Church History articles from March 2003

Church History archives from March 2003

Historical fact and exegetical fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis (1).
March 1, 2003... The nineteenth-century editor of Ermenrich of Ellwangen's (ca. 814-74) Vita Sualonis, Oswald Holder-Egger, dismissed the Carolingian hagiographer's sermon on the Anglo-Saxon hermit Sualo as historically unimportant because of its heavy reliance...

Masculinity, reform, and clerical culture: narratives of episcopal holiness in the Gregorian era (1).
March 1, 2003... Historical narrations of the Gregorian Reform tend to cultivate a certain machismo. The traditional narrative emphasizes a struggle for dominance between two men, Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV, which escalated from epistolary sparring...

Simon Magus, Nicolas of Antioch, and Muhammad (1).
March 1, 2003... Scholars of the Middle Ages have established that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was an intellectual shift in the Christian polemic against Islam. Whereas in earlier centuries heresiologists defined Islam as pagan, in the high...

The communication of friendship: Gasparo Contarini's letters to hermits at Camaldoli (1).
March 1, 2003... The modern idea that to converse means to talk, to exchange ideas with another person, emerged between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Before that time, and throughout the Middle Ages, conversatio was a state of being or a way of...

Karlstadt's Christag Predig: prophetic rhetoric in an "evangelical" mass (1).(Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, 1486-1541)
March 1, 2003... Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486-1541), one of the most prolific authors of the Reformation, is one of the most difficult for historians to classify. (2) He produced about ninety published writings, which were printed in about 213...

Pilgrims and progress: how magazines made Thanksgiving.
March 1, 2003... I. A CONTRAST IN COVENANTS William Bradford wrote, at the beginning of his history Of Plymouth Plantation, "I must begin at the very root and rise" of the story, setting events down "in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple...

"Between the refrigerator and the wildfire": Aimee Semple McPherson, pentecostalism, and the fundamentalist-modernist controversy (1).
March 1, 2003... Early one Canadian winter morning in 1908, a teenage girl knelt to pray, pleading with God to grant her the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Soon her petition was answered. Her body began to tremble, she slipped to the ground, and out of her lips...

Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by Tomas Hagg and Philip Rousseau. Transformation of the Classical Heritage 31. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xii + 288 pp. $50.00 cloth. The essays in this volume, apart from David Konstan's, were originally...

Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680-850): the Sources, an Annotated Survey.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... By Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, 7. Adershot, England: Ashgate, 2001. xxxii + 324 pp. $99.95 cloth. The authors describe this volume as a "brief survey" and "guide" (xxii), a reference work...

Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By John H. Arnold. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. ix + 312 pp. $55.00 cloth. John Arnold began his research with the intention of writing a history of later Catharism, but in the course of his investigations, he...

Medieval Monastic Education.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig. New York: Leicester University Press, 2000. xv + 237 pp. 60.00 [pounds sterling] cloth. The articles collected in this work are "based on" (xiii) an international conference held at Downside...

Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by Richard Gameson and Henrietta Leyser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xvi + 370 pp. $74.00 cloth. The articles contributed to this Festschrift by Henry Mayr-Harting's students and colleagues cover topics ranging from Late...

The Christianization of Iceland: Priests, Power, and Social Change 1000-1300.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Orri Vesteinsson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xvi + 318 pp. $80.00 cloth. The Christianization of Iceland--a revised version of Orri Vesteinsson's 1996 University of London doctoral dissertation--concerns itself with the...

Ramus and Reform: University and Church at the End of the Renaissance.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... By James Veazie Skalnik. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 60. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2002. x + 172 pp. $39.95 cloth. In a contentious century the educational and religious reformer Peter Ramus (1515-72) was by...

Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Edited by Larissa Taylor. A New History of the Sermon 2. Leiden: Brill, 2001. xviii + 397 pp. $127.00 cloth. This is a volume to welcome with enthusiasm. As the editor notes, sermon studies is in the midst of a renascence, and she and her...

A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth Century Flanders.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Craig Harline and Eddy Put. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. x + 387 pp. $27.95 cloth. This elegant work of history, which has been favorably compared to Carlo Ginzburg's Il formaggio e i vermi (Torino: Giulio Einaudi,...

Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. viii + 235 pp. $45.00 cloth. The appearance of this set of collected essays of western perceptions of Islam could not have come at a better time. The book is...

Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600-1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Graeme Murdock. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xiv + 359 pp. $80.00 cloth. After the Reformation, Calvinism was a kind of Protestant counterpart to what the Jesuits did. Like the Jesuits, the main...

The Life of John Milton: a Critical Biography.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Barbara K. Lewalski. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. xviii + 777 pp. $39.95 cloth. John Milton is a hard man to know. Generations of scholars have puzzled over the origins of his religious and political radicalism and over the apparent...

The Diocese of Meath in the Eighteenth Century.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Patrick Fagan. Dublin: Four Courts, 2001. 224 pp. $39.95 cloth. The Diocese of Meath is one of the more important bishoprics of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It lies just north of Dublin and includes most of the county of Westmeath and...

The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe, 1589-1715.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Paul Kleber Monod. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. x + 417 pp. $45.00 cloth; $19.00 paper. Before 1589, the corpse of a king of France was treated as though it retained what Paul Monod calls "the spiritual presence of...

Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By John W. O'Malley. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. 219 pp. $24.95 cloth; $15.00 paper. A compact yet complex and fascinating study, this book takes its origin from lectures the author gave in Fall 1993 at Campion Hall,...

Always Reforming: a History of Christianity Since 1300.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... By Craig D. Atwood. Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 2001. viii + 375 pp. $29.95 paper. This work is a general if not generic approach to the history of Christianity from 1300 to the present. It intends to be a companion book to Glenn...

"Good and Proper Men": Lord Palmerston and the Bench of Bishops.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Nigel Scotland. Cambridge, England: James Clarke, 2000. 272 pp. $80.00 cloth. This book seeks to rescue the Palmerston bishops from obscurity and to vindicate them in the face of calumny heaped upon them by their contemporary High...

Vocationalism and Social Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Ireland.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Don O'Leary. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000. xiv + 274 pp. $52.50 cloth. If papal encyclicals are like the weather, Pius XI's 1931 Quadragesimo Anno stands out as an exception. Prompting more than talk, this encyclical prompted...

Modern Catholic Social Documents and Political Economy.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... By Albino F. Barrera, OP. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001. xii +340 pp. $69.95 cloth. This volume is a remarkable exposition and summary of Papal documents over the period from Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) to...

Singleness of Heart: Gender, Sin, and Holiness in Historical Perspective.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Diane Leclerc. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2001. xviii + 195 pp. $50.00 cloth. In this remarkable historical theological survey, Diane Leclerc, professor of Historical Theology at Northwest Nazarene University, constructs an innovative...

A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By John K. Nelson. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xi + 480 pp. $49.95 cloth. After decades of suspended animation, scholarship on the Anglican colonial church in Virginia has become awakened. The last few years...

The Devil and Doctor Dwight: Satire and Theology in the Early American Republic.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Colin Wells. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xii + 254 pp. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Despite its catchy title (a la Stephen Vincent Benet) and comic illustrations (from a 1797 work not discussed in the book), The...

Religion in Mississippi.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... By Randy J. Sparks. Heritage of Mississippi Series, 2. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi for the Mississippi Historical Society, 2001. xiv + 374 pp. $40.00 cloth. This volume examines the history of religion in Mississippi,...

Black Bishop: Edward T. Demby and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the Episcopal Church.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Michael J. Beary. Studies in Anglican History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. xvi + 307 pp. $34.95. African American Episcopalians are a small part of the religious landscape in the United States. Before the Revolution, they...

Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862-1939.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000. xxxii + 357 pp. $50.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. Scholars of African American religion, and more generally of American religious history, will be...

Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by William Thorn, Phillip Runkel, and Susan Mountin. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001. 615 pp. $30.00 paper. As the title suggests, this remarkable collection of essays tells two stories. The first is about Dorothy...

Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 380 pp. $29.95 cloth. Probably no religious order in the history of Catholicism has generated as much interest--both pro and con, but rarely...

Strangers in Zion: Fundamentalists in the South, 1900-1950.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By William R. Glass. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. xxiii + 309 pp. $39.95 cloth. Fundamentalism made a home for itself in the American South, argues historian William R. Glass, but who would argue with that point? Conventional...

Alternative American Religions.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Stephen J. Stein. Religion in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 156 pp. $22.00 cloth. Ours is an age of disciplinary hyper-specialization, when a single decade gives rise to twenty-nine thousand new scholarly...

Regulating Religion: the Courts and the Free Exercise Clause.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... By Catharine Cookson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xii + 269 pp. $45.00 cloth. Catharine Cookson, author of Regulating Religion, was trained in law (at Rutgers University) and studied religion (at the University of Virginia and...

Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Edited by Andre Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001, xi + 300 pp. $49.95 cloth; $22.95 paper. This collection of essays attempts to place the exponential growth of pentecostalism in the developing...