Saint John Fisher's "A Defense of Free Will against Luther"

From an article in First Things--brought to my attention by one of my theologian friends--I found out about an upcoming publication of an important work by Saint John Fisher, the holy Bishop of Rochester, executed on June 22, 1535. The article by Michael Root, "Overcoming Theological Amnesia", argues that we skip too many centuries in our overview of Catholic theology, jumping from Saint Thomas Aquinas to the Ressourcement movement, and proposes:

We need to recover what has been lost. We need a wider ressourcement, not unlike the ressourcement of the mid-twentieth century, but one that casts a wider, more “catholic” net. The endeavor will not be easy. Late medieval and early modern theologians are hard nuts to crack. When a late medieval theologian says that a certain adjective is applied in the second mode of per se predication, one has to stop and figure out what that means. And the early modern theologians can be horribly long-winded. In many ways, twelfth- and thirteenth-century theologians are easier for us to understand than those of the fourteenth or seventeenth centuries. But the hard work will be worth it.

Root later comments:

It’s easy to anticipate the objection that a wider ressourcement seeks to perform the impossible, or at least what is impossible for most of us. Mastery of an almost two-thousand-year history of theology is more than can be expected from the theologian. Many important pre-modern theological works, especially from the late medieval and early modern periods, are untranslated, and most of us do not have the Latin facility typical of our theological forebears. Nevertheless, things are improving. The Catholic University of America Press series of Early Modern Catholic Sources is making available in English translation significant works that have been long ignored. Google Books, the Hathi Trust, and the Internet Archive make older editions available as never before.

So I clicked on the link to the CUA Early Modern Catholic Sources website and found this: A Defense of Free Will against Luther: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article 36, by Saint John Fisher; translated by Thomas P. Scheck. 

From the book's blurb:

Lord Acton said that of all the works written against Martin Luther in the beginning of the Reformation, Bishop John Fisher of Rochester's Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio of 1523 was the most important. Oddly enough this massive work of Catholic apologetics, composed in Latin, has never been rendered into the English language. It contains Fisher's detailed responses to all forty-one articles defended by Martin Luther against the censures of Pope Leo X found in the bull Exsurge Domine (1520).

In this volume Thomas Scheck presents for the first time in English translation, introduced, and annotated, Fisher's Preface to the Reader, Ten Truths, and the most important single article found in Fisher's Confutation, namely his Confutation of Luther's Assertion of Article 36, in which Fisher defends the existence of free will against Luther's claim that free will is a fiction with no reality. Fisher's reply is thoroughly grounded in Scripture and in the interpretation of Scripture found in the ancient Fathers of the Church. Interestingly to defend free will he makes abundant use of Augustine, Origen, Jerome, Tertullian and John Chrysostom. . . .

Something to consider next month!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Book Review: "John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed"

Please note, I purchased this book from Eighth Day Books: John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed by Ida Friederike Gorres. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024.

Edited and with an introduction by Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz

Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson

Contents:

Translator's Preface 

• Quotations and Citations: Hunting and Reverse Engineering
• "Dark, 17" and Detective Work
• The Citations: Layers of Complications
• Orthography: A Patchwork Quilt
• Acknowledgements

Introduction: A New Discovery. Ida Friederike Gorres on Newman

• Hagiography: A Segment of Gorres' Life's Work
• A New Discovery: A Newman Draft
• The Postwar Period: Exiting the Ark, Friendship with Newman Specialist Father Breucha
• Searching for What is Distinctive about This Book
• Circling Back Later On
• Unique Approach

The Book:

I. The Life of Newman

    1. The Man Who Was Sacrificed

        An Initial Reconnaissance of His Life

    2. The Golden Apple

    3. Newman's Religious and Human Character in Letters and Sketches

    4. Passion for the Truth

    5. Taking Christianity Seriously: The Tracts and Sermons

    6. Rome: A Mix of Hatred and Love

    7. Newman Brought Low

    8. Newman's Piety

    9. Two Poems by Newman ("The Two Worlds" The Oratory, 1862; The Death of Moses" Off Ithaca, December 30, 1832)

II. Conscience

    10. On Conscience

III. Encore

    11. A Sketch of the Life of Newman

Appendix A: Timeline of the Life of John Henry Newman

Appendix Be: Timeline of the Life of Ida Friederike Gorres

Register of Persons

Bibliography 

Index

This book takes me back, takes me way back to the January of 1979 when I attended the Newman School of Catholic Thought at (then named) St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center. From Ida Friederike Gorres I hear, among other things, what many of the college students, including me, there and then cried out: "Why didn't the Catholic Church in England listen to Newman? Why didn't they support his goals to revive Catholicism in Victorian England and beyond by engaging the laity, especially young men and women? Why did the leaders of Church relegate him to the Oratory in Birmingham? Why did they waste his talents?"

As Gorres examines the sacrifice(s) of Newman's life, she notes not only his loss of friends, family and influence because of his conversion to Catholicism, but how he sacrificed his intellect to the Truth, by not discovering it through his efforts but to finding what was objectively true and outside himself, so that he had to decrease so that He could increase. 

In the chapter on Rome (6.), I was impressed by Gorres' explanation of how the Vatican's over site of justice and order in Rome (and in the Papal States) caused Newman great difficulty: he saw "Roman corruptions" and "priestly rule" creating "physical and moral distress" (pp. 142-145), and that influenced his distaste for the Papacy. (But was England that much better at that time: debtors prisons, poor houses, and slums?, she notes.)

In the chapter "Newman Brought Low", Gorres contrasts how the hierarchy wasted his talents with how the laity wrote to him for advise and counsel, as he answered thousands of letter from potential converts to Catholicism, Catholics asking for spiritual direction, etc. So while he sacrificed the larger influence he could have had, he was sought out nonetheless.

As does Father William R. Lamm, Gorres offers excellent insights into Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons at Oxford and his wonderful efforts to lead his congregation, especially the students, to take "Christianity Seriously", to make it real for them and to impact their lives. In that context, and with the success of his efforts, Gorres frames the famous Tract 90, as Newman sought a firmer foundation for the doctrinal and liturgical reform of the Church of England. (Chapter 5)

Overall, however, I wanted more context for why, in 1940s Germany, Gorres was so attracted to Newman. She travelled to the Oratory in Birmingham in 1949, as the Introduction notes, and much of her research and reading into Newman took place between 1944 and 1949. I was surprised to read that there was a conference coinciding with the one hundred anniversary of Newman's conversion in Cologne, Germany when a similar celebratory conference couldn't be held in England during World War II, according to the Catholic University of America's American Essays for the Newman Centennial! (In the Introduction to that book, Father John K. Ryan is as certain that Newman would never be seriously considered a canonized saint as Gorres (in Chapter I of this book) is that Newman would be canonized and should be considered a Doctor of the Church! She's correct on one point so far, and both the UK and US bishops have presented arguments for the second point to the Vatican.)

Then in post-war years Gorres found a mentor in Newman studies, Father Breucha, and she was deeply involved in the Synod of Wurzburg in 1971, collapsing after defending the Catholic doctrine and Sacrament of Marriage. I need to purchase and read her book The Church and the Flesh from Cluny Media, translated by Bryson, I suppose, to understand the context further since Newman is cited several times in that book, evidently. Bread Grows in Winter: Six Essays on the Crisis in the Church from 1970 might be helpful to me too. And her defense of Marriage at the Synod (meaning it was under attack, right?) is forthcoming from Catholic University of America Press (What Binds Marriage Forever: Reflections on the Indissolubility of Marriage), also translated by Bryson. A Letter to the Church and the response to it is also cited. Here's more about forthcoming translation of books by Gorres, etc.

So, as usual, one book leads to another, and another. For example, I'm already browsing a copy of John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (1945), edited by Father Henry Tristram of the Oratory, highlighted in the bibliography and elsewhere in this volume as one of Gorres' sources (remember, she didn't have the newmanreader.org with almost everything Newman wrote at her fingertips!) 

Gorres succeeded remarkably well with the sources she had to present a saintly and human portrait of Newman. I recommend John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed most highly. In fact, I've already ordered two more copies from Eighth Day Books as gifts!

What I'm Reading Now: "John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed"

My, I had an eventful weekend: Adoration and Mass Friday morning; our annual Chesterton Advent/Christmas party at Eighth Day Books that evening; a Shakespeare play reading Saturday night (As You Like It); the monthly Lovers of Newman reading at the local IHM Convent ("Religious Joy") and Sunday evening Mass. Plus, I have discovered Ida Friederike Görres(1901-1971), by starting John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed from Ignatius Press:

This unparalleled introduction to St. John Henry Newman—mind, heart, soul, and personality—brings the great cardinal to life before our eyes, and with him the charged air of nineteenth-century England. Drawing from his letters, writings, and journal entries with precision and poetic flair, the book is one of Ida Friederike Görres’ masterworks.

While famous for his brilliance, Cardinal Newman did not hide in an ivory tower. His life was one of risk, sacrifice, and immense charity. His sharp turn to Catholicism rocked the University of Oxford, costing him his friendships, his livelihood, and his identity. Through failures and disappointments, over and over again, Newman let himself be recreated by God.

This work, in Görres’ words, is a portrait of “the boy, puzzled, who was startled and overwhelmed by God; the active, creative young prophet of his church in crisis; the hermit, who he was and wanted to be all his life; and the fighter, who he was with and against his will: the saint of the Church and the saint of humility, the one perfected in sacrifice”.

With an in-depth introduction by Ratzinger Prize winner Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, an extensive commentary by translator Jennifer S. Bryson, and a detailed index*, the book introduces readers not only to St. John Henry Newman, but to Görres, one of the greatest hagiographers of the twentieth century, whose spiritual writings have only recently been discovered by the English-speaking world.

*plus an extensive bibliography!

I bought my copy at Eighth Day Books before we started our Chesterton party, reminiscing about our favorite Christmas memories and reading a few selections from our author! We'll continue our discussion of his Autobiography in January, 2025!

More about Gorres here.

H.C. White on "Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs"

Readers of this blog might have been wondering if I've forgotten about the English Reformation and the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales since I've been posting so much about Saint John Henry Newman and the Greek Fathers of the Church, books about Newman, etc,. I have not.

I've been reading, to great benefit, Helen C. White's Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs, her survey of the books published before and during the English Reformations during the Tudor dynasty. 

She begins, after a survey of the development of devotion to the martyrs and saints from the Early Church to the Medieval Era, with pre-Henrician Reformation devotion to the saints and books of saints and martyrs, when England was pretty solidly Catholic, through the changes wrought by Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth with their effects on Catholics and of course, the interim of Mary's reign with the reversion to Catholicism and restoration of the heresy laws with their effects on Protestants. While there is plenty of historical narrative, the focus of the book is the books published during that era. Many of those books are stories of martyrdoms, Catholic and Protestant. White maintains an excellent balance of explication and analysis, describing the strengths and weaknesses of the accounts of those martyrdoms.

Table of Contents:

I. The Saint's Legend as a Literary Type

II. "The Golden Legend" [Caxton's 1483 translation of Voragine's Legenda Aurea]

III. The Attack on the Saint's Legend

IV. The Catholic Martyrs under Henry

V. Foxe's Book of Martyrs

VI. Foxe's Ecclesiastical History

VII. The English Mission

VIII. The Triumphs of Death (mya favorite chapter!)

IX. Continuing Classics and Emergent Types

Notes, Bibliography, Index

By documenting the history of the forms and contents of the books saints and martyrs from the reigns of Henry VII to Elizabeth I, White has simultaneously sketched out the history of religion in England during the Tudor Dynasty. I say "sketched out" because she confines her religious narrative to this specific genre, the saints' lives and legends. Only insofar as these books reflect the religious changes (from Catholic unity to Henrician compromises to Calvinist reform to Marian revival to Elizabethan compromise) does she trace that narrative. Because of course how the people of England were supposed to think and write and read about the saints and martyrs, how to model their lives on their examples and ask their intercession in prayer and devotion was affected by the religious changes throughout this dynasty.

I. White begins with a review of the history of saint's lives and legends from the early Church martyrs during the waves of Roman persecution, highlighting Saints Stephen, Perpetua, and Polycarp. Then she looks at the transition from martyrs to confessors, with Saint Martin of Tours for example. She examines Voragine's Legenda Aurea and his systematization of the calendar of the saints and discusses these legends in the Middle Ages as sources of both exhortation and entertainment, noting some of the pitfalls of exaggeration in these lives, their miracles and wonders, etc.

II. Then she looks at William Caxton's translation of Voragine's Legenda Aurea (in the crucial year of 1483: the death of Edward IV, the brief succession and disappearance of his son Edward V, and the beginning of the brief reign of Richard III, succeeded by Henry Tudor as Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty). White highlights The Golden Legend's basic framework and homiletic purpose. Caxton starts with the Apostles, then proceeds to the Martyrs, the Confessors, and the Virgins, exploring themes of wisdom, piety, charity, and miracles.

III. White contrasts the last printing of Caxton's book in 1527 with the first smuggled copies of Tyndale's English New Testament (written on the Continent in 1525 and 1526) before discussing the Humanists's attack on the superstition evident at saint's shrines (Erasmus, and even More, who distinguished between legitimate devotion to the saints and abuse of that devotion). She cites a 1548 sermon preached by Bishop Stephen Gardiner before Edward VI (as a test of his conformity) in which Gardiner highlights the three most important changes in the Church of England: First, the renunciation of the authority of the Pope; Second, the dissolution of the abbeys; Third, that "images [of the saints] were pulled down" (p. 68) She describes the books that accompanied that crucial third change and Henry VIII's own reaction to the over-reaction of some against images and the saints, except for, of course, any devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury! Photo above of the candle in Canterbury Cathedral in place of the shrine/tomb that Henry VIII had destroyed.

IV. Now we turn to the Catholic protomartyrs of English Reformation: the Carthusians, Bishop John Fisher, and Thomas More. White opines that "unlike Fisher, More would be remembered today, even if he had never been a martyr" because he was "the greatest genius in his country in that day" (p. 116). She devotes several pages to the different lives of Thomas More, from William Roper's memorial, to Harpsfield, Stapleton, and Ro. Ba., noting their different approaches and contexts, as they wrote about More from their exiles on the Continent (except Harpsfield). There's a great quotation in this chapter about "son Roper": "All this (anecdotes and reflection on More's humor and story-telling) Roper had to refresh his memory, and up to around some ten years before he presumably wrote his story, he had the help of his wife [Margaret]. With her he must often have talked over these things, doubtless finding in the later consequences much help for understanding what had once seemed so puzzling." (p. 122) More's "Dearest Meg" helped build her father's legacy.

V. and VI. In the chapters about John Foxe and his Book of Martyrs and Church history, White pays tribute to his dramatic story-telling, his consistent black-and-white, good vs. evil view of the religious controversies of his day. She also analyses his inability to contemplate any compromise in that conflict. As she notes, Foxe dedicates his works to Elizabeth I, praising her rule over the Church of England, exalting the virtues of her mother Anne--but he cannot contemplate how Henry VIII condemned good men like John Lambert to the stake. He has to find another villain to exculpate a hero and he chooses Bishop Stephen Gardiner as the deceitful persuader against Henry's better Protestant judgement. Foxe could not imagine that Henry VIII believed in the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass, just as he could not imagine any religious imagery as being anything but an occasion of idolatry. White sums up Foxe's work as the story of great victory, the victory of the State over the Church.

VII. On the other hand, the Catholic Recusants of Elizabeth I's reign could not even imagine a path to victory; their story is "of the resistance of the defeated and the irreconcilable" (p. 197), whose first years under the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Settlement were kind of waiting game, hoping for a quick succession of Mary of Scotland (after two brief reigns, it could be imagined). Then the Jesuits (and others) Robert Parsons (or Persons) and Edmund Campion launch the English Mission in 1580. 

White devotes requisite attention to both men's books and reputations, but notes that Campion is the real hero (like the comparison and contrast of Fisher and More in chapter IV), because of his daring, the debates in the Tower, and the drama of his capture, torture, and execution. Parsons survives, leaves England never to return, and leads the later English Mission from the Continent. As White notes, he was a tireless writer and educator. She contrasts Parsons life of prose to Campion's life of poetry. Commenting on the narration of Campion's capture, she notes that his betrayer George Elliot's report is "valuable for the light it throws on Recusant life in a large country house in those days" (p. 213) Books attacking and defending Campion--including the poetry of Henry Walpole, inspired to become a missionary priest at his execution--add to his reputation and regard for him among the Catholics of England.

White also highlight a priest's "anonymous Latin diary of what happened to Catholic prisoners in the Tower of London in the years 1580 to 1585", including details about the other prisons which Catholic were incarcerated, and the tortures they endured. The diary contains tantalizingly incomplete information, for example, about the Arden family, Edward and Mary, their daughter Margaret and her husband John Somerville, and the family's resident priest, Father Hugh Hall, all accused of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I, and condemned to death. We know that Edward and John were executed, but what of the women and the priest? The diary does not tell.

VIII. This chapter is almost entirely devoted to the character, works, and reputation of the Jesuit priest and martyr Robert Southwell, particularly to how his use of Saint Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises helped prepare him for the sufferings he endured. White continues the pattern of compare/contrast between Campion and Southwell.

She notes that they were "two very different types of men" and those differences represent "some important differences" in their times in the English Mission. White says that Campion's brilliance is at the "full tide of the high Elizabethan genius, with all its optimistic energy and color and dramatic edge" while Southwell's genius is "something more withdrawn, more reflective, more solitary, more ecstatic; he belongs to a later, more complicated, more shadowed world" (p. 240) and sums him up on page 241: Southwell "was not only a mystic, but a poet." And as a poet, Southwell had the "metaphysical power of organization and the metaphysical power of the revelation of the heart of the matter through a lightning flash of the continued reality in momentary detail." (my italics) We should recall that White also wrote The Metaphysical Poets: A Study in Religious Experience, published by Macmillan in 1936.

White's analysis of Southwell's poetic and mystic vision and his practice of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises reminded me of Anne R. Sweeney's Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: redrawing the English lyric landscape, 1586-95, which I reviewed here. Sweeney explores more fully White's insights into Southwell's experiences of the art and culture of Counter-Reformation Rome, especially in the first chapter, "Rome: the discernment of angels". By the way, Sweeney included White's Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs in her bibliography. And both White and Sweeney (in chapter 2, "The Spiritual Exercises: the 'inward eie') explore the influence of Southwell's use of the Ignatian method of meditation on his preparation for capture, torture, and execution--and in his poetry.

One reason for the difference between the worlds of Campion and Southwell, measured only a few years, is the increasingly desperate situation of Catholics in England. New recusant laws, the 1581 Acts of Persuasion, declaring conversion/reversion to Catholicism, called "reconciliation with Rome" an act of High Treason, and the Act of 1585 against the Jesuits and Seminary priests, making their return to England also an act of Treason--plus the horror of the Babington Plot and its aftermath, the execution of Mary of Scotland and the 1588 Spanish Armada with the State's reaction of multiple executions--when even those Catholics who proved the answer to the "Bloody Question" was that they wanted to fight to defend England from the Armada received no consideration! What cause for optimism did Southwell have?

So he wrote works of comfort and consolation to the Catholics of England: Epistle of Comfort, written for Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, held in the Tower for years under a sentence of death, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth--all to help them deal with their sorrows through their sorrows. White particularly highlights the popularity of Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears and St. Peter's Complaint, reprinted and imitated often. 

It's really a masterful chapter.

IX. This chapter describes how saints' lives and legends returned to English Anglican literature, adapting the pre-Reformation traditions to the contemporary Elizabethan standards. Thus carefully moderated poems about the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God or of an English hero like St. George could be written and published. At the turn of the century, in the last years and months of Elizabeth I's reign, chroniclers and biographers could look back on the past and write about Reformation heroes. They weren't to be canonized saints for devotion, of course, but they could be models for imitation. 

I look forward to reading White's other Tudor book, on Books of Private Devotion.

Just Released: "Newman and His Critics" by Edward Short

From Gracewing Publishers:

The third volume of Edward Short’s trilogy on Newman, following on the much acclaimed Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family, which Gracewing now publishes in a handsome uniform edition. ‘An enthralling and intricate picture of Newman the saint, the friend, the priest, the intellectual, the apologist and the controversialist…This capstone volume brings the author’s trilogy to a masterly close. It is full of judiciously chosen quotations from a paradigmatic range on interlocutors, critics in the best and highest sense of the word, and interlaced with passages from Newman’s own works, all adroitly orchestrated and suffused with deep understanding of Newman and a thorough command of his texts…Bracing, rewarding reading.’ Dr Reinhard Hűtter

Edward Short is the author of Newman and his Contemporaries, and Newman and his Family, both now reissued by Gracewing in uniform editions to the present volume, as well as Newman and History. The first volume of his collected essays and reviews, as Adventures in the Book Pages, was acclaimed by the Catholic Herald as "wise, witty and entertaining." His critical edition of the first volume of Newman's Difficulties of Anglicans introduces and annotates the lectures that Newman delivered in London in 1850, which, taken together, constitute a dress rehearsal for his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Edward Short Short also edited the Saint Mary's Book of Christian Verse (2022), which Prof. Emma Mason of Warwick University called "a mesmerizingly beautiful anthology." His latest collection, What the Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews (2023) includes far-ranging pieces on poets, novelists, moralists and historians. Lord Andrew Roberts, Churchill's biographer, called the book "beautifully written," "brave" and "wise."

I read several chapters in manuscript form and look forward to reading the whole work and reviewing it. Note that I've read and reviewed the first two volumes in the trilogy, Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family, which will now be re-issued by Gracewing Publishers (available next month).

Short provides biographical sketches of each of Newman's critics (unfavorable or favorable), describes his interactions with them (except for the late Father Ian Ker, his twentieth century biographer), and Newman's responses to their criticisms, where applicable. Short gives both the critics and Newman fair space to present their cases. There's a wonderful spirit of sympathy and compassion throughout the book (based on my reading of the chapters submitted to me.)

On the back cover--rather hard to read here, but better on amazon--the blurbs are most complimentary, from Dr. Andrew Meszaros, Reverend Gerald E. Murray (he's often on EWTN's World Over program and writes for The Catholic Thing), and Dr. Reinhard Hutter.

It's definitely a book any student of Newman should read.

Helen Constance White: Hildebrand, Matilda, and the Tudors

After my foray into the works of Josephine Ward, I've discovered another rather forgotten Catholic woman writer, the English professor and historical novelist, Helen Constance White. Cluny Media has published several of her historical novels. I just finished reading Not Built With Hands: A Novel. Cluny describes it thus:

Not Built with Hands tells of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, whose valor and vision proved invaluable in resolving the Investiture Controversy of eleventh-century Christendom. As the staunchest of Pope Gregory VII’s lay advisers, Matilda is called to constant service of the Church’s mission to build the City of God, even at the expense of her own kingdom. Despite the rampant political confusion and domestic strife that threatens to consume her realm, Matilda assumes the role of mediator between Church and State; in that role, she must work with (and against) such giants of history as Pope Gregory and Emperor Henry IV, Hugh of Cluny and Desiderius (the great Benedictine abbot who would become Pope Victor III), to achieve a concordant that will permit the two swords of society, the secular and the spiritual, to together rule in peace and amity.

“If, in fear of violence or through sloth, we suffer the power of the kingdom of God to pass into the hands of the princes of this world, then is the light of the world gone out, and chaos come again.”

Excepting her Norwegian contemporary Sigrid Undset, Helen C. White was peerless in her ability to bring the people and places of the past to brilliant life in the form of historical novels. That ability is on full display in Not Built with Hands (the second of her six novels), with its spirited and gracious heroine the embodiment of her author’s grand style and vision.

White tells a vivid story about Matilda's efforts to negotiate between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor during the Investiture Controversy over who should name bishops: the Pope or the Emperor; and of what was the purpose of bishops: to be priests and leaders of their diocese in the Catholic religion or be supporters of the secular aims of the ruler. There are meetings, and synods, and discussions, and battles, and all manner of skirmishes in this long tale and White keeps the pace going as Matilda works with her mother, her (first) husbands, soldiers, monks, bishops, and vassals. The limited omniscient narrator knows Matilda's thoughts and feelings, particularly her care and concern for her friend the pope, formerly Hildebrand, but also for the peace of Church and State in her encounters with Henry IV, a worthy foe, mercurial, powerful, and dangerous. The novel is divided into six Books: Rome, The Fullness of the Year, Another City, Canossa, A Gold Cup, and The Green Fields. White does not miss the opportunities for vivid descriptions of households, landscapes, churches, cities, travel, and battles. 

I also have Cluny's edition of To the End of the World, but instead of jumping from 11th century Tuscany and Rome to late 18th century France, I'm going to pause with one of two Tudor era studies she wrote: Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs. I have also acquired another withdrawn library book, her Tudor Books of Private Devotion.

Helen Constance White was the first woman Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and there are several on-line tributes to her, including this one by a former graduate student, writing her dissertation on John Donne. Professor White specialized in the Metaphysical poets. You may find a list of her titles in the Library of Congress here.

Book Review: A Symphonic Survey of Pope Benedict XVI's Liturgical Theology

Roland Millare visited Eighth Day Books in January 2023 and I bought his book A Living Sacrifice: Liturgy and Eschatology in Joseph Ratzinger at that time (and I also gave a copy of it to my best friend last month for her birthday; she's the educated theologian; I'm just an autodidact reader).

This review from the Adoremus Bulletin by Father Paul J. Keller, O.P., summarizes the book much better than I possibly can.

What I really appreciated was the clarity and balance of Millare's writing style; his declarative yet comprehensive sentences as he described the theologian-Cardinal/Pope's interaction with other theologians. Since I have read many of Romano Guardini's liturgical theology works, I was able to follow Millare's analysis of the issues of Ethos and Logos and even the models of meal/banquet and sacrifice easily. And when Millare compares and contrasts Ratzinger's thoughts with other theologians I'm not familiar with, like Moltman and Metz, he provides the necessary detail and context, even as he emphasizes the central themes of Logos and the eschaton.

In fact, the "consistency and centrality of the Logos" versus placing Ethos at the center of theology, liturgical, moral, or fundamental is one of most crucial themes of the entire book. It informs Millare's discussion of the Sacrifice of the Mass, of the Communion of the Church and the Second Coming, with hope for the New Heavens and the New Earth, of the mission of the Church and the congregation attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion and then going to the world to share the Love of God and neighbor; and the beauty of art and architecture of the celebration of Mass and our churches, etc.

Millare summarizes his study of Pope Benedict XVI's theology of worship and the eschaton thusly on page 266:

Ratzinger describes his work as having an "incomplete character," yet I have demonstrated that there is a unity within his "fragmentary" writings that is defined by the primacy and centrality of the Logos incarnate. It has been argued throughout this book how the focus on the loges consistently unites his eschatology with his theology of liturgy, in whose orbit can also be found his Christology, ecclesiology, theological anthropology, and ethics.

The text is supplemented with extensive footnotes and a substantial bibliography. Well worth reading, even for a non-specialist. I read it after a discussion of the Resurrection and Ascension chapters in Pope Benedict XVI's Holy Week volume in the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy with my theologian friend and in the midst of the Eucharistic Revival here in the USA.

Book Review: "Tudor Sunset" by Mrs. Wilfrid (Josephine) Ward

This book begins and ends with death: the future Saint John Rigby is hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Thomas Waterings (on the way to Canterbury) on June 21, 1600 and Queen Elizabeth I dies in her bed on March 24, 1603. With a title like Tudor Sunset, I don't think I'm spoiling the plot by telling you that: the sun sets on the Tudor dynasty when she dies.

It's what Josephine Ward does between these two deaths that make a novel a tense and suspenseful historical tale, as the fictional couple at the center of tale, Margaret (Meg) Scrope and Captain Richard Whitlock do their best to survive the last two years and three months of Elizabeth's reign. Especially since Meg is a recusant Catholic lady-in-waiting and friend of Anne (Dacre) Howard, Lady Arundell, the widow of martyred-in-chains Saint Philip Howard, and she and Whitlock frequent the bookstore of future Blessed James Duckett (also a martyr).

Each book and each chapter--numbered, not titled--brings another brush with danger, near escape, temptation or trap, and the reader becomes even more watchful than the characters.

Following a classic historical fiction method, Ward brings real historical characters into the story: not just Queen Elizabeth I, but Richard Topcliffe, William Byrd, Father John Gerard, SJ, Lady Arundell, the two martyrs already mentioned, etc., and one lady in particular, Luisa de Carvajal.

In the appendix with notes on her sources, Ward admits that she has brought Luisa de Carvajal to England earlier than records indicate she actually came. She needs her there for a crucial plot development and resolution. 

This may be a deal breaker for some readers and I'm not completely happy with her decision either. One result of this change in time line is that Ward depicts the "last supper" of Saint John Roberts, OSB and Blessed Thomas Somers the night before their executions at Tyburn arranged by Luisa de Carvajal on December 9, 1610 in Newgate Prison as being arranged instead for Blesseds Francis Page, SJ, Robert Watkinson, and Venerable Thomas Tichborne the night before their executions on April 20, 1602!

I looked at a couple of historical fiction writing guides and they commented that the author may use the excuse of a gap in the historical record to deviate from the timeline. For example Jane Friedman comments:

Rather than worrying about never, ever deviating from history, I advise establishing your own set of rules for when to bend history or not. That way, you’ll be able to make fair and consistent decisions and achieve the kind of balance most readers are looking for. Here are some tips that might help:

• There is a difference between altering verifiable facts and filling in the gaps. History is full of mysteries, unanswered questions, and gaps in the record. If what really happened can’t be verified, you have much more freedom to play around with history. . . .

• If a historical figure isn’t well known and not a lot has been written about them, you have more room for maneuver than you do if their life has been exhaustively documented. But, if you’re going to make something up, make sure it’s consistent with what you otherwise know about the character, including how they behaved, their interests, and what their values were.

So I'll just leave that there for your consideration; the scenes depicting the interactions between the priests and the laywomen, including the tragic figure of Anne Bellamy, who betrayed Saint Robert Southwell after horrible abuse and manipulation by Topcliffe (see the third paragraph on this page for details) are filled with wonderful detail and verisimilitude (?). Ward adds details to their conversations like the stories of Jane Wiseman, a recusant sentenced to the same fate as Saint Margaret Clitherow, of being pressed (literally) for information--which fits the timeline of the novel--and the executions of Blesseds John Thules and Richard Wrenno (Wrenno the Weaver)--which do not! (they were executed in Lancaster in 1616)--so while it's a beautiful scene and fulfills Ward's purposes of using the occasion to present vivid historical detail about how Catholics suffered in different ways in that era, it still troubles me a bit . . .

After a detour through Newgate and a sojourn at the Recusant Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire with Lady Huddleston and William Byrd (his Mass for Three Voices is sung there), the scene returns to Court after the execution of the Earl of Essex on February 25, 1601. 

There's a different tension in the last part of the book as the two fictional characters wait out the last months of Elizabeth I's life. Meg and Lady Southwell--I presume this is the Lady Elizabeth (Howard) Southwell who went on to serve James I's Queen Anne of Denmark--serve the queen through her last decline: on the floor, standing up for hours, finally in bed, pressed to prepare for death by Archbishop Whitgift and the succession by Lord Cecil . . . 

The last words of the book are: 

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

Finally, I must comment on Josephine Ward's extensive preparation for this book, documented in her "Rough Notes on some of the Books Consulted" in the Appendix. The notes are not rough at all as she evaluates the literature available to her at the time and displays her critical judgment of the authors' intentions and methods. She read these works not just for the details about the sufferings of Catholics during Elizabeth I's reign but to help her prepare for the really great challenge of the novel: How to depict Queen Elizabeth I in the waning years of her reign. 

In the note Ward wrote "To Alfred Noyes" at the beginning of the book, she offers some insights into how she framed this depiction:

Does not tyranny provoke falsehood? Was ever a father so tyrannous as Henry VIII? Has it every been understood how his tyranny affected Elizabeth? Mary has been more pitied [?], and perhaps rightly, but the fact that the vices of the triumphant Elizabeth can be traced to her childhood is in itself a tragedy.

If the heart of Mary's mother was broken, the mother of Elizabeth was beheaded. The alternations of their fate were extreme, for first one and the other daughter was proclaimed illegitimate; first one and then the other and then both had the prospect of wearing the crown. The story of their childhood shows how they were conscious that they were utterly helpless and without defense against their father. On Elizabeth the effect was formative and repulsive. It seems to me that she admired the monster as heathens have admired inhuman gods. . . . Was ever child more demoralised by a bad father? (p. xi)

For all my qualms about the Luisa de Carvajal timeline manipulations, this was a marvelous reading experience and I recommend the novel highly.

Ward placed the "Epilogue at the Presentation before Queen Elizabeth of Ben Jonson's "Every Man Out of His Humor" (1599) as the frontispiece of the book (I have the Reprinted edition of December 1932 from Longmans, Green and Co.):

O heaven, that She, whose presence hath effected
This change in me, may suffer most late change
In her admired and happy government:
May still this Island be call'd Fortunate,
And rugged Treason tremble at the sound,
When Fame shall speak it with an emphasis.
Let foreign polity be dull as lead,
And pale Invasion come with half a heart,
When he but looks upon her blessed soil.
The throat of War be stopt within her land,
And turtle-footed Peace dance fairy rings
About her court; where never may there come
Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety.
Let Flattery be dumb, and Envy blind
In her dread presence; Death himself admire her;
And may her virtues make him to forget
The use of his inevitable hand.
Fly from her, Age; sleep, Time, before her throne;
Our strongest wall falls down, when she is gone.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Elizabeth I, painted around 1610, during the first revival of interest in her reign. Time sleeps on her right and Death looks over her left shoulder; two putti hold the crown above her head.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait thought to Elizabeth Southwell as a widow in 1600

Newman and the Liturgy: From Withey to Lang and Velez

As noted recently, I'd dipped into Donald A. Withey's John Henry Newman: The Liturgy and the Breviary, Their Influence on His Life as an Anglican (London: Sheed & Ward, 1992), and used some information gleaned from it to comment on Newman's friendship with Isaac Williams. Then I finished the book and turned to Father Juan Velez's excellent survey of Newman's life and thought to read an essay on Newman and the liturgy there.

Donald A. Withey, who served on the Committee for Pastoral Liturgy of the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales and other liturgical organizations, also wrote Why Receive the Chalice? (1990) and Catholic Worship: An Introduction to Liturgy (1990/2002), and edited Adult Initiation (1989).

In John Henry Newman: The Liturgy and the Breviary, Their Influence on His Life as an Anglican, he is focused on Newman's interests in the celebration of the prayers and liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer and his use of Roman (Catholic) Breviary and involvement in projects to translate and publish it for Anglican use. In chapter nine Withey considers Newman's conversion in light of his understanding of the liturgy and his use of Roman Breviary, especially in his Littlemore retreat while writing the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

The Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations 

Acknowledgement

Preface

Part One: Newman, The Liturgy and the Roman Breviary

One. Beginnings

Two. Newman and the Liturgy

Three. Newman and the Breviary

Four. The Breviary Translation Project - Phase One

Five. The Breviary Translation Project - Phases Two and Three

Six. The Sarum Breviary Project

Seven. The Breviary Offices at Littlemore

Eight. Newman's Writings on the Daily Office

Nine. Outcome: 'This is a Religion'

Part Two: Newman's Translations

Ten. Ten Translations

Eleven. Notes on the Translations

Appendices

One. [Liturgical] Tracts for the Times

Two. [List of] Newman's Sermons of Liturgical Interest

Three. Newman's Two Prefaces to Hymnae Ecclesiae

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Withey quotes often from the letters between Newman and others working on the Roman Breviary translation project one through three; he had access to the Birmingham Oratory Archives in the days when not all of Newman's letters and diaries were available in print. 

The Tractarian interest in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer began with lectures by Charles Lloyd, Regius Professor of Theology and later Bishop of Oxford. In 1825 he published Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII. Newman had attended his private lectures and after Bishop Lloyd died on May 31, 1829, Newman wrote to his sister Harriet (6/4/1829):

I had the greatest esteem, respect, and love for him as a most warm-hearted, frank, vigorous-minded and generous man. His kindness for me I cannot soon forget. He brought me forward, made me known, spoke well of me, and gave me confidence in myself. I have before my mind various pictures of what passed in his lecture-room; how he used to fix his eyes on me when he was pleased, and never put his Ch. Ch. friends unduly forward. I wish he ever had been aware how much I felt his kindness. [Letters and Correspondence: 1827-1829]

The other great influence on the Tractarians regarding liturgy was Origines Liturgicæ by William Palmer of Worcester College (not the William Palmer of Magdalen College).

Newman restored elements of the Prayer Book liturgy at both St. Mary's in Oxford and St. Mary's-St. Nicholas' in Littlemore, including Morning and Evening Prayer read aloud in church and Sunday Communion services. Withey also credits Newman with "introducing the nineteenth century Church of England to office hymns" (p. 91)

In the chapter on the Sarum Breviary translation project I learned that:

Because of the conditions in sixteenth century England [that is, Recusancy, Penal Laws, Martyrdoms, etc], no attempt was made by Roman Catholics to secure the continued use of the Sarum Breviary under the provisions of the the Bull Quod a nobis, which allowed for missals and breviaries with at least two hundred years of continuous use to be continued to be used. (p. 68)

Perhaps the last chapter was the best: "Outcome: 'This is a Religion", in which Withey traces the three phases of Newman's progress to the Catholic Church and the "part played by his understanding of the Liturgy, and especially by his encounter with the Roman Breviary." (p. 102)

According to Withey's schema the first phase was "his search for the identity of the Church of England." (p. 102) At that time he believed that the Church of England was a part of the Church Catholic, one, holy, and apostolic (Credo!) as the Via Media. The second phase, through his study of the Fathers of the Church and the Anglican divines revealed to him that it might not be that Via Media at all--the Monophysite heresy and Wiseman's Dublin Review article, with the echoing refrain "securus judicat orbis terrarum"--contributed to those doubts. And third, when Newman began to test the Roman Catholic Church's claim to be that Church Catholic he sought: that's when studying Saint Athanasius and the Arian heresy mirrored what he'd found in his study of the Monophysite heresy: Rome was the One upholding the true doctrine of the Incarnation! (pp 104-105) 

And the role of the liturgy--although barely mentioned in the Development of Doctrine--was that, according to Withey, Newman saw the Church "as an integrated body, made up of interrelated elements, one of the most important of which was the sacramental principle" (p. 107). In some ways, Withey anticipates some of Father Ian Ker's argument in Newman on Vatican II (OUP: 2014), but in such compressed form that it cannot compare with Father Ker's analysis.

Once Newman--as Chesterton would later say--started looking at the Catholic Church from the inside through the Roman Breviary and being fair to the Catholic Church by studying the Fathers of the Church and their times, he came to assent to the Truth  and to become a member of the "one true fold of Christ".

I appreciated Dr. Withey's detail and narration and would recommend this book to those interested in this aspect of Newman's life.

Turning to chapter 21 in A Guide to John Henry Newman His Life and Thought, (which is now available in paperback!) "From the Book of Common Prayer to the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Roman Breviary" by Father Uwe Michael Lang (of the London Oratory) and Father Juan R. Velez (of Opus Dei and the editor of the book), here are the chapter headings:

Anglican Liturgy in the Early Nineteenth Century

    --Important for context and the most essential liturgical ideas in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer: there is no Sacrifice re-represented in the Communion Service and the rejection of Transubstantiation

Newman: From Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic Views

    --Highlights Newman's "understanding of the Mass as a sacrifice. For Newman, it became evident that the altar (thusiasterion) for the early Christians implied a sacrifice (prosphora) and sacrifice implied priesthood." (p. 379)

Newman and the Tractarians: Underlying Principles

    --Includes this discussion of the Ritualism movement in the later stages of the Tractarian movement (see John Shelton Reed's Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism from Vanderbilt University Press)

Newman at Littlemore and Rediscovering Catholic Tradition

    --Not much added to Withey's discussion of Littlemore and the Roman Breviary, etc

Newman as a Catholic Priest

    --Notes Newman's comfort in the Eucharistic Presence of Christ in the Tabernacle; mentions Newman's aims in building Our Lady Seat of Wisdom for the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, its Byzantine/Romanesque style.

Catholic Sense of the Liturgy

    Cites Alcuin Reid's The Organic Development of the Liturgy's two pages (pp 67-69) on Newman as exceptional; otherwise comments on Romano Guardini's Spirit of the Liturgy (not much Newman)

Conclusion

    --"Once he became Catholic, he truly found peace and serenity in the liturgy, even in the midst of severe external trials, and his prayerful dedication to the Church's divine worship made his priestly life exemplary." (p. 397)

Suggested Reading

Fathers Lang and Velez highlight Withey's book as the only monograph study on Newman and the Liturgy and note that neither the Oxford nor Cambridge guides to Newman contain essays on that subject and in fact, there are few studies of Newman and the Liturgy. One they do not mention is here by Father Guy Nichols of the Birmingham Oratory which highlights Newman's contributions to the liturgy at that church, architecturally and musically. Father Lang contributed this article to the Adoremus Bulletin.

There you have it: some notes on Newman and the Liturgy as an Anglican/Tractarian and as a Catholic/Oratorian priest.

What I'm Reading Now: "The Catholic Reformation" by Pierre Janelle

I've just started this book which purports, according to the publisher's blurb (The Bruce Company of Milwaukee) to offer a different interpretation of Church history in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries:

"The Catholic Reformation began before the Protestant Revolt as a continuation of the Christian humanism movement of the late fifteenth century. It not only amended the discipline of the Church, but exerted its influence in every field of human endeavour."

This is the thesis of Dr. Janelle's book in which he corrects the world's generally mistaken impression that Catholic Reform, commonly termed the Counter-Reformation, was a consequence of and reaction against the Protestant Reformation. Analyzing the historical movement in all its aspects, he presents the first work on this subject ever published in English. . . .

I have the 1963 paperback edition. The Table of Contents:

Anarchy the Disease Within the Church -- Early Reactions against Disease in the Church -- Reformation Again Delayed -- Preparing for Trent -- The Council of Trent -- The Religious Revival among the Regulars -- Education and Scholarship -- The Catholic Reformation and Literature -- The Catholic Reformation and Art -- Piety and Mysticism -- The Catholic Reformation after Trent -- The Catholic Reformation in France -- The Catholic Reformation in Great Britain and Ireland -- The Missions

Here's some information about the author, whose books are out of print and hard to find:

Pierre Janelle was born on the 17th of September in 1891 in the village of Mouy in the French region of Oise. His father, Ernest Janelle, was a headmaster at several secondary schools in Paris including Lycée Charlemagne and Lycée Pasteur.

Pierre studied at the Sorbonne where he graduated in 1911 as an English academic. Between 1925 and 1928 he was also the holder of the Ernest Lavisse research scholarship awarded to him by the Sorbonne. In 1935 he obtained a D.Litt degree at the same university. . . 

As well as being an English Professor, Janelle wrote many influential books on religious history particularly surrounding the British Isles. Some of his books which can be found in the university library include Obedience in Church and State (1930) and The Catholic Reformation (1949). John Swinnerton Philimore an English Catholic covert [sic]*who was a professor of Glasgow University greatly influenced Janelle's interest in Britain's Catholic history and lent him many rare books so that he could carry out his research. Janelle also appeared as a guest speaker for the BBC in July 1948 to discuss his research on the religious history of Britain.

* [a covert convert?]

I'd really love to find a copy of this book: Robert Southwell, The Writer: A Study in Religious Inspiration, published by Sheed & Ward!

To conclude the author's Roll of Honour entry at the University of Glasgow:

Pierre Janelle died on 19th March 1964. He is remembered for his gallant military actions in the First and Second World War as well as his notable contributions to education and religious historical research.

I'm also reading Roland Millare's A Living Sacrifice: Liturgy and Eschatology in Joseph Ratzinger, which I purchased at Eighth Day Books last year in January (!) when the author was visiting Wichita:

A Living Sacrifice focuses on the inherent relationship between eschatology and the liturgy in light of Ratzinger’s insistence upon the primacy of logos over ethos. When logos is subordinated to ethos, the human person becomes subjected to a materialist ontology that leads to an ethos that is concerned above all by utility and progress, which affects one’s approach to understanding the liturgy and eschatology. How a person celebrates the liturgy becomes subject to the individual whim of one person or a group of people. Eschatology is reduced to addressing the temporal needs of a society guided by a narrow conception of hope or political theology. If the human person wants to understand his authentic sacramental logos, then he must first turn to Christ the incarnate Logos, who reveals to him that he is created for a loving relationship with God and others.

The primacy of logos is the central hermeneutical key to understanding the unique vision of Ratzinger’s Christocentric liturgical theology and eschatology. This is coupled with a study of Ratzinger’s spiritual Christology with a focus on how it influences his theology of liturgy and eschatology through the notions of participation and communion in Christ’s sacrificial love. Finally, A Living Sacrifice examines Ratzinger’s theology of hope, charity, and beauty, as well as his understanding of active participation in relationship to the eschatological and cosmic characteristics of the sacred liturgy.

It's a good follow up to re-reading and discussing the chapters on the Resurrection and Ascension in Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two: Holy Week from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection with my best friend after Easter!

Constantinople in April, 1182: The Massacre of the Latins

I received this book as premium for a charitable contribution I made. It's from Catholic Answers and in both the subtitle and the book description, there's a defiant tone:

What if there’s a better Christian religion than Catholicism? One that has true apostolic doctrines, a more beautiful and ancient liturgy, and freedom from all that “pope” baggage—and valid sacraments, too.

That’s what apologists for Eastern Orthodoxy are selling. In a time of uncertainty and confusion for many Catholics, Orthodox challenges to the Church’s history, teaching, worship, and authority structure have been drawing Catholics away in hope of greener pastures in the East.

But those thinking of jumping off the barque of Peter toward the siren song of Eastern Orthodoxy—and for Protestants who’d like Catholicism’s historical pedigree without all the mess—need to think twice. In Answering Orthodoxy, Michael Lofton (Reason & Theology Podcast) shows why, with a thorough and critical refutation of Orthodox attacks against the Church.

Formerly Eastern Orthodox himself, Lofton has the knowledge and experience to uncover the flaws in the most common anti-Catholic arguments from Orthodoxy’s top advocates. From intricate doctrinal debates to the historical flubs and foibles of the popes, right on down to the basic understandings (and misunderstandings) of the sacraments Catholics and Orthodox share but don’t always agree on, Answering Orthodoxy shows where Orthodox attacks go wrong. In so doing, he not only strengthens Catholic conviction in the truth of the Faith, but also shows the Orthodox that there’s not as much distance between them and the Church as they might think, and unity with Rome might be closer than ever.

Whether you’re frustrated with today’s Church and find yourself attracted to Orthodoxy’s antiquity, beauty, and religious rigor, or you’re just looking to learn the best Catholic responses to Orthodox arguments, Answering Orthodoxy will equip and edify you.

I admit I've only begun to read the book, but in the Introduction, "The History of the Catholic and Orthodox Divide" the author Michael Lofton mentioned an event I had never heard of: "The Massacre of the Latins" in Constantinople. He offers one sentence:

"In the later twelfth century, Constantinople massacred its Latin Catholic inhabitants for political reasons."

He should have said more: 

Mobs in Constantinople, unimpeded by Andronikos I Komnenos, who was leading a coup to overthrow the regent, Empress Maria of Antioch and her son, Emperor Alexios II Komnenos, attacked the Latin quarter. Nearly all the 60,000 Latin-rite Catholics, mostly from Pisa and Genoa, were massacred. The reasons were not just political, but economic, since the Italians were so dominant in the maritime trade and financial sectors, with the encouragement of the former Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, Maria's husband and Alexios' father.

The usual rape and pillaging occurred, with Latin-rite Catholic churches destroyed, etc. This website offers some detail from Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations from Cambridge University Press:

Donald M. Nicol wrote in Byzantium and Venice that “the people needed no encouragement. With an enthusiasm fired by years of resentment they set about the massacre of all the foreigners that they could find. They directed their fury mainly against the merchant quarters along the Golden Horn. Many had sensed what was coming with the arrival of Andronikos Komnenos and made their escape by sea. Of those who remained, the Pisans and Genoese were the main victims. The slaughter was appalling. The Byzantine clergy shamelessly encouraged the mob to seek out Latin monks and priests. The pope’s legate to Constantinople, the Cardinal John, was decapitated and his severed head was dragged through the streets tied to the tail of a dog. At the end some 4000 westerners who had survived the massacre were rounded up and sold as slaves to the Turks. Those who had escaped by ship took their revenge by burning and looting the Byzantine monasteries on the coasts and islands of the Aegean Sea.”

After Andronikos I Komnenos imprisoned the regent, Maria of Antioch, he forced her son, Alexios II Komnenos to condemn her to death and then to recognize Andronikos as the new emperor, after which he was executed. She was reportedly strangled to death and buried secretly.

Maria of Antioch was one of the offspring of Raymond of Poitiers and Constance of Antioch, daughter of Bohemund II of Antioch and Alice of Jerusalem/Antioch (one of the daughters of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem)! These names are so redolent of twelfth century history, as the First and Second Crusades brought the noble families of Europe in positions of power in the East.

Reading this little bit of history, all inspired by one sentence in the Introduction of a book, reminded me of course, of Pope Saint John Paul II's apology to the Orthodox Church of Greece on May 4, 2001 for the Rape of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade :

Certainly, we are burdened by past and present controversies and by enduring misunderstandings. But in a spirit of mutual charity these can and must be overcome, for that is what the Lord asks of us. Clearly there is a need for a liberating process of purification of memory. For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us the forgiveness we beg of him.

Some memories are especially painful, and some events of the distant past have left deep wounds in the minds and hearts of people to this day. I am thinking of the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople, which was for so long the bastion of Christianity in the East. It is tragic that the assailants, who had set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their own brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret. How can we fail to see here the mysterium iniquitatis at work in the human heart? To God alone belongs judgement, and therefore we entrust the heavy burden of the past to his endless mercy, imploring him to heal the wounds which still cause suffering to the spirit of the Greek people. Together we must work for this healing if the Europe now emerging is to be true to its identity, which is inseparable from the Christian humanism shared by East and West.

Before that, in 1995, Pope John Paul II had issued two important documents, Ut Unim Sint (That All May be One) and Orientale Lumen (Light of the East), in which he discussed, among more general principles and issues, in particular ecumenical efforts reaching out to the Eastern Orthodox Churches, including not just doctrinal issues, but those controversies and misunderstandings of the past in paragraphs 50 through 61 of Ut Unim Sint. He dedicated Orientale Lumen to more detailed discussion of his regard for the riches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

I'll let you know more about the book, Answering Orthodoxy, when I've finished it!

Image Source (Public Domain): Empress Maria of Antioch, from a manuscript now in the Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana.

Book Review: "Apostles of Empire: The Jesuits and New France"

I have seen reviews (and even the back cover blurb) of this book calling it "revisionist history"; I'd prefer to call it careful history. The author, Bronwen McShea, neither attacks nor defends what the Jesuits did when spreading the Gospel in North America. It's neither hagiography nor a lurid exposé of their efforts both to convert the native population to Christianity and to bring them into the French empire. I say this because throughout the text, McShea demonstrates how the Jesuits both cooperated with the French monarchy and ruling classes to spread the ideals of their native culture and the Catholic faith among the native tribes in North America and differed with the goals and methods of the French monarchy and ruling classes in achieving their missionary efforts. Events in France, like the Fronde, and wars in Europe and North America often thwarted the goals of the Jesuit missionaries to provide protection, education, religious formation, medicine, and other assistance to the Indigenous peoples. While several French elites, like Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot, duchesse d'Aigullon, Francois Sublet de Noyers, and Marguerite d'Alegre, the Marquise de Bauge, and others, contributed to the Jesuits' religious, educational, and charitable efforts, the entity they wanted support from to achieve the other goal of establishing French culture and power in North America, the monarchy and its administration--including military and financial aid--was the one that seemed reluctant to support them as the Society of Jesus desired.

As an example of the cooperation, the Jesuits indeed wanted to encourage cooperation between their Indigenous allies against the Iroquois tribes in colonial organization and military conflict. This continued into the conflict between English and French colonizing efforts in the later seventeenth century in Nine Year's War, etc. They even continued these efforts when the French stopped sending military aid. As an example of their disagreement with the methods and goals of the French monarchy especially during the personal reign of Louis XIV and the premiership of Colbert, the Jesuit missionaries deplored the dangers of the brandy trade and Colbert's encouragement of intermarriage between the Frenchmen and the Indigenous women. The first because it could cause drunkenness and violence in the colonial settlements and the second because the Frenchmen were not worthy of the excellence of the Abenaki or Huron women!

Throughout the book, McShea carefully describes the missionary efforts of the Jesuits in New France, often by telling the stories of the individual Jesuits, their vocations, formation in Old and New France, and missionary careers. At the end of the book, as the Society of Jesus was suppressed first in France by King Louis XV and then throughout the world (except Russia!) by Pope Clement XIV, McShea describes the last days of the remaining Jesuit missionaries in France and in Canada (now held by the English), including two who fell victim to the French Revolution (Fathers Simeon Le Bansais and Julien-Francois Derville) when they returned to France and one who welcomed Benjamin Franklin and the Carroll cousins to Quebec in 1776 (Father Pierre-Rene Floquet). 

The publisher, the University of Nebraska Press describes the book as:

Winner of the 2020 Catholic Press Association Book Award in History

Apostles of Empire is a revisionist history of the French Jesuit mission to Indigenous North Americans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, offering a comprehensive view of a transatlantic enterprise with integral secular concerns. Between 1611 and 1764, 320 Jesuits were sent from France to North America to serve as missionaries. Most labored in colonial New France, a vast territory comprising eastern Canada and the Great Lakes region, inhabited by diverse Native American populations. Although committed to spreading Catholic doctrines and rituals and adapting them to diverse Indigenous cultures, these missionaries also devoted significant energy to more worldly concerns, particularly the transatlantic expansion of the absolutist-era Bourbon state and the importation of the culture of elite, urban French society.

In Apostles of Empire Bronwen McShea accounts for these secular dimensions of the mission’s history through candid portraits of Jesuits engaged in a range of activities. We see them not only preaching and catechizing in terms borrowed from Indigenous idioms but also cultivating trade and military partnerships between the French and various Indian tribes. McShea shows how the Jesuits’ robust conceptions of secular spheres of Christian action informed their efforts from both sides of the Atlantic to build up a French and Catholic empire in North America through Indigenous cooperation.

Please find additional comments below:

Table of Contents (I've added the subtitles in the chapters)

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

--Historiographical Interventions

--Sources and Interpretive Approaches

--Men of this World

Note on Primary Sources

Part 1. Foundations and the Era of the Parisian Relations

1. A Mission for France

--A Young Jesuit in Bourbon Paris (Paul Le Jeune)

--French Expansions and Missions before 1632

--Lay Metropolitan Support and Sebastien Cramoisy's Press

--Working for France's "Powerful Genius"

(Throughout this chapter McShea establishes the importance of the Jesuit Relations, the reports written by the Jesuit missionaries and published in Paris by Sebastien Cramoisy, who "may have been the layman most crucial to the early success of the Jesuit mission to New France", p. 20)

2. Rescuing the “Poor Miserable Savage”

--"At the Best, Their Riches are Only Poverty"

--"Voila, Their Fine Eating"

--"The Cabins on This Country Are Neither Louvres Nor Palaces"

--"I Mocked Their Superstitions"

--Natives as Carnival "Maskers," "Sorcerers," and "Charlatans"

(Throughout this chapter McShea compares the Paul Le Jeune's descriptions of the poverty, bad food, and primitive living quarters of the natives in North America to the poverty, bad food, and primitive living quarters of the rural and urban poor in France!)

3. Surviving the Beaver Wars and the Fronde

--A Political Mission in France

--A Martyr for Christ and New France (St. Isaac Jogues)

--Maneuvers during the Fronde

--A New Holy War for the "Heirs of Saint Louis"

4. Exporting and Importing Catholic Charity

--Social Charity at the Sillery Reserve

--The Huron Refugee Crisis

--Diversifying Charitable Ministries and New Transatlantic Challenges

--"Give to Many Poor People and to Many Kinds"

Part 2. A Longue Durée of War and Metropolitan Neglect

5. Crusading for Iroquois Country

--The Carignon-Salieres Campaign and the Iroquois Mission

--Western Expansion and Renewed War

--The Nine Years War and the Peace of Montreal

--Queen Anne's War

--Warfare and Conversion

6. Cultivating an Indigenous Colonial Aristocracy

--To "Civilize" the Natives or "Play the Savage"?

--Frustrations with the Colonial French

7. Losing Paris

--The End of the Cramoisy Relations

--A House Divided

--Mounting Metropolitan Skepticism and Indifference

--Renewed Publishing Efforts for the Mission

8. A Mission with No Empire

--Jesuits at the Limits of Empire

--The French and Indian War

--The French Suppression of the Society of Jesus

--Quiet Death under British, Protestant Rule

Conclusion

(A good summary of her overall analysis of the complexity of the Jesuit mission in New France, combining the spread of the Gospel with the establishment of colonial territories. The anecdotes with which she opens her conclusion, of Pope Benedict XV reprimanding "Catholic missionaries who had helped fan the national-imperial zeitgeist" that contributed to the horrors of World War I (in Maximum Illud, 1919) and then canonizing Joan of Arc in 1920, "a saint exceedingly identified with French Nationalism", before, during, and after the Great War (p. 255), symbolize the dual nature of the Jesuit mission in North America. She offers a devastating analysis of how their efforts set the stage for later French colonial efforts, imposing a political, national culture on the native people.)

Notes

Bibliography

Index

I would have appreciated a better map showing the different areas of Jesuit missionary activity both in the Canadian north and the USA south (and in between). Figure 5 among the illustrations is a contemporary map but it is very faint and hard to read. It's interesting that McShea never looks at the Arkansas region and the efforts of the French there, but then, as Morris Arnold noted in two books (Unequal Laws Unto a Savage Race: European Legal Traditions in Arkansas, 1686-1836 and Colonial Arkansas, 1686-1804: A Cultural and Social History) on Colonial Arkansas, there wasn't much success in that region for either the French or the Jesuits (see my reviews here and here).

There were two strange typos: one even made the index, as King Louis XVI on page 139 is listed: "In the fall of 1688 Louis XVI went to war over territories in Europe against England, the Hapsburg powers, the Dutch, and other members of the Grand Alliance." (Of course "Louis XVI" should be Louis XIV!) The same transposition of the "I" and the "V" occurs in the Conclusion on page 260: "With political, mercantile, and religious interests coalescing in Paris during Richelieu and Louis XVI's eras . . ." Since I worked as a proofreader at an advertising agency years ago, I know how easy it is for one's eyes to miss details like that!

Having read McShea's first two books (this one and her biography of Richelieu's niece), I look forward to picking up my copy of her next work, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, from Eighth Day Books soon.