The Holy Land and the Early Modern Reinvention of Catholicism

A shared biblical past has long imbued the Holy Land with special authority as well as a mythic character that has made the region not only the spiritual home for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but also a source of a living sacred history that informs contemporary realities and religious identities. This book explores the Holy Land as a critical site in which early modern Catholics sought spiritual and political legitimacy during a period of profound and disruptive change. The Ottoman conquest of the region, the division of the Western Church, Catholic reform, the integration of the Mediterranean into global trading networks, and the emergence of new imperial rivalries transformed the Custody of the Holy Land, the venerable Catholic institution that had overseen Western pilgrimage since 1342, into a site of intense intra-Christian conflict by 1517. This contestation underscored the Holy Land's importance as a frontier and center of an embattled Catholic tradition.

1. A Catholic gateway to the Holy Land: the Custodia Terrae Sanctae; 2. Altars in the holy places and the pursuit of Christian precedence; 3. The order of the holy sepulcher; 4. Franc, the protector of the holy places; 5. The congregation of the propaganda fide and the custody; 6. A Franciscan Holy Land.

Megan Armstrong is Associate Professor of History at McMaster University. A scholar of Early Modern history in a global context, she is the author of The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of Religion, 1560-1600 (2004).