Project MUSE®: The Catholic Historical Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Catholic Historical Review.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 81 (1995) through current issueLatest Articles: The Catholic Historical ReviewTWOProject MUSE®The Catholic Historical Review1534-07080008-8080Latest articles in The Catholic Historical Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®A House for the Catechumens: Public Conversions and Scandals in the Rise of the Jesuits
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982627
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The Houses of Catechumens held a prominent place among the institutions that characterized Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Emerging over the span of three centuries, the Houses were responsible for encouraging and overseeing the conversion of non-Catholics, especially Jews. The amount of literature on this subject has significantly increased in recent decades thanks to many studies that have sought to reconstruct the life and operations of shelters for converts.1 What emerged was a varied panorama of solutions that found their chosen (though not exclusive) terrain throughout Italy. These shelters sprang up in various corners of the Italian peninsula and were dedicated to the instruction of those—Jewish, Muslim
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallA House for the Catechumens: Public Conversions and Scandals in the Rise of the Jesuits2026-02-12text/htmlen-USA House for the Catechumens: Public Conversions and Scandals in the Rise of the Jesuits2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®1843382026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Translating Human Nature and Merit in Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982628
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Matteo Ricci's (1552–1610) missionary accommodation strategy in the late Ming Dynasty is widely recognized as an effort to integrate Confucianism and Christianity. His apologetic Chinese-language work, Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), was the first formal exchange of Western and Chinese philosophies. In this book, Ricci set out
Figure 1
Portrait of Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., who is also the supposed Western scholar in Tianzhu shiyi. Painted by You Wenhui during the Ming Dynasty. Public domain.
[AI Generated Alt Text] Portrait of a bearded man in a dark robe and tall hat standing against a muted background with a stylized sun and Latin inscription below
to fulfill two major tasks: the first
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallTranslating Human Nature and Merit in Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USTranslating Human Nature and Merit in Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®1221822026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Pope Leo XIV: Background, Election, and Beginning of His Papacy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982629
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The election of Robert Francis Prevost, O.S.A., to the papacy as Leo XIV on May 8, 2025 presents numerous elements of novelty in the history of the Church. The 133 electors in the conclave chose Cardinal Prevost by a large majority (according to revelations by cardinals to the press) on the fourth ballot, thus concluding the election process very quickly, which has been typical of papal elections in the last century. Although he was considered an underdog by many, before the end of the conclave scholars of social network theories suggested that Cardinal Prevost was in fact one of the strongest "papabile" thanks to three key mechanisms that play a crucial role in the dynamics of the conclave: status, mediation
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallPope Leo XIV: Background, Election, and Beginning of His Papacy2026-02-12text/htmlen-USPope Leo XIV: Background, Election, and Beginning of His Papacy2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®995102026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Forum Review Essay
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982630
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In this comprehensive history of sex in Christianity, Diarmaid Mac-Culloch chronicles the "complexity and creativity" of "startlingly varied" past attitudes to sexuality (5), beginning with Greek society around 1500 BC and reaching to the present day, offering what he calls "a story without an ending" (490). The journey he takes readers on is intended to illuminate the reality that "there is no such thing as a Christian theology of sex," but instead "multiple Christian theologies of sex, many of which have … been downright contradictions of each other" (493). This history is in part a response to "self-styled traditionalists" and "conservatives," calling them out for not knowing the very tradition they aim to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallForum Review Essay2026-02-12text/htmlen-USForum Review Essay2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®412752026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Notes and Comments
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982631
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Pope Leo XIV declared St. John Henry Newman (1801–90), English cardinal and theologian, the thirty-eighth Doctor of the Church on November 1, 2025. Together with St. Thomas Aquinas, he is the co-patron of Catholic education. A former Anglican priest, Newman converted to Catholicism in 1845, was ordained a Catholic priest in 1847, and was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. He authored numerous important theological works, including An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), the autobiographical Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), and Grammar of Assent (1870).Br. Lycarión May (1870–1909) was beatified on July 12, 2025. He was born in Switzerland, and after becoming a Marist Brother in 1888 he
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallNotes and Comments2026-02-12text/htmlen-USNotes and Comments2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®260912026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Uta-Renate Blumenthal (1935–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982632
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Uta-Renate Blumenthal was born in Berlin, Germany and moved to the United States after World War II with her three sisters. She entered Columbia University in 1965 with a passion for ballet while working for the Joffrey Ballet Company but soon found another passion, medieval history. She received her BA, MA, and PhD from Columbia under the mentorship of Robert Somerville, although John Mundy is listed as her director because Somerville was only an assistant professor at that time. Columbia's rules did not permit assistant professors to direct dissertations. She went on to teach at Vanderbilt University (1973–79) and then at The Catholic University of America where she remained until she retired. She was elected
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallUta-Renate Blumenthal (1935–2025)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USUta-Renate Blumenthal (1935–2025)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®60492026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Jurgis Saulius Algirdas Elisonas (1937–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982633
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Jurgis Saulius Algirdas Elisonas passed away after a brief illness on September 17, 2025. Professor Elisonas is known to many in the field of East Asian history by the Anglicized version of his name, George Elison, under which he published on the history of early modern Japan up until the early 1990s. Born on January 6, 1937, in Lithuania, Jurgis left his homeland during the Second World War. He was educated as a boy in Bavaria before being sent to live in Brooklyn. After graduating from the University of Michigan and serving as an artillery officer in Korea, he traveled to Japan, a country whose history and culture he came to know as few ever do. He was helped in that endeavor by his wife, Toshiko Nakabayashi, a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallJurgis Saulius Algirdas Elisonas (1937–2025)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USJurgis Saulius Algirdas Elisonas (1937–2025)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®52232026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Reverend John Edward Lynch, C.S.P. (1924–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982634
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Father John Edward Lynch, a Paulist priest, medieval historian, and canon lawyer, was born in New York City on October 21, 1924. When he was nine, his family moved to Washington, DC, where he attended St. John's College High School. He then enrolled in the Paulists' minor seminary in Baltimore. He entered their novitiate in 1944 and took his first promises in 1945, final promises in 1948, continued his priestly studies, and was ordained in 1951. After performing pastoral work in Los Angeles and teaching Latin at the Paulist minor seminary in Baltimore, he was sent for further studies to the joint program at the Pontifical Medieval Institute and the University of Toronto, where he earned his licentiate and doctoral
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Reverend John Edward Lynch, C.S.P. (1924–2025)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Reverend John Edward Lynch, C.S.P. (1924–2025)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®55692026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins by Stefanos Geroulanos (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982635
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To Stefanos Geroulanos, prehistory is often a "myth" (6), a "recycled" myth (389), an addition to the pile of "misinformation and lies" (397), a "folly" (398), and "misguided, incomplete, or pernicious" (391). Indeed, it is "one of the most ruinous" intellectual endeavors of modernity (7). His jacket cover states that "we would be better off setting aside the search for how [humanity] started."If Geroulanos sounds extreme, he often makes his case well. For example, chapter 7 describes how ideas about evolution and primitive humans allowed the nineteenth-century Western world to accept the "disappearance" of Indigenous peoples as a "biologically inevitable" (117) consequence of survival of the fittest, even while
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins by Stefanos Geroulanos (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins by Stefanos Geroulanos (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®99292026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Book of Raymond of Aguilers: Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem by James Currie (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982636
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The priest Raymond of Aguilers, a canon of the church of Le Puy in Auvergne, was one of a handful of participants in the First Crusade who produced narrative accounts of the expedition. His position as chaplain to his namesake Raymond of Saint-Gilles, count of Toulouse, meant that he was often privy to decisions of the crusade leadership, and he took an especial interest in the relic of the Holy Lance discovered at Antioch and the numerous visions experienced by crusaders. James Currie justifies the need for a new translation of Raymond's Liber on the grounds that the previous translation by August C. Krey (1921) is outdated in its language and limited in its apparatus, and that the one by John and Laurita Hill
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Book of Raymond of Aguilers: Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem by James Currie (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Book of Raymond of Aguilers: Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem by James Currie (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®57702026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Die Karmeliten: Geschichte des Karmelitenordens by Joachim Smet (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982637
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Like the great religious family whose story it tells, Joachim Smet's magisterial The Carmelites: A History of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel has its own peculiar history. After decades awaiting the completion of Smet's painstaking work, in 1975 an impatient provincial superior took an unfinished draft of the author's first volume and had it privately printed, without the intended footnotes or bibliography. Undaunted, Smet brought out volume 2 in 1976, the two parts of volume 3 in 1982, and volume 4 in 1985, before releasing a revised and corrected version of volume 1 in 1988. Editions in other languages quickly followed, including Spanish (Los Carmelitas, 1987–96) and Italian (I Carmelitani, 1989–2020)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallDie Karmeliten: Geschichte des Karmelitenordens by Joachim Smet (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USDie Karmeliten: Geschichte des Karmelitenordens by Joachim Smet (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®52922026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Anthony of Padua: Franciscan, Preacher, Teacher, Saint by Valentin Strappazzon (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982638
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My mother once lost sixty dollars coming home from the bank. She searched everywhere. After praying to St. Anthony, we retraced her steps outside where three crisp twenty-dollar bills were blowing through the summer garden. Most Catholics, regardless of their level of education, probably know St. Anthony through stories like this. He is the patron saint of lost things and in a twist befitting the humility of the man, his memory remains mostly lost to us.Pius XII gave new energy to recovering Anthony's memory in 1946, when he declared Anthony the "Evangelical Doctor," thanks to his reputation as a preacher. In the wake of that declaration, scholars produced a critical edition of Anthony's sermons in 1979 and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallAnthony of Padua: Franciscan, Preacher, Teacher, Saint by Valentin Strappazzon (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USAnthony of Padua: Franciscan, Preacher, Teacher, Saint by Valentin Strappazzon (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®53132026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts. From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982639
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This substantial book represents the summation of a life's work. It aims to show that inquisitorial trials in medieval and early modern England observed due process far more than their continental counterparts. Inquisitorial procedure, largely introduced by Innocent III's Lateran IV canon 8 (1215), enabled an ecclesiastical judge to prosecute canonical crimes based on the suspects' reputation (fama). Suspects might be acquitted through "purgation," where "compurgators" attested to believe their denial of guilt. Objections might be raised to purgation, but the judge had to prove the suspects' fama and thus their guilt. The procedure was originally designed to discipline clergy but became most associated with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallCriminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts. From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USCriminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts. From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®97522026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Ladies on the Hill: The Female Monastic Communities at the Aristocratic Monasteries of Klosterneuburg and St. George's in Prague ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Eva Schlotheuber (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982640
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The Augustinian canonesses at the double monastery of Klosterneuburg were dissolved in 1568, along with much of their library. In the absence of sources, many scholars of female monasticism in Central Europe have ignored the canonesses. Jeffrey Hamburger and Eva Schlotheuber seek to rectify this, comparing Austrian Klosterneuburg to a convent with more textual survivals, Benedictine St. George's in Prague, due to their parallel relationships to male monastic institutions and ties to rulers. The chapters situate deep investigation into the convents' manuscript traditions within their broader social and religious networks.Enclosure looms large in this volume, in both its practical and its prescriptive dimensions.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Ladies on the Hill: The Female Monastic Communities at the Aristocratic Monasteries of Klosterneuburg and St. George's in Prague ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Eva Schlotheuber (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Ladies on the Hill: The Female Monastic Communities at the Aristocratic Monasteries of Klosterneuburg and St. George's in Prague ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Eva Schlotheuber (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®64242026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Renaissance Papacy 1400–1600 ed. by Nelson H. Minnich (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982641
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Nelson H. Minnich commissioned essays for this volume from a world-class group of Renaissance scholars addressing the history and significance of the early modern papacy. And that was no small task. The process, begun in 2015, then delayed by unforeseen circumstances, resulted in a beautiful volume illustrated with two dozen plates, nearly all in color. The chapter contributions cover a broad range of subtopics in papal history and—as with most such collections—vary a bit in quality.Some essays here are exceptionally helpful. Among these are Minnich's own on "The Renaissance Papacy" and "Renaissance Papal Court and Curia." Both readable and informative, these contributions illustrate the challenges popes faced
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Renaissance Papacy 1400–1600 ed. by Nelson H. Minnich (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Renaissance Papacy 1400–1600 ed. by Nelson H. Minnich (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®57432026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12A Crusade Against the Turks as a Means of Reforming the Church: Two Camaldolese Hermits' Advice for Pope Leo X by James G. Kroemer (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982642
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Ever since Hubert Jedin in 1949 highlighted the reform treatise of the Camaldolese hermits Paolo Giustiniani (1476–1514) and Pietro Querini (1479–1528), known as the Libellus ad Leonem X, and their Murano Circle correspondence in 1951–53, followed by the opening of the Camaldoli archives, the Libellus has become a favorite topic of scholars. For example, Eugenio Massa (1919–2007) dedicated the later years of his long career to studying it. Written in 1513, it was not published until 1775. It has been translated into Italian by Lorenzo Barletta (2012) and into English by Stephen M. Beall with commentary by John J. Schmitt (2016). James G. Kroemer thanks Schmitt for introducing him to the Libellus and its authors. In
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallA Crusade Against the Turks as a Means of Reforming the Church: Two Camaldolese Hermits' Advice for Pope Leo X by James G. Kroemer (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USA Crusade Against the Turks as a Means of Reforming the Church: Two Camaldolese Hermits' Advice for Pope Leo X by James G. Kroemer (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®65162026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12The Deformation: Attention and Discernment in Catholic Reformation Art and Architecture by Susanna Berger (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982643
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Susanna Berger has written an important book that gives essential insight into late Renaissance and Baroque religious art and architecture. It is a commonplace that illusionism as a variant of perspective enters the scene in the early seventeenth century, but we have had, until now, no convincing explanation of why or of its meaning. Berger provides a study of both the written sources and the images to show that deformations were used by the Church—and called that—to foster spiritual growth in the laity.When the Protestant churches rejected the sensuous and mysterious elements of Catholicism, including images in churches, the Catholic Church strengthened its commitment to just those elements of its practice. Led by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallThe Deformation: Attention and Discernment in Catholic Reformation Art and Architecture by Susanna Berger (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USThe Deformation: Attention and Discernment in Catholic Reformation Art and Architecture by Susanna Berger (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®60362026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982644
<p></p>
Specialists in early modern Italian history know this first volume in the new Viella series, translating a work originally published in 2012. Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, lauded for her studies of reform in Italy, particularly in Modena, here provides a reconsideration of a central figure in that history, Giulia Gonzaga (1513–66). Rambaldi plays off an early, defective, and mannered initial portrait of Gonzaga by Giuseppe Betussi (c. 1512–c. 73). Gonzaga was significant not just for the dynastic and political life Betussi traced, Rambaldi maintains, but also because of her hazardous spiritual interests and contacts with heterodox individuals, features that Betussi omitted. Rambaldi argues that Gonzaga was affected by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallGiulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USGiulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®57982026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12A Defense of Free Will against Luther: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article 36 by St. John Fisher (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982645
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The question of the freedom of the will was arguably the most contentious of the issues that divided Lutherans and Catholics in the 1520s; it was also possibly the most durable, the topic of centuries of philosophical disputes. Although the 1525 dispute between Luther and Erasmus is the best-known episode in a longstanding problem, the text here translated by Thomas Scheck was arguably more influential in its time. Its publication history on the continent, in being issued by some of the leading printers of polemical works, attests to its importance in the canon of Catholic controversial theology. Both as an example of polemical rhetoric in the first decade of the Reformation era and for its importance for the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallA Defense of Free Will against Luther: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article 36 by St. John Fisher (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USA Defense of Free Will against Luther: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article 36 by St. John Fisher (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®63782026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Imaging Jesuit Sanctity ed. by Alison C. Fleming and Thomas Worcester, S.J. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982646
<p></p>
The result of a symposium held in Toronto in 2022, this book is part of the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the canonization, in 1622, of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, as well as Teresa of Avila, Isidore the Farmer, and Philip Neri. Edited by two eminent scholars specializing in the history of the Society of Jesus in the early modern period, among other subjects, it offers a series of nine studies (supplemented by a very useful index) that shed new light on the construction and influence of sainthood, mainly Jesuit, essentially through a process presented as engaging an imaging dynamic. Admittedly, this last dimension, clearly stated in the title, would have deserved to be explained in more
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallImaging Jesuit Sanctity ed. by Alison C. Fleming and Thomas Worcester, S.J. (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USImaging Jesuit Sanctity ed. by Alison C. Fleming and Thomas Worcester, S.J. (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®65292026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Sans loi ni foi. Prêtres et violences sexuelles au coeur du système catholique by Agnès Desmazières (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982647
<p></p>
In Sans loi ni foi, historian and theologian Agnès Desmazières examines sexual violence within the Catholic Church as a structural phenomenon rooted in enduring institutional dynamics. Rather than treating abuse as an exceptional deviation, she traces how policies of silence and cover-ups were embedded in legal, pastoral, and sacramental frameworks. Drawing on extensive archival material, the study engages with canonical procedures and related theological and administrative discourses that shaped the Church's response across space and time.Structured in nine chapters, the book approaches clerical abuse from multiple angles. The opening chapters outline key patterns: the global scope and historical continuity of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallSans loi ni foi. Prêtres et violences sexuelles au coeur du système catholique by Agnès Desmazières (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USSans loi ni foi. Prêtres et violences sexuelles au coeur du système catholique by Agnès Desmazières (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®61752026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Off-Modern Catholic Aesthetics: Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture by Samuel O'Connor Perks (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982648
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In this enormously stimulating work, Samuel O'Connor Perks aims at revealing the role played by Catholicism in the production of aesthetic modernity between approximately 1930 and 1970. Beginning in the polarized political landscape of 1930s interwar France, the story migrates across the Atlantic as it follows the post-World War II avant-garde into Cold War America. O'Connor Perks frames his analysis using Svetlana Boym's concept of the "off-modern." Neither "anti" nor "post," the "off-modern" provides a prism through which Catholicism—often viewed as marginal to (or even incompatible with) narratives of modernization and progress—may be revisited as an unlikely collaborator with the avant-garde.O'Connor Perks
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallOff-Modern Catholic Aesthetics: Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture by Samuel O'Connor Perks (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USOff-Modern Catholic Aesthetics: Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth-Century Art and Architecture by Samuel O'Connor Perks (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®103872026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Jesuit Missionary Cartography of the Upper Amazon, 1689 to 1789 by Irina Saladin (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982649
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In Jesuit Missionary Cartography, Irina Saladin, lecturer at the University of Koblenz, offers a detailed and important contribution to the history of the Jesuit Order, cartographic studies, and the history of the Amazon in the early modern period. Saladin joins a recent group of scholars with similar interests in the study of Jesuit spatial knowledge production of the Amazon basin, such as Ivan Lucero and Mirela Altic. While Saladin presents her work as an English translation of her original German monograph published in 2020, the use of Altic's 2022 work indicates that this is not a mere translation but a revised edition of that earlier version. Furthermore, the use of German sources constitutes an important
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallJesuit Missionary Cartography of the Upper Amazon, 1689 to 1789 by Irina Saladin (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USJesuit Missionary Cartography of the Upper Amazon, 1689 to 1789 by Irina Saladin (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®58992026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Missionaries and Resistance in Guatemala: The Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary during "La Violencia." by Mario Trinidad (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982650
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Mario Trinidad sets out to tell the story of the missionaries from the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM), also known as Scheut Missionaries, and their involvement in popular and revolutionary organizations during la violencia, the most violent period of Guatemala's civil war (1960–96). He examines their transformation from Cold War anticommunism and defense of tradition to a progressive and oftentimes a radical stance, and how this shift was shaped by everyday lived experiences and the broader political context of state terrorism. This is both a well-researched book and a personal memoir that relies on archival sources located in Guatemala and Belgium, interviews with former missionaries, and the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallMissionaries and Resistance in Guatemala: The Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary during "La Violencia." by Mario Trinidad (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USMissionaries and Resistance in Guatemala: The Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary during "La Violencia." by Mario Trinidad (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®71132026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Devotion in Motion: Pilgrimage in Modern Mexico by Edward Wright-Rios (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982651
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Several years ago, I visited a wholesale produce market in Immokalee, Florida, and came across a vendor's shrine to the Virgin Mary. Fresh flowers surrounded framed images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a smaller image: the Virgin of Juquila. The proprietor smiled broadly when I asked if she was from Oaxaca. I knew this southern Mexican devotion from Edward Wright-Rios' Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism (2009). Now he has written an entire book on the devotion to Juquila that foregrounds her devotees and their relentless movements to express their piety by walking, cycling, singing, praying, and wearing their faith in pilgrimage, often in group actions. This fresh take on pilgrimage vividly illustrates that "there
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallDevotion in Motion: Pilgrimage in Modern Mexico by Edward Wright-Rios (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USDevotion in Motion: Pilgrimage in Modern Mexico by Edward Wright-Rios (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®61412026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Asian Pacific Catholicism and Globalization: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges ed. by José Casanova and Peter C. Phan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982652
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Asian Pacific Catholicism and Globalization is an interdisciplinary collection in two parts, "Historical Perspectives" and "Contemporary Challenges." It reads Catholicism in the Asian Pacific region through the paired lenses of global connectivity (structural) and global consciousness (reflexive), situated within a tripartite periodization (early modern, modern Western hegemony, contemporary after Western hegemony). This framework offers a comparative language that moves beyond a simple colonial or postcolonial binary and clarifies how religion is shaped by, and responds to, shifting global orders. The volume is aimed at scholars of world Christianity, Asian Pacific Catholic studies, theology, the sociology of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallAsian Pacific Catholicism and Globalization: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges ed. by José Casanova and Peter C. Phan (review)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USAsian Pacific Catholicism and Globalization: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges ed. by José Casanova and Peter C. Phan (review)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®68052026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12Index to Volume 111 (2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/982654
<p></p>
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28/image/coversmallIndex to Volume 111 (2025)2026-02-12text/htmlen-USIndex to Volume 111 (2025)2026-02-122026TWOProject MUSE®478472026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-02-12