Abstract: Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) shared few political goals with Italian patriot and radical republican Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82). A staunch believer in tradition and established institutions, Disraeli opposed the same revolutions Garibaldi championed and consistently advocated against British intervention in the Italian Risorgimento, the process of liberation and unification of the Italian peninsula. In the spring of 1870, however, the politicians found common ground, both choosing to publish anti-Catholic novels to the British public. In late February, Garibaldi published the English translation of his work Clelia o il governo dei preti under the title The Rule of ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In Hubert Jedin's seminal series on the history of the Catholic Church, volume seven discusses the Restoration and is written in part by Roger Aubert. Pope Pius VII and his Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi are portrayed in admirable terms. The pope, Aubert writes, "devoted the final nine years of his pontificate to laying a solid foundation for the rapid rise of the Church. … The effort of Pius VII and his successor Leo XII toward the reorganisation of the Church was the prerequisite for the revival of Catholic vitality."1 Aubert had in mind a more spiritual revival. On the day-to-day aspects of the Restoration, those that concern this study, Aubert devotes a meagre paragraph, on regaining lost properties.2 As ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In 1435 a Scottish Benedictine named Alexander Keith bought a missal from the market near the episcopal curia in Florence. We know nothing more of Alexander whose missal had another owner by 1452, except that the presence of a Scot in Florence during the fifteenth century was not an isolated incident.1 This is in spite of the contemporary image of Scotland among many Italians, if such a distant place crossed their minds at all, that had many parallels with the ideas of Ptolemy, Cicero, and Caesar about the inhabitants of the farthest regions of the Britannic Isles who were considered violent, transgressive, and lacking in every trace of continental culture. As the famous cartographer Fra Mauro put it: "the people ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Shortly after midnight on January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Havana with his family, ending his almost seven-year dictatorship over Cuba. Cubans poured into the streets to celebrate Batista's overthrow, which many attributed to Movimiento 26 de Julio, the most prominent resistance movement to emerge during the revolution. Several prominent Catholic leaders joined the chorus, as Archbishop Enrique Pérez Serantes published a pastoral letter that praised Movimiento's leader Fidel Castro, describing this period in Cuba as "a new life."1 Less than twenty-four hours after Batista fled, Fidel Castro delivered an address to the Cuban people. With Archbishop Pérez at his side, Castro symbolically affirmed the Catholic ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the early 1840s, American newspapers reported that Father Theobald Mathew,1 Ireland's celebrated "Apostle of Temperance," would soon be arriving in the United States.2 Mathew had enjoyed phenomenal success in Ireland, administering the total abstinence pledge to five million Irishmen and women over a five year period.3 The prospect of Mathew's visit was at first eagerly anticipated by several of America's Catholic bishops; they were hopeful that he would be able to reach much of the Irish immigrant population which was then burgeoning and encountering increasingly sharp opposition from nativists.4 However, as the bishops learned more about Mathew's liberal attitudes towards Protestants, his association with ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), through its Center for the Study of Religion and the Church, organized a two-day conference (7–8 April 2020), "Catholics in the Soviet Union: The Testimony of Ordinary People about the Radical Transformations of the 1920s–1950s." The organizers proposed that the conference make a critical assessment of the sources currently available and that it explore the possibilities for acquiring new sources and reinterpreting old ones.The conference was part of a broader, three-year research project, "Entangled Histories: Russia and the Holy See, 1917–1958," which is based at the Institute of World History and directed by Professor Gregory Freeze ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ileana Chinnici's biography of Father Angelo Secchi, S.J. (1818–78), introduces English-language readers to the life and work of this pioneering astrophysicist. The book has flaws, notably its high cost and abundant typographical and editing errors. Despite these, it is an interesting and valuable work.Such a costly book should show evidence of more attention from its publisher. A heading atop the cover reads, "Jesuit Studies—Modernity through the Prism of Jesuit History." An editor and an editorial board are listed inside, under the heading "Volume 16," but there is no series editor's foreword, and no listing of the other titles in the series. The reader is directed to Brill's Web site for more information. The ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: To commemorate the closing of the Council of Trent, the Catholic University of Leuven, in collaboration with the Europäische Melanchthon Akademie in Bretten and the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose in Bologna, sponsored an international conference entitled "The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–1700)." It was held in Leuven precisely on the 450th anniversary of the council's final, two-day session, on December 4–6, 1563, and was organized by Wim François of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and by Violet Soen of the Faculty of Arts. The contributions from that conference published in its proceedings number forty-four. They are distributed among three volumes: Volume ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Eleventh-century church reformers such as Peter Damian strongly condemned those members of the clergy who were living with women, and they called upon these men to return to what they argued was the early church tradition of strict celibacy. Reformers considered such a practice, called concubinage or clerical marriage (nicolaitism) by some, a source of contamination and corruption of the Church. For scholars of medieval religion, the extent to which the average member of the clergy was actually living up to these normative prescriptions is a fascinating but vexed historical problem. Nothing less than meticulous research in state and ecclesiastical archives can reveal the actual "lived experience" of the clergy. ... Read More PubDate: 2020-08-19T00:00:00-05:00
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