Ecclesiastical Office Research Articles

The Sources behind “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (No. 4)

The 2015 Vatican statement, "The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable" frequently draws upon or alludes to phrases and formulations found in earlier texts from Catholic ecclesiastical offices and officials without always directly citing them. By means of extensive footnotes, this version of "Gifts and Calling" provides the original wordings behind many of these allusions and references.

Colloquium on Youth Day 16 June 2017: The Commission of Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches in association with the Faculty of Theology of the University of Pretoria and its centennial celebration in 2017

This article represents the contributions of ecclesiastical and academic office bearers participating in the centennial celebration of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Pretoria on Youth Day 16 June 2017, in collaboration with the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. This Youth Day commemoration showcases the profound way of transformation at the University of Pretoria and, in particular, its theological faculty in democratic South Africa since 1994. It presents a truly historic event, highlighting a global participation of specifically the Reformed churches in South Africa after a period of ecumenical isolation because of a formerly endorsement of apartheid, nowadays confessed as a theological and humanitarian heresy.

‘Lithuanians’, ‘Foreigners’ and Ecclesiastical Office: Law and Practice in the Sixteenth-Century Grand Duchy Of Lithuania

The distinction between ‘Lithuanians’ and ‘foreigners’ made by the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with regard to eligibility for senior offices was less clear in practice. The protracted dispute, between 1591 and 1600, over the royal nomination of a ‘Pole’ as bishop of Vilna, has traditionally been presented as an expression of Lithuanian particularism after the 1569 union between Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. Using neglected capitular sources, this article re-examines the crucial, but underappreciated role played by the Vilna cathedral chapter in this cause célèbre. The motives for the chapter's opposition to the royal nominee cast doubt on the allegedly overwhelming importance of the defence of Lithuanian ‘sovereignty’. Instead, the case demonstrates the significance of material interests in the actions of early modern ecclesiastical corporations.

Spectacular Wealth: The Festivals of Colonial South American Mining Towns by Lisa Voigt

Reviewed by: Spectacular Wealth: The Festivals of Colonial South American Mining Towns by Lisa Voigt Ricardo Padrón Lisa Voigt. Spectacular Wealth: The Festivals of Colonial South American Mining Towns. U of Texas P, 2016. 225 Pp. IN THIS CAREFULLY RESEARCHED AND THOUGHTFULLY CRAFTED BOOK, Lisa Voigt makes a compelling case against José Antonio Maravall’s argument that civic festivals were among the key practices used by church and crown to direct the culture of the Hispanic world during the Baroque period. According to Maravall (and others), such festivals rehearsed the triumph of civilization over barbarism, Christianity over paganism, and Spain over its various ethnic and racial others, thereby serving to impress the masses with the majesty of the Crown or the truth of the Faith. Voigt overturns this argument by carefully examining a series of printed descriptions of religious and secular festivals held in the colonial Latin American mining towns of High Peru and Minas Gerais. According to her, celebrations of Corpus Christi, official entrances of secular and ecclesiastical officials, and other such festivals did not speak with a single voice, but with many. The people responsible for them as sponsors and participants of various kinds did not just hear the commanding voice of God or king and submit to it, but also found ways to express their own agendas and identities as criollos, Amerindians, and Africans. The book is divided into two parts of two chapters each, with a separate introduction and conclusion. Part 1 deals with criollo patriotism in festival descriptions, with chapter 1 focused on the festivals included in Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela’s Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí (1737), and chapter 2 on Simão Ferreira Machado’s Triunfo Eucharistico (1734) and the anonymous Aureo Throno Episcopal (1749). In each chapter, we see how these texts celebrate the identities of the criollo elites of mining boomtowns, often against metropolitan aspersions. Arzáns, for example, uses his accounts of Potosí festivals over the course of a century to defend creoles against metropolitan arguments that the inhabitants of the Americas were less sophisticated, intellectually and culturally, than their European counterparts. The Portuguese texts, meanwhile, portray the mining towns of Minas Gerais as centers of piety and devotion, thereby answering to the claim of metropolitan [End Page 235] discourse that their locations in the far reaches of the empire meant that they lacked the piety of Portugal. Part 2 is probably the more interesting of the two, insofar as it involves greater interpretative challenges. In chapter 3, Voigt returns to Potosí and Arzáns, but adds Diego Mexía de Ferangil’s El Dios Pan (early seventeenth century) to the mix; in chapter 4, she returns to Minas Gerais, Machado, and the Aureo Throno. In returning to these texts, Voigt’s goal is to examine how Amerindians in Peru and Africans in Minas Gerais appropriated civic festivals for their own ends. Baroque civic festivals putatively included Amerindian or African participants in order to enact the submission of subject populations to king and church, but Voigt demonstrates that subaltern groups were able to inhabit these roles in ways that converted them into celebrations of Amerindian or African identity. She does so by reading against the grain of the criollo narrative, fastening onto places where subaltern agendas peek out through the overt rhetorical program, using comparisons with relevant archival material and ample references to the secondary literature to tease them out. This reviewer was most interested in the discussion of mulattoes in Carijó costumes, which made them look like Tupinamba Indians and African kings at the same time, allowing their performance to mean different things for different publics. Like Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic, Voigt’s first book, Spectacular Wealth benefits from the author’s rare ability to move capably and easily between the Spanish and Portuguese speaking worlds. Brazil and Bolivia receive equal attention. As a result, we learn how the same practices of performance and inscription characterize the Iberian Baroque on both sides of the line of demarcation. We also observe fascinating parallels between Amerindian and African festival participation, something that would hardly be possible if the argument did not...

Conway-Jones, Ann. Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. viii+301 pp. $95.00 (cloth).

Conway-Jones, Ann. <i>Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts</i>. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. viii+301 pp. $95.00 (cloth).

Conquests of Memory: Franciscan Chronicles of the East Asian Church in the Early Modern Period

This essay examines the ways in which Franciscan authors recounted the history of their missions in East Asia from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Key differences between Franciscan authors and those of other orders are highlighted, with special emphasis placed on disputes over precedence in the Asian mission field, over privileges accorded by the papacy for missionary activity, and over the prestige secured by acts of pious heroism and appointments to high ecclesiastical offices. Chronicles served as important adjuncts to the face-toface rivalries of Catholic religious orders, with the Franciscans dueling their peers for pride of place in historical memory. The publication of Franciscan histories in Europe ensured that the conflicts between orders extended around the globe, while their original intention was to consolidate the memories of distant efforts to plant and grow the church.

Funkcja nauczycielska kobiety w myśli Jana Chryzostoma

The Church Fathers repeatedly spoke about the function that women should play – especially Christian women – in the communities they lived in. One of the widely discussed problems in ancient times was the question of teaching by women. It was discussed whether women in general can teach, and if so, under what circumstances? In this article I decided to investigate this issue on the basis of selected speeches of John Chrysostom. The first point of the present study notes that in ancient times the public teaching and speaking in general was a manifesta­tion of power. The next two sections present Chrysostom's comments on this topic based on the exegesis of biblical texts 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and Romans 16:3-16. In the final conclusions it should be underlined, that John Chrysostom firm­ly holds to the teaching of Scripture (especially St. Paul). He makes a distinction between private and public teaching. According to him, women can only lead pri­vate teaching activity (especially in the family), but they cannot teach in public, be­cause such teaching is associated with the holding of an ecclesiastical office, reser­ved for men. A man teaches a woman, not the other way around – this is the standard situation. Reversing these roles was permitted only in exceptional circumstances.

Udział dominikanów w chrystianizacji Prus do połowy XIII wieku

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the attempts to the Christianization of Prussia were resumed. The greatest and lasting results brought the Cistercian mission, led by the missionary bishop, Christian. The arrival of the Teutonic and DominicanOrders to Prussia changed the political, social and religious situation in this area dramatically. The Teutonic Order in the thirteenth century was dealing with creating their statehood and with the military conquest of the land. In converting the pagans, they were very glad to count on the assistance of the Dominican Order. The Dominican merits in the evangelism were so large that the Holy See was entrusting the priests from this Order with the most important ecclesiastical offices. By the end of the thirteenth century the Dominican Order gained in Prussia and also abroad the universal acclaim and respect, which raised objections and concerns of the Teutonic Order.

Between the “Old Law” And the New: Christian Translation, Indian Jurisdiction, and Criminal Justice in Colonial Oaxaca

AbstractIn midcolonial Villa Alta, Oaxaca, New Spain, indigenous political conflict intersected with the extirpation of idolatry to shape an arena of native social life and colonial legal culture about which we know little: Indian jurisdiction over crime. Through analysis of bilingual missionary texts and a unique corpus of Zapotec-language criminal records, this article highlights the role of indigenous judges as translators and innovators of legal procedure, notarial form, and criminal discourse. As they prosecuted crimes in Indian tribunals while seeking justice in Spanish courts, native judges and litigants—in conflict and alliance with Spanish civil and ecclesiastical officials—engaged in a spiraling process of translation that vernacularized colonial criminal justice. By putting the histories of Christian translation and of law and empire into productive dialogue, we reconstruct the processes whereby a Spanish and Christian moral order became locally meaningful and politically useful in indigenous communities far removed from Spanish administrative centers.

Covenant and the consolidated Christian community: The covenantal roots of theologico-political federalism in Samuel Rutherford’s &lt;i&gt;Respublica Christiana&lt;/i&gt;

The celebrated author on the mind of Samuel Rutherford, John Coffey, chose the Calvinist tradition as the appropriate context for interpreting Rutherford’s covenantal perspectives. The authors question this assumption and produce evidence to the effect that the Bullinger– Vermigli approach to theologico-political federalism in Rutherford’s views proves to be a more cogent paradigm for understanding Rutherford’s thoughts. It is concluded that Rutherford utilised the insights of both Bullinger and Vermigli in structuring the ideal form of government in the Christian state as well as the relationships between ecclesiastical and political offices in the state, a theory that gained in importance in later political theories.

Diego Laínez (1512–1565) and his Generalate: Jesuit with Jewish Roots, Close Confidant of Ignatius of Loyola, Preeminent Theologian of the Council of Trent ed. by Paul Oberholzer, S.J.

Diego Lainez (1512-1565) and his Generalate: Jesuit with Jewish Roots, Close Confidant of Ignatius of Loyola, Preeminent Theologian of the Council of Trent. Edited by Paul Oberholzer, S.J. [Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Jesu, vol. 76.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu. 2015. Pp. xx, 1074. euro60,00. ISBN 978-88-7041-376-2.)This fine volume is the last of three that have been published since 2004 by the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome that deal in reverse chronological order with the three Superiors General of the Society ofJesus following the death in 1556 of the founder and first Superior General, St. Ignatius Loyola. The Mercurian Project: Forming Jesuit Culture, 1573-1580, edited by Thomas McCoog, S.J., and co-published with the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis in 2004 treated the generalate of Everard Mercurian (reviewed ante, 93 [2007], 405-06). Francisco de Borja y su Tiempo: Politica, Religion y Cultura en la Moderna, edited by Maria del Pilar Ryan and Enrique Garcia Hernan and co-published by the Consejo Superior de Investigationes Cientificas in Valencia in 2011, looked at the life and times of St. Francis Borgia, who was Superior General from 1565 to 1572 (reviewed ante, 99 [2013]: 559-62). Diego Lainez served as vicar general from 1556 to 1558 and was elected Superior General at the first general congregation of the Society in 1558. The current volume is divided into seven parts: Introductory Reflections; Personality and Ministry; Political and Social Milieu; Works and Networks; Catholic Reform; Culture and Education; and the New World, and it includes thirty-four contributions by twenty-seven authors in five languages along with an extensive bibliography. All three of these volumes contribute substantially to our understanding of the foundational period of the Society of Jesus.Paul Oberholzer maintains that Lainez had particular and personal relationship (p. 23) with Ignatius; he was the only one of the six who took vows at Montmartre in Paris in 1534 or the ten who arrived in Rome in 1537/38 to remain a close confidant of Ignatius up until the founder's death. According to Pedro Ribadeneira, Ignatius's first biographer, he was the choice of the founder to succeed him as Superior General. Ignatius himself testified that Lainez had provided the most accurate description of his own vision at La Storta outside Rome in 1537, in which God the Father placed Ignatius with his Son, a vision that has had great significance for Jesuit identity. Lainez stood out as a theologian as well as a preacher and diplomat who dealt with secular and ecclesiastical officials. But Ignatius did not consider him as one of the most adept at giving the Spiritual Exercises. Oberholzer suggests that Lainez has remained at the second level in Jesuit historiography because of his converso background and because of the large number of autograph letters that remain unedited in the Roman archives of the Jesuits, partly due to the extreme difficulty in deciphering his handwriting, despite the eight volumes of the Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu devoted to his correspondence. …

The Prelate in England and Europe 1300–1560

High ecclesiastical office in the Middle Ages inevitably brought power, wealth and patronage. The essays in this volume examine how late medieval and Renaissance prelates deployed the income and influence of their offices, how they understood their role, and how they were viewed by others. Focusing primarily on but not exclusively confined to England, this collection explores the considerable common ground between cardinals, bishops and monastic superiors. Leading authorities on the late medieval and sixteenth-century Church analyse the political, cultural and pastoral activities of high-ranking churchmen, and consider how episcopal and abbatial expenditure was directed, justified and perceived. Overall, the collection enhances our understanding of ecclesiastical wealth and power in an era when the concept and role of the prelate were increasingly contested. Dr Martin Heale is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of Liverpool. Contributors: Martin Heale, Michael Carter, James G. Clark, Gwilym Dodd, Felicity Heal, Anne Hudson, Emilia Jamroziak, Cedric Michon, Elizabeth A. New, Wendy Scase, Benjamin Thompson, C.M. Woolgar

The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity by Todd Hartch (review)

Reviewed by: The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity by Todd Hartch Timothy Matovina The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity. By Todd Hartch. [Oxford Studies in World Christianity Series.] (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xvi, 278. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-19-984313-8.) Pundits and scholars frequently note the rise of Protestantism, especially Pentecostalism, in Latin America. One of the most influential examples was David Stoll’s Is Latin America Turning Protestant? (Berkeley, 1990). Todd Hartch’s new book documents the Pentecostal advance as well as the ongoing competition for adherents between Catholics and Protestants. But Hartch also contends that “Protestants proved much better at conversion that at retention” (p. 55), underscoring that Protestants also struggle to retain members who are attracted to other Protestant denominations, to Catholicism, to other religions, or to no religious practice. Thus, although proportionally Protestant gain and Catholic loss has marked the recent history of Latin American Christianity, the overriding dynamic is the advent of a religious culture of choice that impels all religious groups to engage their adherents actively. Indeed, the rising Protestant tide “served as a catalyst [End Page 964] to Catholic revitalization” (p. 56). It animated numerous Catholic pastors and lay leaders to fortify the cultural Catholicism of previous eras with apostolic initiatives that foster Catholicism as an intentional way of life. Hartch notes that Catholic revitalization movements have reached the full range of Catholics, from the poor to the rich, the politically progressive to the conservative, the ordained and religious to the laity. These new developments include the emergence of a prophetic Christianity associated with liberation theology, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Catholic Action, base ecclesial communities, and new ecclesial movements like Focolare, the Sant’Egidio Community, and Opus Dei. Although the noteworthy influence of liberation theology has rightly garnered much attention, Hartch accentuates the simultaneous impact of other initiatives. He notes, for example, that as of 2000 some 75 million Latin American Catholics were participating in the Charismatic Renewal, outnumbering the 66 million Latin American Pentecostals and composing what the late Dominican scholar of Latin American affairs Edward Cleary deemed “the most important religious movement in Latin America” (p. 113). In fact, despite many ongoing challenges, the renewal of Catholicism in Latin America has resulted in an unprecedented global influence of Latin American theologies, religious practices, and lay and ordained missionaries. The major critique of this reviewer regarding this book is the treatment of popular religion. Echoing a widespread judgment of popular Catholicism, Hartch contends that “in focusing on saints, rituals, and holy days, many Catholics lost sight of (or never knew) the radical nature of their religion, such as its calls for justice, charity, and world evangelization” (p. 167). It is not clear how this claim corresponds to Hartch’s subsequent and overwhelmingly positive summary of the influence of devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe beyond Mexico and Latin America. Moreover, while not denying the limitations of popular Catholicism, many scholars, pastors, and popes since Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) have noted how popular religion often fosters evangelical virtues, a sacramental worldview, a communitarian ethos, and hope and endurance amidst intense suffering. Hartch is not alone in his criticism of popular religion, but his assessment would be stronger if he responded to these counterarguments. Nonetheless, this is a superb book that provides a highly readable introduction to Christianity in Latin America over the past half century. Hartch deftly inter-weaves broad analysis with concrete case studies that illuminate his major theses. He examines both the efforts of ecclesiastical officials as well as grassroots leaders and movements, particularly the often-underemphasized role of local lay leaders. The Rebirth of Latin American Christianity is strongly recommended for graduate and advanced undergraduate classes on Latin American or world Christianity, as well as for anyone interested in the seismic shift of Christianity to the global south. [End Page 965] Timothy Matovina University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

La chiesa di San Sebastiano a Venezia, Paolo Veronese, le implicazioni albanesi: una storia tutta da riscrivere.

The church of San Sebastiano in Venice, and its adjoining convent of the Girolamini, is considered as the temple of Paolo Veronese, entirely painted by him and therefore the destination of international scholars and visitors. The study of the recovered archival sources belonging to the monastery have unearthed the tumultuous events that for about half a century, in the first half of the sixteenth century, shook the convent during the conflicts with two Albanian priests: Niccolo Franco and Girolamo Messio. The cause of the dispute was the possession of a priory in Treviso, Santa Felicita of Romano. The conflict quickly became a battleground between church and state arguing about the rights of appointment of ecclesiastical offices. The Albanian side had an unconditional support from Rome, especially by Pope Paul III. In 1553, a Concordio put an end to the dispute and the year of 1554 saw the beginning of Paolo Veronese’s pictorial cycle. From the documents recovered emerges indeed a new personality to be ascribed to the history of Albanian culture, namely Girolamo Messio, who is the author of some writings. Above all, a new interpretive trail of all the decoration of the church is unveiled, which allows to read the metaphorical references to the geopolitical role of Scanderbeg's Albania as a confessional boundary. Therefore follows a new interpretive hypothesis of the temple of Paolo Veronese, an Albanian protagonist.

High time to talk about noon

The paper re-examines a well-known semantic change observed in the history of the English word noon. The received academic opinion is that the word originates from the Latin phrase nōna hora > nōna ‘the ninth hour’ and was originally used in the medieval context to denote the ninth hour of the day, i.e. about three o’clock p.m., and, by metonymy, also the prayer at the ninth hour of the day prescribed by The Rule of St Benedict. Due to the central role of The Rule of St Benedict in the organisation of daily monastic life in the Middle Ages, the Latin word nōna was borrowed into vernaculars of the countries which adopted The Rule. It appeared in Old English as nōn, in Middle Dutch as nōne, noene, in Old Saxon as nōn, nōna, in Middle Low German as nōna, etc. The available historical and etymological dictionaries of English date the beginning of change in the English word noon to the 12/13th century and claim that it was complete by the 14th century. In effect, the word started to denote ‘midday’ rather than ‘three o’clock p.m.’, and the change is traditionally associated with “anticipation of the ecclesiastical office or of a meal-hour.” The paper reassesses the strength of these assertions on the basis of an examination of the medieval system of time-keeping and the analysis of the monastic horarium, in particular the relationship between meal times and prayer times. It is shown that the explanation for the change put forward in the current sources relies on a misinformed view of medieval reality. I put forward an alternative explanation of the change, which is consonant both with the medieval system of time-keeping and with the monastic daily regime.

The Roles of Buddhist Ecclesiastical Officials on the Conflict Management in the Community

The Roles of Buddhist Ecclesiastical Officials on the Conflict Management in the Community

Obowiązek biskupa diecezjalnego wizyty ad limina Apostolorum

The subject of the article is to characterize the obligation of diocesan bishop of a visit ad limina Apostolorum . At the beginning the author explains what such a duty results from and what enti­ties are obliged to a visit ad limina Apostolorum . The obligation of a visit ad limina Apostolorum rests on the diocesan bishop and other high ecclesiastical officials who are equal to him under law, i.e. apostolic vicar, territorial abbot, territorial prelate, apos­tolic administrator of an apostolic administration which has been erected on a stable basis, military ordinary, personal ordinary of personal ordinariates for anglicans en­tering into full communion with the catholic Church and apostolic administrator of Personal Apostolic Administration of Saint John Maria Vianney. Then the author pre­sents the preparation for a visit ad limina Apostolorum which includes two elements: remote preparation and immediate preparation. The first stage concerns the prepara­tion of quinquennial report on the state of the diocese. The second one, in which par­ticular task has the Secretariat of the Episcopal Conference and the Coordinating Of­fice for the Visit, includes establishing a date and the schedule of the visit. The author describes each element of the visit, i.e. venerate the tombs of the Blessed Apostles Pe­ter and Paul, meeting the Roman Pontiff and visiting the Roman dicasteries.

Hungary and the Holy See of Rome (Sources and Perspectives): Studies in Honor of Cardinal Erdő Edited by Péter Tusor (review)

Hungary and the Holy See of Rome (Sources and Perspectives): Studies in Honor of Cardinal Erdo. Edited by Peter Tusor. [Collectanea Vaticana Hungariae Series I, Classis I, Vol. 8.] (Budapest: Gondolât Publishing. 2012. Pp. viii, 466. Paperback. ISBN 978-9-633-08063-4.)Church history research nowadays does not examine only the past of religion or the clergy; it also connects strongly with the history of politics, diplomacy, economy, culture, and lifestyle. Church history research in Rome about Hungary started in the second half of the nineteenth century and continues today with many remarkable results, such as those that appear in this collection of sixteen studies.In the Medieval section of the book, Tamas Fedeles used the quitantiae of the Apostolic Camera to gain information about the appointments to ecclesiastical offices in Hungary. According to the author, future research should concentrate on exploring and publishing all the Hungary-related material of the Apostolic Camera. Kornel Szovak chose to present a fascinating personality of the humanist culture: Martin of Ilkus, astronomer to Pope Paul II and physician to King Matthias I of Hungary. The author examines Martin's political and ecclesiastical career from a brand-new perspective. Gabor Nemes examined the situation of Croatia and Dalmatia by using the breves of Pope Clement VII. The pope-as the study points out-did not only support the resistance against the Turks financially but also sent a large amount of grain and war material. Help was also spiritual- the pope granted indulgence to the Frangepans and their soldiers.In the Early Modem Age section, Istvan Fazekas analyzes the papal confirmation of Hungarian episcopal appointments in 1554 on the basis of documents from the archives of Vienna. In this case, the new bishops (and an archbishop) were ordered to spend the annates on the fortification of the Hungarian border fortresses. Antal Molnar writes about Hungarian relations with the Republic of Ragusa, especially through the Catholic missions promoted by Ragusan merchants in the Balkans. These missionaries had to cope with both the spread of Islam and the Protestant preachers. Tamas Kruppa examines and publishes the apology of Demeter Napragi, bishop of Transylvania from 1601. The source found in the Vatican Secret Archives was an answer to the several accusations against the bishop by the Transylvanian orders. The apology discloses that Napragi supported Zsigmond Bathori and intended to destroy the Protestant denominations. …

Buddhist Debate and the Production and Transmission of Shōgyō in Medieval Japan

Medieval scholar-monks produced and transmitted a massive body of texts known as sacred works or shogyo. This article focuses on the Todaiji monk Sosho (1202-1278), who produced almost five hundred texts. How and for what purposes did a scholar-monk come to generate such a massive body of texts? First, Sosho produced most of his texts in the process of preparing for and participating in state-sponsored debate rituals (rongie). Since scholarmonks' participation in these rituals guaranteed their promotion, they produced their shogyo first and foremost for advancing their positions in the ecclesiastical community. In addition, copying shogyo was the main method of learning and advancing doctrinal studies. The transmission of shogyo also contributed to a significant institutional change in temple society in medieval Japan-the development of cloisters (inge). This article reveals the undeniable importance of liturgical tradition and the resultant production of shogyo in medieval Japan.KEYWORDS: Buddhist debate (rongi)-scholar-monks (gakusho)-Sosho-Todaiji- shogyo-cloisters (inge)(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)In medieval Japan (roughly from the twelfth to the early-sixteenth century), scholar-monks (gakuryo ... or gakusho ...) produced and transmitted various texts (shogyo ...)1 as part of their efforts to establish the authenticity of their doctrinal knowledge, ritual techniques, and cloisters (inge...).2 In this article, I analyze this process by examining texts that the Todaiji ... monk Sosho ... (1202-1278) produced to prepare for participating in Buddhist debate rituals (rongie ...) sponsored by the state.3 Unlike one-time polemical debate, these state-sponsored debate rituals were held annually and provided an elite scholar-monk such as Sosho with opportunities to gain knowledge of Buddhist doctrines and to build his credentials as a scholar. A monk's successful debate performance in state-organized debate rituals not only increased his fame, but also guaranteed his promotion to a high position in the ecclesiastical office of sogo .... In order to prepare for debate, Sosho copied, edited, or compiled vast amounts of shogyo, and he later transmitted these texts to his disciples who also were to attend debate rituals. Furthermore, the transmission of shogyo contributed not only to the education of his disciples but also to his lifelong ambition of reinvigorating Kegon ... studies at his cloister within Todaiji.Despite the voluminous corps of texts that he leftand the significance of his pedagogical and scholarly achievements, Sosho has not attracted major scholarly interest, especially in the English-speaking world, for several reasons. First, there are certain technical difficulties; most of Sosho's shogyo texts have not been published, and still remain in the form of handwritten manu- scripts. In addition, Sosho usually copied these texts very quickly; therefore, he used a rather peculiar shorthand style, which is not easily decipherable to the untrained eye.4 Finally, Sosho was more interested in copying, editing, and commenting on what others had written than authoring his own work. A Todaiji monk once half-jokingly said to me that Sosho was a mere copyist (kopi man). This view, however, is premised on the modern notion of authorship, which is not always applicable to premodern texts.5 In this article, I show that the act of copying, and its products-the texts themselves-facilitated a scholar-monk's desire for academic accomplishment, salvific attainment, and political empowerment.In addition, scholarly paradigms in the field of premodern Japanese religions that are currently dominant tend to neglect or obscure the intellectual and social activities of elite scholar-monks of Nanto6 temples such as Sosho-especially Kuroda Toshio's characterization of and Buddhism (kenmitsu ...). Kuroda largely equates exoteric with doctrinal learning-what elite scholar-monks of Nanto temples devoted their life to-while contrasting it with esoteric Buddhism that focused on thaumaturgical rites (shuho . …

Truth and calumny in Baroque Rome: Richard O'Ferrall and theCommentarius Rinuccinianus, 1648–1667

Richard O'Ferrall's claim of 5 March 1658 that the Stuart monarchy had no right to rule Ireland was made almost in passing. The real purpose of the report made by this Capuchin friar and courtier at the congregation of Propaganda Fide, the committee of cardinals whose jurisdiction included nearly all those missions and churches under non-Catholic governments, was to exclude all Irish Catholics of English descent from high ecclesiastical office. At the centre of his argument was the confederate Catholic association of the 1640s and the place within it of the Old English community. The Capuchin argued that the confederates had remained too closely bound to the Stuart monarchy, and that the Old English had betrayed the confederate cause to Charles I's lord lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, earl, marquis and later duke of Ormond. Many of O'Ferrall's Catholic contemporaries saw him as a dangerous member of a radical tradition: a clerical assembly at Dublin in June 1666 burned his report along with a copy of Conor O'Mahony's Disputatio apologetica of 1645, which had argued that all Ireland's Protestants should be killed or expelled and a native king elected. The Commentarius Rinuccinianus, begun by O'Ferrall, developed the argument of the 1658 report on a grand scale.