Search

ASSOCIATION NEWS The American Catholic Historical Association invites submissions on any topic relevant to the study of Catholicism for its 105th Annual Meeting in New York City, taking place Friday, [...]

Ever since 1960, when he was appointed associate editor of the Catholic Historical Review, Msgr. Robert F. Trisco has been a towering figure at the journal. He was promoted to [...]

Konzil in der Perspektive: Heribert Schauf und sein Tagebuch zum II. Vaticanum (1960-1965). Edited by Dominik Burkhard und Joachim Burkle (Munster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2022. Pp. 525. [euro] 69. ISBN: 978-3-402-24867-6.) [...]

Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History. Edited by Matthew Rowley and Natasha Hodgson (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. Pp. 253. $44.95. ISBN: 978-0-367-76728-0.) [...]

American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era. By Robert Emmett Curran. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2023. Pp. x, 458. $60.00. ISBN 9780807179307.) The [...]

Introduction An important consequence of the Second World War was the changes in state borders. In the case of Poland, the new delimitations had a significant impact on the administrative [...]

Debates over the role of the state in Catholic education rocked both the United States and Canada during the early-to-mid 1890s. Arguably the two most famous of these disputes--the 'Manitoba Schools Question' (1890-1897) and the 'Faribault Plan' (1890-1893) in Minnesota--unfolded alongside one another in neighboring polities. Both centered on whether Catholic schools could receive taxpayer funding and whether they should be recognized as public institutions. This article explores cross-border press coverage of them to demonstrate their deep top-down and bottom-up ties. It argues they represent two sides of a broader, intertwined late nineteenth-century North American Catholic Schools Question. Keywords: Manitoba Schools Question, Faribault Plan, American Protective Association, Canada, United States, Catholic Education, I. Introduction 'It Looks Like War.' So warned (and exaggerated) one front-page March 1895 newspaper article, describing how a long-simmering ethnoreligious and political controversy in Canada, known as the Manitoba [...]

Scholarly knowledge about the interplay of Wagnerian opera and British church history has advanced on an uneven front and has yet to reach lofty heights. Relatively little has been published about how Parsifal, Richard Wagner's final and arguably most religious opera, was perceived in the United Kingdom. The present study begins to fill that gap by investigating how a spectrum of British Catholics diversely debated such crucial themes as the extent to which Parsifal was a Christian work, the possible mimesis of the Mass in the Holy Grail scenes, the construction of the title character as a symbolic Christ figure, and whether the staging of this work, whose spiritual content was widely acknowledged, could appropriately be pe formed in a secular setting like the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Key words: Richard Wagner, opera, Parsifal, Covent Garden, British Catholicism, Introduction The reception and interpretations of Richard Wagner's controversial final opera, Parsifal, lie at the confluence of religious and music history. Debates about its spiritual content began before its premiere [...]

Dear Editor, Volume 108, issue 2 of the Catholic Historical Review published a lengthy review of my book The Shroud of Turin (Baylor University Press, 2019), written by 'independent scholar' [...]

At age eighty-five I have lived longer than I had ever imagined. I am also conscious of having long resisted the requests of friends who suggested I write some kind [...]

La Guera Rodriguez: The Life and Legends of a Mexican Independence Heroine. By Silvia Marina Arrom. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 250 pages. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-52-038342-5.) Over her distinguished [...]

Cold War Mary: Ideologies, Politics, Marian Devotional Culture. Edited by Peter Jan Margry. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020. Pp. 400. $65.00. ISBN: 978-9-46-270251-6.) On May 13, 1917, Eugenio Pacelli, the [...]

For God and Liberty: Catholicism and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1790-1861. By Pamela Voekel. (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2023. Notes, Bibliography. Index, xv, 403 pp. Paper, $29.99 [...]

A Priest Took a Stand against Cold War Anti-Communism (1948): Political Theology for Present-Day NATO Criticism. By Jean Boulier. (New York: Red Star-CW Publisher. 2023. Pp. 214. $9.00. ISBN: 978-0-97-641688-3.) [...]

The Survival of the Jesuits in the Low Countries, 1773-1850. Edited by Leo Kenis and Marc Lindeijer, S.J. [KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture, and Society, 25]. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, [...]

Alla ricerca di soluzioni. Nuova luce sul Concilio Lateranense V: Studiper i 500 anni del Concilio. Edited by Nelson H. Minnich [Collana del Pontifico Comitato di Scienze Storiche, Atti e [...]

Deza and Its Moriscos: Religion and Community in Early Modern Spain. By Patrick J. O'Banion. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2020. Pp. 378. $70. ISBN: 978-1-49-621672-4.) This carefully written [...]

Solo sermone: Uberlieferung und Deutung politischer Ansprachen der Papste im Mittelalter. By Georg Strack (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2022. Pp. 328. $75.28. ISBN: 978-3-447-11388-5.) Georg Strack's Solo sermone is the latest [...]

El Mercado Curial. Bulas y Negocios entre Roma y el Mundo Iberico en la Edad Moderna. By Antonio J. Diaz Rodriguez. (Universidad de Valladolid, 2020. Pp. 268. [euro]19. ISBN: 978-8-41-320113-9.) [...]

Eternal Ephemera: The Papal Possesso and Its Legacies in Early Modern Rome. Edited by Jennifer Mara DeSilva and Pascale Rihouet. (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020. Pp. 304. [...]

Pope Eugenius III (1145-1153): The First Cistercian Pope. Edited by Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt and Andrew Jotischky. [Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West series]. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. Pp. [...]

Publishing for the Popes: The Roman Curia and the Use of Printing (1527-1555). By Paolo Sachet. (Leiden / Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2020. Pp. xii, 306. $25.00. ISBN: 978-9-00-434864-6.) Papal [...]

Francis of Assisi. His Life, Vision and Companions. By Michael F. Cusato. (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2023). Pp. 224. $25.00. ISBN: 978-1-78-914783-4.) In the introduction to his latest contribution to [...]

Bonizo of Sutri: Portrait in a Landscape. By John A. Dempsey. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. Pp. 341. $125. ISBN: 978-1-7936-0823-9.) The book Bonizo of Sutri: Portrait in Landscape, [...]

Dives Episcopus: La signoria dei vescovi di Volterra nel Duecento. By Jacopo Paganelli (Rome: Viella, 2021. Pp. 216. $26.55. ISBN: 978-8-83-313796-4.) Ex professo, this book sets out to question and [...]

The Doctor of Mercy: The Sacred Treasures of St. Gregory of Narek. By Michael Papazian. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic. 2019. Pp. xxiii, 254. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8146-8501-3.) In 2015, Pope [...]

Political Ritual and Practice in Capetian France: Studies in Honour of Elizabeth A. R. Brown. Edited by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Jay Rubenstein. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Pp. 457. ISBN: 9782503593029.) [...]

Michael A. Motia, Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis. [Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion] (Philadelpia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 288. $69.95. ISBN: 978-0-81-225313-9.) [...]

The Jesuits: A History. By Markus Friedrich [translated by John Noel Dillon] (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2022. Pp. xviii, 855. $ 39.95. ISBN 9780691180120.) One might pick up The [...]

The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism. Edited by Bernice M. Kaczynski. [The Oxford Handbooks Series] (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 2020. Pp. xix, 722. $175.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-968973-6.) In keeping with [...]

Acs, Pal. Reformations in Hungary in the Age of the Ottoman Conquest. [Academic Studies, 52.] (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck 8c Ruprecht. 2019. Pp. 336. [euro]99,00, hardcover.) Addington, Catherine, trans. Saint Rafael Arnaiz: [...]

GENERAL Catalogues de manuscrits latins. Inventaire hagiographique (trente-neuvieme serie). Francois Dolbeau. Analecta Bollandiana, 141 (1, 2023), 161-64. Childbirth and Emerging Missionary Information: Networks in Britain and the South Pacific. Kate [...]

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 [...]

Il Concilia Vaticano II e i suoi protagonisti alla luce degli archivi. Edited by Philippe Chenaux and Kuril Plamen Kartaloff. [Ponticifio Comitato di Scienze Storiche, Atti e Documenti, Vol. 46] [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 plays 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} This incendiary play was premiered at the Free People's [...]

This article studies the participation of Juan Landazuri Ricketts, archbishop of Lima (Peru), in the Preparatory phase of Vatican II, as a member of the Central Preparatory Commission (CPC). It argues that Landdzuri'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. Landazuri 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 Landdzuri's participation in the conciliar preparatory phase. Keywords: Juan Landazuri 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 [...]

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, Amedee 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 [...]

The Reverend Ian Ker (1942-2022) Father Ian Ker died on November 5, 2022. He was a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. For thirty years, he was parish priest of [...]

American Catholicism Transformed: From the Cold War Through the Council. By Joseph P. Chinnici. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 461. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-19-757300-6). INTRODUCTION Joseph M. White [...]

This article places colonial Cuzco's Nombre de Jesus confraternity within early modern global history. The Nombre de Jesus served as a focal point for collaboration between Indigenous elites and Jesuit proselytizers in the old Inca capital. An ambiguous archive and forgeries related to the confraternity have led to sensationalist narratives about the confraternity. While compelling from the perspective of archival and forgery studies, this discussion ultimately distracts from a more thoroughly-grounded history of a mixed European and Indigenous institution. This article draws on evidence outside the forgeries to show how Indigenous mission history was globally connective and collaborative rather than European-dominated. Keywords: Jesuits, Missions, Peru, Ethnohistory, Atlantic History, Introduction In the Jesuit Order's central archive in Rome is a two-volume manuscript chronicle of the Society's history in Peru, dating to 1600. (1) About halfway down the page numbered [...]

Several publications are devoted to John Nepomucene Neumann (1811-60), bishop of Philadelphia and the first American male saint. The emphasis in these texts is mainly on his time in the United States since 1836. On the contrary, the time of his youth and maturation in Europe, in Bohemia, is somewhat neglected. However, his decision to pursue the priesthood, becoming a missionary, and going to the United States before receiving holy orders were the most significant events preceding everything else which followed in the young man's life. In the hagiographic and professional literature, these decisions are mentioned in various contexts and often contradict each other. Based on research from contemporary sources stored in European and American archives, this study shows the accurate chronology of Neumanns decisions, as well as their demonstrable causes, based not only on his decisions but also on the specific situation in his native Diocese of Budweis, and also complicated relations between the Catholic Church and the state. Keywords: John Nepomucene Neumann, missionary, priesthood, vocation, ordination, Introduction to the Topic Presenting in more detail the life of John Nepomucene Neumann (1811-60) is not so much needed in the Catholic environment. A native of Prachatice in South [...]

Two Austrian Dominicans, Albert Tschick and Franz Poschinger, belonged to Freemasonry in the 1780s. Although their shared interest in the Enlightenment led them to join, they took different paths as members of the association. The article outlines the brief biographies of the two Friars Preachers, sketches their development as Enlightenment preachers, and presents the Masonic period of their lives in the context of the history of Austrian Freemasonry. It contributes to a more nuanced view of the relationship of the Catholic clergy and the Friars Preachers to Freemasonry in the eighteenth century. Keywords: Freemasonry, Catholic Enlightenment, Dominican Order, Austria, Introduction The German Dominican friar Ludovicus Greinemann is quite well known in historical research because of his anti-Masonic sermons in Aachen in March, 1779, which contributed to a temporary closure [...]

This article examines the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, Italy during a siege in 1554-1555 to explore two related threads within the historiography of charity: the treatment and perception of abandoned children, and the intersection of hospitals and civic religion in a time of crisis. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, people viewed the hospital and its children as a reflection of Siena's piety and devotion to its patron saint. During the siege, the designation of the hospital's children as bocche inutili and the resulting perceptions of the city's failure in its peformance of charity towards abandoned children enabled the hospital's rector to use rhetoric around foundlings and charity to protest policy and negotiate resolutions. This incident allows us to see how, during times of crisis, abandoned children, through their physical presence in processions and as objects of rhetoric, could hold an important place in civic religious devotions and discourse. Keywords: charity, civic religion, foundlings, children, Siena, Introduction In early September of 1554, the Italian city of Siena found itself under a second month of siege and rapidly losing ground against the encroaching Spanish and Florentine forces. [...]

ROBERT FREDERICK TRISCO was born on 11 November 1929, the son of Richard Edward Trisco (1893-1981) and Harriet Rose Hardt (1902-52). His father was a construction superintendent who earlier worked [...]

GENERAL Collective memory and sanctity: the case of equivalent canonization. Marco Papasidero and Gabriele Vissio. Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 58 (1, 2022), 119-38. Vatican II: Bibliographical Survey 2019-2022. [...]

CAUSES OF SAINTS On March 23, 2023, Pope Francis declared six persons as venerable servants of God due to their heroic virtue: --Father Carlo Crespi Croci (1891-1982), a priest of [...]

Le 'catharisme' en questions. Edited by Jean-Louis Biget, Sylvie Caucanas, Michelle Fournie, and Daniel le Blevec. (Fanjeaux: Centre d'etudes historiques de Fanjeaux, 2020. [euro]30,00. ISBN: 97829568972.) Since the publication of [...]

This article examines Operation Migratory Labor (O.M.L.), a cross-border collaboration between the Mexican and United States Catholic hierarchies, guided by Vatican authorities, from 1953-1964, which brought Mexican priests into the United States to tend to Bracero migrants and to protect them from Protestant missionization. Employing Vatican sources in tandem with Mexican documentation, this article demonstrates the geopolitical ramifications of this surge of migration in distinctively religious terms. O.M.L. heralded a new era of transnational migratory pastoral care and revealed how intertwined the institutional and pastoral concerns of the Mexican Catholic Hierarchy were during the 1940s and 1950s. Keywords: Braceros Program [Mexican Farm Labor Program], Operation Migratory Labor, Mexican priests, Pius XII's Exsul Familia Nazarethana, Jose Garibi y Rivera, Robert E. Lucey, Introduction Wiry and thin-faced, Pastor Augustin Alvarez had a working day that began at sundown and sometimes lasted until 2:00 a.m. Born in Volcanes, Jalisco, Alvararez entered the seminary in [...]