In a masterful survey of research on Catholicism in the South, Woods has done for that region what James Hennesey did for the Catholic Church in the United States in American Catholics.”—Gerald P. Fogarty, University of Virginia

“This is a book we have long needed. Over the last four decades the history of the evangelical tradition in the South has been discovered and much written about, but the Catholic dimension of southern religious history has lagged behind in the historiography. Finally here is a synthesis of almost three centuries of the Catholic Church in the region.”—John B. Boles, Rice University

No Christian denomination has had a longer or more varied existence in the American South than the Catholic Church. The Spanish missions established in Florida and Texas promoted Catholicism. Catholicism was the dominant religion among the French who settled in Louisiana. Prior to the influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s, most American Catholics lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. Anti-Catholic prejudice was never as strong in the South as in the North or Midwest and was rare in the region before the twentieth century.
James Woods’s sweeping history stretches from the first European settlement of the continent through the end of the Spanish-American War. The book is divided into three distinct sections: the colonial era, the early Republic through the annexation of Texas in 1845, and the stormy latter half of the nineteenth century. Woods pays particular attention to church/state relations, mission work and religious orders, the church and slavery, immigration to the South, and the experience of Catholicism in a largely Protestant region. He also highlights the contributions and careers of certain important southern Catholics, both clerical and lay, and considers how the diverse Catholic ethnic and racial groups have expressed their faith—and their citizenship—through the centuries.

About the Author
James M. Woods is professor of history at Georgia Southern University.

A History of the Catholic Church in the American South, 1513-1900. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2011. Pp. xviii, 498. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-813-03532-1.)

Jean-Pascal Gay, Morales en conflit Théologie et polémique au Grand Siècle (1640-1700) Paris: Cerf Histoire, 2011, pp. 984.  ISBN: 978-2204091503.

From the book cover:

Cet ouvrage explore le long conflit qui divise le catholicisme français du second XVIIe siècle autour de la morale, depuis les premières escarmouches du début du siècle jusqu’aux condamnations prononcées par le clergé de France in 1700. L’étude de ce conflit repose sur la mise en relation de deux réalités culturelles distinctes: la polémique et la théologie. Elle reprent et inscrit dans une perspective de moyen terme une série d’épisodes et de phases d’affrontement avant et après la célèbre campagne des Provincales. Cette enqûete souligne combien la polémique devient un trait caractéristique de la culture du catholicisme moderne. Le conflit autour de la théologie frappe par son efficacité, et sa capacité à construire des traditions idéologiques créatrices d’identité. L’étude permet de mieux saisir les glissements sociaux à l’œuvre dans l’histoire de ce conflit culturel. Au-delà de l’intervention du laïcat, c’est d’abord et avant tout la prise de pouvoir de l’instance du public sur les questions religieuses que la polémique autorise, à une période où s’affirment les nouveau “pouvoirs de la litterature.” Cependant, ce travil signale aussi son échec partiel. Les évolutions doctrinales sont lentes et fragiles. Si une culture de la rigueur morale s’affirme, la rupture rigoriste est moins radical e qu’elle ne le proclame. La force des formes de l’élaboration théologique préserve de nombreux ressorts d’une culture théologique indulgente. De fait, si l’etude de la polémique permet de percevoir la profondeur de la politisation des rapports ecclésiaux, l’examen de la production théologique permet de percevoir la profondeur de la politisation des rapports ecclésiaux, l’examen de la production théologique montre également l’irréductibilité de la tension entre un savoir institutué et sa mise en círculation devant le public. La culture confessionnelle du catholicisme français apparaît alors comme prise dans une contradiction fondamentale.

Ancien élève de l’École normale supérieure, ancien member de l’École françise de Rome, Jean-Pascal Guy est maître de conferences en histoire moderne à l’université de Strasbourg.

Aimé Richardt, Le Jansénisme. De Jansénius à la mort de Louis XIV, Paris, François-Xavier de Guibert, 2011. 2nd edition, pp. 277. ISBN: 978-2-7554-0469-2

From the book cover:

“Après le débat sur la grâce et le libre-arbitre à l’origine des sanglantes guerres de religion du XVIe siècle, le mouvement janséniste, à la fin du XVIIe siècle, ouvrit à nouveau la querelle ébranlant, de manière plus “feutrée,” le monde des théologiens.

Le sujet fundamental de ce conflit fut, comme le souligne Mgr Guillaume, “le grave et difficile problème des relations entre la grâce de Dieu et la liberté de l’homme: comment Dieu peut’il respecter cette liberté, s’il donne à l’homme une grâce efficace pour agir selon le bien? Si Dieu faith tout, qu’ai-je encore à faire? Si j’ai tout à faire, à quoi sert Dieu? Comment comprendre que la grâce, loin de détruit ou de diminuer la liberté de l’homme, en est, au contraire, la source permanente?”

Le jansénisme révélera aussi de profound conflits de pouvoir religieux et politiques qui s’avèreront décisifs pour l’avenir à maints égards. La crise révolutionnaire est en effect déjà en germe: certains jansénistes ne se révaient-ils pas “républicains” sous Louis XIV?

De sa plume simple et déliée, Aimé Richardt décrit pas à pas la naissance, le développement et le paroxysme, jusqu’au dénouement apparent, de ce grand débat, en même temps qu’il met en situation de manière très vivante les principaux protagonistes.

Spécialiste des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, laureate de l’Académie française pour son Fénélon en 1994, Aimé Richardt a publié de numbreux ouvrages, dont Les savants du Roi Soleil, Saint Robert Bellarmin, Les médécins du Grand Siècle, La vérité sur l’affaire Galilée, Calvin, Luther (editions François-Xavier de Guibert) et Érasme (Lethielleux).”

Note: An important contextual study given the importance of Baltimore and New York as early centers of the Vincentian experience in the United States.

Distinguished historian Robert Emmett Curran presents an informedand balanced study of the American Catholic Church’s experience in its two most important regions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Spanning the years 1805 to 1915, Curran highlights the rivalry and tension between the northeast and southeast, specifically New York and Maryland, in assuming leadership of the church in America and the Society of Jesus.
Slavery, polity, religious culture, education, the intellectual life, and social justice — all were integral to the American Church’s formation and development, and each is explored in this book. The essays provide a
unique vantage point to the American Catholic experience by their focus on two communities that played such an incomparable role in shaping the character of the church in America. Though Baltimore was half
the size of New York in population, until the 1900s it held a significant edge in the number of churches, priests, and religious orders serving the needs of its own immigrant community. By 1900 the place that Maryland had occupied as the premier see of the Church in America was won by New York in actuality if not in title. Based on exemplary archival research and scholarship, the book offers an engaging history of the northward shift in power and influence in the nineteenth century.

About the Author
Robert Emmett Curran is professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University. He is the author of several books including John Dooley’s Civil War, Georgetown University: A History, and American Jesuit Spirituality: The Maryland Tradition.

Product Details
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: The Catholic University of America Press (May 23, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0813219671
ISBN-13: 978-0813219677

Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnee & Olivier Tort (dir). L’union du Trone et de l’Autel? Politique et religion sous la Restauration, (Paris: Paris-Sorbonne, 2012), pp. 252.  ISBN 978-2-84050-807-6.

From the jacket cover:

“L’union du Trone et de l’Autel” est une formule devenue banale a force d’etre repetee pour designer les relations entre pouvoir politique et pouvoir religieux sous la Restauration. Or de nombreuses tensions demeurent, trop souvent occultees ou sous-estimees. L’ouvrage reprent donc le dossier a la lumiere du renouveau historiorgraphique dont jouit aujourd’hui la Restauration.

Ainsi, les problemes administratifs quis se posent durant cetter periode, tels que le financement public des cultes, la creation d’un ministere dedie aux affaires religieuses, ou encore la formation des rabbins suous tutelle de l’Etat, one une resonance polemique qui n’a pas perdu toute actualite.

Les questions memorielles constituent aussi un enjeu preponderant des relations entre politique et religion: commemorations du geticide de 1793, ordonnancement protocolaire des messes du Saint-Esprit, discours prophetique de faux Louis XVII, tout est pretexte a raviver les conflits et les haines du passe, malgre les volontes conciliatrices d’un Chateubriand par example.

Efin, l’etude de divers groupes de pression montre que les relations entre le pouvoir royal et les milieux chretiens ne sont pas elles-memes sans nuage: deputes clericausx, eveques membres de la pairie, pasteurs protestants ou encore etudiants royalistes essayent, chacun a leur maniere, d’influencer l’Etat et le monde politique pour imposer leur vision du monde.”

Antonio Furioli,Vangelo e testimonianza. L’esperienza di san Giustino de Jacobis in Abissinia (1839-1860),  Torino: Edizioni San Paolo, 2008, pp. 550.  ISBN: 978-88-215-6310-2

“Oggi la Chiesa e chiamata a vivere una missione piu essenziale, fondata sull testimonianza cristiana. Il dono di se, l’attenzione all cultura, il dialogo, il solidarieta, l’impegno per la promozione e la liberazione dell’uomo…sono logiche conseguenze della valenza testimoniale della vocazione cristiana.

Nella sua esperienza in Abissinia (1839-1860) san Giustino de Jacobis ha reso operativa la spiritualita missionaria della Chiesa. La sua esemplarita referenziale deve ricondurci al rapporto fondamentale con Gesu Cristo e con lo Spirito Santo, veri protagonisti della missione. In questa struttura cristologica e pneumatologica e saldamente radicata la spiritualita di ogni cristiano.  Nella struttura dialogica della sua vocazione missionaria e nella permanente obbedienza all chiamata di Cristo Gesu, Giustino de Jacobis ha realizzato uno degli essempi piu interessanti e riusciti d’inculturazione dell’Africa del XIX secolo.”

Tim McHugh, Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-Century France. The Crown, Urban Elites and the Poor,” (Ashgate Publishing Limited: Hampshire England, 2007). pp. 191,  ISBN: 978-0-7546-5762-0.  Tim McHugh is Wellcome Trust Researcher and Lecturer in the History of Medicine in the School of History at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

From the book cover:

“The seventeenth century witnessed profound reforms in the way French cities administered poor relief and charitable health care. New hospitals were built to confine the able bodied and existing hospitals sheltering the sick poor contracted new medical staff and shifted their focus towards offering more medical services.  Whilst these moves have often been regarded as a coherent state led policy, recent scholarship has begun to question this assumption, and pick-up on more localised concerns, and resistance to centrally imposed policies.

This book engages with these concerns, to investigate the links between charitable health care, poor relief, religion, national politics and urban social order in seventeenth-century France.  In so doing it revises our understanding of the roles played in these issues by the crown and social elites, arguing that the central government’s social policy was conservative and largely reactive to pressure from local elites.  It suggests that Louis XIV’s policy regarding the reform of poor relief and the creation of General Hospitals in each town and city, as enshrined in the edict of 1662, was largely driven by the religious conerns of the kingdom’s devout and the financial fears of the Parisian elites that their city hospitals were overburdened.  Only after the Sun king’s reign did central government begin to take a proactive role in administering poor relief and health care, utilizing charitable institutions to further its own political goals.

By integrating the social aspiration of urban elites into the history of French poor relief, this books shows how the key role they played in the reform of hospitals, insipired by a mix of religious, economic and social motivations.  It concludes that the state could be a reluctant participant in reform, until pressured into action by assisting elite groups pursuring their own goals.”