Making use of the only records available - pastoral visits and synodal statutes - the authors introduce fresh evidence and interpretations. They shed new light on the medieval origins of the Catholic Reformation and the nature of the reform movement in the sixteenth century. Their work shows the importance of French bishops in starting the early-modern reform and their subsequent role in preparing the Catholic Church to weather the French Revolution. They also explore both the role of the French monarchy in the creation and collapse of the Catholic Reformation, and the changing attitude of peasants and the proto-proletariat toward official religion.

Preliminary Material /Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow --Introduction /Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow --The Reform Movement, the Monarchy, and Political Modernity /Peter Zarrow --Literati-Journalists of the Chinese Progress (Shiwu bao) in Discord, 1896-1898 /Seungjoo Yoon --Zhang Zhidong's Proposal for Reform: A New Reading of the Quanxue pian /Tze-ki Hon --The Founding of the Imperial University and the Emergence of Ghinese Modernity /Timothy B. Weston --Placing the Hundred Days: Native-Place Ties and Urban Space /Richard Belsky --Reforming the Feminine: Female Literacy and the Legacy of 1898 /Joan Judge --Naming the First 'New Woman' /Hu Ying --'Slavery,' Citizenship, and Gender in Late Qing China's Global Context /Rebecca E. Karl --'Poetic Revolution,' Colonization, and Form at the Beginning of Modern Chinese Literature /Xiaobing Tang --Index /Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow --Harvard East Asian Monographs /Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow.

In this authoritative history of American education reforms in this century, a distinguished scholar makes a compelling case that our schools fail when they consistently ignore their central purpose--teaching knowledge.

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Gospel-centered Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all the people of the Church into mission territory every day -- a territory increasingly defined in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive secularism. Confronting both these cultural challenges and the shadows cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism unapologetically proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of the world. It also molds disciples who witness to faith, hope, and love by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations. Thus the Catholicism of the 21st century and beyond will be a culture-forming counterculture, offering all men and women of good will a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of postmodernity. Drawing on thirty years of experience throughout the Catholic world, from its humblest parishes to its highest levels of authority, George Weigel proposes a deepening of faith-based and mission-driven Catholic reform that touches every facet of Catholic life -- from the episcopate and the papacy to the priesthood and the consecrated life; from the renewal of the lay vocation in the world to the redefinition of the Church's engagement with public life; from the liturgy to the Church's intellectual life. Lay Catholics and clergy alike should welcome the challenge of this unique moment in the Church's history, Weigel urges. Mediocrity is not an option, and all Catholics, no matter what their station in life, are called to live the evangelical vocation into which they were baptized: without compromise, but with the joy, courage, and confidence that comes from living this side of the Resurrection.

Indulgences have been synonymous with corruption in the Catholic Church ever since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. Tingle explores the nature and evolution of indulgences in the Counter Reformation and how they were used as a powerful tool of personal and institutional reform.

While most works on Nicholas of Cusa concentrate either on his early career as author of the monumental 'Catholic Concordance' or on his later career as writer of remarkable philosophical/theological works such as 'On Learned Ignorance' and 'The Vision of God', the essays included here attempt to address the whole Cusanus, sharing common contexts, issues and themes. Following chapters on the legacy of conciliarism and ecumenicity, the story begins with the Council of Basel for which Cusanus wrote 'The Catholic Concordance', but from which he broke away, raising issues of private conscience as well as the balance between papal authority and representative councils in the pursuit of reform. The story then turns to the 'matrix' between Constantinople and a new council in Ferrara when Cusanus received a ship-board gift from the 'Father of Lights' and began to write his great philosophical/theological treatises. When taken together the essays in this book not only form a cohesive whole, they also enlighten aspects often left in the shade, such as the enigmatic aspects of Cusanus' participation in the council, and his mystical theology that reveals a man of faith in search of certainty beyond the well-trod paths of philosophical reflection.