Early Modern Catholic Research Articles

Priests Behaving Badly: The Problem of Scandal in the Early Modern Catholic Church

Priests Behaving Badly: The Problem of Scandal in the Early Modern Catholic Church

The Lutheran Experience in the Ottoman Middle East: Stephan Gerlach (1546–1612) and the History of Lutheran Accommodation

Abstract This article examines what it meant to be Lutheran in the early modern Middle East. Its point of departure is a letter in which Stephan Gerlach, a sixteenth-century Lutheran chaplain to the imperial ambassador in Istanbul, asked his superiors about the type of behaviour that befitted him as a Lutheran. Was he allowed to wear a Turkish turban to see mosques and learn about Islam? Was it permissible for him in exceptional circumstances to accept communion under both kinds from a Roman Catholic monk? Was he allowed to postpone the Sunday sermon to attend Greek Orthodox ceremonies? Reconstructing how sixteenth-century Lutherans who had business in the early modern Middle East tried to resolve such issues not only affords new insights into the Lutheran experience in the Ottoman Empire; it also raises a set of fundamental questions about late sixteenth-century Lutheranism itself. Did Lutherans in this period develop forms of religious accommodation similar to those of early modern Catholics? Did travel in the Eastern Mediterranean demand a more flexible and more fluid form of Lutheranism? Could one even adhere to Lutheranism’s core principles so far away from the place where the movement had first taken root? Through an examination of various Lutheran treatises and travelogues, I show that sixteenth-century Lutheranism did not develop an official policy of accommodation. Instead, Lutheran responses to questions about accommodation, (dis)simulation and conformity were often makeshift and idiosyncratic, because Lutheranism formulated little to no official guidance on the movement as a lived religion.

Essentialising Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Thresholds of Masculinity and Femininity in the Early Modern Catholic Church c.1700

AbstractThis article focuses on four individuals from France and Italy who were viewed as hermaphrodites and their attempts to become members of the Catholic clergy between c.1650 and 1720. Drawing on largely unexplored material from the archive of the Roman Congregation of the Council, this article argues that whether, and how, bodies were problematised as hermaphroditic depended on the different and changing thresholds of masculinity and femininity they were confronted with. Offering a fresh perspective on practices of constructing sex and sex difference, this article suggests that the decades c.1700 saw marked transformations in the defining and assigning of sex both in theory and social practice. Medical and ecclesiastical decision‐makers shifted their attention from a broader spectrum of behavioural and bodily signs to the anatomy of genitalia. The trend towards heightened vigilance and intransigence towards perceived sexual ambiguity was, however, highly asymmetrical, targeting mainly individuals initially believed to be women.

The Predestination of Humans and Angels: Augustinus

One of the difficulties in researching and teaching the history of early modern French religion—particularly for the history of Jansenism—is the inaccessibility of sources, especially in translation. Because of this, the Early Modern Catholic Sources series, published by the Catholic University of America Press, is fulfilling an important need. The books currently available are related to debates about grace, freedom and predestination that occurred in the early modern era and form the historical background to Jansenism. One of the most recent texts in this series is a translation of a selection from Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinus, the text that—published posthumously in 1640—sparked the controversy over Jansenism. The Augustinus itself is a massive three-volume text of over thirteen hundred pages in Latin. Stucco has chosen to translate a section on predestination from the third volume. This is a good selection to provide historical-theological background to the controversy over Jansenism as it developed subsequently in France because it deals with the questions of grace and predestination in Augustine’s response to the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians. Stucco selected this section because, as he explains, ‘I believe that Jansenius’s re-statement and re-affirmation of Augustine’s teaching on grace and predestination have contemporary relevance’. Although just a selection from the Augustinus, Stucco also included as an appendix the table of contents of the full text to place this in context and provide an overview of arguments in the whole text. Stucco translated the table of contents from Jean Carreyre’s Dictionnaire de theologie catholique article on Jansenism. In it, Stucco indicated that he bolded where the five condemned propositions from Innocent X’s Cum occasione (1653) are alleged to appear, although it seems that they have unfortunately not all been marked in this way. In the table of contents, Stucco has translated Carreyre’s French, leaving in Latin what Carreyre left in Latin—a choice that unfortunately limits its usefulness for students who may not already know that language.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

:A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

:<i>A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions</i>

A ‘Chief Error’ of Protestant Soteriology: Sin in the Justified and Early Modern Catholic Theology

Abstract Catholic theologians after Trent saw the Protestant teaching about the remnants of original sin in the justified as one of the ‘chief ’ errors of Protestant soteriology. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Chemnitz, and many Protestant theologians believed that a view of concupiscence as sinful, strictly speaking, did away with any reliance on good works. This conviction also clarified the Christian’s dependence on the imputed righteousness of Christ. Catholic theologians condemned this position as detracting from the work of Christ who takes away the sins of the world. The rejection of this teaching—and the affirmation of Trent’s statement that original sin is taken away and that the justified at baptism is without stain or ‘immaculate’ before God—is essential for understanding Catholic opposition to Protestant soteriology. Two Spanish Dominican Thomists, Domingo de Soto and Bartolomé de Medina, rejected the Protestant teaching on imputation in part because of its connection with the view on the remnants of original sin in the justified. Adrian and Peter van Walenburch, brothers who served as auxiliary bishops of Cologne in the second half of the seventeenth century, argued that the Protestants of their time now agreed with the Catholic Church on a number of soteriological points. They also drew upon some of their post–Tridentine predecessors to offer a Catholic account of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Nonetheless, the issue of sin in the justified remained a point of serious controversy.

A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, ed. A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia, ed. A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions

A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, edited by Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia

A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, edited by Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth by Brian C. Lockey

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth by Brian C. Lockey

A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, ed. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 80. Leiden: Brill, 2018. x + 488 pp. $219.

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Papal Anatomy in the News: Bodies and Politics in the Early Modern Catholic World

Papal Anatomy in the News: Bodies and Politics in the Early Modern Catholic World

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth, by Brian C. Lockey

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth, by Brian C. Lockey

:Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth

:<i>Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth</i>

Stones and Bones: Catholic Responses to the 1812 Collapse of the Mission Church of Capistrano

This essay delves into the 1812 collapse of the Great Stone Church at California’s Mission of San Juan Capistrano and its aftermath to consider how early modern Catholics in the greater Iberian world approached the material remains of ruined churches that contained human victims. Questions explored include how Franciscan missionaries reported and reacted to the calamity, why the casualties were disproportionately Indian and female, and what survivors did with the physical remnants of broken churches. Churches that collapsed on worshippers in Arequipa, Cuzco, Lima and Lisbon prior to 1812 are mustered for comparison. Overall, a pattern emerges of Catholics separating stone from bone in these tragic situations.

Brian C. Lockey . Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth. Transculturalisms, 1400–1700. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. 376. $129.95 (cloth).

Brian C. Lockey . Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans: English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth. Transculturalisms, 1400–1700. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. 376. $129.95 (cloth).

Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (Kathryn A. Edwards, ed.)

<i>Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe</i> (Kathryn A. Edwards, ed.)

Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans, English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth. By Brian C. Lockey.

<i>Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans, English Transnationalism and the Christian Commonwealth</i>. By Brian C. Lockey.