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Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763–1939

Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763–1939

by Matteo Binasco

Edited by Kathleen Sprows Cummings

220 pages, 7.00 x 10.00 in

Hardcover

Published: May 2018

ISBN 9780268103811

$75.00

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ISBN 9780268103842

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Praise
Excerpt

“This is a fine piece of work: well written, superbly organized, and offering concrete guidance to scholars seeking to work in Roman archives. The author and the Cushwa Center, which commissioned this project, have made a signal contribution to the desire to ‘transnationalize’ the history of American Catholicism. The work is excellent; preparing a researcher to make maximum use of funds and time abroad is one of its great gifts.” —Steven M. Avella, Marquette University

"Matteo Binasco’s Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763–1939 is the historian’s GPS for American Catholic archives in Rome. Binasco has produced a magisterial book for the historian of American Catholicism, finally giving us a comprehensive, detailed, and expert mapping of the American sources. The archives catalogued in this book, many of them containing files never reviewed by American Catholic historians, should compel new reflections, perspectives, and directions for research. As American Catholic historiography moves from national to global, this resource will be an invaluable tool for graduate students, professors, writers, and archivists." —Charles R. Gallagher, S.J., Boston College

“The author must have pounded the pavement (or cobblestones) of Rome to gather this data. This guide provides basic information in a concise manner so that researchers can plan and utilize well their time in Rome.” —Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., curator of the Avery Cardinal Dulles Papers, Fordham University

"Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763–1939 is an invaluable addition to the reference literature on American Catholicism. As the foreword notes, no other reference work covers the subjects and collections this volume does." —Choice

"This thoughtful and thorough book emerged from a 2014 conference in Rome sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. . . . With his survey of sixty archives and libraries in Rome and the Vatican, [Matteo] Binasco has answered so many questions, and research travel budgets will never be the same." —Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu

“This volume will be a boon to new areas of research in the fields of transatlantic studies, Catholic studies, and global history.” —Catholic Library World

"In her Introduction, Kathleen Sprows Cummings reveals that the ball for this excellent work started rolling at a 2014 conference in Italy sponsored by Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center and the Università della Tuscia. Two very useful chapters follow her Introduction—one by Luca Codignola and Matteo Sanfilippo, and the other by Binasco that provide useful historic and historiographic contexts for the project." —American Catholic Studies

"The labors of Binasco and his colleagues have produced a monumental work that serves as an effective reference tool for furthering scholarship in American Catholic history." —Reading Religion

Part 1

Matteo Binasco’s Roman Sources for the History of American Catholicism, 1763–1939, accompanies the curious reader on a tour through the mysteries of Roman archives. Whether zooming in for a close-up of a known repository, or perusing several entries in search of that particular document, the overall feeling is one of awe before the magnitude and the complexity of the task. While the sense of mystery will remain—a lifetime would not be enough to lift all veils from these rich archives—this guide allows any researcher to do many things. First, while at home, to establish objectives for a research project; then to select at what doors to knock once in Rome; next, to learn which series, volumes, or individual item to enter in the repository’s application form; and finally, to get down to business—to see, touch, and read the actual document one needs, be it a private letter, a public memorandum, the proceedings of a meeting, or a bull appointing a bishop.

This guide is meant for students of the history of the United States from 1763 to 1939. It is not the first attempt to untangle the difficulties awaiting scholars unfamiliar with Roman archives and practices. In the early twentieth century, the Carnegie Institution of Washington attempted to help scholars in this predicament, publishing a number of guides to archival material for the history of the United States scattered around the Western world. In 1911, US diplomatic historian Carl Russell Fish (1876–1932) wrote a “Roman and Other Italian Archives” volume, meant as “a preliminary chart of a region still largely unexplored.” Fish lived in Rome for less than a year (1908–9). Yet his century-old guide is still valuable for scholars embarking on a research trip to Rome. More recently (1996–2006), the Academy of American Franciscan History, mainly through the painstaking work of Slovenian archivist Anton Debeveč (1897–1987) and his Italian assistant and successor, Giovanna Piscini, produced an eleven-volume “calendar” of the Archives of the Sacred Congregation “de Propaganda Fide.” This was the Holy See’s department in charge of all missions around the world, including, until 1908, the United States and Canada. Debeveč’s Calendar, while a most useful finding aid, is therefore limited to one repository, albeit of vast importance for the history of the United States. It is this situation that Matteo Binasco’s Guide addresses. Having personally reconnoitered fifty-nine Roman repositories, Binasco moves well beyond where Fish’s Guide left off over a century ago.

Before taking the reader through a quick and selective survey of the relationship between the Holy See and the United States between 1763 and 1939, let us explain why these two dates were selected. The opening year, 1763, is the date of the Treaty of Paris. When France ceded its Canadian holdings to Britain, several provinces and colonies north of the Spanish Main came to constitute a vast British North America. As of 1776, most of them became part of the United States. It took another few decades before British North America (later Canada) and the United States agreed on their respective borders. In fact, many French-speaking Catholics later became citizens of the United States. During this early period, then, the borders between the two countries were blurred and it would be a mistake to try to clearly distinguish between them; therefore, from the point of view of Catholic history 1763 is a more useful opening date than 1776. As for 1939, at the time of the Guide’s publication, that year represents the official closing date for consultation of the Vatican archives. Other material will become available in the future. For some time, Vatican archivists and international scholars have been whispering about the new accessibility of World War II and Cold War material. At this time, however, there are no set dates for the release of this material in sight. As indicated by Binasco’s Guide, some post-1939 material, is, however, already available. For example, documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), as well as those of the Ufficio Informazioni Vaticano and Prigionieri di Guerra (Vatican Information Office and Prisoners of War), dealing with the years 1939–47, are open to researchers. They are housed within the Vatican Secret Archives collections.

Part 2

Prior to the American War of Independence, the Catholic inhabitants of the British continental colonies, about one per cent of the population, mostly lived in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with a few families in New Jersey and Virginia. Their only ministers were a handful of priests sent by the English Province of the Society of Jesus. Because the open practice of the Catholic religion was officially forbidden both at home and in the colonies, the activity of these priests was shrouded in secrecy. Very little of what took place in the British colonies made its way to Rome, either to the Sacred Congregation “de Propaganda Fide” or to the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, the latter being the central office of the Society and home to the superior general. During the French and Indian War, the Holy See enquired as to who was in charge of the Catholics of English-speaking America. The vicars apostolic of London, Benjamin Petre (1672–1758) and Richard Challoner (1691–1781), who took Petre’s place in 1758, confessed that in principle they should have been in charge, but that in practice they had never done anything in that regard. After the Treaty of Paris, Challoner suggested that the Holy See appoint three vicars apostolic, one in Quebec City, one in Florida, and a third in Philadelphia. Nowhere else in the British Empire, he indicated, did Catholics did enjoy more freedom for their religion than in Philadelphia. Challoner also pointed out that the English Province of the Society of Jesus was doing its utmost to stop the appointment of a vicar apostolic for the British colonies. The Maryland Jesuits, he explained, had for so long enjoyed an exclusive mastery of those provinces that they would not suffer the arrival of a priest who did not belong to their Society—and even less of a bishop.

Carroll’s 1789 appointment as bishop of Baltimore took place only a few months after the Storming of the Bastille. The tragic events of the French Revolution turned some of the certainties of the Catholic world upside down. Protestant England became a haven for thousands of French émigrés, lay and religious, and the United States came to be regarded by some, even within the Holy See, as the promised land of a reborn Catholicism. In 1789 Antonio Dugnani (1748–1818), then nuncio in France, wrote that “the best solution is to go to America.” Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) raised some enthusiasm at first, but his attitude toward the French church, let alone his imprisonment of the pope and the military régime that he imposed on Rome and the Papal States, transformed him into a “consummate brigand.” Seen from Carroll’s view across the Atlantic, the French Revolution had tried to annihilate religion “through fire and sword,” while Napoleon was trying to do the same through “the humiliation and the degradation” of a church “completely subjugated to the power of the state.”

(excerpted from introduction)