Catholic Books Research Articles

The Bulgarian Catholic Book in the System of the Bulgarian Publishing (1878–1944). Geographic Information Systems as a Tool in Presenting and Preserving Literary Cultural Heritage

The paper introduces the concept and framework of a scientific project concerning the printed Catholic books in the Bulgarian publishing system between 1878 and 1944. It describes the purpose and the outcomes of implementing Geographic Information Systems within interdisciplinary studies in the Bibliography and Book History scholar fields.

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II, by Freddy Cristóbal Dominguez

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II, by Freddy Cristóbal Dominguez

O literackich łupach wojennych w bibliotekach prywatnych. Przypadek zbiorów Clasa Rålamba w Länna Gård

After arriving in Sweden, the literary spoils of war taken from Poznań in the Swedish deluge in the 1650s ended up in the private country house library of nobleman Clas Rålamb (1622–1698), who had been sent by Swedish King Charles X Gustavus (reigned 1654–1660) to manage the difficult situation in this Polish town while it was under Swedish command. With the help of a still extant inventory from the 1690s drawn up at the country house before the books were donated to Uppsala University Library, where they remain today, the contents and possible arrangement of this library are briefly described and discussed in this article. Some notable characteristics are the sections on theology and duplicates being larger than what would normally be expected from a country house library of this kind. It is assumed that these factors, among others, indicate that Rålamb did not make any sort of selection when seizing the books from monasteries and churches in Poznań. In addition, it suggests that their primary role in their new environment was to increase the cultural capital of their owner. Large numbers of the confessionally Catholic books were of little practical use in a Sweden characterized by Lutheran Orthodoxy.

:Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II

:<i>Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II</i>

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez

Reviewed by: Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez Spencer J. Weinreich Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II. By Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2020. Pp. xi, 264. $106.95. ISBN: 9780271086019). The recusants—those early modern British Catholics who kept the faith despite the best efforts of Tudor and Stuart regimes to dislodge them—are familiar figures in the study of the Reformation. But what of those who chose exile? Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez’s thoughtful study centers the experiences, ideas, and especially books of these Catholics, specifically those who operated out of Habsburg Spain. Radicals in Exile homes in on the polemical battles waged in the heady years between 1585, when the Armada began to take shape, and 1598, when Philip II died, taking English Catholicism’s most immediate hopes with him. This decade and a half constituted a period in which “the most radical efforts to re-Catholicize England seemed to match Habsburg willingness to do so” (p. 16). Part I, “History in Action,” examines the life and afterlives of Nicholas Sander’s De schismate Anglicano, a scabrous history of the English Reformation that sensationally claimed Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s own daughter. Domínguez closely tracks the text’s transformations through subsequent editions, as its editors used it to demonize Elizabeth I and Protestantism, and to promote Spanish military action against Elizabeth. The section concludes with the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s Spanish adaptation of De schismate Anglicano, by which “an exile version of the English past [. . .] became deeply rooted in the Spanish world” (p. 92). The seamlessness with which Domínguez can integrate Spanish protagonists alongside English ones, as well as translations and adaptations in multiple languages, showcases the power of centering books, rather than authors. The second part, “The King’s Men,” further pursues the Spanish digestion of the English exiles’ polemical fare. In the wake of the Armada, English Catholic writers carved out relevance for themselves within Spain—promoting the English seminary at Valladolid, flattering and admonishing the king, linking heresy and rebellion to shore up the regime in restive Aragon—and abroad, as propagandists defending Philip II and his policies against Protestant attacks. The king himself cannily exploited this abundant literature, favoring those portions of Joseph Cresswell’s Exemplar literarum that identified the monarch with his nation, for example, [End Page 204] while deprecating the second part of Ribadeneyra’s history that dwelt upon Spanish (and royal) sins. In Part III, “(Habsburg) England and Spain Reformed,” Domínguez examines the public component of the exiles’ campaign for a second invasion attempt, through two texts by the Jesuit Robert Persons reimagining the English political and religious settlement. The Conference vindicated Habsburg claims to the English throne, while the Memorial set out a program for the re-Catholicization of the kingdom once it had been conquered. Throughout, Domínguez places these texts in a rich intellectual landscape, as the project to reclaim England adapted to shifting geopolitical realities, intra-Catholic tensions, and disparate audiences in Spain and abroad. A brief, forceful conclusion emphasizes the exiles’ success in influencing early modern Spanish thought, while arguing against the prevailing assumption “that early modern secular and spiritual matters were hopelessly intertwined” (p. 209). Quite the contrary: Domínguez interprets his authors as deeply concerned to delineate the distinct logics of state and church, of politics and piety. This is strong and persuasive stuff, fostering a greater respect for the clarity of our subjects’ thinking; it is unfortunate that it remains an “ideological undercurrent” in Radicals in Exile (p. 209), rather than an explicit claim, articulated upfront in what is otherwise a lucidly organized book. Domínguez handles the textual and political complexities of his sources with aplomb, deftly drawing out theological implications and hidden tensions. Radicals in Exile is a compelling study of texts as instruments of political action in the Reformation, of the close relationship between writing and invading. Spencer J. Weinreich Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...

Education in partibus infidelium

Catechisms and schoolbooks were essential tools for Catholics living in partibus infidelium, ‘in the lands of the unbelievers’, in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. While constant demand for these texts from parents, priests and schoolteachers sustained the livelihoods of many Catholic printers, their regulation and censorship became a battleground of doctrinal orthodoxy. In the 1690s, corrections to the catechism of the Archbishop of Sens led to printed polemical rebuttals and an audit of books used in Catholic schools. Using the remarkable archival evidence surviving from this controversy, this article demonstrates the importance of schoolbooks to the Catholic book trade in the Dutch Republic and how accusations of unorthodoxy and censorship can help to reconstruct lost titles and editions.

Domínguez, Freddy Cristóbal. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II.

Domínguez, Freddy Cristóbal. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II.

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II. Iberian Encounters and Exchange, 475–1755, 4. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. Pp. 250. $99.95 (cloth).

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II. Iberian Encounters and Exchange, 475–1755, 4. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. Pp. 250. $99.95 (cloth). - Volume 61 Issue 2

Catholic Feminist Ethics and Its Localization Prospect in the East-Asia Region (Take China as an Example)

With the unceasing liberation of people’s ideology, the promotion of women’s rights has been raised to unprecedented importance in today’s society. Therefore, more and more theologists have started to re-examine the conventional Catholic doctrines through a critical lens, especially under the framework of moral philosophy. The author aims to explore two main conceptions deep-rooted in Catholic traditions or sacred books that are considered to convey gender inequality, for one decrees the inferior of the gender female to the gender male while the other emphasizes women’s obedience to men’s instructions. In addition, the author analyzes the origin of such conceptions, the dualistic theory, and how renowned Catholic feminists such as Margret Farley and Lisa Cahill managed to develop new comprehension towards Catholicism based on Catholic feminist ethics. While the modern spiritual movements are predominantly derived from Western experience, the application of theological innovations in the East-Asia region still depends on different, complex religious realities. In this article, the author takes China as an example and investigates how secularization may encourage the practice of Catholic feminist reformations in China.

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II. Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. Iberian Encounter and Exchange, 1475–1755. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. xii + 252 pp. $99.95.

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II. Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez. Iberian Encounter and Exchange, 1475–1755. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. xii + 252 pp. $99.95.

Literary Spoils of War in Uppsala in Practice – Controversial Theology

Religious conflicts did not only take place on battlefields in the 17th century, but in far wider contexts. We see them also in propaganda, poetry, sermons and academic discourse. When the literary spoils of war were taken by the Swedish from Catholic libraries in Poland to the Lutheran Uppsala University, many books were not highly valued. These Catholic books ended up stored separately from the ‘sound and pure’ volumes found in the first library building in Uppsala. In this article, it is shown how these Catholic books did at times prove useful, at least in the field of polemical theology. In fact, teaching at the university took an increasingly anti-Catholic direction after the arrival of the collections from Braniewo and Frombork to Uppsala, with the main confessional enemy apparently being Robert Bellarmine.

Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia

Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez, Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020, pp. xii + 264, $99.95, ISBN: 978-0-271-08601-9

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez, Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020, pp. xii + 264, $99.95, ISBN: 978-0-271-08601-9 - Volume 35 Issue 4

:Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II

:<i>Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip II</i>

Interconfessional Implications: Printed Plainchant in the Wake of the Reformation

Abstract This article investigates the retention, reformation, and revision of plainchant in liturgical books printed in German-speaking lands during the early Reformation. Previous scholarship often considered chant in confessional and linguistic isolation, which has obscured both its importance in Protestant worship and its connections with contemporary Catholic musical trends. Writings of reformers and their followers, including Luther, Müntzer, and Spangenberg, indicate that they valued plainchant because it provided continuity, functioned pedagogically, and increased congregational unity. However, chant was subject to modification. An examination of reformed sources connected to Allstedt, Erfurt, and Nordhausen demonstrates how plainchant was adopted and adapted to reflect shifting priorities. Analyses of modified alleluia chants in Protestant and Catholic books reveal similarities and differences in techniques of revision. The formation of new musical traditions is delineated, as well as their intertwined relationships with the musical past, present, and future. These interconfessional findings provide new perspectives on early modern chant and liturgies.

Eucharistic devotion and textual appropriation in post-reformation England

ABSTRACT This essay explores the forms of sacrament centred piety that developed in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart church. It does so by utilising Christopher Sutton’s “Godly Meditations”, first published in 1601. The text’s movement from Catholic mass book to Protestant communion guide, and Sutton’s amendments to later editions, are used to examine the ways texts were altered to fit different theological and pastoral requirements. Attention is paid to the ambiguous and flexible rhetoric of the “Meditations” and of avant-garde conformists more generally. It is shown that this ambiguity allowed such texts to be appropriated by Laudians who cast them as precedents for their innovations. In doing so, Laudians recast avant-garde conformity as something much narrower than it had been. Ultimately, it is suggested that a more nuanced approach to avant-garde conformity is required; one which recognises that anti-Calvinism was not an inherent part, or necessary consequence, of sacramental piety.

Einblicke in Zürichs Bibliothekswesen und Gelehrtenkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit

Zurich has repeatedly been described as a city of a particular reading culture. The medieval monastic libraries of the city preserved a great number of precious books. The richness and diversity of this cultural heritage was decimated in 1524/1525, when in the course of the implementation of the Reformation great numbers of Roman catholic books, in particular liturgical texts, were destroyed. After Ulrich Zwingli’s death in 1531, the reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) and the Franciscan scholar Conrad Pellikan (1478–1556) began to reorganize the Grossmünster library. The book collection of this new library, which was connected to the Latin school at the Grossmünster, contained remnants of the old Zurich monasteries as well as many books from the library of Ulrich Zwingli. Later on, the Grossmünster library served as a base for Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), who published his influential “Bibliotheca universalis” in Zurich in 1545. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, despite the considerable importance of the Grossmünster library for professors and students of the so called “Schola Tigurina”, this book collection did no longer satisfy the intellectual needs of the younger generation of students. Hence, in 1629, four young citizens of Zurich founded the city-library (Stadtbibliothek), located in the “Wasserkirche”, a church on asmall island in the River Limmat. This library grew rapidly. Within these walls the “Collegia”, the first Enlightenment societies in German-speaking Europe, originated in the seventeenth and the early eighteenth-century.

Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914

Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip ii, written by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez

Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books during the Reign of Philip ii, written by Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez

‘Very Knaves Besides’: Catholic Print and the Enforcers of the 1662 Licensing Act in Restoration England

This article explores the motivations of three enforcers of the Licensing Act of 1662 in regard to their treatment of the illicit Catholic book trade in London during the Restoration. As censors, the Stationers’ Company, the Surveyor of the Press, Roger L'Estrange, and the bishop of London, Henry Compton, were intended to unite the concerns of the book trade, the state and the church. However, each used the Licensing Act to pursue their own interests. Contemporaries and historians have both viewed the act as being unsuccessfully enforced; this article explores whether full enforcement was ever the goal. Using the case of Catholic print, it posits that it was precisely the act's flexibility that encouraged its repeated renewals. Moreover, exploring the print of the Catholic minority in London highlights the differences between the written law and the enforced law. Finally, this article suggests that at times there existed an informal toleration for the printers and booksellers engaged in Catholic book production that enabled books to escape detection and the Catholic book trade to continue despite the Licensing Act.