An important element of monastic penance and conflict resolution was its repetitive, almost cyclical nature. The manuscripts that were used during these performances often proceed implicitly, which makes them difficult to contextualize and understand. This article considers a possible example of such “hidden” reconciliatory discourse in a manuscript that was produced for the congregation of St. Laurent in Liège around the turn of the eleventh century: Brussels, Royal Library 9361–9367. It examines the sin of pride in monastic dignitaries, discusses the best way to atone for it, and provides tools for the penitent to start living a more virtuous life in the future. The surviving evidence suggests that this manuscript was produced in reaction to the deeds of abbot Berenger, whose actions in 1095 were considered scandalous by contemporaries because he had led his monks into confusion and sin. The article shows how the combination of texts in this manuscript takes on a different meaning because of these politically charged circumstances, and argues that the St. Laurent manuscript was a discreet but methodical way to end the resulting estrangement between Berenger and his monks. In this interpretation, Brussels RL 9361–9367 is a rare and highly relevant testimony to the ways in which monks in the early twelfth century dealt with psychological and social tensions in the wake of an intra-group conflict.

This article considers the social and cultural contexts of the two lives of Margherita Colonna (c.1254–1280) to reveal her traditional, monastic Franciscan piety that originated with her baronial Roman background. To her family, Margherita Colonna represented a moderate type of Franciscan piety that did not conflict with elite patriarchal expectations of women, and one that differed from the radical penitence of Clare of Montefalco, Angela of Foligno, and Margherita of Cortona. Her hagiographers structured their respective renditions of her life to promote their own agendas, choosing and omitting saintly virtues as they saw fit. Margherita's first life, written by her brother Giovanni Colonna, extolled her humility, nobility, and almsgiving. Her second life, written by Stefania, her relative and the successor of her spiritual community, focused on Margherita's mysticism and concern for her cloistered community. Both of these works diverge from the lives of radical female Franciscans who practiced contempt for the world and rigorous poverty. For this reason, this article argues that Margherita's pious type broke from that of Clare of Assisi, and more closely resembled the traditional monastic religiosity practiced by her family before the arrival of St. Francis. Such an approach to hagiography reveals the social context from which it arose, as well as gendered notions of holiness, thereby contributing to the fields of medieval sanctity, gender, and society.

This study traces the evolution of one version of the New Testament across two early modern kingdoms and three confessional communities. The Oratorian priest Pasquier Quesnel salvaged the text of the Nouveau Testament “de Mons,” which was condemned in 1667 for infidelity to the Vulgate, by attaching “Christian thoughts” to each verse and framing the new product as a moral commentary. The French Jesuit Michel Le Tellier revived the charges against the “Mons” scriptures, but he could not prevent their redistribution in Quesnel's L'Abrégé de la morale de l'Evangile (1672) and Nouveau Testament (1692) for more than three decades until he shifted his attack away from the translation toward the legitimating paratexts. Long before then, Le Tellier plunged the French Jesuits into the competition for marketing vernacular scripture-books. Though they first proposed an alternative model of scripture-reading, they increasingly borrowed from Quesnel's model as they had more success proscribing his book. Meanwhile in England, both Catholics and Protestants attempted to fit Quesnel's scripture-books to the standards of their geo-confessional communities, conforming enough to make transgression possible. The Catholic physician Richard Short represented Quesnel's book as the “Jesuit” Rheims version while the Anglican divine Richard Russel re-packaged it as a deluxe King James Bible. The struggles of all these competitors illuminate the informal processes of authorization that enabled scripture-books to shadow the Authorized Versions and to expand the space for publisher adaptation and reader appropriation between them. By analyzing the permutations of books, scholars might enrich their understanding of confessional differences, often limited to comparisons of textual access, and more precisely discern the varieties of historical relationships that particular Christian communities sought with their sacred scriptures.

An analysis of Lyman Stewart, California oilman and patron of early American fundamentalism, reveals much about the mutual transformations of American religion and capitalism in the early twentieth century. As an expositor of Victorian moralism and California Progressivism, as a missionary for dispensational fundamentalism, and a leader in industrial extraction, Stewart applied the logics of supernatural religion to his oil speculation and the logics of industrial capitalism to his religious work. As one of the chief architects of twentieth-century fundamentalist aspirations, Stewart pursued dueling objectives. On the one hand, he fought for empire and cultural custodianship; on the other hand, he argued for purity and cultural separatism. It was not theological or ecclesiological beliefs that produced this dual aim, but the commodification of religious work. As oil became transmuted into religious capital, religious work—particularly pastorates, missionary work, and theological education—became commodities that could be bought and sold, regulated, and appraised in terms of both purity and production.

At seventy-three years old, John Quincy Adams embarked on a winter lecture tour to share his views “On Faith” and drew on his “intercourse with the world” to describe the “many liberal minded and intelligent persons—almost persuaded to become Christians” whom he had met. So powerful was Adams's religious message that when his youngest son came across the manuscript years later, he simply docketed it: “Two sermons/JQA.” The speech, delivered from Boston to Salem and Hartford to Brooklyn—but never printed—laid out his decades of seeking and the formulation of Adams's own theology. Overall, Adams came to believe that man's unity of faith, hope, and charity could defeat earthly ills and clarify choices in the early republic's burgeoning religious marketplace. “Faith must have its bounds, and perhaps the most difficult and delicate question in morals is to define them clearly,” Adams said, praising the American government's nonintervention in forming official articles of faith. “But allow me to say that this unbounded freedom of religious faith, far from absolving any individual from the obligation of believing, does but impose it upon them, with a tenfold force.” This insight was especially true of Adams's own religious history. Therefore this essay offers a reintroduction to America's sixth president based on the diverse circles of prayer that he moved through, and the religious poetics that he created to narrate that pilgrimage. It ends with a glimpse of the curious afterlife that American religious culture assigned to him.

Tall tales are often told in times of war. Stories of masculine courage under fire, of the fog of war, and of the grim realities experienced by embattled bodies dominate the genre. During the Great War, however, Americans told a different kind of story about their president. Rather than picture their president entrenched and fighting, Americans shared accounts of President Woodrow Wilson praying. Dr. Admiral Cary T. Grayson recalled a popular wartime tale about an unnamed Congressman who sought President Wilson's counsel. The story begins with a Congressman, distraught with the state of the war-torn world, insisting upon visiting the White House to speak with the President. Travelling through the White House residence, the Congressman searched for his Commander-in-Chief from the East room to the Green room to the Blue room; all to no avail. Finally, he came to the Red Room, where “he discovered the President on his knees wrestling in fervent prayer, like Jacob, with the Most High.” As Wilson's friend and physician, Grayson remembered that this story and variations of it were popular despite its complete lack of credibility. This folk tale, Grayson believed, began as a rumor by Wilson's opponents (one that poked fun of a President who preferred to kneel on the floor rather than prepare the country for war) but, after the United States declared war in April 1917, was taken more seriously (as a testament to a Commander-in-Chief who led a righteous war). What perhaps began as a joke at the president's expense, gained credence as a reflection of President Wilson's approach to the Great War: it was, for him, a part of his religious life.

The letters were portrayed as a goodwill gesture toward the three more dominant religious traditions in America and, as far as President Franklin Roosevelt was concerned, the world. After being carefully constructed over the preceding weeks, they were held in strict secrecy until they were released to the media on December 24, 1939. Each was written to the leader of his respective religion: as president of Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Cyrus Adler represented American Jews and George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC), received a letter on behalf of American Protestants, with the last letter going to Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Each letter was, at least ostensibly, a Christmas greeting. Roosevelt offered each man warm wishes and his hearty thanks for all that he had done for his people and the world. Yet Roosevelt also noted the fear and uncertainty of the time. War had again come to Europe and threatened to envelop the globe. It was the responsibility of all people of goodwill, Roosevelt argued, to come together in any way they could for the cause of peace. He hoped the three men, and those they represented, would put aside religious differences and join together for the common good.

As a candidate for president Barack Obama identified Reinhold Niebuhr as one of the most important influences on his political and social thinking. Obama's referencing of Niebuhr was not casual. Frequently, in diverse contexts, and before a variety of audiences, Obama either subtly or overtly offered Niebuhr as a guide for statesmanship. He obliquely referenced Niebuhr's two-fold test of toleration at the 2011 National Prayer Breakfast; he structured his Nobel Prize speech around Niebuhr's consideration of the problem of Christian realism in foreign policy; and, in unveiling the stimulus package, Obama placed the entire work in a context of Christian realism. Clearly, Obama takes his Niebuhr seriously not only in theory, but also in practice. Obama's first term offered a lesson in Christian realism and governance.