French Church Research Articles

Six hundred years of reform. Bishops and the French Church, 1190–1789. By J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields. (McGill–Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion. Ser. 2, 37.) Pp. xx+604 incl. 54 tables, 45 graphs and 29 maps. Montreal–London–Ithaca: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2005. £52. 0 7735 2893 8

Six hundred years of reform. Bishops and the French Church, 1190–1789. By J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields. (McGill–Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion. Ser. 2, 37.) Pp. xx+604 incl. 54 tables, 45 graphs and 29 maps. Montreal–London–Ithaca: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2005. £52. 0 7735 2893 8 - Volume 58 Issue 2

Finding shapes in a set of points

We present a tool for querying a set of points for geometric shapes. This tool was developed as part of a larger project studying the architecture of 13th century French churches. We present a query language for specifying shapes. We describe an implementation of the tool that optimizes and executes shape queries. We describe the performance of the tool, and show examples of how it can be used to analyze building floorplans. The tool is available for download over the internet.

J. MICHAEL HAYDEN and MALCOLM R. GREENSHIELDS. Six Hundred Years of Reform: Bishops and the French Church, 1190-1789. (McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, series two, number 37.) Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2005. Pp. xx, 604. $80.00

J. MICHAEL HAYDEN and MALCOLM R. GREENSHIELDS. Six Hundred Years of Reform: Bishops and the French Church, 1190-1789. (McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, series two, number 37.) Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2005. Pp. xx, 604. $80.00

The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France

By examining in detail the transformation of Gallicanism in sixteenth-century France, Jotham Parsons has performed an important service for all historians of the Ancien Regime. He shows how medieval Gallicanism, which was largely predicated upon fiscal independence and which reached its high point with the council of Pisa in 1510, was profoundly changed by the rise of humanist learning and by the conflicting responses of Catholics to the Protestant Reformation. During the Wars of Religion a generation of Gallican jurists developed an ideological complex whose intellectual foundations derived from the new discipline of history. They began to develop the concept of Gallican liberties as a fundamental law in response on the one hand to Protestant schism and on the other hand to the claims of reinvigorated ultramontanism. Traditional scepticism of ecclesiastical jurisdiction among lay jurists was joined by newer currents of thought. Principally, the dominant role ascribed to custom as the basis of social order permitted jurists to develop ‘an ideology allowing them to claim prescriptive authority in maintaining the stability of the state, based on their special relationship to the past and its fundamental legal structure’. History, law and counsel were the intellectual tools at their disposal, the proper exercise of which required disinterestedness—objectivity, justice, devotion to the public good. The ways in which the gens du roi in particular had an exalted sense of themselves as tribunes dedicated to the upholding of justice and the defence of ancient liberties is a familiar story, but Parsons shows how the development of a coherent ideology was consequent upon the crisis of erudite Catholic royalism in the 1580s. The manifesto of this group was Antoine de Loisel's De la puissance Royalle et Sacerdotale, a refutation of the call of the 1579 Assembly of the Clergy for introduction of the Tridentine canons, a reduction of royal influence over the collation of benefices, the redistribution of church income, and a strengthening of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. From this date, publications on Gallican liberties became a distinct genre, and the collapse of the Henrician regime in 1589 necessitated that what had been until then an episodic, reactionary and indefinable political force coalesce into a party. By the turn of the century the institutional structure of erudite Gallicanism in the Parlements had been firmly established and the armature of publication, collection, scholarship and rhetoric that incarnated Gallican ideology thrived in the contentious political and legal arena. Thereafter Gallicanism as a political ideology spread beyond its intellectual milieu as it was taken up by anyone wishing to challenge either the pretensions of individual clergy or the jurisdictional competence of the Church. The rise of Gallicanism also forced the strongly Tridentine French church to develop its own political doctrine, one that transcended custom and history through its foundation on revealed truth, and which countered the Gallican magistrates claim to offer more disinterested council than the First Estate. In the long run, it was the timeless ideals of the clergy that appealed more to the monarchy and by the middle of the reign of Louis XIII the role of Gallicanism as an ideology of opposition, patrolling the limits of absolute monarchy, was already established. Given the immense importance of Gallicanism into the eighteenth century, this study will command a wide readership among those interested in the religious and intellectual history of the Ancien Regime, especially since it complements Alain Tallon's recent important, though more essayistic, treatment of the subject. That said, it is not an easy read and Parsons' undoubted powers of erudition are sometimes compromised by his prolixity. Tighter editorial control would also have reduced the number of errors, some of which, such as the substitution of the first for the third estate on page 259, will leave students baffled. Likewise, though the meaning of the noun ‘republic’, in the sense of commonwealth, is uncontroversial, the word ‘republican’, adjective or noun, is anachronistic and, at the very least, likely to leave all but the most advanced students perplexed. For those who persevere, however, this book will be an important addition to their understanding of the role played by ideas, learning and erudition in shaping Ancien Regime political culture.

A Catholic Model of Martyrdom in the Post-Reformation Era: The Bishop in Seventeenth-Century France

By the seventeenth century, episcopal martyrdom was an established reality and ideal throughout the Catholic church. Bishops could pay homage to the celebrated prelates of the early church who had gone bravely to their deaths at the hands of their persecutors. Equally, they had access to the white martyrs who had lived their lives as 'spiritual athletes', martyring themselves through extraordinary sufferings for Christ. French bishops shared in this legacy, and their church had its own tradition of episcopal martyrology.1 Of course, no French bishop need expect to die a martyr's death by 1600, but he faced his own challenges in an ancien regime that expected its bishops to be ecclesiastical leaders, political agents and prominent members of the social establishment.These last two were radically different images of episcopacy from those proposed by traditional theology, which emphasised the spiritual nature of the office, its functions of pastoral care and government of Christ's flock. Neither were they images that fitted easily with the growing spirit of Tridentine reform in the French church. Yet Catholic reformers, including members of the episcopate itself, succeeded in offering bishops a means of reconciling these conflicting expectations through an adapted notion of spiritual martyrdom that injected new life into an ancient ideal, remoulding its traditional character according to contemporary spiritual trends. This updated construction, mainly disseminated through publications and correspondence, offered the bishops opportunities to participate in the world without allowing themselves to be ruled by it. To the historian, this model of martyrdom provides an insight into the concerns of the Catholic reform movement in France, for it resolved an urgent dilemma: how did a bishop function in the world, with its profane temptations and pressures to sin, without moving ever further from God?This question had perhaps never been more pertinent, for the bishop of a French diocese had enormous demands made on him. Appointed by the crown, he was a royal servant, under obligation to represent the king, keep the government informed on regional affairs and cultivate political and social stability. In an age when popular unrest was an ever-present possibility, he was expected to be a mediator, broker and governing force.2 Indeed, the crown remained quite prepared to use bishoprics as a means of patronage and it was certainly not unknown for its loyal servants to be rewarded with dioceses, although it was far less common in the seventeenth century than it had been before. Yet significant numbers of prelates did owe their positions to political service. In 1648, Francois Bosquet was appointed to Lodeve in recognition of his assiduous labour as a provincial intendant, while Henri Arnauld of Angers served as a diplomat in Rome before his nomination to Angers in 1649.3 Many bishops also acted as deputies in the provincial estates and in the clerical Assembly, where they were required to examine any political affair that remotely affected the ecclesiastical realm.Whether he spent his time at court or in his diocese, the laity also expected much of its bishops. Not only should he be a generous benefactor, he should also cultivate a life appropriate to the dignity of a prince of the Catholic church. This was even more important if the bishop was a member of the secular nobility, and through the seventeenth century the overwhelming majority were.4 In practice, this generally involved possessing a household and wealth corresponding to those of the leading local aristocracy. To maintain their social standing, many bishops undertook extravagant building projects and, indeed, contemporaries often commented on the large numbers of new and refurbished episcopal palaces.5 This secular view of episcopal office was perpetuated by the fact that many noble families regarded particular sees as their lineal property, invaluable tools for their retention of status and power: amongst seventeenth-century bishops who owed their seats to virtual hereditary tenure were the prelates of the Villars family who dominated the dioceses of Agen, Mirepoix and Vienne. …

Crown, church, and episcopate under Louis XIV

This book presents an eloquent account of the power, character, and mentalite of the French church under Louis XIV and of its relationship to the crown and other elite institutions as well as its critics and congregations. Prominent historian Joseph Bergin investigates the background, recruitment, and management of the episcopate, illuminating the process of trial and error by which the king developed a flexible and effective system for appointing qualified and worthy men as bishops. Bergin shows how bishops were appointed and promoted, how no single set of rules ever obtained, and what the inherent limitations of the system were. With balanced judgment throughout, he relates the evolution of the bishops' selection process to a range of issues, bolstering the story with well-chosen examples and many details of human interest.

Locke's Accidental Church: The Letter Concerning Toleration and the Church's Witness to the State

Despite the obviously theological nature of much of John Locke's writings, until recently that aspect of his work was largely ignored. His Christianity has often been seen as a flaw that the modern reader does well to look past, his theological commitments being inappropriate for today's pluralistic society. Such a reading is not unfounded. After all, it was Locke's political writings that, in many ways, helped separate theology from other disciplines. Perhaps it is no wonder that the inheritors of his liberalism feel free to overlook his Christianity. Unfortunately, reading Locke without full attention to the theological nature of his work is problematic. Not only does such a reading lead to potential misunderstandings of the work itself, it can obscure ways that his work continues to affect contemporary theology and church life. This essay seeks to fill this void, at least partially, by studying the theology of Locke's argument for religious toleration. Locke's mature view on the subject, his Letter Concerning Toleration, was written at the end of a century or more of religious conflict. The Thirty Years' War ended in 1648, but religious persecution continued in many places, including England and France. The persecution of Protestants by the French church, which was renewed in 1685 with the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, was severe.1

Supersessionism Rears Its Ugly Head in the Church's Dominus Iesus : A Contextual Analysis

Ambiguity and ambivalence have marked the Catholic Churches' relationship with the Jewish people and Judaism since Saul of Tarsus converted and became Paul. Condemnation and protection have been the twin pillars of Vatican policy towards the Jews since the Church became Rome's Church under Constantine.(1) Degradation and a good interest rate were the watchwords of the medieval Church. The Jews may have been a royal pain, but they were necessary. The Church needed its Jews. They needed them to show the vast unwashed how much better they all were than the Jews; the Church took over all that was good in Judaism while at the same time throwing out the bad. The Church was the new Israel, the new chosen, and the Gospels and the other early Church writings that made up the New Testament were to supersede Judaism and the Jews. Unfortunately for both the Church and the Jews those vast unwashed sometimes did not understand the subtlety of Church ambivalence and ambiguity. Those who could not see the difference between the Church's need to vilify and demonize the Jews and their need to keep the Jews around from a theological perspective, murdered millions of Jews over the 2000 years of Church history. The logical conclusion drawn by the populace was that they now had carte blanche to destroy those evil Jews. During the last 60 years the Catholic Church has found itself in a position of great controversy. Once again ambiguity and ambivalence has marked the relationship between the Church and the Jewish community. In light of Auschwitz, the Catholic Church has had to confront the question of doctrines that had been central to Church that may have had an impact in setting the groundwork for future atrocities against the Jews. In the post-Shoah world what will be the Church's relationship with the Jewish people? It has been only in the last 50-plus years that some in the Catholic Church have begun to understand that Jesus himself would have been one of the six million murdered by the Nazis. This understanding places in question some of the most critical and crucial dogmas of the Church of last two thousand years. It places into question the Church's teaching of contempt of the Jews for not accepting the divinity of Jesus. It places into question the Church's false accusation of Jewish deicide. It places into question the supersessionist doctrine of the Church. It also questions the Church's role in 2000 years of antisemitism. Finally, it places into question the Church's institutional silence in light of the deaths of 6,000,000 Jews. Yet, most of all it places into question the Church's own relationship to itself and to its Jewish roots. On one hand Pope John Paul II has moved mountains to bring about reconciliation between Jews and Catholics. On the other hand the church moves with speed to beatify Edith Stein and Pope Pins XII, while closing down the Vatican archives to a joint Jewish-Catholic commission. It moves to convert Auschwitz into a Catholic shrine while remaining silent on the words of Catholic anti-Jewish proponents such as Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran. It remains silent in the face of outrageous anti-Jewish statements by Bashir Assad, president of Syria, made while the Pope stood next to him. The activities of the excommunicated anti-Jewish prelate Levevre still resonate among some from the right of the Catholic Church. In spite of the good faith effort of many in the Church from Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate to the German and French Church hierarchies and the efforts of Cardinal O'Connor, until recently there has been very little movement to translate these exciting and important events down to the parish level. I say recently because it has not been long since the beginning of what seems to be a growing movement to confront the issues of the church's long history of anti-Judaism and its role in the Holocaust. Cardinal O'Connor's letter to the Jewish community prior to Yore Kippur and before his death, in the form of a traditional Jewish Yom Kippur confessional, was a dramatic statement. …

The Party of Humanity: Writing Moral Psychology in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Blakey Vermeule

198 ‘‘massive intervention . . . and seaborne invasion from the Netherlands [that] removed James II’’ erases the compromise with the hereditary principle in that revolution . Scriblerians might want to know what happens to England in this multicultural, transnational ferment. On the one hand, Locke and Newton are subsumed in the foundational triad: ‘‘the Scientific Revolution , the rise of the mechanical world view, and Lockean empiricism.’’ On the other, English influence is discounted in the critical period at the turn of the century since neither Locke nor Newton has an impact on the Continent until the third decade of the century. Then, abruptly, Locke and Newton are welcomed ‘‘even among the most reactionary sections of the French Church, and by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, as intellectually safe writers, innovativeperhapsbut entirely supportive of revealed religion, Providence, and the political and social order.’’Voltaire and Mme. du Chateletare the conduits, and the English trinity of Locke, Newton, and Bacon shelters the Encylopédistes from dangerous political charges. This very suggestive account makes Locke and Newton part of a wider intellectual movement,Locke’sviewsbeing disseminated by LeClerc even before the publication of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding; they also are part of a paradigm shift that they do not cause, but participate in and then come to represent . What thinker could ask for more? Regina Janes Skidmore College BLAKEY VERMEULE. The Party of Humanity : Writing Moral Psychology in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000. Pp. xii ⫹ 250. $49.95. The Party of Humanity is an ambitious and far-reaching study that examines the ‘‘moralizing power of the aesthetic,’’ principally as represented in select works by Pope, with lesser attention to Johnson and Hume. The apropos title, drawn from Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), is chosen for the eighteenth-century empiricist anticipation of our contemporary notions of ‘‘evolutionary psychology’’and neo-Kantian ‘‘normative ethics.’’ In pursuing this episteme , however, Ms. Vermeule takestwo additional bold steps. Not only does she explicate these three authors (and several others in passing) via the ‘‘normative ethics of obligation,’’she also argues that the ethical model Hume outlined should be recognized as establishing the foundations of present ethical theorization. Further, and significantly, she not only applies, but endorses and advocates the acceptance of the entire project of normative ethics of obligation, as championed by noted Harvard philosopher Christine M. Korsgaard (The Sources of Normativity,1996).Andsoweareatonce immersed in the most active area of contemporary philosophical debate, the ‘‘return to ethics,’’ which can be best characterized as a ‘‘return to Kant.’’ Ms. Vermeule’s argument is presented in three parts: ‘‘Some ParadoxesofMoral Psychology,’’ which introduces the theoretical framework; the ‘‘Art of Obligation ,’’ which focuses on Pope’s character sketches and The Dunciad; and ‘‘Spectator Morality,’’ which emphasizes Johnson ’s Life of Savage, Hume’s theory of pride, and several ‘‘jovial fanatics,’’ namely Hume, Thomas Wharton, and Cowper (and his biographer, William Hayley). The preliminary theoretical essay consists of two parts, and is chal- 199 lenging in its rapid exposition of numerous terms, concepts, and evendisciplines. The principal ‘‘paradox,’’however, is between the usual self-serving interests of moral psychology and the presumption of social transcendence in the ethical systems. Ms. Vermeule proposes ‘‘naturalism ’’ to ‘‘focus’’ the paradox, a methodology that recontextualizes ‘‘selfinterest theories of human motivation,’’ particularly via the discipline of ‘‘evolutionary psychology,’’ which leads, in turn, to ‘‘evolutionary ethics,’’ in particular Korsgaard’s ‘‘updating [of]Kant’s moral philosophy.’’The second sectionof the opening chapter then offers a preliminary outline of the moralizing power of art through an interpretation of Joseph Wright of Derby’s ThreePersonsViewing the Gladiator by Candlelight (1765). Ms. Vermeule argues that Pope and Johnson (and other writers) ‘‘desire to master the world by transcending it,’’ through denying the content and details of their potent moral adversaries and then imposing their own view of moral order on the world. This strategyembodies‘‘theethics of obligation,’’which, she asserts, is ‘‘the only one consistent with the metaphysics of the modern world.’’ Following the reasoning of Hume, Korsgaard, and other empirical ethicists, Ms. Vermeule rejects ‘‘a transcendental source for morality and values,’’ turning to the scientific discipline of ‘‘evolutionary naturalism,’’ which explains the sources of morality...

Correspondance: Repertoire, Tome 1: 1816-1839 (review)

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire. Correspondance:Repertoire, Tome 1:1816-1839. Edited and arranged by Guy Bedouelle and Christoph-sAlois Martin. (Paris: Editions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. lxxvii, 1429. euro72.-.) Jean-Baptiste-Henri (later Dominique) Lacordaire (1802-1861) is known to American and European Catholics (well, at least to priests and seminarians) for one quote: To live in the midst of the world with no desire for its pleasure; to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; . . To go daily from men to God to offer Him their homage and petition; to return from God to men to bring them His pardon and hope, . . Oh God, what a life, and it is thine, O priest of Jesus Christ. But the life of this one-time agnostic lawyer turned priest is emblematic of the creative energies and diverse personalities that constructed nineteenth- and twentieth-century French Catholicism. Much of the creativeness went into the new relationship with the Pope's authority, which was diminished by Napoleon relative to the French government but augmented many times over relative to the French church. The Concordat of 1801 had allowed a government voice in church appointments, but it also required the total and absolute submission of French bishops to the Pope. They were all obliged to tender their resignations, so that the differend between the constitutional Catholicism of the Revolution and the Rome-dedicated refractory church could be settled. In the beginning was Felicite de Lamennais. This high-profile intellectual priest formed around himself a quasi community of younger intellectuals including Lacordaire, by this time a priest for several years, and the Comte de Montalembert, a politically and intellectually engaged young aristocrat. Lamennais wanted to shape a dynamic French Catholicism upon the absolute authority, religious and political, of the Pope; and the journal he founded to promote his program was confidently entitled L'Avenir. Ironically, the Pope and his entourage thought they had more to fear from Lamennais than they did from his opponents and so condemned a number of the propositions of Lamennais and ordered the closing down of L!Avenir. Lacordaire was profoundly disappointed-as were the other members of the Lamennais circle-but led the way in submission to Rome. Henri Lacordaire's own personal combination of submission to Rome and maintenance of philosophical, or at least literary, originality has become a waystation along the historical road of modern French Catholicism. His ultramontanism was tempered to greater strength by the condemnation crisis and gave him leverage in problems with French hierarchical authority, chiefly Archbishop Quelen of Paris; his oratorical gifts merited invitation (from this same prelate) to give a high-profile series of sermons in Notre-Dame cathedral; his emotion-fraught relationships -were filled with high controversy and, some say, sexual tension; and his combination of humility and self-importance in ecclesiastical renewal bought for him a unique in French Catholic life in the middle third of the century (he had a major role in the re-establishment of the French Dominicans shortly after a one-year novitiate). Not that it is easy to place Lacordaire in French church history. He is known, glibly perhaps, as a romantic, as much to dispel suspicions of homosexuality as to situate him on the complex range of literary and artistic romanticisms; known also for high sermonizing but not for spirituality; known as a political liberal but not for a political theology; known for his biography of St. …

Catholicism, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century France (review)

This carefully constructed collection of essays explores twelve facets of the complex, fascinating development of French Catholicism over the past hundred years. Each essay examines a particular aspect of that development in a self-contained treatment, based on its own well documented research. However, [End Page 136] the twelve essays overlap and interrelate in such a way as to produce an engagingly coherent and comprehensive view of French Catholicism, not in its inner institutional evolution, but rather in its relationship to the society, culture, and state within which the French church functions.

Ecclesiastical Discipline in the French Church of London and the Creation of Community, 1560-1600

Article Ecclesiastical Discipline in the French Church of London and the Creation of Community, 1560-1600 was published on December 1, 2001 in the journal Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History (volume 92, issue jg).

Thomas Deloney and the London Weavers' Company

Thomas Deloney-balladeer, novelist, and yeoman weaver-remains best known for The Gentle Craft, the source for Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, but he was also a passionate advocate for the needs of his class. Deloney's early polemical efforts endangered his freedom, particularly a now-lost ballad on the want of corn and a printed letter To the Minister and Elders of the French Church in London, He was more subtle in his novels about his own cloth trade, lacke of Newberie and Thomas of Reading, where his idealization of his craft mixes past and present ideologies of his gild, preserved for him and for us in the London Weavers' Company's ordinances. This idealization failed to reform Deloney's gild, but the novels were successful in more material terms, since lacke of Newberie and Thomas of Reading met with an acceptance and popularity that the printed letter or banned ballad could not.

Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Volume 1: The Clerical Establishment and its Social Ramifications; Volume 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion (review)

Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Volume 1: Clerical Establishment and its Social Ramifications; Volume 2: Religion of People and Politics of Religion. By John McManners. [The Oxford History of Christian Church.] (New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. xviii, 817; xiv, 866. $155.00, $165.00 clothbound; $49.95, $45.00 paperback.) British are renowned travelers. An innate sense of curiosity seems to take them to every possible place on earth, to visit, to observe, and to report. These travel stories have taken many shapes from Dr. Burney's European musical journeys to A Year in Provence, but they share a common perspective: a keen attention to details, especially whimsical ones, and a slightly amused way of describing their experience. This view, I suspect, has also influenced British historians, who have with same flair visited past and come back with reports that are both comprehensive and entertaining. Since his 1960 dissertation, dedicated to city of Angers in eighteenth century, John McManners has proven himself to be master of this type of historical exploration. With his deep attachment to Ancien Regime tempered by a very British sense of humor, future Regius Professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford gave us most readable work of social history. book under scrutiny, written after his retirement from teaching, represents magnum opus that many academics dream of, but few actually produce. Its well-filled 1700 pages present a complete survey of French church from Louis XIV's reign to eve of French Revolution. Divided into two volumes available separately, it presents successively clerical establishment (vol. 1) and religious life and politics (vol. 2). In exactly fifty chapters author offers a complete, up-to-date, and precise description of every aspect of life of French church: three chapters on bishops, three on parish priests, two on canons and chapters, four on male and female religious orders, preceded by five on Church and State, and followed by a last one on the Art of Obtaining a Benefice, constitute first volume. In second one, nine chapters cover religious practice, including The Dark Side of Supernatural (chap. 30), followed by four very engrossing studies of clerical interventions on moral issues: usury, sexuality, and entertainment. More political, second part of book describes Jansenist conflict that followed crisis of Unigenitus and relations of established church with religious minorities, Protestants and Jews. Entitled The Crisis of Ancien Regime, final three chapters analyze situation that represented prodromes to French Revolution: political role of Jansenists, of bishops, and of cures. Being a professional historian and a devoted admirer of John McManners, I must confess that long before being asked to review this book I had bought it. …

Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (review)

Controversial Concordats: The Vatican's Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler. Edited by Frank J. Coppa. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 1999. Pp. viii, 248. $44.95 clothbound; $24.95 paperback.) This study of the concordats concluded between the Holy See and the major dictators of the modern age is an expansion of papers first presented as a panel at a scholarly conference. As such, it is organized like a conference panel, with an introduction by John K. Zeender, substantive essays on France by William Roberts, on Italy by Frank Coppa, and on Germany by Joseph A. Biesinger, and a concluding commentary by Stewart A. Stehlin. An appendix contains the complete texts of the concordats with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler. For over 800 years prior to the 1960's, the Papacy had negotiated concordats with secular states, trading the favor of the Pope for guarantees of the position of the Church and its institutional status within those states. In the early nineteenth century, concordats, on the model of that of 1801 with Napoleon, served to consolidate alliances of throne and altar. They were less used in the latter part of the century as the Vatican was beset by attacks from liberal anticlericals and from the newly created national entities of Germany and Italy. The use of concordats was revived by Pius XI as a means of dealing with a world of secular nationalism in the 1920's. Yet the concordats with Italy (1929) and Germany (1933) raised questions about the morality of pacts with dictators and, with Vatican Council II's intended decentralization of power within the Church, no new concordats have been concluded by the Vatican since the 1950's. William Roberts contends that Napoleon sought agreement with the Church in order to secure popular support for his regime as well as to control what was potentially a dangerous oppositional institution. In the short term, the French concordat of 1801 worked to Napoleon's advantage. Yet, Roberts argues that in the longer term, the concordat was of considerable benefit to the Church, since it brought the French Church under greater papal control than heretofore and it laid the foundation for the nineteenth-century revival of French Catholicism. Within France, the concordat gave great power to the bishops, with the result that the lower clergy became fervently ultramontane, seeing the Pope as their protector against an arbitrary episcopate. Roberts attributes French support for the 1870 doctrine of papal infallibility to this internal tension of the Church. In the same way, Frank Coppa indicates that the Italian concordat of 1929 provided short-term benefits to Mussolini's fascist regime, but, through its protection of Italian Catholic Action, the concordat assisted in the preparation of the post-fascist generation of Italian political leadership. …

The French Churches and the Jewish Question: July 1940 — March 1941

This article examines why, following the military defeat of June 1940, the French Catholic Church remained silent as race laws were introduced, whereas before the war it had publicly rejected racism and opposed antisemitism. A number of reasons accounted for it. A strong conviction prevailed in its ranks that the regime which had then emerged offered a unique opportunity to resume preeminence in French society and regain rights formerly denied under the Republic. It took two years for members of the clergy to recognise that by its prolonged silence the Church had in fact jettisoned its traditional views on ‘justice and charity’ for all men. It was only after the deportation to the death camps of over fifty thousand Jews that it finally raised its voice up on their behalf.

Romano Guardini: A Precursor of Vatican II by Robert A. Krieg, C.S.C.

BOOK reviews313 In order to comprehend the Republican anticlericalism in France, Larkin made an exhaustive study of the Vatican,Jesuit, Assumptionist, and French National Archives as well as the archives of the Grand Orient. The result is a detailed account of Vatican policy under Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. Leo XIII followed a policy of ralliement with republican France in the hope that France would aid him in regaining the papal territories lost in 1870. Pius X and his Secretary of State Raphael Merry del VaI followed a policy of seeking an accommodation with Italy rather than France. This policy created great difficulties for the French Church at the very moment of the crisis in the French Church over separation of church and state. Larkin's basic conclusion is that the French governmental policy aimed at keeping the prefectoral corps free of committed Catholics and this extended also to the ministries of Interior and Justice. Promotions of committed Catholics into ministries which required expertise such as public works, finance , commerce, andponts et chaussées were not so restricted. The army was a special case as at the beginning of the wave of anticlericalism there were large numbers of Catholic officers. It took major efforts of staunch republican officers to somewhat redress the balance. Throughout all of this period there were numerous notations in the personnel files describing the private lives of the officers in question as well as their wives and children. Of special interest was whether they educated their children in private or public schools. One conclusion is certain: Protestants and Jews were overrepresented in the higher civil service and Catholics grievously underrepresented. The author writes in a clear and forceful, often witty, style which is a joy to read. This valuable, well-researched, and remarkable work clarifies the churchstate problem such as the attitudes of the Vatican, the role of the Grand Orient in supporting republican policies, especially in the Affaire desfiches of 1904. The attitudes of Waldeck-Rousseau and Emile Combes in purging the civil service of practicing Catholics is well treated as is the complex role of Vichy. Walter D. Gray Loyola University Chicago (Emeritus) Romano Guardini:A Precursor ofVatican II. By Robert A. Krieg, CS.C. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1997. Pp. vii, 270. $18.00 paperback.) The Italian-German theologian Romano Guardini (1885-1968) was an influential figure in the formative stages of the liturgical movement and a prominent contributor to the modern renewal of ecclesiology. As professor of Catholic Weltanschauung at the Universities of Berlin (1923-1939), Tübingen (19451948 ), and Munich (1948-1962), he held a series of specially designed appointments which both required and allowed him to teach outside the parameters of 314BOOK REVIEWS standard theological programs. Guardini developed a pattern of lecturing regularly on three distinct sets of topics: major themes of ethics and Christian anthropology ; the New Testament, not in a technical exegetical sense, but through reflections of a meditative nature; and interpretations of philosophical or literary texts of religious significance. This wide-ranging activity led to prolific publication , much of which was translated into the major Western languages, with the result that Guardini became one of the most widely read Catholic religious authors of the first half of the twentieth century. Interest in Guardini has subsided in North America, though the centenary of his birth and the publication of several dissertations have spurred renewed attention to his work in the German-speaking world.Yet the historical impact of his thinking on the Church remains significant. For these reasons, Robert Krieg, professor of theology in the University of Notre Dame and author of Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), seeks to introduce this prominent theologian to a late twentieth-century North American audience. After an introduction providing basic biographical information and locating Guardini theologically between Vatican Councils I and II, successive thematic chapters present his thought on seven topics of interest: revelation, the Church, the liturgy, faith and literature, Nazism, Jesus Christ, and the modern world. The usual pattern is to depict the historical and theological context of an aspect of Guardini's life and work, present (sometimes...

An SGML/HTML Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Library

The Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Project (ETD) was launched in 1987 at an Ann Arbor, MI, meeting arranged by UMI and attended by representatives of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT), the University of Michigan (UM), SoftQuad, and ArborText. VT funded the development of a Document Type Definition (DTD) for dissertations and theses. The project continued at VT, with collaboration from the Coalition for Networked Information, the Council of Graduate Schools, and UMI, among others. Since 1994, many VT students have submitted their dissertations and theses in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). As of January 1997, VT requires its students to submit their projects in electronic form rather than in paper. The long-term plan is to have them submitted in both PDF and SGML. VT’s ETD Project is part of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, funded by a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education. VT has been joined by 25 universities in supporting this effort. The aim of my initial project was to describe a potential online library of dissertations and theses at the University of Michigan. The focus was on the SGML markup of sample dissertations using the TEI DTD and an HTML-based user interface for searching and retrieval. These latter elements will be developed as the body of electronic dissertations at UM grows. The electronic dissertations described here can be thought of as extensions of their print counterparts. Software, multimedia projects, and other natively electronic submissions are a different animal entirely and are not addressed in this project. The discussion of the initial project is followed by an update on the realized project at the University. I acquired four dissertations to show the breadth of types that would need to be covered by the selected DTD. The first is the doctoral dissertation of Rebecca Price-Wilkin on the architectural history of a French church, prepared for the UM Department of Art History. Price-Wilkin’s document was used as an example of an image-rich dissertation. The second is the doctoral dissertation of David Ruddy on the medieval travelogue Mandeville’s Travels, completed for the UM Department of History. Ruddy’s shows how historic texts can be represented in this model. A

The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589-1661 by Joseph Bergin

Making of the French 1589-1661. By Joseph Bergin. (New Haven:Yale University Press. 1996. Pp. xiii, 761. $50.00.) emergence of prosopography as a historical method some thirty years ago has led to the publication of a large number of works on the early-modern episcopate. Bishops are well suited to this approach because of their status and the extensive information, relatively speaking, available about them.The best of these studies so far is this massive book, which provides a vast amount of detail about the 351 bishops given miters in the seven decades it covers.The book's title accurately reflects its content in that it concentrates on how bishops were appointed and what went into preparing a cleric for episcopal office, not on what they did once they gained their sees. text is divided into three major sections. first, French Church and Its Bishops, provides a sketch of the previous studies of the French episcopate and a description of the territorial layout of the French Church before moving on to the process by which bishops were appointed.The latter point is accomplished largely through a series of case studies that demonstrate the complicated maneuvers within the diocese, at Rome, and especially at court that would-be bishops and their patrons had to go through to gain a miter. Bergin devotes two valuable chapters to the finances of the episcopate, showing what the bishop's nominal income in each of the 113 French dioceses was at midseventeenth century and what obligations, mostly in the form of pensions, reduced a bishop's real income. second section, Profiles of the Episcopate, is devoted largely to the question of what went into the making of a bishop: place of origin, family background, clientele and kinship ties, education, and career path. Among the noteworthy points shown by Bergin's data are a decline in home-grown bishops and a substantial increase in those from Parisian families. His data on their social origins contradict the common image of an episcopate solidly noble by 1661, showing that under Richelieu in particular a higher percentage of commoner bishops were seated than in the sixteenth century.The education of future bishops was decidedly improved over the previous century. By 1661 over 90% had higher degrees in law or theology. Even the best noble families had realized that if they hoped to win miters for their younger sons, they had to be well educated. Other changes that Bergin's statistics reveal are the near disappearance of underage appointees but yet a longer average period of tenure, as bishops no longer resigned their sees or traded them in the same high proportions as previously. final section, The Crown and the Episcopate, examines the patterns of episcopal appointments according to the politics of the court. Bergin first details the anarchy in the episcopate during the last years of the religious wars and shows how Henry IV through a pragmatic policy of rewarding supporters and buying off former enemies was able to restore stability to it. …

Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France by Henry Phillips

BOOK REVIEWS351 pany in 1641 andAlderman of London a decade later,now known to his EngUsh colleagues as John Great. Paul S. Seaver Stanford University Church and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. By Henry PhiUips. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. ix, 334. $59.95.) The Catholic Reform movement began to have a significant impact in France during the seventeenth century, after the conclusion of the devastating religious wars. The Church undertook to assert its authority over society through its educational system, its missionary efforts in rural areas, and its promotion of activities designed to instiU in the various segments of society a more intense religious consciousness. However, as Professor PhiUips informs us, the reforming efforts of the French Church were hampered not only by secular trends within French culture, especiaUy in science and phUosophy, that became increasingly influential at this time, but by forces within the Church itsetf as well. In order to inspire in the hearts and minds of the faithful a greater respect for the authority of the Church, ecclesiastical officials at aU levels undertook to develop a clearer understanding of Catholic tradition and doctrinal orthodoxy. This task proved to be impossible to accomplish given the profound differences of opinion that existed between GalUcans and ultramontanes,Jesuits and Jansenists, and the regular and secular clergy on these matters. Such differences of opinion inevitably weakened the authority of the Church at a time when the authority of the French state was increasing, often at the expense of the Church. The authority of the Church was brought into question in the area of science and phUosophy, not because Descartes and others intended to chaUenge that authority but because they challenged the authority ofAristoüe, whose phUosophy , configured to reUgious belief by medieval scholars, was viewed by the Catholic hierarchy as a whole as essential to the maintenance of that authority. Furthermore, consideration of "the new phUosophy" took place in areas beyond the control of the Church—in the salons, at public lectures, and in the newly established royal academy of science. The most direct chaUenges to the authority of the Church, in PhiUip's opinion , were from the Jansenists, Protestants, libertines, atheists, and deists, aU of whom the Church attempted to suppress without success. TheJansenists in defense of their own version of CathoUc orthodoxy defied both the hierarchy and the state. The Huguenots, especiaUy those in exUe after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, helped to develop a poUtical culture in the Netherlands and in England that was antithetical to the culture of the Old Regime to which the CathoUc Church had contributed so much. As for the Ubertines, atheists, and 352BOOK REVIEWS deists, their role in undermining the authority of the Church lay not so much in the direct chaUenge that they posed to that authority but in suggesting the possibility ofsocial values that did not require the validation of Catholic orthodoxy. In framing his argument, Phillips uses the concept of space because spaces, he says, foUowing Foucault, are related to power and control. Thus there are frequent references to the space ofbelief, of dissent, of hostUity, etc. Framed in this way, the argument sometimes seems too abstract, and the issues of power and control are not clearly worked out. Nevertheless, the book provides a useful overview of French culture at a critical moment in its history. Alexander Sedgwick The University of Virginia Mazarin.The Crisis ofAbsolutism in France. By Geoffrey Treasure. (NewYork: Routiedge. 1995. Pp. xv,413· $39.95 clothbound; $22.95 paperback.) The period from the death of Louis XIII in 1643 to the beginning of the personal reign of Louis XIV in 1661 was one of the most tumultuous and complex in French history. It was as well the "age of Mazarin," the cardinal-minister who merged Italianate style with French statecraft, who increased French glory and reputation at the expense of revolts, social tension, and economic dislocation, and who has provoked passionate reactions from contemporaries and historians alike. The difficulties in understanding Mazarin's life and times mean that only accomplished historians—recently Georges Dethan and Pierre Goubert and now Geoffrey Treasure—could hope to offer satisfactory biographies of Giulio Mazarini. Treasure...