Notes and Comments
- Notes and Comments
Association News
At its Executive Council meeting in Atlanta on January 7, 2016, Father Bentley Anderson, S.J., was offered a new five-year appointment as executive secretary and treasurer of the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) that will extend his term to 2021.
The Association will not hold a spring meeting this year, but planning for the next Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, scheduled for January 5–8, 2017, is moving forward. Proposals for individual and panel presentations that concern any aspect of Catholic history should be submitted on the ACHA online submission portal by April 15. Acceptances will be announced by May 15. Membership in the ACHA and registration for the Annual Meeting are prerequisites for presenting or participating in panels.
On January 9, 2016, at the ACHA’s 2016 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, the Association presented the following 2015–16 prizes with their citations:
2015 John Gilmary Shea Prize
Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200
In awarding the Shea prize to Miller, the committee commented that “[i]t is common for historians to speak metaphorically of following threads and weaving together stories. But for Maureen C. Miller, textiles and their production offer more than just a language to explain the historian’s craft. They instead serve as crucial texts themselves, providing new and valuable insights into the past. In Clothing the Clergy: Virtue, and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200, Miller deftly demonstrates the importance of clerical vestments for understanding how religious authority was conceived and exercised. As she reveals, the gradual rise in the status of the clergy from the early to high Middle Ages was accompanied by ever more elaborate forms of clothing, even though this development stood in contrast to the repeated calls for reform among certain quarters of the clergy. Eventually, the reformers adopted the type of magnificent vestments that have been the markers of clerical power down to the modern era. Relying on a wide array of physical evidence, Miller reveals the level of effort invested in producing these vestments and how the styles changed over her period as a reflection of changing ideas about clerical virtue and power. She further demonstrates the role of female patrons and producers in making the vestments, showing how women actively shaped clerical culture. Miller’s work exemplifies the [End Page 216] value of the study of material culture and offers a compelling argument that deepens our understanding of medieval Catholicism and its legacy.”
The selection of Dr. Miller’s work is doubly significant because this marks the first time that an individual has been a two-time recipient of this honor. Dr. Miller had previously been awarded the 1993 Shea prize for her book, The Formation of a Medieval Church: Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950–1150 (Cornell University Press). We congratulate her on her fine accomplishments.
2015 Howard R. Marraro Prize for Italian History
Nino Zchomelidse, Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy
This beautifully-produced book offers an in-depth and fascinating portrait of the Easter liturgical celebration in medieval southern Italy, based on a study of ecclesiastical furnishings and manuscripts produced between the 10th–14th centuries. Zchomelidse’s interdisciplinary analysis focused on ambos, monumental candlestick holders, and exultet rolls brings to life the theatrical reenactment of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection during Easter week, as well as the changes brought to the liturgical practices in the Norman and Angevin eras.
2015 Peter Guilday Prize
Scott Berg, “Seeing Prussia through Austrian Eyes: The Kölner Ereignis and Its Significance for Church and State in Central Europe”
The Peter Guilday Prize for 2015 is given to Scott Berg for his article “Seeing Prussia through Austrian Eyes: The Kölner Ereignis and Its Significance for Church and State in Central Europe,” which appeared in CHR, 101, no. 1 (Winter 2015), 48–73. Heavily based on archival and printed primary sources, this study analyzes the complex issues surrounding “mixed-marriage” civil legislation in the states of Prussia and Austria that led to the arrest in 1837 of...
