Report of the Editor

Volume 101 of the journal consisted of 1004 pages of articles, essays, book reviews, brief notices, and the quarterly sections Notes and Comments, Periodical Literature, and Other Books Received, with an additional twenty-four pages of preliminary material. It also contains two centennial supplements: the first of 111 pages, the second of 285 pages. Three indices (one general and one each for the two supplements) added 31 pages, so that volume 101 totaled 1455 pages. Subsidies from authors and contributions from others made directly to the journal allowed for the addition of pages above those budgeted. Professor Paul F. Grendler of Chapel Hill, NC (emeritus of the University of Toronto), once again generously made such a contribution.

Of the fourteen regular articles published, one treated a medieval topic, two early-modern European, four late-modern European, four American, one Latin American, one Caribbean, and one Canadian. Half of their authors came from American institutions; the other half came from Belgian, Canadian, Chilean, Grenadan, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese universities. In addition, there were two essays in the series Journeys in Church History: one from a scholar of the ancient period, the other of the early modern. Two Forum Essays—one dealing with a book on the ancient period and another on the early modern—had contributions by scholars from Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors of the three Review Essays came from Italy, the United States, and Vatican City. Two Centennial Retrospective articles by an American scholar traced the history of the journal and its relationship to the American Catholic Historical Association.

The two Centennial Supplements were dedicated to different themes. The first, edited by Maureen C. Miller, treated Catholic Material Culture and included six articles. The second, edited by Nelson H. Minnich, was a retrospective of the journal’s contributions in eight areas of church history. The contributors to these centennial supplements were from among the leading scholars in their fields.

In 2015 the journal published 202 book reviews and two brief notices. The book reviews can be subdivided into the following categories: general and miscellaneous (21), ancient (9), medieval (53), early modern (50), late modern (24), American (24), Latin American (14), Asian/Australian (4), Canadian (2), and African (1). Their authors came mostly from institutions in the United States (130 or 64%), but those in other countries were also represented: in England/Ulster/Wales (31 or 15%), Canada (10 or 5%), Belgium (4), Germany (4), Italy (4), Scotland (3), Australia (2), and The Netherlands (2), with one each from Argentina, Finland, France, Ireland, Israel, Malta, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The two brief notices were by authors at institutions in the United States. Please see table 1.

Table 1.

Book Reviews and Brief Notices Published in 2015

The book review editor, Msgr. Robert Trisco, reports:

Readers of the journal must have been dismayed to find listed in “Other Books Received” 121 titles of valuable books that scholars have accepted but neither reviewed nor returned to the editorial office. One must wonder about their professional ethics.

The journal received thirty-four new submissions of articles in 2015. They came primarily from the United States, but also from Australia, Belgium (2), Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany (2), Ireland, Israel, Italy (2), Poland (2), South Africa, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Table 2 shows the current disposition of these submissions. During 2015, fourteen articles earlier accepted were published.

During 2015 the journal published two Forum Essays, featuring books by Liam M. Brockey and Peter Brown, and the two “Journeys in Church History” essays by Elizabeth Clark and Robert Bireley, S.J. Review essays by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller and Alberto Melloni gave differing assessments of the two tomes published by Brepols that included critical editions of the medieval ecumenical and general councils.

The Catholic University of America Press published Journeys in Church History: Essays from The Catholic Historical Review, a collection edited by Nelson H. Minnich of six autobiographical essays spanning 2007–15. It contains the contributions of Elizabeth Clark; Caroline Bynum; Jean Delumeau; John W. O...