Book Description

Excerpt from The Catholic Hierarchy, of the United States 1790-1922 Several attempts have been made to write the history of the Hierarchy in the Church of the United States. John Gilmary Shea, historian of the American Church, was one of the first to undertake this task. In 1886, he published a volume The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States, and while this work deserves the highest praise, it is of little historical value, since the author withheld all references to his sources. In 1888, Richard H. Clarke published a similar work in three volumes entitled The Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States. Unlike Shea, Clarke has given abundant references in his footnotes with the result that he has approached somewhat more closely to the historical ideal. But, despite this, the work is not reliable. To Francis X. Reuss must be accorded the honor of being the first to undertake a thoroughly historical treatment of this subject. His Biographical Cyclopedia of the Catholic Hierarchy of the United States from 1789 to 1898, published at Milwaukee in 1898, was "nothing more - nor less - than an American supplement to the Art of Verifying Dates. It is not a history in the ordinary meaning of the word: it is a manual of fundamental data for the guidance of future historians of the Church in the United States." The work has many source references and in some instances previous historical inaccuracies are corrected. In the first issues of the Catholic Historical Review, the Rt. Rev. Owen B. Corrigan, D.D., Auxiliary-Bishop of Baltimore, published a Chronology of the Catholic Hierarchy of the United States, supplementing to a great extent the plan of Reuss. He added the Provinces and the Suffragan Sees in the order of their establishment, following a geographico-chronological division. These articles elicited high commendation and have been exceedingly beneficial to writers in the field of American Church History. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.