International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830—1914)

Abstract

The essay explores what recent trends in international and religious (in particular, Catholic) history have to offer one another. On the one hand, the transformation of imperial history into global history and a new attention for the role of non-state actors in international politics are opening the eyes of international historians to religion as one of the main forces shaping the modern world. On the other hand, historians of religion are rediscovering the essentially transnational nature of their subject, and its enmeshment with politics at every turn. In the history of Catholicism, this takes the form of an aggiornamento of 'old-fashioned' themes such as ultramontanism, missionary expansion and the papacy. After having drifted apart for half a century, the two subdisciplines thus increasingly appear as natural allies in reconsidering the master narrative of modernity. The concept of 'religious internationalism', illustrated here through its Catholic variety, allows us to 'think together' the different aspects of religion's transformation into worldwide mass movements, and to grasp the key role of religion in creating a global public sphere that was conditioned by international politics, but in turn also refashioned the international system.

‘A Most Select Gathering’. Mexican National Pilgrimages to Rome during the Papacy of Leo XIII

“…This study corroborates from a Latin American perspective the studies that point to the development of a global devotion to the papacy (Zambarbieri 1990;Horaist 1995;Viaene 2002;Pollard 2005;Rusconi 2010) and, in particular, the emotional and physical connection with the papacy (Seiler 2007). The historiographical contribution of the study of Latin America can therefore be fundamental to understanding the transnational and transatlantic dimension of Ultramontanism, which until then had had an essentially national and European dimension (Viaene 2008;Blaschke 2015), with some exceptions (D'Agostino 2004;Ramón Solans 2020c). This perspective would also make it possible to connect the fertile Latin American national historiographies with their European counterparts and to do so, not as an appendix, but as a fundamental and constitutive part of the development of the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century (Di Stefano and Ramón Solans 2021).…”

Stigmata, Prophecies, and Politics: Louise Lateau in the German and Belgian Culture Wars of the Late Nineteenth Century

“…Vincent Viaene has suggested various ways to do this, with research on Louise's fame readily fitting into two approaches: (1) we can examine her "as a magnet upon believers beyond borders;" and (2) we can study her as an element of the "symbolic idiom of the revival" and its counter-revolutionary worldview that gained cross-national currency. 10 However, rather than postulating a fixed meaning upon Louise, to which Catholics within different national contexts could refer, the article will draw upon recent work in celebrity studies to advocate the fluidity of the meaning attributed to her. Although Louise Lateau seems to have been a point of reference for European Catholics, this does not mean that her image, or what she represented to the faithful, was the same in each of the various countries, or even within one country.…”

“…22 Parallel to the work on the shared liberal political and literary culture, historians such as Christopher Clark have traced the evolution of Catholicism in this period, noting how it became more centralized, uniform, and Rome-oriented. 23 They have studied Romanized reinventions of older cults, such as that of the Sacred Heart (and its political connotations), and pointed to the role of the Catholic press in nourishing a sense of solidarity among Catholics in different countries and its capacity to link conflicts and emphasize common themes. 24 Although common themes can be drawn out across the European sphere, the culture wars were fought within specific national settings that influenced the dynamics of the conflict (e.g., legislation, censorship).…”

Centralized globalization: The Holy See and human mobility since World War II

“…In the nineteenth century Ultramontanism had already forged a global Catholic imagination. Ultramontane bishops were representatives of a centralized Roman hierarchy, and Catholics often thought of themselves as members of a global body and subjects of a universal papal authority (Viaene, 2008). Yet the principle of collegiality affirmed by Vatican II—that is, the authority of the college of bishops together with the pope over the whole Church—restored the authority of the local bishop as a leader in his own right rather than as a mere delegate of the papacy.…”