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Around the year 1215, female mystics and their sacramental devotion were among orthodoxy's most sophisticated weapons in the fight against heresy. Holy women's claims to be in direct communication with God placed them in positions of unprecedented influence. Yet by the end of the Middle Ages female mystics were frequently mistrusted, derided, and in danger of their lives. The witch hunts were just around the corner. While studies of sanctity and heresy tend to be undertaken separately,Proving Womanbrings these two avenues of inquiry together by associating the downward trajectory of holy women with medieval society's progressive reliance on the inquisitional procedure. Inquisition was soon used for resolving most questions of proof. It was employed for distinguishing saints and heretics; it underwrote the new emphasis on confession in both sacramental and judicial spheres; and it heralded the reintroduction of torture as a mechanism for extracting proof through confession. As women were progressively subjected to this screening, they became ensnared in the interlocking web of proofs. No aspect of female spirituality remained untouched. Since inquisition determined the need for tangible proofs, it even may have fostered the kind of excruciating illnesses and extraordinary bodily changes associated with female spirituality. In turn, the physical suffering of holy women became tacit support for all kinds of earthly suffering, even validating temporal mechanisms of justice in their most aggressive forms. The widespread adoption of inquisitional mechanisms for assessing female spirituality eventuated in a growing confusion between the saintly and heretical and the ultimate criminalization of female religious expression.

El dominico fray Antonio de Monroy fue el único novohispano en alcanzar el generalato de su orden y un arzobispado en la metrópoli de la corona hispánica, el de Santiago de Compostela. El presente artículo tiene el objetivo de analizar la nómina de obras publicadas sobre el personaje y plantear nuevas preguntas con base en una exhaustiva revisión de los documentos en los que ha quedado registrada la labor del fraile en Europa, en el contexto de la movilidad geográfica de los ministros de la corona y con miras a desarrollar una biografía que incluya todas las facetas de su vida: universitario, fraile, político y patrocinador de distintas obras. El artículo muestra la pluralidad de fuentes documentales para estudiar desde la historia social a los ministros de la corona, cuyas características eran los estudios universitarios y conventuales, la pertenencia a familias con un rico patrimonio, el prestigio y relaciones político-sociales en distintas latitudes de la monarquía, así como la disposición para trasladarse a distintos destinos, en ocasiones entre continentes, para servir al rey. El estudio de una carrera particular como la de Monroy permite conocer el contexto político internacional de la época moderna europea al igual que el novohispano. Se requiere considerar la organización del estado, su funcionamiento y sus alcances en los territorios de la corona hispánica. La búsqueda de documentación relativa al personaje y a su contexto me ha llevado a consultar archivos y bibliotecas institucionales en Galicia, pero también en Madrid, Sevilla, Simancas y Valladolid. The Dominican friar Antonio de Monroy was the only priest from New Spain to become the head of his order and an archbishop in metropolitan Spain, in the archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela. This article’s goal is to analyze the works that have been published on this figure and to ask new questions based on an exhaustive review of the documents regarding his work in Europe, in the context of the geographical mobility of crown ministers, in order to contribute to the development of a biography that incorporates all facets of his life: student, friar, politician, and patron of a variety of works. This article makes use of a variety of documentary sources in order to study the social history of crown ministers, who were shaped by university and convent studies; came from rich, prestigious families that were well connected, both politically and socially, in many parts of the empire; and were willing to move great distances, sometimes to another continent, in order to serve the king. The study of the career of one individual, such as Monroy, allows us to understand the international political context of both modern Europe and New Spain. It is necessary to understand the organization of the state, its functioning and its reach throughout the territories of the Spanish Crown. The search for documentation on this figure and his context has led the author to consult archives and institutional libraries in Galicia, Madrid, Simancas, and Valladolid.

Once credited with the reinvention of biography, the book now seems indebted to Thomas Carlyle for its structural reliance on metaphors, both mixed and not (Life of John Sterling [1851], as well as the earlier German essays), and its ensemble approach to biographical reconstruction (Reminiscences [1881]); as well as to James Boswell and perhaps James Anthony Froude for its ironic irreverence for its subjects.3 The volume's reputation for redefining the Victorians as hypocritical, repressed, and generally unappealing evangelical zealots has similarly declined as subsequent Victorianists have demonstrated Strachey's own affinities with his predecessors, in addition to the Victorian period's delightfully seamy heterogeneity.4 What has endured, even if it has not been fully appreciated, is Strachey's successful appropriation of biography away from positivistic empiricism and the \"slow, funereal barbarism\" of history, and toward literary aestheticism and the freshly professionalized discipline of English (Strachey 6). [...]Strachey's commitment to the motif of doubling is so strong that first-time readers could be excused for occasionally forgetting that \"Cardinal Manning\" is not a biography of John Henry Newman. Throughout Eminent Victorians, Strachey often overleaps the empirically verifiable in favor of the artistically satisfying, providing motives and intents knowable only to an omniscient narrator. [...]he attributes Manning's susceptibility to Newman's fledgling Oxford Movement not to charisma or doctrine, but instead to the ambitious young rector's \"relief, to find, when one had supposed that one was nothing but a clergyman, that one might, after all, be something else-one might be a priest\" (23). [...]the pleasures of the literary text that is Eminent Victorians may never have been more available than they are today.

To many readers ofThe Prince, Machiavelli appears to be deeply un-Christian or even anti-Christian, a cynic who thinks rulers should use religion only to keep their subjects in check. But inMachiavelli's God, Maurizio Viroli, one of the world's leading authorities on Machiavelli, argues that Machiavelli, far from opposing Christianity, thought it was crucial to republican social and political renewal--but that first it needed to be renewed itself. And without understanding this, Viroli contends, it is impossible to comprehend Machiavelli's thought. Viroli places Machiavelli in the context of Florence's republican Christianity, which was founded on the idea that the true Christian is a citizen who serves the common good. In this tradition, God participates in human affairs, supports and rewards those who govern justly, and desires men to make the earthly city similar to the divine one. Building on this tradition, Machiavelli advocated a religion of virtue, and he believed that, without this faith, free republics could not be established, defend themselves against corruption, or survive. Viroli makes a powerful case that Machiavelli, far from being a pagan or atheist, was a prophet of a true religion of liberty, a way of moral and political living that would rediscover and pursue charity and justice. The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS - Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentis the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II--a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup--is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image. In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country--Vladimir Putin among them--proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith. Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentargues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.

The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion. Lisa Jardine, however, shows that Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world. Erasmus himself—the historical as opposed to the figural individual—was a brilliant, maverick innovator, who achieved little formal academic recognition in his own lifetime. What Jardine offers here is not only a fascinating study of Erasmus but also a bold account of a key moment in Western history, a time when it first became possible to believe in the existence of something that could be designated \"European thought.\"

RésuméLongtemps traduit par « abus », le terme latin excessus désigne dans les lettres pontificales les infractions, les crimes et les délits commis par l’ensemble des fidèles, mais surtout par le clergé et ses plus hauts dignitaires, les prélats. Leur lecture révèle une multiplication à la fois des occurrences du mot, des dénonciations des fautes qu’il désigne, d’un élargissement de son sens en même temps qu’un gain en précision à partir du milieu du xii e  siècle (pontificats d’Eugène III et d’Alexandre III). Ce phénomène s’accompagne de la multiplication des enquêtes et de transformations des procédures canoniques dont l’enquête de renommée constitue une forme élaborée dès les premières années du pontificat d’Innocent III. Parallèlement, la réflexion des décrétistes traduit leurs efforts pour favoriser ces transformations qui trouvent leur origine, non dans une réaction salutaire à une multiplication absolue des « excès », mais dans la volonté exprimée des papes de rendre parfaite l’institution ecclésiale. La dénonciation et la correction des « excès » du clergé doivent donc être comprises comme élément central du mode de gouvernement de l’Église. AbstractFor a long time translated as « abuse », actually the latin word excessus means, in the pontifical letters, offences and crimes committed by all the faithful, but especially by the clergy and its highest dignitaries, prelates. Their reading reveals, from the middle of the xii th century (pontificates of Eugene III and Alexander III), a multiplication of the occurrences of this word, of the denunciations of the faults that refer to it, and an extension of its meaning in conjunction with more precision as well. This fact is related to the multiplication of inquiries and to transformations in the canonical procedures ; among them the inquiry of fame is an elaborate form in the early years of Innocent III’s pontificate. In parallel, the decretists reflections testify to their efforts to promote these transformations. For instance, in some glosses of Gratian’s Decretum, they were both extending the list of the excepted cases and asserting that criminal and infamous people, ordinarily not allowed to testify, should be allowed to accuse and to testify as well. The fact that heresy was almost never identified as an excessus suggests that the extension of the cases of excessus is hardly related to it, at least not directly. On the over hand, the transformations of the procedure of inquiry are obviously not based on a salutary reaction to an absolute multiplication of « excesses », but in the expressed will of the popes to make perfect the Church. Denunciation and punishment of the excesses of the clergy therefore have to be understood as central to the mode of Church government.

This absorbing book explores the tensions within the Roman Catholic church and between the church and royal authority in France in the crucial period 1290-1321. During this time the crown tried to force churchmen to accept policies many considered inconsistent with ecclesiastical freedom and traditions--such as paying war taxes and expelling the Jews from the kingdom. William Jordan considers these issues through the eyes of one of the most important and courageous actors, the Cistercian monk, professor, abbot, and polemical writer Jacques de Thérines. The result is a fresh perspective on what Jordan terms \"the story of France in a politically terrifying period of its existence, one of unceasing strife and unending fear.\" Jacques de Thérines was involved in nearly every controversy of the period: the expulsion of the Jews from France, the relocation of the papacy to Avignon, the affair of the Templars, the suppression of the \"heresies\" of Marguerite Porete and of the Spiritual Franciscans, and the defense of the \"exempt\" monastic orders' freedom from all but papal control. The stands he took were often remarkable in themselves: hostility to the expulsion of Jews and spirited defense of the Templars, for example. The book also traces the emergence of King Philip the Fair's (1285-1314) almost paranoid style of rule and its impact on church-state relations, which makes the expression of Jacques de Thérines's views all the more courageous.