Preface

Abstract

The aims and the approach of this book will be discussed in the Introduction. I wish to acknowledge here my obligations to colleagues and friends as well as to institutions who have given me generous help. In preparing an earlier version of this study for presentation as a doctoral dissertation at Yale University, I was the recipient of a Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. This enabled me to spend six months at Rome where I had the privilege of working in the Vatican Archives and in the Vatican Library to whose Prefects and their staffs I wish to express my gratitude for all courtesies extended to me. I owe a similar debt to the Manuscript Department of the Austrian National Library at Vienna whose magnificent collection I was permitted to consult. At the Smith College Library I have received unfailing and cheerful assistance from the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Office. In preparing the text of this study for publication, the relevant literature appearing through the end of the year 197 4 has been considered insofar as it was accessible and known to me. In the Appendices and in the Bibliography, however, a number of studies published in 1975 and 1976 could still be cited.I am honored and pleased that this book can appear as a volume in the "Studies in the History of Christian Thought" and I wish to express my appreciation to Professor Heiko A. Oberman of the University of Tiibingen, the General Editor of this series, for making this possible. At this time, I also wish to thank Professor Steven E. Ozment of Yale University who first encouraged me to present this study to a wider public. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the President and to the Committee on Aid to Faculty Scholarship of Smith College for financial assistance which made it possible to complete the research for this book and to publish it. My deepest gratitude goes to my wife, Ernestine J. Stieber, who understandingly accepted the many small sacrifices which were necessary to complete this study in its present form.