Author of the "Stabat Mater": Jacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III?

In the liturgical calendar for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite, today is the Friday of Passion Week, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. In the calendar for the Ordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite, this memorial is celebrated in conjunction with the Exaltation of the Cross in September, which I explained last year in this article for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine. That memorial highlights the Seven Sorrows, while today we focus on the sorrows Mary felt at her Son's Passion and Death.

I don't think it's in any way inappropriate to reflect on the fear and sorrow she must have felt in the days leading up to the events of Holy Week. Even Palm Sunday, with its glory, laud, and honor, heightened the conflict between Jesus and the Sanhedrin. The image brought up thrice in the Propers for this Mass is the piercing of Mary's soul, foretold by Simeon in St. Luke's Gospel (in the Collect, in the Secret, and in the Post communion Prayer).

The Stabat Mater (the mother standing) sequence was once part of the celebration of this day, but the many sequences once part of the liturgy were reduced after the Second Vatican Council. Authorship of the words is contested: it is most commonly attributed either to Pope Innocent III or Jacopone da Todi.

Pope Innocent III was one of the most influential popes of the early Middle Ages. Just listing some of the historical events he was involved with demonstrates his influence: meeting St. Francis of Assisi and approving his new mendicant order; supporting the Fourth Crusade; opening the Fourth Lateran Council; forcing King John of England to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury and then accepting England as a feudal fief from the same king, etc. It may seem odd that such an intellect and will would write a devotional and emotional work like the Stabat Mater, but as the Catholic Encyclopedia article notes, St. Thomas Aquinas's Corpus Christi hymns might seem out of character too.

The other candidate, Jacopone da Todi, was a 13th century Franciscan, author of many laudi, popular poetry written in an Umbrian dialect. He was one of the "Spiritual" Franciscans who desired to follow a stricter interpretation of St. Francis's rule, and did come into conflict with the pope at the time, Boniface VIII. Since the Stabat Mater is written in Latin, it might seem unusual in his oeuvre. 

Whomever wrote the poem, it is moving and solemn, and it has been set to music by many composers, as the Wikipedia article attests.

Stabat mater dolorosa
juxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.

Cuius animam gementem,
contristatam et dolentem
pertransivit gladius.

O quam tristis et afflicta
fuit illa benedicta,
mater Unigeniti!

Quae mœrebat et dolebat,
pia Mater, dum videbat
nati pœnas inclyti.

Quis est homo qui non fleret,
matrem Christi si videret
in tanto supplicio?

Quis non posset contristari
Christi Matrem contemplari
dolentem cum Filio?

Pro peccatis suæ gentis
vidit Iesum in tormentis,
et flagellis subditum.

Vidit suum dulcem Natum
moriendo desolatum,
dum emisit spiritum.

Eia, Mater, fons amoris
me sentire vim doloris
fac, ut tecum lugeam.

Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
in amando Christum Deum
ut sibi complaceam.

Sancta Mater, istud agas,
crucifixi fige plagas
cordi meo valide.

Tui Nati vulnerati,
tam dignati pro me pati,
pœnas mecum divide.

Fac me tecum pie flere,
crucifixo condolere,
donec ego vixero.

Juxta Crucem tecum stare,
et me tibi sociare
in planctu desidero.

Virgo virginum præclara,
mihi iam non sis amara,
fac me tecum plangere.

Fac, ut portem Christi mortem,
passionis fac consortem,
et plagas recolere.

Fac me plagis vulnerari,
fac me Cruce inebriari,
et cruore Filii.

Flammis ne urar succensus,
per te, Virgo, sim defensus
in die iudicii.

Christe, cum sit hinc exire,
da per Matrem me venire
ad palmam victoriæ.

Quando corpus morietur,
fac, ut animæ donetur
paradisi gloria. Amen.

Newman's "Litany of the Passion" (for Private Devotion)

From the Vultus Christi blog of Silverstream Priory in Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland, comes this Litany of the Passion composed by Blessed John Henry Newman. Father Mark, the blogger, introduces the Litany thusly:

Blessed Cardinal Newman’s Litany of the Passion reveals the tenderness and compunction of his Christocentric piety. It also demonstrates that Newman was a humble man, capable of entering into the mainstream of Catholic devotion and of learning from it, even while adapting it somewhat to his own sensibility.

To illustrate Newman’s Litany I chose a painting by a French contemporary of his, William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905). The position of Jesus attached to the column already suggests the torments of the crucifixion: his arms are extended, his feet lie one upon the other as they will be on the cross. No blood is visible on His sacred body; it appears white and host–like. His face is turned upward, suggesting the mystery of His victimal priesthood. The flesh of Jesus appears luminous — almost transfigured — while, all around Him, are shadows. All the light in the painting seems to emanate from the body of Jesus. I see already the Lumen Christi [the Easter Candle] of the Paschal Vigil. Is this Bouguereau’s way of expressing the whole mystery of Redemption?

The heart of the litany:

Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom, Have mercy on us.
The Word made flesh, Have mercy on us.
Hated by the world, Have mercy on us.
Sold for thirty pieces of silver, Have mercy on us.
Sweating blood in Thy agony, Have mercy on us.
Betrayed by Judas, Have mercy on us.
Forsaken by Thy disciples, Have mercy on us.
Struck upon the cheek, Have mercy on us.
Accused by false witnesses, Have mercy on us.
Spit upon in the face, Have mercy on us.
Denied by Peter, Have mercy on us.
Mocked by Herod, Have mercy on us.
Scourged by Pilate, Have mercy on us.
Rejected for Barabbas, Have mercy on us.
Loaded with the cross, Have mercy on us.
Crowned with thorns, Have mercy on us.
Stripped of Thy garments, Have mercy on us.
Nailed to the tree, Have mercy on us.
Reviled by the Jews, Have mercy on us.
Scoffed at by the malefactor, Have mercy on us.
Wounded in the side, Have mercy on us.
Shedding Thy last drop of blood, Have mercy on us.
Forsaken by Thy Father, Have mercy on us.
Dying for our sins, Have mercy on us.
Taken down from the cross, Have mercy on us.
Laid in the sepulchre, Have mercy on us.
Rising gloriously, Have mercy on us.
Ascending into Heaven, Have mercy on us.
Sending down the Paraclete, Have mercy on us.
Jesus our Sacrifice, Have mercy on us.
Jesus our Mediator, Have mercy on us.
Jesus our Judge, Have mercy on us.

And the closing prayer:

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee,
Because through Thy Holy Cross Thou didst redeem the world.

Let us pray.
O God, who for the redemption of the world wast pleased to be born; to be circumcised; to be rejected; to be betrayed; to be bound with thongs; to be led to the slaughter; to be shamefully gazed at; to be falsely accused; to be scourged and torn; to be spit upon, and crowned with thorns; to be mocked and reviled; to be buffeted and struck with rods; to be stripped; to be nailed to the cross; to be hoisted up thereon; to be reckoned among thieves; to have gall and vinegar to drink; to be pierced with a lance: through Thy most holy passion, which we, Thy sinful servants, call to mind, and by Thy holy cross and gracious death, deliver us from the pains of hell, and lead us whither Thou didst lead the thief who was crucified with Thee, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, God, world without end. –Amen.

This litany, along with other prayers, devotions, and meditations (including two sets of meditations on the Stations of the Cross) may be found on-line at the Newman Reader; Baronius Press has a beautiful edition of Newman's Meditations and Devotions.

If, this deep into Lent, you are looking for a deserving recipient of alms, I think Silverstream Priory qualifies. For one thing, they have a Staffordshire Terrier named Hilda as part of their community, and even make accepting her part of their notes on vocations to their priory: We have a very gentle dog; if you are not dog-friendly or are easily shocked when a dog acts in a very doggy fashion, you will not be happy among us. In another post, Father Mark comments, A dog contributes much to the quality of community life, not the least of which is the indispensable craich (an Irish word meaning fun and good times). Abba Xanthios said, “A dog is better than I am, for he has love and he does not judge.”(Just search for Hilda at the blog site!)

Information on their fundraising campaign and how to donate here.

Not "Papist Patriots" but "Papist Devils"! Coming Soon from CUAP

The Catholic University of America Press will release this book in June this year: Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574-1783 by Robert Emmett Curran:

This is a brief [320 pages] highly readable history of the Catholic experience in British America, which shaped the development of the colonies and the nascent republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Historian Robert Emmett Curran begins his account with the English reformation, which helps us to understand the Catholic exodus from England, Ireland, and Scotland that took place over the nearly two centuries that constitute the colonial period. The deeply rooted English understanding of Catholics as enemies of the political and religious values at the heart of British tradition, ironically acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a Catholic republican movement that was a critical factor in the decision of a strong majority of American Catholics in 1775 to support the cause for independence.

Papist Devils utilizes archival material, newspapers, and other contemporary records in addition to a broad array of general histories, monographs, and dissertations dealing with the British Atlantic world.The unprecedentedly broad scope of this study, which encompasses not only the thirteen colonies that took up arms against Britain in 1775, but also those in the maritime provinces of Canada as well as the ones in the West Indies, constitutes a unique coverage of the British Catholic colonial experience, as does the extension of the colonial period through the American Revolution, which was its logical dénouement.

With its view of "the British Catholic colonial experience" beyond Maryland, which I have usually focused on, this looks like a fascinating study to me. It would be interesting to read and compare it to Papist Patriots, which analysed how Catholics in Colonial Maryland were so ready to assist the American Revolution and the new republic, based upon their Cisalpine tendencies.

St. John Fisher, Defender of Marriage (And a Few Colleagues)

From Crisis Magazine, this article by Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute:

In his October 2013 article on the question of communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Cardinal Gerhard Müller underscored that the Catholic Church had risked much to uphold Christ’s teaching regarding true marriage’s indissolubility. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith singled out the fact that Catholicism had suffered the schism of “a Church in England” “because the Pope, out of obedience to the sayings of Jesus, could not accommodate the demands of King Henry VIII for the dissolution of his marriage.”

In this context, most people immediately think of Saint Thomas More. In at least two accounts of his trial, More stated that the real core of Henry VIII’s animus against him was that More did not believe Anne Boleyn to be Henry’s wife. After all, one reason for More’s imprisonment was his refusal to affirm, on oath, the marriage’s validity.

In truth, however, More had tried to say as little as possible about the King’s Great Matter before and after his resignation as Lord Chancellor. In public at least, the real water on the marriage issue was carried by another Saint: Cardinal John Fisher of Rochester.

Fisher was by far the most formidable defender of the validity of Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage, penning at least 7 tracts on the subject. Widely regarded as one of the greatest bishop-scholars of his time and a successful Chancellor of Cambridge University, Fisher’s writings underscore his deep familiarity with the Scriptures, church fathers, and scholastic and renaissance thought. Not many people learn Greek in their forties. Yet Fisher somehow managed to do so.

Concerns about what his scholarly peers might think, however, didn't prevent Fisher from confronting doctrinal and moral error. He also actively combated corruption and lax morality among clergy and laity alike. Nor was Fisher ever distracted from his pastoral responsibilities. Testimonies abound to Fisher personally serving the poor, spending long hours in the confessional, regularly visiting the sick and dying, penning devotional writings for ordinary folk, and leading an abstentious life. Eligible for any number of more famous sees, Fisher chose to remain in the very poor, insignificant diocese of Rochester.

Other great defenders of the validity of Henry and Catherine's marriage met the same fate as good Bishop Fisher: Fathers Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell (except that they endured the full sentence of the execution of traitors, being hung, drawn, and quartered). The Observant Franciscans, formerly Henry VIII's favorite mendicants, openly opposed Henry's marital machinations and defended the validity of his marriage to Queen Catherine. Friars Peto and Elstow publicly stated their opposition and defense during sermons in the Greenwich chapel. Perhaps on this date, April 8, in 1533, the friars appeared before Henry's Council. According to this website:

Again the friars repeated their strong condemnation of Henry's course of action. The Earl of Essex (sic) [Henry did not name Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex until 1540, less than two months before his arrest and attainder] told them that they deserved to be put in a sack and cast into the Thames. Elstow's response deserves recording: "Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk who are clothed in purple, fare delicately, and have their chiefest hope in this world, for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the discharge of our duties we are driven hence. With thanks to God we know the way to Heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not which way we go." 

Astonishingly the two friars were not flung into the Thames or even into prison (Henry was still flexing his proto-totalitarian muscles) and were instead banished from the country. Friar Peto was eventually to be raised in Rome to the purple [during the reign of Mary I].

Passiontide: Two Weeks Leading up to Easter Sunday

In the liturgical calendar of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, today is Passion Sunday and we begin the two week period of Passiontide. It is traditional to veil all the statues and crucifixes in church, and in our homes, starting today and through Holy Week until the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Even in the Ordinary Form, the statues are often veiled on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. From Passion Sunday to Palm Sunday, as Dom Gueranger notes, the readings at Mass are focused on the ever increasing danger Jesus faced from His opponents, as even Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead, is targeted:

The miracle performed by our Savior almost at the very gates of Jerusalem, by which He restored Lazarus to life, has roused the fury of His enemies to the highest pitch of frenzy. The people's enthusiasm has been excited by seeing him, who had been four days in the grave, walking in the streets of their city. They ask each other if the Messias, when He comes, can work greater wonders than these done by Jesus, and whether they ought not at once to receive this Jesus as the Messias, and sing their Hosanna to Him, for He is the Son of David. They cannot contain their feelings: Jesus enters Jerusalem, and they welcome Him as their King. The high priests and princes of the people are alarmed at this demonstration of feeling; they have no time to lose; they are resolved to destroy Jesus. We are going to assist at their impious conspiracy: the Blood of the just Man is to be sold, and the price put on it is thirty silver pieces. The divine Victim, betrayed by one of His disciples, is to be judged, condemned, and crucified. Every circumstance of this awful tragedy is to be put before us by the liturgy, not merely in words, but with all the expressiveness of a sublime ceremonial.    

In the Extraordinary Form, more liturgical changes indicate the growing tension and even fear: the Glory Be to the Father is omitted from the prayers at Mass:

Such are the sublime subjects which are about to be brought before us: but, at the same time, we shall see our holy mother the Church mourning, like a disconsolate widow, and sad beyond all human grief Hitherto she has been weeping over the sins of her children; now she bewails the death of her divine Spouse. The joyous Alleluia has long since been hushed in her canticles; she is now going to suppress another expression, which seems too glad for a time line the present. Partially, at first, but entirely during the last three days, she is about to deny herself the use of that formula, which is so dear to her: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. There is an accent of jubilation in these words, which would ill suit her grief and the mournfulness of the rest of her chants.

The opening psalm of the Mass, the Judica Me (Psalm 50) is also omitted, and the great hymns of Venantius Fortunatis, Bishop of Poitiers, are appropriate for the period of Passiontide: Vexilla Regis and Pange Lingua. The Friday of Passion Week is dedicated to the Seven Sorrows of Mary, so the Stabat Mater is also sung, as it often is between the stations of the Stations of the Cross, usually in the translation by Edward Caswall, Oxford Movement convert. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, and Holy Week begins, culminating in the greatest days and nights of the liturgical year: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

The Canterbury Clerestory Windows at The Cloisters

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition of stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral at The Cloisters:

This exhibition of stained glass from England's historic Canterbury Cathedral features six Romanesque-period windows that have never left the cathedral precincts since their creation in 1178–80.

Founded in 597, Canterbury Cathedral is one of the oldest Christian structures in England. It was an important pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages—as witnessed by Geoffrey Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales, a literary masterpiece from the fourteenth century—and is also the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide. Recent repairs to the stonework of the magnificent historic structure necessitated the removal of several delicate stained-glass windows of unparalleled beauty. While the restoration of the walls has been undertaken, the stained glass has also been conserved.

The windows shown at The Cloisters are from the clerestory of the cathedral's choir, east transepts, and Trinity Chapel. The six figures—Jared, Lamech, Thara, Abraham, Noah, and Phalec—were part of an original cycle of eighty-six ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history. One complete window (Thara and Abraham), rising nearly twelve feet high, is shown with its associated rich foliate border.

Masterpieces of Romanesque art, these imposing figures exude an aura of dignified power. The angular limbs, the form-defining drapery, and the encompassing folds of the mantles all add a sculptural quality to the majestic figures. The glass painting, which is attributed to the Methuselah Master, is striking for its fluid lines, clear forms, and brilliant use of color.

Blue Heron is performing at The Cloisters on Palm Sunday, April 13--both performances are sold out!

In 1541, following Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, Canterbury Cathedral was re-founded as a secular cathedral. The works in the program are drawn from a set of partbooks commissioned by Canterbury from the singer and scribe Thomas Bull, then at Magdalen College, Oxford, in order to supply the cathedral's new choir of professional singers (including the youthful Thomas Tallis) with a complete repertoire of Masses, Magnificats, and votive antiphons. The centerpiece of the program is the Missa Spes nostraby Robert Jones (fl. 1520–35), a wonderful and wholly obscure composer whose only two surviving works appear in Bull's partbooks.

Radiant Light: Stained Glass from Canterbury Cathedral at The Cloisters closes on May 18, 2014--makes me want to book a flight to New York! My husband took the picture above when we visited Canterbury Cathedral many years ago.

St. Edward the Confessor and Papal Gifts

Pope Francis wisely featured St. Edward the Confessor (in the center of the left half of the Wilton Diptych, behind Richard II) in his gifts to both Queen Elizabeth II and her great grandson Prince George. St. Edward is a shared saint between the Church of England and the Catholic Church--primarily because he was canonized by Pope Alexander in 1161 and his cult extended to the entire Catholic Church by Blessed Pope Innocent XI in 1679 (!) According to the Vatican's report of their meeting, "The Pope . . . presented the Queen with a replica of a decree from the Vatican archives, dating from 1679, by which Pope Innocent XI extended the veneration of St Edward the Confessor to the Universal Church, establishing his feast day on October 9^th." (Except that sources I found say his feast day is October 13, since that is the date of the translation of his relics to Westminster Abbey.) It is interesting to think that Blessed Pope Innocent promoted this feast while Catholic priests in England were being executed because of Titus Oates' "Popish Plot". It's also important to remember that Innocent did not approve of Catholic King James II's methods in promoting Catholicism in England--nor of James's closeness with King Louis XIV of France (and probably not of Charles II's, either).

Additionally, St. Edward the Confessor was featured in the other gift Pope Francis presented to the Queen for Prince George, third in the line of succession to the throne:  "It was a blue, lapis lazuli orb, topped with a cross of St Edward the Confessor and around the base a dedication reading ‘Pope Francis to His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge’."

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip faced a greater challenge in giving ceremonial gifts to Pope Francis: what do you give to the man who does not really want anything? In keeping with the informal nature of the visit, they gave him a hamper "stuffed with goodies from her royal estates: honey from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, venison, beef and some best bitter from Windsor Castle, cider, apple juice and a selection of chutneys from Sandringham and some shortbread and whiskey from the Balmoral estate in Scotland."

We should recall that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams knelt together in prayer before the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor on Friday, September 17, 2010 during the ecumenical Evensong in Westminster Cathedral:

Pope Benedict, in his address, said he was grateful for his welcome and described his visit as a “pilgrimage”, by the Successor of St Peter, to the tomb of St Edward the Confessor. He said King Edward was “a model of Christian witness” and “an example of that true grandeur to which the Lord summons his disciples in the Scriptures we have just heard: the grandeur of a humility and obedience grounded in Christ’s own example”.

St. Edward the Confessor, so-called because he was not a martyr, is the only English king to be proclaimed a saint.

Six Catholics Authors and Father Ian Ker

Dermot Quinn reviews The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh, by Father Ian Ker (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), for The Imaginative Conservative:

Assembling a sestet of writers whose dates describe an arc between the Oxford Movement and the first stirrings of the Second Vatican Council, Ker explores a rare moment when Catholics seemed to dominate a world generally inhospitable to their moral and sacramental preoccupations. These writers are a varied bunch—so miscellaneous, in fact, that it is hard to imagine them together anywhere other than in a church, and a very broad church at that. As individuals complex and contradictory, as a group they seem so eccentric that even shared Catholicism strains to contain them.

In order of treatment, Father Ker’s revivalists are Cardinal Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. Allowing for taste and personal preference, it is an impressive roster. . . . 

This is a fine book, warmly recommended, full of sharp insight and telling quotation. The reader will not concur with every judgment (which is, indeed, one of the book’s pleasures) and one or two editorial errors creep in, but these niceties apart, it is a highly accomplished piece of work. Learned, witty, and humane, it will give much pleasure to specialist and generalist alike. . . .

They had an easy intimacy with mystery, these six, as all Catholics must have who take their church seriously. With Chesterton, for instance, the intimacy was with the mystery of goodness. With Greene, on the other hand, it was with the mystery of evil. Think of Chesterton’s insight in Orthodoxy that the task of the philosopher—of every person—is to be at once at home in the world yet utterly amazed by it. One must “somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.” “We do not fit into the world,” he said, but see, rather, “the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural.”

The same apprehension of the sheer gift and goodness of being, the strange loveliness of all creation, permeates the work of Hopkins, great poet of landscape and “inscape.” But think, too, of Greene, wrestling with malevolence and losing. His derelict characters reach their private Golgothas too broken even to hope for redemption, often refusing when freely offered it at the last. Greene in his own life came to resemble them, once for instance declining an invitation from Padre Pio (now a saint) because he knew such a meeting would require him to reform his life. He called his memoirs Ways of Escape. Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven should have reminded him there is no escape.

Yet in a more important sense the Church is not prison but liberation. It is the way of escape—from the cell of the self, from the solipsist nightmare, from the grubbiness of materialism, from the overwhelming fact, in every age, of sin and sorrow. For Hopkins, the church was a heaven-haven. For Belloc, it was freedom from “the isolation of the soul.” For Chesterton, it was salvation from being a child of his own time. For Waugh, it was “an island of order and sweetness in an ocean of rank barbarity.” For Newman, it was emergence from darkness to light. Without God, he wrote, “we are pent up within ourselves. We need a relief to our hearts…that they may not go on feeding upon themselves; we need to escape from ourselves to something beyond.” That “something beyond” is God. It is also, mysteriously, His Church on heaven and earth. Examining six of its members, Father Ker has written a splendid book.

Read the rest here.

Jacques le Goff, RIP

According to The Guardian, historian Jacques le Goff has died:

The historian Jacques Le Goff died in Paris on Tuesday aged 90, his family told newspaper Le Monde.

Over a long and influential career in academia and public broadcasting, Le Goff transformed views of the middle ages from a dark and backward time to a period that laid the foundations for modern western civilisation.

He was a leading proponent of "new history" – the shift in historical research from emphasis on political figures and events to mentality and anthropology. . . .

His many books included works on middle age intellectuals, bankers and merchants, a biography of King Louis IX and a seminal work on the introduction of the concept of purgatory.

"By transforming our view of the middle ages, you have changed the way we deal with history," Le Goff was told when awarded the prestigious Dr AH Heineken prize for history in 2004, whose jury described him as "without doubt the most influential French historian alive today".

I think that Le Goff's views of the middle ages were certainly shared by and articulated very effectively by Christopher Dawson in England and the USA, through his research on the spiritual tradition (Christianity) that infused Western Civilization. And Regine Pernoud's Those Terrible Middle Ages! also helped strip away the darkness imposed on the Middle Ages by the Enlightenment. But in popular thought (if that's not a contradiction in terms) the Middle Ages is still the dark, benighted, superstitious (that is, Catholic) era between the brightness of Greece and Rome and the rebirth of that brightness in the Renaissance (witness the EU's proposed constitution, which skips the era entirely!). Perhaps the fact that Le Goff was an agnostic helped his argument for the Middle Ages prevail in academia! 

One of Le Goff's most influential books was The Birth of Purgatory, translated by Arthur Goldhammer for The University of Chicago Press:

In The Birth of Purgatory, Jacques Le Goff, the brilliant medievalist and renowned Annales historian, is concerned not with theological discussion but with the growth of an idea, with the relation between belief and society, with mental structures, and with the historical role of the imagination. Le Goff argues that the doctrine of Purgatory did not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the late twelfth century, that the word purgatorium did not exist until then. He shows that the growth of a belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages. Throughout, Le Goff makes use of a wealth of archival material, much of which he has translated for the first time, inviting readers to examine evidence from the writings of great, obscure, or anonymous theologians. 

His most recently published book is about The Golden Legend, published by Princeton University Press: In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend:

It is impossible to understand the late Middle Ages without grasping the importance of The Golden Legend, the most popular medieval collection of saints' lives. Assembled for clerical use in the thirteenth century by Genoese archbishop Jacobus de Voragine, the book became the medieval equivalent of a best seller. By 1500, there were more copies of it in circulation than there were of the Bible itself. Priests drew on The Golden Legend for their sermons, the faithful used it for devotion and piety, and artists and writers mined it endlessly in their works. In Search of Sacred Time is the first comprehensive history and interpretation of this crucial book. Jacques Le Goff, one of the world's most renowned medievalists, provides a lucid, compelling, and unparalleled account of why and how The Golden Legend exerted such a profound influence on medieval life.

In Search of Sacred Time explains how The Golden Legend--an encyclopedic work that followed the course of the liturgical calendar and recounted the life of the saint for each feast day--worked its way into the fabric of medieval life. Le Goff describes how this ambitious book was carefully crafted to give sense and shape to the Christian year, underscoring its meaning and drama through the stories of saints, miracles, and martyrdoms. Ultimately, Le Goff argues, The Golden Legend influenced how medieval Christians perceived the passage of time, Christianizing time itself and reconciling human and divine temporality.

Authoritative, eloquent, and original, In Search of Sacred Time is a major reinterpretation of a book that is central to comprehending the medieval imagination.

The Queen and I, Part II: Book Review

Beth von Staats reviews my book on her blog:

Supremacy and Survival, How Catholics Endured the English Reformation is a triumph of comprehensive brevity. In a mere 149 pages, Stephanie A. Mann tackles head-on and convincingly from a Roman Catholic point of view the Henrican and Protestant Reformations of England and later Great Britain, beginning the with way of life of Roman Catholics living prior to Henry VIII’s decision to annul his marriage to Catalina de Aragon straight through to the British Roman Catholic Emancipation of the 19th century and beyond. Just how does Mann pull off this seemingly impossible feat? Stephanie A. Mann is a educator, and like any great teacher, she sticks to the facts, points to the obvious and allows her reader to absorb what for many will be a true enlightenment. Our English historical heroes were not as religiously tolerant as we thought. Our English historical villains were not so condemnable as we were led to believe. They never taught us any of this in history class or Sunday School. Who knew?

What's different about this review is that Beth comes from a historical fiction community that has Anne Boleyn as its heroine. If you are interested in Tudor dynastic history, you know that Anne Boleyn is a crucial figure. She can also be a controversial figure: either the heroine of the era or the terrible villainess of English history--as Hilary Mantel (and others have said something similar) wrote in The Guardian in 2012, "Anne Boleyn is one of the most controversial women in English history; we argue over her, we pity and admire and revile her, we reinvent her in every generation. She takes on the colour of our fantasies and is shaped by our preoccupations: witch, bitch, feminist, sexual temptress, cold opportunist." In summary: Anne Boleyn fascinates many for many reasons--and of them has been her reputation as a reformer, with evangelical (Lutheran) sympathies.

One might expect that my book, with its focus on what Catholics suffered during and after the English Reformation, could be seen as an attack on Anne Boleyn or even an attack on English Protestantism as it developed. But I think throughout Supremacy and Survival, I practiced charity toward all the historical personages, not ever attacking their persons--sometimes weighing their actions in a balance of justice and pointing out general inconsistencies--but never naming anyone a villain or villainess. My thesis about the English Reformation has been tested, based as it is on the work of great scholars like Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh, et al--and when I read Alister McGrath's Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution (San Francisco: Harper One, 2007), I was more assured I had it right. That's why I appreciate this review so much: it is not only fair to my thesis, but argues for readers to be open to my argument--and to some of its implications.

As Beth concludes in her review:

If you are looking for an apologetic view of English and Welsh history, you will not find it in Supremacy and Survival, How Catholics Endured the English Reformation . If you are Anglican or even if another Protestant denomination, you may find some of what Stephanie A. Mann teaches unsettling. Read the book anyway. Learn English history through the eyes of of the Roman Catholic experience. You will hear the voices of English and Welsh Roman Catholics, hundreds martyred for their faith alone, clear and strong — and for many of you, perhaps for the first time. Hear them roar.