Catholic History Research Articles

Religion, Discrimination, and the Nation-State—A History of Catholics and Burakumin in Nagasaki, Japan

Religion, Discrimination, and the Nation-State—A History of Catholics and Burakumin in Nagasaki, Japan

From the Periphery to the Center—and Back Again: The Trajectory of British and Irish Catholic History and Historiography

From the Periphery to the Center—and Back Again: The Trajectory of British and Irish Catholic History and Historiography

Indomitable Sacramentans: A Social History of Catholics in the State Capital by Steven M. Avella (review)

Indomitable Sacramentans: A Social History of Catholics in the State Capital by Steven M. Avella (review)

19세기 전반 경기도 거주 세 소년의 해외 유학생 공동체와 서학 수용

The three first-generation seminarians, Choi Bang-je, Choi Yang-up, and Kim Dae-gun, who were also the first overseas students in Korean Catholic history, all lived in Gyeonggi-do at the time of selection, so they had the advantage that Father Pierre Philibert Maubant(1803~1839) who settled in Seoul in early 1836, was suitable for selecting the seminarians within a short period of six months. Among them, Kim Dae-gun and Choi Yang-up became the first-generation Korean priests, and are considered the pioneers who first learned and utilized Western modern studies. The seminarians were summoned to the priest's hall in Hudong, Seoul, where they formed a community preparing for studying abroad while receiving 5 to 10 months of training at the preparatory seminary. Macau's Korean Seminary, which began in June 1837, corresponds to the early curriculum, and missionaries such as the first principal, Father Callery, Libois, and Desflèches provided three Korean seminarians with a wide range of liberal arts education ranging from Latin, which was the initial curriculum, to various foreign languages, international circumstances, humanities, society, natural sciences and music, and doctrines. The study community of Korean seminarians, including Kim Dae-gun and Choi Yang-up, was somewhat shaken by the Macau riots and changes in the seminary's organization, but it was maintained firmly thanks to the solidarity and cooperation of the two students and the care of missionaries, including Father Maistre. The knowledge of Western studies, a modern Western discipline that Korean seminarians learned in Macau, has been properly utilized since 1842 while writing Latin letters or meeting Chinese, European, and Korean people while promoting various private activities as the seminary was transferred to the Liao-dong region. As a result, the history of Western studies acceptance through overseas students, which is one of the movements of voluntary acceptance Western cultures to Korean society 30 to 40 years before the opening of the port in 1876, began.

Priests and their Bodies after Trent: (Dis)abilities, Masculinities, Sexualities

This article discusses the impact of a “corporeal turn” in early modern religious history on recent publications in Counter‐Reformation Catholic History. Scholars increasingly look towards the Church's legal archives in Rome as a source of information about ecclesiastical and theological attitudes to the body and sexuality. The figure of the priest has emerged as one of the most interesting subjects in that inquiry because of the richness of material about clerics which those archives hold. Scholars are now engaged in study of how past generations of theologians, ecclesiastical magistrates, and medics assessed priestly abilities and disabilities, priests' engagement in sexual acts, and their wider performances of masculine identities. Rome's role as a major centre in shaping Catholic masculinities is reinforced in this scholarship but a new study underscores the blurred boundaries between the lay and ecclesiastical in masculinities there. Overall, this research provides much new material both for rethinking historical questions about Trent's impact on reform discourses and also for commenting on contemporary debates in theology and Church politics about the nature of Christian priesthood.

History of Science and the History of Catholicism and Colonization - Sacred Habitat: Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic. By Ran Segev. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. Pp. 213. $129.95 cloth.

History of Science and the History of Catholicism and Colonization - Sacred Habitat: Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic. By Ran Segev. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. Pp. 213. $129.95 cloth.

Qingdao Modern Church Contrast and Analyzing Based on Religious Influences Perspective: Examples from Qingdao Catholic Church and Qingdao Christian Church

Qingdao, as a city with a colonial history, has numerous architectures that combine traditional Chinese architectural style and Western architectural style. One of the most distinctive types of architecture is the church. Churches have significant mental support functions as well as their function as shelters. They are symbols of the city, and valuable for the city to present its architectural scene. This article wishes to state the backgrounds and history of Catholicism and Protestantism; compare the differences in external spaces, internal spaces, decorations, and volume of Qingdao catholic church and Qingdao Christian church to analyze the architectural differences based on different religious backgrounds; emphasize the characteristics and connotations for churches. Studying church architecture can reveal the creativity and technical proficiency of ancient architects and craftsmen. Church architecture encompasses knowledge and skills from various fields, including structural engineering, sculpture, painting, and decoration. Such research contributes to the advancement of architectural design and engineering technology. Church architecture is a reflection of human creativity and cultural traditions, and it holds significant importance for the study and preservation of cultural heritage.

Unexplained Revolutions: The Origins and Ends of Latin American Catholic Upheaval

John T. McGreevy's chronicle of modern Roman Catholic history is a vivid and sometimes jarring reminder of the historical depth of contemporary divisions within the Church, especially as these enter the public sphere. Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis elucidates the church's ambivalent response to the challenge of modernity over the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, specifically the rise of democratic nation states, anti-colonialist movements from the global south, the struggles of poor and working people for liberation, and feminist and human rights movements. The spread of totalitarianism and the supposed triumph of capitalism represented a different set of challenges for the church in this period.

Życie i twórczość Józefa Łukaszewicza w świetle artykułów wspomnieniowych prasy XIX-wiecznej

The article focuses on Józef Łukaszewicz (1799-1873), a historian, director of the Raczyński Library, librarian, publisher, editor, and founder of Tygodnik Literacki, Przyjaciel Ludu and Orędownik Naukowy. Author of monographs on the history of cities in terms of material culture, history of Catholicism and the Reformation in Poland in the 17th century, as well as on the history of education. The review of 19th-century press included in the article is a selection from the published texts after Łukaszewicz’s death, summarizing the life and legacy of this distinguished scholar, an outstanding figure who made a lasting mark on the history of the Raczyński Library, the history of the city of Poznań and the region of Wielkopolska.

Is the Pope Catholic?

In Roman Catholic History, Popes Have Been Conservative Or Progressive. Pope Francis’s Pontificate Is Different. He Does Not Fit The Traditional “right” And “left” Categories, Although His Teaching And Actions Have Often Been Labeled As Disruptive. He Has Been Called “radical,” “heretical,” And Even “Protestant.” Ten Years After The Beginning Of His Pontificate, This Article Explores Some Of The Significant Influences On His Formation And Assesses Some Critiques He Has Received Within Roman Catholic Circles. It Ends By Suggesting That Pope Francis Is More “catholic” Than “Roman” In The Sense That He Is More Interested In Expanding The “catholicity” Of Rome (i.e., Its Inclusivity), As It Was Envisaged At Vatican II, Than In Defending Its Doctrinal-institutional “Roman” Markers. KEYWORDS: Pope Francis, Vatican II, The Joy Of The Gospel, All Brothers, Roman Catholic Church

David Jones's Medieval Voices: A Review of Poet of the Medieval Modern by Francesca Brooks

Abstract: Especially notable for its new archival research into David Jones's personal library and marginalia, Francesca Brooks's Poet of the Medieval Modern situates Jones's engagement with several significant early medieval texts in The Anathemata as an integral part of the poem's cultural project of articulating a long and living British Catholic history, one that reflects the multiculturalism and multilingualism of the island. Jones's repurposing of the texts for his own project of renewal is both a modern version of medieval compilation—an interpretive arrangement of fragments—and a distinctively modernist re-imagining of a historical archive. Brooks's new research and thorough reassessments of key passages in Jones's poetry represents an impressive contribution to Jones studies and to scholars interested in medieval engagements with modernity and modernist approaches to history and the archive.

Martyrdom, Witnessing, and Social Lineages in the Tamil Country

Abstract This article examines the martyrdom of the Jesuit missionary Saint João de Brito (1647-1693) and the beginnings of his cult, at once embedded in the local dynamics of the Tamil country and extending towards broad imperial horizons. How did a Portuguese Jesuit, an agent of modern global Catholicism, become such a locally anchored figure? And how did the last moments of Brito’s life initiate a Tamil devotion that has lasted for over three centuries? A diverse array of sources is used to address these questions: the multilingual archives produced during early inquiries in support of Brito’s canonization (particularly the witness statements of his catechists), a missionary treatise in Tamil, and a life of Brito composed in Tamil by one of his catechists and preserved in a palm-leaf manuscript. Two conclusions emerge from this study. In the early eighteenth century, witnessing a martyrdom could be a means of acquiring a certain degree of sanctity, and thus a spiritual and social authority transmissible within family lineages. Moreover, by witnessing Brito’s life and death, Tamil Christian laymen found a way of inscribing their own lives into the history of Catholicism on both local and global scales.

Irish Catholic History in Australia's Oldest Secretarial College

Irish Catholic History in Australia's Oldest Secretarial College

We Know Not God's Designs in Permitting a Separation: Women Religious, the Consolidation Controversies, and the Nineteenth‐Century American Catholic Church*

This article bridges the fields of Catholic history, Women's history, and American religious history to propose a new perspective for studying the development of the American Catholic Church, termed by me as the consolidation controversies. Previous historians have focused on the development of the local parishes and the dioceses, focusing on the power conflicts between the lay trustees and the local bishops that accompanied this institutional growth. However, an often‐forgotten aspect of Catholic history is the simultaneous rise of religious congregations and orders. As these communities developed, their leaders clashed with the local bishops over questions of property and authority over members of the communities. Often at the centre of these power struggles were the women religious. Rather than allowing themselves to be manipulated, women religioudemonstrated their own autonomy, navigating larger institutional politics. Should these women fail, they faced losing their place in the diocese as well as their position and vocation as women religious.

Intimate Strangers : A History of Jews and Catholics in the City of Rome by Fredric Brandfon (review)

Intimate Strangers : A History of Jews and Catholics in the City of Rome by Fredric Brandfon (review)

A Fake Saint and the True Church: The Story of a Forgery in Seventeenth-Century Naples, by Stefania Tutino

In this short, accessible and lively microhistory, Stefania Tutino explores the way early modern Catholic intellectuals navigated the often subtle differences between truth and authenticity. The book centres on an obscure episode in post-Tridentine Catholic history, the attempt of Carlo Calà, the Duke of Diano and a prominent member of the Neapolitan viceregal administration, to promote the canonisation of his ancestor Giovanni Calà. At first glance, the story seems simple enough: Calà hoped to improve his own standing in Neapolitan society by tracing his lineage back to a heroic ancestor, whose social significance would have been divinely sanctioned. But there was just one problem: the stories of Giovanni Calà—and possibly his very existence—were forged. Having discovered traces of this intrigue in the archives, Tutino began tracking down every available source and, à la Carlo Ginzburg, ‘squeezing’ them for every last drop of juicy detail (p. 10). The story begins in Naples, where Carlo Calà is a noted jurist eager to advance his fortune. His opportunity is presented by Ferrante Stocchi, who tells him about an illustrious Calà ancestor from Calabria who had served under the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI before leaving the military to become a hermit. He became a follower of Joachim of Fiore, a famous medieval Italian prophet who himself has long been proposed for canonisation (and whose case has never been completed). Stocchi provided Calà with print and manuscript texts, and helped him to find the grave of his ancestor, which contained gigantic bones and a lead ball containing a vita of Giovanni Calà. As more manuscripts continued to surface, Carlo Calà began to write a book, part history, part vita and part genealogy, to promote his ancestor’s cause and draw a clear connection to himself. This book told of Giovanni’s spectacular feats in secular and religious life; in the former he defeated a hundred mounted soldiers while alone and on foot, fought a duel against ten men and killed them all, and even beheaded a giant (as a giant himself, he was more than capable), before sustaining not one, but three life-threatening wounds in battle. He was miraculously saved, and then left military life to follow Joachim, in the process gaining the gift of prophecy and the ability to perform miracles himself. His miracles included resurrecting five people, stopping a plague, walking on water, and effecting numerous miraculous cures.

Toward a Counter-History of Christianity: Theologies and Critical Analytics from Rosemary Radford Ruether

The intellectual contributions of feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether remain urgent, including for scholars outside of the immediate field of theology. This exposition unfolds in two parts. First, I argue that Ruether’s considerable corpus of published works provides a model through which theological categories can be honed as theoretical analytics for historical critique, especially for thinking about colonialism and empire. There is essential work that theology and theologians can do in interrogating the past, especially the Catholic past and its imbrication with extractive global political economies. Theology, in its finest form, is fundamentally a critical and analytical project, as Ruether demonstrates. The second part refers to Ruether’s expansive articulation of sacrament and sacramentality, a lens through which scholars of religion can better approximate and interpret the religious experience and practice of women, and Catholic laywomen in particular. I apply these analytics to consider the history of Catholicism in Mexico.

Prize Announcement: The British Catholic History Best Article Prize

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939–1945

The Polish Catholic Church under German Occupation: The Reichsgau Wartheland, 1939–1945

История католической миссии в Монголии с 1992 г.

Mostly on the basis of personal observation and conversations with Catholic ecclesiastic, a picture of the missionary activity of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in modern Mongolia is built. The historical period in the Mongolian Catholic History, starting from 1992, is designated as the «new era». Significant achievements of Catholics in the field of social service are noted. Quantitative data of the RCC in Mongolia are given. As a result, the main problems faced by Catholic missionaries in Mongolia are indicated.