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The Catholic Historical Review 88.3 (2002) 556-557



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Book Review

Dictionary of Popes and the Papacy


Dictionary of Popes and the Papacy. Edited by Bruno Steimer and Michael G. Parker. Translated by Brian McNeil and Peter Heinigg. [Volume one of The Encyclopedia of Theology and Church based on the third edition of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche.] (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. 2001. Pp. xviii, 278. $50.00.)

The Papacy or office of the bishop of Rome, which has played a crucial role in world history, continues to generate interest, as can be seen by the spate of publications about it. Unlike the multi-volume works produced in the past (such as Pastor's), however, the last decade has witnessed a proliferation of one-volume dictionaries or encyclopedias of the institution in German, French, Italian, and English. The recently published English works include: Matthew [End Page 556] Bunson, The Pope Encyclopedia (1995); P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Chronicles of the Popes (1997); Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (1997); Frank J. Coppa, Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy (1999); and Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes (1999), among others. Older, but still useful works, include: J. N. D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes (1986) and J. V. Bartlett, The Popes (1990). A number of these volumes are cited in the short but helpful "Select Bibliography" (pp. xv-xvi) of the work currently under review.

The present Dictionary contains the necessary scholarly features of this genre including a "List of Popes" in chronological order, with an indication that those marked by an asterisk should not be regarded as legitimate bishops of Rome—and are therefore antipopes. A separate list of antipopes might have been useful. The main text is divided into two parts: persons and subjects. The first part (pp. 1-155) provides important information on popes and antipopes from "Peter" to "John Paul II" in alphabetical order—and includes an entry on the alleged female pope "Joan" (pp. 69-70). These entries vary in length from a few lines for "Adeodatus II" (p. 1) to several pages for "Pius IX" (pp. 124-127). Many of these biographical sketches are written by established scholars on the subject—for example, those on Pius IX and Pius X are written by Roger Aubert. A good number of these list sources for the pontificate, as well as an appended bibliography. Since the entries are drawn from the third edition of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, almost all reveal a strong theological interest, as well as a European historical bent.

The theological interest is even more pronounced in the second half of the Dictionary (pp. 156-271), which contains articles on the institutional, canonical, and theological aspects of the Papacy. Unlike the earlier-mentioned volumes by Bunson and Coppa, where these issues are interspersed alphabetically within the main text, here they are reserved to a separate section with coverage ranging from "Academies, Pontifical" (p. 156) to "Zelanti" (p. 271). Like the biographical articles on the popes, these latter entries vary in length, with long ones on "Papacy, Pope" of several pages (pp. 220-227), while that on "Insignia, Papal" is restricted to a few lines (p. 203). Most of these short articles, like their counterparts in Part I, have useful, appended bibliographies that are proportionate to their length. All of them are signed, and most have been written by experts on the subject. The range of topics covered in the present Dictionary is broader than that provided by Thomas J. Reese's Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (1996), although the coverage is neither as deep nor detailed as in the Reese volume. On the other hand, its coverage is not as broad as that provided in the larger one volume edited by Richard P. McBrien, The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (1995). Nonetheless, this well-researched and clearly written work will prove useful to both the student and the scholar.

 



Frank J. Coppa
St. John's University, New York...

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