History Books

The Church of Apostles and Martyrs is the first installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent and enormously popular History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first six chapters of that work, surveying the first years of the Church until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; the peerless contributions of St. Paul; the relations between imperial Rome and the fledgling Church; the persecutions and first martyrdoms; the catacombs and development of the liturgy; and the genesis...

The Church of the Revolutionary Age: A Fight for God is the ninth installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' outstanding History of the Church of Christ. This volume surveys (1) the crisis of Modernism, "the crossroad of all heresies"; (2) the outbreak of the Great War and Pope Benedict XV's fight against the flames which laid unprecedented spiritual and material waste; (3) the continued success of Catholic social teaching and the rise of Catholic Action in the years after World War I, crowned by Pius...

The Church in the Dark Ages is the second installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the last five chapters of that work, surveying the threats to the Christian East, from the rise of Islam and onslaughts of jihad to the Iconoclastic Controversy, burgeoning heresy, and imminent schism; the greatness of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance; the subsequent era of disorder in the West, counteracted by the first great medieval pope, S...

The Church in the Dark Ages is the second installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first five chapters of that work, skillfully studying St. Augustine of Hippo, whose genius governed Christendom for centuries; the "Great Invasions" of the Barbarians and their conversion under the great popes, Gregory and Leo; the sanctifying influence of such saints as John Chrysostom, Patrick, and Boniface, and the scholars and missionaries of Eas...

The Church of Cathedral and Crusade is the third installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the last seven chapters of that work, surveying the rise of the universities and triumph of scholasticism in Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas; the emergence of that "perfect expression of a faith," the cathedral; the callings, conflicts, and controversies of the Crusades; the ascent to glory and decline into schism in the Christian East; the ad...

The Church of the Classical Age: The Era of Great Splintering is the seventh installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent History of the Church of Christ. This volume surveys the eighteenth century's intellectual revolution, wrought by Galileo, Descartes, and Rousseau (among others); appraises the Church's missionary efforts-in Asia, with the Chinese rites controversy and the spirited work of de Nobili and de Britto in India; in Canada, with the heroic endeavors of Sts. Isaac Jogues and John...

We live in apocalyptic times: secularization, persecution, and atheism abound. In the history of the Church, the faithful relied on councils to unify and help them weather life's fierce trials. But what recourse do we have when the synods themselves begin sparking confusion and discord? Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong was formed during the "wind of Pentecost" surrounding the Second Vatican Council and taught theology and philosophy in seminaries for more than fifty years. In these pages, col...

In this book, János Csák explores the enduring intellectual and spiritual legacy behind America's achievement, the very essence and history of the American genius. Americans see freedom as the ultimate human good, but it is precisely around the principle of freedom and its misuse that much drama has unfolded in recent years. This drama manifests in a creeping cognitive dissonance rationalizing (seemingly at every turn) practices and injustices that contradict America's original ideals. Yet Th...

Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Ja...

An Age of Renewal: The Catholic Reformation is the fifth installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent History of the Church of Christ. This volume surveys the re-awakening of the Catholic soul which began even before the advent of Luther's revolution and which culminated in the tireless devotion of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his founding of the Society of Jesus; provides a superbly detailed summary of the Council of Trent and a fascinating analysis of the decrees and canons and various metho...

A Religious Revolution: The Protestant Reformation is the fourth installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first four chapters of that work, examining the triple crisis in the Church-of authority, as the scandal of the antipopes leads to the Great Western Schism; of unity, as the Hundred Years War, the chaos of famine and plague, and the fall of Byzantium spell the disintegration of Christendom; and of spirit, as moral decay and in...

To survey the history of the Catholic Church is, in the words of Eamon Duffy, to be left with "a sense of the intractable complexity of the historical reality of the Church and its institutions." To do justice to this complexity, Philip Hughes wrote an ambitious, three-volume survey of Church history-comprehensive in scope yet introductory and accessible in detail. Volume III: The Revolt Against the Church surveys the critical period of 1270 to 1517 and the key figures and events which preced...

This second volume carries the history through to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas.

To survey the history of the Catholic Church is, in the words of Eamon Duffy, to be left with "a sense of the intractable complexity of the historical reality of the Church and its institutions." To do justice to this complexity, Philip Hughes wrote an ambitious, three-volume survey of Church history-comprehensive in scope yet accessible in detail. In Volume I: The Church and the World in Which It Was Founded, Hughes dispenses with the chronological method, instead following the organic divis...

Due to the advancement of observable evil in our society, the topic of exorcism has increasingly come to the forefront in the West in this century. In Hollywood movies, exorcism has often been sensationalized and misconstrued. Although volumes have been written about demons and exorcism, little has been explained about what solemn exorcism really is within the larger context of deliverance ministry. But now, Church-decreed expert on demonology and exorcism Adam Blai thoroughly explores the ro...

"What we priests were forced to endure under the Nazi regime, especially in Dachau concentration camp, is no more than a cup filled from the vast sea of human suffering in the world today," wrote Fr. John Lenz. "It is not this suffering as such that is important. The important thing is to show those who have crosses of their own to bear in life just what the grace of God can do for those who follow faithfully in the footsteps of Christ the Crucified. It is no less important to reveal the wick...

"One of the 100 best books of the year." --The Times Literary Supplement Christopher Columbus is reevaluated as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction--on a mission to save Jerusalem from Islam. Five hundred years after he set sail, Columbus is still a controversial figure in history. Debates portray him either as the hero in the great drama of discovery or as an avaricious glory hunter and ruthless destroyer of indigenous cultures. In Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, ...

Why is the capital of the United States named in part after Christopher Columbus, a Genoese explorer commissioned by Spain who never set foot on what would become the nation's mainland? Why did Spanish American nationalists in 1819 name a new independent republic "Colombia," after Columbus, the first representative of the empire from which they had recently broken free? These are only two of the introductory questions explored in The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, a fundament...

The Catholic Church has been a part of English history since the arrival of Christian missionaries to Roman Britain in the first century after Christ. England was evangelized in these early centuries to such an extent that, by the time the Romans withdrew in the fifth century, the Celtic population was largely Catholic.Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, was a land of saints. From St. Bede, with his history of the early Church, to the holy king St. Edward the Confessor, Saxon E...

Histories of the Catholic Church in the United States abound. Most suffer from an excess of either scholarly detachment or popular triumphalism. American Pilgrimage seeks instead to draw on the best of current scholarship to tell the story of the Church as it understands itself: the Body of Christ, divinely ordained yet marred by sin, charged with the mission of spreading the Gospel and building up the community of the faithful. In scope, American Pilgrimage narrates the story of the Church f...

C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural...

New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire Why is the capital of the United States named in part after Christopher Columbus, a Genoese explorer commissioned by Spain who never set foot on what would become the nation's mainland? Why did Spanish American nationalists in 1819 name a new independent republic "Colombia," after Columbus, the first representative of the empire from which they had recently broken free? These are only two of the introductory questions explored in The Lega...

The Ancient Church, The Middle Ages, The Beginnings of the Modern Period "The task of condensing the History of the Church within a few hundred pages is a delicate one. We have undertaken it in the hope that our efforts will benefit both seminarians and college students. Our chief concern throughout has been clearness, precision, and brevity, and for this reason we have carefully eliminated unnecessary details. On the other hand, we have thought it our duty to stress the dogmatic controversie...

The Modern Period: Contemporary Church History So vast is the material to be controlled, digested and presented in the work of preparing a manual of Church History for the use of students in colleges, seminaries and universities or for the enlightened portion of the general public, the historian who undertakes the task is always confronted with the problem of knowing what to leave out as non-essential details or events of secondary importance and what to include as matter of capital importanc...

From the Preface: The Renaissance was a time of realization, continuity and rebirth that began in fifteenth-century Italy. The name Renaissance or Classical is given to that manner of building and style of ornament which is an adaptation of the models of ancient Greece and Rome. These ancient classical models helped influence the new architecture and painting of Sant'Onofrio. It is my hope this little book will inspire you, dear pilgrim, and help create a conversation among other pilgrims to ...

​"Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable." So begins Marcel Proust's Death Comes for the Cathedrals (La mort des cathédrales), originally published in Le Figaro (1904). Proust addresses the political and religious debate concerning the "the Briand bill," a parliamentary proposal which imperiled the fate of French ...

How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith What does Plato have to do with the Christian faith? Quite a bit, it turns out. In ways that might surprise us, Christians throughout the history of the church and even today have inherited aspects of the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato, who was both Socrates's student and Aristotle's teacher. To help us understand the influence of Platonic thought on the Christian faith, Louis Markos offers careful readings of some of Plato's best-known texts...

An Historical Inquiry Progress and Religion was perhaps the most influential of all Christopher Dawson's books, establishing him as an interpreter of history and a historian of ideas. It has been described as a brilliant work of synthesis, for in this single volume he outlined his main thesis for the history of culture, which was his life's work. Anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religion, and history formed the backdrop for the key idea of his thought--namely, that religion is the soul of...

St Benedict and the European Future St. Benedict has been called the Father of Western Monasticism and Patron of Europe. In this masterful work, Christopher Derrick brings forward the relevance of the values in the Rule of St. Benedict for the temporal as well as the spiritual future of the Western world.

America's Third Struggle for Freedom Initially written in 1940, Rural Roads to Security is a well-documented book about agrarian life during the Great Depression, and carried a warranted subtitle: “America’s Third Struggle for Freedom”. According to the authors, the first struggle was the war for American independence from Great Britain. The second struggle was the American Civil War, which succeeded to preserve the union and emancipate the enslaved. The third struggle was taking place during...

St. Cecilia's, Brooklyn, 1871-1930 Here, in these pages, first published in 1931, is the story of the first sixty years of St. Cecilia's parish in Brooklyn, NY. Under the stewardship of Msgr. Edward McGolrick (1857-1938), an impressive network of social support that touched practically every aspect of a parishioner's life was built: a maternity hospital, a daycare center (the first of its kind in the country!), the largest Catholic parochial school building in America, a sports facility for h...

A Historical Study It may be useless to deny that most of the West functions under the reign of capitalism, but despite this fact the question of the origin of this paradigm and how it came to such a prominent position in our society remains unclear. This is the vital question.  Religion and the Rise of Capitalism aims to address. In what has proven something of a minor classic, R. H. Tawney sets his sights high, returning to the Middle Ages to examine the history of both capitalism and reli...

500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society With essays from John Rao, Chris Ferrara, Brian McCall, and eight others, Luther and His Progeny is a signal contribution toward understanding the full import of the Protestant revolt, and the best guide available for Catholics to the meaning of Luther's decisive break.