Orders of Knighthood and of Merit: The Pontifical, Religious and Secularised Catholic-founded Orders, and their relationship to the Apostolic See by Peter Bander van Duren (review)

738BOOK REVIEWS word to religious and lay voices—prophetic, controversial, spiritual—determined in their pursuit of the peace of the Gospel. This impressive work should be treasured and housed in, at very least, the Ubraries of every Catholic parish and educational institution. Its value, however, is not confined to these. It wiU remain an important standard resource for courses on peace studies, church history, and adult Christian education. For aU its merit, this work suffers from lack of clarity in presentation and organization . Sometimes a document that is excerpted from a published coUection or secondary source remains undated and carries only the publication date of the subsequent published source. Each part begins with a full table of contents covering both volumes, i.e., aU four parts. More confusing, however, is the full numerical list of texts that also appears at the front ofeach part; it would be greatly improved U, in addition to the number, it provided the reader with the appropriate page. Readers who cannot easUy find what they are looking for but persist after the initial frustration are rewarded richly. Patricia A. Gajda The University ofTexas at Tyler Orders ofKnighthood and ofMerit.The Pontifical, ReUgious and Secularised Catholic-founded Orders, and their relationship to the Apostolic See. By Peter Bander van Duren. (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe. Distributed by Oxford University Press, New York.1995. Pp. xvi, 714. $125.00.) Lord Melbourne would have enjoyed reading this book. The paradoxical spirit of the British Prime Minister's comment, "I like the Garter; there is no damned merit in it," would have been enhanced by the evidence in this book that secular republics have often imitated Christian monarchies in rewarding their meritorious citizens by admission to Orders of Knighthood and of Merit. Decorations answer some need in men's minds, and the scramble for "gongs" wiU last as long as human life on this planet. CathoUc teaching has emphasized that external marks ofhonor are bestowed appropriately upon those recipients who are inwardly meritorious. The relationship between the Holy See and the many Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood between the eleventh and the early eighteenth centuries has not always been weU understood by individual pontiffs and their advisers. They might have given priority to other matters altogether, or they might have been misled by partisan representations from a particular phalanx of knights. Such is the thrust of Dr. van Duren's pen, as he writes this invaluable work of reference, and one worth reading also for its tone of scholarship. Often the author 's pen-portraits of certain pontiffs, cardinals, and archbishops are more arresting than their respective photographs in this lavishly iUustrated tome. BOOK REVIEWS739 Outside the European chanceUeries which still draw up pubUc Usts of the great and good to be honored with the appeUation chevalier or commendatore , there exist also more shadowy organizations which style themselves Knights ofThis orThat.These latter often cause offense to the former by using similar names, thereby confusing a general public less famUiar than Dr. van Duren with the history of the ideals of Christian service and chivalry. His book is a warning to those gulUble readers who might have been enroUed among Knights or Dames of spurious organizations instead of joining the real thing. Besides contributing to contemporary sociology, Dr. van Duren contributes insights into other academic disciplines besides the obvious ones ofhistory and heraldry. In fact his book has echoes of an older European tradition of coUaborative book-making, exemplified by Diderot and his contributors to the Encyclopédie between 1751 and 1772. The orthodox abbé Edme MaUet (1713-1755) had contributed to the Encyclopédie about thirty or so separate references to aspects of the Order of St. John and of Malta, basing them on the abbé Vertôt's uncritical history of the HospitaUers, published at Paris in 1726. An intriguing subplot ofDr.van Duren's book is where does he begin and Archbishop Hyginus Eugene Cardinale end?The author had first intended to update Archbishop Cardinale's own pubUshed study, Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See (1983). Even to readers not immediately attracted by the subject matter of his book, Dr. van Duren patiently demonstrates...