French Catholic Research Articles

Zouave Stories: Gender, Catholic Spirituality, and French Responses to the Roman Question

In 1860, Joseph-Louis Guerin, a seminarian in the French city of Nantes, promised his mother that he would bring her a rosary blessed by Pope Pius IX. At first, she thought he was referring to the distant future, after his ordination. But he told her gently that he would be leaving for Rome immediately, and as she wept, he departed to join the pontifical Zouaves, the international volunteer force of devout Catholics dedicated to preserving the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See against the forces of the Italian Risorgimento. Guerin was wounded at the battle of Castelfidardo later that year, and he died on All Saints’ Day, “in ecstasy,” smiling, and with his eyes wide open and insensitive to light. In death his face “preserved the angelic form it had had in life.” Guerin’s story continues in a more unusual vein after his death. In March 1861, a young, desperately ill Italian girl, paralyzed, blind, and epileptic, saw a man in a peculiar uniform—baggy Arab-style trousers and a short jacket decorated with red braid—who instructed her to continue praying. The next night he appeared again and told her that her prayers had been answered: she immediately stood up, opened her eyes and saw an image of the Virgin on the wall. On her way from confession the next day, she recognized her visitor’s distinctive uniform when she passed a contingent of Zouaves in the street, and, shown a photograph of the dead Guerin, she recognized him as her visitor.1 The story of Guerin’s miracle circulated in Zouave commemorative literature, and for many his presumed sanctity came to represent the martyrdom of all Zouaves. Guerin’s story is evidence of a particular strain of French Catholic devotion to Pius IX and of Catholic mobilization in the face of the threat to papal sovereignty. It is a strange narrative, however, that disrupts many of our assumptions about how French men and women experienced emotion, faith, and the supernatural. This essay explores the stories told about Joseph Guerin and other Zouaves, with particular attention to what they tell us about gender and Catholic spirituality. Guerin and his fellow Zouaves were hardly typical of

Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine (review)

Reviewed by: Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine Barbara Corrado Pope Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine. By Suzanne K. Kaufman. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 2005. Pp. viii, 255. $34.95.) Suzanne Kaufman's Consuming Visions challenges two ways of looking at the history of France and French Catholicism: The first maintains that there [End Page 430] were "two Frances," one Catholic and antimodern, the other Republican, anticlerical and in tune with the modern world of science and commerce. The second contends that French Catholicism became "feminized" in the nineteenth century, and, as a consequence, "privatized," its practices and rituals removed from the public sphere. When historians of Lourdes complicate these dichotomies, they assert that the promoters of the shrine used the instruments of modernity—the railroads, the press, and "medical proofs"—to bolster an essentially reactionary political agenda and devotional practice. Kaufman presents a brilliant, well-researched, clearly written argument that the development and practices of the Lourdes shrine are modern. Medieval pilgrimages, of course, had their share of buying, selling, and profit-mongering. But Lourdes had more: a proliferation of standardized commodities, modern transportation, and urban renewal, a panoply of developments that made Lourdes not only a tourist site, but a crucial regional economic asset. The shrine, Kaufman also contends, introduced the largely rural female influx to the modern wonders of consumption and spectacle. Lourdes was a spectacle both by design and because of the controversies it evoked. Organizers (the religious and lay orders) standardized the rituals surrounding the sick who came to the shrine hoping for a miraculous recovery: the stretchers at the train; the baths; the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, during which the multitudes chanted for a cure; and the crowds around the Bureau of Medical Verification awaiting the declaration that a miracle had been scientifically validated. This spectacle was communicated to the rest of France, and eventually the world, through the mass press (especially the Assumptionist La Croix), best-selling books, guidebooks, and when photography became cheaper, postcards. Finally, the cured themselves became a spectacle, in Kaufman's words, "sacred celebrities," often women who used their ephemeral fame as a means to assert their moral authority. The mixture of commerce and religion, and the presence of women worshipers, spectators and shoppers made both supporters and detractors of Lourdes uneasy. Even Republicans wanted money separated from worship. Catholic moralists like Léon Bloy and aesthetes like J. K. Huysmans railed against the ugliness and commercialization. And both sides were willing to blame women, who, they said, were prone to various excesses, including hysteria. Kaufman devotes two chapters ("Scientific Sensationalism and the Miracle Cure" and "Public Wager: Publicity and the Truth of the Cure") to the most fundamental controversy: whether the cures at the shrine proved divine intervention. Catholic and secular doctors alike used the mass media to take their case to the public. Fraud and slander were among the charges and countercharges played out in a sensationalist press; so was the contention, from secularists, that all cures were "mind cures." In the end secular doctors could not reach any consensus about certain famous cases, and when anti-clerical legislators tried to close Lourdes down in 1903 they were thwarted by many in [End Page 431] their own camp whose economic interests were too entwined in keeping the shrine open. Today, Lourdes remains the most popular pilgrimage site in Europe, about which Kaufman has written (to use a modernist term) a spectacular book. Barbara Corrado Pope University of Oregon Copyright © 2007 The Catholic University of America Press

Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840–1970 (review)

Reviewed by: Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840–1970 Susanna Lee Burton, Richard D. E. Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840–1970. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2004. Pp. 291. ISBN 0-8014-4207-9. Richard Burton's Holy Tears, Holy Blood is an engaging historical, political, and psychological study of women's voluntary suffering in the name of religion. Focusing on the "centrality of Christ's Passion in French Catholic thought and practice," the book is about the practice of suffering, and specifically about eleven women who practiced, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France. From the second epigraph by the Goncourt ("By bringing into the world the feeling for suffering, Jesus Christ has increased enormously the ability to suffer. His death was the death of physical and moral pagan health. Neurosis comes from Golgotha"), this study presents a rich compendium of perspectives on suffering. Indeed, the perspective or focus varies considerably from chapter to chapter, from literary analysis to psychological commentary to social history to theology, with the result that the book reads not as a linear argument or arguments, but rather as a series of slices of life and thought. It raises far more questions than it answers; however, there is great richness in the questions themselves and how they are raised, and this richness makes the book more than worthwhile. After an introduction on suffering and the gendering of its permutations, the first chapter is devoted to Mélanie Calvat, the witness (or alleged witness) to the La Salette Marian apparition of 1846. In describing La Salette and the weeping, afflicted image of the Virgin associated with it, Burton establishes the sort of female religious image that found primacy in nineteenth-century France. He then moves in the second chapter to Thérèse Martin, who concentrated on God's love and mercy rather than on God's judgment and anger. This chapter is more psychological in nature; we see Thérèse's devout family, her mother's obsession with expiation and sacrifice, her assumption of the masculine voice in autobiographical writings, and her curious conflation of Jesus Christ with her own biological father. The third chapter shifts into literary territory to discuss Camille Claudel, principally as sister and inspiration to Paul Claudel; it contains an analysis of Claudel's play, L'Annonce faite à Marie. The fourth chapter is [End Page 656] a wonderful piece of social history. Devoted to Jacques and Raïssa Maritain and their "conversion machine" headquarters at Meudon, it chronicles in lively detail the Maritains' relationship with Léon Bloy as well as the various converts, successful and unsuccessful (Jean Cocteau was one such unsuccessful) to their "congregation." The fifth chapter moves to the realm of pathology to present Marthe Robin, who ate nothing and re-enacted Christ's passion on a seven-day cycle for decades. Burton then passes to a discussion of more than thirty women and their "extraordinary phenomena," which included stigmatic bleeding, fasting, and visions, among others. This chapter contains some of the book's most fascinating biographical/ psychological portraits: in addition to Robin, we meet Pauline Lamotte/"Madeleine Lebouc," Eva Lavallière, Claire Ferchaud, and Simone Weil. The sixth chapter, combining the pathological and literary veins, discusses Colette Peignot, a "self-created negation of everything that the other Catholic women discussed here held dear." It examines Colette's sadomasochism, her relationship with Georges Bataille, as well as Bataille's review Acéphale. The final chapter roams through numerous psychological and sociological questions raised by the book's portraits. It moves from the gendering of the Church in the nineteenth century to the medical concept of hysteria, from anorexia and mother-daughter dysfunction to the public and private phenomenon of dying, from homosexuality to hair and sacrifice. It also contains the book's eleventh portrait, this time of Anne-Marie Roulé, mistress and "mystagogue" to Bloy. One important strength of this book is its extraordinary wealth of historical and anecdotal detail – from an intriguing discussion of Christian anti-Semitism to the relationship between the Tour de France and the crucifixion, to a description...

Religions, genre, et politiques laïques en France, XIXE-XXE siècles

In the French polemics over the Islamic headscarf, the relationship betweensecularism and sexual equality has sometimes been made out to be an artificialone. The articulation between politics, religion, secularism, and women'srights is examined here over the longue durée. Since the beginning of the secularizationprocess during the French Revolution, a minority has championedan egalitarian conception of secularization. Rivalries between or convergencesof political and religious authorities have driven an ambivalent and not veryequal secularization, creating secular pacts that rely on gender pacts to thedetriment of equality. This dynamic reversed itself beginning in the 1960swith the battle for legal contraception and abortion, which shook one of thevery bases of French Catholicism to its foundation. The headscarf affairsrevealed the egalitarian effects of secularism and favored the elaboration ofthought about secularism in conjunction with sexual equality, which, whateverthe various interpretations of that thought may be, could prove to be anon-negligible benefit.

La paroisse des affranchis. Communauté, identité et religion dans le village de Kdol, Cambodge (1898-1979)

The Freed Slaves' Parish. Community, Identity and Religion in the Village ofKdol, Cambodia (1898-1979). Mathieu Guérin and Gerald Vogin. In 1897, slavery and the trafficking of the inhabitants of the Highlands were permanently abolished in the Cambodian kingdom, then under French rule. A missionary from the French Catholic Missions, Father Lazard, gathered at that time a group of freed slaves in the village of Kdol on the Mekong river. A very specific community of new converts emerged between groups of Muslim Chams, Buddhist Khmers and Christian Vietnamese. This community survived all the political regimes that Cambodia experienced during the twentieth century, including the war and the Khmer Rouge regime. By converting to Catholicism, the freed slaves ofKdol achieved a new identity and status in the Khmer kingdom.

Religion and radicalism in July monarchy France. The French Catholic Church of the abbé Chatel. By Iorwerth Prothero. (Studies in French Civilization, 36.) Pp. xxv+364 incl. 4 figs and 3 maps. Lewiston–Queenston–Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2005. £74.95. 0 7734 6221 X

Religion and radicalism in July monarchy France. The French Catholic Church of the abbé Chatel. By Iorwerth Prothero. (Studies in French Civilization, 36.) Pp. xxv+364 incl. 4 figs and 3 maps. Lewiston–Queenston–Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2005. £74.95. 0 7734 6221 X - Volume 58 Issue 1

Lucifer in the City of Light: The Palladium Hoax and “Diabolical Causality” in Fin De Siècle France

Lucifer in the City of LightThe Palladium Hoax and “Diabolical Causality” in Fin De Siècle France David Allen Harvey The fin de siècle was a time of intense political conflict and recurrent public scandal in France. After overcoming its monarchist foes at the ballot box and enjoying a brief period of stability in the early 1880s, the Third Republic lurched almost without interruption through a series of “Affairs”: Boulangism, Panama, and the Dreyfus controversy. The volatility of fin de siècle French politics reflected underlying social tensions, as rapid urbanization and industrialization, the rise of mass political movements of the left and right, and rapidly changing cultural mores undermined many of the certainties on which bourgeois life rested. Among French Catholics, these fears were compounded by the rise of militantly secular regimes in both France and Italy; the end of the temporal authority of the pope; the collapse of hopes for a monarchist restoration with the death of the Count of Chambord, the last Legitimist pretender, in 1883; and the experience of national decline, which was brought home painfully by humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.1 The conflicts that Herman Lebovics, writing about a slightly later period, [End Page 177] has described as “the wars over cultural identity” left many Frenchmen in both camps willing to believe the worst about their antagonists.2 A clever trickster, the journalist Léo Taxil, was able to take advantage of this situation by means of a spectacular hoax that lasted over a decade. Almost forgotten today, the “Palladium Affair” captivated and frightened thousands of French readers, mostly conservative Catholics, in the final years of the nineteenth century. The story of the Palladium, an alleged global satanic conspiracy led by Freemasonry against legitimate civil and religious order, was revealed in a series of publications between 1885 and 1897, most notably in Taxil’s magnum opus, Le diable au XIXème siècle, the principal subject of this article. Lurid, sensationalistic, and nearly two thousand pages long, Le diable au XIXème siècle combined political polemic with pulp fiction adventure and exoticism, a formula that quickly made it a success and ultimately a cause célèbre. Ultimately, however, the Palladium was revealed as a fraud in April 1897 by the man who had done the most to publicize it. Taxil’s hoax or “fumisterie,” which we will examine shortly, was successful, I will maintain, because his inventions dovetailed perfectly with the prejudices, fears, and modes of thought of his readers. The worldview presented in Le diable au XIXème siècle is starkly Manichean: good versus evil, darkness versus light, a world in which sinister forces guide human destinies through means imperceptible to the casual observer. Léon Poliakov has coined the term “diabolical causality” to describe a mentality in which “the evils of this world are attributable to a malevolent entity or organization, the Jews, for example.”3 In one of the few scholarly articles on the Palladium Affair, W. R. Jones has noted that Taxil’s conservative Catholic audience to a large degree already shared this mentality, writing that “the sterile thought-world of late nineteenth century French Catholicism, insecure and uncertain of itself in the face of the new science and the new politics, was prepared to believe the worst about the motives of its enemies and to suspect that the source of the church’s discomforts might be found in some gigantic Satanic plot.”4 For reasons that will become apparent below, I will argue that Poliakov’s concept of “diabolical causality” is particularly relevant to understanding the course and impact of the Palladium Affair. [End Page 178] Political anti-Semitism, Poliakov’s primary concern, was certainly one response of the beleaguered right to the challenges of modernity. Edouard Drumont’s La France juive charged that two hundred Jewish families were manipulating the French Republic and leading it to its ruin. Drumont continued to publicize these charges in his successful newspaper, La Libre Parole, and was a virulent critic of Captain Dreyfus and other prominent French Jews. Nor was Drumont an isolated figure; the integral nationalist Charles Maurras, another prominent anti-Dreyfusard, also condemned...

A Catholic Response in Sixteenth-Century France to Reformation Theology: The Works of Pierre Doré (review)

Reviewed by Katharine Lualdi University of Southern Maine A Catholic Response in Sixteenth-Century France to Reformation Theology: The Works of Pierre Doré. By John Langlois. [Roman Catholic Studies, Volume 18.] (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 307. $119.95.) Despite his standing as the most edited Catholic writer in France in the first half of the sixteenth century, the Dominican and Paris theologian Pierre Doré (ca. 1497-1569) remains largely in the wings of Reformation historiography. This scholarly neglect is unfortunate, John Langlois argues compellingly, considering [End Page 666] the sheer size of Doré's publishing record and its convergence with the first decades of the French Reformation. Returning Doré to the prominence he enjoyed in his own day, Langlois provides a general introduction to his literary corpus and its significance as a "grass-roots" Catholic response to Protestant theology and the challenges it posed to French Catholic unity. Langlois begins by situating Doré's works in the context of the institutional reaction to the Reformation in France, and more specifically, that of his fellow Dominicans (introduction, Chapter 1). Set against this backdrop, Doré clearly stands out in his early and unwavering commitment to fighting heresy based on a singular strategy. Rather than engaging the Reformers directly, he addressed the French laity instead, seeking to keep them within the Catholic fold through religious instruction, guidance, and inspiration. Chapter 2 reveals that this strategy found expression in more than thirty texts written by Doré in French between 1537 and 1557, ranging from a catechism to polemical treatises and devotional writings. Especially striking here is the large number of devotional works Doré wrote at the request of and for aristocratic women, most of which went on to become his top sellers (pp. 89-97; see also the book's four appendices, where Langlois neatly summarizes Doré's bibliographical output). While acknowledging this female influence on Doré's literary career, Langlois does not consider the broader implications regarding the role of women in shaping early modern French Catholicism. Given the fact that his book is the first comprehensive study of Doré, this comment is not a criticism per se; Langlois has a lot of basic ground to cover, which he does effectively. But it does point to the rich veins of analysis remaining to be tapped. As Langlois demonstrates, a determined desire to undermine the validity of Protestant theology while calling his readers to a more personal (and orthodox) relationship with Christ shaped Doré's work regardless of genre. For this reason, Langlois devotes the second part of his study to an analysis of three major themes found repeatedly in Doré's books: justification, grace, merit and free will (chapter 3); the Eucharist (chapter 4); and the virtuous life (chapter 5). Reflecting Doré's own preoccupations, the chapter on the Eucharist is the longest in the book. Because Doré believed Protestants' rejection of transubstantiation was satanic, thereby posing the greatest risk to the Church and the individual believer, he addressed the Eucharist in some fashion in almost every one of his books (pp. 167-169). To elucidate this angle of Doré's anti-Protestant strategy, Langlois examines the basic features of Doré's theological exposition and how he packaged them for his readers. Despite the strength of Langlois' textual analysis, it offers little insight into Doré's place in the growing debate in France concerning the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. Noticeably absent from Langlois' bibliography is Christopher Elwood's book exploring precisely this topic (Oxford, 1999). Doré was ahead of the game, not just in recognizing the potency of the printed vernacular as a bulwark against [End Page 667] Protestantism (as Langlois contends), but also in situating the Eucharist at its core. As Elwood discusses, the 1560's saw an explosion of eucharistic treatises and related public discourse in France, which ultimately helped to reshape its political and religious landscape...

The Reception of French Catholic Intellectuals in Britain after the Second World War

French intellectuals had a major impact on British cultural life during the post-war years from 1945 to 1960. Among them, Catholic intellectuals were a significant group. This article seeks to reveal some patterns taken in the process of ‘diaspora of ideas’. It identifies three groups of Catholic intellectuals: philosophers such as Mounier and Marcel, writers such as Mauriac and Bernanos, and priests such as Lubac and Teilhard de Chardin. It shows that their ideas travelled through personal contacts, through the work of literary and academic commentators, and especially through published translations. They were received by a largely Catholic audience, divided between elite and working-class groups with different priorities. British publishers and their advisors scanned the French intellectual scene, selecting for translation those items that seemed most relevant to British concerns. They largely ignored or neglected historical, political or institutional issues specific to the French context, and used French ideas to assist them in addressing key issues in Britain.

Les Curés de Paris au XVIe siècle (review)

Reviewed by: Les Curés de Paris au XVIe siècle Katharine J. Lualdi Les Curés de Paris au XVIe siècle. By Vladimir Angelo. [Histoire Religieuse de la France, no. 26.] (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. 2005. Pp. v, 906. €49.00 paperback.) At 906 pages, this book, a revised thèse de doctorat completed under the direction of Marc Venard, cannot help but to command attention. The author seemingly left no stone unturned in his effort to bring the parish clergy of sixteenth-century Paris into the historical spotlight. The significance of Paris as the demographic, intellectual, and political hub of sixteenth-century France is well understood, as is its emergence as a bastion of militant Catholicism (here Megan Armstrong's recent study of Franciscan preachers in particular comes to mind). Yet, a few well-known curés aside, the place of the secular clergy is largely absent from scholarly discourse. This absence is regrettable, Angelo argues, because the curés serving the city's thirty-nine parishes were not only deeply enmeshed in everyday life, but they also formed "le lien entre théologie et pastorale, entre pratique religieuse quotidienne et orientation politique"at a time when the dual forces of Catholic reform and Protestantism were reshaping the city (p. 596). Angelo sets out to reconstruct the curés' world, layer by layer, over the course of the sixteenth century. He intentionally casts a broad chronological net in order to expose change and continuity over time. It is a daunting agenda, which, he explains, he began by identifying the names of as many curés as possible, where they served, and for how long. Once armed with this list, comprised of 386 men in all, Angelo culled through an enormous range of sources (synodal statutes, capitular and parish registers, wills, inventories after death, to name only a few) to illuminate the trajectory of the curés' careers as both an ideal and lived experience. The result is a well-organized and cogently presented group portrait of Parisian curés that in its sheer scope and concomitant refusal to rest on generalizations forges new historiographical ground. [End Page 324] Divided into three parts, Angelo's narrative draws the reader into ever closer concentric circles around the curés and their parishes. Part I examines the varied, and often competing, jurisdictional frameworks in which curés had to function, followed in Part IIwith a detailed look at how men became curés, and what intellectual and cultural "baggage" they brought with them to the job. Angelo reserves his most extended discussion for Part III, where he explores the realities of the curés' lives as pastors—how well they performed their charge; their relations with auxiliary clergy and parishioners; the manner in which they lived. His study concludes with two, user-friendly appendices:a chronological list of the 386 curés by parish (pp. 605-622); and a biographical sketch of each man comprised of ten categories (sources permitting), ranging from diocese of origin to political choices (pp. 623-838). Consequently, the book is at once an essential end and beginning for a fuller understanding of the institutional and human landscape of parish life in sixteenth-century Paris and its impact on the development of early modern French Catholicism. Although the book paints a picture vast in its detail, some dominant images emerge. Drawing on a mixture of medieval pastoral traditions and Catholic reform, Parisian curés appear to have fulfilled their duties attentively, if not always with visible passion, and largely to their parishioners' satisfaction. By law, every curé in Paris was required to have a maîtrise ès arts, but in the second half of the century, one in two curés held an advanced degree. In addition, more than 40% of the curés remained in charge of their parishes in excess of eleven years, thus allowing them to establish firm roots in the community. For these reasons, they were well positioned to cultivate Parisians' strong Catholic sensibilities, particularly when confronted with the rising tide of Protestantism. However, following Robert Descimon's lead, Angelo challenges many historians' assumption that the secular clergy were...

History, Historians, and Autobiography (review)

Reviewed by: History, Historians, and Autobiography Allan Megill (bio) Jeremy D. Popkin . History, Historians, and Autobiography. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. 328 pp. ISBN 0-226-67543-2, $35.00. A book on "historians' autobiography" is a bit unexpected. To be sure, many historians take an interest in the autobiographies of their fellow historians. If the present reviewer is any indication, historians typically give passing attention to the autobiographical writings of historians whom they have encountered in person or whose historical works they know. Accordingly, over a span of years this reviewer has read Arthur R. M. Lower's My First Seventy-Five Years (1967), Sir Keith Hancock's Professing History (1976), Saul Friedländer's When Memory Comes (1979), Hans A. Schmitt's Lucky Victim: An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, 1933–1946 (1989), H. Stuart Hughes's Gentleman Rebel (1990), Martin Duberman's Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey (1991), Deirdre McCloskey's Crossing: A Memoir (1999), and George L. Mosse's Confronting History (2000). These are, respectively, historians of Canada, Britain, Germany (with a focus on the Third Reich and the Holocaust), Germany, Europe (intellectual and political history), the United States (cultural history, gay history), Britain (economic history), and Germany (intellectual and cultural history). This reviewer has also just finished Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin (2005), whose author has written many books on the history of the United States. But aside from a few classic works, such as Edward Gibbon's Memoirs (1796) and Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams (1907), it is hard to think of historians' "life writing" as constituting an especially interesting subgenre. It appears that no one before Jeremy Popkin has written a book on the subject, and the absence is surely indicative. One problem is the often uneventful character of historians' lives. The historian's craft requires that much time be consecrated to the sedentary tasks of reading and writing. If some part of the historian's life story happens to be rich in incident and excitement, this is usually the result of circumstances, such as being drafted into a war, that are separate from a scholarly career. While it is tempting to say that any life can be interesting if it is well told, only a few historians lead lives that are likely to resonate widely in the retelling. In this regard, two of the autobiographies mentioned in the previous paragraph stand out: Friedländer's When Memory Comes and John Hope Franklin's Mirror to America. Friedländer's book recounts how, as the young child of refugee Czech Jews, he managed [End Page 481] to survive World War II under the assumed identity of a French Catholic. As for Mirror to America, which was published in John Hope Franklin's ninety-first year, it has a far wider subject than Franklin himself, for the real story that it tells is of an American racism so rigid and pervasive, during most of his life, that his triumphing over it seems nothing short of miraculous. However, a more important question is not whether historians' autobiographies are interesting but whether we ought to think of them as a subgenre at all. It is a matter of existential priority: in other words, we need to ponder the question, "How deep an aspect of the self is 'being a historian'"? Marcus Mosely recently published a 650-page study of Jewish autobiography, Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (2006). If someone is Jewish enough to write a "Jewish autobiography," that author's Jewishness surely exists deeply enough that it can be said to be a fundamental identity. Our imagined author of a "Jewish autobiography" would see herself as being Jewish in a quite profound sense of "being." By way of contrast, in most cases "being a historian" seems more an activity one carries out than an identity one inhabits (although, to be sure, one cannot entirely separate doing and being). Consider Franklin's Mirror to America. Franklin has much to say about his struggles to establish himself as a historian (he was eventually elected president of the American Historical Association), but his book is far more...

Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World: The Clash of Cultures in the Colonial Southeast (review)

Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World: The Clash of Cultures in the Colonial Southeast. By Michelene E. Pesantubbee. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. 208. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $21.95.)Research and writing about American Indian in the colonial period is a challenging task. European documentary sources rarely discuss Native directly except in biased, often derogatory ways, and the written evidentiary data are scattered far and wide in published and archival collections. This shortage of evidence can be overcome using ethnohistorical methodology to incorporate archeological data, anthropological theory, and Indian oral traditions, languages, and perspectives. Just as American history can longer be written without paying attention to women, to ignore Native and gender roles in writing the histories of Indian people due to an alleged lack of sources is an omission that can longer be tolerated. Indian experienced life differently than their male counterparts, sometimes even speaking their own female-only dialect, and their roles and perspectives in cultural change and persistence need to be better understood. Still, monographs focusing on Indian women's history have only recently begun to appear. Booklength attention to southeastern Indian women, for example, is a relatively recent phenomenon with books on Cherokee by Devon Mihesuah (1993), Wilma Mankiller (1993), Sarah HiU (1997), Theda Perdue (1998), and Carolyn Johnston (2003) being the sole representatives in the field. Michelene Pesantubbee's new book on Choctaw during the colonial era addresses the need in this literature to consider the experiences of non-Cherokee in the South.Pesantubbee, a religious studies professor at the University of Iowa and of Choctaw descent, employs a traditional scholarly approach to her history of Choctaw women. The book begins with brief descriptions of how the Choctaws settled in central Mississippi based on published accounts of Choctaw origin stories. After establishing the broad cultural parameters of the role of within Choctaw society, Pesantubbee then supplies a chronological narrative that emphasizes Choctaw interaction with Europeans, especially the French. Most of this narrative can be found in other histories of the Choctaws as Pesantubbee focuses on the wars, trade, and diplomacy that characterize that intercultural relationship. The author places a greater emphasis on the role of French Catholic missionaries among Indians in the lower Mississippi Valley than many other scholars, but she does not identify any specific Catholic impact on the Choctaws beyond her supposition that the differing gender expectations of missionaries and Indians no doubt had an impact on how Choctaw society perceived and treated women (85). That impact on Choctaw women, Pesantubbee argues, was inherently negative. There is little dispute that European diseases, the British-sponsored Indian slave trade of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the deerskin trade of the entire eighteenth century forced Choctaws and other southeastern Indians to reconfigure various aspects of their cultures and societies. To say that change was automatically harmful or that Choctaws were incapable of resisting it, however, portrays Choctaws as only victims in a story that is actually much more complicated. …

The Catholic Church in the Italian Empire, 1936‑1938

Les accords du Lateran de 1929 inaugurèrent une période d'étroite collaboration entre l'Eglise catholique romaine et l'Etat italien sous Mussolini. Cependant la politique italienne en Abyssinie, après la conquête de ce pays en 1936, exacerba les tensions qui avaient résulté à la fois des politiques intérieures et de l'appui de l'Italie aux activités antirelig ieuses en A llemagne .Cet exposé traite de V évolution de la politique italienne en Abyssinie et du désenchantement graduel de l'Eglise face aux résultats de ces accords. En matière d'affaires intérieures, l'ère du Vatican portait sur le manifeste du gouverne- ment Mussolini (1938) sur la pureté de la race, et sur la législation antisémitique qui en découla. La hiérarchie ecclésiastique d'Italie avait présumé que son appui à i interven- tion italienne en Afrique entraînerait l'adoption, par le gouvernement, d'une politique de christianisation. Pour maintenir une certaine stabilité intérieure, le gouvernement choisit de suivre une stratégie de tolérance religieuse, d'ailleurs défendue par le ministère de la colonisation. Cette approche aliéna le Saint-siège qui, contrairement à la hiérarchie italienne, n'avait jamais été en faveur d'une guerre impériale. Cette politique de tolérance était contraire aux plans de l'Eglise pour la conversion au catholicisme de ce territoire, et gênait ses activités missionnaires. Les musulmans étaient particulièrement favorisés car, de l'avis du ministère de la colonisation, leur appui était essentiel au maintien du contrôle impérial. On croyait également que cette coopération aiderait les Italiens dans leurs relations avec d'autres puissances islami- ques du Moyen-orient. Il n'y a pas que l'Eglise qui s'opposait aux actions du ministère de la colonisation; le ministère des affaires étrangères croyait qu'on devait utiliser l'Eglise comme instrument de l expansion italienne. Cependant, la position du ministère de la colonisation préva- lut. Peu importe leur religion, les missionnaires qui s'opposaient aux désirs de l'Italie pour la nouvelle colonie étaient punis. Lorsque les affaires extérieures tentèrent d'inter- venir en faveur des missionnaires britanniques, Mussolini appuya la politique du ministère de la colonisation, et même l'élargit; désormais, aucun étranger ne pouvait enseigner dans l'Empire. Le ministère de la colonisation consolida son emprise, ordonnant au Saint-siège de remplacer les missionnaires catholiques Français par des Italiens. Réagissant, le Vatican créa une commission pontificale qui, en dernière analyse, se plia à la plupart des exigences du ministère. Sur les questions litigieuses, le ministère demeurait inébranlable; le Pape envoya alors en Abyssinie un visiteur apostolique qui, il l'espérait, améliorerait la position de l'Eglise. Finalement, le ministère de la colonisation accéda à la demande de l'Eglise pour la création d'une hiérarchie ecclésiastique distincte pour la colonie; peu après, l'Eglise reconnut Victor Emmanuel comme empereur a"Abyssinie. Cependant, malgré cette entente, la politique de tolérance de VEtat Italien avait causé des dommages irréparables à la coopération entre ce dernier et l'Eglise catholique romaine. L'hostilité du gouvernement face aux prétentions de l'Eglise au sein de l'Empire constituent un fondement essentiel de l'attaque du Pape sur la politique raciale italienne de 1938.

Assessment of 24 years of infant growth monitoring in a rural area of Senegal (1969-1992)

Undernutrition in young children in developing countries is associated with an increased risk of death. But in several studies, a decrease in mortality was not associated with any decrease in the prevalence of undernutrition. A rural population of Casamance (Senegal) has been under yearly demographic surveillance by The French National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) since 1985. Between 1960-1964 and 1990-1994, under-5 and child (1-4 years) mortality rates dropped from 312 to 127 and from 201 to 68 per 1,000, respectively. Since 1961, French Catholic nuns who are also professional nurses have been in charge of a private village dispensary located in a rural area of Casamance. This dispensary delivers permanent, high quality service and is widely attended. GROWTH MONITORING PROGRAMME: A growth-monitoring programme, supported by Cathwell, was initiated in 1969 for 0-5-year-old children (0-3 from 1985). Children were weighed wearing light clothes to the nearest 10g. Weights were recorded in a register that also contained information concerning identity (name, sex, date of birth) and address. All weights were plotted on growth charts kept by the mothers. During the sessions, the nurses provided nutrition education messages (i.e., preparation of high-energy and nutrient-dense infant gruels using local foods), advice on illness management (oral rehydration during diarrhoea) and hygiene (well and water-jar disinfection, construction of pit-latrines), importance of vaccination. From 1975, they also distributed free chloroquine during the malaria transmission season (May-November) for prevention and early presumptive treatment. Most likely thanks to this programme, infant and child mortality reached a low level at the end of the 1980s. In 1990, plasmodium resistance to chloroquine appeared, increasing malaria mortality. All weight measurements taken in 1969-1994 were entered into a database. This paper presents an analysis of weight measurements taken at 3-23 months of age from 1969-1992. A total of 4,636 infants were weighed at least once, but only 3,912 infants (1,983 boys and 1,929 girls) were available for the analysis, 724 being excluded due to missing data. The average coverage of the programme during the month of February was 88% for infants aged 3-23 months. Mean weight was examined at three target ages: 5, 11 and 15 months. Not only did the nutritional status not improve between 1969 and 1989, it even deteriorated in some years for all three age-cohorts. The nutritional status of infants in this community did not differ significantly from that of 12-23 month-old Senegalese children in the 1992-1993 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Seasonal differences in mean weight and the prevalence of underweight became significant in the rainy season since 1975. Underweight for the 15-month-old children increased over time during the rainy season. These findings were unexpected, since malaria morbidity is thought to be at least partially responsible for seasonal variations in the nutritional status of young children, and despite the fact that the nurses began a malaria control programme in 1975. The rapid transition towards lower childhood mortality observed in this rural area of Casamance (Senegal), was not concomitant with any improvement in infants' nutritional status from 1969 through 1992. Focused public health interventions such as vaccinations and malaria prevention probably did not improve the nutritional status. Paradoxically, growth monitoring may have been more helpful in improving health than growth. Targeted specific nutritional interventions are needed to significantly improve growth of children in this community.

French Catholic Traditionalism and the Specter of Reactionary Politics

In this article I first sketch out what I think remains the importance and continued appeal of the traditionalist response to Catholic (Vatican II) reform, particularly in light of rising French anxiety concerning the role of religion in civil society. This conservative tendency in French Catholic thought is represented most forcefully by followers of Mgr. Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebrvre's positions involve not only a return to pre-Vatican II practices—the Latin Mass, hierarchical social relations within the Church, etc.—but, more important, a larger rejection of lay society and an implicit (and at times explicit) return to a belief that religious authority and civil authority are or should be one and the same. This rejection of secular society very much puts the traditionalists in league with certain right-wing political parties. My second goal in this article is to sketch out the ways in which the traditionalist church may very well be headed toward reconciliation with the Vatican, subsequent to the election of Pope Benedict XVI, whose position on ecumenism might tend to be somewhat different from that of John Paul II. If this is the case, the mainstream, post-Vatican II church might indeed find itself, willy nilly, drifting distinctly to the right, if only because anti-ecumenical positions inevitably will lead to anti-republican, if not frankly reactionary, political positions.

The Moment of No Return: The University of Paris and the Death of Aristotelianism

Aristotelianism remained the dominant influence on the course of natural philosophy taught at the University of Paris until the 1690s, when it was swiftly replaced by Cartesianism. The change was not one wanted by church or state and can only be understood by developments within the wider University. On the one hand, the opening of a new college, the College de Mazarin, provided an environment in which the mechanical philosophy could flourish. On the other, divisions within the French Catholic Church between Augustinians and Molinists led to Cartesianism finding support within an important section of the faculty of theology, which was the traditional guardian of philosophical orthodoxy. The conversion of the University of Paris to Cartesianism had important consequences. It encouraged similar changes to the natural philosophical curriculum throughout France and affected the structure and raison d’etre of the Academie des Sciences.

Knowing the East (review)

Reviewed by: Knowing the East Patti M. Marxsen Knowing the East. By Paul Claudel. Translated by James Lawler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 136 pp. Fifty years after his death, Paul Claudel (1868–1955) is remembered for many things. Not only was he a major twentieth-century poet and playwright, he was an astute observer of Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese art. Not only was he the brother of sculptor Camille Claudel, he was a diplomat who lived for nearly twenty years in Asia, including a stint as the French ambassador to Japan (1921–1927). When he was elected as a member of the Académie Française in 1946 at nearly 80 years of age he quipped, "For an academic, that is puberty." He died at 87, having lived large in two centuries and on three continents. Following an adolescence marked with indifference toward religion, Claudel experienced a profound conversion to Catholicism during a Christmas night service at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at the age of 18. With Christianity at the center of his universe and under the influence of Symbolist poets Rimbaud and Mallarmé, he developed a response to the world that was at once poetic and spiritual. Through his poetry, plays, and essays, he insisted on a fundamental unity between matter and spirit, a harmonious and vast universe into which the human mind could enter. And, at least for him, the point of entry was the portal of the Church. He struggled at times, but never lost sight of his faith. For all this, he is often credited with the revival of French Catholicism in the wake of WWI. After all, if Paul Claudel could take religion seriously and find meaning in it, pourquoi pas the rest of us? The facts of his extraordinary biography form a peculiar background to the recent translation by James Lawler of Claudel's collection of prose poems titled Knowing [End Page 229] the East. First published in 1946 as Connaissance de l'est, these sixty-one texts were written between 1895 and 1905 during Claudel's first visits to China and Japan as a young vice-consul stationed in Shanghai. He was twenty-six and still finding his poetic voice. And though his stance in the world is decidedly Christian, the content of this intriguing work reveals an inner dialogue with Buddhist ideas of interconnection, harmony, the ongoing quest for a higher life condition, and the overwhelming impact of nature in the lives of mere humans. In "Pagoda," Claudel describes a seven-story Chinese pagoda as it "amplifies and multiplies the roof, exaggerates the horned corners that rise with an elegant surge, and turns their curves upward to the sky." This form that "does away with walls" and concentrates on the uplifting roof creates a space where "Buddha, Prince of Peace, dwells inside with all the gods." In this architecture he reads a structuring of physical and spiritual space, a kind of never ending upward movement divided into "the seven mystical heavens." The culminating effect is the heavenly achievement of the unknowable. And so, after going as far as he can go into the world of the spirit, he ends this prose poem with an abrupt return to temporal reality. "I have no more to say of the Pagoda. I do not know its name." Elsewhere, in "The Wanderer," he turns his sense of awe toward nature. "Every tree has its personality, every small beast its role, every voice its part in the symphony," he writes. "As one understands music, so I understand nature, like a detailed narrative of proper names; as my walk and the day advance, so does the elaboration of the doctrine." The "doctrine," it seems, is the idea of dependent origination, the interrelation of all life that springs from a single source. In the last line, he states, "I understand the world's harmony. When will I grasp its melody?" In "The Temple of Consciousness" Claudel climbs "the black rock's vertical wall, and only at this late afternoon hour do I know myself to be on the right track." Below, he observes golden rice fields. Ahead there is an "old stairway overlaid with hoary moss...

Basil Hume: The Monk Cardinal (review)

Basil Hume: Monk Cardinal. By Anthony Howard. (London: Headline Book Publishing. 2005. Pp. 342. £29.) In February, 1976, Pope VI reached over heads of all his bishops in England to select Basil Hume, then Abbot of Ampleforth, to be Archbishop of Westminster. In profile of Hume published shortly thereafter, I compared appointment to selection of Father Theodore Hesburgh of University of Notre Dame to be Cardinal Terence Cooke's successor as Archbishop of New York. Something unthinkable in United States became reality in England. Anthony Howard, author of three previous political biographies and self-described wistful agnostic ,describes behind-the-scenes maneuvering which led to Hume's selection as Patricians' Revolt. Calling Hume the very quintessence of Englishness, this official biography is itself quintessentially English: breezy, fast-paced, and often funny. It is above all good read. Where but in England could one find man like Herbert Byrne? For twenty-four years Abbot of Ampleforth (and deeply hurt when, at age 78, his community refused to reelect him for another eight years, and turned to Hume instead), Byrne responded to novice who announced that he needed to leave monastery for wider horizons by asking: What's her name? And could there be more delightfully English countenance than that of Father Neville, Headmaster of Ampleforth School from 1924 to 1954, known to generations of schoolboys as Posh Paul (his photo says it all). What I am is what you have given, Hume told packed Abbey church in his farewell sermon before leaving for Westminster. The gap between what is thought and expected of me and what I know myself to be is considerable and frightening. There are moments in life when one feels very small and in my life this is such moment. It is good to feel small because I know that whatever I achieve will be God's achievement and not mine. One cannot read these words today without recalling Pope Benedict XVTs words day of his election about cardinals' choice of a simple, humble worker in vineyard of Lord, and his confidence in God's ability to work even with insufficient means. Priests of that caliber seldom get miters. son of nominally Anglican Scots doctor and devout French Catholic mother, Hurne's first experience of non-Catholic religious service was his father's Church of England funeral in 1960. Yet as archbishop and cardinal he preached in most of England's ancient cathedrals, never sharing his co-religionists'feeling of having been dispossessed, but simply rejoicing in what, for him, was shared religious and architectural heritage. More important, for first time since Reformation Hume put Catholic Church in England on map, in effect annexing it to British Establishment. To appreciate this achievement, one must know that as recently as 1935, when Hume's predecessor Cardinal Hinsley twice sent King George V loyal address from his Catholic subjects sovereign's Silver Anniversary, envelope was both times returned from palace unopened and stamped Not received .Hume dissipated this Establishment hostility by combination of personal charm and deep spirituality. At his death June 17,1999, Hume was universally acknowledged to be Britain's leading moral authority. Rupert Murdoch's daily Sun, normally replete with sex and scandal, bore front page headline: Farewell our Beloved Basil: Friend who touched all our hearts. Howard portrays above all public man. He describes his subject's cordial but never close relationship with Pope John II, marked contrast to that which Hume enjoyed with VI. Always remain monk, pontiff told Hume at his appointment. And when he returned to Rome shortly thereafter to be made cardinal, Pope said: Above all, dear Father, be yourself. Hume emerged from that audience in tears-behavior which, when exhibited when he was first elected abbot, had caused stiff-upper-lip contingent in monastery to murmur about their new leader's Gallic temperament. …

BOOK REVIEW: Ian Radforth.ROYAL SPECTACLE: THE 1860 VISIT OF THE PRINCE OF WALES TO CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Reviewed by: Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States Frank Prochaska (bio) Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States, by Ian Radforth; pp. xi + 469. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004, $75.00, $39.95 paper, £42.00, £18.00 paper. There has been a resurgence of interest in the modern British monarchy in recent years, not least in its ceremonial guise. Ian Radforth's Royal Spectacle, which surveys the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States in 1860, is an admirable, scholarly addition to the burgeoning literature on national identity and royal pageantry. The purpose of the first royal visit to British North America, which came at the initiative of the legislature of the Province of Canada, was to cement imperial relations, to rally disparate Canadians around the British banner, and to further trade and industry. From the monarchy's point of view, the Prince's visit was an opportunity to test royal popularity abroad, which in an era of advancing democracy could not be taken for granted. The visit, remarked The Times, "will illustrate not only the loyalty of these prosperous Provinces, but the immense extent of British dominion and the deep-laid foundations of British power" (45). The book opens with a constructive chapter on the background of the tour, the Prince's entourage, and the itinerary and arrangements, which were planned with an eye to civic effect and what his minders thought the young, unproven Prince could bear. In Britain, the Queen and Prince Albert took an active interest in their son's progress. In some respects, as Radforth points out, the North American tour mirrored their own visits to England and Scotland in the 1840s and 1850s. In keeping with the local character of Canada, the municipalities took the lead in planning the visit and the various civic receptions. In addition to sitting through innumerable loyal addresses, the Prince laid the foundation stone of the new Parliament buildings in Ottawa, presided over the opening of the Victoria Bridge, and dedicated parks, a waterworks, and an exhibition. As the North American tour illustrated, the Prince proved a worthy representative of the Albertine monarchy and its emphasis on civic purpose. Like all the royal offspring, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but also arrived with a silver trowel in his hands, the better to lay foundation stones. On his Canadian tour, the Prince sought to be as attentive to provincial characteristics as he was to public monuments. Radforth is particularly attuned to local and regional identities, which sometimes threatened the general impression that Canada was composed of a citizenry of contented admirers of the Queen. Negotiating the claims of Orangemen, French Catholics, native peoples, and African Canadians, who did not fit into conceptions of mid-Victorian progress, brought out the underlying tensions in the tour. Radforth includes a revealing chapter titled "Performing Indians," which discusses the prominent, though ambivalent, role the native peoples played in public spectacles during the tour. Most Canadians deemed the Prince's Canadian visit a success, a source of [End Page 164] pleasure and pride; but partisan journalists made Canada appear "as a place riven by class, ethnic, and religious feuds that threatened public peace, as well as provincial progress and prosperity" (378). Radforth's treatment of the Prince in the United States is lively, though less thorough than the chapters on Canada, which make up the bulk of the book. The excursion, which came at the invitation of President Buchanan, was an exercise in good will and diplomacy rather than imperial purpose. In the United States, the Prince travelled incognito as the Duke of Renfrew, a fiction disregarded by everyone he met. Sensationalist reporters followed the Prince's every movement. In Detroit, Cincinnati, and Chicago, unruly crowds jammed the streets. In genteel Boston, where the Prince visited Harvard and interviewed the last living survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill, onlookers were more sedate. In New York, which Radforth highlights, a mass of humanity waited impatiently as the Prince was driven down...

The church in the republic: Gallicanism & political ideology in Renaissance France

The Church in the Republic offers a new interpretation of the relationship between religion and politics in Europe at the dawn of the modern age. Its main subject, the theoretical and political contest over the liberties of the Gallican Church, was one of the great political issues of early modern France. This debate raised basic questions on the nature and origins of authority within human institutions. It shaped the way French Catholic magistrates, laypeople, and clergy understood the state and their own places within it, and was followed closely in England, Italy, and beyond. The conflict over Gallicanism revealed the assumptions underlying the political thought of two of its most influential participants: the lawyers and judges of the French sovereign courts, and the bishops and other prelates of the Catholic clergy. Jotham Parsons shows that the Gallican controversy began with an attempt by humanists to understand society as based on contingent, historical custom rather than immutable divine justice. Under the pressures of political and religious conflict, this theoretical commitment developed into a powerful political ideology. At the same time, the Tridentine Reform was reinvigorating France's Catholic clergy intellectually and organizationally. French bishops could thus counter what they saw as an attack on their proper jurisdiction with a vigorous and successful bid for increased authority within the royal state. These two alternative visions, Gallican and clericalist, provided a framework for politics for the remainder of the Old Regime and were highly influential around Europe. This book presents an enlightening examination of the ways in which Renaissance humanism and the Catholic and Protestant Reformations interacted to create the modern state.