Pius IX in 1846-1848 - the Liberal Pope?

The paper discusses the first years of the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1878), when the newly elected head of the Catholic Church was perceived as a “liberal Pope”. On the one hand, in 1846-1848 Pius IX was the Pope who carried out reforms and announced an amnesty. On the other hand, in the same period he criticized rationalism and created censorship commissions. The paper is another attempt to answer the question whether Pius IX was indeed a “liberal” Pope at the beginning of his pontificate. Special attention is given to the Pope’s policy during 1847. It was the time when the Papal States’ population expected the continuation of the reform process. The paper raises the question of Cardinals’ impact on the Pope, as well as on the pace of reform in the Papal States. Another key issue is the response of Pius IX to the revolutionary movement in Italy. The author concludes with the significance of the Pope’s refusal to struggle against Austria for the further development of the process of Italian Unification.

Catholic Clergy at Home and in Rome: Intersocial Processes in French Counterrevolution (1848–52)

Sociological scholarship on political revolution has recently begun to embrace a process-based understanding of revolutions. Such a processual ontology opens up for understanding hitherto unaddressed processes of counterrevolution. Historians of the Spring of Nations, and The Second French Republic (1848–52) in particular, have failed to address the international aspects of the revolutions, and above all of counterrevolution in the period. This paper addresses this gap through a historical case study of the French Catholic clergy in the Second French Republic. The study applies an amalgamation of recent theoretical developments from revolution scholarship in order to dissect the empirical material and births a new framework in the process. The results demonstrate the important intersocial work of Catholic clergy on the triumph of the counterrevolution in France. The political concerns of the Papal States and Pope Pius IX spilled over into French politics and cemented the legitimacy of the counterrevolutionary turn and fuelled the rise of Louis Napoleon. From these results a new theoretical framework that addresses the intersocial nature of political agency and moves beyond a domestic understanding of political processes is developed. Further studies applying this approach across cases are encouraged in order to better understand how these processes unfold and how multiple intersocial influences can interplay.

A bíboros legátusok kancelláriái a 14. században

From 1305 to 1378, the popes involved in 64 missions 40 cardinals (that is 26,7% of the members of the Sacred College of that period), either as legate (41%), or as legate and vicar general on the Papal States (7%), or only as nuncio (35%), excluding the vicars generals who were neither legate nor nuncio. In a (temporary) synthesis are studied the composition and the working of the legatine chanceries: the functions and the value of the chancellors, their relations with the judiciary court of the cardinal’s curia (audientia causarum curie); the various members of the chancery, notaries, secretaries, abbreviatores, scribes, registratores and all the familiares working in the „writing offices” of cardinals. On the other hand, the relations between the legatine chanceries and other chanceries (specially papal and royal ones) are observed in order to see their reciprocal influence and the effects on the development of the papal diplomacy. Two tables are proposed in appendix, a chronological table of all missions of these cardinals from 1305 to 1378 and a synthetic table of the members of the „writing offices” during legations and nunciatures or nor.

Accounting and disciplinary methods in fishery management

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to contribute to the research related to “the interplay between accounting and the state, politics, and local authorities in the broad government and administration of food for sustainability of populations” (Sargiacomo et al., 2016). Considering contemporary examples and investigating the genealogy of an 18th-century reform of fishery management (the New Plan), the authors explore the role played by accounting and calculative practices when local authorities intervene using forms of discipline based on control systems that acted on commons (fish), people and space.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is historically grounded on archival research on a fish provisioning case during the 18th century in Ancona, an Italian town on the Adriatic coast. The investigation adopts an approach focussed on the use of disciplinary methods in the terms highlighted by Foucault. This perspective offers a lens capable of revealing the key role of accounting in a period when discipline became “general formulas of domination” (Foucault, 1977) and the Papal States were looking for food provisioning solutions (Foucault, 2007). The study highlights similarities with contemporary fishery management.FindingsThe paper shows that governability of fishery in a commons' logic is not limited by the properties of the good, but rather “it is achieved through the objects and instruments that are deployed to make it possible” (Johnsen, 2014, p. 429). It reveals forms assumed by economic calculation in different eras and their contribution in the art of governing realised by the state (Hoskin and Macve, 2016). The study unveils how accounting effectively operates using “naming and counting” activities (Ezzamel and Hoskin, 2002) based on a system of documents and accounting registers; these have a pivotal role in redefining fishery management and in keeping goods (fish) and people (fishermen) under control. The investigation also highlights the importance of properly quantifying data in fishery management, confirming the literature on the topic (Beddington et al., 2007, p. 1713). In contemporary situations, data refer to quantifying the fish stock in the sea and the consequent estimation of fish catch. In the historical investigation, although environmental protection was not an issue, quantification refers to the fish that entered the town of Ancona, whose estimation was the result of a new calculative approach adopted by local authorities facing fish needs. In addition, it offers early evidence of organised and rational-based control mechanisms that were the result of Enlightened ideas emerging in the Papal States context.Originality/valueDespite the fact that fish represent a fundamental good for governments to act on in response to a population's needs, there has been no attention paid to how governmental authorities have used disciplinary mechanisms to intervene in fishery management or the role played by accounting. This study's novelty is its investigation of fishery, using Foucauldian disciplinary methods to understand accounting's contribution in fishery governance. In addition, this investigation permits to unveil the role of accounting to support one of the main principles of the governance of commons that is represented by the congruence between rules and local conditions (Fennell, 2011, p. 11; Ostrom, 1990, p. 92).

Martyrdom in Early Modern England

At the advent of England’s Reformation, the monarch assumed sovereignty over the English Church. This created an established state church, which was designed to counter the papacy’s assertion of supremacy. In doing so, the English Church more emphatically linked itself to the monarchy’s temporal control and its attendant realpolitik than was the case with the Pope’s authority over Roman Catholic territories, barring the small Papal States. For those in England who remained faithful to Roman Catholicism, this created an environment where some Protestants took “popery” to be akin to sedition. Whereas during Mary I’s regime, where the English Church was back under papal authority and martyrs died under heresy statutes rather than treason statutes, it was held under Protestant regimes that to act against the English Church was to act against the English state. Given the wide sway of perspectives within English Protestantism from Presbyterianism to Arminianism, as well as the old faith’s continuing appeal among many, English subjects were confronted with competing notions of what it meant to be a good Christian and, consequently, conflicting views about who qualified as a Christian martyr and what precisely Christian martyrdom involved. Martyrologies and other discourses on martyrdom were powerful tools for defining true religion and influencing the behavior of religious adherents, even if the popular representation of the martyr-figure that arises from these works did not necessarily reflect all of the views on martyrdom held by Catholics and Protestants in contemporary society.

Fraud and incompetence: Accounting in the Papal States (1831–1859)

The Papal States was a longstanding nation ruled by the Pope, the Head of the Roman Catholic Church. Its accountants included priests and laymen who were employed as bureaucrats. Despite an expectation that the finances would be carefully managed, this research from the mid-nineteenth century shows that incompetence and fraud dogged the Papal States’ latter years, contributing to it losing most of its territory in the Second War of Italian Independence from 1859, and its final demise in 1870. This prosopography of three men who held high bureaucratic positions, analyses their approach to accounting in the Papal States. It shows that waste and deficient accounting arose from individuals undertaking fraud and from organisational (and individual) incompetence. In doing so, it elucidates how the Papal States could be a ‘vehicle for fraud’, and in particular, how it was used as a shield to enable both fraud and incompetence to go unpunished.

Jesuits in Spanish America before the Suppression

From the late sixteenth century until their expulsion in 1767, members of the Society of Jesus played an important role in the urban life of Spanish America and as administrators of frontier missions. This study examines the organization of the Society of Jesus in Spanish America in large provinces, as well as the different urban institutions such as colegios and frontier missions. It outlines the spiritual and educational activities in cities. The Jesuits supported the royal initiative to evangelize indigenous populations on the frontiers, and particularly the outcomes that did not always conform to expectations. One reason for this was the effects of diseases such as smallpox on the indigenous populations. Finally, it examines the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories. Some died before leaving the Americas or at sea. The majority reached Spain and were later shipped to exile in the Papal States.

Massimo il Greco e gli ordini religiosi dell’Occidente

Maximus the Greek (c.1470-1556), born Michael Trivolis, is a complex figure. As a copyist and Dominican novice, Orthodox monk and humanist, he stands at the crossroads of different worlds, cultures and creeds. His life path unwound between his besieged homeland, humanist Italy – in the Republics of Florence and Venice and in the Papal States – Mount Athos and the Moscow of Vasili III and Ivan IV. This path brought him exceptionally into contact with both Latin and vernacular humanism and Latin Christianity, with the Greek and Slavic Byzantine tradition, with Orthodoxy and Islam, in a cultural, linguistic and religious polyphony that is at once his hallmark and the key to his literary legacy. The subject of this book is Maximus the Greek’s testimony regarding the Western religious orders contained in the Terrible and Memorable Narration, and the Perfect Form of Monastic Life and the Letter on the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The comparison with documentary evidence, made here for the first time, demonstrates the reliability of these works, casting light on the author’s life and the sources, places and people involved in it.