Abstract: Between 1414 and 1418, an exceptionally large number of delegates coming from all over Europe met on the shores of the Bodensee with the threefold aim to end the schism that had divided Western Christendom for thirty-six years, to fight heresy, and to reform the Church in head and members.1 The Council of Constance was a crucial moment in the history of Pre-Reformation Europe, as it meant the coming together of the political, religious, and intellectual elites of the time, and became the arena of an extraordinary exchange of texts and ideas that substantially contributed—together with the later Councils of Basel and Ferrara–Florence—to the reshaping of the cultural framework of early modern Europe. In particular ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In recent years, historians have judged the early modern English Catholic community to be far more "international" than "insular," reassessing the impact of exile, diaspora, and cross-border networks and diplomacy.1 This historiographical revision gave rise to newer interpretations of a "Catholic International" or "International Catholicism,"2 and an important, if not crucial, role has been attributed to books, the printing press, and the clandestine book trade in connecting the British Isles to the wider Catholic world.3 Alexandra Walsham championed this new interpretation, first demonstrating how books produced on the continent came to function as "dumb preachers" for Catholic audiences in England, and more ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In his Book of Antiquity (Libro de la antigvedad, 1599), Tomás Sánchez Dávila, O.C.D. (Baeza 1564–Rome 1627) states that when he started writing a history of the Carmelite Order, the impulse that most moved him to this task was its geographical origin.1 The Order's origin in far Syria caused western writers ("latinos") to ignore its genealogy. In this allegedly great mistake, the Carmelites themselves shared responsibility. They had neglected their past and made no effort to assimilate the order's antiquity into Western Europe.2 His prose reveals a concern: the collective urgency to strongly affirm the past of the Discalced Carmelites. It is possible to trace, with relative certainty, the beginning of the Discalced ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Several decades after the Haitian revolution (1791–1804) that created Haiti out of the colony of Saint Domingue, a group of lay Catholics founded a religious confraternity on the northwest coast of Haiti.1 For these lay people, the confraternity served as an institution for mutual aid and fellowship as well as communal worship. All around them in Haiti, the Catholic Church was expanding in new ways. Many priests and religious had fled the island during the revolution, but Haitians did not abandon their churches. The lay association met in Notre Dame de l'Assomption, the colonial-era church in the main square of Cap-Haïtien (previously Cap-Française, also known as Le Cap).2 Confraternity members could see the sky ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The involvement of Catholic laity in the spiritual and material management of local churches is one of the elements that have defined the Catholic Church in the United States for a long time. As a result, the topic has received notable attention in the past.1 Nevertheless, studies have often limited their attention to the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. Historians have thus not considered Italian immigrants, believing that conflicts arising from lay involvement had ceased by the time Italians began arriving on American shores (1876–1921) and so did not affect that group.2The aim of this article is to contribute to the historical understanding of the evolution of the ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This is the first comprehensive study of the life and thought of the enigmatic figure Gabriele Biondo (ca. 1445–1511), the youngest of the famous humanist Flavio Biondo's five sons. It is enriched with a detailed survey of his surviving manuscripts and a transcription / critical edition of his three most importatnt treatises: the De meditatione et deceptionibus (1492); fragments from the Ricordo (1498) and its complete Latin translation the Commentarius (1503); and the De amore proprio (1502–06). This monograph is an expansion of Lodone's 2012 thesis on the latter treatise at the Scuola Normale Pisa under Franco Bacchelli who encouraged him to expand on earlier studies of Gabriele conducted by Augusto Campana (on ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This book offers an insightful and eminently readable account of the reading habits of German Catholics between the Enlightenment and the First World War, as well as the ill-fated attempts of church officials to control those habits. Growing out of the author's award-winning 2002 dissertation, the book was many years in the making. It was well worth the wait.Zalar's main argument is that existing historiography has failed to accurately portray the lived experiences of German Catholics due to an excessive focus on the theoretical construct of the Catholic "milieu." The milieu paradigm, according to Zalar, has portrayed Catholics as largely passive members of a hermetically sealed subculture within German society ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Catholic Confederates, by college instructor and novelist Gracian Kraszewski, is the second entry in Kent State University's The Civil War in the South series. It has a select bibliography, extensive endnotes, index, and an appendix of biographical sketches. It also includes a centerpiece of contemporary illustrations, mostly portrait photographs, of notable Catholics from the short-lived Confederacy. Kraszewski's examination of the Catholic commitment to the Confederacy is based upon his thesis of 'Confederatization.' This was a process of replacing old ethnic identities with a new Confederate one while not negating Catholic faith. This conflicts with the widely held concept of Americanization within Catholic ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In light of the continuing public health crisis, the American Catholic Historical Association has regretfully cancelled the in-person annual conference originally scheduled for Seattle, January 2021. The ACHA earlier cancelled its Spring Meeting at the University of Scranton, originally scheduled for April 17–18, 2020. The public health emergency presented by COVID-19 closed the University of Scranton campus until at least April 12 and made holding any gathering impractical and inadvisable. As an alternative to the Annual Meeting, the Program Committee and Executive Council have planned a series of four webinars drawn from accepted panels for the Annual Meeting. The ACHA Annual Business Meeting will take place ... Read More PubDate: 2020-11-25T00:00:00-05:00