Notes and Comments

Nelson H. Minnich Prize

The Nelson H. Minnich Prize for Best Article in the Catholic Historical Review in 2018 is awarded to Brian R. Larkin, professor of history, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University, Minnesota. His article "Beyond Guadalupe: The Eucharist, the Cult of Saints and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City" appeared in the Spring issue (Volume 104, No. 2).

In this groundbreaking article, Professor Larkin demonstrates that the Virgin of Guadalupe was not the preeminent Marian devotion of colonial Mexico. The Guadalupan devotion was rising, but always second in preference to Our Lady of Sorrows. He also proposes that Mexican devotion to local virgins, saints, and Christ images never exceeded devotion to such universal Catholic devotions as the Eucharist. He proposes that otherworldly concerns such as eternal salvation and release from purgatory be considered important motivations for religious gifts and bequests.

Professor Larkin's contribution lies in his argument for greater balance in examining colonial Mexican piety. He finds a presentism in considering the colonial past, first by imposing on that era the Guadalupan domination that later generations produced, and second by focusing on the local/exotic/particular over the universal in developing an understanding of colonial Mexican piety. While Robert Morgan's Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity, 1600–1810 emphasizes American discontinuities, this author balances that attention to the unique with equal attention to the more commonplace or universally recognized.

Thoroughly grounded in primary sources, the author uses tables to demonstrate the range of devotions present in the minds of devotees as they wrote their last wills and testaments. In acknowledging evidence that does not support his arguments; he admits that further study is needed on the widespread popularity of Our Lady of Sorrows or St. Anthony of Padua. He places the Mexican experience in wider contexts: Tridentine reforms of Catholicism, papal declarations, Spanish piety, official sponsorship of particular devotions, and others. This strengthens the emphasis on the importance of universal devotions in relationship to local Mexican novelties.

On account of its outstanding research and original contributions, "Beyond Guadalupe: The Eucharist, the Cult of Saints and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City" deserves recognition of the Nelson H. Minnich Prize for 2018.

Newberry Library

The Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies proudly launches a new digital resource devoted to Italian paleography, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Paleography, the study of the history of handwriting and scripts in books, manuscripts, and other documents, is essential for scholarly research in the humanities for the premodern period. Created and edited by Isabella Magni (Newberry Library), Lia Markey (Newberry Library), and Maddalena Signorini (Università di Roma-Tor Vergata) in collaboration with the University of Toronto Libraries Information Technology Services and the Walter J. Ong S.J. Center for Digital Humanities at St. Louis University, this new website provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular handwriting from 1100 to 1700 using manuscripts in the Newberry collections as well as other US institutions. The new paleography site complements a resource devoted to French paleography launched in 2016, also funded by the Mellon Foundation and designed in partnership between the Newberry, Toronto, and St. Louis. Like the French site, the intended audience of the Italian site is varied: scholars preparing to conduct research in Italian archives; students studying Italian language, history and culture; curators, librarians, and archivists who work with manuscripts; calligraphers and graphic designers interested in historical scripts; and anyone who would like to experiment with transcribing early Italian documents.

The site features 102 digitized manuscripts representing 7 different types of scripts and 3 difficulty levels. Each manuscript is paired with a transcription and a scholarly entry written by a specialist in the field. These background essays provide the historical, cultural, and at times codicological context for the manuscripts. Using the Ong Center's transcription tool, T-PEN, users of the site can transcribe the documents and save their transcriptions online. The site includes a handbook describing the various types of scripts and providing the history of the vernacular in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The...