This second volume begins with the dawn of the eighteenth century, and relates how the Congregation of the Mission, founded by St. Vincent de Paul, worked to remain faithful to his vision while adapting itself to the demands of ecclesiastical and political life in France, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Portugal, overseas missions in North Africa and the Mascarenes, as well as the missions taken up after the suppression of the Jesuits in the Middle East and China. Among other problems, the Missioners found themselves in the middle of fights over Jansenism, but tempered by the success of the canonization of Saint Vincent de Paul. This is an important, down-to-earth side of history not often told.

The French Revolution nearly destroyed the Vincentians in France, and those in most other countries were isolated, persecuted in every degree from niggling regulations to imprisonment and martyrdom, and sometimes squeezed into oblivion. To these external miseries were added painful internal schisms: the Italians, abetted by other countries and the Holy See, pushed to center the Congregation in Rome; interdicts against communication with foreign superiors forced provinces in many countries to act autonomously; national pressures to swear loyalty and conform to compromising regulations created splits within the community and threatened to divide the Daughters and separate them from their brothers. Reduced membership and funding crippled the Vincentians’ efforts as they emerged from the worst of the state obstructions. Nevertheless, they began rebuilding and even made struggling beginnings in overseas missions, notably the United States, Brazil, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, and China, where the martyrdom of two missionaries galvanized interest in this distant and challenging mission.

China’s Old Churches, by Alan Sweeten, surveys the history of Catholicism in China (1600 to the present) as reflected by the location, style, and details of sacred structures in three crucial areas of north China. Closely examined are the most famous and important churches in the urban settings of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as lesser-known ones in rural Hebei Province. Missionaries built Western-looking churches to make a broad religious statement important to themselves and Chinese worshippers. Non-Catholics, however, tended to see churches as sociopolitically foreign and culturally invasive. The physical-visual impact of church buildings is significant. Today, restored old churches and new sacred structures are still mostly of Western style, but often include a sacred grotto dedicated to Our Lady of China--a growing number of Catholics supporting Marian-centered activities.

The career of the French saint Vincent de Paul has attracted the attention of hundreds of authors since his death in 1660, but the fate of his legacy - entrusted to the body of priests called the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists) - remains vastly neglected. De Paul spent a lifetime working for the reform of the clergy and the evangelization of the rural poor. After his death, his ethos was universally lauded as one of the most important elements in the regeneration of the French church, but what happened to this ethos after he died? This book provides a thorough examination of the major activities of de Paul’s immediate followers. It begins by analysing the unique model of religious life designed by de Paul - a model created in contradistinction to more worldly clerical institutes, above all the Society of Jesus. Before he died, de Paul made very clear that fidelity to this model demanded that his disciples avoid the corridors of power. However, this book follows the subsequent departures from this command to demonstrate that the Congregation became one of the most powerful orders in France. The book includes a study of the termination of the little-known Madagascar mission, which was closed in 1671. This mission, replete with colonial scandal and mismanagement, revealed the terrible pressures on de Paul’s followers in the decade after his demise. The end of the mission occasioned the first major reassessment of the Congregation’s goals as a missionary institute, and involved abandoning some of the goals the founder had nourished. The rest of the book reveals how the Lazarists recovered from the setbacks of Madagascar, famously becoming parish priests of Louis XIV at Versailles in 1672. From then on, fealty to Louis XIV gradually trumped fidelity to de Paul. The book also investigates the darker side of the Congregation’s novel alliance with the monarch, by examining its treatment of Huguenot prisoners at Marseille later in the century, and its involvement with the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. This study is a wide-ranging investigation of the Lazarists’ activities in the French Empire, ultimately concluding that they eclipsed the Society of Jesus. Finally, it contributes new information to the literature on Louis XIV’s prickly relationship with religious agents that will surprise historians working in this area.

Their mission was humble and simple: to reach the poor country people, who suffered from ignorance of their faith, a debased clergy, and poverty. In response, Vincent De Paul defined the vocation of his “Little Company” as preaching local missions for free, educating the clergy, and working to relieve the people’s poverty. Soon, however, this vocation was complicated by commands to minister to royal families, including Louis xiv of France and the kings and queens of Poland, which would embroil the Vincentians in international and ecclesiastical politics. In addition, they would begin dangerous foreign missions, such as ministering to the Christian captives of the Barbary pirates, the debased colonists and rebellious natives of Madagascar, and the vendetta-prone Corsicans. For the first time, modern readers have a thoroughly researched history based on original documents and the studies of numerous scholars, past and present. It portrays the Vincentians’ daily lives and describes their failings as well as their exalted acts of heroism. It also details the social and political milieus that conditioned their lives and work. It is an important, down-to-earth side of history not often told.

Thérèse Peeters shows how trust and distrust affected reform attempts in the post-Tridentine Church, while offering a multifaceted account of day-to-day religiosity in seventeenth-century Genoa.

Interpreting the History of a Region in Crisis / Robert H. Holden -- Land and Climate: Natural Constraints and Socio-Environmental Transformations / Anthony Goebel McDermott -- Regaining Ground: Indigenous Populations and Territories / Peter H. Herlihy, Matthew L. Fahrenbruch, Taylor A. Tappan -- The Ancient Civilizations / William R. Fowler -- Marginalization, Assimilation, and Resurgence: The Indigenous Peoples since Independence / Wolfgang Gabbert -- The Spanish Conquest? / Laura E. Matthew -- Spanish Colonial Rule / Stephen Webre -- The Kingdom of Guatemala as a Cultural Crossroads / Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara -- From Kingdom to Republics, 1808-1840 / Aaron Pollack -- The Political Economy / Robert G. Williams -- State Making and Nation Building / David Díaz Arias -- Central America and the United States / Michel Gobat -- The Cold War: Authoritarianism, Empire, and Social Revolution / Joaquín M. Chávez -- Central America since the 1990s: Crime, Violence, and the Pursuit of Democracy / Christine J. Wade -- The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces / Orlando J. Pérez and Randy Pestana -- Religion, Politics, and the State / Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval -- Women and Citizenship: Feminist and Suffragist Movements, 1880-1957 / Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz -- Literature, Society, and Politics / Werner Mackenbach -- Guatemala / David Carey Jr. -- Honduras / Dario A. Euraque -- El Salvador / Erik Ching -- Nicaragua / Julie A. Charlip -- Costa Rica / Iván Molina -- Panama / Michael E. Donoghue -- Belize / Mark Moberg.

THE SUBTITLE OF THIS VOLUME is “An Era of Expansion, (1878–1919).” It reflects the reality of the Congregation of the Mission under the leadership of Antoine Fiat, the superior general who governed the Community longer than St. Vincent de Paul. Like the founder, Fiat was a man of both prayer and action. Also like the founder, Fiat was often hesitant and delayed final decisions. His confreres spread to new missions, such as the republics of Central America and Argentina, and several missions or provinces had grown large enough to be given more autonomy, such as the two American provinces, the Antilles, Barcelona, Ecuador, Belgium and Holland, Madagascar, and Colombia. China continued to attract many missionaries as well as local Chinese vocations despite war and unrest. This volume, then, relates not only that the Vincentians, members of the Congregation of the Mission, grew in number and influence, but how they exercised their ministry. Persecution was their lot in some regions, but they forged ahead. As always, they sought to align their ministries at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries with the original mission entrusted to them by the Church through Vincent de Paul: to bring the Gospel to the poor.