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The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to announce a new series, Early Modern Catholic Sources, edited by Ulrich L. Lehner and Trent Pomplun. This series – the only one of its kind – will provide translations of early modern Catholic texts of theological interest written between 1450 and 1800. The first volume in this series is On the Motive of the Incarnation, the first English translation of the seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelites at the University of Salmanca treatise on the motive of the Incarnation. Originally intended for students of their order, it became a major contribution to broader theological discourse. In this treatise, they defend the assertion that God intended Christ’s Incarnation essentially as a remedy for sin, such that if Adam had not sinned Christ would not have become incarnate, and that, at the same time, God intended all other works of nature and grace for the sake of Christ at their end. The Salmanticenses’ position thus combines elements of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions, stemming from the thought of Blessed John Duns Scotus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. This treatise is an exhaustive effort to show how the Scotistic emphasis on the primacy of Christ as the first willed and intended by God can be articulated within a Thomistic framework that acknowledges the contingency of the Incarnation on the need for redemption. In addition to the translation, the volume will include a brief introduction and extensive notes for theologians, historians, and students.

Ordering Customs explores how Renaissance Venetians sought to make sense of human difference in a period characterized by increasing global contact and a rapid acceleration of the circulation of information. Venice was at the center of both these developments. The book traces the emergence of a distinctive tradition of ethnographic writing that served as the basis for defining religious and cultural difference in new ways. Taylor draws on a trove of unpublished sources—diplomatic correspondence, court records, diaries, and inventories—to show that the study of customs, rituals, and ways of life not only became central in how Venetians sought to apprehend other peoples, but also had a very real impact at the level of policy, shaping how the Venetian state governed minority populations in the city and its empire. In contrast with the familiar image of ethnography as the product of overseas imperial and missionary encounters, the book points to a more complicated set of origins. 

 

A long-lost seventeenth-century poetic text exemplifying women's writing in the early modern period.

Written in 1685, Orphan Girl traces the life of the Polish noblewoman Anna Stanisławska (1651–1700) as she writes candidly and unsparingly about the course of her life, from her infancy to the time of her second widowhood, and ultimately her withdrawal from a world of which she no longer wants any part. Stanisławska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the tumultuous course of her three marriages. Described as one of the nine female Polish writers you need to read before you die, she is a writer whose stridency and directness of authorial voice would not be matched until modern times.

Writing years after terrible events which colored her life forever, Anna Stanislawska (1651-1701) meticulously reconstructed in an epic poem the episode of her forced marriage to the deviant son of the Castellan of Kraków. He was deemed to be so ugly that Stanislawska called her new husband Aesop, who was said to have been one of the ugliest men in Antiquity.

Barry Keane's idiomatic and inventive verse translation brings to life this half-forgotten poetic account of a remarkable tale of triumph in the face of overwhelming oppression and allows Anna Stanislawska to take her place among the women poets of early modern Europe.

A page-turner featuring one of literature’s earliest female protagonists.

Written in 1685, Transaction or the Description of the Entire Life of an Orphan by Way of Plaintful Threnodies, often referred to as Orphan Girl, is a valuable, long-lost, seventeenth-century poetic text that documents women’s writing in the early modern period. In this autobiographical account, Anna Stanislawska speaks confessionally and unsparingly about her life, from her infancy to her widowhood and withdrawal from the world. Stanislawska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the depths of her private life in a manner not to be matched until modern times. One Body with Two Souls Entwined brings together this spirited poetic account with an in-depth introductory and literary commentary by Barry Keane. Together the book offers a remarkable piece of scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical work and puts it in context amid the backdrop of Polish history.