Ecclesiastical Property Research Articles

Reformbedarf und Reformen an der norditalienischen Peripherie. Der Deutsche Orden in Venedig und in Venetien (14.–15. Jh.)

Needed Reform vs. Effected Reform on the North Italian Periphery. The Teutonic Order in Venice and its “Terraferma” (14th–15th centuries) This article examines manifestations of decline in the Bailiwick of Lombardy (Lamparten) that ultimately affected the lives of brothers in all commanderies within the dominion of Venice. It discusses the problems ensuing from the transformation of ecclesiastical property into free benefices and the attempts of the Venetian government to seize control of all appointments of all offices and prebends. A strict control of the conditions in the North Italian commanderies could have been achieved by regular and frequent visitations. These inspections, however, were not instigated until the second half of the 14 th century and only occurred – perhaps for financial reasons – in long intervals. Whether or not there were specific reasons for dispatching visitors can no longer be determined. The underlying cause of the problems in most commanderies was the extremely low membership in the individual houses: nowhere did the number of brothers in the Teutonic Order suffice to achieve the minimum number required by the established Rule to lead a conventual life. It was easy, therefore, to ignore – whether by accident or design – any regulations. The sources only report the most spectacular cases also involving secular jurisdiction. The Teutonic Order was only affected by transformation of church property into free benefices in the diocese of Treviso. However, the ecclesiastical prebend politics in the area of study was so inconsequential that the Order never even protested. Of much greater danger to the Order was the politics of Venice: since the 1360s, the Venetian government had seized control of all ecclesiastical offices and benefices. The Order saw its autonomy seriously threatened when the Venetian Senate began, in the early 15th century, to focus not only on the secular church but also the established religious communities in Venice and its mainland possessions, including the religious military orders. Sources document that the Teutonic Order, in order to protect itself against all interference in its internal affairs by the Venetian state, cooperated with the Knights Hospitallers. They were equally threatened, but their networking in Venice gave them more influence. The joint protest of both religious military orders caused the Venetian government to retreat. The Senate’s order was not enforced and the Teutonic Order retained its autonomy. One typical example of the Order’s problematic conduct can be observed in its holdings in Astian / Stigliano (Diocese of Treviso), where it gravely neglected its responsibilities as patron of the small church there. The Order even allowed the Diocese of Treviso – before the Council of Constance – to divert income from church property designated to pay the local resident priest, as a pure prebend to support underpaid clergy at the cathedral chapter of Treviso. Not until the reform debates at the Council of Basel was the Order – more precisely: the German Master (“Deutschmeister”) responsible for Italy – reminded of its patronage rights in Stigliano. At the end of July 1435, the Order and the Diocese of Treviso agreed to a compromise in which the vicar of the (at the time) vacant see of Treviso recognized the Order’s presentation right as patron of the church. The Order acquiesced in the transformation of the ecclesiastical property in Stigliano into a free prebend to support the clergy of Treviso, thereby quite pragmatically consenting to the personnel-political schemes of the church of Treviso. Already by the mid-1430s, the Teutonic Order’s financial situation in the Bailiwick of Lombardy was so acute that it was unable to fulfill its responsibilities attached to the church patronage in Stigliano or even to maintain the church building. Later, this became even more difficult – or better, impossible – when the commanderies faced accumulating financial obligations. From the mid 15th century, the Bailiwick of Lombardy was unable to raise even the smallest portion of the financial means necessary towards the maintenance and regular repairs of St. Nicholas Church in Stigliano. The reason: the enormous extra contributions demanded by the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order, deeply in debt because of the unsuccessful war against Poland. Even though the Order was entirely incapable of performing its duties as patron of this small church, it still refused to relinquish its patronage. English translation by Cornelia Oefelein

Administration of Ecclesiastical Temporal Goods in the Light of the Instructions of the Polish Episcopal Conference of 2015

The mission of the Church is evangelisation and not acquisition of capital. It is good if the Church has sufficient financial means necessary to fulfil its mission. The Catholic Church has the inherent right, independently of any secular power, to acquire, retain, administer and alienate temporal goods, in pursuit of its proper objectives (can. 1254 of the Code of Canon Law). In order to fulfil its mission in the world, the Church needs to be supported by appropriate material goods and the freedom to administer them. The Code of Canon Law of 1983 introduced a new regulation regarding ecclesiastical property, so as to make sure that the Church could better suit the concept of a “poor Church” that, being in the need of economic resources to achieve its goals, focuses on the instrumental task of such resources: so that the faithful fulfilled their duty in the form of helping in maintaining the Church and its works as part of their fundamental rights and obligations related to the temporal goods; so that spiritual goal of ecclesiastical offices was emphasised and the revenues received were justly distributed. The Polish Episcopal Conference on 25 August 2015 approved the Instruction on the Administration of Ecclesiastical Temporal Goods. In the present article four points will be discussed: The right of the Church to the acquisition, holding and alienating of temporal goods; the Instruction of the Polish Episcopal Conference on the acquisition of temporal goods; the Instruction of the Polish Episcopal Conference on the administration of temporal goods and contracts; the Remuneration for priests.

Royal Licensing of Ecclesiastical Property Exchanges in Early Medieval Germany: Ottonian Practice on Carolingian Foundations

The obligations of churches within the German kingdom to provide material support to the Ottonian kings during the tenth and early eleventh centuries, that is their servitium regis, has received co...

Akty zarządzania dobrami doczesnymi

The Code of Canon Law (Corpus Iuris Canonici, CIC), in its version enacted by Pope John Paul II, employs diverse terminology when refer- ring to acts of administration of goods. Can. 1277 of CIC refers to “acts of administration which are more important” and “acts of extraordinary administration”, while the provision of 1281 §1 and §2 of CIC points out the dierence between “acts of ordinary administration” and “acts which exceed the limit and manner of ordinary administration”. Although the terminology adopted in the Code of Canon Law clearly marks the dierence, it does not dene these terms and does not provide any list of these acts. Scholars do not provide much opinion in this matter either, leaving the issue for consideration by particular legislation and legal practice. However, the exact denition of dierences between the above-mentioned acts of admi- nistration is of great practical importance for the validity of acts related to the administration of ecclesiastical property. e article presented herein, based on an analysis of Can. 1277 and Can. 1281 §1, and §2 of CIC, indicates the existing dierences in terminology, and underlines the urgent need to develop a list of extraordinary acts of administration of ecclesiastical goods to ensure the stability of this kind of legal action, and draws attention to the criteria by which acts of extraordinary administration should be formulated.

L’importance des sources de la période révolutionnaire pour la reconstitution des bibliothèques médiévales

The nationalization of ecclesiastical property in France, ordered in a series of decrees from 1789-1791, gave rise to the procedure of inventorying the libraries of ecclesias¬ tical establishments. This included both French and “foreign” establishments (located on territories recently occupied by Revolutionary France), thus producing a very rich documentary history which can “fix” the final state of collections of manuscripts and old printed books before they were dispersed. For collections that were formed in the medieval period and for which no catalogs were preserved, the revolutionary inventory becomes a unique tool which allows the study of the medieval library and its eventual reconstitution. This article focuses on the inventory of manuscripts (89 items) from the library of the Benedictine abbey of Gembloux (Belgium), recently discovered by us in the National Archives of France and identified as a copy of an revolutionary inventory established in 1795 (until now was considered lost). The richness and very rigorous methodology of the inventory allowed us to suggest identification for 84 items from the surviving manuscripts, all preserved today at the Royal Library of Belgium.

Tra Oriente e Occidente: note sulla circolazione artistica nei ‘quartieri’ veneziani del Levante attraverso i documenti

In this paper I emphasise the relevance of the archival documents, in order to understand the extent of the circulation of art works in the Venetian ports of the Levant. A few examples are presented, chosen among those, stored in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, concerning ecclesiastical properties in Constantinople, Raidestos and Negroponte, in which liturgical vessels, textiles and manuscripts are mentioned. Such lists are very concise, but some preliminary remarks can be drawn out of them, about the quality and provenance of the objects used and preserved in the Venetian churches of the Outremer in the late Middle Ages.

Religião e política no salazarismo: o problema do património da Igreja Católica e a resolução da «questão religiosa» = Religion and politics under the Salazar regime: the problem of Catholic Church property and the resolution of the ‘religious question’

This article deals with the strategies and solutions that Salazar, the Portuguese episcopate and Vatican diplomacy developed in order to address one of the issues that put most strain on the relationship between the Portuguese state and the Catholic Church up to the mid-twentieth century, namely the problem of the ecclesiastical property that had come into the hands of the state and its administrative organs as a result of the 1911 Law of Separation [of Church and state]. It examines the principal legal documents that governed the status of this property between 1926 and 1953. It also considers the main accords made concerning that property and its use, especially the agreement of 1 November 1940, which was signed without any publicity, and which has remained unknown to the wider public until this research was conducted. Based on legal sources and on official correspondence between the political establishment and the religious authorities, the present study reveals how the Estado Novo handled the property aspect of the so-called ‘religious question’, which, despite being fundamental to overcoming that dispute, has to date been little considered by historiography.

SECULARIZATION: THE BIRTH OF A MODERN COMBAT CONCEPT

This essay argues that today's dominant understanding of secularization—as an epochal transition from a society based on religious belief to one based on autonomous human reason—first appeared in philosophical histories at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was then anachronistically applied to early modern Europe. Apart from the earlier and persisting canon-law use of the term to refer to a species of exclaustration, prior to 1800 the standard lexicographical meaning of “secularization” was determined by its use in public law and diplomacy to name the civil conversion of ecclesiastical property and jurisdiction. Prior to the same point the most important use of the adjective “secular” was in political jurisprudence as a synonym for temporal, civil, and political, to name a religious–political settlement from which rival theologies had been excluded as the condition of its negotiation. But this usage was domain-specific, was quite compatible with religious devotion, and had nothing to do with the putatively secular character of the spheres of philosophy or the natural sciences, thence “society”. Far from seeing a shift from religious belief to autonomous rationality, early modernity in fact witnessed a significant intensification of religious belief and practice under the impact of rival confessional movements. It also emerges that the nineteenth century was characterized not by the supersession of confessional religions—or their conversion into rational religion or moral philosophy—but by their remarkable persistence and adaptation to new circumstances. In light of this, the essay argues that the variant philosophical-historical conceptions of secularization—as the epochal supersession of religious belief by human rationality—should not be understood as theories of a putative process but as “combat concepts”. These were internal to an array of rival cultural-political factions that first emerged in early nineteenth-century Protestant Germany and that continue to do battle today.

“Penuria pauperum clamat”. Discursos letrados sobre los bienes eclesiásticos (siglos XII-XVI): doctrinas ideales y realidades típicas

This article studies the origins and development of the highbrow literature about the ecclesiastical properties between the Twelveth and the Sixteenth Centuries in Europe. These texts were created by the ecclesiastical reformist process during this age and originated the opinions and social mentalities about the ideal clergyman and his relationship with the wealth.

A Law of War? English Protection and Destruction of Ecclesiastical Property during the Fourteenth Century

Historians—both those who concentrate on military history and those who touch upon it in passing—often refer to the ‘laws of war’ in the middle ages without any clear idea of what this term actually implies. Ecclesiastical immunity during warfare has long been held as one such ‘law of war’; this article, however, questions the validity of identifying late medieval ideas of ecclesiastical immunity during wartime as valid ‘law’. The article focuses on English warfare in and around the fourteenth century (c.1290–c.1415), contrasting apparent attempts to protect ecclesiastical property with the widespread destruction of churches, abbeys, and other religious property during wartime. By comparing theoretical military conduct, as stipulated in military ordinances, with actual military conduct in the field, the article seeks to reveal medieval attitudes regarding the limitation of war. A number of English campaigns from Edward I to Henry V are examined, with particular attention given to the Durham Ordinances of Richard II, created on the eve of his 1385 invasion of Scotland. It is argued that notions of ecclesiastical protection contained within military ordinances were based more on politico-military factors than on moral or legal considerations. Furthermore, it is argued, ecclesiastical immunity lacked fundamental characteristics of law—compliance, sanction, enforcement—and therefore cannot be identified as valid ‘law’.

Lay Patronage and the Development of Ecclesiastical Property in Spanish America: The Case of Buenos Aires, 1700–1900

Abstract Beginning with the dissolution of colonial Christendom, the development of church property has been closely tied to processes of secularization in Latin American countries. This process is to be understood not as the marginalization of religion but as the restructuring of religious matters in modern societies. The practice of lay patronage—which was common in America, as it was in Europe for centuries—channeled family wealth into the financial support of certain institutions, which in turn allowed lay patrons to intervene in decisions about religious life. In the case of Buenos Aires such properties were absorbed or expropriated during the nineteenth century as part of a process of centralization, in which local church authorities, the papacy, and the state all participated. Thus in Buenos Aires the process of disentailment of church property did not involve the transfer of property from the church to the state, as might be supposed by extrapolating from the liberal reforms that took place in other countries. Rather, there was a process of appropriation by the state and by the church of property and managerial authority that had previously been held by families and various local institutions. It is worth asking if this phenomenon was unique to Buenos Aires, or if it can be generalized in some measure to other parts of the Hispanic world.

Zakaz alienacji dóbr kościelnych instytucji dobroczynnych w Cesarstwie Rzymskim

The subject of the submission are the prohibitions of alienations of Christian charitable institutions` estates. Christian charitable institutions came into being in 4th Century. The charitable institutions displayed a new way of charitable activity to advantage. The charitable institutions became the matter of ecclesiastical legal regulation in 5th Century. Some of those regulations concerned interdictions of sale, donations, lend, lease or any disposal of Church and its institutions` property. The prohibition of alienation indicated that the imperial legislation was focused on well existence and functioning of ecclesiastical charitable institutions. The aim of imperial legislation was the protection of ecclesiastical property from diminution by the acts of fraud conducted by dishonest clergy or contracting party. According to Roman legal tradition the owner was permitted to alienate his property. But by the cause of public benefit ecclesiastical and imperial authorities enforced limitation of this owner`s right. Now, we can say, that the existing and activity of charitable institutions was a sphere of privet and public interests.

“The Economics of Reform in the Middle Ages”

AbstractScholarship has long recognized the primary economic mission of eleventh‐century Church reform as the restitution and protection of ecclesiastical property. Most monographs on the subject of reform regard the economic changes of the period as fundamental to wider negotiations of power. While the study of land tenure offers one context in which to examine how customary authority and canon law intersect, more recent work reveals a much more complex landscape of economic concerns. In particular, some excellent studies published in the last two decades consider the relationship between reform polemic and its manifestation on the ground. The interpretive shift towards a focus on local reform movements and the move towards studying the economic aspects of reform should often go hand in hand. In this way, we may arrive at a more holistic understanding of the economic issues raised during the most intense period of reform, from 1046 (Synod of Sutri) to 1122 (Concordat of Worms).

Church Property—A Commentary on Canon Law Governing Temporal Goods in the United States and Canada (review)

Reviewed by: Church Property—A Commentary on Canon Law Governing Temporal Goods in the United States and Canada Phillip J. Brown S.S. Church Property—A Commentary on Canon Law Governing Temporal Goods in the United States and Canada by John A. Renken. Ottawa: Saint Paul University, 2009. Canonists note the desperate need for a comprehensive English commentary on Book V of the 1983 code adapted to conditions in the United States and Canada. Robert Kennedy's commentary in the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law remains indispensible. Others are scattered about in journals and non-English publications, e.g., De Paolis in Italian. Quite often, however, they do not account for the conditions in the United States and Canada. Church Property—A Commentary on Canon Law Governing Temporal Goods in the United States and Canada is Renken's attempt to fill the void. Practitioners with sufficient expertise will find the text useful. Its didactic value is limited, but certain sections provide helpful outlines and course readings. The treatment of acquisition and administration is especially good. Renken explains carefully and clearly the supervisory power of the Holy [End Page 273] See and diocesan bishops. The text emphasizes the important role of the administrator of public juridic persons; likewise, it differentiates between the public juridic persons administered by the diocesan bishop and those not subject to his administration. The differences in meaning between moral and juridic persons in the 1917 and 1983 codes is a conceptual minefield for students and practitioners. More detail and clarity on these canonical institutions would have been helpful. Likewise, the USCCB complementary norm on canon 1277 confuses extraordinary administration and alienation, something the 1983 code described as clearly distinct. This problem should also be clarified, since it perplexes students and poses a nightmare for practitioners. Greater attention to such difficulties would have been helpful. The effects of trust obligations on property ownership differ, sometimes significantly, in canon and civil law. Greater depth and detail would have been helpful here. "Canonization" of the civil law of contracts opens endless traps for the unwary: Is the Statute of Frauds merely an evidentiary rule, allowing oral testimony at odds with a written land contract pursuant to canon 1547? Or does it concern formation of the contract; hence, no contract-no testimony? Canon 1295 provides the application of the norms of canons 1291-1294 to transactions placing ecclesiastical property at risk of alienation. Attempting to do this involves complexities that literally boggle the mind, e.g., how to apply the minimum and maximum amounts to such transactions. The text contains several typographical errors that require careful editing, since they could lead to confusion even regarding the substance of the book. The author seems partial to the past perfect and a tendency to repetition. That being said, Church Property contains many useful references and a helpful overview of canon law on temporal goods law for discerning readers, researchers and well-guided students. Canonists working in this area should have this text as a useful resource. [End Page 274] Phillip J. Brown S.S. Theological College Washington DC Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations (review)

Reviewed by: The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations James Murray The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations. By Henry A. Jefferies.(Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distrib. by ISBS, Portland, OR. 2010. Pp. 302. $70.00. ISBN 978-1-846-82050-2.). Henry Jefferies's aim in his new book is "to put religion back at the heart of the on-going debate on the Reformation in Ireland" (p. 12). This is a laudable [End Page 794] objective, and he deserves commendation for reminding us that Ireland's Reformation experience is unintelligible unless due consideration is given to the religious convictions of its sixteenth-century inhabitants. It is disappointing, then, to discover that his own treatment of religion is self-consciously regressive and that ultimately he presents an account of the religious developments of the period that closely resembles the traditional and, prior to the 1970s, predominant Catholic-nationalist narrative of the failure of the Reformation in Ireland. Given the rhetorical method employed, this outcome is inevitable. Jefferies pits himself against the "revisionist successors" of the older generation of Irish Catholic/nationalist historians, who, he argues, have "tended to project their own secularist mentalities onto the past and deny religion its significance as an important influence in Tudor times"(p. 11). As a remedy, he elects throughout his book to set those modes of inquiry and argument that do not focus specifically on religion in opposition to those that do, suggesting, repeatedly, that the former are necessarily inferior when they are utilized to explore any aspect of the history of the Reformation in Ireland. This uncompromisingly dualistic approach is particularly marked in the final chapters of the book, where the author offers an analysis of the series of rebellions that erupted in Ireland from the late 1570s. Here, the historians who have advanced political, constitutional, or economic explanations for the outbreak of the rebellions are successively dismissed, generally because they are adjudged to have "played down," or "failed to appreciate" the religious dimensions of the revolts (pp. 208, 278). Jefferies's implicit rejection of the possibility that secular modes of inquiry may offer useful perspectives on the religious history of Tudor Ireland is symptomatic of a more general tendency to simplify or reduce any argument, and the supporting evidence, that complicates that history. Consequently, far from putting religion back at the center of the debate on Ireland's Reformation, he merely reframes that debate as a closed and problemless entity, which enables him to create a clear, untroubled space in which to establish his own narrative. That narrative is ultimately revealed in the final part of the book in a committed and lengthy description of pan-Irish resistance to the Elizabethan settlement. Familiar motifs emerge as this narrative unfolds: a steadfast Irish communal attachment to traditional Catholicism, the buttressing effect of a steadily emerging Counter-Reformation Church, and the ineffectiveness of a weak and corrupt Church of Ireland. His conclusion—that these factors led inexorably to the failure of the Reformation—is reminiscent of historians such as M.V. Ronan and Robin Dudley Edwards not only in terms of the final judgment but also in regard to the evidence used to support it, namely, the series of despatches preserved in the Irish State Papers in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, which were penned by ecclesiastical and state officials and which lament the obdurate nature of Irish religious conservatism. [End Page 795] This approach is unsatisfying because it not only accepts uncritically the evidence for the existence of an undifferentiated, communal attachment to Catholicism but also endeavors to construct a late-medieval wellspring for the phenomenon built on an equally questionable evidential base. In the opening section of the book, the Irish Church is portrayed as a healthier and more coherent, island-wide entity than many contemporaries were prepared to admit, on the basis of a dubious simplification of the island's complex politics, culture, geography,and economy; through his avoidance of contemporary evidence detailing the widespread lay despoliation of ecclesiastical property; and through some extravagant claims made for a relatively modest renewal of the late-medieval Church's physical infrastructure. Although Jefferies's account certainly challenges the old...

The politics of remorse: penance and royal piety in the reign of AEthelred the Unready

In 993 King AEthelred the Unready made a public declaration of remorse for sins commited in his youth. This article examines the royal privilege to the abbey of Abingdon (S 876) which records this council, and the penitential style of kingship adopted by AEthelred from 993 evidenced in a remarkable series of restitutions of ecclesiastical property and grants to churches. It argues that his penitential policy should be viewed in a continental context of the political deployment of penance, and that it was initially adopted to enhance AEthelred's kingship. It demonstrates how reflexes of the king's repentance can be seen in the homilies of AElfric and suggests that the great penitential decree of 1009, drafted by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, both continued this penitential policy and moved beyond it to extend royal remorse for wrongdoing to national penitence.

Les vicariae et la genèse des «paroisses» dans le Massif Central (fin IXe-milieu-XIe siècle)

Vicariae and the Genesis of « Parishes » in Massif Central (End of 9th-Middle of 11th Centuries). The new understanding of the 9-11th centuries vicariae as the usual entity for entrusting properties and local delegation of authority (potestas) is opening up prospects. There are several kinds of vicariae, and one of them is gathering ecclesiastical properties and rights around a single local church. Linked upon the law to the bishop and part of a hierarchical system, those ecclesiastical vicariae look like « parrochiae ». However, they are not similar, with their large scattering of linked properties and their fluctuating boundaries. So we can’t call a vicaria parish, even if some medieval scribes use the word « parrochia » to call some ecclesiastical vicariae as soon as the end of the 9th century Most of the time, before the middle of the 9th century, parrochia seems to be used in deed’s location phrases as synonymous with vicaria, like many other words (ager, ministerium, aids, centena, vallis...).

Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy 1948–1967 (review)

Reviewed by: Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy 1948–1967 Robert O. Freedman Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy 1948–1967, by Uri Bialer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 240 pp. $39.95. In recent years religion has played an increasingly important role in Middle Eastern foreign policy. On the one hand, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, a radical interpretation of Islam has been a motivating factor in Iran's foreign policy, leading the Islamist regime to take a bitterly anti-Israeli stance. On the other hand, Evangelical Christianity has been a significant factor behind the Bush Administration's pro-Israeli policy from 2001 to 2007. While both Iran's Islamists and America's Evangelical Christians became politically influential after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, religious issues were also important in Israeli foreign policy well before that conflict, as Uri Bialer demonstrates in this very well researched and very well written book. Indeed, Bialer highlights a neglected topic in Israeli foreign policy as he outlines the often troubled relations between Israel and the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Churches on such topics as the possible internationalization of Jerusalem, the future of Church property, and Christian missionary work in Israel. In considering these issues, Bialer shows the dilemmas facing Israeli decisionmakers as they weighed different options in dealing with the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Churches and their backers in Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States. In the early years of the State of Israel, the main problem was the Catholic Church and its Pope. Israeli policymakers were deeply suspicious of the Catholic Church, often seeing its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist as reflecting nearly 2,000 years of, if not downright religious bigotry, then at least the fear that the rebirth of Israel would raise major questions about Catholic doctrine which, before 1965, saw the destruction of the Second Temple in [End Page 168] 70 CE by the Romans as proof that God's grace had shifted from the Jews to the Christians. Indeed, as Bialer points out (p. 4), L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published a Vatican statement that asserted, "Modern Zionism is not the true heir of Biblical Israel . . . therefore, the Holy Land and its sacred sites belong to Christianity which is the true Israel." At first, however, recognition was not the central issue between Israel and the Vatican but rather the internationalization of Jerusalem, which the Vatican was energetically advocating. Bialer describes in detail how Israeli policymakers, having been caught by surprise by the Vatican's success in pushing through the United Nations in December 1949 a declaration for the internationalization of Jerusalem, worked, in tacit cooperation with Jordan, which then occupied East Jerusalem, to thwart the Vatican-led declaration. In this Israel was ultimately successful, as the issue of the internationalization of Jerusalem became a dead letter—at least as far as the UN was concerned. Israel also had problems with the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches. In the Russian case, while the Soviet Union had recognized Israel and provided it with diplomatic support and military assistance (via Czechoslovakia) during Israel's war of Independence, there was the vexing problem of Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical property in Israel. Complicating the issue, as Bialer notes, were the various claimants to that property, which included the Soviet government, the Russian Ecclesiastical mission, and the Palestine Orthodox Society. Initially, Israel favored Soviet claimants, but after relations between Israel and the USSR chilled when Moscow switched its backing to the Arabs, negotiations slowed, and a partial agreement was not reached until May 1964. One of the most interesting aspects of Bialer's book is his discussion of how the Israeli government handled missionary activity. While on the one hand Christians feel the duty to propagate their faith, on the other hand, for centuries Jews have been on the receiving end of forced conversions. With the establishment of the State of Israel, its Jewish leadership had to balance its abhorrence of Christian missionary activity with the desire not to alienate the countries from which the missionaries came, a dilemma...

Church Property: The Unity of Law and Theology

As part of a book project, this Chapter explores the ownership of property in the Catholic Church. The Chapter consists of four sections. First, the Chapter compares several seminal elements in the understanding of property in canon law and liberal political theory. On the basis of the differences, the Chapter suggests that it would be misplaced to impose the understanding of property embraced by liberal theory onto the canon law that regulates the ownership of property within the Catholic Church. Second, in light of the question raised about the ownership of parish property in the recent diocesan bankruptcy litigations, the Chapter examines the canonical and theological relationship between the diocese and the parish in terms of the ownership of property. Third, the Chapter recounts the nineteenth century struggle of the Catholic Church to secure its parish property in accord with the hierarchical structure required by canon law in opposition to the then dominant congregational model embraced by Protestantism. Fourth, it discusses the relationship between canon law and state law with regard to ecclesiastical property. The Chapter suggests that property is held within the Catholic Church in accord with the unity of canon law and theology.

Politics and power in early medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish realm, 600-1000

Introduction 1. The late Merovingian order 2. Conquest and continuity 3. The Carolingians and ecclesiastical property 4. Reaction and resistance 5. The politics of old German 6. Imperial unity and regional power 7. The late Carolingian order 8. The tenth-century transformation Conclusions.