázuri’s vote was
placet iuxta modum. He urged a careful re-assessment of the observations of
Cardinals Julius Döpfner, König, Bea, and Ruffini.75 The three first
prelates wanted an ecumenical perspective for the scheme, mainly when
chapter two refers to the non-Catholic baptized people. For instance,
Döpfner distinguished between the non-Catholic baptized, and the baptized Catholic. The former were partially members of the Church, while
the latter were complete and perfect church members.76 Bea remarked that
the schema should be sent to a mixed commission formed by the Theological Commission and the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians.77 Ruffini,
on his side, pointed to topics regarding the Old Testament images of the
Church and the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary as “the most distinguished
member of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church.”78
The debate about chapters three and four referred to episcopal theology. Landázuri’s vote was a placet for both chapters, but he requested that
the new manuscript should ponder and incorporate all the cardinals’ observations.79 Most of the interventions were critical of the subordination of
the bishops to the pope. Cardinals Frings, Ruffini, König, Confalonieri,
Alfrink, and Maximos IV pointed out the episcopal collegiality as a model
for the relationships between the bishops and the pope.80 This position
concurred with Landázuri’s stance in favor of a more active role of the episcopal conferences and episcopal bodies.
For chapter six on the laity, Landázuri voted placet iuxta modum.
Landázuri proposed that a new version of the chapter should consider the
opinion of the Commission for the Lay Apostolate. The Peruvian prelate
74. The chapters discussed were: chapter one, De ecclesiae militantis natura; chapter two,
De membris ecclesiae militantis eiusdemque necessitate ad salutem; chapter three, De episcopate ut
supremo grado sacramenti ordinis et de sacerdotio; chapter four, De episcopis residentialibus; chapter five, De statibus evangelicae adquirendae perfectionis; and chapter six, De laicis. For a description of the schema De ecclesia (chapters 1–6), see Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 242–47.
75. AD II: II: III, 1032.
76. Ibid., 1004–16.
77. Ibid., 1012–16.
78. Ibid., 1000–02
79. Ibid., 1076.
80. Indelicato, Difendere la dottrina, 251–53.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

also requested a consideration of the animadversiones of Cardinals Giuseppe
Siri, Giuseppe Pizzardo, Ruffini, Léger, König, and Suenens, and archbishop Franjo Šeper.81 On one side, Ruffini, Siri, and other prelates criticized the concept of a lay universal priesthood because it could become a
parallel priesthood regarding the ministerial priesthood. On the other side,
Léger, König, Suenens, and other prelates considered the schema an opportunity to emphasize a positive and ecumenical definition of the laity regarding the question of the “separated brothers.” Hence, it could be the recognition of the ecclesial role of laypeople. Finally, Šeper also affirmed that the
Catholic world expected Vatican I to be completed with a new theology of
bishops and theology of the laity.82 Landázuri endorsed all those opinions
to indicate his search for a compromise. According to his idea of gradual
reform, the contribution of laypeople was undeniable and deserved recognition within the Church. However, recognition was not to call into question
the doctrine of the ministerial priesthood.
The sixth session was for Cardinal Landázuri a moment to concur with
the other members that the conciliar themes should deal with the doctrinal
and theological reforms. Thus, Landázuri joined the opinions in favor of
sending many schemas to the commissions for the reform of the code of
canon law of the Latin and Oriental Catholic Church.
The Commission for the Discipline of the Sacraments sent five
schemas concerning marriage. Like many other CPC members, the Peruvian cardinal believed that the schemas were inadequate for a council. For
De impedimentis ad matrimonium and De matrimoniis mixtis, Landázuri
believed that the issues of those schemas and other similar ones should be
discussed in the Commission for the Reform of the Code of Canon Law.83
For De processu matrimoniali, Landázuri also recommended sending the
schema to the same commission for the reform of canon law.84
Landázuri had a similar opinion for De consensu matrimoniali which
contained many canonical issues which he believed were not proper for a
council but rather for a commission for the renewal of canon law. He also
81. AD II: II: III, 1110.
82. Ibid., 1101, 1104.
83. Ibid., 1213. Pizzardo was concerned that topics such as male impotence would be
discussed in the council. Other members advised the sending of the normative part of the
schema to the commission for reform of canon law. Bea considered that the ecumenical
dimension of mixed marriages should be studied in a mixed commission. See also: Indelicato,
Difendere la dottrina, 258–59 ns. 91 and 93.
84. AD II: II: III, 1276.

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Harry Pott, President van Peru, naast hem zijn echtgenote [President of Peru, his wife
beside him], March 9, 1960, photograph. Stored in Dutch National Archives, The
Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANeFo), 1945–1989,
bekijk toegang 2.24.01.05, Bestanddeelnummer 911-0841. Image is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license.

endorsed Cardinal Fernando Cento’s and Monsignor Vittorio Bartoccetti’s
recommendation to avoid easy access to the dissolution of marriages. This
kind of situation produced a severe scandal among the faithful.85 Landázuri
probably recalled the 1958 scandal in Lima produced by president Manuel
Prado Ugarteche, who obtained the dissolution of his marriage from the
Holy See. Immediately afterward, he contracted a Catholic marriage
presided over by the auxiliary bishop José Dammert. Outside the church,
Catholic women dressed in black to protest. Landázuri avoided presiding
over the ceremony.86
The Commission for the Oriental Churches sent the last three
schemas for the sixth session. For Landázuri, the schema De facultatibus
Episcoporum had many disciplinary topics more suitable for the Commission for the Oriental Canon Law. Hence, Landázuri supported the observations of Browne and Ruffini, who considered that many topics could be
85. Ibid., 1255–56.
86. Luis Jochamowitz, “Archivo expiatorio de Luis Jochamowitz: retratos biográficos
de Manuel Prado,” Cosas, December 13, 2019, retrieved on October 5, 2023 from https://
cosas.pe/cultura/169647/archivo-expiatorio-de-luis-jochamowitz-retratos-biograficos-demanuel-prado/.

746

SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

Lothar Wolleh, Second Vatican Council, ca. 1962–1965 (precise date unknown),
photograph. Image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license.

part of the renewal of canon law.87 After the discussion on De catechismo et
catechetica institutione, Landázuri proposed that it should take into consideration the schema for the Catechismo universali pro Ecclesia Latina.88 A
summary of doctrines was not suitable for a council.
The closing of the sixth session also marked Landázuri’s final participation in the preparatory phase. He returned to Rome in October 1962 for
the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The Peruvian cardinal showed
a doctrinal and juridical understanding of the Church and her renewal
without neglecting theology and doctrinal development. He generally supported the tendency for renewal, which he mainly understood as canonical
and doctrinal transformation with implications on pastoral care. Therefore,
Landázuri’s involvement during the preparatory stage expressed an openness to a general renewal of the Church. This frame of mind was crucial
during the conciliar period.
87. AD II: II: III, 1283, 1287.
88. Ibid., 1301.

ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ

747

Conclusion
In his Pastoral Exhortation of June 21, 1961, archbishop Juan
Landázuri developed and explained the main purpose of the council: the
renovation of the entire life of the Church.89 On the renewal of the
Church, Landázuri asserted:
The Church is not of the world, but she lives in the world, and she cannot
remain impassive in the swaying of the forms that the world is adopting,
which are subject to aging and expiration. Renewal and adaptation are
therefore necessary: renewal in the vigor of faith and doctrine, renewal in
administrative and disciplinary structures, renewal in the religious and
liturgical life of ecclesiastics and laity, renewal in the forms of apostolate,
renewal, finally, in the consolidation of Christian principles, by which the
development of civil, economic, political, and social life is governed.90

For the Peruvian archbishop, the renewal of the Church was related to
the “swaying forms that the world is adopting.” The renovation, hence, was
connected to the reality in which the Church was constituted. This aspect
of his idea of church renewal was important because of its impact in pastoral work and the commitment of the Church to the struggle for social
justice. However, in his idea of renewal, doctrine could not be reformed.
This vision of renewal gradually changed during his involvement in the
preparatory phase of Vatican II. Landázuri became acquainted with the
new theological and doctrinal stances of the CPC, and therefore he shaped
his own position in favor of a prudent and necessary reform of the Church.
At the beginning of his participation, Landázuri held that the renewal
of the Church should be a gradual process of changing the administrative
89. Juan Landázuri Ricketts, “Exhortación Pastoral que el Arzobispo Primado de Lima
dirige al Clero y fieles de su Arquidiócesis con motivo del Día del Papa” (Mimeographed
manuscript), June 21, 1961, stored in Vatican City, AAV, buste 396, fasc. 18, fol. 178–80. It
was Landázuri’s only pastoral exhortation directly referring to the council during these years.
The exhortation was reported to the Roman curia by the Nuncio and was published in El
amigo del clero, nos. 1633–1635 (June, July, and August, 1961), 523–26.
90. Landázuri Ricketts, “Exhortación Pastoral,” stored in Vatican City, AAV, buste
396, fasc. 18, fol. 179. “La Iglesia no es del mundo, pero vive en el mundo, y no puede quedar
impasible en el vaivén de las formas que el mundo va adoptando, y que están sujetas a envejecimiento y caducidad. Se impone, pues, la renovación y la adaptación: renovación en el vigor
de la fe y de la doctrina, renovación en las estructuras administrativas y disciplinares, renovación en la vida religiosas y litúrgica de los eclesiásticos y de los laicos, renovación en las
formas de apostolado, renovación, en fin, en al consolidación de los principios cristianos, por
los que se rige el desenvolvimiento de la vida civil, económica, política y social.” The English
version above is the author’s translation.

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SEARCHING FOR ECCLESIAL COMPROMISE

and disciplinary structures. In his idea of the Church, Landázuri held that
ecclesial renovation comes from top to bottom, from administrative and
disciplinary structures to the faithful. However, during the fifth and sixth
sessions, Landázuri began to consider that some parts of doctrine could be
reformable. Moreover, the Peruvian cardinal gave the episcopal conferences or bodies a decisive role in a gradual process of ecclesial renewal.
They were crucial for the implementation of any reform in a local Church.
During the fifth session, Landázuri endorsed the observations in favor
of liturgical adaptation and changes for improving the missions. For
instance, during the debate on De sacra liturgia, Landázuri followed some
conservative observations regarding liturgical adaptation, like the permanence of Latin in the divine office. Because of his formation as a canonist,
he also requested the adaptation of canon law in order to avoid contradictions with the liturgical reform. Therefore, while agreeing with the reform,
Landázuri preferred a process of gradual change so as not to affect the
faithful and the ecclesial doctrine.
It is remarkable how Landázuri appreciated the episcopal bodies,
mainly the episcopal conferences. For him, it seemed that the episcopal
conference as a national council of bishops was crucial for discerning any
ecclesial renewal from a local point of view. The bishops as a whole would
be able to introduce more adequate reforms into local church life. This can
be seen, for example, in the case of the restoration of the diaconate.
Landázuri believed that a radical adjustment of ecclesial ministry should be
made by each episcopal conference or body. However, for the Peruvian
prelate, all liturgical reform or changes in the discipline ought to be confirmed by the Holy See. The counterbalance to the local episcopal bodies’
reforms was the confirmation from the Holy See.
Landázuri’s interventions in the sixth session show his interest in
reaching a compromise between the theological and doctrinal developments of the CPC and his idea of gradual church renewal. On one side,
Landázuri probably found important the many theological developments
in De Ecclesia. It likely was the case that the term “collegiality” expressed
Landázuri’s idea of the role of episcopal conferences and bodies in the
Catholic Church. Hence, he endorsed the observations favoring episcopal
collegiality. On the other hand, the idea of recognizing a universal priesthood for laypeople was not convincing to Landázuri because it threatened
the ministerial priesthood. Therefore, the archbishop of Lima favored theological renewal in ecclesiology without threatening, for instance, the traditional theology of the priesthood.

ROLANDO IBERICO RUIZ

749

It is commonplace to assign the major roles of Vatican II history to the
Central European Fathers. This approach produces an unfortunate oversight of the role of the majority of Fathers. Like many of his peers,
Landázuri arrived in Rome with his idea of the Church and what he
believed was the proper way of reforming her. Hence, the preparatory
phase was an essential moment for Landázuri to measure the state of the
Church in anticipation of a council. His participation in the CPC meetings
was important in the nuancing of his idea of church renewal from a canonical and disciplinary perspective, but without renouncing his stance in favor
of progressive renovation. Landázuri always had an attitude of openness;
however, he showed his reserve to some reforms because he felt they could
affect the faithful’s customs or traditional theology and doctrine. He was
open to changing doctrine, without affecting the main doctrinal lines of
the priesthood and the faithful’s customs.
This attitude of openness and search for compromise was essential
during Landázuri’s participation in the four sessions of Vatican II, because
he was willing to support crucial changes in the Catholic Church in order
to foster and improve its doctrinal definitions and pastoral work.91
Therefore, the study of “minor” Fathers, like Cardinal Juan Landázuri,
sheds light on the complexity of local churches from the periphery of the
Catholic Church, and on the ways in which these Fathers theologically and
ecclesially experienced the conciliar event. They participated in the preparation of Vatican II with their own ideas of renewal and were able, like
Landázuri, to enrich and resist many reform proposals. Like the archbishop of Lima, many Fathers sought documents which supported positions of compromise. Therefore, the history of Vatican II becomes more
Catholic by recovering the history of the participation in the CPC of Cardinal Juan Landázuri, archbishop of Lima.

91. Cardinal Juan Landázuri earned the criticism of prominent prelates because he supported canonical and pastoral changes during the council. Although he was reserved during
the preparatory phase at Vatican II, the archbishop defended the restoration of the diaconate
for married men. After his defense, the cardinal of New York, Francis Spellman, told
Landázuri: “I no longer send priests to Lima.” Juan Landázuri Ricketts, Recuerdos de un
Pastor, 97.

Miscellany
Homily of Cardinal Timothy Dolan
at the Funeral Mass for Msgr. Robert F. Trisco,
August 7, 2023,
Crypt Chapel, Basilica of the
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

T

hat we could gather for Robert Trisco’s funeral Mass in this crypt
church of the Basilica of the National Shrine, where he faithfully kept
his daily 7:00 a.m. appointment with the Lord in the Eucharist for over
sixty years, is most fitting; to assemble on the campus of this university he
served so ably and loyally for over a half-dozen decades is appropriate as
well; that so many of his colleagues, students, and friends would be here is
one more reason that this is an occasion of joy and gratitude, even as we
admit our loss.
How could a vocation so enduring, years of scholarship so helpful, all
achieved by a thoughtful gentleman of manners and courtesy, lead us to
exclaim anything but Deo gratias?
Only three weeks ago did I write him. . . . He preferred correspondence; an email or text from Monsignor Trisco was not to be!—following
my own reading of the new biography of John Tracy Ellis by Monsignor
Thomas Shelley, yes, a former student of Robert’s. In this note I renewed
my thanks to him for his patient guidance and direction of my own graduate work in American Church history here. I’m glad I had the chance to
say that to him one last time. When Monsignor Trisco became the director
of my thesis and dissertation, Dr. John Zeender remarked, “Father Dolan,
he will drive you crazy with his precision and relentless red-pencil corrections. However, you will thank God you have him, as he will demand thoroughness and substance. Plus, when it’s time for your defense you’ll fly
through, as each of your readers will acknowledge, ‘If it is good enough for
Robert Trisco, it’s good enough for me!’”
Last Friday, we celebrated the Feast of the Cure of Ars, St. John Vianney, patron saint of priests. While revered for his pastoral zeal, humility,
750

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751

and piety, he was not noted for his scholarly accomplishments, wise though
he was. Monsignor Trisco, a priest of the archdiocese of Chicago shined in
his scholarly research, showing us that a diocesan priest could also be summoned to serve the Church in the classroom, library, in research, and writing. We need both the Vianneys and the Triscos.
You know that he did his philosophy, theology, and graduate work in
ecclesiastical history at the Gregorian University, while a seminarian and a
young priest at the North American College in Rome. Daily would he have
viewed the motto of that college, from the psalms, Firmum est cor meum;
My heart is . . . steadfast, loyal, strong, single-minded, as the various renderings of Firmum est have it. That’s Robert Trisco: steadfast. No novelties;
no experiments; no alterations in schedule; no distractions from his duties.
Steadfast: hailed in the Bible; perfected by Jesus; modeled by Monsignor
Trisco.
Might I propose to you that he was a splendid churchman. There may
be those who would not esteem such accolade. While Robert would not
claim it, he sure deserves it. For him, “Love for Jesus and His Church” was
the passion of his life, as Pope St. John Paul II encouraged in priests. Love
for Jesus and His Church. . . .
Monsignor Trisco would believe that God has revealed Himself in
history, the history of Israel, the history of the New Israel, the Church. His
love for the Church was especially inspirational because, as a celebrated
historian, he knew the mystical body of Christ “warts and all.” As Dorothy
Day, a frequent worshipper in this crypt church, commented, “Ah, yes, the
Church I believe to be the spotless bride of Christ; but at times she is the
harlot of Babylon.” Robert knew both, and loved them both. A man whose
natural family had faded away, he claimed the Church as his, determined
in his priesthood, his scholarship, his detailed editing of the Catholic Historical Review, his writing, his directing, his teaching. This was his passion,
his meat and potatoes, his steadfastness. As Jesus asked Martha, “Do you
believe this?” Do we believe Monsignor Trisco’s life and vocation were
worth it, made a difference, served Jesus and His Church significantly?
With Martha we reply, “Yes Lord, we do believe.” Welcome, please, this
devout, dedicated, shy, impeccably courteous and thoughtful gentleman,
this teacher and scholar, to his true and eternal home.
Eternal rest. . . .

Forum Review Essay
David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini,
and Hitler. (New York: Random House, 2022. Pp. xxxvii, 621. $22.00.
ISBN 978-0-8129-8994-6).

INTRODUCTION
Mark Edward Ruff (Saint Louis University)
As one of the first scholars to draw on recently released documents
from the Vatican Archives, David Kertzer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
his earlier book, The Pope and Mussolini, has provided a panoramic portrait
of the wartime pontificate of Pope Pius XII. Kertzer’s exploration brings
significant new detail to the question that has done more to sully Pius’s
posthumous reputation than any other: Why did the pontiff remain silent
about the crimes of the Fascist powers, the Holocaust in particular?
Pius’s silence has been at center stage ever since the premiere in West
Berlin in February 1963 of The Deputy, the debut work of the young
German playwright, Rolf Hochhuth.1 But as Kertzer’s book shows, his
public reticence on controversial questions bedeviled the pontiff from the
outset of his pontificate. Quoting from the journals of Monsignor Angelo
Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, Kertzer shows that Pius XII was
well-aware of the damage to his reputation from remaining publicly
closed-mouthed about Nazi crimes. “He asked me if his silence regarding
the Nazis’ action is not a mistake,” Roncalli wrote in October 1941 following a meeting with the pope (214).
In a gripping work that frequently reads as a detective story, Kertzer’s
work doggedly traces the silence of Pope Pius XII, large and small, from
the days before the start of his pontificate to the close of the war. He begins
with the last days of his predecessor, the more bluntly outspoken and even
cantankerous Pope Pius XI. In what was to be his final public message,
Pius XI had planned to deliver a speech sharply critical of Fascist Italy’s
embrace of Nazi Germany to more than three hundred Italian bishops
assembled to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Accords of
1. Rolf Hochhuth, Der Stellvertreter (Reinbek, 1963).

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753

1929. He had even ordered the Vatican printing office to print paper copies
for the bishops of what likely would have been a ringing denunciation of
Fascist excess. Just two days after Pius XI’s death, Eugenio Pacelli, in his
capacity as Cardinal Secretary of State, bowed to the pressure from Mussolini’s government and ordered all copies of the speech destroyed so that
“not a comma” remained (17).
This, according to Kertzer, was but one of many examples of deliberate
silence on the part of the secretary of state turned pontiff. In spite of pressure from the French ambassador to the Vatican, Pius XII remained silent
when confronted with reports of Nazi persecution of the Polish clergy (84).
He declined to speak out openly against the Nazi invasions of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, all nations with either a Catholic majority or
substantial Catholic minority. Even after weeping “like a child” after
receiving reports of the atrocities the Germans were inflicting in Jews in
Ukraine in October 1941, he held both tongue and pen (216). In a notorious example made famous by Hochhuth’s play, he said nothing publicly
when German authorities rounded up Roman Jews on October 16, 1943
for deportation to Auschwitz in what became known as la grande razzia.
In the words of the German ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von
Weizsäcker, which concluded Hochhuth’s play, “. . . Rome has refrained
from making any ostentatious remarks on the deportation of the Jews from
Rome” (370). Subsequent arrests and deportations of Roman Jews in the
coming months did nothing to alter the papal position.
Only in one instance did Pius XII break from what seemed to be a vow
of silence. Following the Allied bombing of Rome on July 19, 1943, he
publicly chastised the Allies for the carnage they had inflicted in “the city
that is the center of Catholicism” (307). This protest was printed not only
on the pages of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, but in multiple Fascist newspapers. The vigorous condemnation of National Socialism and Fascism long sought by those Catholic voices like the French cardinal, Eugène Tisserant, critical of Pius’s timorousness, came only on June
2, 1945, just under a month after Nazi surrender. In an address to the papal
College of Cardinals, Pius condemned National Socialism as a “satanic
ghost” with a vigor that had eluded him for the previous six years.2 This
ringing denunciation contrasts sharply with the obfuscating verbiage that
Pius had used during the previous six years to point the finger at Nazi and
2. For a text of the speech, see: Pius XII, Discorso di sua Santità Pio XII, “Nell’Accogliere”
(Vatican, June 2, 1945), accessed June 20, 2023 at https://www.vatican.va/content/piusxii/it/speeches/1945/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19450602_accogliere.html.

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Fascist crimes and which has been taken by his apologists as a sign of his
courage and resolution.
How does Kertzer explain this seemingly all-pervasive papal silence?
That these were not one-off instances but deliberate policy was made abundantly clear by a series of meetings that Pope Pius XII held in secret with
Nazi Germany through an intermediary. This was Prince Phillip von
Hessen, a Nazi aristocrat who also happened to be the son-in-law of King
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and whose wife, Mafalda, would perish tragically in Buchenwald in 1944. In the protocol of a meeting between Pius
XII and von Hessen on May 11, 1939, discovered by Kertzer in the Vatican Archives, von Hessen expressed his concern that the new pope might
not remain silent about the “racial question,” one of the “biggest issues”
needing to be resolved. Seeking agreement and hoping to promote peace,
Pius assured his interlocutor that there were no reasons to worry about the
church’s involvement in “partisan politics” (67).
But why did Pope Pius XII hold to this position of silence on seemingly all issues likely to provoke the sensitivity of the Fascist and Nazi
state? Kertzer reiterates traditional arguments frequently used by defenders
of the pontiff. Pius XII, for instance, saw himself as an impartial peacemaker in the vein of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XV. As Catholics
fought fellow Catholics in the trenches, central European plains, and
Alpine peaks during the First World War, he sought to mediate.
But Pius XII’s hesitancy to speak out against right-wing aggression
had deeper roots. As Kertzer repeatedly points out, the pontiff feared for
the German church, which was particularly dear to his heart. Fluent in
German, he spoke longingly of his time as Nuncio in Bavaria from 1917
to 1925 and in Berlin from 1925 through 1929. Fearing permanent
damage to the German church in the form of either widespread persecution or a schism were he to denounce, he sought above all to preserve the
institutional church. Here, Kertzer carefully distinguishes between the
years 1939–43, when it appeared that the Nazis and Fascists might win the
war, and the years 1943–45 when their might, though still formidable, was
ebbing. Even during this latter period, Kertzer argues that the pope took
pains to “promote the public impression” for both the Allies and the Axis
that he was “on their side” (476).
Underlying his fear of offending was Pius’s cautious temperament. The
embodiment of an aristocratic diplomat from a century prior, he was by
nature aloof, distant, and even fearful, even while in person he could be

FORUM REVIEW ESSAY

755

charming and warm (48–49). Kertzer’s account makes abundantly clear
that it was personal weakness rather than any sort of ideological affinity
with Nazism or Fascism that undergirded his silence. Pius XII was not
motivated by anti-Semitic or anti-Judaic animus, even where distinct and
powerful anti-Semitic attitudes were to be found elsewhere in the highest
reaches of the Vatican. Drawing on his earlier scholarship on Vatican antiSemitism, Kertzer certainly provides ample illustration of the anti-Semitic
excesses of high-ranking officials like the Jesuit Superior General,
Wlodomir Ledóchowski and Pietro Tacchi Venturi, S.J.3 But Pope Pius
was not the “Hitler’s pope,” of John Cornwell’s imagination.4 He was suspicious of both Nazi Germany and Italian Fascism, the former more so
than the latter.
Pius’s cautious temperament, however, does not prevent Kertzer from
closing with an unsparing verdict. Kertzer concludes that Pius’s wartime
pontificate, as successful as it was in preserving the institution of the
Church and even possibly the city of Rome itself from wartime destruction, represented a moral failure. In a passage certain to be quoted by most
reviewers and scholars engaging with his work, Kertzer argues that “as a
moral leader, Pius XII must be judged a failure.” When seeking to rescue
the Jews of Rome from Nazi deportation, Pius XII prioritized those who
had been baptized Catholic. Papal intervention led the numbers of those
put in cattle cars bound for Auschwitz to drop from 1259 (or 1260) to
1007; of the latter, only 16 survived.
In casting his verdict in explicitly moral terms, Kertzer fits into the line
of papal critics dating back to Hochhuth. They too argue that Pius “failed”
or that the Church “failed.” Kertzer’s reasons for this verdict nonetheless
differ. Unlike Hochhuth who pointed to the pope’s icy aristocratic
demeanor, venality, and Vatican financial interests, Kertzer argues that
papal cowardice and Fascist intimidation were decisive. And it was ultimately on the question of papal silence that he takes issue with Pius’s
defenders and apologists from the 1960s. His biggest criticism is reserved
for the four Jesuits—Pierre Blet, Robert Graham, Angelo Martini, and
Burkhart Schneider—charged with putting together eleven volumes of
documents from Pius XII’s wartime pontificate, Actes et Documents du Saint
Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Acts and Documents of the Holy
3. David Kertzer, The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern
Anti-Semitism (New York, 2001); David Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of
Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York, 2014).
4. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York, 1999).

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See related to the Second World War).5 Blet argued that Pius “had given
thought to the possibility of public statements” but chose not to, believing
that protests harmed the faithful more than they helped the victims of
aggression (472–73). For Kertzer, in contrast, such arguments were deeply
misleading. How could Hitler’s persecution of Jews have been any worse?
Not least, “good Catholics,” some steeped in centuries of Christian antiJudaism, were well represented in the ranks of perpetrators. Pius, he
argued, may well have worried that an unequivocal condemnation of racial
laws and Jewish persecution would have led many, both Germans and Italians, to “abandon” the Roman Catholic Church (473). Mussolini’s Italy, he
suggests, may reasonably be viewed as “clerico-Fascist” (479).
As this example points out, Kertzer’s account is squarely anchored
within the context of Italian history. His focus on the Italian peninsula and
Italian Catholicism no doubt reflects the fact that Kertzer’s scholarly interests have long centered on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian history. Long before he wrote his prizewinner account of Edgardo Mortara, a
six-year old Jewish boy secretly baptized by his family’s serving girl as an
infant and wrested from his family, he published widely on the relationships
between Catholics and Communists in Bologna and social and family life
in central Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.6
Research on Catholicism has increasingly been moving in a global
direction.7 Broadening Kertzer’s chronological and geographical framework will either serve as a corrective or an affirmation of his central claims.
By placing the events of the Second World War within in the context of
Pius XII’s pontificate as a whole—all the way to his death in 1958—future
scholars will be able to draw comparisons and contrasts between Pius’s crusade against Communism and his stance against Italian Fascism and

5. For an online version, see the following: Pius XII, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège
relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See related to the
Second World War], 11 vols. (Rome, 1970–1981), accessed June 16, 2023 at https://
www.vatican.va/archive/actes/index_fr.htm.
6. David Kertzer, Comrades and Christians: Religion and Political Struggle in Communist
Italy (New York, 1980); David Kertzer, Family Life in Central Italy, 1880–1910: Sharecropping, Wage Labor, and Coresidence (New Brunswick, 1984); David Kertzer and Dennis Hogan,
Family, Political Economy, and Demographic Change: The Transformation of Life in Casalecchio,
Italy, 1861–1921 (Madison, 1989).
7. For two examples, see John T. McGreevy, Catholicism: A Global History from the
French Revolution to Pope Francis (New York, 2022); John T. McGreevy, American Jesuits and
the World: How an Embattled Religious Order made Modern Catholicism Global (Princeton,
2016).

FORUM REVIEW ESSAY

757

National Socialism. Why was his rhetoric sharper and his actions more
decisive against Communism? In the same vein, viewing Pius’s pontificate
within the context of the global Church will serve as a test of Kertzer’s central arguments. Already in the 1940s, Latin America, the Middle East,
Asia and Africa were emerging as a locus of struggle between right and left.
Proponents and opponents of decolonization were keenly aware of the
importance of the so-called “Third World” to this global ideological struggle, in which the Catholic Church was playing a crucial role politically and
culturally. Can we regard Pius’s entire pontificate as one in which the pope
was “at war?”
Filled with detailed footnotes for the scholar and accessible prose for
the general reader, Kertzer’s critical account will serve as a work with which
every scholar of the twentieth-century Vatican and Pope Pius XII will have
to engage. Four distinguished commentators will now do precisely that.

REVIEWS
Suzanne Brown-Fleming (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)8
On August 27, 2020, six months after the opening of an estimated sixteen million pages of archival material for the pontificate of Venerable Pius
XII (1939–58, hereafter Pius XII), The Atlantic published an article by
David Kertzer in its Ideas section. For scholars long engaged in the contested topic of the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See, and the Holocaust, the article, titled “The Pope, the Jews, and the Secrets in the
Archives,” felt something akin to the “shot heard round the world.” The
question of the decisions taken by Pius XII, head of the Vatican city-state
and Bishop of Rome—the Vicar of Christ, or Christ’s representative on
earth to millions of faithful—would never be the same again.
Kertzer’s article featured new evidence from multiple Vatican
archives, including the Vatican Apostolic Archive, the Holy See’s Historical Archive of the Section for Relations with States, and the archive of
the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The majority of the article
centered around the case of two young Jewish boys, Robert and Gérald
Finaly, who were hidden from their Jewish relatives by a network of
Catholic institutions from 1945 until 1953. Evidence uncovered by
Kertzer and his collaborator, Roberto Benedetti, revealed regular discussions between the Holy Office (the former name of the Roman Catholic
8. The views as expressed are the author’s alone and no not necessarily represent those
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or any other organization.

758

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congregation of the curia charged with protecting faith and morals) and
the Secretariat of State (analogous to governments’ foreign ministry), with
the pope himself both fully aware of the details of the case and supportive
of resisting returning the children so as to avoid the sin of apostasy (the
boys had been secretly baptized).
The Atlantic piece also included an episode regarding the response of
the Holy See to the on-going deportations of Italian Jews, a prelude to his
much deeper study. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini
and Hitler, published on June 7, 2022, can be interpreted as the third book
in a trilogy, following The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the
Rise of Modern Antisemitism (Knopf, 2001) and The Pope and Mussolini: The
Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (Random House,
2014). In The Pope at War, Kertzer has a singular guiding question that
binds together his vivid writing and compelling narrative: what animated
the decisions Pius XII made when faced with two of the world’s most infamous dictators?
From colorful prose about Pius XII with his beloved canaries to stark
depictions of the pleas from Rome’s Jews coming to the pope in the days
after the October 16 roundup only a few kilometers from Saint Peter’s
Square, Kertzer is clear about why the pope decided to protect Vatican
City and Rome’s ancient treasures above other considerations. One point
made clear by Kertzer is Catholics outside of Italy were also sacrificed.
Mussolini, an ally of Hitler at the time of the German invasion of Poland
on September 1, 1939, immediately flexed his muscles by arresting the
Vatican daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano’s lead writers. Pinned
between Mussolini pressuring the pope not to “remain silent about the
German invasion of Poland” (83) and desperate pleas from the Polish
ambassador and leading Polish prelates, Pius XII would “say nothing,”
citing “his desire not to do anything that might worsen the church’s situation in Germany” (84).
“It is impossible,” writes Kertzer, “to understand the pope’s actions
without recognizing he had good reason to think the church’s future would
likely lie in a Europe under the thumb of Hitler and his Italian partner,”
(139), writes Kertzer. It is in this vein that we should understand the sacrifice of other European countries (Germany and Italy excepted) with
major Catholic populations in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Protection of the
treasures of the centuries-old seat of Roman Catholicism was the largest
driving force in the pope’s thinking.

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Documents in the recently released archives for the postwar period
confirm this. Involved in successful efforts to commute the sentence of
Ernst von Weiszäcker (1882–1951), among the reasons cited by Domenico
Tardini (future Cardinal Secretary of State, 1958–63, under Saint Pope
John XXIII, 1958–63) was the gratitude of the pope for Weizsäcker’s
interest in obtaining demilitarization of parts of Vatican City and Rome,
facilitation of initiatives to save historical, bibliographical, and artistic relics
in the Lazio region, and issuance of protection documents to the religious
institutes of Rome, the personnel of the Papal Dicasteries, and the members of the Palatine Guard.
The response to The Atlantic article and the book has been intense and
has echoed far beyond the halls of the academy. Stories appeared in the
New York Times (August 28, 2020), Jerusalem Post (August 30, 2020), The
Washington Post (July 29, 2022), La Stampa (August 17, 2022), to name
only some. But the greatest surprise was a full-page rejoinder in L’Osservatore Romano, “A response to “The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius
XII, Mussolini, and Hitler” by David I. Kertzer” (July 1, 2022). In a book
so full of rich insights documented from the Vatican archives and crossreferenced against over two dozen secular archives in Great Britain,
France, Germany, the United States, and Italy, the resistance to some of
Kerter’s findings is surprising.
The great hope of The Pope at War is that it will herald in a new chapter
in discussions about the decisions made by both popes and their powerful
officers of the Church between 1922 and 1958. Both Popes Pius XI and
Pius XII were criticized for their “silence” in their own time, and the lack
of full access to the archival record for this period until March 2020 has
meant that conjecture could replace the painstaking work of reading millions of pages of evidence and weighing these new fonds against other
available evidence in archives around the world. For Pius XII, and for all
popes who came before and since, hard political realities meant making
decisions at times barely discernable as decisions made as Christ’s representative on earth.
Kertzer’s book—carefully researched, thoughtfully written, and based in
documentation that is clear when examined in the original—will, I hope,
usher scholars into a new phase. The moral role of the pope—explicitly
claimed in a way that is different from other heads of state, makes evaluating
and assessing and explaining and describing papal decision-making very difficult. Rather than openness to these complexities, discussions and debates
have been characterized for decades as either apologetic or excoriating. A

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careful, open, and productive exchange across varied interpretations on the
historical aspects of the Church during these two troubled papacies has not
yet been achieved. Kertzer’s book offers us a chance to try again.
Roy Palmer Domenico (The University of Scranton)
As David Kertzer’s The Pope at War shows us, during the Second
World War, as the center of the Catholic Church and as his hometown,
Rome—and Italy—figured prominently in the story of Pius XII. Eugenio
Pacelli was a “romano romano,” born across the Tiber from Saint Peter’s,
just off the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and not far from San Filppo Neri’s
Chiesa Nuova. His family had served the papacy for years and one of his
nephews, Carlo, became one of his own closest advisors. Throughout the
conflict, Pius never left the city and its environs, and he acquired a political
importance in Italy that did not correspond to the German situation. The
sorry state of the Fascist regime enhanced that status. That Hitler’s power
surpassed Mussolini’s meant that the duce never achieved an authoritarian
rule on the level of the Nazis. The duce could not completely crush myriad
factions in society—the traditionalist peasants, the monarchy, the nobility,
the army and navy, industrialists, the sensible middle class (the buoni
borghesi), the working class, and, especially, the Catholic Church. Except
for the monarchy and nobility, all the rest re-emerged in full bloom soon
after the Fascist regime expired. Pacelli had a special role to play in all this.
During the war years, as Professor Kertzer confirms, “For Italians, (Pius)
was the country’s only authority independent of the Fascist regime, the
lone man whose own charisma rivaled Mussolini’s” (xxxi). One might add
the king to that list; whether he was “independent of the Fascist regime”
or not is of course debatable, although in the end Victor Emmanuel was
crucial in removing the duce from power. Kertzer notes (476) that as the
duce’s star declined, the pontiff’s rose, becoming “the focus of an intense
personality cult.” Pius’s popularity, furthermore, received a boost, in fact an
international boost, when a Catholic film crew in 1942 produced the
acclaimed and hagiographic Pastor Angelicus. The pontiff’s 1942 and 1944
Christmas messages and his actions after the July and August 1943 bombardments of Rome also earned him authentic and widespread praise,
although quite a few Italians welcomed those air attacks with a bit of
schadenfreude—comeuppance for the previously untouched capital. The
historian of the anti-Fascist Resistance, Roberto Battaglia, moreover, credited Pius with the peaceful German exit from the city in June of 1944.
Struck by what he called “the insurrection that never was” (la mancata
insurrezione), Battaglia may have been correct when he detected Pope Pius’
fine hand at work, a “masterpiece of Vatican politics” (capolavoro della polit-

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ica vaticana).9 The tag defensor civitatis did not fall into Pius’ lap—he
worked for it.
But the pope was just the tip of the iceberg. One can read his actions
in Italy as preparation for a postwar Catholic political revival. Religious
fervor and phenomena characterized the war years: the popularity of the
Focolare movement under Chiara Lubich, for example, or Marian apparitions outside of Naples or Bergamo where 300,000 of the faithful gathered
on one day in 1944. Widespread appreciation of Padre Pio and his miracles, furthermore, impressed the British author of Naples ’44, Norman
Lewis, particularly insofar that it extended to the educated bourgeoisie.10
Within the Vatican the sostituto at the Secretariat of State, Giovanni Battista Montini, maintained very close links with leaders of the nascent
Christian Democracy, often through the Catholic university federation,
the FUCI; and many of those friends would guide the postwar nation.
While nobody expected a return to the Papal States and the days of the
papa re, by 1947 and 1948 Italy witnessed something of the establishment
of a clerical regime under the Christian Democracy.
Finally, David Kertzer’s The Pope at War bears on a lively discussion
among historians, that of Italiani brava gente, an idea promoted by those
who claim that Italians were hardly good people during the war and must
be held responsible for their participation with the Germans in acts taken
against the Jews and others, particularly the Slovenes. It comes as no surprise that some Fascists like Roberto Farinacci and Giovanni Preziosi
embraced Nazi racism and supported German roundups and deportations.
On the other hand, Italians of all stripes, but particularly Catholics—lay
and clergy—protected Jews, some at the cost of their own lives, and
ensured their survival at a rate better than those in most other countries.
Cold and silent, Pius XII sat somewhere between the two camps, although,
considering the numbers sheltered in church properties including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo, he certainly leaned toward the better side.
Martin Menke (Rivier University)
The narrative of David Kertzer’s latest work picks up where his previous
study of the relationship between Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini left
off. While the earlier work also addressed the role of Hitler and German fascism in the Church’s development, this study of the war years devotes much
9. Roberto Battaglia, Storia della resistenza italiana (Turin, 1974), 319.
10. Norman Lewis, Naples ’44 (New York, 1978), 151–53.

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more attention to the role Hitler and the German fascist state played in the
fate of Italy and the Catholic Church. However, the unfavorable judgment
of the Church found in the earlier work grows more robust in this volume.
In this detailed narrative, Kertzer confirms several conclusions drawn
by other historians of this complex and controversial period. Pius XII was
favorably disposed to Germany and abhorred Communism partly because
of personal experience while nuncio in Munich, which Kertzer does not
mention in this volume. Kertzer confirms the pope’s use of abstract and
flowery language in his addresses and letters. To Pius, these were the most
unambiguous condemnations of the atrocities occurring he dared make. To
much of his audience, however, they seemed weak and ineffective. While
Kertzer does not address this question explicitly, one wonders what role
willing self-deception played in Pius’ statements. Furthermore, Pius
offered no condemnation of the German invasion of Poland or Mussolini’s
invasions of Albania and Greece except through confidential diplomatic
channels. Because of the importance of these confidential communications
in Kertzer’s work, the Holy See’s oral and written communication with
diplomats and other representatives of the Axis and Allied powers played
an important role, both at the time and for scholars today.
Perhaps the most revealing point of this new work is evidence suggesting
that Pius’ inaction and indirect language stemmed from extreme timidity. The
pope feared putting Germans in a morally impossible position and feared for
the welfare of Catholics in Germany and Italy. He also feared for the integrity
of the Vatican State. One wonders why the same concern seems to have carried much less weight where the Catholics and Church institutions of occupied Europe were concerned. Through intermediaries and private audiences
with many on both sides of the war, he voiced concern for the continued
availability of the sacraments and all these required. Above all, it seems the
pope feared any negative repercussions and therefore chose to remain silent.
Kertzer might have addressed the many impossible choices facing a man
tasked with preserving an institution and its members and insisting on
morally correct behavior. A further problem is the common misunderstanding of the Catholic Church’s hierarchical control over the faithful. Popes can
barely control bishops and bishops their priests, and neither exercises the control over the faithful that critics imagine the hierarchy to possess.
As previous scholars have shown, there were occasions on which Pius
XII spoke out quite clearly and emphatically. Also, on several occasions, he
traveled to the bombed sites in Rome and blessed the crowds. He made no
such effort for others persecuted in Rome. After the war ended, he con-

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demned Rome’s moral decay under Allied occupation. Kertzer documents
several occasions when the Holy See issued official complaints about matters that seem, in retrospect at least, to pale compared with some of the
crimes co-occurring and about which the pope remained silent.
While Kertzer labeled many diplomats, politicians, military officers,
fascist officials, and church officials as antisemites, he does not label the
pope as such. Perhaps Kertzer takes it for granted, or perhaps his research
exonerates Pius of that charge by pointing to his fear and his lack of awareness of the effect his choices to speak and be silent, act, and remain inactive
had. Additional analysis by Kertzer would have provided additional illumination: was Pius just as antisemitic as he was timid?
One wishes that the publisher had chosen footnotes over endnotes.
Given the importance of the newly released records of the Vatican
Archives, avoiding constant page flipping would have been helpful.
While this work does not conclusively end the “Pius Wars,” it further
underscores the pope’s human frailties that kept him from being the heroic
leader of the Church one wishes he would have been.
John F. Pollard (University of Cambridge)
The opening of the papers of Pius XII in the Vatican Archives in 2020
naturally prompted much speculation about where this would take the
well-developed historiography on the controversies surrounding the pope’s
role during World War Two, in particular his response to the Holocaust.11
Professor Kertzer’s research confirms most of what has been known or
surmised about Pius XII’s silences in the face of the Holocaust and other
fascist genocides, and the reasons for those silences. In particular, the passages relating to the attitudes of Monsignori Giuseppe di Meglio and
Angelo dell’Acqua (chapter 27 and page 385) confirm the impression that
there were strong anti-Semitic prejudices among elements of the Roman
curia, most notoriously demonstrated by the Jesuit periodical, La Civilta
Cattolica. Kertzer’s study also throws much light on the crucially important
role of Msgr. Domenico Tardini. It is surely now time for a new, comprehensive biography of this extremely furbo son of the Roman plebs, a pow11. The historiography began with Avro Manhattan, The Catholic Church against the
Twentieth Century (London, 1947); another notable contribution was John Cornwell’s Hitler’s
Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (London, 1999).

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erful figure in the Vatican from 1938 onwards, who died in the saddle as
Cardinal Secretary of State to Pope John XXIII in 1961.
The most important discovery that Kertzer made in the Archives is the
evidence of secret negotiations between Hitler and Pius XII, via Prince
Philipp of Hesse, between August 1939 and April 1941 (see especially
chapter 6). But this throws into relief the sparse attention which the author
devotes, overall, to the relationship between the Nazis and the Catholic
Church in Germany: by comparison Mussolini’s Italy gets the lion’s share
of his attention.12 I feel we need more detail on the persecution of the
Church in Germany, Poland, and other occupied territories, which
included the imprisonment and/or murder of hundreds of priests, and
doomed Hesse’s negotiations to failure. Relations with the Third Reich
reached their nadir in January 1942, after the Vatican rejected the Germans’ demand to veto all episcopal appointments in the territories occupied by them.13
Kertzer meticulously details the Vatican’s shameful failure to protest
both the deportation of Roman Jews in October 1943 (chapter 34) and the
Germans’ executions of innocents in retaliation for the partisans’ attack on
their troops in March 1944 (413–14). On the other hand, he states that
Pius countermanded an order to remove those Jews, anti-fascists, deserters,
etc. who had taken shelter in the homes of Vatican prelates (404). The eminent Italian historian Andrea Riccardi relates another case where Pius forbade Jews being shown the door and demonstrates that, despite the threat
of retaliation by the German (and Italian) authorities against religious institutions in the city which sheltered thousands of similar fugitives, Pius
knew and approved of this situation.14
In the winter/spring of 1940, Pius XII agreed to act as a channel
between the German generals plotting against Hitler and the British, a
totally out-of-character decision for a pope who seemed to be so timid,
angst-ridden, and indecisive.15 That Kertzer does not appear to have found
any traces in the Archives of this otherwise well-documented episode
12. What purpose do the frequent references to Mussolini’s torrid and turbulent affair
with Clara Petacci, which run through this narrative, serve?
13. See John Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958 (Oxford,
2014), 324–25.
14. Andrea Riccardi, L’inverno piu lungo 1943–44: Pio XII, gli Ebrei e I Nazisti a
Roma (Roma, 2008), 80, 110, 112, 116, and 280–81.
15. See David J. Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage
against the Vatican, 1939–1945 (London, 1997), 25–33.

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suggests that Pius was remarkably successful in keeping it secret in a Vatican infested by Italian spies.
In his conclusion, Kertzer ponders whether Pius XI, Pius XII’s predecessor, would have been more outspoken in response to the Holocaust.
Given Papa Ratti’s silence over Italian war crimes in Ethiopia between
1935 and 1936, after his initial public hostility to Mussolini’s aggression,16 that is doubtful. As with Pius XII, Pius XI’s concern for the survival
of the institutional Church would almost certainly have triumphed over his
prophetic role, diplomatic expediency over the papacy’s moral primacy.

RESPONSE
David I. Kertzer (Brown University)
Deep thanks to my colleagues for their thoughtful comments and
encouraging words on my recent book. In the space I have available here I
can only touch briefly on a handful of the points they raise.
While much attention has understandably focused on the question of
Pope Pius XII’s failure to denounce the Nazi attempt to exterminate the
Jews of Europe, and The Pope at War is in part an attempt to provide a
fuller explanation for that silence, the book, as the title indicates, is more
broadly focused on Pius XII and the Second World War. In this context,
it is worth mentioning that the book is not only based on thousands of
documents newly made available with the opening of the Vatican (and
some other ecclesiastical) archives for the war years, but also on the examination of tens of thousands of relevant documents from Italian, German,
French, British, and American government archives. Adequate understanding of the pope’s actions during the war must take advantage of all
these archives to provide a full picture of the dramatic days of the war as
lived in the Vatican.
John Pollard notes that my book devotes much more attention to the
pope and the Church in the Italian political context than to the question
of the Catholic Church in Germany and its relation to the National Socialist regime. This is certainly true, largely because my focus is on the pope
and the influential prelates of the Vatican during the war. Not only was the
pope very much Italian (and very Roman) but all but one of the members
16. See Lucia Ceci, “Santa Sede e impero fascista: contrasti, silenzi e fiancheggiamenti,” in: Pius XI: Keywords: International Conference, Milan, 2009, eds. Alberto Guasco and
Rafaella Perin (Berlin and Vienna, 2010), especially 137–39.

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of the Curia at the time was Italian and almost all the key nuncios and
apostolic delegates were Italian. As for the relations of the German
Catholic Church with the Nazi regime, others more expert than I in this
field have been offering excellent insight into this fraught history.
I would take issue with Roy Domenico’s characterization contrasting
a handful of Italian pro-Nazi extremists with what he describes as “Italians
of all stripes, but particularly Catholics” who often risked their lives to protect Jews in these years. The systematic persecution of Jews in Italy began
two years before Italy entered the war, with the imposition of the draconian racial laws of 1938. The state bureaucracy swung into immediate action
enforcing these laws, with little signs of unhappiness, much less risktaking, among Catholics in Italy. The Jews who were later rounded up by
the Germans for deportation to the death camps were in good part identified thanks to Italians, and large numbers of Jews were sent to Italian concentration camps by Italians well before the German occupation of Italy.
As for the sheltering of Jews in religious institutions during the German
occupation of Italy, this was clearly not a product of anything Pius XII
ordered. The recent opening of the Vatican archives offers abundant evidence that many of Rome’s religious houses routinely turned away desperate Jews trying to escape deportation, others would only accept those who
could pay, and many attempts—not infrequently successful—were made to
take advantage of the desperate Jews’ plight to convert them. No attempts
were made by the pope to shelter Jews in Vatican City, and Jews were not
particularly numerous among the large number of Italians who hoped to
find a safe haven at Castel Gandolfo. To put the question further in perspective, it should be noted that it was thanks to the sheltering provided by
Italian religious institutions that many of Italy’s top Fascist government
officials found refuge and escape from justice.
I also wonder whether Martin Menke’s assertion that “Popes barely
control bishops and bishops their priests” is not more applicable to the
Church today than it is, particularly in the Italian context, in characterizing
the Church in the war years. Both the Italian state archives and the Vatican
archives make clear that as soon as the Fascist government complained to
the Vatican about a priest or a bishop’s politically unacceptable speech or
behavior, the Vatican secretariat of state had the prelate warned. Pius XII
was certainly intimidated by Mussolini and Hitler, but he was not intimidated by Italy’s bishops and would not tolerate disobedience from them.
I agree with Pollard that with the opening of the archives for the
papacy of Pius XII it is time for a new biography of Domenico Tardini,

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and, I would add, the time has come for new studies of other key figures
from the wartime Vatican, including the future Pope Paul VI, Giovanni
Battista Montini, then Sostituto, but also others of the secretariat of state
office who played important yet relatively little examined roles. Of these,
the man Pius XII regarded as his expert on Jewish questions, Angelo
Dell’Acqua, future cardinal vicar of Rome, is particularly important. This
also points to another aspect of the opportunities now available thanks to
the recent Vatican archival opening: examination of the full span of Pius
XII’s papacy, most of which took place after the war. Dell’Acqua, for
instance, would be appointed Sostituto himself in 1953 and continue to
play an important role in brokering relations between Pius XII and the
Jewish world in the postwar years. Much important work lies ahead.

Book Reviews
GENERAL
Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. By Peter Brown. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. xv. 713. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-691-24228-6.)
In 1977 Peter Brown delivered “Learning and Imagination,” his inaugural lecture as head of the history department at Royal Holloway College (Society and the
Holy in Late Antiquity [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982], 3–21). He
encouraged venturing outside one’s field and commended the “imaginative curiosity” that makes us “attempt to project ourselves into the thoughts and feelings of
men and women whose claim to our respect was precisely that they were profoundly different from ourselves.” Echoing his foremost mentor, Arnaldo
Momigliano, to whom he paid tribute, he held up “wild and wooly” Giambattista
Vico as an exemplary historian because he defied “the standards of a well-run history department,” i.e. the Oxford department that had nurtured him for twentytwo years (“Learning,” 3–4).
In Journeys of the Mind Brown suggests how he came by imaginative curiosity
himself and how, among other things, it led him to reject the entrenched view of
the Later Roman Empire summed up in Edward Gibbon’s words, “decline and
fall.” Thanks in large part to Brown, we now study a vital and creative society, “Late
Antiquity,” not a degraded culture approaching a dead end.
Brown tells how, studying history as an Oxford undergraduate, he grew curious
about someone “who was larger and more vivid than any medieval pope or emperor,
and whose ideas would echo throughout the Middle Ages” (169–70). Having designated “Saint Augustine and his age” as his special field, he gravitated to historians
who challenged Gibbon’s perspective. Preeminent among these was a convert, H.I. Marrou. Imitating his subject, Marrou appended a “Retractatio” to the 1949 edition of his magisterial S. Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (1938). There he repudiated his earlier perpetuation of the “decline and fall” narrative; the civilization that
produced Augustine was not moribund, but vigorous and still evolving. In his copy
the emerging historian wrote “HURRAH! HURRAH!” in a margin.
An undergraduate friend from France put Brown on to another transformative
work, Fernand Braudel’s La Méditérranée et le monde méditérranien à l’époque de Philippe
II (1949), “a book that placed a distinctive landscape, with its unchanging, silent
restraints and perennial rhythms, at the center of an historian’s imagination” (165).
As a Fellow of All Souls, he neglected his proposed dissertation to write a
biography of Augustine. He intended it, not to clarify theological controversies, but
768

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to enter the thoughts and feelings of a man with a profoundly different outlook
from his. He wondered why “one of the subtlest minds of all antiquity” came to
accept religious coercion; more than a millennium after Augustine’s death an exiled
Huguenot would justly single him out as “the Grand Patriarch of persecutors”
(244). Brown says he did most of his research out of centuries-old tomes. He listened to Augustine’s voice through the Maurist edition and correlated what he
heard with the chronology in Louis Sébastien le Nain de Tillemont’s Mémoires
Écclésiastiques. Gibbon, he realized, had used Tillemont much the same way to
write The Decline and Fall (2 5 0 – 5 1 ).
In 1967 he produced a literary tour de force that holds the reader’s attention
from the vivid evocation of the North African hinterland where Augustine was
born to the dramatic scene where, as the approaching Vandals ravaged the nearby
countryside, he lay on his deathbed with penitential psalms hanging on the walls
where he could see them. Acclaimed as a brilliantly original historical work, Augustine of Hippo launched Brown’s illustrious scholarly career, sans Ph.D. Journeys of
the Mind recounts Brown’s books, positions, and travels in the next two decades as
the avid pursuit and assimilation of new perspectives. He dwells on what he gained
from, among others, anthropologists Edward Evans-Pritchard and Mary Douglas,
philosophers Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault, and historian Évelyne Patlagean.
What he gained from Braudel shines through his account of travels in Iran in
the early seventies. He lovingly explains how Zoroastrian beliefs integrated monumental architecture with the land. He was moved by fervent Islamic worship in a
country that was officially secularizing. His mental journey could easily have taken
him farther in that direction had it not been for the Islamic Revolution.
At Berkeley, liberated by Michel Foucault “from the notion that sex was a
constant through the ages” (583), Brown undertook to account for virginity’s allure
to early Christians in The Body and Society (1987). The research involved left him
with a new perspective on an old friend: “Returning to Augustine after having
spent many years with Origen and the Desert Fathers, I felt like a traveler returning
to his hometown after a long absence abroad and finding it somehow shrunken.
Origen’s sense of constantly expanding horizons was absent” (654).
In an evident hommage to the Confessions, Brown concludes his life narrative
with his mother’s death that same year, 1987. He appends sketches of later works.
These include his longest, Through the Eye of a Needle (2012), where he listened
closely again to Augustine, among others, as they Christianized classical philanthropy to embrace all the poor, not just citizens.
Brown shows how began his journey as a child. Like Augustine, he was born
into the governing class and the minority church of a shrinking empire. His Protestant forebears were military officers and colonial administrators. As a toddler, he
lived in Sudan, where his father oversaw railroads. His mother took him back with
her to neutral Dublin when World War II started. In 1941 she caught him, at six,
gleefully throwing pebbles at a cigar box floating in a barrel; he was reenacting the

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sinking of the H. M. S. Prince of Wales—from the Japanese point of view (52).
“Protestant or Catholic?” defined everyone’s status in Ireland; he always appreciated
the social power of religion. A curious outsider stance came naturally: “I was a
‘native’ of Ireland. But I had learned that ‘natives’ were dangerous creatures and
prone to ‘risings’” (70).
Journeys of the Mind pays tribute to his father, who stretched a meager pension
to provide him an education. He found a poignant note in his mother’s diary; on
August 8, 1977, the day she and his father saw him off to Berkeley at Dublin airport:
“Pets looked well and happy—he had got the job he had always wanted” (533). He
says that he wrote for his two aunts, literate women who lacked university education.
Brown otherwise tells little about his private life. As to his own religion, we learn
only that he resumed attending church as an adult and that he says his prayers.
Writing for aunts was a good idea. Brown remains a captivating storyteller
when telling his own.
Louisville, Kentucky

JOSEPH W. TRIGG

Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacy. Edited by David G. Hunter
and Jonathan P. Yates. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company. Pp. 501. $80.00. ISBN: 978-0-802-87699-7.)
Augustine and Tradition (hereafter AT) is an outstanding collection of essays
on Augustine and his “influences, contexts, and legacy,” dedicated to the historical
theologian J. Patout Burns. Like Burns’s own wide-ranging work on Augustine,
this volume explores Augustine’s writings in relation to the intellectual world in
which he matured and from which his thought would continue to shape theological
controversy and conversation to the present day. AT is organized in four major sections with contributions from leading lights and some rising stars in the field of
Augustinian and early Christian studies, as well as historical theology.
In the first and longest section, “Augustine and the North African Tradition,”
Michael Cameron, Andrew McGowan, William Tabbernee, Geoffrey D. Dunn,
and Alden Bass explore Augustine’s scriptural exegesis, his engagement with the
North African lectionary and martyrology, and his relationship to his predecessors,
Tertullian of Carthage and Optatus of Milevis. Here, Dunn and Bass do a great
service to the North African theological tradition in their depiction of Augustine
as a critical and appreciative inheritor of already well-developed perspectives on
Christian psychology, sacramental theology, and ecclesiology.
In the second section, “Augustine and the Philosophical and Literary Tradition,” John Peter Kenny and Thomas Clemmons focus on Augustine’s complex
negotiation with Platonism in general and Porphyry in particular. Here, Clemmons
succeeds admirably in focusing scholarly attention on Porphyry as a major interlocutor throughout Augustine’s career. James Wetzel’s essay stages a dialogue
between Augustine and Cicero on grief that expands into a philosophically rich

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reflection on the limits of classical ethics and the new pathways Augustine dared to
tread. Dennis Trout offers a subtle account of the development of Augustine’s
assessment of the Latin literary tradition, especially Vergil, while affirming Augustine’s enduring, if not uncomplicated, appreciation for it across his body of work.
The third and shortest section addresses “Augustine and the Greek Patristic
Tradition.” Joseph W. Trigg picks up where section 2 left off, exploring Augustine’s relationship to another plenary practitioner of scriptural exegesis indebted to
the Platonic philosophical tradition, Origen of Alexandria. His mastery of the secondary literature is impressive, as is his display of surprising points of contact
between Augustine’s negotiation of a Platonic inheritance and Origen’s. Mark
DelCogliano explores “Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian Reception of Basil of Caesarea
and Gregory Nazianzus,” revealing, in spite of contrary hopes, that Augustine was
not influenced by these two Cappadocian Fathers in any significant way.
In the fourth and final section, “Augustine and His Latin Contemporaries/
Successors,” the first thee essays from Stephen A. Cooper, John C. Cavadini, and
Theodore de Bruyn address “Augustine and Marius Victorinus,” “Ambrose,” and
“Ambrosiaster,” respectively. These three chapters provide excellent starting
points—both bibliographically and conceptually—for the study of Augustine’s
relationship to three of Augustine’s most significant contemporaries. Cavadini, in
particular, charts new territory for reconsidering Augustine’s “Ambrosian lens” for
discerning the essential connection between the doctrine of creation and redemption. Finally, Brian Matz’s essay looks forward to Augustine’s later reception in the
“Ninth-Century Predestination Debate,” focusing on uses of Augustine’s phrase
“predestined to punishment.” Here, we catch a glimpse of how one strand of
Augustine’s thinking on a particular issue came to dominate a theological debate
that continues to reverberate to the present day.
AT’s major contribution is found in its careful reading and analysis of Augustine’s engagement with significant interlocutors in his immediate context. It will be
useful not only to scholars of Augustine, but also to those primarily interested in
sorting out much later “contexts” and “legacies” in which Augustine features
prominently. Readers owe Hunter and Yates a debt of gratitude for compiling these
essays, noteworthy for their historical sensitivity, philosophical insight, and theological depth.
Providence College

JAMES COLUMCILLE DEVER

From Ignatius to Francis: The Jesuits in History. By Michael Walsh. (Collegeville,
Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2022. $29.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-81468491-7.)
With a preface, ten chapters, and an index, this work, by Michael Walsh, a
former Jesuit and a resident of the United Kingdom, offers an overview of Jesuit
history, from the era of the sixteenth-century founder of the Jesuits, to that of
Francis, the Jesuit pope. Seeking to distinguish this attempt at a history of the Soci-

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ety of Jesus from many other such efforts, the author states that he will focus less
on what Jesuits did than on what they thought.
What Walsh really means by “thought” is not altogether clear, though one
might expect a good deal of focus on what Jesuits published over the centuries.
There is some of this here, but there are also gaps, as in a substantial chapter on
France where a very prolific author such as Jesuit Etienne Binet (1569–1639), the
author of some fifty books, is passed over in silence.
Factual errors are not as rare as one would like. The author speaks of King
Louis XV as active in the 1660s (125), but that would have to be Louis XIV. For
what is surely Urban VIII (103), Walsh has Urban VII. Walsh states that the “pinnacle of Jesuit achievement in Japan” (78) was in the early sixteenth century, but
that would in fact be the early seventeenth century. More than once (139, 145),
Walsh attributes an entry in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits to the Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits; on p. 102, note 11, Walsh gives 2008 for the publication date of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits; it is 2017. He has Fr. Pedro
Arrupe resigning as Superior General (286) at Jesuit General Congregation 34 (but
this took place in 1995, after Arrupe’s death), whereas General Congregation 33
would be correct for Arrupe’s resignation (1983). The most egregious error is on p.
274, note 41, where Walsh claims that no Jesuits were killed in the Spanish Civil
War. In fact, several were; see the entry “Sitjar, Tomas, SJ, Bl. (1866–1936) and
His Companions,” by Inmaculada Fernández Arrillaga, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits, 740–41.
To be sure, Walsh may at times be more journalist than scholarly historian.
He offers a concise, easily accessible book, and one of modest size compared to the
lengthier histories often produced by academics. The secondary sources Walsh uses
are often rather dated; the author in some cases appears unaware of the abundance
of studies, in many languages, published in recent years. Though his chronology
goes up to the present, he gives much more attention to the Society of Jesus in its
early centuries than after the restoration of the Jesuits in 1814. Since the 2014
bicentennial of that event, scholarship on Jesuit topics has increasingly turned to
the last two centuries, for which an exceptional range of sources is beginning to get
serious attention.
I happily share the author’s deep appreciation for cultural historian Peter
Burke, with whom I was delighted and privileged to do a doctoral dissertation at
Cambridge University. Walsh rightly gives Burke the last word in this book: the
Cambridge Professor of Cultural History Emeritus suggests that while the deeply
hostile, negative stereotypes of the Jesuits that once were widespread have diminished in recent times, they can yet re-emerge (294–95). Indeed, has not such hostility re-appeared in the past decade, in some of the reactions to Pope Francis, the
anomaly that is a Jesuit pope?
Fordham University

THOMAS WORCESTER, S.J.

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The History of the Congregation of Holy Cross. By James T. Connelly, C.S.C. (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Pp. xxiii, 440. $49.00. ISBN:
978-0-268-10885-4.)
The Congregation of Holy Cross was founded in response to the spiritual and
material needs French Catholics faced in the field of education following the
French Revolution. Starting as the Brothers of Saint Joseph in 1820, the community grew from serving primary schools in Le Mans, France, into an international
spiritual family of priests, brothers, sisters, and lay collaborators working across five
continents. James Connelly, C.S.C., as congregational archivist draws on the collections of the institutions and ministries of his community to present the first general history of the Congregation.
The author does not dwell on individuals except in their relationship to the
particular works of the Congregation. This is a history of institutions, with the University of Notre Dame, missions in Bengal, and the Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal looming large. He outlines nearly two centuries of the community’s history in
universities and parishes while not dwelling on any one of them in depth. This book
is intended as an introduction to the Congregation for general audiences and a
starting point for further reading. His ample notes give incredible depth to these
modest claims, and it is a great service to scholars of religious history particularly in
Europe and North America. The book stops at 1998, leaving it for someone else to
add the Congregation’s contemporary history.
Connelly admits the potential weaknesses of this book at the outset. It is not
per se about particular people, nor does it explicitly treat the spirituality and charism
of the Congregation, or systematically chronicle the contribution of female communities in the Holy Cross tradition. That is to say, it is not a comprehensive work
that would require volumes. To his credit, anyone familiar with the charism of religious communities will agree that all these facets permeate the works of a congregation to such an extent that they become two sides of the same coin.
Our Lady of Victory Church (Washington, DC)

SEAN P. PHILLIPS

MEDIEVAL
The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179: Their Origins and Reception. By
Danica Summerlin. [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th
series.] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxiii, 306.
$99.99. ISBN 978-1-107-14582-5.)
Papal Jurisprudence c. 400: Sources of the Canon Law Tradition. By David L. d’Avray.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. $108.00. ISBN
9781108472937.)
Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234: Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law.
By David L. d’Avray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. x,
302. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-108-47300-2.)

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The three volumes under review provide innovative studies of the two major
sources of canon law in the medieval period, namely conciliar canons and papal
decretals. They constitute works of history that pay attention to the particulars of
text and textual transmission but utilize the tools of philology, paleography, diplomatics, and/or codicology to help answer larger questions about the social, political,
and religious factors at play in the development of the body of canon law and of the
papacy. As the subtitles of Summerlin’s and d’Avray’s publications make clear, they
are not simply interested in completed texts and textual content; rather they are
interested in issues of origins, of transmission, and of reception. Each one represents a sizable contribution to the history of the papacy as well as to the development of canon law prior to the Liber Extra of 1234, the first major papally commissioned and authorized collection of canon law that would remain a significant part
of the Corpus iuris canonici until the new Code of Canon Law went into effect in
the Roman Catholic Church in 1918.
The two works by d’Avray go together as a pair, even though each volume is
useful on its own. We begin with the source book of early papal decretals c. 400. After
an appropriate introduction, orientation to the most important work done previously
(in this case, beginning with Erich Caspar’s three-volume Geschichte des Papsttums
published in 1930 and 1933), and discussion of the texts and manuscripts, d’Avray
organizes the book thematically, with each chapter providing a brief introduction to
the theme and then containing relevant papal decretals that are both edited in the
original Latin and translated into English, section by section. At the end of each section of edited and translated texts, d’Avray notes whether the text was received in ten
later canonical collections. While a different scholar may have selected different collections, there is no doubt that d’Avray’s selection gives a chronological and geographical spread of early canonical collections up to and including Gratian’s Decretum, providing a good indication of the breadth of reception of various decretal
excerpts. For his selection of texts, d’Avray focuses on “the critical half-century of
imperial military breakdown” in the West after the year 378 and covering the pontificates of Siricius to Celestine I (2–3). The pope who looms largest is Innocent I
(402–417). Importantly, d’Avray is concerned only with decretals that were included
in the earliest Latin canonical collections and were transmitted widely, through
copies of these collections, and thus had “a quantitatively significant afterlife in the
West” (3). The themes covered in chapters four through thirteen are: rituals and
liturgy; status hierarchy; hierarchy of authority; celibacy; bigamy; marriage; monks
and the secular clergy; two sections on heretics (Novatians, Bonosians, and Photinians; Pelagius and others “in the shadow of Augustine”); and, finally, penance.
The same themes reappear in the 2022 companion study by d’Avray. That
study examines this earlier period of the proliferation of papal decretals (late
fourth–early fifth centuries) together with a later period when the same kind of
phenomenon occurred, namely a proliferation of inquiries directed to the papacy
that prompted rescripts or decretals that then prompted some kind of collecting
and categorizing of the law for posterity. D’Avray is acutely attuned to what social,
political, and cultural factors might account for these historically parallel phenom-

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ena even when, on the face of it, the social, political, and cultural environments of
the two time periods seem utterly different (however one wants to frame the “fall”
of the Roman Empire, nothing similar was going on in the West in the twelfth
century; in fact, political entities were growing more centralized and developing in
a direction that would establish stronger kingdoms with more capable systems of
administration, finances, and law). Utilizing Pocock’s notion of “reoccurrence,”
d’Avray delves into the kinds of conditions that did enable a flurry of papal decretal-making in both periods, above all, “the complexity of multiple and fast-evolving
religious systems, together with uncertainty about what was or was not essential to
Christianity” (13). And in the midst of uncertainty arising from many social, cultural, economic, and religious changes and no other clear authority to provide guidance or definitive answers, Latin Christians and above all the bishops, who were
responsible for the faithful expression and administration of Christian rites and
norms at the regional level, turned to the pope. The book offers a much fuller treatment of the earlier period than the later one, but its treatment of the papal reform
movement of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries is particularly noteworthy. Not only does it highlight appropriately the importance of the reception of the
earlier papal decretal material in the debates of the day, but it also pinpoints precisely the disconnect between those canonical sources and the practices of real life
as they had developed in the church and among clerical hierarchies and standards.
In short, the old law could not always be aligned with new reality, so what we see
are reformers scrambling to compile former law, finding much of use in the forged
papal decretals of the ninth century (the pseudo-Isidorian material), and supporting the making of new law through consultations that led to new decretals as well
as renewed conciliar activity at the papal and regional levels.
This conciliar activity forms the focus of Summerlin’s study, an in-depth treatment of a council held at the Lateran under Pope Alexander III in 1179 marking
the end of a schism. As for d’Avray, so too for Summerlin, what merits attention
consists of the conditions on the ground that led eventually to conciliar decrees on
various issues and the ways in which the texts were later received, and by whom and
when, such that, at the end of the day, the decrees were accepted as part of universally binding canon law. Theory plays less of a role in Summerlin’s analysis than it
does for d’Avray; her argument is strong in analyzing manuscript witnesses, piecing
together historical accounts of the council and those active at it, and tracing the
treatment of issues from Gratian, decretists, and earlier decretals addressing local
complaints and inquiries that then were resolved in generalized form at the council.
What she illuminates particularly well is the fact that, while Alexander III intended
for his decrees to be in effect throughout the church, he and his curia in fact had
no concrete means to enforce such enactment. It took years, and efforts of people
far from the curia, for the decrees of the council to be accepted and utilized as
authoritative.
A few points of synthesis arising from consideration of the three works are
worth enumerating. First, there is the issue of historical actors and whether the
figure at the top (the pope) is or can be the driver of significant historical change.

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As with the much earlier decretals of the early fifth century and newer decretals of
the late twelfth century, individual compilers seeking to amass and organize legal
norms for teaching and/or administrative use more locally made copies of the texts,
from which other copies were made and disseminated, resulting over time in the
recognition of the texts as authoritative law. Innocent I could not legislate for the
church universal, and neither could Alexander III. And, yet, somehow, through the
historical forces at work, the papacy grew in centralized authority and concrete
power in the church. Second, there is the issue of authority and the conditions that
promote the rise of a particular authority. Both Summerlin and d’Avray are concerned with the papacy but also with particular textual manifestations of that
authority, one with conciliar canons and one with decretal letters. The texts themselves hold an authority, but that authority is not just because they emanate from a
figure or office that is authoritative but because the way in which they address real
problems and offer well-considered solutions provided genuine guidance and assistance. Both d’Avray and Summerlin demonstrate how their sources reveal an
authority backed by substance, thereby reinforcing that authority, even if it followed several years later or not simultaneously everywhere. Finally, there is the
issue of textual transmission in relationship to tradition. Declarations are meaningless if they do not reach an audience and have longevity. Summerlin and d’Avray
contribute to our understanding of how traditions take shape and how, over
decades and even across breaks of centuries, texts carry forward ideas, norms, and
argumentation that exercise formative influence in how members of a tradition
think, act, and govern themselves internally.
All three works are to be commended to historians of the papacy, Catholic
institutions and offices (including the hierarchy and bishops, in particular), canon
law, and legal and institutional history more broadly. And for historians interested
on a more theoretical level with mechanisms of historical development, these books
provide a wealth of material for consideration and some salient case studies.
Saint Louis University

ATRIA A. LARSON

Rathier de Vérone. Lecteur, remanieur et centonisateur. By François Dolbeau,
[mediEVI, 29] (Florence: Sismel–Edizioni del Galluzzo. 2021. Pp. viii, 509.
$ 7 5 .4 2 . ISBN: 9 7 8 -8 -8 9 2 -9 0 0 7 3 -8 .)
As François Dolbeau underlines in his avant-propos to this volume, Ratherius,
tenth-century monk and abbot at Lobbes and (intermittently) bishop of Verona
and Liège, very much enjoyed talking about himself. This was quite unusual for
medieval authors, who were sometimes so silent about themselves that we do not
even know their names. His troubled life and ecclesiastical career can be reconstructed quite thoroughly by means of the autobiographical remarks he included in
his texts, usually as a way to justify his often-controversial choices and respond to
his adversaries’ criticism. Ratherius’s works also distinguish themselves because
they (in)famously do not make easy reading. His vocabulary and style of composition were extremely peculiar and probably looked complicated not only to present-

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day readers but also to his contemporaries, as the limited circulation of most of his
works seems to suggest. And yet, despite Ratherius’s proclivity for self-disclosure
and highly distinct stylistic flourishes, his written production has long been and still
is the subject of debate among scholars, mostly focusing on issues of attribution and
textual reconstruction. In this volume, the results of a lifetime of research on
Ratherius and his works by François Dolbeau, one of the greatest medieval philologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, are brought together in
an outstanding collection.
The eleven contributions included in this volume, covering a chronological
span ranging from the early 1980s to the present day, are structured in four subsections. After a couple of introductory chapters providing a detailed and thorough
picture of Ratherius’s life and works, three groups of contributions focus on more
specific fields of his intellectual activity. The role and use of Patristic sources in his
texts is highlighted in chapters 3 to 5. Ratherius as a writer and a rewriter of hagiographical texts is discussed in chapters 6 to 8. Finally, issues of attribution of some
collections of sermons to Ratherius are addressed in chapters 9 to 11. Two contributions (chapters 8 and 11) are published here for the first time and present editions of texts previously disregarded by editors of Ratherius’ works. New or revised
editions of short texts are also included as appendices to almost all the chapters.
This volume will thus become a necessary supplement to the previous collections of
Ratherius’ texts, such as those published by Weigle and Reid, who are sometimes
the object of Dolbeau’s criticism or philological readjustments.
This book also provides the chance to review some forty years of development
in scholarly work on and approaches to Ratherius and his production. The transformations that took place in this period in philological methodologies are very
clearly reflected–and reflected upon–in Dolbeau’s considerations, may look quite
obvious, even commonplace, to present-day scholars, but they were in fact revolutionary when they were first voiced. New tools, like the Thesaurus Ratherii, have
been developed in the meantime and have immediately become parts of the toolkit
deployed by Dolbeau–who actually played a key role in their conception and development. The evolution in his ways of thinking about Ratherius is one of the most
interesting “subplots” of the whole collection. Another one, suggested by the huge
amount of information provided on the editorial history of individual texts in early
modern and modern times, concerns the scholars who edited Ratherius’s works,
their methodologies, and the cultural contexts in which they operated.
In sum, this book can be appreciated and fruitfully exploited from a wide
range of perspectives. It will prove indispensable to all those wishing to work on
Ratherius and his writings in the future.
University of Padua

FRANCESCO VERONESE

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Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century. By Edward
Roberts. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii, 268.
$99.00. ISBN 978-1-316-51039-1.)
As Edward Roberts (rightly) points out several times throughout his engaging
book, the tenth century in medieval Europe has been unjustly maligned and still
too often ignored. We know so much more about this period and should treat it as
its own thing–not just a stopping point between so-called “renaissances” in the
ninth and twelfth centuries. He does this by focusing on the whole oeuvre of the
canon Flodoard of Rheims.
After a deft introduction that would be useful in any classroom studying the
historiography of tenth-century Europe, chapter one sets the scene of Flodoard in
Rheims. The early tenth-century city was a highly contested site throughout his life,
as Carolingian and Robertian (and Ottonian!) kings jockeyed with powerful magnates and ecclesiastical authorities for control over the city and its archbishopric. In
this drama, Flodoard himself played a substantial role moving between many of the
affected parties, which in turn shaped how he presented the past. Chapter 2
expands upon this with a close, insightful reading of the Annals. We ought to
understand that this style of historical writing was a choice that evoked ninth-century texts, but also distinguished itself from those earlier texts by his own authorial
presence and opinions in his Annals. Roberts argues clearly that Flodoard saw his
own age as something somehow worse than what was before.
The next several chapters move to some of Flodoard’s other texts, which all–
like the Annals–demonstrate a concern for the wider sweep of sacred history, and
the place of Rheims within that. As such, they are direct interventions into the
ongoing political conversations and activities that Flodoard himself witnessed and
in which he, at times, participated. The History of the Church of Rheims, for example, was intended to justify the expansiveness of the archbishops of the city as “the
church surfaced once more from calamity, this time under the awning of a new
Ottonian political order” (144). The next chapter deftly analyzes the poem The
Triumphs of Christ, forcefully arguing that modern genre distinctions meant nothing to our medieval authors who wrote poetry, history, and hagiography, and to
the same didactic ends. In this specific case, the poem aimed to integrate the
recent past into the story of sacred history, to show how God was still working in
the world. Finally, chapter five continues this line of thought by giving an
overview of how the miraculous functioned in Flodoard’s writing, in his sense of
tenth-century Europe. Significantly, his outlook changed during the political crisis
of the 940s, and he became more assertive of God’s presence as a sign of hope for
a better future.
The brief conclusion recaps the book. In his introduction, Roberts is correct in
pointing out the discursive scholarly parallels between the falls of empires–fifthcentury Rome and late ninth-century Carolingian–and more recent pushes toward
a language of “transformation.” He returns to that trend in the conclusion, and as

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such, Flodoard of Rheims is an effective contribution to that move. But I wonder if
the book actually hints at more. In that conclusion, Roberts writes that “the only
thing ‘post-Carolingian’ about Flodoard was the fact that he was born after 888”
(223). On its face, the statement seems banal, but its implications are tremendously
important and call out the sub-periodizations we too often inflict upon ourselves.
When he died in 966, Flodoard had never known a world without a Carolingian
king. In other words, Roberts reminds us that Flodoard saw clearly both backwards
and forwards. He wrote about the past and, at least implicitly, his vision of the
future, but he also participated in helping enact that vision in the present. In doing
so, this book shows that the tenth century’s horizons of expectation weren’t narrow
and provincial—ours too often are.
Virginia Tech

MATTHEW GABRIELE

Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard’s Illuminated
“Scivias.” By Margot E. Fassler. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2022. Pp. 392. $65.00. ISBN: 978-1-512-82307-3.)
In the Acknowledgments section, Margot Fassler describes her own fiery
introduction to Hildegard studies after she politely declined to contribute to an
upcoming volume because she did not research Hildegard. “You do now,” she was
told. Indeed, the surging tide of interest in this complex twelfth-century Benedictine abbess has left many in Fassler’s situation. This book is for them as much as it
is for seasoned Hildegard specialists.
Fassler’s study concentrates on one manuscript in particular, Wiesbaden 1,
which is the only illustrated source of Hildegard’s first book of visions, Scivias
(completed 1141–51). The thirty-five illustrations in Wiesbaden 1 accompanying
Hildegard’s twenty-six visions elucidate important aspects of the cosmic drama
detailed in Scivias. Hildegard is unparalleled in the diverse media she melded
together to express the sounds and images that the voice of the living Light presented to her. Yet, “Hildegard’s cosmological understandings have not hitherto
been studied in the context of her music, poetry, theology, drama, art, and scientific
works . . . which were also of her own design” (40). The most important contributions of the volume are Fassler’s identification of the numerous threads Hildegard
pulled from Scripture, the liturgy, the Rule of St. Benedict, scholastic authors, and
her own novel reflections to expound her visions. Fassler then demonstrates how
these threads, woven through and across multiple modes of expression, relate to
Hildegard’s single overarching purpose.
The visions, each with their own explanation and commentary, are followed by
fourteen original chant texts, a shortened version of her liturgical play entitled
Exhortatio virtutum, and her commentary on Psalms 148–150. Not only were these
sections copied together, Fassler suggests that they were written concurrently in
close thematic relationship. Consequently, the eight chapters of Cosmos, Liturgy,
and the Arts frequently overlap and reference one another.

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In chapter 1, Fassler situates Hildegard within a larger theological turn in the
first half of the twelfth century that sought to understand the structure and workings of the cosmos in terms of salvation history. Chapter 2 continues the discussion
of Hildegard’s intellectual influences and analyzes the production of Wiesbaden 1,
arguing that Hildegard’s secretary, Volmar, was the main scribe. Chapter 3 explores
the striking correspondences between themes in Scivias and the liturgy for the Feast
of All Saints, when Hildegard and the nuns of her community made their monastic
professions. Chapters 4–6 concern the drama of redemption as it plays out on the
stage of the entire cosmos, including the countervailing winds unleashed at Satan’s
fall that jostle and vie throughout the material world as well as the human soul. The
final two chapters examine the Ordo virtutum, the longer sung form of Exhortatio
virtutum, which expands on this cosmic story from the perspective of the Soul navigating the treacherous journey back to God through virtue.
Fassler’s expansive grasp of Hildegard’s oeuvre and milieu and explanation of
Hildegard’s central themes, oblique references, and allegorical meanings in accessible language will make this volume foundational reading and a standard point of
entry into Hildegard’s thought for some time to come. The overall coherence of
Scivias necessitated copious references to other visions and illustrations throughout
the book (presented simply by book and vision, e.g., Scivias I.iii), which could
encumber the reader. It is best to read these chapters alongside a table of contents
or a general schema of Scivias, which is not provided. The rich connections Fassler
has exposed between the cosmos, liturgy, and the arts open exciting new avenues of
exploration across disciplines just as Hildegard challenges us to rethink more holistically how we approach the study of theology and of our world generally.
Saint Meinrad Archabbey

JOHN GLASENAPP, O.S.B.

Dominicus hispanus: Saint Dominique avant la fondation de l’ordre des Prêcheurs. By
Adeline Rucquoi. (Fanjeaux: Centre d’études historiques de Fanjeaux, 2023.
Pp. 245. € 26,00. ISBN 978-1-534-88313-0.)
In Dominicus hispanus: Saint Dominique avant la fondation de l’ordre des
Prêcheurs, Adeline Rucquoi focuses on what she sees as the overlooked Hispanic
biography of Saint Dominic as the basis of her comprehensive historical analysis of
the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans). Her extensive research on
Dominic’s life examines the context of the first thirty-five years of his fifty-year life.
Rucquoi especially centers her study on Dominic as a priest, Canon Regular, and
sub-prior at the Cathedral of Osma before he crosses the Pyrenees in 1203 to
accompany his bishop to the “Marches” (Denmark) by way of Toulouse to find a
noble bride for the son of King Alfonso VII. She also demonstrates how a second
trip in 1206 with the bishop resulted in Dominic’s evangelical mission in Languedoc to return the Cathars to the Church, which eventually led to his establishment
of the Order of Preachers there.
Rucquoi’s book, which was originally written in French but also features an
English translation, is part of the Collection d’histoire religieuse du Languedoc

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au Moyen Age produced by the Centre d’études historiques de Fanjeaux. The
manuscript contains six chapters and four addenda. Both the introduction and
first chapter establish Rucquoi’s historical method. The remaining chapters highlight Dominic’s social and family context in Castile, Dominic as sub-prior at the
Cathedral of Osma, his intellectual formation in Palencia, his travels and experiences especially in Languedoc during his second trip to Denmark with Bishop
Diego de Aceves, and his founding of the community of women “converted by
the friars” at Prouille in the winter of 1206–1207. The addenda provide four documents that feature artifacts related to the historical environments delineated in
the chapters.
The hermeneutical key to Rucquoi’s careful historical work rests on her comparative method that analyzes periods and cultures within and beyond Spain, also
weighing the importance of the known sources associated particularly with the
biographical context of Dominic’s early years as both the sub-prior of the Canons
Regular at the cathedral at Osma and in light of his education at the Studium Generale which subsequently would become Spain’s first university at Palencia. In addition, the unique ecclesial context of Dominic’s participation in the restored Rule of
Saint Augustine among the Canons at Osma and the multicultural and complex
religious setting at Palencia both strongly characterize the biographic profile of the
thirty-five-year-old priest who eventually ventured out to meet up with the social
and religious challenges in Languedoc.
Rucquoi concludes that the Dominic who left Spain with his bishop was an
intellectual who had been trained in a lively and varied cultural environment, where
rhetoric took precedence over logic, disputes with other religions were common,
and study was oriented to holiness. Therefore, Dominic carried into his experience
in Languedoc a faithfulness to the writing and books he encountered in Palencia,
as well as to the pastoral ministry and the life in common which are proper to the
Rule of Saint Augustine. Therefore, in order to truly understand the vision and
mission of Saint Dominic and his response to the Cathars of Languedoc, it is necessary to fathom the deep and influential Hispanic context of his life.
Aquinas Institute of Theology

MARK E. WEDIG, O.P.

Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements. Edited by
Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2022. Pp. xx, 430. $95. ISBN: 978-1-487-50241-6.)
Nearly nine decades have passed since the publication of Herbert Grundmann’s seminal study Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, but it seems as if its
potential to inspire scholars in searching for new perspectives on the development
of medieval religious life is far from exhausted. This collection of eleven essays,
which stems from a series of sessions held at the International Medieval Congress
of 2015, revisits Grundmann’s work and examines its relevance for future research
in the field of medieval religiosity.

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The Grundmann thesis, which argues that religious orders and heretical
movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both emanated from the vita
apostolica movement and should therefore be studied as a whole, has been so influential that J. Van Engen considered it to be a “foundation for the historical study
of medieval religious life.” Indeed, Grundmann’s work has led us to move away
from essentialist interpretations of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, deconstruct glorifying “order histories,” and appreciate religious groups that were previously regarded
as marginal. A question that is (too) rarely asked, however, is whether the binary
master narrative of orders and heresies (which Grundmann in a way reinforced) is
still an adequate one. As the title suggests, the aim of the present edited volume is
to address this issue by exploring medieval religious interactions, experiences, and
practices that took place outside the institutional boundaries of orders and heresies–the so-called space “in between.”
Not counting the opening essay, which examines how Grundmann related to
the political currents of his time (Letha Böhringer), the focus of the essays is mainly
on the thirteenth century, and more specifically on the women’s religious movement. Each essay, in its own right, successfully points out various methodological
shortcomings and biases within the current historiography, but there is also a more
general lesson to draw, namely that we must recognize the complexity and multidimensionality of the concept of “orthodoxy.” The excessive historiographical focus
on religious movements adopting the order model has led us to overlook the possibility that “tolerated” forms of religious experience could exist and flourish beyond
the institutional boundaries of orders and the physical confines of convents.
While the transgenerational and family-centered crusader religiosity that
emerged after the Fall of Jerusalem (Anne Lester) stands out as an atypical example, the same cannot be said about the many quasi-religious groups of lay people
and women that popped up in high and late medieval Europe. When not being targeted by the papacy, these groups successfully claimed legitimacy on the basis of
self-identification—such as lay confraternities that expressly emulated the apostolic
model of communal life (Neslihan Şenocak)—or definitions of orthodoxy formulated by local (ecclesiastical) elites—such as Margherita Colonna’s (d. 1280)
family-supported religious community in Rome (Lezlie Knox) or the Parisian
beguines who maintained close ties with the masters of the Sorbonne (Tanya Stabler Miller). Many of these movements were eventually pushed into the mold of
the order anyway, but their role in shaping a proper institutional identity should
not be ignored (Sean L. Field), and it should be stressed that, before that moment
arrived, other criteria of orthodoxy were applied, as the case of the “Grey Sisters”
illustrates (Alison More).
Just as we cannot suppose that the papal view of orthodoxy was monolithic
and uniform, or that it was the sole authority determining legitimacy in practice, so
we cannot suppose that the path to orthodoxy was linear or that recognition was
irreversible. This is shown by the example of the “orthodox” beguines of Prague,
whose legitimacy was questioned because of their active role in the rise of the Hus-

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sites in the early fifteenth century (Jana Grollová), or simply by the accusations of
“hypocrisy” with which religious peers constantly attacked each other’s authority
(Sita Steckel). Of course, we must always try to look beyond the labels that were
assigned by “others”: that women were almost never described as heresiarchs by the
papacy or the inquisition, conceals the leading role they could assume in heretical
movements (Janine Larmon Peterson). Finally, we must continue to ask ourselves
how “orthodox” the reality is that lies behind the emergence of “the Franciscans” as
an order (Amanda Power).
Ghent University

JOHAN BELAEN

Dominicans and Franciscans in Medieval Rome: History, Architecture, and Art. By
Joan Barclay Lloyd. (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2022. Pp. 439. €110.
ISBN: 978-2-503-57883-5.)
Two familiar representations of the Dream of Pope Innocent III grace the cover
of this book. On the left, Francesco Traini’s panel painting shows Dominic straining
to support the crumbling Lateran Church, while on the right side, Giotto’s fresco
from the upper church in Assisi suggests Francis only needed his right arm and
shoulder to support the dangerously tilting papal basilica. The two mendicant orders
regularly and competitively deployed this shared iconographic theme to emphasize
their special connections to the papacy and their service to the thirteenth-century
Church. Joan Barclay Lloyd’s rewarding new study extends this metaphor to address
how the Dominican and Franciscan orders also renewed the Church spiritually and
architecturally through their contributions to Rome’s built environment.
Her book focuses on the seven mendicant foundations listed in the 1320 Catalogue of Turin (effectively, a census of Rome’s religious communities). Part 1 features communities established during the first half of the thirteenth century: S.
Sisto (Dominican nuns, c. 1218–1221), S. Sabina (Dominican friars, 1220–1222),
S. Francesco a Ripa (Franciscan friars, 1229), and S. Cosimato (Franciscan nuns,
1234). These houses tended to be located on the urban periphery, and readers will
appreciate Lloyd’s descriptions of the contemporary city and the mendicants’ architectural renovations as they took over existing monastic spaces. She provides a
survey of their foundations and pays particular attention to how these spaces
reflected their order’s needs. Enclosure was critical for religious women, even as the
friars also required private spaces to prepare for their missions. A strength of the
book is her consideration of nunneries as well as friaries, including their different
functions in the city and papal support.
Part 2 turns to those houses established in the second half of the century: S.
Maria in Aracoeli (Franciscan friars, c. 1248), S. Maria sopra Minerva (Dominican
friars, c. 1266), and S. Silvestro in Capite (Franciscan nuns, 1285). The friars’
churches were now more likely to serve as parishes, and they included generous
spaces both for preaching needs and to allow private chapters. These chapters also
offer reflections on how poverty featured in these churches, with Lloyd concluding

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it was more a choice in building materials or architectual details such as lack of vaulting, rather than the size of their complexes. The final chapter considers Dominican
penitents, including Catherine of Siena, who traveled to the city in 1378 with the
return of the papacy. It is less centered on architecture and art, as most penitents
remained in their own homes and did not occupy a particular building or complex.
To an understandable degree, Lloyd synthesizes the work of other scholars for
individual communities, but her stance is always critical. Even in building on her
own work, for example on S. Cosimato and S. Maria sopra Minerva, she incorporates new studies and archaeological surveys. Moreover, her deep knowledge of
Roman and monastic architecture allows her to raise questions about potential
models for thirteenth-century renovations and engage with scholarly debates.
Details about each church’s institutional history sometimes are repeated, but that
may aid a reader seeking particular information. Lloyd sometimes presumes
anachronistic institutional formation, such as describing Francis’s friend Jacopa of
Settesoldi as a tertiary over a half century before a lay order existed. Lay patronage
receives less attention, which then credits the orders and papacy with building plans
and decorating the complexes. These are minor points when compared to detailed
evidence presented that Lloyd supplements with photographs and architectural
diagrams, as well as literary and archaeological evidence. Scholars interested in
Rome and religious architecture broadly speaking will much appreciate this study,
as well as mendicant specialists.
Marquette University

LEZLIE KNOX

Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community Among the Nuns of Helfta. By
Anna Harrison. [Cistercian Publications.] (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. 2022. Pp. xxv, 494. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-87907-289-6.)
Gertrude the Great of Helfta, The Memorial of the Abundance of the Divine Sweetness.
Translated and introduced by Alexandra Barratt. [Cistercian Publications.]
(Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. 2022. Pp. xiv, 394. $49.95. ISBN
978-0-87907-138-7.)
Recent scholarship on medieval women’s spiritual and visionary writings has
prioritized a community of nuns at the monastery of Helfta in Saxony. Thirteenthcentury Helfta was the home of four memorable religious figures, Abbess Gertrude
of Hackeborn (d. 1292), her sister, Mechtilde of Hackeborn (d. 1298/99),
Gertrude of Helfta (also called Gertrude the Great, d. ca. 1302), and Mechtilde of
Magdeburg (d. ca. 1282). Both Gertrudes and Mechtilde of Hackeborn were cloistered nuns of the Benedictine tradition. Helfta considered itself a Cistercian house,
and followed a Cistercian way of life, although there is no evidence that it was ever
formally incorporated into the Cistercian order. (Harrison, xxxi–xxxii). Mechtilde
of Magdeburg was a non-cloistered religious woman of the Beguine tradition who,
in the face of ecclesiastical opposition, took refuge at Helfta around 1270. The nuns
of Helfta sheltered her in the last decade of her life. At Helfta, Mechtilde wrote the
final part of her masterpiece, the Flowing Light of the Divinity (Harrison, 3).

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Abbess Gertrude did not leave behind any written works, but important writings
are attributed to both her sister Mechtilde of Hackeborn and the younger nun,
Gertrude of Helfta/The Great. Mechtilde is known as the author of the Book of Special Grace. Two works, the Herald of God’s Loving Kindness and the Spiritual Exercises, are attributed to Gertrude of Helfta. All of these works are described by Harrison as “a jumble of genres, containing treatises on Mary and John the Evangelist,
accounts of visions and ecstasies, discourses on the religious life and related instructions, liturgical commentary, spiritual confessions, deathbed narratives, prayers,
and hagiographical accounts of contemporary nuns” (5).
Harrison structures her study in three parts: part 1, “The Nuns,” has four chapters that focus on reading and writing at Helfta, the relationships among the nuns,
community in illness, death and grief, and liturgy and community. Part 2, “Within
and Beyond the Cloister,” has two chapters focusing on the relationships of the
nuns with the clergy, and on community beyond the monastery. In part 3, “The
Living and the Dead,” two chapters analyze, very tenderly, Helfta’s sense of community with the souls in Purgatory and with Mary and the saints. Thus, Harrison’s
focus moves outward, from within Helfta, to the world surrounding the monastery,
to relationships with the departed and the saints. Of course, as her subtitle suggests,
the focus is always on the way the nuns of Helfta created community at each level.
Harrison’s discussion of the relationships between the nuns, their neighbors, and
those who dwell in eternity is solidly placed in the historical context of thirteenthcentury Saxony, and skillfully woven from close reading of the works of the nuns
Gertrude and Mechtilde, so that her definition of community is mainly derived
from the primary sources.
The most striking aspect of community at Helfta is the way it is manifested in
the writing of the famous spiritual works of both Mechtildes and the younger
Gertrude. For example, Gertrude and/or other nuns probably had a hand in the
writing of Mechtilde of Hackeborn’s Book of Special Grace. The Herald was composed by Gertrude working with one or several unknown nuns and probably not
finished until after her death. The Beguine Mechtilde of Magdeburg was also
assisted by unnamed nuns of Helfta in writing the Flowing Light of the Godhead
near the end of her life (4–6). It is especially interesting that, unlike other medieval
religious women authors such as Hildegard of Bingen, Angela of Foligno and
Catherine of Siena, no male amanuensis, not even a priest or confessor, is associated with the writing of these books. Because of this absence of male co-authorship, Harrison says that, unlike Hildegard, Angela, and Catherine, the nuns of
Helfta were not “burdened with worries about writing because of their gender” (7).
In keeping with this complicated pattern of authorship, Harrison consistently
refers to these texts as “the Helfta writings” or “the literature.” This insight opens a
new perspective on the religious life of medieval women, an approach that will
inform scholars for many years.
Except for the Flowing Light of the Divinity, which has the distinction of
being the first mystical treatise written in Low German, most scholars agree that

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the works of Helfta were written in Latin (xxii). They were certainly circulated in
Latin, although the reception of each work is quite different. The Book of Special
Grace, in whole or in part, survives in over a hundred manuscripts, while the Herald
is only known in seven copies, and the Spiritual Exercises can only be traced back to
its first printed edition by John Landsberg in 1536, which, oddly, does not identify
the manuscripts from which it was edited (xxii). This suggests that the Helfta writings will also be interesting subjects for the burgeoning field of the material culture
of medieval texts.
A recognizable version of part of the Herald of God’s Loving Kindness has
recently been discovered as one of the texts in a composite manuscript, Leipzig,
Universitätsbibliothek, MS 827 (L), copied at the Benedictine monastery of Pegau,
some 70 kilometers from Helfta (xviii), and translated for the Cistercian Press by
Alexandra Barratt, who also translated the Herald for the Cistercian Fathers series
between 1991 and 2018 (Harrison, 440). The manuscript has a paper title in a sixteenth-century hand that attributes the Memorial of the Abundance of the Divine
Sweetness to Birgitte of Sweden, which is why, Barratt says, “it remained unknown
for so long” (xvii). The Memorial appears on fols. 25v–148r of the Leipzig manuscript. Barratt compares it in detail to the Herald (xxi–xxvi) and surveys the wide
range of medieval sources quoted in the Memorial (xxxii–xxxiv), which are evident
also in the translation. These details will surely help future scholars to place the
Memorial in the full context of the Helfta literature.
The only problem with the identification of the Memorial as an early version
of the Herald is, indeed, how early it is dated. Barratt tells us, “The section containing the Gertrudian texts has been dated to the early years of the thirteenth century,
maybe as early as the first decade” (xvii). Since Gertrude is thought to have been
born in 1256, even a very early version of the Herald could not possibly have been
copied in the first decade of the thirteenth century. The publication of an English
translation of this beautiful text will surely help scholars to study it (hopefully
alongside a critical edition of the original Latin). It may even be the catalyst for
some major reappraisals of the dates and authorship of the Helfta literature.
In the meantime, the almost simultaneous publication of the most significant
monograph in English on the nuns of Helfta, and of a text argued to be an early
version of a treatise long attributed to Gertrude the Great, will certainly spur further scholarship on this important moment in the history of women in medieval
Christianity.
The University of Pennsylvania

EDITH ANN MATTER

The Keys to Bread and Wine:Faith,Nature,and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia. By Abigail Agresta. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 201.
$56.95. ISBN: 978-1-501-76417-2.)
Until fairly recently, teleological attitudes about technology tended to treat
religious responses to environmental crises as backward or superstitious, implying

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that society was unable to deal with crises any other way. However, both religious
and technological responses have generally co-existed (and continue to co-exist).
Abigail Agresta’s book, The Keys to Bread and Wine, is an excellent example of combining religious, environmental, and technocratic themes. Her work is based in an
expansive reading of the available sources from the medieval city of Valencia (full
original language is included in the notes with only a few lacunae: 40n9–10;
117n17; or 153). She takes seriously the overlaps, contradictions, and competing
religious, political, and environmental forces at play that influence how the city
implemented its environmental policies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
This combination allows for multiple impressive and surprising observations.
The first half of the book discusses the relationship of the urban leaders in
Valencia to their environment, with chapters discussing the reshaping of the irrigation system in the wake of Christian conquest, efforts to expand the Valencian
hydrological infrastructure, and the influence of Christian ideologies on Valencian
urban planning. The fourth chapter (perhaps the most fascinating) acts as a hinge
for the entire book, demonstrating a major shift in the balance of Valencian
responses to disasters from more technocratic to more religious methods starting in
the 1420s. The second half of the work then dedicates chapters to the responses
(both technological and theological) that the urban leaders took to droughts,
plagues, floods, and locusts.
Throughout, Agresta demonstrates how urban leaders responded to a competing mix of assumptions and pressures. Clearing swamps was a good idea because it
expanded economically productive space, but also made the air healthier (51–61).
The council often wanted to close up small urban alleyways (called “azucachs”) to
widen streets for commercial traffic, but also because “evil men” hid in such alleys,
they encouraged putrefaction and disease, and simply because they were ugly (73–
74 and 80–81). Urban repairs were pragmatic, but they also made the city look
more Christian, according to the aesthetics of the ruling elite (68–69 and 75–80).
The beautification projects undertaken by the city also involved limiting or removing both Muslim and Jewish influence, especially in the wake of the anti-Jewish
violence of 1391 (80–86).
Most notably, Agresta charts a significant shift toward a greater use of religious processions starting sometime in the 1420s. The use of rogation ceremonies
as a response for drought, famine, plague, and other disasters exploded in the midfifteenth century; corresponding efforts at infrastructure (irrigation, drainage, etc.)
tapered off. Thus, a society with available technological responses could opt to
ignore those options in favor of religious ceremony. Agresta offers several possible
explanations, including a greater emphasis on celebrating the Christian identity of
the city (facilitated by the successful rebuilding described in the previous chapters),
shifts in the make-up of the government itself, a general move towards large civic
rituals across Europe, and experiments in public ritual staged by the Valencian
church, especially by Bishop Hug de Llupià (1397–1427). Even with these explanations, I was curious to hear more about what factors might move a society to

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make such a notable shift. The sources might only allow guesses (and further examples of other cities seem the next logical step), but even possible observations at this
stage would be a welcome contribution. This is especially so given Agresta’s notable
ability to chart these sorts of changes in attitude, such as chapter 5’s description of
plague responses shifting from regarding disease as a contamination to a contagion,
or the effective speculations even with relatively sparse information about why
swarms of locusts might have been viewed as natural, despite the obvious biblical
examples of divine plagues (190–96).
Overall, The Keys to Bread and Wine is an excellent study across a long expanse
of time. The most notable part of the work is how well it combines areas of study
that inherently influence each other—especially environmental and religious history. More works of this depth and rigor on new locations would help us better
understand how even our own narratives and mythologies about the world around
us can shape our interactions with the environment.
Emerson College

ADAM FRANKLIN-LYONS

Pastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany: Albert of Diessen’s Mirror
of Priests. By Deeana Copeland Klepper. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2022. Pp. 197. $54.95. ISBN: 978-1-501-76616-9.)
Pastoral Care and Community is a wonderful book and an absolute joy to read.
Deeana Copeland Klepper has a thrilling case at her hands: three autograph manuscripts of the pastoral manual Mirror of Priests written by the Upper Bavarian
Augustinian Canon Albert of Diessen in 1370, 1373, and 1377. Not only is the
material something that creates envy in anyone working with late medieval manuscripts, but Klepper addresses her sources with such learning, analytical power, and
elegance that one can only admire her achievement.
In recent years, many medieval historians have applied the concept of lived
religion in their studies. Sometimes, the reader is left to wonder what the difference
actually is between lived religion and the older concept of popular religion, but not
in this case. Klepper puts the full analytical power of the concept into use when she
explores how Albert of Diessen selected, adapted, and omitted elements of
Catholic theology, canon law, and previous pastoral manuals “to fit within his environment and broader community” (6), how Albert revised his work for different
audiences, and how the readers responded to it. Klepper paints a convincing picture
of Albert’s work as a regional, Upper Bavarian project addressing pressing issues in
the communities the Augustinian Canons served, but at the same time firmly
rooted in the tradition of medieval Catholicism. The Mirror was a work written “in
an Augustinian convent on a hill overlooking a lake in a small Bavarian market
town” (195), as Klepper puts it in her conclusion.
The book has five chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion. In
chapter 1, Klepper recounts the history of pastoral care and guides for priests and

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situates Albert’s Mirror in this tradition. Chapter 2 illustrates the context of the
work: the Augustinian convent of Diessen, the market town, the convent’s possessions, and other connections to the broader region of Bavaria and Austria. The
town’s geography and surrounding lands are neatly woven into the analysis of
Albert’s work: among other things, Klepper demonstrates that there likely was a
Jewish community at Diessen in the late fourteenth century, which shows in
Albert’s choice of topics. Chapters 3 and 4 treat the making of the Mirror, its manuscripts, and its text, respectively. While the chapters are somewhat technical, they
are entirely justified in this study, as they illustrate Albert’s compilation and revision process. Many photos from the manuscripts support Klepper’s argumentation,
and tables summarize succinctly how Albert reworked his sources to compile his
own work.
Chapter 5 discusses three topics through which Albert constructed the Christian community: 1) sorcery, superstition, and the demonic; 2) Christian-Jewish
coexistence; and 3) eschatology. In all these topics, Albert resorted to earlier tradition but addressed matters from his brethren’s and community’s point of view.
Albert’s attitude to Jews illuminates his approach. According to Klepper, Albert
reacted to the anti-Jewish violence during and after the Black Death, emphasizing
that killing Jews without due legal process was a sin, and paying attention to regulating the coexistence of Christians and Jews. Personally, I found it particularly
interesting that heresy gained so little attention from Albert. Two decades later, in
the 1390s, Waldensians were discovered in the diocese of Augsburg, as in many
other places of German-speaking Europe. Albert’s manual indicates that in his
days, he and his Augustinian brethren were unaware of the dissident communities
in the region.
To sum up, Klepper’s book is obligatory reading for anyone studying lived
religion in the Middle Ages, and you will enjoy reading it.
University of Turku

REIMA VÄLIMÄKI

Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval German Cities. By
Eugene Smelyansky. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 166. $52.95. ISBN:
978-0-367-41527-3.)
This book examines a series of anti-heresy persecutions in several Germanspeaking cities between 1390 and 1404, which were “unprecedented in central
Europe in their intensity and geographic range” (1). The heresy in question was
Waldensianism, which, as Smelansky points out, developed in the late twelfth century in an urban milieu (Lyons), but by this time had become a more rural phenomenon. Large numbers of rural Waldensians also suffered persecution in these years,
notably in the Mark of Brandenburg and upper Austria, but Smelansky concentrates on cities. He sets the persecutions thoroughly within the context of civic politics, both among lay urban elites and between city governments and the bishops or
other powerful religious institutions that also dominated German towns. The cities

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examined are Augsburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Strasbourg, and (taken
together) Bern and Fribourg (Switzerland). For some of these places, Waldensian
persecutions have already been studied in great detail; for example, in Strasbourg
by Georg Modestin and in Fribourg by Kathrin Utz Tremp. Smelyansky draws
diligently on this scholarship, and on that of other Waldensian persecutions across
central Europe, but he also establishes his own focus.
While Smelyansky points to some overarching conditions, such as tensions
radiating out of the ongoing papal schism, in all cases he explains the identification and persecution of Waldensian communities in terms of local civic politics.
Processes and outcomes could, however, be very different. In Augsburg, for example, city leaders locked in a power struggle with the local bishop ultimately administered a “religious” resolution to supposed Waldensians, namely confession,
penance, and reintegration into the community. In Strasbourg, trials resulted in
what Smelyansky identifies as a more “civic” response: mass expulsions. In
Rothenburg, the entirety of anti-Waldensian efforts came to focus on one wealthy
citizen who was also the main rival of the city’s mayor. In Fribourg, charges were
actually instigated by pressure from the town’s nearby urban rival Bern; and Fribourg itself, while accepting the need to launch investigations, ultimately acquitted every single suspect.
Smelyansky’s central argument is that all these cities were growing in power
and trying to assert greater independence, often against previously well-entrenched
ecclesiastical authorities. Regardless of how the processes played out differently in
practice, they were all generated (at least in large measure) by tensions arising from
this new civic assertiveness. Whether they were locked in struggles with ecclesiastical authorities or whether they were just looking to burnish their own authority
generally, civic leaders at this time endeavored both to project their own moral
virtue and to police with increasing diligence the moral state of their citizenry. The
identification and persecution of supposed heretics provided a useful mechanism to
achieve these goals. After a brief spate of anti-Waldensian activity, these underlying concerns did not abate; instead, they were refocused, Smelyansky suggests, on
Beguines, on the very real threat of Hussitism rising in Bohemia, and on the
entirely imaginary threat of heretical witches.
Smelyansky’s arguments align him with scholarship looking forward to the
“Reformation in the cities,” and more broadly still to the rise of “godly states” in the
early modern period. In fact, he argues that smaller city governments were able to
develop along these lines much earlier than larger states (140–41). While much of
the material he covers has been studied from several angles already, he adds a useful
new framework for understanding the surge of anti-heretical campaigns in the
cities of late medieval Central Europe.
Iowa State University

MICHAEL D. BAILEY

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Manuel II Palaiologos (1350–1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult. By
Siren Çelik. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 388. $36.99.
ISBN: 978-1-108-81262-7.)
This biography of the Palaiologan Byzantine emperor Manuel II (1350–1425)
is a welcome monograph that evaluates the complete literary oeuvre of the emperor
and casts light on the profound connections between east and west during this
time. Manuel II was the sole Byzantine emperor to travel as far west as England
and a key figure in the diplomatic, intellectual and theological exchange between
east and west in the Renaissance. Çelik reevaluates the literary production of this
prolific emperor-auteur and provides vivid portraits of places and intellectuals. Supplementing John W. Barker’s seminal work on the emperor which focused on
statesmanship, Çelik engages with the whole range of literary texts to illustrate
events and personalities. The intricate and extended discussions between the
Orthodox and the Catholic Churches in the greater context of the political and
military framework of the Byzantine empire receives much attention. Çelik is keen
to point out instances of divergence between Manuel II’s Orthodox position—
wherein the emperor was in favor of a union primarily for military reasons in the
dire circumstances of ongoing war with the Ottomans—and the “Latinphone”
Byzantines who emigrated to western countries. Tellingly, Manuel II was the close
confidante of the Unionate Catholic convert and diplomat-intellectual Manuel
Chrysoloras, illustrating the complexity of political positions at this time.
In the monograph, Çelik adopts a conciliatory narrative and synthesizes the
Orthodox and Catholic positions, providing ample literary evidence for both parties
and following Manuel II’s political and literary career closely. Late Byzantine imperial politics had been likened to the work of an administrator by Manuel II himself,
and Çelik unveils the inner mechanisms of managing the Byzantine state, which was
fraught with civil wars and theological disputes. Some of the most striking passages
detail Manuel II’s travels, and the sections on Paris and London, and on the itinerary
of his vassalage with Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402), stand out for their wealth of historical
detail. Barker’s previous forays into the Byzantine relic and icon diplomacy with western kings and monasteries is taken up by Çelik, who also includes some images of
miniatures, coinage, and precious objects. She also offers an extended discussion of
the bronze medallion of Manuel II that depicts the emperor as the seminal late
antique emperor Heraclius (610–641), which is an original contribution to the debate
on Renaissance appropriation of late antique figures. In addition, Çelik engages with
the theological writings of Manuel II, who was a devout Orthodox Christian, as well
as his classicizing texts, which suggest that this Renaissance emperor-auteur’s religious convictions did not deter him from the mimesis of classical authors. Manuel II’s
relations with the Ottomans and with Bayezid I also receive an extended discussion,
and Çelik particularly focuses on Manuel II’s “Dialogue with a Persian” to sketch the
Byzantine engagement with the other in the late Byzantine period. In conclusion,
Çelik’s balanced and nuanced treatment of Manuel II’s reign is sure to be of great use
to scholars working on Byzantium and the Renaissance.
Boğaziçi University

ASLIHAN AKIŞIK-KARAKULLUKÇU

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Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe. By Verena
Krebs. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. 266. $99.99. ISBN: 978-3030-64933-3).
In an excellent book which offers fascinating new perspectives on the diplomatic history of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ethiopian state, Verena
Krebs’s Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe convincingly argues that Ethiopian monarchs did not seek and maintain contact with
European polities for the sake of military alliances and arms, but rather in pursuit
of holy relics, liturgical objects, and skilled craftsmen from the Mediterranean
world. More importantly, these diplomatic missions were sent by a monarchy
driven by a desire to emulate not those Europeans, but rather the biblical model of
monarchy offered by Solomon and David, importing foreign objects and labor from
foreign Christian lands to supplement their monumental building projects and
thereby “impressing their claims of political and religious supremacy upon their
North-East African subjects” (8).
The book stands as an excellent synthesis overall. It begins in chapter 2 with
an account of Dawit II’s first embassies to Italy in 1402, 1403, and 1404, considering not only European sources, but an Ethiopian homily which discussed the return
of Dawit II’s envoy to Ethiopia and the Egyptian Coptic History of the Patriarchs of
Alexandria. Chapter 3 continues the account by tracing the diplomatic activity of
Dawit II’s successors, Yәshaq, Täklä Maryam, and Zär’a Ya‘әqob, and here Krebs
notes that while crusading seemed to be the highest priority of the Solomonid
Ethiopians’ European interlocutors, the interest in crusading was not shared by
Ethiopian monarchs. Chapter 4 deals with the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, when Ethiopian contact with Europe slowed precipitously. Three
Ethiopian embassies to Europe are detailed; the last before the Solomonid
dynasty’s war with the Sultanate of ‘Adal would drastically change the nature of
diplomatic missions to the West. Connecting these three chapters is a thread of
argument that is strengthened by a careful consideration of European, and where
available, African written and material sources, namely that there was no interest in
an exchange of military technology, but rather in objects and craftsmen from the
wider Christian world.
But the book’s most important chapter is undoubtedly its fifth, “King
Solomon’s Heirs,” which offers a vital intervention in scholarship on the topic.
Prior scholarship has focused on an argument that European contact was fueled
primarily by a desire to secure military arms and technology. Yet, as Krebs demonstrates, this is hardly reflected in contemporary sources, and formed instead a part
of a deliberate program of intergenerational monumental construction, including
the acquisition of foreign objects and laborers, based on an emulation of Solomon
and David, from whom Ethiopian Solomonid kings claimed direct descent.
Importantly, Krebs is careful to reject any suggestion that the search for foreign decoration was a product of “a passive capitulation to the supposedly greater

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achievements of a foreign other” (214). This is certainly vital, as the scholars who
long ago made such arguments and whose colonial outlooks and contempt for the
subjects of their historical inquiries were hardly well-kept secrets, nevertheless
remain frequently cited and well-respected scholars in the field.
This well-researched account of Ethiopian diplomatic activity constitutes an
important work which well serves not only historians, art historians, and philologists interested in Solomonid Ethiopia, but also non-Ethiopianists interested in a
“global” approach to the Middle Ages, and in particular those who might be interested in comparative studies of Christian monarchical ideology.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

FELEGE-SELAM SOLOMON YIRGA

Inquisition and Knowledge 1200–1700. By Peter Biller and Lucy J. Sackville, eds.
[Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages, 10.] (York, UK: York Medieval
Press, 2022. Pp. xi, 360. $99. ISBN: 978-1-914-04903-3.)
Most inquisitorial scholars think of “actions” as opposed to “knowledge” when
it comes to the violent, well-oiled mechanism of medieval and early modern inquisitions. It was refreshing to read this volume of essays on the collection, curation,
and manipulation of inquisitorial knowledge from 1200 to 1700. Knowledge is
defined here as information on heresy, inquisitorial evidence, and empirical historical research, and on how inquisitorial manuals might either define heresy or fabricate it. The volume’s origin was a Doat Project conference, “Inquisition and Knowledge,” held at King’s Manor, University of York, 9–10 April 2018, which
commemorated the University’s acquisition of six volumes of thirteenth-century
records of inquisitorial interrogations from Languedoc, copied by Jean de Doat,
President of Le Parlement et Chambre des comptes de Pau between 1665 and
1670.
The introduction gives far too much detail on each of the thirteen essays. It
would have been better to explain the position of individual inquisitions as ecclesiastical institutions maintaining considerable control over society, while the
Church’s highly organized administration and network enabled manuals, records of
interrogations, texts, and correspondence to be spread widely and easily.
The first nine chapters of the book are headed “medieval.” In Jessalynn Lea
Bird’s study of the liturgical sermons of Jean Halgrin d’Abbeville, a thirteenth-century Paris inquisitor, she examines how they were used to transmit pre-mendicant
notions of suppressing heresy, executing clerical reform, and justifying the moral,
spiritual and religious superiority of the clerical over the lay realm. Moving to other
types of written knowledge, Alessandro Sala’s excellent paper questions what
defined a heretic in the medieval inquisition. He analyzes the narratio section of
papal letters, which stated their purpose. Through these letters, the popes (in particular Gregory IX [1 2 2 7 – 4 1 ]) shaped the Church’s official policy and gradually
criminalized medieval heretics and their belief systems. The danger, as Sala points

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out, was that “truth” was sacrificed. Papal definitions of heresy were made on the
basis of misconceptions, stereotypical prejudices, and accusations.
Jörg Feuchter’s essay turns to a major but unusual work of inquisitorial
jurisprudence, the Liber (or Libellus) fugitivus [The escape book] of Nepos of Montauban, a thirteenth-century scholar and law practitioner in Southern France. Surprisingly, this work was created to help suspects nullify inquisitorial prosecution.
By studying Nepos’s life and professional activities, Feuchter comes close to identifying the reasons for this treatise.
In a long and slightly repetitive paper, Paweł Kras analyzes the 1332 records
of an investigation by the papal Inquisitor and Dominican friar, John of
Schwenkenfeld, into sixteen Beguine women, the “Cowled Nuns” (moniales Capuciatae) of Świdnica in Lower Silesia, suspected of following the heretical doctrine
of the Free Spirit. Kras shows how the testimony of the embittered former sisters
enabled Schwenkenfeld to secure the proof he needed.
Chapter 5 shows how the medieval inquisition considered Eastern Christians to
be heretics. Irene Bueno analyzes the construction of a universal knowledge of heresy
by studying the few encyclopedic works produced in the fourteenth-century papal
court in Avignon. These provided ecclesiastics with necessary but limited juridical and
theological weapons against heresiography and unorthodox belief particularly among
Greeks and Armenians. Reima Välimäki tracks German Waldensian Brethren and
their heresies as depicted in different versions of the De vita et conversacione inquisitorial manual in the late fourteenth century. She shows that the treatise disseminated
accurate knowledge, previously inaccessible, on these heretics’ mores.
Adam Poznański studies the language in Cum dormirent homines, the late fourteenth-century anti-heretical treatise of the Inquisitor Petrus Zwicker, which dealt
with central European Waldensians. Poznański believes that Zwicker was trying to
help the uneducated believers of the sect by explaining how they had been deceived
by their Waldensian masters. Richard Kieckhefer rethinks the effect of personal situations on witchcraft testimonies.
The last third of the book (part 2—Early Modern, chapters 9 to 13), turns to
the construction and understanding of the medieval inquisition by polemicists,
enthusiasts, and scholars from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There is
only one essay, the last of the volume, that discusses the early modern inquisition.
Harald Bollbuck studies how the sixteenth-century Protestant historian,
Matthias Flacius Illyricus, used inquisition registers and manuals in his work Ut
ex vetustis membranis cognosco. Flacius formulated a “counter-church” theory that
the Hussite and Waldensian movements were heretical predecessors of the
Lutheran doctrine. Luc Racaut also traces this idea of using medieval heresies to
historically legitimize Protestantism; he shows how the Cathar movement was
used to substantiate both Protestant and Catholic confessional identities.

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Catholics argued that Protestants were similar to Cathars, and Protestants that the
Cathars were the True Christians.
Shelagh Sneddon describes how Doat’s seventeenth-century copies were laid
out, highlighting a number of thirteenth-century Languedoc inquisitorial depositions produced in Toulouse and Carcassonne. Unlike the other authors, she does
not provide translations of her quotations. Peter Biller then questions how and why
Doat chose those particular inquisition registers.
In the last essay Michaela Valente analyzes the image of the Spanish, Roman,
and Sicilian Inquisitions from the sixteenth century onwards and how the papal
inquisition was seen ethically, religiously, and legally by different bodies. Valente
ignores the ferocious Portuguese inquisition and does not discuss whether there
was any reaction to the continuing persecution of secret Judaism by these inquisitorial courts.
There are many aspects of Inquisitorial knowledge that I would have liked to
see included. Inquisitorial knowledge was not limited to heresy, witchcraft, Greek
Orthodoxy, Waldensians, Cathars, Protestantism, or the Albigensian crusade. A
large part also related to the investigation and prosecution by the early modern
inquisitions of Anabaptism, crypto-Judaism, professing Jews, and Muslims. How
was the knowledge collected by the medieval inquisition adapted for the newly
established early modern inquisitions? How did inquisitorial knowledge differ from
that of secular courts which often prosecuted suspects for the same offences?
The lasting impression of this work is that of “jigsaw pieces, not a whole picture” as the editors forewarned in their introduction (30). But the volume has
opened up a new engaging angle on the history of the inquisitions, and I am hopeful that more work will be done on it in the future.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

KATHERINE ARON-BELLER

Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art, Politics, and Religion (1 1 0 0 – 1 8 0 0 ). Edited by
David D’Andrea and Salvatore Marino. (Toronto: Victoria University Centre
for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2022. Pp. 579, 101 ill. $59.95
CAD. ISBN 978-0-772-72220-1.)
Since the publication nearly a century ago of Gennaro Maria Monti’s Le Confraternite Medievali dell’Alta e Media Italia (1927), historians have been recovering
the role of Italian confraternities in shaping sacred and social identities. From the
medieval period through the early modern era, these lay religious brotherhoods
performed ritual, penitential, and philanthropic acts to ensure public welfare and
beseech salvation. They commissioned architecture and art, founding and decorating hospitals, orphanages, chapels, oratories, and churches. Although confraternity
studies are now well established, their focus, especially among Anglophone scholars, remains, as in Monti’s day, major cities in northern and central Italy. The omis-

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sion of the Mezzogiorno––the vast territories encompassing the former Kingdom
of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia––can be explained by the region’s tumultuous past,
the destruction of documentary evidence, and, equally troubling, deeply-rooted
prejudice. Yet as this volume compellingly demonstrates, the history of southern
Italian confraternities demands integration in the field.
Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art, Politics, and Religion (1 1 0 0 – 1 8 0 0 ) is a
milestone in scholarship. The volume––the first on this subject in English––reconstructs the rich history of sodalities in the region’s major cities and small towns
across seven centuries. It elucidates the innovative approaches that the authors
employed, given the loss of documents and monuments. The co-editors’ introduction presents a historiography that explains the exclusion of the south from most
studies. It establishes the organizational principles, themes, and objectives to which
all essays conform. The glossary by Marco Piana defines specialized terms and their
etymology. Fifteen essays, eleven fluently translated by Piana, are ordered in three
sections. They consider Naples (1–4), the southern Italian mainland (5–12), and
the southern Italian islands (13–15). Each includes an introduction with clearly
stated objectives, lucid subheadings, and a conclusion with recommendations for
future research. Discursive footnotes are complemented by a list of archival and
secondary sources. Latin and Italian texts and inscriptions are translated into English. Illustrations, many in color, and in some cases, maps, ground plans, charts, and
statistical tables follow each essay. Six of the contributions are co-authored, serving
as models of collaboration.
The uniformly high quality and originality of the essays must be underscored.
The authors identify the characteristics of each site and reconstruct historical context through ingenious archival research. Essays delineate the devotional practices,
charitable activities, and networks of diverse sodalities as well as their interactions
with civic authorities and religious orders. Among the distinguished discussions,
the quantitative analysis by Valeria Cocozza, who identifies 868 confraternities in
383 towns in Abruzzo and Molise during the first half of the seventeenth century,
is especially impressive. Co-editor Salvatore Marino’s comparative study of sodalities in Abruzzo presents a micro-history of the Misericordia in Penne, noting
“how, from a modest collection of documents, one can reconstruct the life and the
history of a medieval confraternity” (250).
The book’s title foregrounds confraternal art, which is considered from multiple perspectives. In particular, the two art historians offer detailed contextual,
iconographic, and stylistic analyses. Stefano D’Ovidio introduces the staurite (charitable associations dedicated to the Cross) of medieval Naples that evolved into
confraternities and explicates the distinctive images that shaped the city’s lay spirituality. Luciana Mocciola reveals the history of the Neapolitan confraternity of
Santa Marta and its famous illuminated codex, whose female patron she identifies.
As historians Salvatore Bottari and Alessandro Abate note, sodalities in Messina
patronized renowned artists, including Antonello da Messina, Antonello Gagini,
and Polidoro da Caravaggio. By interweaving religious, political, and art histories,

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this exemplary volume demonstrates the richness of southern Italian sacred and
visual culture and makes a major contribution to confraternity studies.
DIANE COLE AHL

Lafayette College (emerita)

EARLY MODERN
Abortion in Early Modern Italy. By John Christopoulos. (Cambridge, MA and
London: Harvard University Press. 2021. Pp. 360. $53.00. ISBN 978-0-67424809-0.)
John Christopoulos’ deeply researched study of abortion, clearly written and
analyzed, is timely and pertinent, given the current, sometimes vicious, debates and
actions on the topic in the USA. Abortion in early modern Italy was faced with
ambivalent attitudes at all levels of society and governments on what constituted the
crime of abortion, who should be punished, and how severely. Christopoulos has
read very extensively in published and manuscript writings from theologians, physicists, jurists, secular authorities, popes, and bishops. These writings come from the
Roman period up to the eighteenth century. The range of views from “hard” to “soft”
are amply analyzed and quoted. He concludes that abortion was broadly tolerated in
practice. A fundamental issue was when the fetus was “animated,” that is, had a soul.
A few argued that it was at conception, while some wrote that animation did not
occur until birth. Many specifically judged it came at about forty days for males,
eighty for females (151). If the fetus was animated those responsible might be more
severely punished as murderers. Death sentences could be imposed, but Christopoulos concludes from many surviving trials that these were not that common. His most
valuable sources are from the Rome Governor’s court, and Bologna’s Torrone tribunal (which I sampled profitably). Significant Naples and Sicily cases also feature. He
quotes extensively—in Italian and Latin in the notes, in English in the main text—
to indicate the evidence of the accused and the witnesses, and the views of physicians, apothecaries, experienced midwives, lawyers, and judges.
After each chapter on Women’s Bodies, the Church, and the Law,
Christopoulos has many pages on an exemplary case to show complexities, ambiguities, tutored confessions, resistance to torture—and inconclusive results. Was
the abortion therapeutic to save the mother, as was seemingly common (97)? Can
one decide whether herbs and potions were given as abortifacients or medicinal
remedies? Midwives and physicians could have trouble “interpreting” the woman’s
body concerning the age of the fetus, whether abortion or miscarriage had
occurred, and whether it was alive or dead at birth. Men were investigated and
charged as much, or more than, the pregnant woman, recognizing that they might
pressure the woman, force drugs on her, or violently attack her to induce an abortion. Family honor might be at stake through scandal from an illegitimate birth.
Identifying and tracing the father was often a problem. Abortion cases essentially
concerned the unmarried or scandalously adulterous, with the courts seldom pursuing abortions within marriage. For this reviewer the chapter on “Women’s
Bodies” is the most fascinating and revealing on what males and females (especially

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midwives) knew and debated. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed
intense study of women’s bodies, (52–55, and n.14). Bologna’s 1641 pharmacopeia
listed fifty plus compounds for healing the womb—and for killing the fetus (77).
Christopoulos is also extremely helpful in exemplifying the diverse views of
writers and testifiers, for example, the theologians and moralists Martin de Azpilcueta and Theatine Antonino Diana (a notable realist, 151–56); physicians Girolamo Mercuriale and Scipione Mercurio; Paolo Zacchia on medical forensics; the
prolific and controversial jurist Prospero Farinacci, with jurist Marc’Antonio
Savelli treating women’s bodies as evidence; Paduan medical professor Bernardino
Cristini on women’s illnesses using over 400 case studies (55); and Angela Ferranta
as expert midwife. Judges are often revealed as showing a degree of compassion,
opting for accepting a lesser evil, granting secret local absolution instead of a public
Roman one (as Sixtus V demanded), and avoiding the death penalty.
This admirably scholarly book has seventy-nine pages of quotation-filled notes,
a twelve-page bibliography of primary sources, but frustratingly not one of secondary
sources. Christopoulos shows that “abortion could be a socially and politically sensitive crime . . . also legally contentious, resisting easy categorization” (189).
University of Glasgow (emeritus)

CHRISTOPHER F. BLACK

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation.
Edited by James E. Kelly and Susan Royal. (Leiden: Brill. 2018. Pp. xiv, 258.
$164. ISBN: 978-90-04-32566-1.)
As I write, the book under review was published five years ago. Far from losing
relevance or appeal in the intervening years, a current reading (or re-reading)
affirms its importance for our understanding of early modern English Catholicism.
For centuries, students of the topic often (but not always) stunted the field by writing with confessional imperatives in mind. Such work was produced by
researchers—on many occasions, great researchers—who were Catholic priests and
who belonged to religious orders. By contrast, this volume exemplifies a historiographical turn toward less polemical and apologist stances. Just as importantly, as
the editors point out, the book helps underline the welcome trend to move English
Catholic history from the margins, a restricted area of Catholic studies, to the
center of Tudor-Stuart history.
I’ll leave it to the reader to explore all of the book’s insights, but it is worth
suggesting some themes that make this book essential. As the title implies, there is
much here about identity, an important topic because defining who was an English
Catholic is not a simple matter. In his chapter, Brad Gregory considers that something akin to an English Catholic community emerges early on in the aftermath of
Henry VIII’s reign. He also emphasizes how that community was molded in conversation with the strictures imposed by political authorities. English Catholicism
emerges as more capacious in this book because of its inclusion of women, mostly
nuns. Women have been an important part of the “recusant” story for a long time,

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but they have often been left out of the politico-cultural story in its most recent
forms. James Kelly, in his wide-ranging essay, places these women as active players
within the English Catholic story, while Jaime Goodrich offers a meticulous essay
that shows the textual and interpretive traditions within continental convents.
Implicitly throughout and explicitly in Susannah Monta’s essay concerning the
writings of John Austin, this book makes an argument for the importance of English Catholics in a literary context, both by demonstrating their embeddedness in
contemporary debates and their relevance to the wider world of literary production.
The final major trend evident here regards the move to place English (and occasionally British) Catholicism within a more European framework. Earle Havens
and Elizabeth Patton offer a fascinating essay on the distribution networks for foreign books, while William Sheils offers a description of the theological polemic
written by Thomas Stapleton, who was based in Louvain.
Perhaps the most delicious treat in this book comes at the end, in a brief epilogue written by John Bossy. In it, he offers a serious critique of the preceding
essays—a blast of fresh air, given that such rhetorical exercises tend to be adulatory
summaries. Aside from engaging with specific arguments, he questions the thematic logic of the book. While he accepts (I’d say too brashly) that everyone knows
what the Counter-Reformation is, he is skeptical about “identity” and “memory.”
He scoffs at the first as vague and anachronistic, and he snarks about the false
equivalence of history and memory, suggesting that “tradition” might be the better
word to describe the theme articulated in the book.
The importance of Kelly and Royal’s volume cannot be overstated, but some
quibbles remain. Occasionally, the odd essay can seem overly descriptive. Moreover, reading from today’s perspective, some of the essays seem to state what has
become increasingly obvious. But this is only because some of the authors here have
expanded their initial work in their own now-canonical books and articles.
There is one theme that the book did not quite cover, even if the editors
acknowledge its importance. More attention could have been placed on English
Catholics living in Europe (and elsewhere). To an extent, this has been an important
interest for a long time, but it has become more crucial in the work of scholars such
as Ana Sáez Hidalgo, Deborah Forteza, Liesbeth Corens, and myself, among others.
(Katy Gibbons had already published a very important monograph on English
Catholics in Paris at the time of this book’s publication.) There is a story missing here
about how English Catholics penetrated foreign imaginations. I suggest this sheepishly because it might be a case of the reviewer wanting his interests taken up in
someone else’s book. Moreover, such a critique also implies an unfair expectation that
a book should have oracular powers and foresee a veritable “turn” before its time.
Ultimately, for students of early modern Catholicism in all its national and
transnational forms, this book is essential reading. One hopes that it will increasingly hold an important place in the study of early modern Catholicism writ large.
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

FREDDY DOMINGUEZ

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Latomus and Luther: The Debate: Is Every Good Deed a Sin? By Anna Vind. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019. Pp. 315. $127. ISBN: 978-3-52555251-3.)
Anna Vind’s revision of her dissertation (Copenhagen, 2002) addresses the
“paradoxicality” (265) of the Lutheran doctrine of justification: that consciousness
of one’s sinfulness is a necessary condition for receiving the promise of salvation.
Although Luther’s Against Latomus (1522) has long been available in English in
LW 32, Jacobus Latomus’s Ratio of 1521 has remained out of reach without even
a modern critical edition, although the original edition is available digitally. Latomus (Jacques Masson, 1475–1544), professor at Louvain, composed the Ratio in
defense of the 1519 condemnation by the Louvain theological faculty. Luther had
by then responded to the condemnations from Louvain, Cologne, and Paris and
defended himself against Johann Eck and Jerome Emser at Leipzig.
In centering the dispute over the salvific value of works, Vind identifies the
point of contrast between the two thinkers as the possibility of merit for works performed. The “sin” of the title is pride in imagining oneself capable of earning any
merit toward salvation; the irony of Luther’s proposition that good works are sinful
in their intent to gain merit was not transparent to those who saw it as a rejection
of works altogether.
Contextualizing the dispute within the sequence of official condemnations as
well as the tensions between scholastics and humanists, Vind presents Latomus’s
work as a defense of the university in its official action. Hence, instead of focusing
entirely on the doctrinal issues in dispute, Vind offers an account of institutional
authority at a time when the scholastic Old Order, on which that authority at least
in part arguably rested, was being challenged. Erasmus is a target, albeit obliquely,
of Latomus’s attack as well. In an effort to meet Luther on his own terms, Latomus
invokes the scriptural and patristic traditions by summoning Paul and Augustine in
defense of his position. Terms like peccatum and concupiscentia that are at the crux
of the exchange show the extent to which arguments hinged on uncertainty over
ancient and later meanings of such words.
A valuable element of Vind’s analysis of this dispute is the attention given to
epistemology. Whereas parsing the terms for sin and concupiscence might represent the philological or “humanist” aspect of doctrinal engagement, determining
how one can be certain in such matters as culpability for sin called for more searching scrutiny. Vind’s discussion sets evangelical anxiety over salvation alongside
scholastic theories of truth for her treatment of a difference that would run through
polemical literature for at least another century. In this aspect too, Augustine (principally the De doctrina Christiana) figures in Latomus’s work, although, as Vind
states, “Latomus is much more of a rationalist than Augustine” (165).
Vind’s discussion of Luther’s response pays due attention to the manner of
argumentation in order to show how the Confutation is a critique of scholastic
method as well as a detailed refutation of the Ratio. The degree to which both

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thinkers interpret scripture, and the value they assign to figurative readings and
tropes (and Luther’s reading of Quintilian), reveal an aspect that illuminates our
knowledge of the development of Reformation hermeneutics. Vind’s analysis clarifies the paradoxical proposition that good works are sinful; as she explains, works
of the law performed without grace deny the promise disclosed in the gospel. A
concluding close reading of Luther on Romans engages a century of interpretive
scholarship culminating with the work of the Finnish School and its interlocutors.
U niversity of Illinois Chicago

RALPH KEEN

Del Santo U ffizio in Sicilia e delle sue carceri. By Giovanna Fiume. (Rome: Viella,
2021. Pp. 360. € 34,00. ISBN: 978-8-833-13812-1.)
When in 1906 the most eminent scholar of folkloric traditions in Sicily,
Giuseppe Pitrè, rediscovered the marks left on the walls of a building in Palermo
by prisoners of the Holy Office, he did not know that those documents were only
part of what would come to light in 2003 during the restoration of Palazzo
Chiaromonte (known as Steri), formerly the prison of the island district of the
Spanish Inquisition and today the rectory of that city’s University. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the so-called “graffiti” in Palermo have attracted the
curiosity of many scholars and intellectuals (think of the writer Leonardo Sciascia).
But recently it has been Fiume in particular who has dedicated a number of books
and contributions to this admirable visual memorial of justice in the early modern
age, following in the wake of the lively historiography on prisons and on the testimonies that the walls of cells (but also of hospices, brothels, latrines, asylums, barracks) have fixed in every time and in every part of the world (think of the research
by Matthew Champion, Antonio Castillo Gómez, and Charlotte Guichard, to
name but a few scholars).
Fiume’s exciting book (well written, rich in data, and accompanied by good
pictures) is, at the same time, an attempt to reconstruct the number and location of
these signs (sentences, poems, drawings, graffiti); their meaning, their authors,
their material history (how they were made, how they were preserved); but also an
original fresco of the life of prisoners in an inquisitorial prison, from the sixteenth
to the eighteenth century, and a solid reconstruction of the activity of the Holy
Office in Sicily, repeatedly defined as “a borderland,” and therefore particularly
intriguing. Moreover, those familiar with Fiume’s past research are not surprised to
find in this book her great sensitivity for the history of slavery and the history of
women. As for the Steri, after the publication of this book, Fiume herself promoted
the publication of an inventory of the testimonies of the Palermo prison that is also
notable for the quality of its images (Rita Foti, I graffiti delle carceri segrete del Santo
Uffizio di Palermo, Palermo, 2023).
Given the loss of most of the documents of that institution, which were
destroyed at various times until the symbolic burning of the trial records that
accompanied the abolition of the tribunal (1783), it is above all the relaciones de

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causas conserved in Madrid that record the work of the Holy Office in Sicily, without forgetting the manuscript sources that have survived in Palermo, and the
printed texts, often accompanied by images, produced both by judges (such as Luis
de Páramo) and their opponents. Drawing on the research of Henry Charles Lea,
Carlo A. Garufi, Vito La Mantia, Pietro Burgarella, Francesco Renda, Manuel
Rivero Rodríguez, Schlomo Simonsohn, Vittorio Sciuti Russi, Valeria La Motta,
and especially Maria S. Messana (who, before her untimely death, had compiled a
database listing all the cases dealt with by the Sicilian Inquisition for which documents are available), the first part of the book traces the history of the tribunal from
its foundation, after the expulsion of the Jews (1493), to the first years of its activity,
in conflict with the local powers and the viceroys; from its slow strengthening to
the enormous privileges it granted to the numerous familiares who served it from
the sixteenth century onwards; from the passage of the island under the rule of the
Savoy and Habsburgs, to the suppression of the Holy Office under the Bourbons
in the Age of Enlightenment (chapter 1). Regulated by the instructions dictated by
the Suprema and a series of concordias, transformed into a weapon of political control during the seventeenth century, and serving as a jealous guardian of the secrecy
of investigations, the court tried more than six thousand defendants, men and
women, condemning hundreds to abjuration or the death penalty in 315 autos-dafé that, in some cases, had a spectacular character and were celebrated by chronicles
and images fixed on engravings (chapters 2–3).
What made the history of the Inquisition in Sicily peculiar—after the first years,
when the target of repression was mainly Jewish converts—was the presence on the
island of moriscos and Muslims (the renegades and slaves captured in the race war, of
which the ports of Sicily were a hub); of Greek-rite communities emigrating from the
Ottoman Empire; of merchants and travelers from Protestant Europe and the
Mediterranean; not to mention the spread of heretical dissent through the influence
of the Reformation and Alumbradism. Moreover, as elsewhere, the tribunal soon
extended its sphere of action to moral and sexual crimes such as bigamy, concubinage,
sollicitatio (poorly documented), and, at first, sodomy. The inquisitors’ energies were
also focused on the control of necromancy and superstition (in Sicily, the belief in the
donne de fora, who were assimilated to witches, was widespread) and, later, the repression of mysticism and quietism. As Fiume points out, a curious fact is that in Sicily
a large number of males were also indicted for crimes of witchcraft. Above all, the
court punished anyone who dared obstruct its activities and devoted much attention
to controlling speech, striking out blasphemy and propositiones haereticales.
It is impossible here to recount the many stories of the women and men who
populate the prisons and pages of this book; but one aspect that attracts Fiume’s
attention, as well as that of his readers, is the spread of original forms of religious syncretism and disbelief, even popular disbelief, which in some cases went far beyond the
generic idea that “everyone is saved in his own law.” As more recent studies have
pointed out, forced and spontaneous conversions, increasing mobility, Mediterranean
slavery, and the widening of global horizons, favored the spread of forms of unbelief
that from the end of the sixteenth century were also recorded in the documents of

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Catholic inquisitorial courts. That is why in the final chapter Fiume dialogues with
the historiography on libertinism and the early modern origins of atheism (citing
Lucien Febvre, Giorgio Spini, Stuart Schwartz, Mercedes García-Arenal, and other
authors) and tells the stories of men like Zosimo Cannata and Gabriel Tudesco.
Moreover, in some perhaps somewhat questionable pages, she traces a thread of continuity between the medieval tradition (the legend of the three rings, the presence of
Islam in Sicily, the myth of Frederick II’s impiety) and the forms of unbelief that
Fiume reconstructs thanks to the sources of the early modern Inquisition.
The court was certainly an agency of conversion, as well as of repression (148
ff.); and this explains not only the mild treatment meted out to the renegades, but
also the use of prison to break the resistance of the accused—imprisoned for a long
time pro tempore iudicij—and that of the condemned, who were comforted by
members of the local confraternities before they climbed the scaffold. For a few
years after the court chose the Steri as its residence (1597), the setting up of the
prisons took up the resources and attention of the inquisitors, who allocated a new
two-story building for the imprisonment of common defendants, but reserved
some spaces in Palazzo Chiaromonte (the carceri della penitenza) for high-ranking
persons and the familiares under investigation, thus reproducing the social distinction of the time in the imprisonment structures (chapter 4). Furthermore, in chapter 5 and in other parts of the book, Fiume describes in great detail the di
coexistence of those who lived in those cramped quarters (in which it could happen
that the Islamic faithful performed their ritual ablutions); the periodic inspections
ordered by the inquisitors on their subordinates; the extortion by the jailers; the
function of the spies introduced into the cells; the tragic attempts by some inmates
to resist or escape; their moments of leisure; the babel of languages spoken by the
prisoners; the food they ate; their ability to communicate with the outside world
and, above all, to devise useful defense strategies to cope with interrogation and
torture (Fiume speaks of a “prison culture” [101]).
In chapters 6–8, the book describes in detail some of the more than two hundred iconographic subjects and about three hundred inscriptions that survive on the
walls of the Steri, created only by male prisoners, trying to speculate who their
authors were and what they really wanted to represent. Fiume focuses in particular
on the impressive “cycle” of the Death and Resurrection of Christ (including a beautiful crucifixion and an intriguing descent into limbo), a group of poems in the Sicilian language, images of saints, and inscriptions left by an English prisoner. As she
observes, by decorating the walls and even the roofs of the cells (an activity tolerated
by the tribunal), the prisoners took possession of those spaces, sacralized them, personalized them, expressed their pain and their repentance, but in some cases also
insinuated a veiled criticism of the tribunal’s procedures that forced them to abjure.
It was a tribunal that the book does not hesitate to condemn, without conceding
anything to those who have recently tried to play down the violence of the inquisitors and of an institution that not only imprisoned bodies but also bent consciences.
Università di Bologna

VINCENZO LAVENIA

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Mysticism in Early Modern England. By Liam Peter Temple. [Studies in Modern
British Religious History.] (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019. Pp. ix, 236.
£75.00/$115.00. ISBN: 978-1-78327-393-5.)
The early twentieth-century spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill spoke of mysticism as revealing “truths that are timeless.” But though mystical experience itself
imparts the sensation of transcending time within ecstatic union with God, it has
often had intense temporal repercussions for mystics and their advocates—not
least in the centuries after the Reformation. This study’s five chapters each
describe a cultural environment where mystical practice elicited fierce debate
among Englishmen and -women of the early modern period: the advocates and
detractors of English Benedictine mysticism in the first half of the seventeenth
century; the radical religionists who thrived within revolutionary England; the
mid-seventeenth-century writers who speculated upon the bodily and mental
causes of mysticism; the harbingers of the age of reason who distrusted the antirational tendencies of mystics; and the Philadelphian Society, a crucible of
counter-Enlightenment thought.
As this summary suggests, Liam Temple’s study is highly comprehensive.
Given that mysticism flourished in convents inhabited by expatriate Englishwomen
and was fomented by such pan-European thinkers as Jakob Böhme, transnational
reach comes with the territory. The book’s judicious gender balance is more unexpected and very welcome. Early modern mysticism has benefited so much in recent
years from feminist scholars’ attention to women’s spiritual agency, in contexts
ranging from the nuns of Cambrai to the Philadelphian prophetess Jane Lead, that
there has been a danger of neglecting their male counterparts. Church of England
clerics have been particularly out of fashion, given the keen recent interest in
Catholics, radical religionists, and others operating outside the established church’s
hierarchies. However, Temple gives appropriate platform space to Anglican clergymen of several stripes: Establishment men such as the Latitudinarian Edward Stillingfleet, proponent of rational religion and foe of the Benedictine Serenus Cressy,
and non-jurors such as Charles Leslie, whose own marginalization did not stop
him arguing against religious toleration for Philadelphians.
Finally, Temple’s cross-denominational reach is entirely in keeping with his
subject matter. The mystical transports of a Benedictine nun and a devotee of
Böhme’s teaching would have been different in theological content, but they often
met round the back in the way they affected literary metaphor and personal behavior. This made it relatively easy for a polemicist to draw comparisons between
Catholicism and radical religion. Meric Casaubon, for instance, posited that
Catholics and sectarians both suffered from religious melancholy: in a direct line
of descent from classical religion, as the mocking term “pagano-papism” indicates
(18). “Anti-Mysticism in Early Modern England” could have been a viable alternative title for Temple’s book; as he demonstrates, the term was often pejorative
in the period he covers, and despite such scholars as Underhill, quoted above, its
negative connotations have lasted until relatively recently. Temple’s sensitive,

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engaging, non-judgmental monograph shows that writing on the topic has now
come of age.
University College London

ALISON SHELL

Callings and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational Culture in Early Modern
France. By Christopher J. Lane. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2021. Pp. xvii, 192. $39.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978-0-228-00855-2.)
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It is a common question for
children today and, according to historian Christopher Lane, a point of significant
discussion in the seventeenth-century French Catholic Church. Lane’s Callings and
Consequences examines the notion of “vocation” in early modern Catholic thinking
through the analysis of Catholic prescriptive literature—a body of sources that
includes “sermons . . . pious spiritual handbooks, catechisms, and guides for priestly
care of the faithful” as well as biographical narratives such as chronicles and obituaries (9). Vocation in these early modern texts entailed a notion of “calling” either
to the professional religious life or increasingly, as Lane contends, to life in the secular world.
Lane argues that seventeenth-century reformers “developed an inherited
repertoire of medieval and sixteenth-century vocational culture into more coherent,
systematic forms that were meant to remake the Church and the kingdom [of
France]” (4). Lane’s argument rests primarily on the impact of a reforming movement that promoted what he terms “vocational rigorism.” Vocational rigorism was
“the belief that salvation was virtually conditional on choosing the state to which
one had been called by God” (39). In Lane’s telling, vocational rigorism was connected to but not synonymous with the “rigorist turn” of the seventeenth century.
It was less a product of Jansenism and more an outgrowth of a general reforming
attitude that emerged in the wake of the Council of Trent.
In the book’s first chapter, Lane connects vocational rigorism to its sixteenthcentury precedents. Seventeenth-century reformers took the ideas of Ignatius
Loyola and Francis de Sales, among others, and built upon them. Lane demonstrates how in the rest of the book, analyzing the concepts of urgency, inclusiveness,
method, and liberty in seventeenth-century Catholic prescriptive texts. Urgency for
reformers entailed the insistence that discerning one’s vocational calling was fundamental for women’s and men’s abilities to access God’s grace, resist sin, and live
a happy life. Inclusiveness involved the ways that reformers understood lay life, in
addition to clerical careers, as predicated on a “calling” and demanding vocational
discernment. This chapter is perhaps the most historiographically significant as it
pushes back on long-standing historical assumptions that Protestant reformers
were solely responsible for upholding the secular life as worthy of divine “calling.”
In chapter 4, Lane uncovers the methods that reformers suggested for discerning
one’s vocation—methods that included “prayer, wise counsel, and introspective
deliberation” (76). Finally, Lane ends with a chapter on “liberty,” or the manner by

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which reformers encouraged Catholic men and women to discern for themselves
what God’s calling was for their lives while also respecting paternal and royal
authority. In all of these thematic examinations, Lane considers writings about
both women and men, laypeople and clergy.
Lane’s ability to unpack complicated theological texts and relate them to the
larger context of early modern Catholicism is impressive. His study is exceptionally
well-organized and clear. The book is limited by the sources upon which he chose
to focus. As a study of prescriptive literature, Callings and Consequences does not
examine to a significant extent the practical application of these reforming ideas.
One might imagine (and indeed hope for) a companion volume that interrogates
diaries, letters, or even court records to uncover the ways that vocational discernment actually occurred in the lives of seventeenth-century French Catholics.
Lane ends his book with a consideration of the “afterlife of early modern
Catholic vocational reform” (112). He locates the significance of vocational rigorism in the ways that it formed a part of “Catholic modernity” (106). The conclusion nudges the book in the direction of philosophy, and it appears that one of
Lane’s primary objectives in studying early modern writings on vocation is to
explore the place of Catholics in what he calls “our hyperpluralist present” (117).
Nevertheless, Lane’s study does add significant richness to the historiographical
conversation about the transformative impact of the Council of Trent on the
Catholic Church. He shows how Catholic thinking about vocation changed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and how these changes led some Catholic
believers to reconsider what it meant to choose one’s path in this life and, ultimately, the life beyond.
B aylor University

DANIEL WATKINS

Lodovico Antonio Muratori: Religione e politica nel Settecento. Edited by Mario Rosa
and Matteo Al Kalak. [Biblioteca della Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa.]
(Florence: Olschki Editore. 2018. Pp. xii, 137. €23.00. Paperback. ISBN 9788-822-26545-6.)
This volume, edited by Matteo Al Kalak and the late Mario Rosa, is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Lodovico Antonio Muratori
(1672–1750), the standard bearer of the Catholic Enlightenment in the Italian
Peninsula. Muratori is still awaiting his biographer, and this book does not purport
to offer a comprehensive portrayal of Muratori’s intellectual trajectory or an exhaustive account of his participation in the eighteenth-century republic of letters. However, the essays collected in this volume shed significant light on several aspects of
Muratori’s scholarship and thought.
The first two chapters, by Anna Burlini Calapaj and the volume’s coeditor Al
Kalak, focus on Muratori’s reflections on liturgy and Scripture. Burlini argues that
while at first Muratori described charity as the only form of devotion required of

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good Catholics, with the passage of time he became increasingly convinced of the
importance of prayer and the mass as instruments for the faithful to participate in
the life of the ecclesial community. Al Kalak details Muratori’s advocacy of biblical
textual criticism and his support for the translation of Scripture into Italian, which
ran counter to the Congregation of the Index’s long-standing ban on vernacular
bibles. In this case, too, what mattered to Muratori was the ability of the faithful—
most of whom did not understand the Latin of the Vulgate—to fully participate in
religious functions. While highlighting the importance of the clergy’s intermediation, Muratori maintained that conscious participation and access to sacred texts
were the foundation of a faith that rejected superstitious beliefs.
The following two chapters, by Girolamo Imbruglia and Fabio Marri, focus on
Muratori’s 1743 work on the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay, Il cristianesimo felice.
While Marri shows that the ongoing edition of Muratori’s extensive correspondence casts new light on the work’s composition and reception, Imbruglia argues
that for Muratori, Jesuit reductions provided evidence of the civilizing nature of
Catholic spirituality. A critic of the devotional excesses often encouraged by the
Jesuits, Muratori nonetheless believed that even Jesuit spirituality, in a moderate
and reasonable form, could serve as the basis for a harmonious community, in
which human beings fulfilled their natural inclination toward religion and revived
the model—much revered by reform-oriented Catholics across Europe—of the
early church.
The three ensuing chapters show Muratori grappling with issues of censorship
and religious toleration. Manuela Bragagnolo analyzes Muratori’s biography of
fellow Modenese and sixteenth-century scholar Lodovico Castelvetro, whom the
Inquisition condemned as a heretic, and reveals how Muratori understood erudition and historical scholarship as instrumental to church reform. Corrado Viola
unearths young Muratori’s unpublished panegyric to Louis XIV, a song of praise to
the repeal of the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted tolerance to the Huguenots.
Muratori’s views evolved, though. In an essay focusing on Muratori’s relationship
with Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini, Ennio Ferraglio shows that Muratori cautiously supported the cardinal’s initiatives for Catholic-Protestant dialogue
(although he considered them unrealistic).
The last chapter, by Elisabeth Garms-Cornides, focuses on Amalie of
Brunswick, wife to Austrian Emperor Joseph I, and on the role her reform-oriented
religiosity played in preparing the ground for the reception of Muratori’s work
north of the Alps.
Garms-Cornides’s chapter is a useful reminder that Muratori’s influence
extended well beyond his native Duchy of Modena, and that a comprehensive
reconstruction of his intellectual trajectory and impact is now long overdue. The
essays collected in this volume will offer invaluable insights to the historian who
should undertake such a project.
Yale University

GLAUCO SCHETTINI

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Muratori tra storia e religione. Atti della Giornata di studi muratoriani, Modena, 3
novembre 2020. Ed. Fabio Marri. [Biblioteca dell’Edizione Nazionale del
Carteggio di L. A. Muratori – XV.] (Firenze, L. S. Olschki, 2021. Pp. vi, 254.
€32,55. ISBN: 88-222-6778-8; EAN: 13- 978-8-822-26778-8.)
This volume collects twelve essays dedicated to analyzing both Ludovico
Antonio Muratori’s works on theology and philosophy, as well as a number of his
epistolary exchanges with scholars and intellectuals of his time on the same subjects
(1672-1750). These essays were presented and discussed in the congress held in
Modena on November 3, 2020, and they were collected by Fabio Marri, who is the
director of the Centro studi Muratoriani. The majority of the authors are not academic scholars, but teachers and students of the Italian public school Liceo Muratori, currently housed in the building which was the Collegio San Carlo of the
Jesuits, where the young Muratori studied. The introduction of Fabio Marri presents the state of the project of the national edition, intended to produce forty-six
edited volumes of Muratori’s letters and theological and moral treaties. Started in
1967, the national edition of Muratori’s work is now at twenty-four of the forty-six
planned volumes. The analysis of the manuscripts offers the opportunity to list the
names of the 2054 persons in touch with Muratori and exchanging letters with
him. The edition of the treaties has involved various authors in the project, and in
2020 it was also placed side by side with a digital edition of the catalogues of various public libraries of the city of Modena, included the Biblioteca Estense, which
keep the manuscripts of the personal Muratori’ s archive (https://lodovico.medialibrary.it/home/index.aspx). The index of the quoted names and the bibliography
complete that part of the collection of the Biblioteca dell’Edizione nazionale del
carteggio di L.A. Muratori.
The first essay is by the bishop of Modena, Mons. Erio Castellucci, who writes
on the treaty dedicated to the Christian charity, Della carità cristiana, edited for the
first time in 1723, in Modena. Caterina Bonasegla and her students analyze the
Governo della peste, read by the Italian romancier Alessandro Manzoni (the first
edition was printed, by Muratori, in Modena in 1722); Donatella Ghermandi and
her students present the theme of superstition based on the analysis of the Dissertazioni sopra le antichità italiane (Milan 1751) and the Della regolata divozion de’
Cristiani (Venice 1747). Marta Soli, with the collaboration of Riccardo Pallotti,
offers an analysis of the De Cognominum origine, in the third volume of the Dissertatione XLII (printed in 1740). Gabriele Burzacchini studies the Latin style
adopted by Muratori in the early manuscript De Graecae Linguae usu et praestantia
(it was printed for the first time by his nephew Giovan Francesco Soli Muratori in
1771), listing Muratori’s specific choices in matter of spellings and lexicon, grammar and syntax. In a second article, Burzacchini presents the linguistic characteristics of Muratori as a writer in Greek, a study he undertook as a self-taught scholar
when he was less than twenty years old. The short essay of Yi huo Jin compares the
Italian translation of four letters written by German missionaries and the Italian
translation made by Muratori in his Il Cristianesimo felice nelle missioni de’ padri della
Compagnia di Gesù nel Paraguai.

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Corrado Viola examines the status and the progress of the projects advanced
by the C.R.E.S. (Centro di ricerca sugli epistolari nel Settecento, Center for
research on the eighteenth-century epistolary of the University of Verona), and the
Centro studi muratoriano di Modena. One of the most interesting essays is by
Angelo Colombo: he reconstructs the dispute over the presumed mortal remains of
Saint Augustine, discussed by Giusto Fontanini, Muratori, and other scholars
between 1728 and 1730. Francesca Maria Crasta looks at the diverse philosophical
aspects of the Christian reflection, presented by the volumes Forze dell’intendimento
umano and Forza della fantasia umana, both printed in 1745, ten years before the
Filosofia morale. The need for reformation was discussed by Muratori in the context
of a strong bond with tradition, making Catholicism a reasonable religion, and
stressing its “ragionevolezza.” The exchange of letters between Muratori and Corrado Janning, constituting twenty-five letters written between 1698 and 1707, is
studied by Maria Lieber and Valentina Cuomo (it will be printed as the twentyfifth volume of the edition). Daniela Gianaroli investigates the relation of M. with
the Jesuits: with the De ingeniorum moderatione, the vignolese wounded the pride of
the Sicilian Jesuits for their attachment at the “voto sanguinario,” the bloody vow.
The volume has a fresh approach to the Muratori’s works and thought: this is
its most important positive aspect and the limit of this collection. With few exceptions, most of the essays collected are internal to the analysis of the manuscript and
the works of the vignolese; only a few of them are aware of the complexity of the
research conducted in the last decades by the academic world, i.e., on the subject of
superstition. However, the freshness of the volume’s approach is a demonstration
of the liveliness and importance of Muratori’s theology and thought, whose works
should be studied and still require scholarly study. The goal of urging adequate
funding for the national edition is recalled in the conclusions signed by Marri.
Humboldt University of Berlin

MARIA TERESA FATTORI

Un’illusione di femminile semplicità. Gli Annali delle Orsoline di Bellinzona (1730–
1848). By Miriam Nicoli and Franca Cleis. [La memoria restituita. Fonti per
la storia delle donne, 15.] (Rome: Viella, 2021. Pp. 368. € 30,40. ISBN: 9788-833-13780-3.)
Recent scholarship has shown that despite the Tridentine Catholic Church’s
official preference for the enclosed life for religious women, the lived experience of
women in religious communities encompassed a diverse array of lifestyles and spirituality. Even within a single community, varied visions of the female consecrated
life could come into conflict with one another. This highly learned and useful book
offers an incisive analysis, with documents, of one such conflict in eighteenth-century Bellinzona, a small subalpine city in the archdiocese of Milan, now in Switzerland’s Ticino canton. The work thus sheds light on Swiss Catholic history of the
age as well as on the history of female religiosity.
The Ursuline community of Bellinzona was founded in 1730 by local patricians the Molo brothers, one of whom had eight daughters to settle. The founding

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documents and rule established that the women of the community would take
simple vows, not solemn, and would provide education for girls. Two Ursulines
from a neighboring institute were brought in to lead; the house was soon well populated with the daughters of the local patriciate. The sisters enjoyed some liberty:
not subject to enclosure nor to a vow of poverty, they had their own rooms, furnishings, and incomes, and could inherit. Collective income came from invested
spiritual dowries, pupils’ fees, needlework, and making sweets.
Internal conflict came, as it so often did, over enclosure. The conflict brewed
during the 1740s, and erupted in 1751 when one faction of women, led by Maria
Gertruda Maderni, favored transforming the community into a fully enclosed convent, while another group, led by the daughter of the founder Fulgenzia Maria
Molo, wished to remain unenclosed. A conflict over occupancy of a private cell
fueled the dispute. Molo and her followers lost their battle and left the community,
taking important legal documents with them; a subsequent lawsuit over dowries
was ultimately resolved in 1781.
The unedited documents published here support the case and present rich
opportunities for researchers. The most substantial of them, the Annali, furnishes a
fascinating example of the genre of convent chronicle. It merits further study and
inclusion in the growing literature on this subgenre of historical writing. Begun in
1751 by the convent’s supervising cleric, as part of the effort to control the narrative
of the factional conflict, the Annali was continued by the sisters and maintained
serially until the house dissolved in 1846. Also reproduced are several documents
from the 1752 investigation, conducted at the request of the bishop of Como. A
whole other book could be written, too, based on the chronicle’s account of the
women’s resistance to forced dissolution during the Napoleonic years, their house’s
reconstitution, the establishment of the nineteen Swiss cantons in 1803, and their
subsequent mandate to teach in a public school. In short, the full range of the Age
of Revolutions plays out, as seen from the modest doors of a ladies’ pious redoubt.
Querciolo Mazzonis’s preface sets the story in the Ursuline context, linking it
to the order’s origins in nearby Milan in the early 1500s. As Mazzonis notes, the
Swiss Ursulines manifested a French-style spirituality where charity and serving
others became the primary vehicle of devotion, with little reference to the mystical,
physical penance so important to the founder Angela Merici. All in all, the work
provides an excellent contextualization for a valuable set of little-known primary
sources, of interest to scholars of early modern spirituality, women’s history, and
the history of historical writing.
Miami University

PRUDENCE RENÉE BAERNSTEIN

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811

LATE MODERN
A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought. Edited by Juan R. Vélez.
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2022. Pp. xx.,
532. $75.00. ISBN: 978-0-813-23585-1.)
Father Juan R. Vélez, Ph.D., a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei, is a wellrespected John Henry Newman scholar who holds a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the University of Navarre (Spain). His previous works include a traditional biography on Newman titled Passion for Truth: The Life of John Henry
Newman (TAN Books, 2011) and the more spirituality-focused volume Holiness in
a Secular Age: The Witness of Cardinal Newman (Scepter, 2017). Both books are
valuable resources and endeavor to present the nineteenth-century Englishman
anew to a twenty-first-century reader.
In his latest work, A Guide to John Henry Newman, editor Vélez has brought
together in this collection of essays not only the work of Catholic theologians,
but also of professors of literature, historians, philosophers, and classicists to discuss the rich corpus of Newman’s thought. Each author shares valuable contributions that examine Newman’s approach to such fields as theology, faith and
reason, sermons and preaching, morality and spirituality, and even poetry. These
essays blend perspectives from bishops, priests, and laymen and women, as well
as Protestant converts to Catholicism, in an attempt to provide a comprehensive
picture of who Newman was and why he remains influential in the Catholic
intellectual tradition.
A Guide to John Henry Newman contains twenty-seven essays ranging in scope
from Newman’s participation in the Oxford Movement and his conversion to the
Roman Church to his poetic intimations and his understanding of the term “liberalism.” The book is subdivided into two main sections: the first division deals with
John Henry Newman the man (“His Life”), while the second concerns itself with
Newman and his doctrine (“His Thought”). Both sections are comprehensive treatments that Vélez hopes can be of particular interest to serious Newman scholars,
but will also appeal to a more general audience that has some knowledge about
Newman but wants to learn more.
For the casual reader, some of the essays will prove denser and more nuanced
in their arguments than an introductory volume on John Henry Newman is
expected to provide. In this regard, the Newman novice will find that Vélez’s work
cannot supplant such books as Eamon Duffy’s John Henry Newman: A Very Brief
History (SPCK Publishing, 2019) or Avery Dulles’s John Henry Newman (Continuum, 2009), let alone the definitive John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 2019) by Ian Ker.
What makes this collection unique, however, is the gathering of different
voices and perspectives from the world of Newman scholarship into a single acces-

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sible volume, thereby making it a valuable resource for experts and casually interested readers alike.
Vélez asserts that his task as editor was to bring together authors who through
their intellectual disciplines offer new insights into Newman’s life and work while,
at the same time, reinforcing Newman’s personal integrity and theological orthodoxy. He also acknowledges in his introductory remarks that this collection of
essays is meant to overcome the limitations of a historical-critical evaluation of
Newman’s works, including what he claims was a hermeneutic of suspicion against
Newman’s recollection of his contemporary events and controversies.
No matter the reason for the creation of this collection, A Guide to John Henry
Newman presents a rich complexity of thought and diversity of perspective, not
unlike John Henry Newman’s own writings that the volume references. Whether
the experienced scholar chooses this compilation to focus on one specific topic, or
the novice decides to read the text from beginning to end, they will encounter a
depth of insight and scholarship that makes this a worthy and valuable contribution
to the field of Newman studies.
The Catholic University of America

DAVID P. LONG

The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality. By Marshall J. Breger and Herbert R. Reginbogin. (New York: Lexington Books. 2022. Pp. 322. ISBN 979-1-79364217-2.)
The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality (hereafter Permanent Neutrality) describes
itself as having arisen “out of a workshop held on February 11, 2020. . . .” The date
is important. The book is a collection of scholarly essays broken down in parts:
“From the Papal States to the Vatican: 1870–1929”; “The Long Second World War:
1931–1945”; “Into the Cold: 1950–1990”; and “Post-Cold War: 1990–2020.” As
such the book is a useful academic research tool on the role the Holy See plays and
has chosen to play in the community of nations.
There is something encyclopedic to the book and especially to chapters 6 to
13, each of which can stand alone and each of which was written by a different
scholar. There is no necessary order in which these chapters must be read. While
each article deals with some aspect of the Holy See’s action in the international
community, each is a self-contained unit. Thus, for example, the chapters on
Nuclear Proliferation, Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, Diplomacy and the Cold
War, and Power and Spirituality can be read in isolation with great profit. The
focus on the Holy See’s neutrality of the earlier chapters and the wider purview of
the later ones make this a very valuable resource.
It is no secret that the Holy See, as a unique if not anomalous sovereign state,
is a Permanent Observer State at the UN and takes that role quite seriously. One
of the first trips outside the Vatican after 1870 was Pope Paul VI’s address to the

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UN General Assembly on 4 October 1965. Since then, every pope except the shortlived John Paul I has addressed the General Assembly.
All of the above alone validates the need for a study such as Permanent Neutrality. However, on 24 February 2022, the year Permanent Neutrality was published, Russia invaded Ukraine in blatant violation of the UN Charter Article 2,4.
Both Russia and Ukraine are intensely religious cultures. The Russian Orthodox
Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church have existed tensely side by side
in Ukraine for centuries.
With the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, the Holy See immediately became involved in the hope of mediating a peace. In an extraordinary
move, Pope Francis personally visited the Russian Embassy in Rome at the beginning of the conflict. Negotiations (or what are described as negotiations) have been
going on between the Holy See and Russia and the Holy See and Ukraine.
With the invasion of Ukraine, Permanent Neutrality went from being a significant academic study to being a must-read book on the Holy See’s role in the
Russia-Ukraine conflict. To those unfamiliar with the Holy See, its peace-making
efforts are unusual and may even seem quixotic. Although much of the UN General
Assembly has condemned the invasion, the Holy See has not only steadfastly
refused to take sides but has until recently refused to mention Russia as the aggressor. This has at times irritated and alienated Ukrainian Catholics.
Permanent Neutrality, however, helps the reader understand the unique way
the Holy See is attempting to deal with the crisis. The book clearly shows in chapter
7 that permanent neutrality does not constitute moral indifference but rather a
practical strategy to maintain negotiations. It is significant to note that the Holy
See is sensitive to this possible misunderstanding and prefers “dynamic/active neutrality” to “permanent neutrality.”
Whether or not the permanent neutrality of the Holy See is successful in
bringing a just and sustainable end to the conflict remains to be seen. Nevertheless,
Permanent Neutrality allows the reader to make sense of the Holy See’s strategy and
also to see a possible alternative for negotiations and conflict resolution to the
proverbial and traditional “carrot and stick” approach.
Catholic Near East Welfare Association

ELIAS D. MALLON

Las reliquias de Santiago: documentos fundamentales de la reinventio de 1879. By
Antón M. Pazos. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas,
2021. Pp. 413. €28.50. ISBN: 978-8-400-10924-0.)
This elegant book presents full reproductions in Spanish of two documents
critical to understanding the reinventio of the cult and pilgrimage of Santiago de
Compostela in the late nineteenth century. The reinventio was set in motion in
1878, when Cardinal Miguel Payá, archbishop of Santiago in Spanish Galicia,

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ordered a series of excavations within the town’s Romanesque cathedral in search
of the lost relic of St. James the Elder. After human remains were discovered, a
lengthy evaluation process ensued, involving local clergy, historians, and physicians,
and eventually reaching the highest echelons of the Roman Curia. In 1884, Pope
Leo XIII issued Deus Omnipotens, the bull confirming the authenticity of the relic
and granting papal imprimatur to a millennial tradition associating the remote
Galician town with the apostle. Leo’s proclamation breathed new life into the cult
of St. James, precipitating the revival of the medieval pilgrimage, but questions lingered about the authentication process. The documents, originals of which are
housed at the Vatican Apostolic Archive, reveal with the greatest available detail
the challenges faced by partisans of the relic to gain papal support and how the
campaign to convince doubters both in the archdiocese and in Rome developed in
the years following the initial excavation.
This edition will be of considerable interest not only to historians interested in
the modern revival of the cult of St. James, but also to scholars interested in
Catholic archeology and practices of authentication in the nineteenth century. Of
the two texts reproduced in this volume, the more substantial one is the Expediente
Canónigo (1879–83), a file of 180 folios compiling the declarations and debates that
took place among clergy and lay experts in Spain and Rome. The Expediente is not
a new discovery; a copy of it housed in the archdiocesan archive formed the basis
of major studies by scholars such as Zacarías García Villada, in a foundational work
of 1929, and José Guerra Campos, who served as a cathedral canon in the 1950s.
Nonetheless, Pazos has done a worthy service by making the full text widely available. The second document is the long-sought Nova Positio, revealed here for the
first time. Pazos located the sixty-seven-page document after an extensive search
through the Vatican archives, and the book presents it both in its original version
(a mix of Italian and Latin) and in Spanish translation. Compiled by Cardinal
Domenico Bertolini, the Nova Positio is an 1884 account of the secret travels of the
papal envoy Mons. Agostino Caprara, who examined a Jacobean relic at Pistoia,
near Florence, then traveled to various places in Spain to interview people involved
with the excavation. Unable to locate the Nova Positio, earlier scholars relied on
shorter accounts given elsewhere by Bertolini, who served as Prefect of the Sacred
Congregation of Rites, the body in Rome charged with adjudicating matters of
relics and cults. The newly discovered source provides considerable new detail on
Caprara’s probe, which was more extensive than previously appreciated.
In addition to the texts themselves, Pazos provides a lengthy and valuable
introduction that serves two principal functions. First, it offers an authoritative
account of a century of historiography on the reinventio, and, more broadly, on
Catholic archaeology, nineteenth-century medievalism, and modern pilgrimage.
Second, Pazos provides an invaluable synopsis of the authentication process,
including biographical sketches of its main protagonists and much helpful context
for understanding the two documents.
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

SASHA D. PACK

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Gemeinsam gegen Antisemitismus—Die Konferenz von Seelisberg (1947) revisited. Die
Entstehung des institutionellen jüdisch-christlichen Dialogs in der Schweiz und in
Kontinentaleuropa. By Jehoschua Ahrens. (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2020. Pp. iii,
280. €49.90. ISBN: 978-3-643-14609-0).
The 1947 conference in Seelisberg, Switzerland, has long been overshadowed
by the Second Vatican Council and Nostra aetate (the Vatican II document on
interreligious relations that repudiated several long-standing anti-Jewish claims),
the emergence of post-Holocaust theological and biblical scholarship, and the
growth of Jewish-Christian dialogue.
None of these developments, however, would have been possible without the
Seelisberg meeting, which was organized by British and U.S. interfaith leaders to
address the alarming resurgence of antisemitism in postwar Europe. Sixty-five participants from Europe and North America attended—an international mix of Jews,
Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Most were not official representatives of their communities, but clergy, laypeople, and theologians interested in
reconciliation. The conference produced a detailed working paper and recommendations for interfaith dialogue, but Seelisberg is best known for its brief report on
antisemitism. It began with a blunt acknowledgment by the Christian delegates of
the historical and theological Christian underpinnings of this hatred and concluded
with the “Ten Points of Seelisberg,” which refuted the most common Christian
anti-Jewish tropes. The “Ten Points” is still regarded as the theological foundation
for Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Jehoschua Ahrens’s excellent book is the first comprehensive study of the Seelisberg meeting and its legacy. An Orthodox European rabbi who is presently director for Central Europe at the Orthodox Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding
and Cooperation (CJCUC), Ahrens gives a rich and often moving account of the
road to Seelisberg. His book begins with an examination of different Jewish-Christian encounters in the early twentieth century, the challenges to this work after the
Nazi rise to power, and the multiple pressures on Jewish-Christian relations under
the tragic burdens of that era: from events in Nazi Germany to the intensifying
refugee crisis, the Second World War, and the genocide of European Jews.
The book’s main focus is on the Jewish-Christian circles in Switzerland. As a
neutral nation and because of its shared borders with Nazi Germany, by 1939
Switzerland was the operational base for many international organizations, including Jewish and Christian agencies. While much of this work was humanitarian, it
fostered deeper relationships. By the end of 1943 there was a formal Jewish-Christian dialogue in Switzerland that included theological exchanges.
These interfaith initiatives gained new urgency after confirmation in 1942 of
the genocide of European Jews, leading to a deeper transformation among some
Christian participants, who began to rethink theological teachings about Jews and
Judaism. Before 1945 most Christians, even those involved in Jewish-Christian

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relations, still held supersessionist views and supported the proselytization of Jews.
Ahrens traces how these assumptions began to change and discusses the statements
and meetings in the early postwar era that preceded the groundbreaking conversations in Seelisberg.
The appendixes include the texts of the relevant declarations of that era, as well
as participant rosters from Seelisberg and other major interreligious meetings
during the war and immediately afterwards. Ahrens also analyzes Seelisberg’s
legacy, including the development of formalized Jewish-Christian dialogue, new
theological work, and the Catholic-Jewish conversations that led to Vatican II.
There is much new information (one of the book’s many revelations for me was the
scope of Catholic-Protestant interaction in early interfaith conversations).
The Seelisberg conference remains one of the most significant interreligious
events in history, and the process by which it came into being is instructive, not
only for Jewish-Christian relations, but for broader interreligious questions today.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in interfaith history and JewishChristian relations.
The University of Virginia

VICTORIA BARNETT

Il Concilio Vaticano II e i suoi protagonisti alla luce degli archivi. Edited by Philippe
Chenaux and Kiril Plamen Kartaloff. [Ponticifio Comitato di Scienze Storiche, Atti e Documenti, Vol. 46] (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
2017. Pp. 583. € 48. ISBN 978-8-826-60005-5.)
The Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences collaborated with the Pontifical Lateran University’s Center for Research and Study of Vatican Council II to
hold two international scholarly congresses observing the fiftieth anniversary of the
Second Vatican Council. The first congress, in 2012, featured twenty-five papers
reporting from different locales on the archives of the Council Fathers’ papers,
telling of their extent, their inventories, and their accessibility to scholars. Lateran
University Press brought out these papers in 2015, edited by Philippe Chenaux,
Director of the Lateran’s research center, under the title, Il Concilio Vaticano II alla
luce degli archivi dei padri conciliari. The second congress took place in 2015, with
its thirty-four papers being published in 2017 in the volume presented here, under
the editorship of Chenaux and Kiril Plamen Kartaloff, Bulgarian member of the
Pontifical Committee, who suggest in their title a broader topic, the “protagonists”
of Vatican II.
A volume collecting thirty-four congress papers obliges the reviewer to do a
good deal of cataloging of contents, often with only brief hints of themes of particular value. Along the way, however, arguments of broader import do emerge, which
deserve note. Statements on the hermeneutics of the Council, for instance, come at
the beginning and the end of the 2017 volume. The brief opening Preface by the
two editors states that their scholarly congress views Vatican II, along with Pope

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Benedict XVI, as framed by “a proper and fruitful hermeneutic of reform and continuity” in the Church. Thus, their volume stands in contrast with an erroneous
“hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” The latter approach, treating Vatican
II as an “event” which brings about an “epoch-making transition” in the Church,
disseminates confusion, which they see sown by the five-volume History of Vatican
Council II, published from 1995 to 2006, directed by Giuseppe Alberigo (1926–
2007) and edited in English by Joseph A. Komonchak. The 2015 congress practiced fairness by giving place to a paper now in the resulting volume by Alberigo’s
disciple, Alberto Melloni, which formulates a spirited apologia for the other
approach, on which this review will report below.
The hermeneutical theme was taken up early in our volume by John O’Malley,
S.J. (1927–2022), who deconstructs the cliché by which Vatican II is qualified as a
“pastoral” council standing in contrast with earlier predominantly “doctrinal” councils. O’Malley scores a major point by recalling how the Council of Trent is
remembered by most as teaching crucial doctrines on the relation of grace and free
choice in justification as well as on each of the seven sacraments—while many also
completely forget Trent’s dozen documents of reform decrees of decisive importance for the ways pastoral care was provided in the modern Catholic Church.
Then, in a passage of elegant remembering, O’Malley recalls the doctrines formulated by Vatican II, to conclude in a reconstruction, by which Vatican II’s central
action was to issue documents in which doctrine and practice compenetrate each
other, while illuminating truths of existential import for believers and communities
called to holiness and seeking to live out their Christian vocations in our world.
Moving on to the great block of the 2015 papers, we note that seventeen of
the scholars reporting in 2012 on the extent and condition of archives in different
nations returned to the 2015 congress to present findings from their sources in the
papers of the 2017 volume, at times with dense and illuminating results. A striking
example is Gilles Routhier’s account based on the archived letters of several French
Canadian bishops who tell of how they were gaining day by day at Vatican II a
fresh awareness of the Church’s catholicity, growing out of all their informal interactions with bishops of other lands, such as their neighbors in the rows of the
Fathers’ chairs in St. Peter’s, as well as extra aulam on daily bus rides to and from
Council meetings, at receptions and dinners, at lectures by periti, and at sessions for
formulating amendments to the draft texts.
A common pattern in the 2015 papers by the scholars returning from 2012 is
to treat the conciliar participation and contributions of individual or multiple
Council Fathers belonging to the national group surveyed earlier. In 2012 Christian Sorrel presented the possibilities of research in archives of the 127 French
bishops attending Vatican II, and then in 2015 presented insights from a study of
the Council diaries kept by twenty-one of these bishops. Mathijs Lamberigts first
treated the Belgian bishops’ archives, and then in 2015, in collaboration with Leo
Declerck, presented Bishop André M. Charue of Namur, who we learn joined
Gerard Philips and Bishop Joseph Heuschen late in the Council in convincing “the

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Germans” of the theological gravity of the Pastoral Constitution. Jean Paul
Messina wrote first on the papers of the Cameroon bishops and then on Jean Zoa,
Archbishop of Yaoundé. Fermina Alvarez Alonso first surveyed the archives of
Spanish bishops and then treated Casimiro Morcillo, Archbishop of Saragossa.
András Fejérdy and Krisztina Toth gave 2012 papers on Hungarian archives and
in 2015 presented a paper on the Catholic journalist Vid Mihelics by the former
and on activities of the group, by the latter, with special attention to their president
Bishop Endre Hamvas, to Bishop Sándor Kovács, and to the bishops’ Norbertine
peritus, Sándor K. Klempa. After Tricia Pine and Gerald Fogarty first surveyed the
Vatican II archives of the US bishops and of American periti, respectively, in 2012,
they gave at the second gathering papers on Archbishop Lawrence Sheehan of Baltimore and on episcopal collegiality as an early practice of the American bishops
that they then practiced themselves at Vatican II. Carlos Salinas Araneda reported
initially on Latin American bishops’ archives of Vatican II and then in 2015 presented the conciliar activities of the two cardinals of the South American Pacific
Coast, Raul Silva Henríquez, S.D.B., of Santiago de Chile, and Juan Landázuri
Ricketts, O.F.M., of Lima, Peru. Eduardo Chávez Sánchez told in 2012 of the
condition of the archives of the fifty Mexican council Fathers, and came back in
2015 to tell of what is documented in the surviving papers of Sergio Méndez
Arceo, Bishop of Cuernavaca. Paul Pulikkan’s 2012 report surveyed the archival
sources of the Vatican II bishops of India and then in 2015 told of the Indian bishops’ conciliar activity in the “forum” of British Commonwealth bishops and, more
at length, of the Indian bishops’ promotion of themes of global justice under inspiration of the 1964 Eucharistic Congress of Bombay.
Another case of complementary papers given by a scholar at the two congresses
may serve to introduce one of the thematic concerns of the 2015 congress, namely,
to give attention to Vatican II’s minority. For this, a striking example comes from
another French-Canadian author, Philippe Roy Lisencourt, who reported first on
the sources and perspectives of research on the Coetus Internationalis Patrum assembled and led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, C.S.Sp, and who then offered in 2015
a dense account of the services given to Lefebvre and the other Fathers of the Coetus
by the peritus, Abbé Victor-Alain Berto. The latter’s papers are evidence of his energetic activities during the second and third conciliar periods, amid much anguish
over the advance, in the revised drafts on the Church, ecumenism, and religious liberty, of what was for Berto a modernist conspiracy aiming at substantial change in
Catholic doctrine under the pretext of aggiornamento thinly covering the advance
of heterodoxy. The promulgation of Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio in
November 1964 left Berto so sick at heart that he could not come to the fourth
period of 1965, even though he later admitted that Pope Paul VI had made the dogmatic text on the Church bearable even to one who rejected the spirit in which it
was drafted. In profound sadness Berto died in December 1968.
In 2 0 1 2 , Piero Doria, a long-time official of the Vatican Archive, gave an
informative report on the massive collection of Council records held in the Vatican.
But at the second congress, Doria’s paper gave voice to the Vatican II minority by

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reporting on Luigi Maria Carli, Bishop of Segni, who was at Vatican II an active
and vociferous promoter of the central positions of Lebebvre’s Coetus. Doria’s later
paper, however, is not an archive-based account of Carli at Vatican II, but a summary of his post-conciliar book, Nova et Vetera.Tradizione e progresso nella Chiesa
dopo Vaticano II (Rome, 1969). Here “protagonists” do clash, but at the edges of the
Council’s healthy synthesis, due largely to Paul VI’s interventions, which Carli
came to see as both rebuffing extreme traditionalists and promoting sound innovations in doctrinal formulation and disciplinary guidelines.
The present review turns now to mentioning papers of the 2015 gathering that
were not preceded by a 2012 paper. The 2015 theme of heeding the minority
advanced notably in Giuseppi Militello’s report on Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of
Genoa, drawing on multiple sources, including Siri’s unpublished Council diary
and related correspondence. Siri came to the Council as an established leader
among the Italian bishops, and he moved easily into roles in Council governance,
even though he was unsympathetic with John XXIII’s convocation of Vatican II
and was at times pained over Paul VI’s respect for renewal currents advanced by the
“Nordic” churchmen. Siri attended one early meeting of Lefebvre’s Coetus, after
which he avoided it as a dangerous pressure group. As Council themes emerged in
draft texts, Siri had at times a moderating influence by his votes placet iuxta modum,
accompanied by apposite amendments.
Early in the 2015 Congress, the co-editor Philippe Chenaux gave an informative paper on Pope Paul VI’s decisions and discourses that shaped Vatican II’s
unfolding. Some few early examples begin with Paul VI’s own idea to have four cardinals as moderators, similar to the Cardinal Legates overseeing the Council of
Trent. From him came as well the appointment of lay “auditors” and of a Press
Committee with an international make-up. Paul VI’s opening discourse of the
second period gave Vatican II’s labors a striking Christological basis and characterized its ecclesiological work as the Church presenting itself out of its own depths
to all concerned, while purifying itself of what is outmoded and defective. Paul VI
thought it wrong to cast the papacy as an obstacle to ecumenism, because without
the Pope the Catholic Church would not be itself and would lack the unifying
factor of a supreme pastoral office. Still, he defended the emerging theme of episcopal collegiality, especially in his trenchant Nota riservata rebuffing the opposition
of Cardinal Arcadio M. Larraona and others in October 1964.
In three papers, other major players of the Council are set in fresh light,
beginning with the account of the pre-conciliar development of Cardinal Augustin
Bea in matters ecumenical, related by Saretta Marotta. Correspondingly, the
widely-published Vatican II scholar Michael Quisinsky portrays Lukas Vischer, the
Reformed theologian sent to Vatican II as the principal observer on behalf of the
World Council of Churches. Vischer envisioned Vatican II’s development and
importance for the broader Christian world with growing appreciation, which he
conveyed to the World Council’s leadership in frequent, sometimes daily, letters
from Rome to Geneva. Another cache of Vatican II letters, those between the Car-

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dinal Moderator, Julius Döpfner of Munich, and bishops of developing countries,
illustrate wide-ranging “networking” by a Vatican II leader, as related, with accompanying maps, in Peter Pfister’s 2015 paper.
One learns more about the African Church at Vatican II in papers by Laurent
M. Pasinya on Archbishop Joseph A. Malula of what was then Léopoldville, Zaire,
and by Paul H. Gumdani on the Carmelite missionary Bishop Donal R. Lamont
of Umtali, then in Rhodesia. Western European participation is given even more
coverage in the paper of Carlo Poppi on the Spanish priest and future Opus Dei
General President Alvaro del Portillo, secretary of the Vatican II commission
responsible for the Decree Presbyterorum ordinis. Also, Erich Leitenberger reports
on the archive of Cardinal Franz König of Vienna, whom Karl Rahner assisted as
peritus and who gave decisive backing, amid obstacles, to the Declaration Nostra
aetate. Further information on Latin American “protagonists” comes in Manuelita
Nuñez’s account of Bishop Marcos McGrath, C.S.C., of Panama, both in his conciliar actions, especially in promoting what became Gaudium et spes, and his postconciliar leadership in Latin American conciliar implementation. Further accounts
of the limited Council presence of the Church behind the Iron Curtain are in the
paper of Emilia Hrabovek and Viliam Judák on Eduard Nécsey, titular Archbishop
and Administrator of Nitra in Slovakia, and in the account by Oleh Turiy of the
Ukrainian Major Archbishop Yousif Slipyj, who arrived in 1963 from eighteen
years of Soviet imprisonment to give his witness at Vatican II. Another vital locale
of Catholic life, the Oriental Churches of India, appears in Francis A. Thonippara’s
paper on the 1963 intervention of Sebastian Vallopilly, Bishop of the Syro-Malabar
diocese of Tellicherry, who argued during Vatican II’s second period on behalf of
admitting distinct Episcopal jurisdictions, even in the same territory, based on
adherence to different rites, as is now practiced in the Syro-Malabar Exempt
Eparchies in India and beyond in the English-speaking world.
Surprisingly, one paper given fifty years after Vatican II’s conclusion treats a
daily dimension of the Council’s life heretofore little studied by the Council’s historians. This is the lengthy account of daily and festive corporate worship during
Council sessions, by Maria Teresa Fattori, who researched the records of the
Council’s Ceremonial Commission, with its published guides for participants in
some of the liturgies, while relating numerous scattered reactions to the planned
events, as noted in diaries of Council members. At times liturgical innovations
came from suggestions of Vatican II Fathers acting as “protagonists.” An intriguing
reciprocity developed between the liturgical celebrations and the Council’s developing impact on the wider Church, accompanied by a combination of holding to
older traditions, as in masses of beatifications and proclamations of indulgences,
along with the introduction of renewal, as with the arrival of concelebrated masses
and the regular diversity of language, demonstrated early on by the varied, always
reverent, Oriental Church celebrations.
The conclusion of the 2015 congress included a round-table discussion of Vatican II from the four varied perspectives of the retired Curial Cardinal, Paul

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Poupard, who had headed the Pontifical Council relating to non-believers and to
culture, of the lay historian and editor of this volume, Philippe Chenaux, of Archbishop Sir David Moxon, Director of the Anglican Center in Rome, and of Reverend Aleksej Dikarev, Delegate of the Department of Foreign Church Relations
of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow. Selecting from much more, we find
notable in these papers how Vatican II extended the trail-blazing encyclicals of
Pope Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu on biblical studies and Mediator Dei on liturgical worship (Poupard), an understanding of Vatican II as proposing a Christian
humanism as alternative to the Enlightenment, while expressing an immense sympathy for humanity amid its pains (Chenaux), the importance for interpreting Vatican II of the delegated observers’ post-conciliar publications, exemplified by the
1967 volume, The Second Vatican Council: Studies by Eight Anglican Observers, edited
by Bernard C. Pawley (Moxon), and the remarkably changing evaluations of the
Council expressed by the Russian Orthodox observers in their weekly reports to
Moscow (Dikarev).
The historian Alberto Melloni spoke for an alternative Vatican II hermeneutic
of epochal change, while mentioning early on the truism that every historical
process involves coexisting continuities and discontinuities, in which the interpreter
must avoid confounding what is insignificant with what is original and of major
importance. Among insignificant topics of Vatican II study, Melloni lists the
minority featured in the 2018 volume, while he attributes major significance to the
fact that Vatican II said a decided “Farewell!” to the condemnations issued by the
Popes Pius IX, Pius X, and Pius XII. But even when Vatican II acted in continuity
with previous Church life and doctrine, what emerged was not simple repetition,
but guidance marked by influences at Vatican II giving rise to important variants
from what was previously normative. A sensitive historical interpretation of the
Vatican II outcomes is moving beyond a simplistic pairing of continuity and discontinuity to grasp the Council’s frequent oscillation between the two. Furthermore, today we are moving toward new discoveries foreseen by studies that will use
a complete machine-readable file of the whole Vatican II documentation, combining both the preparatory Acta et Documenta and the Acta Synodalia. This will promote recovery of terms in the fullness of their Vatican II nuances, such as the adjective “pastoral,” and of themes such as “poverty,” i.e., that of Christ, of the apostle,
and, most relevantly, of “the church of the Poor.” Thus, historical study will truly
promote openness to greater catholicity in a Church able to speak to the future with
an equilibrium safeguarded by those serving in apostolic succession.
A final observation: although John O’Malley’s paper stands near the beginning
of the printed volume of 2015 papers, one should not conclude that many, or even
a few, of their authors took account of his overarching contention, namely, that
Vatican II was working out a synthesis of doctrine and pastoral concerns, featuring
discourse combining instruction attractively expressed to encourage, pastorally, our
living in Christ our Lord animated by the Holy Spirit.
Colombiere Center, Clarkston, Michigan

JARED WICKS, S.J.

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AMERICAN
The Religious Formation of John Witherspoon: Calvinism, Evangelicalism, and the Scottish Enlightenment. By Kevin DeYoung. (New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. x,
222. $136. ISBN: 978-0-367-35089-5.)
Among America’s Founding Fathers, John Witherspoon is an enigma. The
Scottish Presbyterian minister emigrated to America in 1768 to serve as the sixth
president at Princeton, and in the process became a patriot and notably the only
clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. But because very few of Witherspoon’s papers have survived, historians and religious scholars alike have had to
speculate how a former loyal subject of the crown and theologically conservative
minister metamorphosed into a revolutionary and leading proponent of Enlightenment moral philosophy. Kevin DeYoung tries to make sense of the apparent “sea
change” in Witherspoon’s thought during his time of transition from Scotland to
America in five chapters that form the heart of this monograph.
Witherspoon began his career as a humble Scottish clergyman, serving the
Kirk at two parishes near Glasgow before relocating to America. The Scottish firebrand developed a name for himself with his immensely popular Ecclesiastical Characteristics (1753). This satirical work, targeting the opposing Moderate Party within
the Church of Scotland and their support of patronage and promotion of polite
pulpit rhetoric at the expense of classic Reformed doctrines, ultimately led to an
invitation to fill the vacant presidency at Princeton. In the first and third chapters,
DeYoung adeptly explains Witherspoon’s adherence to established Reformed doctrines, including the notion of original sin inherited from Adam through federal
headship, the doctrine of divine election through predestination, and the need for
grace through Christ’s death and penal substitution.
DeYoung takes on a more challenging task in the second, fourth, and fifth
chapters where he presents Witherspoon as an enlightened evangelical whose
thought remained consistent even after he established residency in America. DeYoung
very clearly demonstrates Witherspoon’s affinity for traditional Reformed theology
while living in Scotland, and how the Scot’s use of reason made him amenable to
certain aspects of Enlightenment thinking. But readers are left with circumstantial
evidence for Witherspoon’s support of the revivalism inherent in the burgeoning
transatlantic evangelical movement of the eighteenth century. DeYoung is right to
point out that Witherspoon associated with certain Scottish evangelicals, and that
he lambasted the opposing theologically liberal Moderate Party within the Kirk, all
the while criticizing the suspected heterodoxy of such Scottish Enlightenment
luminaries as Lord Kames and David Hume. But Witherspoon’s stance on the
revivals of the First Great Awakening and Western Scotland during the 1740s is
curiously absent from any extant records. Muddying the waters further, one contemporary goes so far as to say that the American patriot opposed a later revival that
took place at Princeton under his watch as president. In the end, it seems only fair
to say that Witherspoon was simply a confessional, orthodox Presbyterian minister.

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Even more difficult is the herculean task of arguing for continuity and consistency in Witherspoon’s thought when he transitioned from his pastoral ministry in
Scotland to his presidency at Princeton. DeYoung pushes back against the scholarship of Mark Noll and other historians who suggest that Witherspoon moved away
from the traditional Calvinism of his Scottish context in order to champion Enlightened moral philosophy and Scottish Common Sense Realism in particular once he
unpacked his bags in America. DeYoung reminds his readers of the obvious different role that Witherspoon had as a college president in America by comparison to
his work as a pastor in Scotland. But whether these occupational differences account
for the apparent discrepancies in his thought continues to be up for debate.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

JONATHAN YEAGER

Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South. By Barbara E. Mattick (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2022. Pp. 246. $34.95. ISBN: 978-0-8132-3608-7.)
In Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the American South,
Barbara E. Mattick provides a comprehensive view of the ministries of the Sisters of
St. Joseph to African Americans and whites just after the American Civil War
through the turn of the twentieth century. She documents how these sisters, who
came to Florida in 1866 from LePuy, France, arrived in time to be among the first
Catholics to directly engage in ministry to the newly freed African Americans in
Florida and Georgia. Within a few months of their arrival in a country whose primary language and various cultures they did not know, these women were already
teaching Black boys in St. Augustine, Florida. By 1867, they extended their teaching
ministries to Black children and adults in Savannah, Georgia. Soon the Sisters of St.
Joseph began offering educational opportunities to whites, too. Ironically, by the
turn of the twentieth century, the Sisters of St. Joseph would have a much greater
teaching ministry among whites than they would among African Americans.
Mattick makes good use of archival and secondary sources to show how and
why they were invited to do this important work that helped lay a new foundation
for formerly enslaved Blacks. They taught the fundamentals—reading, writing, and
arithmetic—as well as provided religious instruction in the Roman Catholic faith.
In letters they sent home to France, Mattick shows how on one hand, some of the
sisters adopted the anti-Black sentiments typical of many white Americans of the
time, while on the other hand, the letters reveal the sincere admiration and respect
the sisters had for African American spirituality and the sense of community that
Black Americans demonstrated.
Among several intriguing aspects of Mattick’s study is her assertion that the
Sisters of St. Joseph engaged in a competition with Protestant missionaries for the
“salvation” of the souls of Blacks. The greatest advantage the sisters had was that
though they were “foreign,” they were not “Northern.” This made them more
acceptable and less threatening than the Blacks and whites who were agents of the

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American Missionary Association. Another advantage they had was that St.
Augustine, Florida was a Catholic stronghold with a significant Black Catholic
community in a state that by the later nineteenth century was predominantly
Protestant. Working against them in this battle for souls was their lack of fluency
in English and the predominance of white and Black Protestant denominations
and churches throughout both Florida and Georgia. Nevertheless, Mattick argues
that these religious rivals did share a sincere desire to evangelize Blacks and to help
them develop skills they needed to live well as free people. In the opinion of this
reviewer, this is Mattick’s most significant contribution. Here she demonstrates
how important it is to understand how Catholic and Protestant histories meet in
relation to African Americans in the U.S. context as well as how enmeshed U.S.
Catholic and African American religious histories are. Mattick offers a salient
example of how we might begin to take on this necessary work.
Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of the St. Joseph in the American South
has much to offer to generalists and specialists alike who are interested in missionary history, educational history, the history of women religious, African American
religious history, and Florida and Georgia history.
CECILIA A. MOORE

University of Dayton

LATIN AMERICAN
Gamboa’s World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in New Spain. By
Christopher Albi. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press,
2021. Pp. 256. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-826-36295-7.)
Christopher Albi has written a fine biography of the preeminent jurist of eighteenth-century Mexico, Francisco Xavier de Gamboa. Born in Guadalajara in
1717, this criollo of Basque heritage made the most of his racial, ethnic, and gender
privilege to enjoy a successful career first as a lawyer, then as a magistrate in New
Spain’s capital of Mexico City. Though illustrious, his career was often fraught with
controversy. The author believes Gamboa to be the perfect vehicle for examining
the tensions between metropolis and colony that increased markedly from the
1760s through the 1780s, the period of the so-called Bourbon Reforms.
Albi’s approach to his subject is chronological, with each chapter highlighting
a major phase of Gamboa’s life as a jurist. First, however, the author provides an
invaluable introduction in which he lays out clearly the fundamental attributes of
derecho indiano, the law that held sway in the Spanish colonial world. This was a
system that drew not only from royal legislation, but also from Christian concepts
of distributive justice, from European ius commune, and from local custom. Therefore, derecho indiano called for judges to consider all these elements in order to
achieve justice, the ultimate goal. Equally illuminating is the author’s discussion of
the importance of jurisdiction. The legal system consisted of multiple jurisdictions,
each with its own tribunals and judges that often competed with one another and

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served not only as a system of checks and balances among institutions but also to
limit the absolute power of the crown. Modern writers, including historians, have
often failed to appreciate the multi-layered, often negotiated, and inherently flexible nature of derecho indiano that Albi describes so well.
While the introduction provides the bedrock for the recurrent themes that run
through this biography, the author goes beyond simply examining the juridical
dimensions of Gamboa’s career. Efficiently and economically, Albi contextualizes
the various settings in which Gamboa’s life unfolded, which form the bases of each
chapter—the elite educational institutions where Gamboa studied, his experiences
as a young lawyer in Mexico City, the nature of the Basque diaspora that facilitated
access to power, Gamboa’s stint in Madrid, the proposed reforms to the mining
industry of New Spain, and imperial politics at the highest levels.
Francisco Xavier de Gamboa spent nine years in Madrid furthering his career
and returned to his homeland in 1764 with an appointment to the Audiencia of
Mexico. Henceforth he figured as a vociferous opponent of reforms imposed from
outside and an energetic advocate for the jurisdictional primacy of the audiencia
and the idea of custom over decree in matters dealing with local affairs. His main
antagonist now was none other than José de Gálvez, visitor general to New Spain
and, later, Minister of the Indies. With no prior colonial experience and utter disdain for the locals, Gálvez embarked on a campaign of “reform” with a heavy hand,
trampling at will on juridical ways embedded in local custom and practice.
Gamboa’s stubborn resistance to these reforms proved costly. Accused unjustly of
disloyalty to the crown, Gamboa was exiled to Spain and, later, assigned to the less
prestigious Audiencia of Santo Domingo. In 1788 he returned to New Spain as
Regent of the Audiencia of Mexico, where he continued until his death in 1794 to
be a combative (at times, cranky) defender of the old order.
Gamboa’s World offers a valuable perspective on the political and juridical ideas
so hotly contested in eighteenth-century Mexico. It also sheds light on the underlying assumptions and the make-up of Spanish colonial law, which had long been
an effective tool of Spanish rule. Jargon-free and clearly written, this book will
prove useful to specialists and novices alike.
Albuquerque, New Mexico

CHARLES CUTTER

AFRICAN
Catholicism and the Making of Politics in Central Mozambique 1940–1986. By Eric
Morier-Genoud. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2019. Pp.
xviii, 246. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-787-44473-7.)
This is a remarkable and original study of Mozambique during the transition
from colonial rule to independence. There have been many books on this topic that
have followed, to a greater or lesser extent, the same broad analysis, though there has

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recently been a marked shift away from the neat narrative propagated by Frelimo to
a greater focus on the diversity among the early nationalists, their rivalries, and the
deep divisions that were later to tear the country apart in a ten-year civil war.
While dealing with the same chronological period, Eric Morier-Genoud’s
book is wholly different. It is a book about the Catholic church in Central Mozambique and how it evolved during the period of the rise of nationalism and the early
years of independence. If it does nothing else, this book reminds students of history
that, when examining key historical events, it pays to view them from radically different angles.
 
  
   
  

           tion of what it describes is Mozambique, in fact it is really a study of the modern
Catholic Church itself.

The author has important things to say about the nature of the twentieth-century church. He dismisses the idea that the church is monolithic and hierarchical,
as it may appear to non-Catholics. After reading this book it is impossible any
longer to think of the church as having one political orientation or one set of values.
Nor does it speak with one voice: “tensions are . . . a structural feature of the Roman
Catholic Church” (161). The author’s focus is on the uneasy, and sometimes even
dysfunctional, relations between the religious congregations with their own separate organizations and relations with the Vatican, and the diocese, which provides
the framework for the Catholic laity: “Neither a purely top-down nor a wholly
bottom-up analysis captures and manages to make sense of the internal diversity of
the church.” This is because the church has always “institutionalized diversity
within religious congregations” (170).
To illustrate his ideas about the nature of the Catholic church, MorierGenoud takes the example of the diocese of Beira where he has had access to a wide
range of diocesan papers, the reports of the secret police (PIDE), and the papers of
the bishop, Dom Sebastião Soares de Resende, who emerges as the hero of this
story. As a result, this book is impressively supported by archival research. The story
begins with the appointment of Bishop Resende to the diocese in 1943, a position
he held until his death in 1967. On arrival he found an almost total absence of any
organized missionary activity and, in order to remedy this situation, approached a
wide range of male and female religious and missionary congregations, both Portuguese and non-Portuguese. He had considerable success, and eventually eighteen
different congregations were working in the Beira diocese, while the number of
converts grew impressively.
Morier-Genoud shows how the approaches of the various congregations to
their work was radically different—in particular contrasting the White Fathers and
the Franciscans, the one seeking to convert individuals through a prolonged period
of teaching, while the latter looked for a more communal approach focused on
observance and practice.

BOOK REVIEWS

827

As the Portuguese regime entered what we now know was the “end game” of
colonialism, these differences between the congregations were reflected in their
attitude to the politics of the day. As the close alliance of state and church began
to break down, some of the missionaries broke ranks and tried to protest against
the violence of the regime. Gradually the prospect of nationalism and independence divided them still further, the non-Portuguese missionaries increasingly
showing their sympathies for the African cause. Resende’s struggle to hold the diocese together is spelled out in detail, and after the bishop died in 1967, the failures
of his successors became every more obvious. Meanwhile the missionary organization of the diocese began to disintegrate as the state expelled missionaries who were
considered unreliable, and first the White Fathers and then the so-called “Picpus”
Fathers unilaterally withdrew from Mozambique. At the same time, one of the first
African priests to have been produced by the diocesan seminaries, Father Gwenjere, left to become a prominent figure in the early history of Frelimo.
 

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the extent to which the church was “decolonized.” The author emphasizes that
independence is not a clean break in the Church’s story. Important changes had
already been taking place since at least the 1960s. His description of the government measures taken against organized religion graphically recalls the extent to
which, after independence, Frelimo declared cultural war on its own people and
drove them into the arms of the Renamo guerrillas.
It is always tempting for a reviewer to suggest that the author should have
devoted more attention to this or that topic, so it is worth emphasizing that this
book is firmly focused on Central Mozambique and the dioceses of Beira and Tete.
The peculiar character of these two dioceses is summed up at the end: “While Beira
was the dissident voice in the colonial church in Mozambique, after independence
its bishop became the vanguard of a new institutional model” (176). Even so,
Morier-Genoud frequently refers to the church in Mozambique as a whole,
although there is very little about what was happening in dioceses other than Beira
and Tete—in the areas of Islamic influence, for example.
In summary, this is a book that can be strongly recommended.
King’s College London

MALYN NEWITT

Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda. By
Jonathan L. Earle and Jay J. Carney. (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer,
2021. Pp. xxii, 242. ISBN 978-1-84701-240-1.)
As Uganda approached independence from British colonial rule in the 1950s,
the Catholic Church had become, numerically, the largest religious community in
Uganda. The transition to democratic politics offered hope that Catholics would be
able to overcome their historic discrimination in the face of a Protestant (Anglican)
establishment, which during colonial rule had dominated the political life of the
country. The leader of the Democratic Party was Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Catholic

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from Buddu in Buganda (the largest and most populous kingdom in Uganda).
Kiwanuka’s Democratic Party (DP) hoped to transcend ethnic and religious divisions by advocating a socially liberal polity for the new nation, along the lines of
Social Democratic parties in Europe, and in contrast to their main rival, the
Uganda People’s Congress, which seemed to be dominated by the existing Protestant elites, and to be leaning towards Communism. Despite Kiwanuka’s intentions,
DP became identified, in the popular imagination, as a predominantly Catholic
party (nicknamed “Dini ya Papa,” the religion of the Pope). Earle and Carney’s
thoroughly researched and detailed narrative convincingly shows that the political
geography of Uganda is much more complex. Simplistic ethnic and denominational
categories simply do not do justice to the situation.
DP was at first seen outside Buganda as an expression of an exclusively Ganda
nationalism in Teso (in eastern Uganda); this meant that Catholic intellectuals
such as Cuthbert Obwangor became early supporters of UPC. In contrast, in the
kingdom of Ankole, DP was seen as anti-monarchist. A coalition between the
Protestant elite and the Catholic peasantry led to a DP victory in the elections of
the early 1960s. In Buganda itself, the charge of “republicanism” alienated many
Catholics, who voted in large numbers for the royalist party, Kabaka Yekka.
In the first election, Kiwanuka, with the support from the strongly Catholic
Acholi province, was able to win a majority and briefly became prime minister. But
he was subsequently outmaneuvered by an alliance between Milton Obote’s UPC
and Kabaka Yekka. In opposition, Kiwanuka was a valiant defender of human
rights. He was imprisoned by Obote, only to be released when the military dictator
Idi Amin came to power in 1971. Amin appointed Kiwanuka as Attorney General,
but his stout defense of the independence of the judiciary soon alienated Amin, and
in 1972 Kiwanuka was arrested, tortured and murdered. There has been a move by
the Catholic Church for him to be canonized as a martyr for truth and justice, but
the complexity of Ugandan politics has made this problematic (the same can be said
of another Ugandan martyr, the Anglican Archbishop, Janani Luwum, whose
legacy is also disputed within Uganda).
Earle and Carney’s excellent book utilizes previously neglected original material and is an important contribution to a more nuanced understanding Uganda’s
social, religious and political life between 1950 and 1972.
Leeds University,UK

KEVIN WARD

Notes and Comments
ASSOCIATION NEWS
The program for the annual meeting to be held in San Francisco’s Hilton San
Francisco, Union Square, on January 4 to 6, 2024 has been posted on the website:
https://aha.confex.com/aha/2024/meetingapp.cgi/Symposium/3435. Registration
for the meeting closes on December 17, 2023, involves a $25.00 registration fee,
and can be done on the website: https://achahistory.org/sanfrancisco2024.
The Association’s newly elected officers are: Mary Dunn of Saint Louis University as vice president, and Kate Feighery of the Archives of the Archdiocese of
New York and Thomas Worcester, S.J., of Fordham University as members of the
Executive Committee.

CAUSE OF SAINTS
On June 22, 2023 Pope Francis gave official recognition to the heroic virtue
of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange and declared her a venerable. An immigrant
from Cuba, she opened in her home the St. Frances Academy to offer free education to Baltimore’s African American children. With support from Archbishop
James Whitfield of Baltimore she founded a school for Black girls. She also
founded in Baltimore in 1829 the first African American religious congregation
called the Oblate Sisters of Providence (of which she was the superior general) to
carry on this work and other ministries. She died in 1882 at the age of 92 or 93.
Pope Francis on this occasion also declared venerable Sister Lúcia de Jesus
Rosa dos Santos, OCD, (1907–2005), the eldest child to witness the Fatima
apparitions. Others declared venerable were: Brazilian Archbishop Antônio de
Almeida Lustosa (1886–1974), a Salesian known for giving wise spiritual direction, writing children’s books, and providng patsoral care in the four dioceses in
which he served as bishop; Italian Franciscan Father Antonio Pagani (1526–
1589), a canonist and theologian, peritus at the Council of Trent, founder of the
Company of the Brothers of the Cross and the Company of Dimesse, famed for
his holiness; and Italian Sister Anna Cantalupo (1888–1983), of the Company of
the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, who worked among the poor in
Catania, Sicily.
The pope also approved the martyrdom of Manuel González-Serna Rodríguez
(1880–1936), a priest of the diocese of Sevilla, and nineteen companions killed
during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
829

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CONFERENCES
On September 6, 2023, as part of its Seminarzyklus “Euro-Mediterranean
Entanglements in Medieval History,” organized by the Deutschen Historischen
Instituten in Paris und Rome, Beatrice Blümer, of the University of Kassel, gave an
online presentation on the theme “Processes of a Mediterranean Exchange. The
Liber insularum Archipelagi and its Humanistic Circulation.” It investigated the
geopolitical and religious context of the Aegean, from Crete to Constantinople,
between 1420 and 1650, using the manuscripts of Cristoforo Buondelmonti and
others of the Italian humanist circle.
On September 28, 2023 the Pontifical Gregorian University held a smposiium titled “Ripensare la Restaurazione: Bilanci e prospettive del pontificato di
Leone XII nel bicentenario dell’elezione (1823–2023).” Among the speakers
were: Rémy Hême de Lacotte, “Spirituel d’abord ? Léon XII, ambitions et limites
d’un réformateur religieux,” Stefano Tabacchi, “Il governo dello Stato. Leone XII
alla prova del tempo,” Pierangelo Gentile, “Da Roma verso il mondo. La diplomazia globale di papa della Genga al tempo delle rivoluzioni,” Giovanna
Capitelli, “Istituzioni, protagonisti, cantieri nel sistema delle arti,” and Christopher Korten “Two Popes, One Vision: The Guiding Influence of Leo XII on
Gregory XVI.”
On November 22 to 24, 2023 the Pontifico Comitato di Scienze Storiche in
collaboration with the Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede and l’Istituto Storico
Italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea sponsored an international symposium on “L’Inquisizione romana: Nuove ricerche, nuove prospettive” held at the
Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori ed Audiovisivi, Via Michelangelo Caetani 32
in Rome. In the morning of November 22, after welcoming remarks, Adriano
Prosperi spoke on “L’inquisizione Romana: bilanci e prospettive” followed by
Agostino Borromeo on the theme “Papato e repressione dell’eresia: istituzione,
competenze e prima organizzazione della Congregazione dell’Inquisizione da
Paolo III a Pio V (1542–1572).” Other speakers included Vincenzo Lavenia, “Percorsi della miscredenza alla fine del Cinquecento: un processo e i suoi corollari,”
Pierroberto Scaramella, “Inquisizione e società nel Viceregno napoletano nella
prima età moderna: uno sguardo d’insieme attraverso la corrispondenza tra le diocesi meridionali ed il tribunale romano del Sant’Uffizio (XVI–XVII sec.),” and
Giorgio Caravale, “L’ombra lunga di Lutero. Censura libraria e categorie controversistiche in età moderna.” In the afternoon the speakers were: Ugo Baldini,
“L’impatto sulla storia delle scienze; precisazione e modifica di antichi percorsi,
apertura di nuovi,” Giuliano Gasparri, “Gli studi di Marta Fattori su censura e
filosofia moderna. Acquisizioni e prospettive di ricerca,” Hannah Marcus, “Le
licenze di leggere Copernico dopo la proibizione del 1616,” S.E.R. Mons. Sergio
Pagano, “Il ‘Galileo’ di Pio Paschini: nuove ricerche,” Michaela Valente, “Da malefici a presunti sortilegi tra XVII e XVIII secolo: primi appunti alle streghe,” and
Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Lettres Un iter inquisitoriale tormentato : la causa
incompiuta di María de Ágreda (1602–1665).”

NOTES AND COMMENTS

831

On Thursday November 23 the speakers were: Antal Molnár, “Il Sant’Uffizio
nell’Europa centrale e nei Balcani durante il XVII secolo,” Benedetto Ligorio,
“Acculturazione e cripto-ebraismo nell’aristocrazia portoghese. L’inquisizione
romana e i nobili Vaez in Puglia nel XVII secolo,” Paolo Aranha, “L’Inquisizione
Romana e l’Asia nella prima età moderna,” Albert Warso, “La Polonia nel periodo
del comunismo fino al 1958 alla luce dell’Archivio del Sant’Uffizio,” Gabriella
Zarri, “‘Affettata santità’. Da colpa morale a definizione ereticale. Studi e ricerche,”
Kim Siebenhüner, “Il delitto di bigamia riesaminato. Prospettive attuali della
ricerca sull’Inquisizione,” Guido dall’Olio, “‘Abusus Psalmorum’: i Salmi come
maledizioni nei documenti dell’Archivio del Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede
(1670–1726),” Antón M. Pazos, “Politica e censura pontificia: la polemica su ‘El
liberalismo es pecado’ di Félix Sardá (1884),” Augustin Laffay, O.P., “Sabine
Schratz, O.P., Institutum Historicum Ordinis Praedicatorum Domenicani al
servizio dell’Sant’Uffizio da Pio X a Pio XII. Verso uno studio della Roma domenicana,” Sebastian Terráneo, “Il processo per il delitto di abuso sessuale di minori
presso il Sant’Uffizio (1922–1958),” Manuela Barbolla, “Grazia e giustizia nella
prassi del Sant’Uffizio nella prima metà del ‘900: la remissione della scomunica
‘specialissimo modo reservata’,” Jean-Louis Quantin, “`Odium theologicum’: Louis
Billot contro Mons. Duchesne (1910–1912),” and Michel Perrin, “Censure ai libri
di Ernesto Buonaiuti: studio di alcuni procedimenti.”
On Friday Novembe 24, the speakers were: Saretta Marotta, “Il Sant’Uffizio
davanti alla crescita del movimento ecumenico internazionale,” Matthias Daufratshofer, “Come nasce una definizione infallibile. Pio XII e la proclamazione del
dogma dell’Assunzione di Maria in Cielo (1950),” Patrick Descourtieux, “La
preparazione del mancato Concilio ecumenico del 1951, secondo l’Archivio del
Sant’Uffizio,” Matteo Al Kalak and Silvia Toppetta, “Dall’apertura alla fruizione
digitale: un progetto di digital library per l’Archivio del Dicastero della Dottrina
della Fede,” and Agostino Borromeo, “Osservazioni conclusive.”

FELLOWSHIPS
The Cushwa Center at the Univeristy of Notre Dame is offering research
grants and awards with an application deadline of December 31, 2023. They
include: Research Travel Grants for archival research at Notre Dame; D’Agostino
Grants for research in Rome; the Cyprian Davis Prize for work on the Black
Catholic experience; Guerin Grants for research centering on Catholic women; and
Hibernian Awards for Irish and Irish American history. For more information,
please contact: cushwa@nd.edu.
The Newberry Library of Chicago is sponsoring a seminar led by Lia Markey
(Newberry Library) for graduate students that will examine the early seventeenthcentury inventory of the Altemps palace in Rome that belonged to Cardinal Marco
Sittico Altemps, nephew of Pope Pius IV. The seminar, to be held on Thursdays,
March 28–May 30, 2024, will seek to determine the attitudes of its collectors, the
consumption and use of books and other household goods, and the function of

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N OTES AND COMMENTS

palace design. The seminar is free and open to all graduate students, faculty, and
postdoctoral scholars.

PUBLICATIONS
A special issue of Quærens: Journal of Theology and Pastoral Life, 17, nos. 1–2
(Jan.–Dec., 2022), is dedicated to a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the
First General Chapter of the Congregation of the Augustinian Recollects of the
Philippines, and is titled “Amor Difussivus III: Historical Studies and Translations.” This special issue contains in Section I: “Historical Studies and Translations
by Various Authors,” the following articles: “The Augustinian Recollects in the
17th Century and the Martyrs in Japan,” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta, O.A.R., (139); “The Augustinian Recollects in the Philippines in the 18th century: Triumphs
and Travails,” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta, O.A.R. ( 40–73); “The Augustinian Recollects in the 18th Century: Religious Identity and Conflicts,” by Ángel Martínez
Cuesta, O.A.R. (74–106); “The Augustinian Recollects in the 18th Century: Pastoral Work,” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta, O.A,R. (107–33); “The Augustinian Recollects in the 19th Century: Turbulence and Expansion,” by Ángel Martínez
Cuesta, O.A.R. (134–50); “The Augustinian recollects in the 20th Century:
Autonomy, Growth and Stability,” by Rene F. Paglinawan, O.A.R. (151–69); “A
Short History of the Church in Caraga Antigua,” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta,
O.A.R. (170–84), “Augustinian recollect Parishes in Cebu and Camotes Islands,”
by Licinio Ruiz, O.A.R. (185–215); “The Augustinian Recollects’ Role in Quelling
the Dagohoy Revolt (1827–1829),” by Manuel Carceller, O.A.R. (216–28); “The
Cession of the Recollect Curacies in Mindanao to the Jesuits (1859–1863),” by
Manuel Carceller, O.A.R. (229–64); “Augustinian Recollect History of Siquijor
(1794–1898),” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta, O.A.R. (265–72); “The Augustinian
Recollects and the Philippine Revolution in Cavite,” by Ángel Martínez Cuesta,
O.A.R. (273–82); “Historical Account of My Arrest and Incarceration in 1898,” by
Blessed José Rada (283–87); “Life and Martyrdom of Blessed José Rada (1861–
1936),” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (288–94); “The Augustinian Recollects
of Cebu during the Philippine Revolution in 1898,” by José Luis Sáenz RuizOlalde, O.A.R. (295–300); “An Unpublished Letter of Saint Ezekiel Unveils a
Model Friar,” by Pablo Panedas, O.A.R. (301–11); “The Philippine Revolution
and the Last Years of Fr. Fernando Cuenca in Talisay,” by Santiago José Martínez
Lazarro (312–20); “Our Lady of Mount Carmel Venerated at San Sebastian Basilica,” by Blessed Vicente Soler (321–26); “Recollect War and Postwar Chronicles of
Manila, San Juan (Batangas) and Cebu,” by Manuel Carceller, O.A.R. (327–338);
“Apostolate during World War II in San Carlos, Negros Occidental,” by Gregorio
Espiga, O.A.R. (339–50).
Section II: “Historical Studies by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos,” contains
the following articles: “History of Guindulman, Bohol (1788–1940) in Augustinian
Recollect Anals and Other Sources,” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (353–69);
“How the Philippines Saved the Augustinian Recollects from Extinction: Church
Confiscation Decrees (1835–1937) of Spanish Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal,”

NOTES AND COMMENTS

833

by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (370–86); “Jesuits and the Augustinian Recollects in Mindanao in the 19th Century,” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (387–
95); “
Luis A. Romanillos (396–408); “The Parish Ministry of Blessed León Inchausti in
Bohol and Romblon (1885–1897),” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (409–18);
“University of San Jose–Recoletos: Towards another 75 Years (1947–2022),” by
Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (419–25); “A History of Santo Tomas de Villanueva-Recoletos Formation Center: Seeds of Vocation to the Recollect Religious
Life and Priesthood,” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (426-64); “Notes for
Biyaheng Recoletos 400/ Saint Ezekiel Moreno Pilgrimage-Caravan (1 May–9
June 2006),” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (465–76); “
Recollect Markers and Saint Ezekiel Promotion Campaigns,” by Emmanuel Luis
A. Romanillos (477–93); “Errors and Omissions in the History of the Augustinian
Recollects in the Philippines,” by Emmanuel Luis A. Romanillos (494–542).

Obituary

Th e R e v e r e n d M a r t i n Z i e l i n s k i
( 1 9 5 2 –2 0 2 3 )
The Reverend Martin Zielinski, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and a
retired professor in the Department of Church History at the University of St.
Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, passed away Sunday, June
25, 2023; he was 71. Born on April 4, 1952, Zielinski grew up in Chicago’s south
side and attended Infant Jesus of Prague Catholic grade school in Flossmoor, Illinois. After his graduation, he entered the Chicago seminary system, first attending
Quigley Preparatory Seminary, in Chicago, then continuing with Niles College
Seminary, in Niles, Illinois, and finally finishing at the University of St. Mary of
the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, Chicago’s major seminary. On May 10, 1978, Cardinal John Cody ordained Zielinski to the priesthood. Recognizing his talents as a
student and a scholar, Cody asked Zielinski to pursue a doctoral degree in American Church History at Catholic University of America. Mgsr. Trisco directed his
dissertation “‘Doing the truth’: the Catholic Interracial Council of New York,
1945–1965,” and Zielinski defended it successfully in 1989, and was awarded a
PhD in American Church History.
In the same year, he was assigned to Mundelein Seminary as an associate professor of Church History; Zielinski spent more than 30 years at the University of
St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary where he taught history of the Church.
He taught nearly every period of the Church, but specialized in American Church
history. His passion for the stories of the Church made him a sought-after professor. As his former student, I will always remember his emotion as he narrated the
circumstances of the Marian apparition of Lourdes. He explained that St. Berna834

OBITUARY

835

dette Soubirous, a small, poor peasant girl, revealed that Mary told her that she was
the “Immaculate Conception;” a dogma that priest and prelates happened to be
debating in Rome at the time. Bernadette’s testimony confirmed the dogma, which
Pius IX later ratified. Zielinski voice’s shook when he explained that a “small, poor,
peasant” confirmed the theological debate.
Zielinski published many articles in the U.S. Catholic Historian, the Encyclopedia of American Catholic History and the journal Chicago Studies. Recently, he
made a special contribution to American Church History, a transcription and
annotation of the diary of Bishop William Quarter, the first bishop of Chicago,
1844–48. Born in Ireland in Killurin, King’s County, in 1806, Quarter as a young
man listened to the stories of an Irish missionary to the United States, who narrated
how early American Catholics were deprived of the Eucharist and the other sacraments on account of a lack of priests. Moved by these tales, the young Quarter
resolved to serve as a missionary in North America. Having received permission
and a blessing from his bishop, Bishop James Warren Doyle, Quarter boarded a
ship for the New World and crossed the Atlantic in 1822. Eventually, he was
ordained to the priesthood in New York in 1829 and served first as a vicar and then
as a pastor of St. Mary’s Church in the heart of New York, at that time. In 1843,
Pope Gregory XVI appointed Quarter as the first Bishop of the diocese of Chicago.
From 1843 until his death in 1848, Quarter logged a diary of his experience as a
bishop and of his travels. Concerning the entries, Zielinski said, “He had some
interesting observations. . . . He talks about being down in the southwest part of
the state and how flooded everything is. There was a huge flood of the Mississippi
that year, and he was seeing the effects of it. You wish he had taken the time to
expand some of his entries, maybe a little more description of the Catholic communities he visited. . . . That could have been just tiredness. He might have had
more to say if he felt stronger.” This diary will serve as important contribution to
the field of American Church History.
At the end of his life, Zielinski contributed the Church’s liturgical life as well.
Having attended many ordinations and prayed the litany of the saints during them,
he realized that the American saints were often absent from the popular liturgical
litanies. In response to this, Zielinski wrote a litany of American saints, and Lee
James Noren composed the music to accompany the litany, which reflects the tones
and rhythms of American music. Under the direction of Linda Cerabona,
Mundelein Seminary’s music director, the Mundelein Seminary choir recorded the
litany in February of 2023. Hopefully, future ordinandi will pray this litany as they
lie prostrate waiting for the imposition of hands.
Fr. Zielinski is, of course, greatly missed by family, friends, parishioners, and
his students. He left, however, an important legacy: his Christian faith. His faith
was present in the way he taught, in the way he spoke, and in the way he prayed.
He formed and inspired generations of priests who have and will continue the great
mission of the American Church. May Fr. Martin Zielinski rest in peace.
University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein

BRENDAN LUPTON

Periodical Literature
GENERAL
Catalogues de manuscrits latins. Inventaire hagiographique (trente-neuvième
série). François Dolbeau. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (1, 2023), 161–64.
Childbirth and Emerging Missionary Information: Networks in Britain and the
South Pacific. Kate Tilson. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 74 (2, 2023),
305–24.

ANCIENT
Dai presbiteri d’Asia agli episcopi di Roma secondo Ireneo di Lione—Parte I.
Enrico Norelli. Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 9–45.
La consacrazione di Novaziano in una notizia di Eulogio di Alessandria trasmessa
da Fozio (Phot., codd. 182, 280). Rocco Ronzani. Augustinianum, 63 (June,
2023), 269–82.
La Madre di Cristo nelle opere dei Padri aquileiesi. Giuseppe Peressotti.
Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 109–29.
Il discernimento spirituale nelle Lettere di Antonio Abbate. Peter Dufka, S.J.
Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 88 (2, 2022), 289–300.
A Palimpsest with the Martyrdom of Proklos and Hilarios (BHG 2374) in
Christian Palestinian Aramaic Translation from the Monastery Library of
Saint Catherine (Sin. CPA NF Frg. 7, fol. 5/6). Christa Müller-Kessler.
Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 5–15.
Lucifero di Cagliari e la sua Chiesa in Sardegna: isolamento volontario e scisma
locale. Daniele Dessì. Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 75–108.
Visualità e drammatizzazione: reliquie e culto dei martiri in Giovanni Crisostomo.
Chiara Spuntarelli. Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 131–63.
Laris exul et urbis: il progetto politico di Paolino di Nola. Maria Carolina Campone.
Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 195–216.
Foot Washing in the Church of Hippo: Augustine as an Interpreter of a Liturgical
Practice. Thomas O’Loughlin. Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 239–51.
Infirmus loquor, infirmioribus loquor: Efficacia retorica e progresso spirituale nei
discorsi al popolo di Agostino. Americo Miranda. Augustinianum, 63 (June,
2023), 217–33.

836

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

837

The ecclesiological writings of Saint Jerome and their canonical impact. Szabolcs
Anzelm Szuromi, O.Praem. Folia Theologica et Canonica, 11, no. 33/25 (2022),
99–107.
Isidore of Pelusium on Providence, Fate and Divine Longanimity. Frencesco Celia.
Augustinianum, 63 (June, 2023), 165–94.

M EDIEVAL
Saint Perpète de Dinant. À la lumière des donnés anthropobiologiques,
archéométriques et écrites : évêque de Maastricht (fin du 6e-début du 7e
siècle)? Guillaume Wymmersch and Caroline Polet. Revue d’histoire
ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 5–43.
The Passio Erasmi in Latin, Greek, and Slavonic Versions. Vadim B. Krysko.
Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 55–09.
L’Office de saint Barbaros le myroblyte. Editio princeps. Dimosthenis A.
Kaklamanos. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 90–117.
L’épitomé des Actes de Thomas (BHG 1836e) et l’Évergétinon. À propos d’une
contribution récente. Pietro D’Agostino. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June,
2023), 51–54.
Haito, évêque et abbé à l’époque carolingienne. Une nouvelle approche. Christian
Wilsdorf. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 190–256.
Le moi de l’hagiographe. La conscience d’auteur de Jean diacre de Naples vers 900.
Thomas Granier. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 16–50.
La Fête de la Protection de la Vierge dans le rite byzantin. Aperçu historique. Olga
Lossky-Laham. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 44–64.
Traduire le De diligendo Deo de Bernard de Clairvaux au Moyen Âge:
Vernacularisation et vulgarisation. Marie-Pascale Halary. Revue d’histoire de
l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–June, 2023), 13–34.
La colaboración de los presbíteros con el obispo durante el primer milenio según el
Decreto de Graciano. Joaquín Sedano. Folia Theologica et Canonica, 11, no.
33/25 (2022), 181–201.
“Beyond,” “Above” or “Against” Nature? Early Scholastic Debates on the Status of
Miracles. Lydia Schumacher. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 116 (1–2,
2023), 3–34.
“Vulgariser” le méditation au XIIIe siècle. Le Tractatus de saporibus de Robert de
Sorbon. François Wallerich. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–
June, 2023), 35–60.
Vulgariser un traité spirituel pseudo-bonaventurien: diffusion et mise en recueils
des traductions françaises du Stimulus amoris. Géraldine Veysseyre. Revue
d’histoire de l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–June, 2023), 75–103.

838

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

Cupientes Subiectos Feliciter Gubernari. Diocesan Administration in Southern Italy
under the Angevin Rule: Structural Limits and Reforming initiatives.
Antonio Antonetti. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 65–116.
Prédication ou ebatemens? Les intentions de l’auteur du Rosarius. Marie-Laure
Savoye. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–June, 2023), 61–74.
Form and matter of the Eucharist in the Church of the East. John F. Romano.
Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 88 (2, 2022), 394–424.
“De Iudeis”: References to Jews and Judaism in Thomas Ebendorfer’s Sentences
Commentary. Ioana Curuţ. Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 90
(1, 2023), 111–22.

EARLY MODERN
The Bohemian Chronicles of Eberhard Ablauff and Michael of Carinthia on the
Capitula generalissima (1430–1517). Antonín Kalous. Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum, 116 (1–2, 2023), 143–246.
Byzantine Requests for an Ecumenical Council in the Years after the Council of
Ferrara-Florence (1438/9). Dimitrios Th. Vachaviolos. Orientalia Christiana
Periodica, 88 (2, 2022), 503–16.
Imprimerie et littérature hagiographique dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (1473–
1520). Renaud Adam. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 118–35.
Ottmar Nachtgall, Jean de Vauzelles, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples: La double mise en
vulgaire des Evangelicae historiae d’Ammonius (1523–1526). Elsa Kammerer.
Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–June, 2023), 105–27.
Forgetfulness in the First English Reformation? Tithes Forgotten. David Fogg
Postles. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 74 (2, 2023), 384–304.
Medieval Inheritances; Papal History Writing, the Peace of Venice and the
Reformation in Robert Barnes’s Lives of the Roman Pontiffs. Griffin Ridley.
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 117–44.
Women, Marriage and Sex in Early Tudor Ireland: Evidence from an Irish Act Book.
Henry A. Jefferies. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 74 (2, 2023), 259–83.
Vulgariser la controverse: La méthode “facile” de Françoise Véron contre les
réformes (années 1610–années 1640). Julien Léonard. Revue d’histoire de
l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.–June, 2023), 129–43.
La culture religieuse des laïques: La littérature christique et les élites françaises du
XVIIIe siècle. Éric Suire. Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, 109 (Jan.-June,
2023), 145–61.
Discussing Exorcism during the Early Enlightenment: Ubald Stoiber’s
Armamentarium ecclesiasticum. Bert Roest. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
116 (1–2, 2023), 247–83.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

839

M ODERN
Giovanni Fortunato Zamboni (1756–1850) and the Unpublished Manuscript of
the Riflessioni. A Secret Plan to Re-Establish the Societas Christiana. Valfredo
Maria Rossi. Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 145–67.
Un intellettuale al vertice dell’Ordine: il costo di una visione. Giuseppe Buffon.
Antonianum, 98 (Apr., 2023), 189–208.
Don de l’Église de France à l’Église de Pologne (1945). Michal Klakus. Revue
d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 168–89.
Lettres de Wilhelm Arndt au bollandiste Remi De Buck. Bernard Joassart. Analecta
Bollandiana, 141 (June, 2023), 136–60.
El padre copto-ortodoxo Matta Al-Miskīn: una aproximación introductoria a su
vida, obra y teología. Ashraf N. I. Abdelmalak. Estudios Eclesiásticos, 98 (Jan.–
Mar., 2023), 35–72.
Intra-Christian Violence and the Problematisation of the World Christian
Paradigm. Jason Bruner and David C. Kirkpatrick. The Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, 74 (2, 2023), 370–97.

AMERICAN
The Catholic Diocese of Lafayette and Desegregation, 1947–1972. Mark
Newman. Louisiana History, 64 (2, 2023), 121–76.
From Lithuania to Lorain, Ohio: Remembering my Grandfather, “The SabbathObservant Jew . . . Whose Name Is Memorialized in a Catholic Hospital.”
Hollace Ava Weiner. The American Jewish Archives Journal, 74 (1–2, 2022),
51–73.

ASIAN PACIFIC
The Church of Todos los Santos in Kelang (Keelung, Taiwan). José Eugenio Borao
Mateo. Philippiniana Sacra, 58 (Sept.–Dec., 2023), 515–25.
“In this land all is death:” Don Diego Vázquez de Mercado, first secular archbishop
of Manila (1608–16) and the Vacant See (1617–20). Alexandre Coello de la
Rosa. Philippiniana Sacra, 58 (Sept.–Dec., 2023), 587–618.

AFRICAN
Abbés Noirs et Pères Blancs. Note sur l’abbé Alexis Kagame. Élisabeth Bruyère.
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 118 (1–2, 2023), 257–87.

Other Books Received
Ács, Pál. Reformations in Hungary in the Age of the Ottoman Conquest. [Academic
Studies, 52.] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2019. Pp. 336. €99,00,
hardcover.)
Addington, Catherine, trans. Saint Rafael Arnaiz: The Collected Works. Ed. Sr.
María Gonzalo-García, O.C.S.O. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2022.
Pp. lviii, 730. $79.95, paperback.)
Ardura, Bernard and Armand Puig i Tàrrech, eds. “Che Cos’è Stato il 1968? Una
Lettura 50 Anni Dopo” Barcellona, 17–19 gennaio 2018: “¿Qué Fue el 1968? Una
Lectura Medio Siglo Después” Barcelona, 17–19 enero 2018. (Vatican City:
Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2020. Pp. xiv, 342. €25,00, hardcover.)
Artman, Amy Collier. The Miracle Lady: Kathryn Kuhlman and the Transformation
of Charismatic Christianity. Foreword by Kate Bowler. (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2019. Pp. 248. $30.99,
paperback.)
Attridge, Michael, Darren Dias, O.P., Matthew Eaton, and Nicholas Olkovich.
The Promise of Renewal: Dominicans and Vatican II. (Adelaide: ATF Theology.
2017. Pp. xviii, 394. Paperback.)
Azar, Helen and George Hawkins. Maria Romanov: The Third Daughter of the Last
Tsar Diaries and Letters 1908–1918. (Yarley, PA: Westholme Publishing.
2019. Pp. xxvi, 270. $28.00, hardcover.)
Bates, John C. The Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania: Its Origins,
Establishment, Decline, and Resurrection. (Pittsburgh, PA: The Catholic
Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. 2020. Pp. xvi, 520. $4.40,
paperback.))
Bazzana, Giovanni B. Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in
the Early Christ Groups. [Synkrisis: Comparative Approaches to Early
Christianity in Greco-Roman Culture.] (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 320. $74.00, paperback.)
Bellabarba, Marco. Das Habsburger-Reich, 1765–1918. (Berlin: De Gruyter. 2020.
Pp. x, 194. $38.99, hardcover.)
Ben-Johanan, Karma. Jacob’s Younger Brother: Christian-Jewish Relations after
Vatican II. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap. 2022. Pp. xii, 356. £30.95, hardcover.)
Bennett, Joshua. God & Progress: Religion & History in British Intellectual Culture,
1845–1914. [Oxford Historical Monographs.] (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. 2019. Pp. xii, 312. $90.00, hardcover.)
840

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

841

Berbara, Maria, ed. Sacrifice and Conversion in the Early Modern Atlantic World. [I
Tatti Research Series, 3] (Florence: I Tatti—The Harvard University Center.
2022. Pp. 384. $45.00, hardcover.)
Boersma, Karla and Herman J. Selderhuis, eds. More than Luther: The Reformation
and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe. [Academic Studies, 55.] (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2019. Pp. 348. €110,00, hardcover.)
Bonora, Elena. Waiting for the Emperor: Italian Princes, the Pope, and Charles V.
Trans. Richard Bates. [Società di Studi Valdesi—English Series.] (Rome:
Viella Libreria Editrice. 2022. Pp. 260. € 39,90, cloth.)
Bragagnolo, Manuela. Lodovico Antonio Muratori e L’Eredità del Cinquecento
nell’Europa del XVIII Secolo. (Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki. 2017.
Pp. xx, 174. €25,00, paperback.)
Brandfon, Fredric. Intimate Strangers: A History of Jews and Catholics in the City of
Rome. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, and Philadelphia, PA: The
Jewish Publication Society. 2023. Pp. xvi, 366. $36.95, cloth.)
Brown, Geoffrey. Lakeville Crucifix: A Religious War in 19th Century Connecticut.
(Taconic, CT: Between the Lakes Group LLC. 2018. Pp. 322. $29.95,
paperback.)
Bruening, Michael W. Refusing to Kiss the Slipper: Opposition to Calvinism in the
Francophone Reformation. (London: Oxford University Press. 2021. Pp. xvi,
362. $110.00, hardcover.)
Bruno-Jofré, Rosa. The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions: From Ultramontane
Origins to a New Cosmology. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2020. Pp.
x, 374. $87.00, hardcover.)
Bruno-Jofré, Rosa, Heidi MacDonald, and Elizabeth M. Smyth. Vatican II and
Beyond: The Changing Mission and Identity of Canadian Women Religious.
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2017. Pp. viii, 192. CA$40.95,
paperback.)
Bucciantini, Massimo, ed. The Science and Myth of Galileo between the Seventeenth
and Nineteenth Centuries in Europe. [Biblioteca Di Galilæana, 10.] (Florence:
Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki. 2020. Pp. x, 506. €52,00, paperback.)
Bünz, Enno, Werner Greiling, and Uwe Schirmer. Thüringische Klöster und Stifte in
vor- und Frühreformatorischer Zeit. [Quellen und Forschungen zu Thüringen
im Zeitalter der Reformation, 6] (Köln: Böhlau Verlag. 2017. Pp. 462.
€60.00, hardcover.)
Butler, Kevin D. Slavery, Religion, and Race in Antebellum Missouri: Freedom from
Slavery and Freedom from Sin. [Religion in American History.] (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books. 2023. Pp. xiv, 176. $95.00, hardcover.)
Botrugno, Lorenzo. “Inutile Strage” i Cattolici e la Santa Sede nella Prima Guerra
Mondiale: Raccolta di studi in occasione del centenario dello scoppio della Prima
Guerra Mondiale (1914–2014). [Atti e Documenti, 44.] (Vatican City:
Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2016. Hardcover.)

842

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

Cadoré, Bruno. With Him: Listening to the Underside of the World. Ed. Steve Cox.
(London, UK: Bloomsbury Continuum. 2019. Pp. xiv, 210. $18.00, paperback.)
Caiani, Ambrogio A. To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press. 2021. Pp. x, 360. $32.50, hardcover.)
Caner, Daniel. The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian
Society in Early Byzantium. [Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 62.]
(Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2021. Pp. xiv, 412. $34.95,
hardcover.)
Canepari, Andrea. The Italian Legacy in the Dominican Republic: History Architecture
Economics Society. (Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2021.
Pp. 536. $50.00, hardcover.)
Carter, Karen E. Scandal in the Parish: Priests and Parishioners Behaving Badly in
Eighteenth-Century France. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
2019. Pp. xiv, 296. $32.95, paperback.)
Clark, Anthony E. China Gothic: The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral. Foreword
by Leland M. Roth. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. 2019. Pp.
xxiv, 216. $60.00, hardcover.)
Clarke, Peter and Tony Claydon, eds. Saints and Sanctity. [Studies in Church
History, 47.] (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2011. Pp. xxii, 438.)
Clément, Olivier. Transfiguring Time: Understanding Time in the Light of the Orthodox
Tradition. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press. 2019. Pp. 176. $16.95, paperback.)
Cole, Michael W. Sofonisba’s Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. 2019. Pp. iv, 308. $68.00, hardcover.)
Contarino, Alessia, ed. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: Dialogus de adoratione.
[Centro Internazionale di Cultura “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola”: Studi
Pichiani, 18.] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 2017. Pp. vi, 171. €25,00,
paperback.)
Conover, Cornelius. Pious Imperialism: Spanish Rule and the Cult of Saints in Mexico
City. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. 2019. Pp. xx, 274.
$29.95, paperback.)
Cornelissen, Christoph and Gabriele D’Ottavio, eds. Germania e Italia: Sguardi
incrociati sulla storiografia. (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2019. Pp. 502.
€39,00, paperback.)
Cuchet, Guillaume. Faire de l’histoire religieuse dans une société sortie de la religion.
[Collection <<Itinéraires>>, 15.] (Paris: Université Paris 1 Panthéon
Sorbonne. 2020. Pp. 298. €18,00, paperback.)
Cwiekowski, Frederick J., The Church: Theology in History. (Collegeville, MN: Order
of St. Benedict. 1989. Pp. xii, 412. $39.95, paperback.)
Dale, Johanna. Inauguration and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century:
Male and Female Accession Rituals in England, France and the Empire. (Suffolk,
UK: York Medieval Press. 2019. Pp. xvi, 292. £80.00, hardcover.)

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

843

Dassmann, Ernst. Ausgewählte kleine Schriften zur Patrologie, Kirchengeschicthe und
christlichen Archäologie [Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
Ergänzungsband, 37 (2011)] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2011. Pp. 608,
xx illustrations. €79,00, hardcover.)
Day, Maureen K. Catholic Activism Today: Individual Transformation and the
Struggle for Social Justice. (New York, NY: New York University Press. 2020.
Pp. vi, 312. $39.00, hardcover.)
Defries, David. From Sithiu to Saint-Bertin: Hagiographic Exegesis and Collective
Memory in the Early Medieval Cults of Omer and Bertin. [Studies and Texts,
219.] (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. 2019. Pp. xiv,
340. $95.00, hardcover.)
Delehanty, Jack. Making Moral Citizens: How Faith-Based Organizations Use
Vocation for Public Action. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press. 2023. Pp. xii, 210. $24.95, paperback.)
Delmaire, Danielle and Olivier Rota. La fondation de l’Église catholique d’expression
hébraïque en Israël 1947–1967 [Bibliothèque des Religions du Monde:
Collection dirigée par Jacques-Olivier Boudon et Daniel Tollet, 9] (Paris: Honoré
Champion. 2021. Pp. 258. €49,00, paperback.)
DiGiovanni, Stephen Michael. Aggiornamento on the Hill of Janus: The American
College in Rome: 1955–1979. Foreword by Timothy Cardinal Dolan.
(Downers Grove, IL: Midwest Theological Forum. 2016. Pp. xvi, 678.
$34.95, hardcover.)
Diocese of Harrisburg 1868–1968. (Harrisburg, PA: Diocese of Harrisburg. 1968.
Pp. 220.) This book contains seventy-nine brief essays by Irish, English, and
American writers.
Dufetel, Nicolas, ed. La Musique religieuse en France au xix e siècle: Le sentiment
religieux entre profane et sacré (1830–1914). [Speculum Musicae, 44.]
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Pp. lvi, 436. € 150,00, hardcover.)
Emmerson, Richard K. Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in
Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania
State University. 2018. Pp. xvi, 270. $74.95, hardcover.)
Erhart, Peter, ed. Fürstabt Celestino Sfondrati von St. Gallen 1696 als Kardinal in
Rom. Eds. Helena Müller, Christoph Uiting, Federica Germana Giordani,
Giuanna Beeli, and Birgit Heinzle. [Itinera Monastica, 2.] (Vienna: Böhlau
Verlag. 2019. Pp. 724. Hardcover.)
Estes, James M. Good Government and Church Order: Essays on the Role of Secular
Authority in the German Reformation. [Essays and Studies, 53.] (Toronto:
Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies. 2022. Pp. 326. CA$49.95,
paperback.)
Fadem, Maureen E. Ruprecht. Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh
McGuckian. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2020. Pp. xxxvi, 274. $135.00,
hardcover.)

844

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Fairbairn, Donald and Ryan M. Reeves. The Story of Creeds and Confessions: Tracing
the Development of the Christian Faith. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
2019. Pp. xiv, 396. $37.00, paperback.)
Fedalto, Giorgio. In Camino tra Fede e Cultura: Saggi di Storia e Spiritualità.
(Verona: Casa Editrice Mazziana. 2022. Pp. 368. €41.50, hardcover.)
Fejérdy, András. Pressed by a Double Loyalty: Hungarian Attendance at the Second
Vatican Council: 1959-1965. (Budapest: CEU Press. 2016. Pp. xx, 426.
Hardcover.)
Ferreyrolles, Gérard. De Pascal à Bossuet: La littérature entre théologie et
anthropologie. [Lumière Classique: Collection dirigée par Philippe Sellier et
Dominique Descotes, 118.] (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur. 2020. Pp.
751. €90,00, paperback.)
Figurski, Paweł, Johanna Dale, and Pieter Byttebier, eds.. Political Liturgies in the
High Middle Ages Beyond the Legacy of Ernst H. Kantorowicz. [Medieval and
Early Modern Political Theology: Historical and Theological Perspectives, 4.]
(Turnhout: Brepols. 2021. Pp. 306. €80,00, paperback.)
Finn, Daniel K. Consumer Ethics in a Global Economy: How Buying Here Causes
Injustice There. [Moral Traditions Series.] (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press. 2019. Pp. x, 174. $59.95, paperback.)
Finocchiaro, Giuseppe. Antonio Gallonio Scrittore di Santi: Agiografia nella Roma di
Clemente VIII. (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore. 2019. Pp. x, 112. €21.85,
paperback.)
Fogg, Nicholas. Forgotten Englishman: Thomas Stephens and the Mission to the East.
(Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing. 2021. Pp. xx, 340. £20.00, paperback.)
Fondras, Antonia. Augustinian Art and Meditation in Renaissance Florence: The Choir
Altarpieces of Santo Spirito 1480–1510. [Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History,
308,] [Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 42.]
(Leiden: Brill. 2020. Pp. xiv, 370. $182.00, hardcover.)
Fordahl, Clayton. The Ultimate Sacrifice: Martyrdom, Sovereignty, and Secularization
in the West. [Classical and Contemporary Social Theory.] (New York, NY:
Routledge. 2020. Pp. xii, 180. $136.00, hardcover.)
Gebke, Julia. (Fremd)köper: Die Stigmatisierung der Neuchristen im Spanien der
Frühen Neuzeit. (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. 2020. Pp. 344. €50,00, hardcover.)
Gehler, Michael, Piotr H. Kosicki, and Helmut Wohnout. Christian Democracy
and the Fall of Communism. (Leuven: Leuven University Press. 2019. Pp. 360.
€69,50, hardcover.)
Goldstein, David B. and Marco Piana. Early Modern Hospitality. (Toronto: Centre for
Renaissance and Reformation Studies. 2021. Pp. 392. CA$49.95, paperback.)
Griggs, Daniel, trans. Aelred of Rievaulx: The Liturgical Sermons: The Reading-Cluny
Collection, 2 of 2 Sermons 134–182. Introduction by Marjory Lange.
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2022. Pp. xlviii, 454. $49.95, paperback.)

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED

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Hanciles, Jehu J. Migration and the Making of Global Christianity. Foreword by
Philip Jenkins. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company. 2021. Pp. xviii, 462. $47.99, hardcover.)
Hankins, James. Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy.
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2019. Pp.
xvi, 736. $47.00, hardcover.)
Hence, Elisabeth, ed. Titus Brandsma: Mystik und Martyrium. Trans. and intr.
Elisabeth Hense. Contribution by Michael Plattig. [Schriften des
Forschungsinstituts der Deutschen Provinz der Karmeliten, 2] (Münster:
Aschendorff Verlag. 2018. Pp. viii, 180. €29,90, hardcover.)
Herzig, Tamar. A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance
Italy. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2019. Pp. x, 388. $56.00,
hardcover.)
Hildesheimer, Françoise. Le péché philosophique ou le salut à la portée de tous.
[Histoire et Archives: Collection dirigée par Françoise Hildesheimer et Louis
de Carbonnières, 19.] (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur. 2020. Pp. 150.
€28,00, paperback.)
Hogan, Edmund. Liberia’s First Civil War: A Narrative History. [Routledge Studies
in Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa. (London: Routledge. 2022. Pp. xx,
314. $52.95, hardcover.)
Howell, Patrick S.J. Great Risks had to be Taken: The Jesuit Response to the Second
Vatican Council, 1958–2018. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. 2019. Pp. x, 226.
$29.00, paperback.)
Israëls, Machtelt, ed. The Borgo San Sepolcro Altarpiece. 2 vols. (Florence: I Tatti –
The Harvard University Center. 2009. Pp. 624. $120.00, hardcover.) 400
color illustrations, 250 halftones.
Jankowiak, François, and Laura Pettinaroli, eds. Les cardinaux entre Cour et Curie:
Une élite romaine, 1775–2015. (Rome: École française de Rome. 2017. Pp. xvi,
468. € 27,00, paperback.)
Karstens, Simon. Untergegangene Kolonialreiche: Gescheiterte Utopien in Amerika.
(Vienna: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage. 2022. Pp. 294. € 39,00,
hardcover.)
Kartaloff, Kiril Plamen. Identità Europea e Radici Cristiane: Atti del Convegno
Internazionale di Studio: Veliko Tarnovo, 26 maggio 2018. (Vatican City:
Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2021. Pp. 254. Hardcover.)
Kelly, Daniel. Living on Fire: The Life of L. Brent Bozell Jr. (Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books. 2014. Pp. xvi, 256. $27.95, hardcover.)
Kertzer, David I. The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise
of Fascism in Europe. (New York, NY: Random House. 2014. Pp. xxxiv, 254.
Hardcover.)

846

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Kertzer, David I. The Pope Who Would Be King: The Exile of Pius IX and the
Emergence of Modern Europe. (New York, NY: Random House. 2018. Pp. xxx,
478. $35.00, hardcover.)
Klapczynski, Gregor. Via triumphalis – Via dolorosa. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag
Herder. 2022. Pp. 160. € 10,00, paperback.)
Kloppenborg, John S. Christ’s Associations: Connect and Belonging in the Ancient City.
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2019. Pp. xxxii, 498. $44.00,
hardcover.)
Koester, Nancy. We Will Be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth. Foreword by
Alicia K. Jackson. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company. 2023. Pp. xx, 274. $29.99, hardcover.)
Komline, Han-Luen Kantzer. Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account. (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2020. Pp. xvi, 470. $165.00, hardcover.)
Krabbendam, Hans. Saving the Overlooked Continent: American Protestant Missions
in Western Europe 1940–1975. (Leuven: Leuven University Press. 2020. Pp.
248. €49.50, paperback.)
Krumenacker, Yves. Un Parcours en Protestantisme: I. Chemins de Traverse.
[Chrétiens et Sociétés: Documents et Mémoires, n° 46.] (Lyon: Laboratoire de
Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes. 2023. Pp. 436.)
Krumenacker, Yves, and Raymond A. Mentzer. Penser L’Histoire Religieuse au XXI
Siècle: Thinking about Religious History in the 21st Century. [Chrétiens et
Sociétes: Documents et Mémoires, n° 42.] ((Lyon: Laboratoire de Recherche
Historique Rhône-Alpes. 2020. Pp. 330. €22,00, paperback.)
Lamb, Michael and Brian A. Williams, eds. Everyday Ethics: Moral Theology and the
Practices of Ordinary Life. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
2019. Pp. viii, 254. $49.95, paperback.)
Lambelt, Kyle B. T. ¡Presente! Nonviolent Politics and the Resurrection of the Dead.
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 2019. Pp. xvi, 216. $59.95,
paperback.)
Lee, Christina H. Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early
Spanish Rule. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 194.
$80.00, hardcover.)
Léonard, Julien and Noémie Recous. Un Parcours en Protestantisme: II. Compagnons
de Route. [Chrétiens et Sociétés: Documents et Mémoires, n° 47.] (Lyon:
Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes. 2023. Pp. 272.
Paperback.)
Lindvall, Terry. God on the Big Screen: A History of Hollywood Prayer from the Silent
Era to Today. (New York, NY: New York University Press. 2019. Pp. vi, 368.
$35.00, paperback.)
Lovatti, Maurilio. Giovanni XXIII, Paolo VI e le ACLI. [Storia, 91] (Brescia:
Editrice Morcelliana, 2019. Pp. 288. €25,00 paperback.)

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Lovison, Filippo, ed. Dizionario Storico Tematico: La Chiesa in Italia: Volume I:
Dalle origini all’Unità Nazionale. Eds. Luigi Michele De Palma and Massimo
Carlo Giannini (Rome: Associazione Italiana dei Professori di Storia della
Chiesa. 2019. Pp. viii, 628. €40,00, paperback.)
Marotta, Saretta. Gli Anni Della Pazienza: Bea, l’ecumenismo e il Sant’Uffizio di Pio
XII. [Istituto per le scienze religiose—Bologna Fondazione per le scienze
religiose Giovanni XXIII: Testi, ricerche e fonti: nuova serie, 63.] (Bologna:
Società Editrice il Mulino. 2019. Pp. 766. €52,00, paperback.)
Marsollier, Armand-Jean de Rancé Jacques. Thoughts and Reflections of ArmandJean de Rancé Abbot of La Trappe. Trans. David N. Bell. (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press. 2022. Pp. x, 186. $24.95, paperback.)
Maspero, Giulio. Rethinking the Filioque with the Greek Fathers. Foreword Sarah
Coakley. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
2023. Pp. xii, 314. $49.99, hardcover.)
Mayeur-Jaouen, Catherine. Voyage en Haute-Égypte: Prêtres, Coptes et Catholiques.
Preface by Robert Solé. (Paris: CNRS Éditions. 2019. Pp. 412. €26,00,
paperback.)
Mazurek, Peter. Modern Catholic Concerns. (n.p.: Xlibris Au., 2019. Pp. xxvi, 592.
$28.48, paperback.)
McCarthy, Tom. Developing the Whole Person: A Practitioner’s Tale of Counseling,
College, and the American Promise. (New York, NY: Peter Lang. 2018. Pp. xiv,
385. $58.65, paperback.)
McCleary, Rachel M. and Robert J. Barro. The Wealth of Religions: The Political
Economy of Believing and Belonging. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. 2019. Pp. x, 200. $32.00, hardcover.)
Merluzzi, Manfredi, Gaetano Sabatina, and Flavia Tudini. La Vergine contessa:
Roma, l’Immacolata Concezione e l’universalismo della Monarchia Cattolica (secc.
XVII-XIX). [Studi e Ricerche, 38.] (Rome: Viella Libreria Editrice. Pp. 464.
€ 34,20, paperback.)
Millett, Nathaniel, and Charles H. Parker. Jesuits and Race: A Global History of
Continuity and Change, 1530-2020. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New
Mexico Press. 2022. Pp. xii, 288. $65.00, hardcover.)
Morris, Ronald V. Yountsville: The Rise and Decline of an Indiana Mill Town. (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2020. Pp. xiv, 224. $35.00,
hardcover.)
Murphy, Kevin D. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris: A Quick Immersion. [Quick
Immersions, 11.] (New York, NY: Tibidabo Publishing. 2020. Pp. 192.
$13.25, paperback.)
Murray, Michele. Tobit. [Wisdom Commentary, 15.] Ed. Barbara E. Reid, OP.
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2023. Pp. lii, 268. $44.95, hardcover.)

848

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Nederman, Cary J. The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and
Political Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1500. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania
State University Press. Pp. xviii, 220. $85.95, hardcover.)
Nix, Dayne Edward. Moral Injury and a First World War Chaplain: The Life of a G.A.
Studdert Kennedy. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2021. Pp. viii, 226.
$100.00, hardcover.)
Noll, Thomas. Das Bildprogramm der Sixtinischen Kapelle in Rom. [Päpste und
Papsttum, 47.] (Pp. vii, 168, 34 pages pictures. €88.00, hardcover.)
Nuzzi, Gianluigi. Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle against
Corruption in the Vatican. Trans. Michael F. Moore. (New York, NY: Henry
Holt and Company. 2015. Pp. xiv, 226. $28.00, hardcover.)
O’Keefe, Mark, and María Gonzalo-García. To Live for God Alone: The Life and
Spirit of Saint Rafael Arnaiz. (Athens, OH: Cistercian Publications. 2023. Pp.
xvi, 272. $39.95, paperback.)
O’Loughlin, Thomas. In Christ Now Meet Both East and West: On Catholic
Eucharistic Action. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2023. Pp. viii, 124.
$16.95, paperback.)
Padgett, Timothy D., ed. Dual Citizens: Politics and American Evangelicalism.
(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press. 2020. Pp. xvi, 490. $28.99, hardcover.)
Paravy, Pierrette and Daniel Le Blévec, dirs. Les cartes de Chartreuse: Collection des
toiles du monastère de la Grande Chartreuse (XVII e–XIX e siècles). (Grenoble:
Éditions Glénat, 2022. Pp. 288. €45,00, hardcover.)
Park, Andy, Lester Ruth, and Cindy Rethmeier. Worshiping with the Anaheim
Vineyard: The Emergency of Contemporary Worship. (Grand Rapids, MI: 2017.
Pp. xiv, 148. $28.99, paperback.)
Parsons, Mikeal C. and João B. Chaves. Remembering Antônia Teixeira: A Story of
Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy. Foreword by Bill J. Leonard.
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2023. Pp.
xvi, 224. $26.99, hardcover.)
Pavur, Claude, S.J. In the School of Ignatius: Studious Zeal and Devoted Learning.
(Brighton, MA: Institute of Jesuit Sources. 2019. Pp. x, 174. $21.21, paperback.)
Payen, Guillaume. Martin Heidegger’s Changing Destinies: Catholicism, Revolution,
Nazism. Trans. Jane Marie Todd and Steven Rendall. (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press. 2923. Pp. xxii, 692. $50.00, cloth.)
Pepin, Ronald E., trans. The Dialogue on Miracles: Caesarius of Heisterbach. Volume
I. Foreword and Introduction by Hugh B. Feiss, O.S.B. [Cistercian Fathers
Series, 89.] (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2023. Pp. xiv, 522. $64.95,
paperback.)
Peterman, Thomas J., John James Monaghan, D.D.: Third Bishop of the Catholic
Diocese of Wilmington. (Warminster, PA: William T. Cooke Publishing, Inc.
2019. Pp. 256. Hardcover.)

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Peterson, Derrick. Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes: The Strange Tale of How the
Conflict of Science and Christianity Was Written into History. (Eugene, OR:
Cascade Books. 2021. Pp. xii, 356. $46.00, paperback.)
Pizzoni, Giada. British Catholic Merchants in the Commercial Age: 1670-1714.
[Studies in the Eighteenth Century.] (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2020.
Pp. xvi, 214. $115.00, hardcover.)
Plaster, Joseph. Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2023. Pp. x, 358. $28.95,
paperback.)
Radcliffe, Timothy, O.P. Alive in God: A Christian Imagination. (London:
Bloomsbury Continuum. 2019. Pp. viii, 424. $18.00, paperback.)
Regoli, Roberto and Maurizio Tagliaferri, eds. of Volume II: Dopo l’Unità
Nazionale of the Dizionario Storico Tematico: La Chiesa in Italia, ed. Filippo
Lovison (Rome: Associazione Italiana dei Professori di Storia della Chiesa.
2019. Pp. viii, 532. €40,00, paperback.)
Renard, John. Crossing Confessional Boundaries: Exemplary Lives in Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic Traditions. (Oakland, CA: University of California
Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 348. $34.95, paperback.)
Restall, Matthew and Amara Solari. The Maya Apocalypse and Its Western Roots.
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 2022. Pp. xii, 154. $84.00, hardcover.)
Rice, John A. Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance: The Emergence of a Musical Icon.
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 2022. Pp. xx, 300. $65.00,
hardcover.)
Richter, Manfred. Der unbekannte Comenius: Ein Bischof fordert—Ökumene radikal.
[Theologische Orientierungen: Theological Orientations, 43.] (Berlin: LIT
Verlag. 2021. Pp. 406. €29,90, paperback.)
Riebling, Mark. Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War against Hitler. (New York,
NY: Basic Books. 2015. Pp. viii, 376. $29.99, hardcover.)
Romero, Robert Chao. Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice,
Theology, and Identity. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press. 2020. Pp. x,
238. $30.00, paperback.)
Root, Jonathan. Oral Roberts: and the Rise of the Prosperity Gospel. (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2023. Pp. xiv, 258. $26.00,
paperback.)
Royal, Susan. Lollards in the English Reformation: History, radicalism, and John Foxe.
(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 244. £85.00,
hardcover.)
Rusch, William G., ed. Henry Chadwick: Select Writings. Foreword by Rowan
Williams. (Grand Rapids, MI: William b. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
2017. Pp. xxxii, 348. Hardcover.)

850

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Sargent, Carole. Transform Now Plowshares: Megan Rice, Gregory Boertje-Obed, and
Michael Walli. [People of God.] (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2022.
Pp. xxiv, 224. $19.95, paperback.)
Sahle, Esther. Quakers in the British Atlantic World c. 1660-1800. [People, Markets,
Goods: Economies and Societies in History, 18 .] (Woodbridge: The Boydell
Press. 2021. Pp. viii, 208. £24.99, paperback.)
Schedl, Barbara and Franz Zehetner, eds. St. Stephen in Wien: Die
“Herzogswerkstatt.” (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. 2022. Pp. 372. €55,00,
hardcover.)
Schjørring, Jens Holger and Norman A. Hjelm, eds. History of Global Christianity:
Volume I: European and Global Christianity, ca. 1500–1789. Trans. David
Orton. (Leiden: Brill. 2017. Pp. x, 458. €59,00, hardcover.)
Schjørring, Jens Holger and Norman A. Hjelm, eds. History of Global Christianity:
Volume II: History of Christianity in the 19th century. Trans. David Orton.
(Leiden: Brill. 2017. Pp. xxxii, 346. €59,00, hardcover.)
Scott, Mark. A., OCSO. Loving Jesus: Monastery Talks on the Gospel According to
Saint Matthew. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2023. Pp. xxiii, 204.
$34.95, paperback.)
Sebek, Jaroslav. Schmerzvoller Weg zur Versöhnung: Etappen der Entwicklung der
deutsch-tschechischen kirchlichen Beziehungen nach 1918. [Kirche und
Gesellschaft im Karpaten-Donauraum, 4.] (Berlin: LIT Verlag. 2020. Pp.
220. €29,90, paperback.)
Seehusen, Jan. Schützende Heilige des lateinischen Westens (370–600 n. Chr.).
[Beiträge zur Hagiographie, 24.] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2021. Pp.
352. €69.00, paperback.)
Shopkow, Leah. The Saint and the Count: A Case Study for Reading like a Historian.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2021. Pp. xiv, 202. $29.95,
paperback.)
Smirnova, Victoria. Medieval Exempla in Transition: Caesarius of Heisterbach’s
Dialogus miraculorum and Its Readers. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
2023. Pp. xxx, 352. $34.95, paperback.)
Smith, Gary Scott. Duty & Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill. (Grand
Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2021. Pp. xii, 256.
$30.99, hardcover.)
Sodi, Manlio, and Anna Głusiuk, eds. Bellarmino e i Gesuiti a Montepulciano: Studi
in occasione del IV centenario della morte di San Roberto (1621-2021). (Florence:
Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki. 2022. Pp. xx, 272. € 33,25, paperback.)
Spicer, Kevin P., and Rebecca Carter-Chand, eds. Religion, Ethnonationalism, and
Antisemitism in the Era of the Two World Wars. (Montreal & Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, with Washington, D.C.: United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2022. Pp. xiv, 406. CA$75.00, hardcover.)

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Steck, Christopher, S.J. All God’s Animals: A Catholic Theological Framework for
Animal Ethics. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 2019. Pp.
x, 250. $42.95, paperback.)
Strange, James Riley. Excavating the Land of Jesus: How Archaeologists Study the
People of the Gospels. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company. 2023. Pp. xvi, 192. $29.99, paperback.)
Strocchia, Sharon T. Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late
Renaissance Italy. [I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History.] (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. 2019. Pp. xiv, 330. £48.95, hardcover.)
Strouse, A. W. Form & Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision. (New York,
NY: Fordham University Press. 2021. Pp. x, 170. $28.00, paperback.)
Sullivan, Karen. Eleanor of Aquitaine As It Was Said: Truth and Tales about the
Medieval Queen. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2023. Pp. vi, 270.
$45.00, hardcover.)
Sullivan, Mary C., R.S.M., ed. A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine
McAuley. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. 2017.
Pp. x, 206. $19.95, paperback.)
Tastard, Terry. Nightingale’s Nuns and the Crimean War. (London: Bloomsbury
Academic. 2023. Pp. x, 202. $115.00, hardcover.)
Terian, Abraham. The Life of Mashtots‘ by his Disciple Korwin: Translated from the
Classical Armenian with Introduction and Commentary. [Oxford Early Christian
Texts.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022. Pp. xii, 252. $180.00,
hardcover.)
Turley, Hugh, and David Martin. The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An
Investigation. (Hyattsville, MD: McCabe Publishing. 2018. Pp. xviii, 314.
Paperback.)
Turley, Hugh, and David Martin. Thomas Merton’s Betrayers: The Case against Abbot
James Fox and Author John Howard Griffin. (Hyattsville, MD: McCabe
Publishing. 2023. Pp. 10, 268. Paperback.)
Turner, Gerald. Tomáš Halík: From the Underground Church to Freedom. Trans.
Gerald Turner. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2019. Pp.
viii, 326. $35.00, hardcover.)
Vernon, Elliot and Hunter Powell, eds. Church polity and politics in the British
Atlantic world, c. 1635–66. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
2020. Pp. xii, 266. £90.00, hardcover.)
Villella, Peter B. and Pablo García Loaeza. The Conquest of Mexico: 500 Years of
Reinventions. Preface by Matthew Restall. (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press: Norman. 2022. Pp. xiv, 314. $55.00, hardcover.)
de Vogüé, Adalbert. A Critical Study of the Rule of Benedict. Volume III: Liturgy,
Sleeping Arrangements, and the Penal Code (RB 8-20, 22-30, 42-46). (Hyde
Park, NY: New City Press. 2019. Pp. 356. $49.95, paperback.)

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Voogt, Gerrit. Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom.
(Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren. 2020. Pp. 328. €32.00, paperback.)
Wallace, Carey. Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace &
Courage. Illustrated by Nick Thornborrow. (New York, NY: Workman
Publishing. 2020. Pp. x, 222. $26.95, hardcover.)
Walters, J. Edward. Eastern Christianity: A Reader. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2021. Pp. xvi, 424. $55.00, hardcover.)
Wegemer, Gerard B. and Stephen W. Smith, eds. The Essential Works of Thomas
More. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2020. Pp. xxviii, 1475.
$110.00, hardcover.)
Weigel, George. Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II. (New
York, NY: Basic Books. 2017. Pp. x, 358. $32.00, hardcover.)
Weir, Todd H. and Hugh McLeod, eds. Defending the Faith: Global Histories of
Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century. (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. 2020. Pp. x, 308. $110.00, hardcover.)
Wright, Jessica L. The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity. (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. 2022. Pp. x, 298. $98.00, hardcover.)
Yarrow, Simon. The Saints: a short history. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2016. Pp. xii, 176. £10.99, hardcover.)
Yates, Kelly Diehl. The Limits of a Catholic Spirit: John Wesley, Methodism, and
Catholicism. Foreword by Howard A. Snyder. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick
Publications. 2021. Pp. xiv, 248. $35.00, paperback.)
Zumholz, Maria Anna und Michael Hirschfeld. Joachim Kuropka streitbarer
Historiker und engagierter Geschichtsvermittler. Fest- und Gedenkschrift zum 80.
Geburtstag. [Schriften des instituts fur regionalgescheichte und
Katholizismus-Forschung, 1] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2021. Pp. 312.
€ 28,00.)

Index to Volume 109 (2023)
ACHA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Moore, Brenna. Rethinking Catholic Intellectual History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

JOURNEYS IN CHURCH HISTORY
Grendler, Paul F. On the Road to Italian Church History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

ARTICLES
Cesarone, Bernard. Devotees Participate in Story and Painting:
Bernardo Alcocer’s Novena to Madre Santísima de la Luz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Dóci, Viliam Štefan, O.P. Two Enlightenment Dominicans among the
Freemasons in Eighteenth-Century Vienna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
Frenken, Ansgar. The Long and Stony Road to Union: The Intellectual
Development of the Concept of Via Concilii from the Outbreak of the
Great Western Schism of the Councils of Pisa and Constance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

Guerrero, Sarah Loose. Bocche Inutile: Abandoned Children, Warfare,
and Civic Religion in Siena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Iberico Ruiz, Rolando. Searching for Ecclesial Compromise: The Role of
Juan Landázuri Ricketts, Archbishop of Lima (Peru), during the
Preparatory Phase of Vatican II (1961–1962) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 724
Lacopo, Frank. Indigenous Globalism: Confraternity and Connectivity in
Colonial Cuzco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
Lane, Christopher J. Rigorism and Clericalism in the Vocational Discernment
Culture of the Nineteenth-Century Catholic Revival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
Misukanis, Nicholas. Servant of Two Masters: Bishop Aloisius Muench
and the Debate over Catholic Schools in Postwar Bavaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Olson, Madeleine Claire. Bracero-Priests: The Vatican’s Response to
Mexican Migration, 1942–1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Ruff, Edward. Was Rolf Hochhuth’s Play, The Deputy, the Result of a
KGB [Plot]? Assessing a Conspiracy Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
Santa Maria, Thomas J. Pedro de Ribadeneyra and the First Ex-Jesuits:
Jesuit Anxiety about Familial Interference to Vocational Perseverance . . . . . . . . .

51

Verstegen, Ian. Real Presence and Mere Painting on the Counter-Reformation
Altar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

MISCELLANY
Dolan, Cardinal Timothy. Homily at the Funeral Mass for Msgr. Robert F. Trisco . . . 750

853

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Editor’s Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Minnich, Nelson H. A Life in the Service of Church History: Robert
Frederick Trisco (as told to Nelson H. Minnich) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Morreale, Laura, Jennifer Paxton, Joel Kalvesmaki, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon
Saint-Laurent, Miri Rubin, and Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C. Digital
Scholarship in the Field of Church History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

REVIEW ESSAYS
Ruff, Mark Edward, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Roy Palmer Domenico,
Martin Menke, John F. Pollard, David I. Kertzer David I. Kertzer’s
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler . . . . . . . . . . . 752
White, Joseph M., R. Scott Appleby, William Dinges, Mark Massa, Leslie
Tentler, Joseph P. Chinnici. Joseph P. Chinnici’s American Catholicism
Transformed: From the Cold War Through the Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564
Young, Julia G., Lidia Ernestina Gómez García, Ramón A. Gutiérrez,
J. Michelle Molina, Paul Ramírez, Jennifer Scheper Hughes.
Forum Review Essay: The Church of the Dead by Jennifer Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

REVIEW ARTICLE
Schloesser, Stephen J. Guillaume Cuchet on Catholicism in France: Sentiment,
Eclecticism, Collapse, and Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

BOOK REVIEWS—BY REVIEW AUTHOR
Akişik-Karakullukçu, Aslihan. Manuel II Palaiologos (1350–1425): A Byzantine
Emperor in a Time of Tumult. (Siren Çelik) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
Allerfeldt, Kristofer. Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the
Waning of Mainline Protestantism (Nicholas T. Pruitt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Álvarez-Pimentel, Ricardo. Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940.
(Margaret Chowning) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
Appleby, R. Scott. Faith and Science at Notre Dame: John Zahm, Evolution,
and the Catholic Church. (John P. Slattery) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
Aron-Beller, Katherine. Inquisition and Knowledge 1200–1700. (Peter Biller and
Lucy J. Sackville) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
Arrom, Silvia. Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of
Enlightenment. (Christina Ramos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
Aston, Nigel. Finding Order in Diversity. Religious Toleration in the
Habsburg Empire, 1792–1848. (Scott Berg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Baernstein, Prudence Renée. Un’illusione di femminile semplicità. Gli Annali delle
Orsoline di Bellinzona (1730–1848). (Miriam Nicoli and Franca Cleis) . . . . . . . . . 809
Bailey, Michael D. Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval
German Cities. (Eugene Smelyansky) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
Ballinger, Philip. A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley
Hopkins. (Catharine Randall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

855

Barbato, Mariano. Die Sorge der Päpste um den Frieden: Eine ethische Analyse
der Botschaften zum Weltfriedenstag. (Patrick Körbs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Barnett, Victoria. Gemeinsam gegen Antisemitismus—Die Konferenz von Seelisberg
(1947) revisited. Die Entstehung des institutionellen Jüdisch-christlichren
Dialogs in der Schweiz und in Kontinentaleuropa. (Jehoschua Ahrens) . . . . . . . . . . 815
Bassett, Sarah. Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a
Christian Imperial Capital. (Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Belaen Johan. Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious
Movements. (Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781
Bendroth, Margaret. Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and
Obstacles throughout Christian History. (Leanne M. Dzubinski and
Anneke H. Stasson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Binasco, Mateo. Carteggio Scalabrini e Zaboglio (1886–1904). (Veronica De Santis
and Giovanni Terragni) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Black, Jeremy Martin. Gibbon’s Christianity: Religion, Reason, and the Fall of Rome.
(Hugh Liebert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
Blackburn, Carole. The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the
Mississippi River, 1698–1725. (Linda Carol Jones) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
Boin, Douglas. Urban Developments in Late Antique and Medieval Rome:
Revisiting the Narrative of Renewal. (Gregor Kalas and Ann van Dijk) . . . . . . . . . 173
Brasher, Sally Mayall. Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in
Later Medieval Italy. (Guy Geltner) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Brockey, Liam Matthew. Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled:
A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds.
(Dominic Sachsenmaier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
Bruno-Jofré, Rosa. The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile.
(Sarah Walsh) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
Buck, Andrew D. The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Beth C.
Spacey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Burns, J. Patout, Jr. The Donatist Controversy. (Maureen Tilley and Boniface Ramsey) . . 389
Byrnes, Joseph. Confiscating the Common Good: Small Towns and Religious Politics
in the French Revolution. (Edward J. Woell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Byrnes, Joseph F. Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transforming Catholicism Through
the Music of Third Republic Paris. (Jennifer Walker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Cangemi, Michael J. Martyrs of Hope: Seven U.S. Missioners in Central America.
(Donna Whitson Brett and Edward T. Brett) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Capistrano-Baker, Florina H. Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines
under Early Spanish Rule. (Christina H. Lee) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Carbonneau, Robert E., C.P. Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and
American Missionaries in Modern China. (Joseph W. Ho) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642
Chestnut, R. Andrew. Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions.
(William A. Calvo-Quirós) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629

856

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

Chinnici, Joseph P. Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over
Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. (Theresa Keeley) . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Christopher F. Black. Abortion in Early Modern Italy. (John Christopoulos) . . . . . . . . . 797
Clark, Anthony E. This Suffering Is My Joy: The Underground Church in
Eighteenth-Century China. (David E. Mungello) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Cohen, Thomas M. Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change.
(Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Cole Ahl, Diane. Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art, Politics, and Religion
(1100–1800). (David D’Andrea and Salvatore Marino) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
Collins, Sam. “Codex Epistolaris Carolinus: Letters from the Popes to the Frankish
Rulers, 739–791. (Rosamond McKitterick, Dorine van Espelo, Richard
Pollard, and Richard Price) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Connell, William J. The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between
Renaissance and Catholic Reform. (Stefan Bauer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Cook, Bernard A. America’s Jesuit Colleges and Universities: A History. (Michael T.
Rizzi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Cotts, John. Remembering the Crusades and Crusading. (Edited by Megan
Cassidy-Welch) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400, 600
Cutter, Charles. Gamboa’s World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform in
New Spain. (Christopher Albi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824
Dale, Thomas. Il patriarcato di Aquileia: Identità, liturgia e arte (secoli (V–XV).
(Edited by Zuleika Murat and Paolo Vedovetto) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Davis, Michael T. Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral. (Stephen
Murray) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Demy, Timothy J. A Religious History of the American GI in World War II.
(G. Kurt Piehler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
Dever, James Columcille. Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacy.
(David G. Hunter and Jonathan P. Yates, eds.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
Dominguez, Freddy. Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and
Counter-Reformation. (James E. Kelly and Susan Royal.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 798
Dormandy, Jason. Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero
Migration in Mexico. (Alberto García) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
Drake, Harold A. Penser la tolérance durant l’Antiquité tardive. (Peter Van
Nuffelen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Dunphy, Walter. The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace
and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. (Stuart Squires) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Eldevik, John. Das Alexandrinische Schisma: in Briefen und Ideenwelt des Arnulf
von Lisieux und Johannes von Salisbury. (Isabel Blumenroth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
Farooq, Jennifer. National Thanksgivings and Ideas of Britain, 1689–1816. (Warren
Johnston) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Fattori, Maria Teresa. Muratori tra storia e religione. Atti della Giornata di studi
muratoriani, Modena, 3 novembre 2020. (Fabio Marri, ed.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

857

Forster, Marc R. Images of Purgatory: Studies in Religious Imagination and
Innovation (The Czech Lands, 1600–1800). (Tomáš Malý and Pavel Suchánek) . . 205
Franklin-Lyons, Adam. The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and
Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia. (Abigail Agresta) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
Freeman, Christopher. Last Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century.
(Katherine Allen Smith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Frizzell, Lawrence. The History of Galilee, 1538–1949: Mysticism, Modernization,
and War. (Matthew M. Silver) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Gabriele, Matthew. Flodoard of Rhemies and the Writing of History in the Tenth
Century. (Edward Roberts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778
Galban, Clemens Timothy, Can. Reg. Instruktionen und Ordnungen der
Stiftsherrschaft Klosterneuburg: Quellen zur Verwaltung sowie zur Landund Forstwirtschaft einer geistlichen Grundherrschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit.
(Edited by Josef Löffler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
Glasenapp, John, O.S.B. Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century:
Hildegard’s Illuminated “Scivias.” (Margot E. Fassler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779
Gleeson, David T. John Moore: Catholic Pastoral Leadership During Florida’s
First Boom, 1877–1901. (Michael J. McNally) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
Graney, Christopher M. The Incomparable Monsignor: Francesco Bianchini’s world of
science, history, and court intrigue. (John L. Heilbron) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Griech-Polelle, Beth A. Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance.
(James Bernauer, S.J.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Haberski, Raymond, Jr. American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National
Identity, 1860–1920. (Benjamin J. Wetzel) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Heimann, Mary. Religious Vitality in Victorian London. (William M. Jacob) . . . . . . . . . 417
Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia. Evangelisation, Conversion and Propaganda in the Global
World of the Early Modern Period. (Giuseppe Capriotti, Pierre-Antoine
Fabre, and Sabina Pavone) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Houliston, Victor. British and Irish Religious Orders in Europe, 1560–1800:
Conventuals, Mendicants, and Monastics in Motion. (Edited by Cormac
Begadon and James E. Kelly) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Hudon, William V. Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact. (Virginia Cox
and Shannon McHugh) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Hudon, William V. Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation.
(Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Hunt, John M. Giannettino Doria: Cardinale della Corona Spagnola (1573–1642).
(Fabrizio D’Avenia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Johnson, Scott. The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma, Christian Asceticism,
and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine. (Johannes Hahn and
Volker Menze) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Johnson-White, Rachel M. Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century:
Catholic Christian Democrats in Europe and the Americas. (Edited by
Wolfram Kaiser and Piotr H. Kosicki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618

858

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

Karrer, Robert N. Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J.
Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. (Frederick W. Marks) . . . . . . . . . . 222
Keen, Ralph. Glaube(n) im Disput: Neuere Forschungen zu den altgläubigen
Kontroversisten des Reformationszeitalters. (Karl-Heinz Braun,
Wilbirgis Klaiber, and Christoph Moos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Keen, Ralph. Latomus and Luther: The Debate: Is Every Good Deed a Sin? (Anna Vind) . . 800
Kelly, James E. Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700: Suppression, Migration,
and Reintegration. (Bronagh Ann McShane) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Klejment, Anne. Seeing Jesus in the Eyes of the Oppressed: A History of Franciscans
Working for Peace and Justice. (Paul T. Murray) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Knox, Lezlie. Dominicans and Franciscans in Medieval Rome: History, Architecture,
and Art. (Joan Barclay Lloyd) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783
Kolb, Robert. Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition. (Nelson H.
Minnich and Michael Root) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Kunicki, Mikołaj. Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and ‘Revolution,’
1891–1956. (Piotr H. Kosicki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Larson, Atria A. The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179: Their Origins
and Reception. (Danica Summerlin); Papal Jurisprudence c. 400: Sources of the
Canon Law Tradition; (David L. d’Avray); Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234:
Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law. (David L. d’Avray) . . . . . . . 773
Lerner, Robert E. The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417: Performing Legitimacy,
Performing Unity. (Joëlle Rollo-Koster) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Lippiatt, Gregory. Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church: The Career of
Philippe of Cahors. (William Chester Jordan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Long, David P. A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought. (Juan R. Velez) . . 811
Mallon, Elias D. The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality. (Marshall J. Breger and
Herbert R. Reginbogin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 812
Matter, Edith Ann. Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community Among
the Nuns of Helfta. (Anna Harrison); The Memorial of the Abundance of the
Divine Sweetness. (Alexandra Barratt, trans. and ed.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784
McCartin, James P. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist,
Feminist. (Donna T. Haverty-Stacke) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
McCartin, James P. Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and
Twentieth-Century French Politics. (Sarah Shortall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
Mcmahon, Darrin M. Berruyer’s Bible: Public Opinion and the Politics of
Enlightenment Catholicism in France. (Daniel J. Watkins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Meens, Rob. Embodying the Soul. Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe.
(Meg Leja) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Mercieca, Simon. La saluberrima auctoritas del sinodo: il tracciato della sinodalitá al
tempo di Agostino d’Ippona. (Giuseppe Di Corrado) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Monfasani, John. Peter de Rivo on Chronology and the Calendar. (Edited by
Matthew S. Champion, Serena Masolini, and C. Philipp E. Nothaft) . . . . . . . . . 604

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

859

Moore, Cecilia A. Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the
American South. (Barbara E. Mattick) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823
Moore, Rebecca. Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic
Aid to Jews under the Occupation]. (Limore Yagil) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Murphy, Paul V. Egidio Foscarari—Giovanni Morone: Carteggio durante l’ultima
fase del Concilio di Trento (1561–1563). (Matteo Al Kalak) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Newitt, Malyn. Catholicism and the Making of Politics in Central Mozambique
1940–1986. (Eric Morier-Genoud) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
Nicot, Yves Bernardo Roger Solis. La disputa del pasado: España, México y la
Leyenda Negra. (Edited by Emilio Lamo de Espinosa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
Nieto-Isabel, Defil I. Le ‘catharisme’ en questions. (Jean-Louis Biget et al.) . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Nogar, Anna M. Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State,
1692–1800. (Suzanne M. Stamatov) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Noll, Mark A. Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political
Resistance, 1750–1776. (Gary L. Steward) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622
O’Daly, Irene. Intellectual Dynamism of the High Middle Ages. (Edited by Clare
Monagle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
Pack, Sasha D. Las reliquias de Santiago: documentos fundamentales de la reinventio
de 1879. (Antón M. Pazos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
Paxton, Jennifer. The Cartulary-Chronicle of St-Pierre of Bèze. (Edited by Constance
Brittain Bouchard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Peixoto, Michael. L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312).
(Damien Carraz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Pollard, John. Santa Sede e Cattolici nel Mondo Postbellico, 1918–1922: Raccolta di
Studi nel Centenario della conclusione della Prima Guerra Mondiale. (Edited by
Agostino Marc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
Portier, William L. Ingrained Habits: Growing Up Catholic in Mid-TwentiethCentury America. (Mary Ellen O’Donnell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Powell, Austin. Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics: Disputed Sanctity and Communal
Identity in Late Medieval Italy. (Janine Larmon Peterson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Putney, Clifford. Titus Coan: ‘Apostle to the Sandwich Islands. (Phil Corr) . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Reinhard, Wolfgang. A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal. (Hollingsworth,
Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Romig, Andrew. Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire: Paschasius Radbertus’
Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie (Mayke de Jong and Justin Lake) . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Romig, Andrew. Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire: Paschasius Radbertus’
Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie. (Mayke de Jong and Justin Lake) . . . . . . . . . . 396
Schettini, Glauco. Lodovico Antonio Muratori: Religione e politica nel Settecento.
(Mario Rosa and Matteo Al Kalak) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806
Schneider, Julia A. The Medieval Dominicans: Books, Buildings, Music, and Liturgy.
(Eleanor J. Giraud and Christian Thomas Leitmeir) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

860

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Schwaller, John F. Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María Family in
Early Modern Spain. (Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Shantz, Douglas H. Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community,
1722–1732. (Paul Peucker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Shell, Alison. Mysticism in Early Modern England. (Liam Peter Temple) . . . . . . . . . . . 804
Solari, Amara. Aztec and Maya Apocalypses: Old World Tales of Doom in a New
World Setting. (Mark Z. Christensen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Solera, Dennj. L’Inquisizione romana a Imola. Processi, Vols. I–II: (1551–1592).
(Edited by Giacomo Mariani, con prefazione di Adriano Prosperi e
postfazione di Mons. Alejandro Cifres) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
Sperber, Jonathan. The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage,
1832–1937. (Skye Doney) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Spinello, Richard A. The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the
Dramatic End of the Cold War. (Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando) . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Stowe, Kenneth. Intimate Strangers: A History of Jews and Catholics in the City of
Rome. (Fredric Brandfon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Talar, Charles J. T. The Bible and the Crisis of Modernism: Catholic Criticism in the
Twenteith Century. (Tomáš Petráček. Translated by David Livingstone and
Addison Hart) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Tanner, Heather J. Courting Sanctity: Holy Women and the Capetians. (Sean Field) . . . . 599
Trigger, Joseph W. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. (Peter Brown) . . . . . . . . . . . 768
Tolan, John. A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of
Righteousness in the Crusading Near East. (Uri Zvi Shachar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Välimäki, Reima. Pastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany:
Albert of Diessen’s Mirror of Priests. (Deanna Copeland Klepper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Vincenzo, Lavenia. Del Santo Uffizio in Sicilia e delle sue carceri. (Giovanna Fiume) . . . . 801
Veronese, Francesco. Rathier de Vérone. Lecteur, remanieur et centonisateur.
(François Dolbeau) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776
Ward, Kevin. Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial
Uganda. (Jonathan Earle and Jay J. Carney) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 827
Watkins, Daniel. Callings and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational
Culture in Early Modern France. (Christopher J. Lane) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
Wedig, Mark E., O.P. Dominicus hispanus: Saint Dominique avant la fondation
de l’ordre des Prêcheurs. (Adeline Rucquoi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780
Weigel, George. The Pope in Poland: The Pilgrimages of John Paul II, 1979–1991.
(James Ramon Felak) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Weinreich, Spencer J. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign
of Philip II. (Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Whaley, Joachim. Ein Fürstenleben zwischen Alltag und Aufruhr: Die französische
Korrespondenz (1772–1801) des letzten Salzburger Fürsterbischofs Hieronymus
Colloredo mit seinem Bruder Gundaker. (Elisabeth Lobenwein). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

861

Whitehead, Maurice. The Years of Jesuit Suppression, 1773–1814: Survival,
Setbacks, and Transformation. (Paul Shore) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Wicks, Jared, S.J. Il Concilio Vaticano II e i suoi protagonisti alla luce degli archivi.
(Philippe Chenaux and Kiril Plamen Kartaloff, eds) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
Wicks, Jared, S.J. The “Sense of the Faith” in History: Its Sources, Reception, and
Theology. (John J. Burkhard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168, 385
Winkler, Emily A. Writing History in the Community of St. Cuthbert, c. 700–1130:
From Bede to Symeon of Durham. (Charles C. Rozier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Worcester, Thomas, S.J. From Ignatius to Francis: The Jesuits in History. (Matt Walsh) . . 771
Worcester, Thomas, S.J. Jesuit Art. (Mia M. Mochizuki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Yeager, Jonatha. The Religious Formation of John Witherspoon: Calvinism,
Evangelicalism, and the Scottish Enlightenment. (Kevin DeYoung) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822
Yirga, Felege-Selam. Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with
Latin Europe. (Verena Krebs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
Young, Julia G. A Christian Revolution: Dialogues on Social Justice and Democracy
Between Europe and the Americas (1945–1965). (Edited by Marta Busani and
Paolo Valvo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639

BOOK REVIEWS—BY BOOK AUTHOR
Agresta, Abigail. The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in
Late Medieval Valencia. (Adam Franklin-Lyons) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
Ahrens, Jehoschua. Gemeinsam gegen Antisemitismus—Die Konferenz von Seelisberg
(1947) revisited. Die Entstehung des institutionellen Jüdisch-christlichren
Dialogs in der Schweiz und in Kontinentaleuropa. (Victoria Barnett) . . . . . . . . . . . . 815
Albi, Christopher. Gamboa’s World: Justice, Silver Mining, and Imperial Reform
in New Spain. (Charles Cutter) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 824
Allen Smith, Katherine. Last Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century.
(Christopher Freeman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Barclay Lloyd, Joan. Dominicans and Franciscans in Medieval Rome: History,
Architecture, and Art. (Lezlie Knox) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783
Biller, Peter and Lucy J. Sackville. Inquisition and Knowledge 1200–1700.
(Katherine Aron-Beller) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
Begadon, Cormac and James E. Kelly, eds. British and Irish Religious Orders in
Europe, 1560–1800: Conventuals, Mendicants, and Monastics in Motion.
(Victor Houliston) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Berg, Scott. Finding Order in Diversity. Religious Toleration in the Habsburg
Empire, 1792–1848. (Nigel Aston) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Bernauer, James, S.J. Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance.
(Beth A. Grieche-Polelle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Biget, Jean-Louis, et al.. Le ‘catharisme’ en questions. (Defil I. Nieto-sabel) . . . . . . . . . . 397
Blumenroth, Isabel. Das Alexandrinische Schisma: in Briefen und Ideenwelt des
Arnulf von Lisieux und Johannes von Salisbury. (John Eldevik) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

862

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

Brittain Bouchard, Constance, ed. The Cartulary-Chronicle of St-Pierre of Bèze.
(Jennifer Paxton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Brandfon, Fredric. Intimate Strangers: A History of Jews and Catholics in the City
of Rome. (Kenneth Stowe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
Braun, Karl-Heinz, Wilbirgis Klaiber, and Christoph Moos. Glaube(n) im
Disput: Neuere Forschungen zu den altgläubigen Kontroversisten des
Reformationszeitalters. (Ralph Keen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Brett, Donna Whitson and Edward T. Brett. Martyrs of Hope: Seven U.S.
Missioners in Central America. (Michael J. Cangemi) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Breger, Marshall J. and Herbert R. Reginbogin. The Vatican and Permanent
Neutrality. (Elias D. Mallon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 812
Brown, Peter. Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History. (Joseph W. Trigg) . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
Burkhard, John J. The “Sense of the Faith” in History: Its Sources, Reception, and
Theology. (Jared Wicks, S.J.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168, 385
Busani, Marta and Paolo Valvo, eds. A Christian Revolution: Dialogues on Social
Justice and Democracy Between Europe and the Americas (1945–1965).
(Julia G. Young) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Bauer, Stefan. The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance
and Catholic Reform. (William J. Connell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Calvo-Quirós, William A. Undocumented Saints: The Politics of Migrating Devotions.
(Andrew R. Chestnut) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
Carraz, Damien. L’Ordre du Temple dans la Basse Vallée du Rhône (1124–1312).
(Michael Peixoto) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Cassidy-Welch, Megan, ed. Remembering the Crusades and Crusading.
(John Cotts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400, 600
Capriotti, Giuseppe, Pierre-Antoine Fabre, and Sabina Pavone. Evangelisation,
Conversion and Propaganda in the Global World of the Early Modern Period.
(Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Çelik, Siren. Manuel II Palaiologos (1350–1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time
of Tumult. (Aslihan Akişik-Karakullukçu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
Champion, Matthew S., Serena Masolini, and C. Philipp E. Nothaft. Peter de
Rivo on Chronology and the Calendar. (John Monfasani) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
Chenaux, Philippe and Kiril Plamen Kartaloff, eds. Il Concilio Vaticano II e i suoi
protagonisti alla luce degli archivi. (Jared Wicks, S.J.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 816
Chowning, Margaret. Catholic Women and Mexican Politics, 1750–1940. (Ricardo
Álvarez-Pimentel) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633
Christensen, Mark Z. Aztec and Maya Apocalypses: Old World Tales of Doom in a
New World Setting. (Amara Solari) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Christopoulos, John. Abortion in Early Modern Italy. (Christopher F. Black) . . . . . . . . . 797
Copeland Lepper, Deanna. Pastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany:
Albert of Diessen’s Mirror of Priests. (Reima Välimäki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Corr, Phil. Titus Coan: ‘Apostle to the Sandwich Islands. (Clifford Putney) . . . . . . . . . . . 433

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

863

Di Corrado, Giuseppe. La saluberrima auctoritas del sinodo: il tracciato della
sinodalitá al tempo di Agostino d’Ippona. (Simon Mercieca) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Cox, Virginia and Shannon McHugh. Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact.
(William V. Hudon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
D’Andrea, David and Salvatore Marino. Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art,
Politics, and Religion (1100–1800). (Diane Cole Ahl) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
D’Avenia, Fabrizio. Giannettino Doria: Cardinale della Corona Spagnola (1573–1642).
(John M. Hunt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
DeYoung, Kevin. Yeager, Jonatha. The Religious Formation of John Witherspoon:
Calvinism, Evangelicalism, and the Scottish Enlightenment. (Jonathan Yeager) . . . . 822
Dolbeau, François. Rathier de Vérone. Lecteur, remanieur et centonisateur. (Francesco
Veronsese) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776
Domínguez, Freddy Cristóbal. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During
the Reign of Philip II. (Spencer J. Weinreich) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Doney, Skey. The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937.
(Jonathan Sperber) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Dzubinski, Leanne M. and Anneke H. Stasson. Women in the Mission of the
Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles throughout Christian History.
(Margaret Bendroth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Earle, Jonathan and Jay J. Carney. Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and
the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda. (Kevin Ward) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 827
Emilio Lamo de Espinosa, ed. La disputa del pasado: España, México y la
Leyenda Negra. (Yves Bernardo Roger Solis Nicot) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630
Glasenapp, John, O.S.B. Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century:
Hildegard’s Illuminated “Scivias.” (Margot E. Fassler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779
Felak, James Ramon. The Pope in Poland: The Pilgrimages of John Paul II, 1979–1991.
(George Weigel) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Fiume, Giovanna. Del Santo U

(Lavenia Vincenzo) . . . . 801

García, Alberto. Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration
in Mexico. (Jason Dormandy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
Giraud, Eleanor J. and Christian Thomas Leitmeir. The Medieval Dominicans: Books,
Buildings, Music, and Liturgy. (Julia A. Schneider) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Geltner, Guy. Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval
Italy. (Sally Mayall Brasher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Hahn, Johannes and Volker Menze. The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma,
Christian Asceticism, and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine.
(Scott Johnson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Harrison, Anna. Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community Among the
Nuns of Helfta; Alexandra Barratt, trans. and ed., The Memorial of the
Abundance of the Divine Sweetness. (Edith Ann Matter) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 784
Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist,
Feminist. (James P. McCartin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

864

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Heilbron, John L. The Incomparable Monsignor: Francesco Bianchini’s world of
science, history, and court intrigue. (Christopher M. Graney) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Ho, Joseph W. Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American
Missionaries in Modern China. (Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642
Hunter, David G. and Jonathan P. Yates, eds.. Augustine and Tradition: Influences,
Contexts, Legacy. (James Columcille Dever) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
Jacob, William M. Religious Vitality in Victorian London. (Mary Heimann) . . . . . . . . . . 417
Johnston, Warren. National Thanksgivings and Ideas of Britain, 1689–1816. (Jennifer
Farooq) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Jones, Linda Carol. The Shattered Cross: French Catholic Missionaries on the
Mississippi River, 1698–1725. (Carole Blackburn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621
de Jong, Mayke and Justin Lake. Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire:
Paschasius Radbertus’ Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie (Andrew Romig) . . . . . . . 181
de Jong, Mayke and Justin Lake. Confronting Crisis in the Carolingian Empire:
Paschasius Radbertus’ Funeral Oration for Wala of Corbie. (Andrew Romig) . . . . . . 396
Jordan, William Chester. Servant of the Crown and Steward of the Church:
The Career of Philippe of Cahors. (Gregory Lippiatt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Kaiser, Wolfram and Piotr H. Kosicki, eds. Political Exile in the Global Twentieth
Century: Catholic Christian Democrats in Europe and the Americas. (Rachel M.
Johnson-White) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Al Kalak, Matteo. Egidio Foscarari—Giovanni Morone: Carteggio durante l’ultima
fase del Concilio di Trento (1561–1563). (Paul V. Murphy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Kalas, Gregor and Ann van Dijk. Urban Developments in Late Antique and
Medieval Rome: Revisiting the Narrative of Renewal. (Douglas Boin) . . . . . . . . . . 173
Keeley, Theresa. Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War
Human Rights Policy in Central America. (Joseph P. Chinnici) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Kelly, James E. and Susan Royal. Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity,
Memory and Counter-Reformation. (Freddy Dominguez) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 798
Kengor, Paul and Robert Orlando. The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan,
and the Dramatic End of the Cold War. (Richard A. Spinello) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Kolpacoff, Jennifer Deane and Anne E. Lester. Between Orders and Heresy:
Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements. (Johan Belaen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781
Körbs, Patrick. Die Sorge der Päpste um den Frieden: Eine ethische Analyse der
Botschaften zum Weltfriedenstag. (Mariano Barbato) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Kosicki, Piotr H. Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and ‘Revolution,’
1891–1956. (Mikołaj Kunicki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Krebs, Verena. Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin
Europe. (Felege-Selam Yirga) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
Lane, Christopher J. Callings and Consequences: The Making of Catholic Vocational
Culture in Early Modern France. (Daniel Watkins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 805
Lee, Christina H. Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early
Spanish Rule. (Florina H. Capistrano-Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

INDEX TO VOLUME 109 (2023)

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Leja, Meg. Embodying the Soul. Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe.
(Rob Meens) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Lobenwein, Elisabeth. Ein Fürstenleben zwischen Alltag und Aufruhr: Die
französische Korrespondenz (1772–1801) des letzten Salzburger Fürsterbischofs
Hieronymus Colloredo mit seinem Bruder Gundaker. (Joachim Whaley) . . . . . . . . . . 610
Löffler, Josef, ed. Instruktionen und Ordnungen der Stiftsherrschaft Klosterneuburg:
Quellen zur Verwaltung sowie zur Land- und Forstwirtschaft einer geistlichen
Grundherrschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit. (Can. Reg. Clemens Timothy Galban) . . . 609
Malý, Tomáš and Pavel Suchánek. Images of Purgatory: Studies in Religious
Imagination and Innovation (The Czech Lands, 1600–1800).
(Marc R. Forster) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Marc, Agostino, ed. Santa Sede e Cattolici nel Mondo Postbellico, 1918–1922:
Raccolta di Studi nel Centenario della conclusione della Prima Guerra Mondiale.
(John Pollard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
Mariani, Giacomo, ed., con prefazione di Adriano Prosperi e postfazione di Mons.
Alejandro Cifres. L’Inquisizione romana a Imola. Processi, Vols. I–II:
(1551–1592). (Dennj Solera) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
Marks, Frederick W. Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J.
Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. (Robert N. Karrer) . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Martínez-Dávila, Roger Louis. Creating Conversos: The Carvajal-Santa María
Family in Early Modern Spain. (John F. Schwaller) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Marri, Fabio, ed. Muratori tra storia e religione. Atti della Giornata di studi
muratoriani, Modena, 3 novembre 2020. (Maria Teresa Fattori) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 808
Mattick, Barbara E. Teaching in Black and White: The Sisters of St. Joseph in the
American South. (Cecilia A. Moore) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823
McKitterick, Rosamond, Dorine van Espelo, Richard Pollard, and Richard Price.
Codex Epistolaris Carolinus: Letters from the Popes to the Frankish Rulers,
739–791. (Sam Collins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
McNally, Michael J. John Moore: Catholic Pastoral Leadership During Florida’s
First Boom, 1877–1901. (David T. Gleeson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
McShane, Bronagh Ann. Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700: Suppression,
Migration, and Reintegration. (James E. Kelly) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Minnich, Nelson H. and Michael Root. Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic
Tradition. (Robert Kolb) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Mochizuki, Mia M. Jesuit Art. (Thomas Worcester, S.J.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Monagle, Clare, ed. Intellectual Dynamism of the High Middle Ages. (Irene O’Daly) . . . . 601
Morier-Genoud, Eric. Catholicism and the Making of Politics in Central Mozambique
1940–1986. (Malyn Newitt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 825
Mungello, David E. This Suffering Is My Joy: The Underground Church in
Eighteenth-Century China. (Anthony E. Clark) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Murat, Zuleika and Paolo Vedovetto, eds. Il patriarcato di Aquileia: Identità,
liturgia e arte (secoli (V–XV). (Thomas Dale) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592

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Murray, Paul T. Seeing Jesus in the Eyes of the Oppressed: A History of
Franciscans Working for Peace and Justice. (Anne Klejment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Murray, Stephen. Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral.
(Michael T. Davis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Nicoli, Miriam and Franca Cleis. Un’illusione di femminile semplicità. Gli Annali
delle Orsoline di Bellinzona (1730–1848). (Prudence Renée Baernstein) . . . . . . . . . 809
Van Nuffelen, Peter. Penser la tolérance durant l’Antiquité tardive. (Harold A. Drake) . . 394
O’Donnell, Mary Ellen. Ingrained Habits: Growing Up Catholic in Mid-TwentiethCentury America. (William L. Portier) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Parker, Charles H. and Nathaniel Millett. Jesuits and Race: A Global History of
Continuity and Change. (Thomas M. Cohen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Pazos, Antón M. Las reliquias de Santiago: documentos fundamentales de la
reinventio de 1879. (Sasha D. Pack) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813
Peterson, Janine Larmon. Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics: Disputed Sanctity and
Communal Identity in Late Medieval Italy. (Austin Powell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Petráček, Tomáš. Translated by David Livingstone and Addison Hart. The Bible
and the Crisis of Modernism: Catholic Criticism in the Twenteith Century.
(Charles J. T. Talar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Peucker, Paul. Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community, 1722–1732.
(Douglas H. Shantz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Peyronel Rambaldi, Susanna. Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian
Reformation. (William V. Hudon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Piehler, G. Kurt. A Religious History of the American GI in World War II. (Timothy
J. Demy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
Pruitt, Nicholas T. Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning
of Mainline Protestantism (Kristofer Allerfeldt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Ramos, Christina. Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of
Enlightenment. (Silvia Arrom) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
Randall, Catharine. A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley
Hopkins. (Philip Ballinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Rizzi, Michael T. America’s Jesuit Colleges and Universities: A History. (Bernard A.
Cook) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. The Great Western Schism, 1378–1417: Performing Legitimacy,
Performing Unity. (Robert E. Lerner) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Roberts, Edward. Flodoard of Rhemies and the Writing of History in the Tenth
Century. (Matthew Gabriele) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778
Rosa, Mario and Matteo Al Kalak. Lodovico Antonio Muratori: Religione e politica
nel Settecento. (Glauco Schettini) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806
Rozier, Charles C. Writing History in the Community of St. Cuthbert, c. 700–1130:
From Bede to Symeon of Durham. (Emily E. Winkler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Rucquoi, Adeline. Dominicus hispanus: Saint Dominique avant la fondation de
l’ordre des Prêcheurs. (Mark E. Wedig, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 780

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Sachsenmaier, Dominic. Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled:
A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds.
(Liam Matthew Brockey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
De Santis, Veronica and Giovanni Terragni. Carteggio Scalabrini e Zaboglio
(1886–1904). (Mateo Binasco) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Shachar, Uri Zvi. A Pious Belligerence: Dialogical Warfare and the Rhetoric of
Righteousness in the Crusading Near East. (John Tolan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Shore, Paul. The Years of Jesuit Suppression, 1773–1814: Survival, Setbacks, and
Transformation. (Maurice Whitehead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Shortall, Sarah. Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and
Twentieth-Century French Politics. (James P. McCartin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
Silver, Matthew M. The History of Galilee, 1538–1949: Mysticism, Modernization,
and War. (Lawrence Frizzell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Slattery, John P. Faith and Science at Notre Dame: John Zahm, Evolution, and the
Catholic Church. (R. Scott Appleby) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
Smelyansky, Eugene. Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval
German Cities. (Michael D. Bailey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
Spacey, Beth C. The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative (Andrew
D. Buck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Squires, Stuart. The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace
and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. (Walter Dunphy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Stamatov, Suzanne M. Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church,
and State, 1692–1800. (Anna M. Nogar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Steward, Gary L. Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political
Resistance, 1750–1776. (Mark. A Noll) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622
Stephens Falcasantos, Rebecca. Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory
in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital. (Sarah Bassett) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Summerlin, Danica. The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179: Their Origins
and Reception; David L. d’Avray, Papal Jurisprudence c. 400: Sources of the
Canon Law Tradition; David L. d’Avray, Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234:
Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law. (Atria A. Larson) . . . . . . . . . 773
Temple, Liam Peter. Mysticism in Early Modern England. (Alison Shell) . . . . . . . . . . . 804
Tilley, Maureen and Boniface Ramsey. The Donatist Controversy. (J. Patout
Burns, Jr.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Velez, Juan R. A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought.
(David P. Long) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811
Vind, Anna. Latomus and Luther: The Debate: Is Every Good Deed a Sin? (Ralph Keen) . . 800
Walker, Jennifer. Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transforming Catholicism Through
the Music of Third Republic Paris. (Joseph F. Byrnes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Walsh, Matt. From Ignatius to Francis: The Jesuits in History. (Thomas Worcester, S.J.) . . 771
Walsh, Sarah. The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile.
(Rosa Bruno-Jofré) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

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Watkins, Daniel J. Berruyer’s Bible: Public Opinion and the Politics of Enlightenment
Catholicism in France. (Darrin M. McMahon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Wetzel, Benjamin J. American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity,
1860–1920. (Raymond Haberski Jr.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Woell, Edward J. Confiscating the Common Good: Small Towns and Religious
Politics in the French Revolution. (Joseph Byrnes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Yagil, Limore. Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic Aid to
Jews under the Occupation]. (Rebecca Moore) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

OBITUARIES
Lupon, Brendan. Reverend Martin Zielinski (April 4, 1952–June 25, 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . 834
McGuinness, Margaret M. Sister Margaret Philomena Gannon, I.H.M.
(Sister Mary Anina) (June 2, 1937–October 24, 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Minnich, Nelson H. Monsignor Robert F.Trisco (November 11, 1929–July 29, 2023) . . . 447
Trisco, Robert. Reverend Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley (May 4, 1937–November 14,
2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Watkins, Daniel J. Dale K. Van Kley (July 31, 1941–March 14, 2023) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441