Presidential addresses to professional societies are a special kind of presentation. Undoubtedly each of us has his or her own set of categories for them: the lofty pronouncement upon the current professional scene, the prescription of a new direction for the discipline, an analysis of presuppositions prevailing in the field, and, of course, a review of and reflections upon developments in the course of the incumbent's professional years. Whether this particular typology of addresses, that is, this general classification system, accords with yours is not the point at issue. Rather, I wish to stress the moment of uncertainty which is experienced, inevitably, as one sets about the task of composing his or her contribution under the constraints of office. Quite frankly, at first I had thought to turn this problem to advantage by offering as the substance of my presentation a critical review of those presidential addresses which have graced the Society through its venerable history. This seemed to be a way that an office-holder might serve the Society in a properly historical fashion. Of course I foresaw difficulties. Should I stop analysis at a discreet distance, shall we say in 1950? Or ought I pass over the addresses of those predecessors who are still active members of the Society, especially if they might be in attendance? Such practical considerations were finally less important in dissuading me from taking this course, however, than the advice of good friends and colleagues: “Build upon your current research interests; it will be a more appropriate presentation.”

During its long history Roman society absorbed innumerable changes without losing its sense of continuity. The present study examines this process of change and continuity in one social and religious epithet of womanly virtue. It concentrates on the history of univira, an epithet that appears in Latin literature and funerary inscriptions from early pagan to Christian Rome.

In order to write about the relationship of four Hungarian kings with the Holy See during the eleventh century, one must first make acquaintance with the ecclesiastical policy of King Stephen I (ob. 1038), who established the political and religious unity of the country. One must also consider the relations with Rome and with the German court of Kings Andrew I (ob. 1060) and Solomon (1063–1074) in the 1050s through the early 1070s. Finally, it is important to point out that only Ladislas I, who reigned during the last quarter of the century and died in 1096, had shown a firm attitude toward Rome, though his policy went too far and, in the view expressed by Urban II to Coloman the Learned of Hungary (ob. 1116), led to a rapture of relations with the Holy See.

Thus far we have considered all the learned ladies of whom we have any knowledge. But as the light of the sun shines above all the stars and with its bright splendor dulls the sparkling starlight, so the learned light of these other ladies stands, as it were, in the shadow because of the great luster of the incomparable young lady Anna Maria van Schurman.

Joh. van Beverwijck, Van de

Uitnementheyt des Vrouwelichen Geslachts (1643)

In his pamphlet entitled From the First to the Last of the Just, Jean-Paul Lichtenberg concludes a brief history of Jewish-Christian relations with a list of five periods to each of which he assigns a particular quality of anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism. Of the third period, 1096–1520, marked by the Crusades, the Ghetto and the Inquisition, Lichtenberg remarks,

“the pogroms, the massacres and the persecutions perpetrated on the Jews by Christian hands are the manifestation of a Christian anti-Semitism of the people, fed by harsh and comtemptuous preaching. Doctrinal anti-Judaism had filtered down to the masses and given birth to anti-Semitism. The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance brought about no changes in this situation. Relations between Christians and Jews are already poisoned and only the coming of the (French) Revolution will bring a change in the situation [emphasis added]. One may qualify the Christian anti-Semitism which prevails during this period as an anti-Semitism of passion based upon religion or, again, as an anti-Semitism of intolerance.”

While American Society was coming apart in the 1960s, an impressive array of historians rallied to condemn what Rayford Logan called “the astigmatism of the social gospel” in race relations. Preoccupied by the ills of urban-industrial disorder, they suggested, the prophets of post-Reconstruction social Christianity either ignored or betrayed the Negro and left his fortunes in the hands of a hostile white South. The indictment of the social gospel on this count hinged upon the racism of Josiah Strong, the faithlessness of Lyman Abbott, and the complicity in silence of Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the others.