Notes and Comments

Association News

The American Catholic Historical Association will hold its Spring meeting on April 6–9, 2017 in Berkeley, California. It will be held jointly with the American Society of Church History. For more informaion about the program, please contact Randi Walker (rwalker@psr.edu). The ACHA 2018 annual meeting will be held in Washington, DC, in January 4–7, 2018. Individual and panel proposals on any aspect of Catholic history should be sent by April 17, 2017. For further information, please consult the Association’s website www.achahistory.org. At the Presidential Luncheon in Denver on January 7, 2017, the following awards were announced and citations read:

2016 John Gilmary Shea Prize awarded to Katrina B. Olds, University of San Francisco, for Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain (Yale University Press, 2015)

In her scintillating Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain, Katrina B. Olds considers the complex story of a set of “false chronicles” of the early Christian history of Iberia forged by a Spanish Jesuit in the late sixteenth century. While accepted as genuine by many, they also aroused suspicions of their authenticity almost from the time of their “discovery,” and by the eighteenth century their spurious origin had been demonstrated. Still, the impact of the “false chronicles” endured, and their elements remained embedded in Spanish popular devotion and religious practice. At first glance, this might appear to be no more than a quirky historical footnote, but in her skilled telling, Olds connects it to broader themes. More than simply an episode in Iberian Catholic and Jesuit history, it becomes a fascinating lesson in historiography. In dealing with her subject, the author deftly examines her Jesuit forger’s skill at mixing fact with fiction to achieve verisimilitude, as well as his possible motives in composing his texts, and offers intriguing insights on the broader subject of forgery in the European Christian tradition. Forging the Past serves as a model of a subtle, imaginatively conceived, and thoroughly engaging examination of a subject, small in itself, but that allows the author and reader to explore matters of universal interest and importance.

2016 Harry C. Koenig Prize for Catholic Biography awarded to Franz Posset, Independent Scholar, for Johann Reuchlin, 1455–1522. A Theological Biography (De Gruyter, 2015)

Dr. Franz Posset (Marquette University Ph.D.) demonstrates a sophisticated degree of Catholic Studies research and objectivity in Johann Reuchlin, 1455–1522. A Theological Biography. In this first biography in English of Reuchlin, Dr. Posset meticulously and even-handedly approaches a difficult but seminal subject: Catholic-Jewish relations in the Early Modern European era. He allows the reader to be immersed into Reuchlin’s Catholic world as the winds of reform and change begin to gain strength in Western Christendom. A renowned Humanist scholar and polyglot, Johann Reuchlin was a devoted student of the Hebrew language, rabbinic literature, and the Hebrew Scriptures. Beginning in 1510, he wrote in passionate defense of preserving Jewish books and learning. Dr. Franz Posset is the first in the English-speaking world to utilize extensively the new critical edition of Reuchlin’s correspondence (Johannes Reuchlin Briefwechsel, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999–2013), which demonstrates the breadth and depth in which Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were valued in theological and humanist circles, whether Catholic or Protestant. In this context, Posset sheds new light on Reuchlin’s achievements as lay theologian to create a uniquely Catholic Cabala. This theological biography is richly nuanced, deep in scope and vision of a still relevant topic in Catholic Studies.

2016 Howard R. Marraro Book Prize presented to Andrew Berns for The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

In a fascinating recreation of the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Italy, Andrew W. Berns focuses on the relationship between the Bible and natural history, and how Christian and Jewish doctors at the time were actively engaged in studying the Bible as both a religious text and a source of scientific and medicinal knowledge. The book also highlights how Jewish and Christian doctors worked together and exchanged ideas on...