A New Letter from Byron to Count Alborghetti

This article introduces a newly re-discovered letter, now in the Pforzheimer collection at the New York Public Library, that Byron sent to Count Giuseppe Alborghetti on 11 December 1820. His letter is quick, business-like, and urgent, one of the many that sped between Byron and the Count throughout this period. Alborghetti was Byron’s neighbour in Ravenna and the secretary to the Papal Legate of Lower Romagna. Alborghetti was a political ally but not a revolutionary, a reader of Byron’s poetry, a confidante, and maybe also a friend. Their correspondence spotlights Byron in one of his most complex roles: as a political actor at once naïve and savvy, firing off reports, questions, and opinions on political affairs that entangled him, involved him, and yet found him always at a remove.

Edward the Confessor

Chapter 4 shows how during John’s reign the baronial opposition appropriated the figure of the recently canonized Edward the Confessor, and used him as a standard against which to judge the current king. A key part was played by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, which compiled and in important respects elaborated and extended the compilations of Old English law codes made during the twelfth century. The Collection informed opposition thinking prior to the crisis which produced Magna Carta. The chapter also subjects to minute analysis two very unusual episodes recorded in thirteenth-century annals of provincial churches. First, the St Augustine’s, Canterbury account of Duke William’s having allowed the men of Kent, uniquely, to continue to use Old English Laws and customs. This episode is supposed to have taken place at Swanscombe Down in 1066. The second is the Burton Abbey account of what purports to be a dialogue between King John and a papal legate, allegedly in 1211. The nub of the dialogue is a disagreement about the role of Edward the Confessor. The chapter then shows how Henry III re-appropriated St Edward for the royal cause, but by emphasizing his saintliness rather than his alleged legislation. Henry focussed on the development of the cult, expressed in liturgical, artistic, and architectural terms, and focussed on the rebuilt Westminster Abbey. The chapter concludes with a brief envoi on the later medieval expression of the cult, especially under Richard II.

Rooms triomfalisme in de Amsterdamse straten : De betekenis van het 27e Internationaal Eucharistisch Congres (22-27 juli 1924) voor de ontwikkeling van het Nederlandse katholicisme

This article analyses the preparations and the implementation of the 27th International Eucharistic Congress, held at Amsterdam in 1924. After an introduction on the (negative) image of this congress in Dutch historiography, on the person of de papal legate (the Dutch cardinal Willem van Rossum CSSR), and on the phenomenon of the ‘Eucharistic Congresses’ and its organizing committee, the author analyses the forces pro and contra the organization of such a Congress in Amsterdam. The initiative was taken by some ultramontane clergy and laypeople, gathered around the revival of the devotion of the Amsterdam Eucharistic Miracle (1345). The bishop involved, mgr. A. Callier of Harlem, felt little of inviting the organizing committee to choose for Amsterdam, and also the (Roman Catholic) Prime Minister Ruijs de Beerenbrouck kept aloof, fearing a revival of protestant antipapism. So in advance it was already clear that the government and queen Wilhelmina would avoid every diplomatic presence ‐ quit different as was the case at similar congresses in other countries. Besides, a grand procession through the Amsterdam streets was impossible because of the then still prevailing prohibition of public religious processions. The most important ceremonies thus were held in the Amsterdam soccer stadium. The Congress strengthened the feeling of unity of the ‘common’ Catholics with the Dutch cardinal as their shared national icon, but on the other hand it worsened the relations between the Dutch episcopate and the Prime Minister, and their ‘man in Rome’. In the end the Eucharistic Congress had no antipapistic consequences, and only limited political consequences, thanks to quite a lot of informal negotiations before and during the Congress. It nevertheless played a role on the background, when the government decided in 1925 to close the Dutch embassy at the Vatican.

Rethinking the Rites Controversy: Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia and the Historical Dimensions of a Religious Quarrel

The Chinese rites controversy (c.1582–1742) is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia.

Robert de Courson and the Northern Reformers

This chapter, the first study of hospital reform under papal legate Robert de Courson, offers a new picture of the legation in preparation for Lateran IV. Courson’s hospital decree is well-known from his councils of Paris (1213) and Rouen (1214). The chapter begins by exploring the origins of the decree, finding that it did not emerge from Courson’s own moral theology, nor from the Parisian theological circle of which he was a leading member. Documentary evidence reveals an earlier iteration of the same decree and unearths a lost first council under Courson, at Reims (1213). Further investigation reveals that the legation was not launched at Paris, as has always been assumed, but with a preaching tour of Flanders and Brabant in June 1213, followed by the council at Reims. The new geography offers a new source for the hospital reform, which is explored through the spread of hospital rules, westward out of Brabant, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. It argues, finally, that the reform was closely tied to the beguine movement and, especially, to Jacques de Vitry. After Courson’s council at Rouen (1214), it was not adopted at any other council, including Lateran IV.

The Path of Pleasantness

Ippolito II d’Este (1509-1572), cardinal and prince of Ferrara, played a crucial role in shaping the political and cultural connections between Italy and France. Seen by his contemporaries as staunchly ‘French’, his life rather followed a difficult balance between the political and spatial entities – Rome, Paris, and Ferrara – through which he continuously moved and from which he derived his power. Following his career as cardinal protector of the Valois crown, royal administrator of Siena on behalf of Henry II, and papal legate to France on the eve of the Wars of Religion, this book argues that Ippolito’s apparent diplomatic access ultimately weakened his family’s position in Italy and left it ill-equipped to compete in the changing politics of the peninsula.

The Regensburg Article 5 on Justification

In 1541 at the Regensburg Colloquy, three leading Protestant theologians (Melanchthon, Bucer, and Pistorius) and three leading Catholic theologians (Eck, Gropper, and Pflug) debated with the aim of producing a commonly agreed statement of belief. The colloquy eventually failed, but it had begun with a statement on justification by faith agreed by all the parties, “Article 5,” leading to an initial burst of optimism. But from the beginning, there were two contrasting reactions to Article 5. Some, like Calvin, maintained that it contained the substance of true doctrine; others, like Luther, called it an inconsistent patchwork. Both rival assessments have continued over the centuries. The aim of this book is to decide between them. It does so primarily by viewing the article in the light of the publications of the colloquy’s key participants and observers, and by comparing it with the Tridentine Decree on Justification. It also views it in the light of the four known earlier drafts of the article, all of which are included in an Appendix, together with translations of three of them. The book concludes that Article 5 is indeed consistent with a Protestant understanding of justification, though it does not always follow Protestant terminology. Agreement was possible because Gropper and Pflug, together with Cardinal Contarini, the papal legate, largely accepted the Protestant account of justification.

Elizabeth of Spalbeek

Elizabeth of Spalbeek was already a well-known if controversial visionary by 1276. In that year a prophecy was attributed to her in which she claimed that God was angry with King Philip III because of the king’s sins against nature. The papal legate Simon of Brie verified that he had heard a similar rumor. In the course of four separate missions to question Elizabeth, the party of Pierre de La Broce and Bishop Pierre de Benais also attributed to her the prophetic claim that Queen Marie of Brabant had poisoned her stepson, the heir to the throne. In the end Elizabeth relied on staunch denial, and chose to silence her own prophetic voice to avoid censure.

Remembering Wolsey

Remembering Wolsey seeks to contribute to our understanding of historical memory and memorialization bexamining in detail the posthumous commemoration and representation of Thomas Wolsey, the sixteenth-century cardinal, papal legate, and lord chancellor of England. Its questions are at once historical and ethical. Analyzing the history of Wolsey’s legacy from his death in 1530 through the present day, this book shows how images of Wolsey have been among the vehicles through which historians, theologians, and others have contested the events known collectively as the English Reformation(s). Over the course of nearly five centuries, Wolsey has been at the center of the debate about King Henry’s reformation and the virtues and vices of late medieval Catholicism. His name and image have been invoked in a bewildering, and often surprising, variety of contexts, including the works of chroniclers, historians, theologians, dramatists, or more recently screenwriters. Cultural producers have often related the story of Wolsey’s life in ways that have buttressed their preconceived opinions on a wide variety of matters. The complex history of Wolsey’s representation has much to teach us not only about the historiography of the English Reformation but also about broader dynamics of cultural and collective memory.