Traditio:: Seventy-Five Years

The first volume of Traditio was published in 1943. Publication was interrupted a few times, so that the current issue is volume 72; but 2018 marks Traditio's seventy-fifth year.

Leading in to this anniversary, the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University sponsored a conference at the Lincoln Center campus of the university on March 25, 2017, under the title "The Generative Power of Tradition: A Celebration of Traditio, 75 Years." The program was planned by three members of the Editorial Board at Fordham University: Fr. Martin Chase, S.J., the Associate Editor, Dr. Mary Erler, and Dr. Nina Rowe, along with the editor. The conference was arranged by Dr. Susanne Hafner and Dr. Laura Morreale, the director and associate director of the Center for Medieval Studies. Sessions on mysticism, editing manuscripts in the digital age, Jews and Christians, and popular religion were presented. The opening address at the conference, "New Seeds, New Harvests: Thirty Years of Tilling the Mystic Field," was delivered by Dr. Barbara Newman of Northwestern University and is printed in this issue.

History of Traditio

Recounting the history of Traditio could not begin more appropriately than by reprinting the preface to the first volume of the journal, published in wartime 1943:

Preface¹

American scholars in the fields of ancient and medieval research see with increasing apprehension the serious difficulties which hamper their effort to give public account of their studies. There is no outlet in European learned magazines, and the number of pertinent American periodicals is no longer adequate to cope with the growth of scholarly production. Quite recently, an "Interim" periodical, Medievalia et Humanistica, was founded to relieve the saturation of existing journals, and has been cordially welcomed. It is not our intention to compete in any way with this or with any established periodical. Yet we feel that productive scholarship continues to progress at a steadily increasing pace far beyond the existing facilities of publication.

This is particularly true of those studies which, by the nature of their respective subjects or by the technical complexity of the researches involved, assume dimensions that would be too bulky for any monthly or quarterly magazine but which, on the other hand, could not very well be published as monographs. In Europe, this type of research has usually been well cared for, especially by the voluminous year books, memoirs, Sitzungsberichte, and the like, published by the great Academies or by other learned institutions. Up to the present, very few serial publications of this kind have existed on this side of the Atlantic. Traditio will help them to carry the burden. Thanks to the enterprising spirit, the cooperation and financial sacrifices of Dr. Ludwig Schopp, director of the Cosmopolitan Science and Art Service Company, this new periodical can start its mission amidst the turmoil of war.

Studies in ancient and medieval history, thought and religion: in this first volume, they are taken from the fields of Classical as well as Christian Antiquity, of Liturgy and Patrology, of Historiography, Scholasticism, Canonical Jurisprudence, and Political Theory. This selection of departments of scholarship which are but too often anxiously segregated will convey to the reader the general program which was in our mind when we chose for the new enterprise the name of Traditio: it represents an effort toward comprehensive knowledge of all the living forces, forms, institutions, and ideas which have made, both in the Church and in secular society, the texture of history something more than a mere deposit of dates and facts.

The Editors

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

The earlier history of Traditio was recounted in the fiftieth anniversary volume of the journal, published in 1995, in a "Foreword" signed by "The Editors" but probably written by Fr. Charles H. Lohr, S.J.² Much of what follows, at least on the first half-century of Traditio, is drawn from that foreword.

Traditio was founded in New York in 1943 by two émigré German scholars, Johannes Quasten and Stephan Kuttner, to provide, in North America, an outlet for research...