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.

Alejo Carpentier, The Harp and the Shadow: Literature, History and Fiction

Not entirely a historical text, The Harp and the Shadow, the last novel published by Alejo Carpentier, takes as its pretext certain historical data in order to offer the readers a specific view of the protagonist, Christopher Columbus. Considered by some the great discoverer of the New World or highly regarded as “The Admiral of the Seas” and despised by many others as an adventurer and a liar, Columbus is also the author of some disturbing writings that still put critics and literary historians in discomfort. This is the novel’s point of departure, together with the intent of Pope Pius IX to initiate the canonization of Columbus, an idea regarded by the great majority of his contemporaries as a complete blasphemy. At the aesthetic level, comparable up to a certain point to the conception of Jorge Luis Borges, Carpentier’s form of understanding and practicing literature is always, in a more or less obvious way, reliant on Cervantes himself. But it is not limited to Don Quixote: in The Harp and the Shadow, the Cuban author builds an endless network of intertextual associations connecting his own creation to The Works of Persiles and Segismunda, the last work by Cervantes.

Saint Agnes of Bohemia: A Thirteenth-Century Iconoclast and the Enduring Legacy of Her Convent as a Sacred Space for Religious Art

Refusing to accept her expected role of becoming an item of negotiation in an arranged marriage to strengthen a political alliance, Agnes of Bohemia (1211–1282), daughter of King Přemysl Otakar I of Bohemia and Queen Constance of Hungary, chose to use her royal dowry to finance construction of the first hospital, convent, monastery, and church in Prague committed to the teachings of Saint Francis. Her youth was influenced by nuns providing her education, by a strong familial precedent in the support of churches and convents, and by religious contemporaries. Joining the fledging Franciscan movement, this remarkably well-educated and deeply committed woman entered as abbess of the convent in 1234, dedicating her life to poverty without endowment, devotion, and service to the sick and poor. Agnes was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1874 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1989. Her legacy remains in Prague today with the Gothic convent she constructed now serving as a premiere museum devoted to the Medieval and Renaissance religious art of Prague and Central Europe. Thus, the original goal of building a sacred space for sisters in order to foster spiritual mediation has now been redirected to provide the public the opportunity to become immersed in ecclesiastical reflection viewing the works of artists such as Master Theodoric, the Master of Vyšší Brod, the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece, and others.

Zensurverfahren gegen Giuseppe Verdis "Don Carlo" vor der Römischen Inquisition

Einen exzeptionellen Sonderfall eines Inquisitionsverfahrens im Rom des 19. Jahrhunderts stellt die Verhandlung von Giuseppe Verdis "Don Carlo" dar. Auf der Grundlage der Akten aus dem Archiv der Glaubenskongregation wird das Verfahren nachgezeichnet und in einem editorischen Anhang das Gutachten dargeboten. Ersichtlich wird an diesem Verfahren eine Facette des kirchlichen Umgangs mit liberalen Ideen zur Zeit Pius IX.

How Pope Pius IX Stimulated 'Pillarization' in the Netherlands

In 1853 an important step in the development of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was set. On initiative of the Vatican and despite vehement resistance of the orthodox Protestant part of the population (known as the April-movement), the episcopal hierarchy in the church was restored. By choosing Utrecht in the heart of the protestant Netherlands and not Den Bosch in the Catholic South of the country as the seat of the new archbishop, the Vatican practised an offensive, national strategy. Unintendedly, the Papal choice for Utrecht contributed to the later on development of the non-territorial, personalistic solution for the Dutch multicultural society at that time: the verzuiling.

Nineteenth-Century Catholic Reception of Aquinas

In the second half of the eighteenth century, under the influence of the Enlightenment, Catholic theology had increasingly turned away from its scholastic tradition. A renewal of Thomist thought started in the first decades of the nineteenth century, especially from Italy. Its original concern was to overcome the modern philosophies that were perceived as endangering faith. From the middle of the century, the movement spread to other parts of Europe, gaining support of the Church’s magisterium under Pope Pius IX. In the wake of the encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) written by his successor Leo XIII, neo-scholasticism made its final breakthrough in Catholic academic life. Subsequently, numerous Thomist-oriented textbooks were published and Thomist academies were founded throughout Europe. The critical edition of the works of Aquinas (Editio Leonia) marked the beginning of a period of intense historical research on medieval theology and philosophy.

II. Modernization of the Papacy and Catholicism in the Postmodern: Legacy and Challenges to Vatican I

In the ongoing aggiornamento of the aggiornamento of Vatican II by Pope Francis, it would be easy to forget or dismiss the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Vatican I (1869–1870). The council planned (since at least the Syllabus of Errors of 1864), shaped, and influenced by Pius IX was the most important ecclesial event in the lives of those who made Vatican II: almost a thousand of the council fathers of Vatican II were born between 1871 and 1900. Vatican I was in itself also a kind of ultramontanist “modernization” of the Roman Catholic Church, which paved the way for the aggiornamento of Vatican II and still shapes the post–Vatican II church especially for what concerns the Petrine ministry.